TEAM ANGST: Catch-22, "Iteration"
Title: Iteration
Author: kitt ( interview)
Team: Angst
Prompt: Catch-22
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Summary: It looked ordinary enough to John, somewhat like a keychain used to lock and unlock car doors. John's fingers itched to touch it. To take it from Rodney and toss it into the vast ocean, so that he couldn't hit the buttons anymore. Which was odd, because John couldn't recall ever having seen it before, much less having seen Rodney hit any of the buttons.
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**
iteration
- n.
1. the act of repeating; a repetition.
2. Mathematics.
a. Also called successive approximation. a problem-solving or computational method in which a succession of approximations, each building on the one preceding, is used to achieve a desired degree of accuracy.
b. an instance of the use of this method.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Rodney couldn't remember ever having seen so much blood before in his life. It spread slowly, sinking into the loose sand below Sheppard's body and making the dirt clump together, forming a sticky, red mud. Rodney's uniform was soaked through, his hands stained red as they carded restlessly through Sheppard's hair. So much blood.
Sheppard took a hitching, pain-filled breath and locked his eyes with Rodney's. He was fading, Rodney could see it, he could feel it. God no, Rodney thought desperately, you can't die, not now, not like this. The rest of the world faded around him, like Sheppard was the only thing in the universe that mattered at all. And at that moment, Rodney thought maybe he was.
A wind blew, chilling Rodney to the bone as the blood on him cooled. Sheppard shivered in his arms and moaned.
“Rodney -” It was barely a whisper.
“Shh,” Rodney pressed his face into John's hair, not noticing, or maybe not caring, as blood smeared across his jaw. “I can fix this,” he whispered into Sheppard's ear, suddenly knowing it was true, “I can fix this.”
Rodney pulled the device out of his pocket. A gift from the M'stirn, those bastards. They had called it a Trial, his Trial. They had promised he would feel a need for it before he'd even gotten off this rock they called a planet, but he hadn't believed them, hadn't believed it was anything more than a plain little pocket souvenir; a symbol of his failure. He believed them now, and he believed it would work. He had to believe it, because otherwise, Sheppard was dead. He wasn't quite sure what it would do, or even how it worked, but it had to be better than this. Anything was better than this, better than Sheppard's blood pooling beneath them.
Sheppard shuddered in his arms and Rodney closed his eyes and pressed the button on the face of the device. His Trial, whatever it would be, had begun.
~*~*~*~*~*~
As they ate dinner with the M'stirn, John looked over to where Rodney sat, wedged between himself and Ronon. Five minutes ago, John would have said Rodney looked as bored as the rest of them, save Teyla. Now though... Now Rodney looked almost haunted.
“McKay. Hey, McKay!” John said, reaching over to snap his fingers in front of Rodney's face.
Rodney's eyes snapped to meet John's, then widened in an expression John couldn't quite read. Shock, or fear maybe.
“What's up, McKay? You look like you've seen a ghost.”
Rodney actually paled. “I think we should go,” he finally managed to stammer out.
“Go where?” John smiled. “The party's just getting started.” And he rolled his eyes theatrically, trying to get Rodney to share the joke.
“Anywhere. Back to Atlantis,” Rodney began babbling in a frightened whisper, “Now, now would be good.”
John reached out to try to calm him, but Rodney wrenched away as though burned and climbed hurriedly to his feet.
“Now, Colonel. We have to go now. Please.”
And that one word, more than anything else, was what caught John's attention. Rodney had said please. Not sarcastically, or snidely, but pleadingly. Rodney was actually begging him. John stared him down for a moment and realized that Rodney was damn well terrified.
“All right Rodney, okay. We'll go.” John stood, motioning for Teyla and Ronon to do the same.
They let Teyla make their excuses; she was the best at bullshitting and getting away with it, and while she seemed somewhat annoyed at this sudden insistence that they up and leave in the middle of the festival dinner, she played along for the moment. Ronon seemed glad of any excuse to get the hell out of there, and frankly, John wasn't exactly sorry to be calling it an early night either. They all eyed Rodney with a mix of concern and annoyance, but Rodney was obviously agitated and didn't even seem to notice their glances in his direction. When questioned, he simply continued to insist that they needed to leave, and right this moment would be vastly preferred to later on.
On their way back to the jumper, Rodney clammed up and refused to speak to them at all. He darted nervous glances back over his shoulder, and kept reaching into his pocket, as if to assure himself that something was still there.
Suddenly, about halfway between the village and the jumper, Rodney came to a dead stop, seemingly for no reason at all. He stood and stared at the sandy path, turned a rather frightening shade of green, and looked like he might be ready to pass out at any moment. John tried to move him along, but Rodney refused to be moved for a solid three minutes, and for the life of him, John couldn't figure out what the hell was so interesting about a sandy bit of trail that looked like every other sandy bit of trail from here to the end of this sandy, boring little world.
When Rodney did finally decide to move again, it was a quick, stumbling lurch away from the place he'd been so intently staring at. John frowned at Rodney's back, before following at a quick pace back to the jumper.
Once they were back in the jumper and heading for the gate, Rodney seemed to relax somewhat, but he still refused to talk, and continued fingering whatever it was he'd stowed in his pocket. John was beyond frustrated with the whole situation, but he was also worried. The entire episode was so completely un-Rodney-like, he couldn't just ignore it. Something was going on here, and John was growing more and more determined to get to the bottom of it.
The moment they emerged into what was left of the gateroom, all thoughts of figuring out just what the hell had spooked Rodney so badly were wiped from John's mind.
The jumper hovered momentarily as John and the rest of his team stared mutely out at the destruction. It looked like a bomb had gone off. Without bothering with the jumper bay, John landed and let them all out in the gateroom. People were scrambling back and forth, some injured, others trying to help. Nobody even seemed to notice John's team and the jumper amid the devastation. John stood frozen in place as he took in the horror around them.
“No,” Rodney whispered to himself, and broke the spell over the rest of the team.
“What the hell happened? Status report!” John yelled into his radio, rushing to the nearest prone form on the floor.
There was a static-filled reply. Something about an explosion when they had opened the iris to let the team back. Nobody seemed to know what was going on, but Beckett's medical team was on the way. When John finally asked a bruised and bloodied marine where Elizabeth was. The answer was not one he wanted to hear.
“Doctor Weir didn't make it, sir,” the marine said, holding a piece of bloody gauze to his forehead, “I saw the whole thing, and there's no way she could have -” The marine swallowed like he was trying not to throw up.
“No,” Rodney whispered again, and John looked over to see him standing in the same place, just outside the back of the jumper, staring at John and the wounded marine. “This can't be it.”
“Rodney,” John bellowed, his patience gone, “Get the hell up to the control room and find out what the fuck happened in here!”
Rodney started shaking his head, backing toward the jumper. “This isn't right. This can't be right,” he continued, repeating it like a mantra.
Shock, John thought, great. And then he remembered that Elizabeth was supposedly dead, and he thought maybe Rodney had the right idea, because god, Elizabeth was dead.
John watched as Rodney pulled something from his pocket.
“No,” Rodney said again, and the world went black.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Rodney had been eight, he'd spent an entire night praying for a do-over. A chance to change how things had gone and what had happened. In retrospect, it had been a complete waste of his time. Partly because praying to a God he didn't really believe in, even then, was pretty stupid. Mostly because the situation really hadn't been all that bad when viewed through the dispassionate eye of age.
Ironically, he'd been granted his wish decades later, and found himself wishing desperately that the need to change things had never been there in the first place.
The M'stirn weren't even to blame for most of it. They had done what they had to do to save one of their own. Rodney hadn't meant for it to happen that way the first time. He certainly hadn't meant for someone to get hurt. That young woman had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there had been nothing he could do to save her. The M'stirn, on the other hand, did have a way to save her. They had a tried and true do-over button. They could reset the world and start again.
Unfortunately, it seemed the M'stirn felt that the one they saw as “at fault” for a situation should be the one to rectify matters. When they'd given Rodney the device, he hadn't believed a word of it. When they'd told him he would feel the need to use it before he got to the gate, he hadn't understood. If he didn't believe it worked, and if he didn't even try to see if it would work to save an innocent girl, what could possibly convince him to suddenly go against his own logic and press the stupid Magic Button?
That was when the M'stirn attacked, and it wasn't some innocent bystander, caught in the middle of an experiment gone awry this time. It wasn't some girl that was too curious for her own good and too drunk from a festival celebration, snooping where she shouldn't have been. It was Sheppard, and as Rodney watched his best friend bleed out, there was no question in his mind as to whose fault it was this time. He was going to be responsible for the death of his team leader, the golden-boy of Atlantis, the man he had spent the better part of three years falling in love with.
That was when Rodney finally realized that some things required a leap of faith. For the first time since he was eight years-old, Rodney prayed to a God he didn't believe in, because saving Sheppard from a horrible and messy death on an alien planet? Totally worth sucking it up and pressing a goddamn button. Even with nothing more than hope to back him up.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It looked ordinary enough to John, somewhat like a keychain used to lock and unlock car doors. John's fingers itched to touch it. To take it from Rodney and toss it into the vast ocean, so that he couldn't hit the buttons anymore. Which was odd, because John couldn't recall ever having seen it before, much less having seen Rodney hit any of the buttons.
Rodney rubbed the edge of the device like a worry stone, staring blankly out to the ocean.
John watched him, unnoticed, from the shadows. He could almost feel the smooth coolness of it in his hand. Feel the hot-sharp stitch under his ribs. Feel it as he plucked it from Rodney's open palm. Feel the ground, rising up to meet him. Feel it as he rubbed his own thumb along the curved edge, just as Rodney did repeatedly. Feel the hands on him, turning him over. Feel it as he drew his arm back, to get a better distance, to assure that it would never be seen again, once released into the sea. Feel the slick burn of his own blood, soaking the sand around him.
John shook himself. Something terrible and frightening floated close to the surface of his mind, but before he could grasp it, Rodney turned and spotted him.
“What do you want?” Rodney said, his voice conveying the sadness they all felt right now.
“I just wanted to see how you were holding up, buddy.” John tried to offer up a smile, but it fell flat in the face of his own grief.
Rodney shrugged. John tried to think of something, anything, to say. He'd never realized how much Ronon and Lorne must have meant to Rodney, for the grief was coming off of him in waves. Or maybe that was John's own. Ronon and Lorne, two of the strongest people on this base, gone just like that; it was unthinkable.
John opened his mouth, intent upon saying some words of comfort, or at least something that would let Rodney know that he wasn't alone. They were all feeling the loss.
“Don't,” Rodney said before John could speak, “It never helps.”
“I - What?”
“And it doesn't matter in the end, you know.” Rodney grinned in such a way that John shrank back instinctively. “I can fix this.”
John shuddered. He'd heard those words before. He didn't know when or in what context, but he knew them, and he suddenly knew what was next.
A creeping, fake darkness stole over his vision and through his mind, and the world John knew was gone.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Elizabeth had died on his first attempt, Rodney had still been trying to recover from the shock of losing Sheppard, then getting him back so quickly. The Magic Button had worked, against all odds. They'd even made it off the planet that had both caused them so much pain, and taken it all way again. So it was safe to say that he wasn't really thinking all that clearly when they had returned to the gateroom, only to find it destroyed.
Even as he had pressed the button for Elizabeth, it hadn't quite occurred to him just what was going on.
By the fourth or fifth attempt at getting things right, Rodney could no longer have claimed to be unaware. He was being forced to watch his friends die, over and over again, and he was the only one that could save any of them. The problem was, saving any of them seemed to require sacrificing someone else.
The loops of time never restarted at the same place. The situations presented were never similar in any way, shape or form. Rodney never had a chance to heroically stop an event from occurring, because once he hit the button everything was different. It was both frustrating, and nerve-wracking.
He chose to remain clueless until the iteration that claimed Ronon and Lorne. After their deaths, he didn't reset immediately, as he had with everyone else, because he needed some time to process. He stood out on a pier, stared off into the ocean, and let the knowledge of what this was leading to consume him.
He didn't want to make that choice, but he also didn't feel he had any other options.
Which was, of course, when Sheppard showed up. Clueless about what Rodney was going through. He had thought Rodney was grieving for Ronon and Lorne. He didn't know that Rodney had stopped being able to feel grief around the time Zelenka had died. He wouldn't have remembered the time Zelenka died.
Rodney had desperately wanted to punch him then. Sheppard, along with everyone else, had been able to go through all of this without remembering a thing. Rodney wanted to be so ignorant. He wanted somebody to lean on. Somebody who remembered what was happening to them all. He wanted Sheppard to know. Except, when he looked at Sheppard, that want faded. Rodney couldn't wish this kind of pain on anybody, but especially not Sheppard.
Rodney realized that making them all wait for him to have some time to think was probably pretty cruel. While he had become fairly numb to watching friends and colleagues die, they had not, and he had forced them to go on grieving for Ronon and Lorne for far too long.
He had to press the button again.
~*~*~*~*~*~
After what happened to Peterson, John went looking for Rodney. He wasn't sure why, but his instincts told him that Rodney was the one he needed to find more than any other.
John found him in an empty lab down the hall from the one Rodney usually preferred to work in. Rodney was leaning against a work bench, staring intently at a small, gray object in his right hand. It looked something like a keychain, only not, and John was confused when he felt a sudden and deep sense of loathing for an object he could never remember having seen before.
That Rodney needed some solitude after what happened to Peterson wasn't entirely unexpected or troublesome. What did worry John was the way Rodney was looking at the small device in his hand. A mixture of disgust, despair and fear seemed to chase itself across Rodney's face as he looked at the object, and John tried to convince himself that his instinctive mistrust of the device was based solely on Rodney's apparent reaction to it.
“So, what does it do exactly?” John asked, pointing at the keychain as he stepped fully into the lab.
Rodney started, but caught himself quickly and went back to his perusal of the device momentarily. He didn't bother pretending to misunderstand. He stopped rubbing the edge of the small, gray rectangle and turned to stare at John.
“It's a giant reset button,” Rodney said with a smile that held absolutely no joy in it, “it's supposed to fix things. Or, at least, I thought it was.”
“How does it work?” John put his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out and snatching it from Rodney.
“It doesn't.” Rodney looked down at the keychain. “Well, it does, but not the way I want it to. Not the way I need it to.” He looked confused and scared. Angry.
John took a step closer, concerned at this nonsensical explanation, and the emotions so easily read on Rodney's face.
“Where did it come from, Rodney?”
Rodney's face blanked momentarily, then he shrugged and went back to looking half-frightened, half-angry, as if deciding that it wasn't worth lying about. “P2X-439. The M'stirn gave it to me.”
John wracked his brain, but could not come up with a memory of the M'stirn giving Rodney anything other than quite a few resentful looks. Rodney had been even more condescending than usual on that mission, and John had counted them lucky not to have be stoned to death - sharp, hot, slick pain under his ribs, blood turning sand to mud - on their way back through the gate, if he was honest with himself.
“I don't remember that,” John finally said, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible, while his concern and fear wrenched up another notch.
“You wouldn't,” Rodney replied cryptically, shoving the device into a pocket and out of John's line of sight, “It doesn't matter anyway. I need it. I need to fix this.”
Rodney offered a lopsided smile that didn't convince John in the least, and John had a sudden moment of clarity, knowing that Rodney wasn't talking about fixing the device, but using the device to fix something else. Before he could say any more, everything went blank, Rodney's whispered “Sorry” following him into a void of artificial darkness.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Rodney had made his decision. He knew how to fix this. What he couldn't figure out, was how to get back to the point where fixing it was possible. Every reset had started them off at a different point, and he never seemed to have any control over it.
He had hoped that pressing the button once he had made his choice would be enough, but after Ronon and Lorne, he'd had to watch Peterson die instead.
He needed to figure out how to make sure they started over at the right point, so he could put his plan into action.
He wished once more that there was someone else who knew what was going on. Someone else who could remember, so he could discuss it with them and figure out how to go about fixing this. Then he decided it was a moot point anyway, because if anybody else remembered and knew what he was planning, they probably wouldn't let him go through with it, even if it was the only way to make things right.
Still, he wished he could talk to Sheppard about it.
~*~*~*~*~*~
John shook his head in confusion, looking down at the sticks in his hands. He didn't see the blow coming, and was flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling in the training room before he could register the pain.
“You lost focus,” Teyla said politely from above him, “are you injured?”
“Fine. I'm fine,” John mumbled, dropping his sticks and accepting Teyla's offer of a hand up.
“Would you like to try a third time?” Teyla asked, spinning her sticks and watching him.
“McKay,” John blurted out, “I've got to find McKay.” And he was out the door, leaving a very confused Teyla behind.
He wasn't sure where the sudden urge to find Rodney had come from, just that he needed to make sure that Rodney was all right. Something felt wrong, different, off. John needed to see him.
He found Rodney in the lab, bent over something on a workbench opposite Zelenka.
“Sorry for what?” John said as he stepped through the door, uncertain of what he was asking even as it slipped from his mouth.
Zelenka gave him a confused glance, but Rodney stiffened at the words and didn't turn around.
“Sorry for what, Rodney?” John repeated.
He watched Rodney's fists clench on top of the table, and when Rodney finally turned around John half expected him to be furious, but he wasn't. Rodney looked downright terrified.
“That's not how it's supposed to work.” Rodney said it so quietly that John had to strain to hear him.
“Not how what's supposed to work?” John asked. “And what the hell did you apologize for? When did you apologize? McKay, what the fuck is going on?” John was practically hissing by the end, and Zelenka vacated the area quickly.
“You don't -” Rodney seemed to choke on the words a little, “You don't remember then?”
“Remember what?” John asked, shoulders sagging in defeat. “My head is spinning Rodney, and I know it has something to do with -” The words melted away as John's mind began to whirl around ideas just out of the reach of his memory. - Sand to mud, stained red. Grief and despair. Pain. - “Something that you, that I, it was never.” Spinning, everything was spinning.
“Sounds like you should be talking to Carson, or maybe Heightmeyer,” Rodney said haughtily.
“Don't. Don't do that. I know something is - I can feel -” John let out a frustrated growl and clutched his head. His ribs, hot and slick, blood. So much pain. Then nothing.
Thoughts and images were flashing and spiraling through his mind. Rodney. Conversations, words, fears. An apology that made no sense. People and events that never were, yet had to have been. Days that hadn't come yet, passing in a flash of explosions, bullets, accidents, death. A flash of light. A sudden plunging of darkness. Rodney. A keychain. No, not a keychain, something else, something far more sinister.
John heard someone screaming now, wanted to find the poor bastard and help him. He could hear Rodney, voice laced with concern. He could feel him nearby, a hand on his arm, fingers running through his hair, so familiar and yet so new, and he wanted to ask why Rodney wasn't helping whoever was screaming, endlessly screaming.
And then John knew where the screams were coming from, and he let the soft and encompassing darkness take him.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When it was obvious that Sheppard remembered, Rodney panicked. He wanted desperately to press the button again, reset it all in the hopes of wiping Sheppard's memory once more. He had watched the pain and despair sweep through Sheppard as the memories caught up with him and surrounded him. When Sheppard dropped to the floor, Rodney caught him and held him close, rocking him gently as Sheppard screamed.
It shouldn't have happened like that, Rodney thought. There had never been any indication from the M'stirn, or from any previous iteration, that anybody might recall what had happened. Having all those memories come flooding back had to be something like torture. He couldn't figure out why Sheppard would suddenly remember, and he hesitated to push the button again, because God, what if this happened every time from then on? What if other people started to remember?
Rodney had wished so desperately for someone else to know, even though he had known how wrong it was to want someone else to have to go through this. He had wanted someone to share the burden with him. He had wished Sheppard could -
And that was when Rodney realized that he did have some control over the device. He had wished, and it had happened. He couldn't wish people to stop dying, he'd been subconsciously trying that from the start, and it had never made a difference. But maybe, just maybe, he could control the little things. Like, for example, where they started out.
Rodney suddenly knew how to get back to where he needed to be to fix this. He was sorely tempted to press the button the moment he had it figured out, but he waited, for Sheppard's sake.
He had wished the memory of the pain and horror of these events on Sheppard, and the least he could do was explain it to him. That wouldn't be an option next time he pressed the button.
So Rodney waited.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“I was never going to use it, you know.” Rodney's voice floated nearby, and John listened, but did not move. The soft beep of machinery, and general quiet surrounding them let him know that they were in the infirmary.
“But you see, you were the first. If it had been anyone else, maybe I could have -” Rodney sucked in a breath, then continued, “But it wasn't anyone else, it was you. I couldn't just watch it happen. There was so much blood, and I couldn't. Not when I could do something about it. Stop it, change it, make it not happen.”
John felt something cool on his arm, and realized it was Rodney's hand.
“After that,” he continued, “it was all too easy to just keep pressing that damn button. Because there was always somebody. Sometimes it seemed like almost everybody. But never you again. I saved you the first time, and I thought that was all that mattered, until I couldn't save everybody else. I've doomed them all, Sheppard. Any one of them could be next, or all of them. I saved you, and now the others will pay the price. No matter how many times I hit the damn button, somebody always dies.”
John got it, he really did. As the memories he should never have had leaked through, he saw it all happening. Elizabeth first, with an accident in the control room. Flash. Carson while off-world. Flash. Zelenka in the labs when they exploded. Flash. A little over half the scientists for reasons nobody could explain. Flash. The fire on the south pier that took four of his marines. Flash. Teyla. Flash. Ronon and Lorne. Flash. Flash. Flash.
John opened his eyes and stared into Rodney's.
“You have to stop,” he whispered with a voice still hoarse from screaming.
“I know,” Rodney whispered back, hand clutching painfully at John's arm, “But I have to use it one more time.”
“No!” John had meant it as a yell, but it came out scratchy and quiet.
“Yes. I know what to do now.” Rodney gave him a smile that showed no mirth, but contained something else, something John was afraid to name.
“Rodney,” John said, his voice barely there now, “you can't predict how it's going to happen. Every time it's been different, started over at a different time even. You can't stop it if you don't know who it's going to be or when.”
It had been Peterson last time. This time hadn't lasted long enough for anyone to have been selected at random as far as John could tell. He knew somehow that it wouldn't be him, though. He'd recover just fine, because he was the one Rodney had pressed the button for in the first place. But somebody was almost out of time. Maybe more than one person. And if Rodney pressed that button again, it would just be somebody else. Everyone was a target now, everyone but John and Rodney.
“I made a mistake that first time,” Rodney spoke quietly, leaning down to rest his head on the bed next to John's, an unusual and startling position that didn't seem strange to John in the least, “I didn't do it right. I chose to save you, but I didn't chose who would take your place, and I think that's the catch. It has to be a trade, and if I don't choose, fate will.” Rodney's voice hitched, and John suddenly knew there was more. A catch to the catch, as it were. Rodney was still hiding something.
“You can't play God, Rodney.”
“But I already have,” Rodney said with a mirthless laugh, “and I can't change that now. I have to choose.” Rodney's hand came up and cupped John's face. “You'll all be safe this way,” he whispered and touched his lips to John's in a kiss so fleeting it almost hadn't happened. Except that it had. John had felt it. John had returned it.
As Rodney moved back from the bed and stood, John noticed the hand that hadn't been touching him had pulled something out of Rodney's pocket. Small, gray, unremarkable. It looked almost like a keychain used to unlock car doors.
“Rodney, NO!” And John found a reserve of voice somewhere, and energy he didn't know he had, as he surged from the bed to stop Rodney.
But he was too late, and he watched as Rodney pressed the button and the world faded to an artificial black that wasn't even remotely like fainting.
~*~*~*~*~*~
This is it, Rodney thought, this is how it ends.
He had explained as much as he understood to Sheppard. Rodney knew Sheppard would be able to piece the rest together with time. Sheppard was anything but dumb. Maybe he would even understand Rodney's choice. It was such a Sheppard thing to do, after all, making a sacrifice like this. That almost made Rodney want to laugh, and he thought that maybe he was going crazy.
Rodney moved in closer and offered Sheppard one last insight before he stopped all of this. The kiss was part apology for things left unsaid and for what was about to happen, and part goodbye. Something in Rodney's chest clenched painfully when Sheppard returned the brief kiss. Rodney smiled sadly at all that could have been and never would be as he stood and moved back from the bed.
As he pulled the device from his pocket, he wished to start over. He wished to start back at the beginning of the mission that took them to meet the M'stirn. He wished for the chance to make an offer that would save the others. He wished, and he pressed the button.
~*~*~*~*~*~
John clutched his head, memories of things that would never happen tumbling through his mind. That moment of pain and confusion cost him dearly, as Rodney dashed ahead of the team and into the midst of the M'stirn.
Ronon moved toward where Rodney had disappeared into the crowd, but the people had closed around him, blocking the rest of the team off. Teyla appeared at John's side as he slid to his knees, his brain pounding a relentless rhythm against the inside of his skull.
“I've made my choice!” Rodney's voice rang out clearly from the crowded marketplace.
A murmur rose from the gathered M'stirn, confusion apparent. They didn't remember. They didn't know, because it hadn't happened yet. This was where Rodney had received the device, and they didn't know about it. Hope flared up, ugly and harsh in John's chest, his head still pounding.
“I know what to do now.” Rodney's voice carried over the excited crowd.
A deep silence fell, and John knew Rodney had held up the device for the M'stirn to see.
“I choose myself!”
The M'stirn began to hum and buzz in a fast, excited way. John felt that ugly flare of hope wither and die. They were not confused at all, they knew exactly what Rodney was asking, and so did John.
“No!” John cried out, still prone on the ground, but his voice wouldn't carry over the excited buzz of the crowd. Teyla was the only one that heard him, and she would not understand until it was too late.
John was pulled to his feet and the team was absorbed into the mass of people gathered around Rodney. Pushed and shoved until all three burst forth into the open circle formed around Rodney.
John's headache finally subsided into a dull throb just as two of the M'stirn stepped forward. John recognized them as Elders from their last, no longer real, visit.
“It is a rare man,” the first one spoke, “who chooses himself over someone else during a Trial.”
Rodney remained silent, still clutching the device in his right hand.
“Who was the first?” the second Elder asked, “Which one of these did you save?”
Rodney visibly paled. “It doesn't matter!” he squeaked, at the same time John yelled, “Me!”
The Elders ignored John as if he had never spoken. “On the contrary, it matters a great deal. You may always choose to put things back the way they were in the first stage of the Trial, and none of the other things you have seen will come to pass.”
“No, I've made my choice.” Rodney held out his hand, the keychain device resting on his open palm, offering it to the first Elder.
“It's not your choice to make!” John said, stumbling forward to place himself between Rodney and the Elders.
The second Elder finally acknowledged John's presence, reaching out and lightly placing a hand on John's shoulder, as if to see if he were real.
“It most certainly is his choice to make,” the Elder said. “He was the one presented with a Trial, so he must choose how to end it.”
“No!” John yelled again, wrenching his arm away from the Elder's touch, “I was the one who died the first time. It should have been me. It still should be me. If Rodney hadn't had that stupid thing -”
“But he did have it,” the first Elder said, his voice dripping with a kind and placating tone that grated on John's last nerve, “And that is what made all the difference. If he had not had the Trial, you need not have perished at all. No, it is his choice to make, and we all must abide by whatever decision he comes to.”
John whirled to face Rodney when it was obvious that the Elders would never accept his reasoning.
“Rodney, please, don't listen to them. It was always supposed to be me. Not Teyla, Ronon, Carson, or any of them. And not you. Put things back the way they were, Rodney. Pick me.”
John had moved closer to Rodney with each word, until they were standing only inches apart. Rodney had dropped his arm, his fist closing around the keychain once again. John took Rodney's hand in his own and closed his fingers around Rodney's fist.
“Don't you get it, Sheppard?” Rodney whispered, refusing to meet John's eyes, “I can't choose any of the others because it was never meant to be any of them. You heard the Elders, none of you would have died if I hadn't been given this, this thing. But I was and now I have to decide who dies, which scenario becomes the truth, a life for a life and all that crap. I won't be responsible for any more pointless, innocent deaths here. I refuse to live with the knowledge that I killed someone because I was too much of a coward to do the right thing. And I cannot watch any more of my friends die. It has to be me.”
“But Rodney, I am the one who -”
“No!” Rodney shook his head violently and finally raised his eyes to meet John's, deep and terrifying emotions right on the surface, staring John in the face. “Don't you get it? Choosing you was never an option, and it never will be.”
Rodney leaned forward and brushed his lips to John's for the second time, then stepped back suddenly and tossed the device toward the Elders, still looking only at John.
“I've made my choice,” Rodney whispered.
And suddenly John was catching Rodney as he went limp, trying desperately to slow his fall to the ground.
Blind fury boiled in John. Fury at Rodney for allowing all those options to play out, forcing them to see so many friends die over and over. Fury that Rodney would choose this in the end. Fury at himself, coupled with disgust, for wishing an unfair fate on someone else, anyone else, just so it wasn't Rodney lying here. Fury at the M'stirn for doing this to them in the first place. He cradled Rodney's body to him, refusing to believe the truth in front of him. Rodney couldn't be dead, not just like that, not like this.
Slowly, he realized one of the Elders was speaking.
“Rarely is such conviction and self-sacrifice shown during a Trial.”
John no longer knew which one was speaking. He didn't particularly care anymore. He clutched Rodney's right hand in his own, trying to wish the fist to form, life to be given back.
“It is unfortunate that his choice was carried out before we could discover for what reason he was placed on Trial,” the other one spoke.
John looked up from Rodney's body, seeing first the two Elders, then Ronon and Teyla struggling at the edge of the crowd that was restraining them. Sheer numbers kept them back. John had almost forgotten they were even there. A young woman stood at the edge of the circle of people surrounding them, her head cocked to the side and a thoughtful expression on her face as she watched John.
That ugly, harsh, burning hope was slowly sliding back into John's chest. John stared at the girl and continued to hold Rodney closely.
“It was her.” John didn't even realize that the words were coming from himself until they were already out. He nodded toward the young woman at the inner-edge of the crowd.
The Elders turned to the girl as she stepped forward. She still watched John with a puzzled expression.
“It was an accident,” John said, “Rodney didn't mean to hurt her. He would never -” John choked on the words. “But she died anyway.”
The girl eyed John for another moment, then approached. She knelt down in front of him and reached out to place both hands on Rodney's body. She looked at Rodney with a fond smile, as if she remembered him, as if she could tell he never meant her any harm. Then she looked up into John's eyes.
“I grant forgiveness,” she said, “I wish to begin again.”
Another collective murmur from the crowd, and John felt that something unusual had just come to pass.
One of the Elders approached and handed the device to the girl.
“My name is Riala,” she said to John.
“John Sheppard,” John managed to choke out, through the hope burning in his throat. “And this is Rodney McKay.”
Riala considered Rodney's limp form for a moment, one hand still resting on his arm, before returning her attention to John.
“He wished you to remember events?” She asked.
“I don't know why I remember now, I didn't at first. So, yeah, I guess he must have.”
Riala nodded. “I would take it back if I could, John, but you must understand something,” she paused and watched him sadly for a moment, “When forgiveness is granted, we will all go back to a time before you came here. Someone must remember in order to stop it from happening again. It will not be Rodney.”
John nodded numbly, he understood.
Riala continued, “I do not know all of what you remember, but I imagine it was not pleasant. I am sorry.”
“It won't matter,” John said, “As long as it never happens, it won't matter.” And god, how he wanted to believe that.
Riala nodded again and held up the device. “I grant forgiveness,” she repeated, “I wish to begin again.”
And as she pressed the button, the world faded out into dark, dismal blackness, and the feel of Rodney's limp body faded with the rest.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Epilogue
Rodney was almost running down the hall, still pulling on gear as he went. He was going to be late for the mission departure, all because Zelenka couldn't solve a simple problem with the water storage tanks without his help. Rodney nearly ran Sheppard over as he turned a corner, rushing toward the gateroom.
“Sheppard? What the hell!” Rodney yelled as he righted himself, using Sheppard's shoulder for balance.
“Whoa there buddy, what's the rush?” Sheppard asked.
“What?” Rodney sputtered, pulling back and dusting himself off, he noticed that Sheppard wasn't even in his off-world uniform. “We've got a scheduled departure to P2X-439 in less than five minutes! Why the hell aren't you geared up?”
“Mission's a wash, I scrubbed it,” Sheppard smiled at him.
“What? Why? You know damn well that I wanted to investigate those readings coming from the -”
“Trust me on this one, Rodney, totally not worth it.”
“Says who?” Rodney frowned at him. “I was at all the briefings, the planet looked perfectly safe. Or at least as safe as any of them look before we actually get there and get attacked by every life form known or unknown to man. What the hell is going on?”
Sheppard reached out and took Rodney's arm, leading him back down the hallway toward the transporters.
“I promise, there is a really good explanation for all of this, and I have the migraine to prove it.” Sheppard said with a grimace.
Sheppard crowded into Rodney's space as they stepped into the transporter, and Rodney backed into a corner. He couldn't figure out what the hell was going on, but Sheppard obviously needed to have his head examined. In more ways than one.
“You canceled the mission because you have a headache? Be a man and take an aspirin! I have important -”
Sheppard leaned in and kissed Rodney deeply. Rodney's mouth hung open mid-word and Sheppard took full advantage of both that and Rodney's stunned stillness.
Rodney stayed still for only a moment longer, before wrapping his arms around Sheppard and pulling him in close, angling his head to give them both better access. Sheppard had apparently lost his mind, but Rodney wasn't about to argue with him if it gave him something he never thought he'd have in a million years.
When air became a necessity, Rodney finally pulled back from the kiss. He wanted to ask what the hell that was all about. He wanted to shove Sheppard back and hit the button on the transporter that would take them to the infirmary and get Sheppard an MRI. He wanted to pull Sheppard back in and kiss him until neither of them could think anymore.
“I thought you said you had a headache,” Rodney finally blurted out.
“Not that kind of a headache, Rodney.” Sheppard offered him a tight smile and leaned his forehead against Rodney's, closing his eyes.
“Are,” Rodney stumbled for words, but concern forced him to go on. “Are you all right?”
“No,” Sheppard said after a long pause. “No, I don't think I am.”
“Oh. Um, is there anything I can do?” Rodney asked, trying to pull away from the embrace before this situation got anymore awkward than it already was.
“Just,” Sheppard tightened his grip, refusing to let Rodney leave the circle of his arms, “just stay.”
Sheppard's hand slid up under Rodney's jacket, palm flat against Rodney's back, he took a deep breath and held it in, eyes closed, like he was trying to memorize Rodney's presence.
“I -” Rodney let his hands wander to Sheppard's waist. “I mean, okay. I can do that. I can stay.”
Rodney momentarily wished he knew what the hell was going on, but as he watched Sheppard reach out and press the button that would take them to the level their quarters were on, Rodney suddenly thought that maybe he was better off not knowing.
Not remembering, Rodney's mind whispered. He shivered and huddled closer to Sheppard as he imagined the feel of slick, hot blood, pooling into mud beneath his knees, and a limp body cradled in his arms.
~End~
**
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Author: kitt ( interview)
Team: Angst
Prompt: Catch-22
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Summary: It looked ordinary enough to John, somewhat like a keychain used to lock and unlock car doors. John's fingers itched to touch it. To take it from Rodney and toss it into the vast ocean, so that he couldn't hit the buttons anymore. Which was odd, because John couldn't recall ever having seen it before, much less having seen Rodney hit any of the buttons.
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**
iteration
- n.
1. the act of repeating; a repetition.
2. Mathematics.
a. Also called successive approximation. a problem-solving or computational method in which a succession of approximations, each building on the one preceding, is used to achieve a desired degree of accuracy.
b. an instance of the use of this method.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Rodney couldn't remember ever having seen so much blood before in his life. It spread slowly, sinking into the loose sand below Sheppard's body and making the dirt clump together, forming a sticky, red mud. Rodney's uniform was soaked through, his hands stained red as they carded restlessly through Sheppard's hair. So much blood.
Sheppard took a hitching, pain-filled breath and locked his eyes with Rodney's. He was fading, Rodney could see it, he could feel it. God no, Rodney thought desperately, you can't die, not now, not like this. The rest of the world faded around him, like Sheppard was the only thing in the universe that mattered at all. And at that moment, Rodney thought maybe he was.
A wind blew, chilling Rodney to the bone as the blood on him cooled. Sheppard shivered in his arms and moaned.
“Rodney -” It was barely a whisper.
“Shh,” Rodney pressed his face into John's hair, not noticing, or maybe not caring, as blood smeared across his jaw. “I can fix this,” he whispered into Sheppard's ear, suddenly knowing it was true, “I can fix this.”
Rodney pulled the device out of his pocket. A gift from the M'stirn, those bastards. They had called it a Trial, his Trial. They had promised he would feel a need for it before he'd even gotten off this rock they called a planet, but he hadn't believed them, hadn't believed it was anything more than a plain little pocket souvenir; a symbol of his failure. He believed them now, and he believed it would work. He had to believe it, because otherwise, Sheppard was dead. He wasn't quite sure what it would do, or even how it worked, but it had to be better than this. Anything was better than this, better than Sheppard's blood pooling beneath them.
Sheppard shuddered in his arms and Rodney closed his eyes and pressed the button on the face of the device. His Trial, whatever it would be, had begun.
~*~*~*~*~*~
As they ate dinner with the M'stirn, John looked over to where Rodney sat, wedged between himself and Ronon. Five minutes ago, John would have said Rodney looked as bored as the rest of them, save Teyla. Now though... Now Rodney looked almost haunted.
“McKay. Hey, McKay!” John said, reaching over to snap his fingers in front of Rodney's face.
Rodney's eyes snapped to meet John's, then widened in an expression John couldn't quite read. Shock, or fear maybe.
“What's up, McKay? You look like you've seen a ghost.”
Rodney actually paled. “I think we should go,” he finally managed to stammer out.
“Go where?” John smiled. “The party's just getting started.” And he rolled his eyes theatrically, trying to get Rodney to share the joke.
“Anywhere. Back to Atlantis,” Rodney began babbling in a frightened whisper, “Now, now would be good.”
John reached out to try to calm him, but Rodney wrenched away as though burned and climbed hurriedly to his feet.
“Now, Colonel. We have to go now. Please.”
And that one word, more than anything else, was what caught John's attention. Rodney had said please. Not sarcastically, or snidely, but pleadingly. Rodney was actually begging him. John stared him down for a moment and realized that Rodney was damn well terrified.
“All right Rodney, okay. We'll go.” John stood, motioning for Teyla and Ronon to do the same.
They let Teyla make their excuses; she was the best at bullshitting and getting away with it, and while she seemed somewhat annoyed at this sudden insistence that they up and leave in the middle of the festival dinner, she played along for the moment. Ronon seemed glad of any excuse to get the hell out of there, and frankly, John wasn't exactly sorry to be calling it an early night either. They all eyed Rodney with a mix of concern and annoyance, but Rodney was obviously agitated and didn't even seem to notice their glances in his direction. When questioned, he simply continued to insist that they needed to leave, and right this moment would be vastly preferred to later on.
On their way back to the jumper, Rodney clammed up and refused to speak to them at all. He darted nervous glances back over his shoulder, and kept reaching into his pocket, as if to assure himself that something was still there.
Suddenly, about halfway between the village and the jumper, Rodney came to a dead stop, seemingly for no reason at all. He stood and stared at the sandy path, turned a rather frightening shade of green, and looked like he might be ready to pass out at any moment. John tried to move him along, but Rodney refused to be moved for a solid three minutes, and for the life of him, John couldn't figure out what the hell was so interesting about a sandy bit of trail that looked like every other sandy bit of trail from here to the end of this sandy, boring little world.
When Rodney did finally decide to move again, it was a quick, stumbling lurch away from the place he'd been so intently staring at. John frowned at Rodney's back, before following at a quick pace back to the jumper.
Once they were back in the jumper and heading for the gate, Rodney seemed to relax somewhat, but he still refused to talk, and continued fingering whatever it was he'd stowed in his pocket. John was beyond frustrated with the whole situation, but he was also worried. The entire episode was so completely un-Rodney-like, he couldn't just ignore it. Something was going on here, and John was growing more and more determined to get to the bottom of it.
The moment they emerged into what was left of the gateroom, all thoughts of figuring out just what the hell had spooked Rodney so badly were wiped from John's mind.
The jumper hovered momentarily as John and the rest of his team stared mutely out at the destruction. It looked like a bomb had gone off. Without bothering with the jumper bay, John landed and let them all out in the gateroom. People were scrambling back and forth, some injured, others trying to help. Nobody even seemed to notice John's team and the jumper amid the devastation. John stood frozen in place as he took in the horror around them.
“No,” Rodney whispered to himself, and broke the spell over the rest of the team.
“What the hell happened? Status report!” John yelled into his radio, rushing to the nearest prone form on the floor.
There was a static-filled reply. Something about an explosion when they had opened the iris to let the team back. Nobody seemed to know what was going on, but Beckett's medical team was on the way. When John finally asked a bruised and bloodied marine where Elizabeth was. The answer was not one he wanted to hear.
“Doctor Weir didn't make it, sir,” the marine said, holding a piece of bloody gauze to his forehead, “I saw the whole thing, and there's no way she could have -” The marine swallowed like he was trying not to throw up.
“No,” Rodney whispered again, and John looked over to see him standing in the same place, just outside the back of the jumper, staring at John and the wounded marine. “This can't be it.”
“Rodney,” John bellowed, his patience gone, “Get the hell up to the control room and find out what the fuck happened in here!”
Rodney started shaking his head, backing toward the jumper. “This isn't right. This can't be right,” he continued, repeating it like a mantra.
Shock, John thought, great. And then he remembered that Elizabeth was supposedly dead, and he thought maybe Rodney had the right idea, because god, Elizabeth was dead.
John watched as Rodney pulled something from his pocket.
“No,” Rodney said again, and the world went black.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Rodney had been eight, he'd spent an entire night praying for a do-over. A chance to change how things had gone and what had happened. In retrospect, it had been a complete waste of his time. Partly because praying to a God he didn't really believe in, even then, was pretty stupid. Mostly because the situation really hadn't been all that bad when viewed through the dispassionate eye of age.
Ironically, he'd been granted his wish decades later, and found himself wishing desperately that the need to change things had never been there in the first place.
The M'stirn weren't even to blame for most of it. They had done what they had to do to save one of their own. Rodney hadn't meant for it to happen that way the first time. He certainly hadn't meant for someone to get hurt. That young woman had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there had been nothing he could do to save her. The M'stirn, on the other hand, did have a way to save her. They had a tried and true do-over button. They could reset the world and start again.
Unfortunately, it seemed the M'stirn felt that the one they saw as “at fault” for a situation should be the one to rectify matters. When they'd given Rodney the device, he hadn't believed a word of it. When they'd told him he would feel the need to use it before he got to the gate, he hadn't understood. If he didn't believe it worked, and if he didn't even try to see if it would work to save an innocent girl, what could possibly convince him to suddenly go against his own logic and press the stupid Magic Button?
That was when the M'stirn attacked, and it wasn't some innocent bystander, caught in the middle of an experiment gone awry this time. It wasn't some girl that was too curious for her own good and too drunk from a festival celebration, snooping where she shouldn't have been. It was Sheppard, and as Rodney watched his best friend bleed out, there was no question in his mind as to whose fault it was this time. He was going to be responsible for the death of his team leader, the golden-boy of Atlantis, the man he had spent the better part of three years falling in love with.
That was when Rodney finally realized that some things required a leap of faith. For the first time since he was eight years-old, Rodney prayed to a God he didn't believe in, because saving Sheppard from a horrible and messy death on an alien planet? Totally worth sucking it up and pressing a goddamn button. Even with nothing more than hope to back him up.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It looked ordinary enough to John, somewhat like a keychain used to lock and unlock car doors. John's fingers itched to touch it. To take it from Rodney and toss it into the vast ocean, so that he couldn't hit the buttons anymore. Which was odd, because John couldn't recall ever having seen it before, much less having seen Rodney hit any of the buttons.
Rodney rubbed the edge of the device like a worry stone, staring blankly out to the ocean.
John watched him, unnoticed, from the shadows. He could almost feel the smooth coolness of it in his hand. Feel the hot-sharp stitch under his ribs. Feel it as he plucked it from Rodney's open palm. Feel the ground, rising up to meet him. Feel it as he rubbed his own thumb along the curved edge, just as Rodney did repeatedly. Feel the hands on him, turning him over. Feel it as he drew his arm back, to get a better distance, to assure that it would never be seen again, once released into the sea. Feel the slick burn of his own blood, soaking the sand around him.
John shook himself. Something terrible and frightening floated close to the surface of his mind, but before he could grasp it, Rodney turned and spotted him.
“What do you want?” Rodney said, his voice conveying the sadness they all felt right now.
“I just wanted to see how you were holding up, buddy.” John tried to offer up a smile, but it fell flat in the face of his own grief.
Rodney shrugged. John tried to think of something, anything, to say. He'd never realized how much Ronon and Lorne must have meant to Rodney, for the grief was coming off of him in waves. Or maybe that was John's own. Ronon and Lorne, two of the strongest people on this base, gone just like that; it was unthinkable.
John opened his mouth, intent upon saying some words of comfort, or at least something that would let Rodney know that he wasn't alone. They were all feeling the loss.
“Don't,” Rodney said before John could speak, “It never helps.”
“I - What?”
“And it doesn't matter in the end, you know.” Rodney grinned in such a way that John shrank back instinctively. “I can fix this.”
John shuddered. He'd heard those words before. He didn't know when or in what context, but he knew them, and he suddenly knew what was next.
A creeping, fake darkness stole over his vision and through his mind, and the world John knew was gone.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Elizabeth had died on his first attempt, Rodney had still been trying to recover from the shock of losing Sheppard, then getting him back so quickly. The Magic Button had worked, against all odds. They'd even made it off the planet that had both caused them so much pain, and taken it all way again. So it was safe to say that he wasn't really thinking all that clearly when they had returned to the gateroom, only to find it destroyed.
Even as he had pressed the button for Elizabeth, it hadn't quite occurred to him just what was going on.
By the fourth or fifth attempt at getting things right, Rodney could no longer have claimed to be unaware. He was being forced to watch his friends die, over and over again, and he was the only one that could save any of them. The problem was, saving any of them seemed to require sacrificing someone else.
The loops of time never restarted at the same place. The situations presented were never similar in any way, shape or form. Rodney never had a chance to heroically stop an event from occurring, because once he hit the button everything was different. It was both frustrating, and nerve-wracking.
He chose to remain clueless until the iteration that claimed Ronon and Lorne. After their deaths, he didn't reset immediately, as he had with everyone else, because he needed some time to process. He stood out on a pier, stared off into the ocean, and let the knowledge of what this was leading to consume him.
He didn't want to make that choice, but he also didn't feel he had any other options.
Which was, of course, when Sheppard showed up. Clueless about what Rodney was going through. He had thought Rodney was grieving for Ronon and Lorne. He didn't know that Rodney had stopped being able to feel grief around the time Zelenka had died. He wouldn't have remembered the time Zelenka died.
Rodney had desperately wanted to punch him then. Sheppard, along with everyone else, had been able to go through all of this without remembering a thing. Rodney wanted to be so ignorant. He wanted somebody to lean on. Somebody who remembered what was happening to them all. He wanted Sheppard to know. Except, when he looked at Sheppard, that want faded. Rodney couldn't wish this kind of pain on anybody, but especially not Sheppard.
Rodney realized that making them all wait for him to have some time to think was probably pretty cruel. While he had become fairly numb to watching friends and colleagues die, they had not, and he had forced them to go on grieving for Ronon and Lorne for far too long.
He had to press the button again.
~*~*~*~*~*~
After what happened to Peterson, John went looking for Rodney. He wasn't sure why, but his instincts told him that Rodney was the one he needed to find more than any other.
John found him in an empty lab down the hall from the one Rodney usually preferred to work in. Rodney was leaning against a work bench, staring intently at a small, gray object in his right hand. It looked something like a keychain, only not, and John was confused when he felt a sudden and deep sense of loathing for an object he could never remember having seen before.
That Rodney needed some solitude after what happened to Peterson wasn't entirely unexpected or troublesome. What did worry John was the way Rodney was looking at the small device in his hand. A mixture of disgust, despair and fear seemed to chase itself across Rodney's face as he looked at the object, and John tried to convince himself that his instinctive mistrust of the device was based solely on Rodney's apparent reaction to it.
“So, what does it do exactly?” John asked, pointing at the keychain as he stepped fully into the lab.
Rodney started, but caught himself quickly and went back to his perusal of the device momentarily. He didn't bother pretending to misunderstand. He stopped rubbing the edge of the small, gray rectangle and turned to stare at John.
“It's a giant reset button,” Rodney said with a smile that held absolutely no joy in it, “it's supposed to fix things. Or, at least, I thought it was.”
“How does it work?” John put his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out and snatching it from Rodney.
“It doesn't.” Rodney looked down at the keychain. “Well, it does, but not the way I want it to. Not the way I need it to.” He looked confused and scared. Angry.
John took a step closer, concerned at this nonsensical explanation, and the emotions so easily read on Rodney's face.
“Where did it come from, Rodney?”
Rodney's face blanked momentarily, then he shrugged and went back to looking half-frightened, half-angry, as if deciding that it wasn't worth lying about. “P2X-439. The M'stirn gave it to me.”
John wracked his brain, but could not come up with a memory of the M'stirn giving Rodney anything other than quite a few resentful looks. Rodney had been even more condescending than usual on that mission, and John had counted them lucky not to have be stoned to death - sharp, hot, slick pain under his ribs, blood turning sand to mud - on their way back through the gate, if he was honest with himself.
“I don't remember that,” John finally said, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible, while his concern and fear wrenched up another notch.
“You wouldn't,” Rodney replied cryptically, shoving the device into a pocket and out of John's line of sight, “It doesn't matter anyway. I need it. I need to fix this.”
Rodney offered a lopsided smile that didn't convince John in the least, and John had a sudden moment of clarity, knowing that Rodney wasn't talking about fixing the device, but using the device to fix something else. Before he could say any more, everything went blank, Rodney's whispered “Sorry” following him into a void of artificial darkness.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Rodney had made his decision. He knew how to fix this. What he couldn't figure out, was how to get back to the point where fixing it was possible. Every reset had started them off at a different point, and he never seemed to have any control over it.
He had hoped that pressing the button once he had made his choice would be enough, but after Ronon and Lorne, he'd had to watch Peterson die instead.
He needed to figure out how to make sure they started over at the right point, so he could put his plan into action.
He wished once more that there was someone else who knew what was going on. Someone else who could remember, so he could discuss it with them and figure out how to go about fixing this. Then he decided it was a moot point anyway, because if anybody else remembered and knew what he was planning, they probably wouldn't let him go through with it, even if it was the only way to make things right.
Still, he wished he could talk to Sheppard about it.
~*~*~*~*~*~
John shook his head in confusion, looking down at the sticks in his hands. He didn't see the blow coming, and was flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling in the training room before he could register the pain.
“You lost focus,” Teyla said politely from above him, “are you injured?”
“Fine. I'm fine,” John mumbled, dropping his sticks and accepting Teyla's offer of a hand up.
“Would you like to try a third time?” Teyla asked, spinning her sticks and watching him.
“McKay,” John blurted out, “I've got to find McKay.” And he was out the door, leaving a very confused Teyla behind.
He wasn't sure where the sudden urge to find Rodney had come from, just that he needed to make sure that Rodney was all right. Something felt wrong, different, off. John needed to see him.
He found Rodney in the lab, bent over something on a workbench opposite Zelenka.
“Sorry for what?” John said as he stepped through the door, uncertain of what he was asking even as it slipped from his mouth.
Zelenka gave him a confused glance, but Rodney stiffened at the words and didn't turn around.
“Sorry for what, Rodney?” John repeated.
He watched Rodney's fists clench on top of the table, and when Rodney finally turned around John half expected him to be furious, but he wasn't. Rodney looked downright terrified.
“That's not how it's supposed to work.” Rodney said it so quietly that John had to strain to hear him.
“Not how what's supposed to work?” John asked. “And what the hell did you apologize for? When did you apologize? McKay, what the fuck is going on?” John was practically hissing by the end, and Zelenka vacated the area quickly.
“You don't -” Rodney seemed to choke on the words a little, “You don't remember then?”
“Remember what?” John asked, shoulders sagging in defeat. “My head is spinning Rodney, and I know it has something to do with -” The words melted away as John's mind began to whirl around ideas just out of the reach of his memory. - Sand to mud, stained red. Grief and despair. Pain. - “Something that you, that I, it was never.” Spinning, everything was spinning.
“Sounds like you should be talking to Carson, or maybe Heightmeyer,” Rodney said haughtily.
“Don't. Don't do that. I know something is - I can feel -” John let out a frustrated growl and clutched his head. His ribs, hot and slick, blood. So much pain. Then nothing.
Thoughts and images were flashing and spiraling through his mind. Rodney. Conversations, words, fears. An apology that made no sense. People and events that never were, yet had to have been. Days that hadn't come yet, passing in a flash of explosions, bullets, accidents, death. A flash of light. A sudden plunging of darkness. Rodney. A keychain. No, not a keychain, something else, something far more sinister.
John heard someone screaming now, wanted to find the poor bastard and help him. He could hear Rodney, voice laced with concern. He could feel him nearby, a hand on his arm, fingers running through his hair, so familiar and yet so new, and he wanted to ask why Rodney wasn't helping whoever was screaming, endlessly screaming.
And then John knew where the screams were coming from, and he let the soft and encompassing darkness take him.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When it was obvious that Sheppard remembered, Rodney panicked. He wanted desperately to press the button again, reset it all in the hopes of wiping Sheppard's memory once more. He had watched the pain and despair sweep through Sheppard as the memories caught up with him and surrounded him. When Sheppard dropped to the floor, Rodney caught him and held him close, rocking him gently as Sheppard screamed.
It shouldn't have happened like that, Rodney thought. There had never been any indication from the M'stirn, or from any previous iteration, that anybody might recall what had happened. Having all those memories come flooding back had to be something like torture. He couldn't figure out why Sheppard would suddenly remember, and he hesitated to push the button again, because God, what if this happened every time from then on? What if other people started to remember?
Rodney had wished so desperately for someone else to know, even though he had known how wrong it was to want someone else to have to go through this. He had wanted someone to share the burden with him. He had wished Sheppard could -
And that was when Rodney realized that he did have some control over the device. He had wished, and it had happened. He couldn't wish people to stop dying, he'd been subconsciously trying that from the start, and it had never made a difference. But maybe, just maybe, he could control the little things. Like, for example, where they started out.
Rodney suddenly knew how to get back to where he needed to be to fix this. He was sorely tempted to press the button the moment he had it figured out, but he waited, for Sheppard's sake.
He had wished the memory of the pain and horror of these events on Sheppard, and the least he could do was explain it to him. That wouldn't be an option next time he pressed the button.
So Rodney waited.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“I was never going to use it, you know.” Rodney's voice floated nearby, and John listened, but did not move. The soft beep of machinery, and general quiet surrounding them let him know that they were in the infirmary.
“But you see, you were the first. If it had been anyone else, maybe I could have -” Rodney sucked in a breath, then continued, “But it wasn't anyone else, it was you. I couldn't just watch it happen. There was so much blood, and I couldn't. Not when I could do something about it. Stop it, change it, make it not happen.”
John felt something cool on his arm, and realized it was Rodney's hand.
“After that,” he continued, “it was all too easy to just keep pressing that damn button. Because there was always somebody. Sometimes it seemed like almost everybody. But never you again. I saved you the first time, and I thought that was all that mattered, until I couldn't save everybody else. I've doomed them all, Sheppard. Any one of them could be next, or all of them. I saved you, and now the others will pay the price. No matter how many times I hit the damn button, somebody always dies.”
John got it, he really did. As the memories he should never have had leaked through, he saw it all happening. Elizabeth first, with an accident in the control room. Flash. Carson while off-world. Flash. Zelenka in the labs when they exploded. Flash. A little over half the scientists for reasons nobody could explain. Flash. The fire on the south pier that took four of his marines. Flash. Teyla. Flash. Ronon and Lorne. Flash. Flash. Flash.
John opened his eyes and stared into Rodney's.
“You have to stop,” he whispered with a voice still hoarse from screaming.
“I know,” Rodney whispered back, hand clutching painfully at John's arm, “But I have to use it one more time.”
“No!” John had meant it as a yell, but it came out scratchy and quiet.
“Yes. I know what to do now.” Rodney gave him a smile that showed no mirth, but contained something else, something John was afraid to name.
“Rodney,” John said, his voice barely there now, “you can't predict how it's going to happen. Every time it's been different, started over at a different time even. You can't stop it if you don't know who it's going to be or when.”
It had been Peterson last time. This time hadn't lasted long enough for anyone to have been selected at random as far as John could tell. He knew somehow that it wouldn't be him, though. He'd recover just fine, because he was the one Rodney had pressed the button for in the first place. But somebody was almost out of time. Maybe more than one person. And if Rodney pressed that button again, it would just be somebody else. Everyone was a target now, everyone but John and Rodney.
“I made a mistake that first time,” Rodney spoke quietly, leaning down to rest his head on the bed next to John's, an unusual and startling position that didn't seem strange to John in the least, “I didn't do it right. I chose to save you, but I didn't chose who would take your place, and I think that's the catch. It has to be a trade, and if I don't choose, fate will.” Rodney's voice hitched, and John suddenly knew there was more. A catch to the catch, as it were. Rodney was still hiding something.
“You can't play God, Rodney.”
“But I already have,” Rodney said with a mirthless laugh, “and I can't change that now. I have to choose.” Rodney's hand came up and cupped John's face. “You'll all be safe this way,” he whispered and touched his lips to John's in a kiss so fleeting it almost hadn't happened. Except that it had. John had felt it. John had returned it.
As Rodney moved back from the bed and stood, John noticed the hand that hadn't been touching him had pulled something out of Rodney's pocket. Small, gray, unremarkable. It looked almost like a keychain used to unlock car doors.
“Rodney, NO!” And John found a reserve of voice somewhere, and energy he didn't know he had, as he surged from the bed to stop Rodney.
But he was too late, and he watched as Rodney pressed the button and the world faded to an artificial black that wasn't even remotely like fainting.
~*~*~*~*~*~
This is it, Rodney thought, this is how it ends.
He had explained as much as he understood to Sheppard. Rodney knew Sheppard would be able to piece the rest together with time. Sheppard was anything but dumb. Maybe he would even understand Rodney's choice. It was such a Sheppard thing to do, after all, making a sacrifice like this. That almost made Rodney want to laugh, and he thought that maybe he was going crazy.
Rodney moved in closer and offered Sheppard one last insight before he stopped all of this. The kiss was part apology for things left unsaid and for what was about to happen, and part goodbye. Something in Rodney's chest clenched painfully when Sheppard returned the brief kiss. Rodney smiled sadly at all that could have been and never would be as he stood and moved back from the bed.
As he pulled the device from his pocket, he wished to start over. He wished to start back at the beginning of the mission that took them to meet the M'stirn. He wished for the chance to make an offer that would save the others. He wished, and he pressed the button.
~*~*~*~*~*~
John clutched his head, memories of things that would never happen tumbling through his mind. That moment of pain and confusion cost him dearly, as Rodney dashed ahead of the team and into the midst of the M'stirn.
Ronon moved toward where Rodney had disappeared into the crowd, but the people had closed around him, blocking the rest of the team off. Teyla appeared at John's side as he slid to his knees, his brain pounding a relentless rhythm against the inside of his skull.
“I've made my choice!” Rodney's voice rang out clearly from the crowded marketplace.
A murmur rose from the gathered M'stirn, confusion apparent. They didn't remember. They didn't know, because it hadn't happened yet. This was where Rodney had received the device, and they didn't know about it. Hope flared up, ugly and harsh in John's chest, his head still pounding.
“I know what to do now.” Rodney's voice carried over the excited crowd.
A deep silence fell, and John knew Rodney had held up the device for the M'stirn to see.
“I choose myself!”
The M'stirn began to hum and buzz in a fast, excited way. John felt that ugly flare of hope wither and die. They were not confused at all, they knew exactly what Rodney was asking, and so did John.
“No!” John cried out, still prone on the ground, but his voice wouldn't carry over the excited buzz of the crowd. Teyla was the only one that heard him, and she would not understand until it was too late.
John was pulled to his feet and the team was absorbed into the mass of people gathered around Rodney. Pushed and shoved until all three burst forth into the open circle formed around Rodney.
John's headache finally subsided into a dull throb just as two of the M'stirn stepped forward. John recognized them as Elders from their last, no longer real, visit.
“It is a rare man,” the first one spoke, “who chooses himself over someone else during a Trial.”
Rodney remained silent, still clutching the device in his right hand.
“Who was the first?” the second Elder asked, “Which one of these did you save?”
Rodney visibly paled. “It doesn't matter!” he squeaked, at the same time John yelled, “Me!”
The Elders ignored John as if he had never spoken. “On the contrary, it matters a great deal. You may always choose to put things back the way they were in the first stage of the Trial, and none of the other things you have seen will come to pass.”
“No, I've made my choice.” Rodney held out his hand, the keychain device resting on his open palm, offering it to the first Elder.
“It's not your choice to make!” John said, stumbling forward to place himself between Rodney and the Elders.
The second Elder finally acknowledged John's presence, reaching out and lightly placing a hand on John's shoulder, as if to see if he were real.
“It most certainly is his choice to make,” the Elder said. “He was the one presented with a Trial, so he must choose how to end it.”
“No!” John yelled again, wrenching his arm away from the Elder's touch, “I was the one who died the first time. It should have been me. It still should be me. If Rodney hadn't had that stupid thing -”
“But he did have it,” the first Elder said, his voice dripping with a kind and placating tone that grated on John's last nerve, “And that is what made all the difference. If he had not had the Trial, you need not have perished at all. No, it is his choice to make, and we all must abide by whatever decision he comes to.”
John whirled to face Rodney when it was obvious that the Elders would never accept his reasoning.
“Rodney, please, don't listen to them. It was always supposed to be me. Not Teyla, Ronon, Carson, or any of them. And not you. Put things back the way they were, Rodney. Pick me.”
John had moved closer to Rodney with each word, until they were standing only inches apart. Rodney had dropped his arm, his fist closing around the keychain once again. John took Rodney's hand in his own and closed his fingers around Rodney's fist.
“Don't you get it, Sheppard?” Rodney whispered, refusing to meet John's eyes, “I can't choose any of the others because it was never meant to be any of them. You heard the Elders, none of you would have died if I hadn't been given this, this thing. But I was and now I have to decide who dies, which scenario becomes the truth, a life for a life and all that crap. I won't be responsible for any more pointless, innocent deaths here. I refuse to live with the knowledge that I killed someone because I was too much of a coward to do the right thing. And I cannot watch any more of my friends die. It has to be me.”
“But Rodney, I am the one who -”
“No!” Rodney shook his head violently and finally raised his eyes to meet John's, deep and terrifying emotions right on the surface, staring John in the face. “Don't you get it? Choosing you was never an option, and it never will be.”
Rodney leaned forward and brushed his lips to John's for the second time, then stepped back suddenly and tossed the device toward the Elders, still looking only at John.
“I've made my choice,” Rodney whispered.
And suddenly John was catching Rodney as he went limp, trying desperately to slow his fall to the ground.
Blind fury boiled in John. Fury at Rodney for allowing all those options to play out, forcing them to see so many friends die over and over. Fury that Rodney would choose this in the end. Fury at himself, coupled with disgust, for wishing an unfair fate on someone else, anyone else, just so it wasn't Rodney lying here. Fury at the M'stirn for doing this to them in the first place. He cradled Rodney's body to him, refusing to believe the truth in front of him. Rodney couldn't be dead, not just like that, not like this.
Slowly, he realized one of the Elders was speaking.
“Rarely is such conviction and self-sacrifice shown during a Trial.”
John no longer knew which one was speaking. He didn't particularly care anymore. He clutched Rodney's right hand in his own, trying to wish the fist to form, life to be given back.
“It is unfortunate that his choice was carried out before we could discover for what reason he was placed on Trial,” the other one spoke.
John looked up from Rodney's body, seeing first the two Elders, then Ronon and Teyla struggling at the edge of the crowd that was restraining them. Sheer numbers kept them back. John had almost forgotten they were even there. A young woman stood at the edge of the circle of people surrounding them, her head cocked to the side and a thoughtful expression on her face as she watched John.
That ugly, harsh, burning hope was slowly sliding back into John's chest. John stared at the girl and continued to hold Rodney closely.
“It was her.” John didn't even realize that the words were coming from himself until they were already out. He nodded toward the young woman at the inner-edge of the crowd.
The Elders turned to the girl as she stepped forward. She still watched John with a puzzled expression.
“It was an accident,” John said, “Rodney didn't mean to hurt her. He would never -” John choked on the words. “But she died anyway.”
The girl eyed John for another moment, then approached. She knelt down in front of him and reached out to place both hands on Rodney's body. She looked at Rodney with a fond smile, as if she remembered him, as if she could tell he never meant her any harm. Then she looked up into John's eyes.
“I grant forgiveness,” she said, “I wish to begin again.”
Another collective murmur from the crowd, and John felt that something unusual had just come to pass.
One of the Elders approached and handed the device to the girl.
“My name is Riala,” she said to John.
“John Sheppard,” John managed to choke out, through the hope burning in his throat. “And this is Rodney McKay.”
Riala considered Rodney's limp form for a moment, one hand still resting on his arm, before returning her attention to John.
“He wished you to remember events?” She asked.
“I don't know why I remember now, I didn't at first. So, yeah, I guess he must have.”
Riala nodded. “I would take it back if I could, John, but you must understand something,” she paused and watched him sadly for a moment, “When forgiveness is granted, we will all go back to a time before you came here. Someone must remember in order to stop it from happening again. It will not be Rodney.”
John nodded numbly, he understood.
Riala continued, “I do not know all of what you remember, but I imagine it was not pleasant. I am sorry.”
“It won't matter,” John said, “As long as it never happens, it won't matter.” And god, how he wanted to believe that.
Riala nodded again and held up the device. “I grant forgiveness,” she repeated, “I wish to begin again.”
And as she pressed the button, the world faded out into dark, dismal blackness, and the feel of Rodney's limp body faded with the rest.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Epilogue
Rodney was almost running down the hall, still pulling on gear as he went. He was going to be late for the mission departure, all because Zelenka couldn't solve a simple problem with the water storage tanks without his help. Rodney nearly ran Sheppard over as he turned a corner, rushing toward the gateroom.
“Sheppard? What the hell!” Rodney yelled as he righted himself, using Sheppard's shoulder for balance.
“Whoa there buddy, what's the rush?” Sheppard asked.
“What?” Rodney sputtered, pulling back and dusting himself off, he noticed that Sheppard wasn't even in his off-world uniform. “We've got a scheduled departure to P2X-439 in less than five minutes! Why the hell aren't you geared up?”
“Mission's a wash, I scrubbed it,” Sheppard smiled at him.
“What? Why? You know damn well that I wanted to investigate those readings coming from the -”
“Trust me on this one, Rodney, totally not worth it.”
“Says who?” Rodney frowned at him. “I was at all the briefings, the planet looked perfectly safe. Or at least as safe as any of them look before we actually get there and get attacked by every life form known or unknown to man. What the hell is going on?”
Sheppard reached out and took Rodney's arm, leading him back down the hallway toward the transporters.
“I promise, there is a really good explanation for all of this, and I have the migraine to prove it.” Sheppard said with a grimace.
Sheppard crowded into Rodney's space as they stepped into the transporter, and Rodney backed into a corner. He couldn't figure out what the hell was going on, but Sheppard obviously needed to have his head examined. In more ways than one.
“You canceled the mission because you have a headache? Be a man and take an aspirin! I have important -”
Sheppard leaned in and kissed Rodney deeply. Rodney's mouth hung open mid-word and Sheppard took full advantage of both that and Rodney's stunned stillness.
Rodney stayed still for only a moment longer, before wrapping his arms around Sheppard and pulling him in close, angling his head to give them both better access. Sheppard had apparently lost his mind, but Rodney wasn't about to argue with him if it gave him something he never thought he'd have in a million years.
When air became a necessity, Rodney finally pulled back from the kiss. He wanted to ask what the hell that was all about. He wanted to shove Sheppard back and hit the button on the transporter that would take them to the infirmary and get Sheppard an MRI. He wanted to pull Sheppard back in and kiss him until neither of them could think anymore.
“I thought you said you had a headache,” Rodney finally blurted out.
“Not that kind of a headache, Rodney.” Sheppard offered him a tight smile and leaned his forehead against Rodney's, closing his eyes.
“Are,” Rodney stumbled for words, but concern forced him to go on. “Are you all right?”
“No,” Sheppard said after a long pause. “No, I don't think I am.”
“Oh. Um, is there anything I can do?” Rodney asked, trying to pull away from the embrace before this situation got anymore awkward than it already was.
“Just,” Sheppard tightened his grip, refusing to let Rodney leave the circle of his arms, “just stay.”
Sheppard's hand slid up under Rodney's jacket, palm flat against Rodney's back, he took a deep breath and held it in, eyes closed, like he was trying to memorize Rodney's presence.
“I -” Rodney let his hands wander to Sheppard's waist. “I mean, okay. I can do that. I can stay.”
Rodney momentarily wished he knew what the hell was going on, but as he watched Sheppard reach out and press the button that would take them to the level their quarters were on, Rodney suddenly thought that maybe he was better off not knowing.
Not remembering, Rodney's mind whispered. He shivered and huddled closer to Sheppard as he imagined the feel of slick, hot blood, pooling into mud beneath his knees, and a limp body cradled in his arms.
~End~
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