SGA Fic: Remembrance of Things Past, Sheppard/McKay
Right so, obviously I've gone insane. Here is Stargate: Atlantis fic that I've been working on instead of doing very pressing real work, but hey, so it goes, right?
Lots of your everyday SGA fandom plot-devices (ie, amnesia) mixed in with some missing scenes from 5.06 'The Shrine', so obviously, there are spoilers within. Also a grab bag of references to Star Trek, Hitchhiker's Guide, Proust just in passing, and Firefly. Along with millions of dialogue quotes from various episodes across the seasons, spot them all. It's also quite obviously Sheppard/McKay, but more friendship than porn, I'm afraid. Though if you've read my fic from any other fandom, you'll know that's just par for the course.
Also, I'm laughing hysterically because I've just written a fic that is totally going to be jossed by the next episode, I swear.
This is for toft_froggy, cause she told me that procrastination was an important part of being a real girl.
remembrance of things past
Many, many years later, people would occasionally ask why Rodney McKay called his best friend and oftentimes commanding officer (though of course, he’s not in the military, and so that’s irrelevant) Madeleine, and the explanation either involves a seven-volume work of literature by Proust or a catastrophic attempt at French cookery, but the short answer is ‘involuntary memory’.
PART ONE: OXFORD
*
Rodney McKay watches as the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is an undergraduate Chemistry lecture mutters and disperses, congratulating himself on the wan recrimination and verge-of-tears looks he sees on the faces of a large proportion of the students. Most of them won’t be back next week, and he won’t be sorry to see them go. The lectures are scheduled for 8am Monday morning, the dead slot, the kill-me-now slot, the I’m-a-research-scientist-and-can’t-be-bothered-with-teaching-despite-the-fact-that’s-what-pays-my-bills slot. McKay takes a grim satisfaction in informing the lecture hall attendants that he’ll only need one of the smaller rooms on the first floor next time.
A couple of the bastards are still milling around and waiting for him when he strides back to pick up his notes and he half greets, half snarls at them. Their questions are, for the most part, juvenile and trite (both, to be expected) but then he’s left with last one, who’s been hanging back, waiting to catch him alone.
“Hi, I’m Andrew,” he says, looking even younger than twenty, messy dark hair, shadowed blue eyes, skinny and sort of laid-back with a slow smile.
McKay groans inwardly and makes a note to ring up his college provost and apologise in advance of this inevitable crisis. He is just brilliant enough that they’re willing to overlook his occasional weaknesses. Especially when his weaknesses display such enthusiastic consent.
*
McKay is sprawled out on his bed, asleep and snoring slightly with one arm pressed against Andrew whateverhisname is when a low beeping sound
“Hi,” a younger, bemused looking Rodney McKay says. “I’m your friendly neighbourhood AI failsafe and--,”
McKay cuts him off by throwing a shoe at him, which sails straight through, causing a bit of a shimmer.
“--did you just throw a shoe at me? Seriously? A younger, more attractive and more brilliant version of yourself materialises in your living room and that’s the first thing you do?”
“Right, ok, prioritise, McKay. Hologram?” He asks, faintly hopefully.
“Yes. Though if you hadn’t worked that out, I would be even more worried than I currently am about the inevitability of my intellectual and--,” the hologram gives him a once-over. “Physical decline.”
“Hey.”
“And also. Could you get rid of the jailbait in the bedroom? He’s really going to cramp my top secret, message in a bottle style and- oh,” the jailbait in question wanders into the living room dressed only in boxer shorts and grins sleepily at both of them. “Oh, please be joking, future dilapidated McKay.”
“About what, exactly?”
“This is your type? What happened to the, you know, blondes, with the breasts. The pert, pert breasts.”
Rodney draws the strings of his dressing gown tighter together before drawing himself up to his full height and putting on his best professorial voice. “Right, that’s enough. You, hallucination-boy, sit. Or stay. Or whatever. You,” he gestures at Andrew. “Out. And read that book on polymers that I recommended.”
Andrew is quick to oblige, probably still in a susceptible sleep state, and the moment the door is closed the hologram blinks at him. “Are you a…chemistry teacher?”
“Yes?” McKay offers.
The hologram wails and clutches his hands to his face. “It’s worse than I thought!”
“When were you made?”
“Stardate 3090 point 041,” the hologram deadpans, and then casts him a disgusted look. “Five years ago, idiot, right after the brain parasite adventure. Now stop gaping at me like a goldfish and gather together whatever faint shreds of intellectual integrity you have left and sit down, because you’re really going to have to make an effort to understand what I’m about to say to you.” The hologram pauses for a breath, even though it really shouldn’t need to. “I’ll use small words.”
It really ought to be no surprise that his blank disregard for other people’s intellects should extend, to his own past or future selves.
McKay considers arguing, but then sits down and surprises himself by saying, “Okay. Go.”
“Right. Step one, and remember this one, this is the most important thing: you need to find John Sheppard. Everything will be okay if you find John Sheppard.”
*
Sheppard has a theory and it goes something like this: the Pegasus Galaxy strips away self-delusion and superfluity away from what it means to be a human being. All the hypothetical scenarios and little clichés that exist on earth to test the bounds and bonds of your friendships and your own soul are-- at some point or another-- edged into reality. It is a very literal place. Sometimes you have to die a couple times for it to really take you seriously.
But, when he’s trying to explain it to Rodney as he’s waiting for Keller to come back with some more test results it comes out more like:
“Ok, so, this is basically the Pegasus Galaxy leaning over you and saying,” Sheppard pauses and makes a gesture that is clearly meant to be menacing but really ends up more Ghost of Christmas Past. “Have you ever heard of Shan Yu?”
McKay blinks and for a moment Sheppard’s innards twist because crap, maybe he’s forgotten and oh fuck but then McKay laughs, sharply.
“Does that make me Mal Reynolds? Actually, no, don’t even answer that, Lieutenant Colonel Tightpants.”
*
PART TWO: IRAQ
*
Rodney finally tracks down John Sheppard in a small provincial capital of Iraq called Amarah, which sits quite close to the banks of the Tigris. He’s hefting his standard issue M9 in one hand and what looks suspiciously like a fishing rod in the other, glittering under a clear, almost Mediterranean midafternoon sun. He’s wearing aviators and looks so damned American it makes Rodney’s teeth hurt. Also, his hair is ridiculous, and do they not have rules about that in the army?
“I’m Air Force, they like it when we look cool,” the quite pretty rather gung-ho looking man Rodney has been looking for grins sickeningly. “And who are you?”
He sounds very, very casual but Rodney recognises it surprisingly quickly for what it is: an elegant farce. Sheppard’s fingers have tightened up on the gun; his body has moved into a convenient position to discreetly observe whether Rodney has any friends in the vicinity and given himself some room to launch to his feet at short notice, all the while looking-- for want of a better word-- languid. McKay is by turns freaked out that he can read all this stuff from Sheppard’s tiny non-verbal cues and smugly impressed because obviously he was right all along, and most definitely not suffering from acute psychosis.
Well. At the very least, he was right.
“I’m- erm,” McKay floundered for a name in a sudden and somewhat inexplicable fit of paranoia and caution. “Arthur.” He says, weakly. “And you’re John Sheppard.”
“Yep.”
“What if I told you that there was a reason that you’ve always felt like everything is wrong. That you don’t belong here.”
“The reason is…?”
“That you don’t belong, Sheppard.”
Sheppard-- who in Rodney’s mind is coming to resemble, more and more, a snake or some kind of glittering, multiwinged, delicate limbed insect-- holds his arms out and shrugs. It’s a universal gesture, and not one without merit. Sheppard looks incredibly at home here, tanned and fit and fishing in the Tigris. The water reflects off his face, and it curves and warps his features-- giving him secret smiles, ghost expressions that aren‘t quite right but getting there. Sheppard probably speaks the local dialect of Arabic and has a band of street children that follow him around all day long and try and imitate his hair, god help the poor bastards.
“Things aren’t meant to be this way. Something weird…or like, not normal has taken away our memories.”
“And you know this, because…?” Sheppard is just indulging him now, like a small child, or toy.
“Well, as you probably don’t know at all, apparently this is not the first time the-- uh-- losing my memories thing has happened to me,” McKay says, trying to sound more sure than he is. “And of course, given the fact that I am almost unbelievably brilliant, my past self instituted certain failsafes.” At Sheppard’s sceptical look, McKay huffs. “Oh come on, Sheppard, if you’re backing up your system you want it to exist in as many places as possible.”
“You’re a very bad spy, Arthur. And I thought Canada were our allies. What are they doing sending incredibly blatant spies after good ole American servicemen?”
“You think I’m a Canadian spy?” McKay’s voice has reached a shriek. “Are you…brain-damaged or something? Were you dropped on your head as a baby? Should I use smaller words?” He stops and kicks at the sand with his foot. “I am going to build a time-machine and kill my past self because he obviously has no idea what he’s talking about.”
“Are you from psych? Because, I know I sort of skipped that last- um- ten or twenty sessions, and I know that you said it was mandatory but hey, I’m all good. I haven’t tried to kill or rescue anyone against orders in years; I’m so over all that.”
McKay counts to ten, which for him was a feat of incredible restraint. “Are you seriously telling me that you don’t think that there’s been something…off…about the last ten years of your life?”
Sheppard looks at him sharply and finally grits out, “More like the last twenty.” He loses that calculating look and slips back into his easy grin so fast McKay wants to smack him in the face. “So you’ve come here to tell me this and…what exactly?”
“I’ve come here to…you know…rescue you.”
Sheppard looks at him, all eyes and lazy trust and says, “You’re a good friend, Arthur.”
Something kicks in McKay’s chest and he rubs it absently.
“Look, everything I’ve been doing for the last ten years is sort of, exactly everything I wanted. Except…it’s…the stuff that someone who knows me pretty well would think I wanted. There’s a difference.”
“You think that our entire lives are some sort of…evil conspiracy wish-fulfilment?”
“Uh huh.”
Sheppard cocks his head. “Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“I just- well, I thought there’d have been more hot girls.”
McKay rocks back on his heels and grimaces. “I know!”
*
“Rodney, this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done and I am going to kill you.”
Pause.
McKay keeps staring at his shoes.
“Zelenka’s giving the science team a day off. Right now. They’re going- totally crazy in there. They’re probably…spilling beer…all over your research.”
“When you wake up, we are gonna do some serious investigating about why people in this galaxy keep losing their memories. Or turning into bugs. Maybe the bugs first, huh, cause that was way worse than this.” John kicks Rodney’s medically approved trainers (‘I have flat feet, Sheppard, it’s a medical condition. Oh yes, Major, laugh it up. You’d mock someone with diabetes, or cancer, wouldn’t you, you smug, soulless sonofa--’) and gets a kick back in response but no corresponding glare. He leaves his foot there. “So. Hey. Footsie.”
Something clicks on in McKay’s face. “John! John. You’re here.”
He smiles in contentment and Sheppard pulls back his foot as if burned, wanting anything but the openfaced trust that was just a tearing reminder of how badly he had fucked up.
“Remember that mission on M1B-129?”
McKay’s posture goes taut and he looks up at Sheppard with wide eyes that should be accusatory and says, in a perfect mime of himself, “You shot me.”
Sheppard’s laughing before he realises that McKay is laughing with him, there’s no real venom in his words, this McKay would forgive him anything, and God, was there no mercy in the world, had it really and truly come to him wishing McKay would chew him out instead of sitting there with that big insipid grin--
--but instead he smiles tightly and says, “Yeah, buddy. Sorry about that.”
*
PART THREE: CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN
*
As they’re frogmarched to the interrogation rooms or death chambers or whatever secret caverns exist in this underground mountain complex, Rodney manages to hiss, “If you’d told me your grand plan to get into Cheyenne mountain was to get caught I’d have seriously reconsidered my participation.”
They’re finally left in what looks like quite a nice meeting room, with an oak table and comfortable chairs and-- mother of god-- pastries in the centre of the table. Rodney tears his eyes away and ignores the rumble in his stomach, deciding to check for…secret gas vents or machine guns posing as security cameras while Sheppard takes a quick, searching look around what is most definitely a façade and settles comfortably into a chair.
“Don’t tell them anything, Sheppard,” Rodney folds his arms and resists the tray of pastries on the table between them.
“Don’t worry, Arthur. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
A tall, greying, slightly twinkly man walks in and Sheppard-- after a quick glance at the man’s stripes-- makes the deliberate decision not to salute, and compromises with a quick nod and, “General,” out of the corner of his mouth.
“Arthur?” The General asks.
McKay coughs. “Er, secret codename,” he says shiftily.
Sheppard looks hurt, and then bemused.
“Dr Rodney McKay,” the General provides, in the silence between them. “And Colonel John Sheppard. I’m General Landry, and this is-,”
“Stargate Command, yes, yes, we know.”
Landry fixes McKay with a look and then sits down across from them. “So, your memories have been altered by a rewired Goa’uld memory device. Which you helped with, Doctor. You’ve also had false memories imprinted to cover your seven years of service with the Stargate program, helped along by the US government giving you a very impressive and thorough paper trail for that period.”
Rodney breaks in, lurching up from his chair, an expression of mixed panic and annoyance that John almost recognises on his face. “This--,” he sweeps his hand across the table, as if to include it, them, time and space and reality itself in the gesture. “This isn’t the-- first time this has happened, is it?”
Landry smiles at him. “Every time I meet you, Dr. McKay, I’m impressed. And no. It isn’t.”
“Oh God, I probably have irreparable brain damage.” McKay slumps down, and begins muttering something that sounds suspiciously like ‘my beautiful, genius brain’ while clutching at his hair.
“Impressed. Then irritated beyond belief,” Landry says, quirking an eyebrow at Sheppard, as if they’re buddies, which they’re clearly not, and so Sheppard keeps his face impassive despite every part of his body wanting to relax and shoot something appropriately insulting back.
He compromises on a grunt.
“You know, it probably would have been simpler just to kill us,” Sheppard says consideringly, as Rodney makes frantic cut-it-out signs and mutters ‘jeez, way to give them ideas, colonel moron’.
Landry looks at them with suspiciously kind eyes. “Nah, we couldn’t kill you, Colonel,” he says, with a hint of bitterness. “We’d have to give you too many god damned posthumous medals. Besides,” he adds. “You asked, and it was the least we could do.”
“We…asked?”
“You asked.”
“You don’t really seem all that bothered that we‘re regaining our memories-- General,” Sheppard adds the title as an afterthought, magnanimously.
“Well, Colonel, frankly, I’m not.” Landry spreads his hands. “The thing is, every time you remember something, you always come here.” He smiles, in a sad, beaten up sort of way. “You always come home.”
McKay scrutinises him for a brief moment and announces. “We’re going to die horribly.”
“What, McKay?”
“He shouldn’t be telling us any of this stuff. He’s monologuing harder than Doctor No, we’re in some sort of secret underground facility, cut off from the tempestuous mistress that is cell phone signal, lured by the siren call of--,”
“Doctor No…?” Asks John.
“Siren call…?” Echoes Landry.
The two of them chuckle, and then stop abruptly. “Well, then,” Landry says, bracing his hands on the table and getting up. “Gentlemen, welcome to SPECTRE. These nice marines are going to show you to your rooms.”
McKay and Sheppard think he’s gone when they hear the door again and look up. Landry comes back in, holding two steaming mugs of coffee. He sets one down next to each of them, and then moves a step back to observe Rodney’s immediate cooing and burbling response as he pounces on the mug. Sheppard fixes him with a shadowed look that is just on this razor edge of threatening, but lowers it when Landry returns his look with a warm, conciliatory one and a step back. Moving out of his territory. Even though there were some really really fancy buttons and ribbons on his uniform. “It really is-,” his voice may even be cracking a little bit, but he’s stepping back. “So good to see you two.”
*
“It’s okay, McKay,” says Keller, very gently, like she is speaking to a child. “You said you loved me when you had a brain parasite. That really is the definition of impaired consent. Oh, and the other time we got together everyone you loved was dead.”
“Also, parallel universe,” he adds, helpfully.
Keller pats him slightly unsurely on the arm. “Yes, Rodney,” she says.
*
PART FOUR: MEETINGS
WEEK ONE
*
“Landry was wrong, you know,” Sheppard says experimentally, pacing the interrogation room.
“Bout what?”
“Lots of things. But mostly, this isn’t home.” Sheppard scowls at a CCTV camera. “I’m right, aren’t I, McKay?”
“Yeah,” Rodney agrees, after a moment. “This isn’t home.”
*
“So, you’re asking us to believe that Sheppard and I chose this?”
“You had almost complete authority when it came to designing your new lives. At the beginning, of course. Then we just let things progress naturally.”
“You made me believe I was a chemist,” McKay parried accusingly. “I spent the last two years working on alternative fuels and- and- giving lectures.”
Landry nodded. “And you’ve done some really quite spectacular things, Doctor. Imagine if we’d put you back into physics. You’d have ended up cobbling together an Ancient device out of sparkplugs and a toaster, and then where would we be? Now, if you don‘t mind, gentlemen,” he added smoothly. “There’s someone here who’d very much like to see you.”
A pretty, slightly serious looking blonde walks in the door wearing civilian clothes and a military gait, and Rodney is seized with a salacious grin and a desire to make seedy comments about the pertness of her ass. “McKay!” She envelops him in a hug, releasing him quickly and moving on to Sheppard. “Sheppard. I have to admit, General, I thought you may have been yanking my chain when you said they were here.”
“No chain yanking, as you can see, Colonel. Well, I’ll just let you get re-acquainted then.”
“I’m Sam Carter. I’m-- I was your friend. And your commanding officer, for a while. But that didn’t really work out,” she finishes, brightly. “Now, tell me, what the hell are you two doing back here. Again.”
“Well, it all started when Rodney got this message from his past self and, ow--,” Sheppard stops and looks reproachful. “You kicked me.”
“Well, you’re telling her things, Colonel Moron. What happened to ‘need to know basis’ or you know, tactical advantage or whatever.”
“I dunno, McKay, she looks trustworthy to me.”
“Just because she has tits and-- well, very nice tits, and hm-- a perfect little--,”
“Shut up, McKay,” Sam slaps a hand on the table, but is also grinning.
“For the record, I was going to say ‘smile’.”
“What happened, Carter?” Sheppard says, suddenly all edges and intimidation and wearing into personal space even though Rodney could swear he hadn’t actually moved a muscle.
The question doesn’t really need a qualifier, and Carter shifts a bit, but doesn’t wither under the Sheppard glare, which comforts Rodney a little, because it proves that she really does know them. (As if he really needed convincing, Carter is familiar and sweet, like the remains of a girl’s perfume left on his collar after the affair is over).
“Nothing…happened,” she says, finally, weighing her words. “The Atlantis mission ended and you two…didn’t want to do it anymore. And then after a while you couldn’t. And so we came up with this solution.”
Sheppard gets a brief, saturated flash of: McKay and Carter at their workstation, laughing, arguing, trying to wrest the whiteboard marker out of each other’s hands, blonde and brown heads bent low, unlocking the secrets of the universe, finding reality faulty and rewriting the base code.
There is a lot unsaid, and a lot conveyed by the way Carter’s mouth pinches in and her so-direct eyes don’t really want to meet theirs and McKay shivers with the sense that all of them, all of these kindly, weird people that he half-knows and half-likes who look at him like a friend are giving them this infuriating brush-off because what McKay and Sheppard decided to forget is actually, in every gutwrenching sense of the word, unspeakable.
“I’m a scientist, Carter,” McKay whines, out of habit more than anything else. “I need to know!”
Her eyes widen and she shakes her head. “Trust me, McKay, you don’t. I know this is-- awful for you, I really can’t imagine but--,” it’s okay, she doesn’t need to complete the sentence because McKay knows the rest: this is awful and infuriating and awkward but, jesus god, McKay, with your half-memories and half-self and flickering soul, you’re the lucky one-- “There were some great years, some really great years. But, then, there was. A not so great one.”
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad, Colonel Sheppard.”
“Huh.” And that’s John’s final word on the subject.
“I’ll get them to give you access to the mission reports,” she promises.
*
“Hey McKay,” Sheppard says, and this time when Rodney looks up he sees on his face what he has already filed away as Smile No. 16, or Something Incredibly Fatal Is About to Be Proposed. “Reading these reports, do you get the distinct feeling that the universe owes us a biggie?”
Looking back, that was probably where it all began.
*
WEEK TWO
*
“Hey, McKay,” Sheppard asks, pushing his hair out of his eyes, and fixing him with a look that is equal parts serious and equal parts taking the piss. “Do you ever think that maybe these guys that we were…weren’t so goddamn brilliant after all?”
“What?” The scientist is busy behind a pile of paperwork, files stacked high with information in hard copy form because they don’t trust McKay with a computer, even a non-networked one, so the guy must be at least half as brilliant as he says he is. Which is plenty, even considering the reports, which do a lot of bragging for him (even with lots of the good bits censored out). Not that he needs them to.
“Cause reading these reports I can almost feel them happening to me. When someone walks past outside the interrogation room I’m counting steps in my head and thinking about tactical advantage and how to get the drop on them, and I keep reaching for a gun that isn’t there that’s shaped like nothing I’ve ever held before. McKay, my fingers remember what it feels like to pull an alien trigger.”
“There’s a…theory…” McKay says with considerable disdain, despite not really paying attention. “The body remembers, sense-memory, events inscribed into our flesh and blood rather than our intellect. Sort of the same kind of principle as phantom limb syndrome, the body’s memory of a limb overrides the intellectual awareness that it is no longer there. Why does that make our memoried selves stupid, Sheppard?”
There is a long moment where Sheppard just looks at him piercingly, big eyes used to full effect, cataloguing his facial expression as he gives him a very small very infuriating smirk. “The thing is--,” Sheppard says, and to the unpracticed eye Sheppard looks incredibly relaxed, sprawled lazily over the chair, but Rodney McKay knows better, and is therefore expecting it when the slackness slides into tension and action and Sheppard is kneeling on the floor next to him with his fingers webbed in Rodney’s hair and neck and his tongue pushed remarkably far into Rodney’s mouth. He releases him quickly, wiping some spit away with the back of his hand, and looking at Rodney with a butter-wouldn’t-melt expression. “I don’t actually remember that. Your mouth is completely new.”
“Schmrfle.” Rodney contributes.
“Yes, McKay, that does totally prove that our past selves were idiots.”
“Not conclusively!” McKay breaks in, hurriedly, sliding to his knees to end up nose to nose with Sheppard. “I think we need more testing.”
*
A straight-backed Colonel with an impressive jawline and bright eyes saunters in, tossing a lemon between his hands. Rodney begins backing into a corner and hissing, watching the two Colonels lock eyes and grin. Of course, the two pretty military boys would be friends.
“Cam Mitchell. I run SG-1.”
“And are also trying to viciously assassinate me.”
“Relax, McKay, just thought I’d bring my old buddy here some fruit,” he hands over the lemon. “Call it-- returning a favour. Don’t know if you’ve discovered this yet, hotshot, but he works best under pressure of imminent death.”
Sheppard pockets the fruit. “I had noticed that yes,” he pats the pocket absently. “Makes me feel better, just knowing it’s there.”
Mitchell’s eyes crinkle into a genuine smile at that, and he includes Rodney in its warmth. “The boys upstairs told me to come in here and pat your hands and tell you not to make trouble. So like, stay off my lawn, you crazy kids.” He nods sagely at that and turns to leave.
“What trouble did we get into, exactly. Before.” McKay asks sharply.
“You might have tried to secede from the Milky Way,” Mitchell says lightly, with a grin. “Who knows? Does that sound likely to you, guys?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Sheppard and McKay glare at each other as Mitchell closes the door behind them.
*
WEEK THREE
*
“So, you know this plan where we step one) bust out of here, step two) recover our memories and then insert step three here?”
“Yes, Sheppard,” McKay says, poking at the Goa’uld device.
“Um. How do you feel about skipping step two?”
“What?”
“Rodney,” John says patiently. “The guys we were. They sound kind of dumb. Also, I don’t think they were very happy.”
“Happy?” Rodney echoes, like it’s a variable he never took into account.
“Yeah, genius. The guys we were wiped every memory they had of…home. And of each other. And if that wasn’t enough, picked deliberately unsatisfying fantasy lives for themselves.”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Rodney blinks up at John and despite the vast and sweeping scope of his brain, he cannot think of anything that could make him want to forget. That face. All of this. Everything. And yet it had happened, and they had done it. Or tried anyway. “I read the report,” Rodney says rapidly. “About the other time I lost my memory. The brain parasite. And. You were the last thing to go. Even when I couldn’t remember pi. I still asked for you. Even with this stupid memory device, all the guys I dated had stupid hair.”
John debates saying, ‘thanks, I think?’ but instead says, “Yeah, you’re kinda stuck with me, buddy.”
“Okay, right. In which case, we should probably, um. Un-escape. Before they notice we’re gone.”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly Sheppard, there are only so many times I can pull off a daring, bloodless escape from a top secret military facility without--,” Rodney is interrupted when John kisses him, muzzle of his stolen rifle pressing into Rodney’s chest. “Hm- yes. Well,” he amends, slightly less grumpily. “Just make it count next time, alright?”
*
“The moment you got your memories back you wouldn’t want them. You wouldn’t want to be here.”
“We don’t want our memories back, Sam,” says John, infuriatingly calm and so she turns to Rodney, shaking her head at the probability that appealing to him to be reasonable is actually going to work.
“Look, Rodney, you-- the other yous-- they didn’t want anything more to do with the Stargate program. They chose to have their memories wiped and live normal lives. It would be wrong to…take advantage of you. In your memory-less state.” Sam senses Rodney’s grin even before it appears.
“Carter, it’s not like you slipped us a roofie at a frat party and you’re now having your way with us in a dark corner,” McKay pauses to gesture grandiloquently. “Besides, we’re not planning to rejoin the Stargate program. Not, um, technically.”
John reaches over the table and grabs Sam’s hand. “We just want to go home,” he says, pleading.
Carter blinks at him and then laughs. “You’ve tried those puppy-dog eyes on me before, Sheppard.”
“And did they work?”
Sam sighs and stands up stiffly. “Colonel Sheppard, I have to inform you that what you’re suggesting amounts to desertion, if not high treason. And I strongly advise you to stop talking unless you want to be courtmartialed.”
Sheppard shrugs. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Sam gives them both curt nods and heads for the door, but there’s a weird watery look in her eye as she closes it behind her.
*
It’s Sam’s fifth visit when she casually drops a newspaper on the table between them. “I brought you the crossword, Rodney. Thought you might be getting bored.”
“Oh please, you think this crossword is going to even remotely tax my mental abilities, which, I don’t have to remind you, are rather gargan- ah,” McKay looks up from his brief perusal of the crossword puzzle to an amused looking Sam Carter. “Gargantuan. Yes. Thankyou, Colonel Carter.”
“You’re welcome, Dr. McKay.”
John is looking at the meaningful glances between them and clears his throat, most certainly not in any way jealous or uncomfortable. “What, no sudoku?” He gripes.
Sam smiles at him. “Page 7. Like I would forget, John.”
She clutches both their hands before she leaves, and this time the wateriness is even more pronounced. “It’s so good to see you two,” she says, and they think she’s going to leave it at that when she adds, “Like this. Like…” The pain in her voice is ripping, horrible, but only for a brief moment before she’s back and smiling, no trace of what she was about to say on her face. “You know. Being pains in my ass again. I never told you this, but I hated being your commanding officer, because you’re bastards.”
She hurries out after that with only one wistful look behind her.
McKay and Sheppard look at each other as she leaves, and are suddenly very glad they abandoned step two of the plan.
*
McKay wordlessly shows John the solution to the highly complicated alphanumerical code that’s embedded in the puzzle clues. John looks at it uncomprehendingly until McKay scribbles it out in plain English: ‘Atlantis, Pegasus Galaxy’ and a series of numbers, circled, with the words, ‘gate address’ written underneath, and then he smiles.
The sudoku is unlocked with the same cryptological key, and the message is short, and simple, for Sam. She speaks to them honestly through nine square boxes of numbers printed on thin paper and she says, ‘look for backdoors.’ Though really what she’s saying it, ‘I’ve got your back’.
*
WEEK FOUR
*
They’re standing in the gate room with Sheppard pointing a gun at various scientists and McKay clawing at the innards of some sort of dialling device. Sheppard shifts lazily and represses the urge to grin. He can’t actually remember the last time that things felt so…right.
“Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard, stand down immediately.” Landry’s voice crackles over the PA system. “That’s an order, son.”
Sheppard waves his gun lazily and the nearest geek flinches. “It’s my party, General,” he drawls. “And I’ll shoot who I want to.”
The PA system doesn’t respond.
“Hey, McKay?”
“Yeah?”
“All of them had stupid hair?”
McKay makes a noise of disgust and puffed air, and heaves something small and shiny like a sprocket at his wide grin. “Don’t get too cocky, Sheppard,” he yells. “I just have a thing for the unkempt.”
“Out of interest, we got any plans for after we get the, um, Stargate, working?”
“Oh of course, Sheppard. I’ve got all the time in the world to fantasise in between trying to remember a lifetime’s worth of memories and experiences, trying to activate Sam’s code for a system that I have a tenuous grasp on at best, and not blowing us up or you know, ripping a hole in the entire fabric of space-time while I open a wormhole that’s going to carry us several thousand light years in 3.2 seconds.”
Sheppard lets the tirade wash over him warmly, tilts his head and grins. “Ok. Cool.”
McKay stops dead at that. “Cool?” He mouths, aghast.
“Yeah. Cool.”
“Wait, scratch that. I think I found us our ship.”
Sheppard’s mouth thinks about falling open for a brief second but holds up at the last moment. “A…space ship?” He manages, raspily.
*
Sheppard and McKay stand in front of the ship, and McKay thinks about averting his eyes as Sheppard runs his fingers reverently, almost sexually, across the metal. “Oh sweet god,” he whispers, as it opens up for him. They go inside and Sheppard automatically heads for the pilot’s seat, and without even a single nudge he places his hands on the control panels and closes his eyes. The ship comes to life around them as McKay overrides the bay doors and curses.
“Do we have a name for this thing?” John calls, as Rodney leaps back from a panel which has begun spitting sparks at him.
“Yes, Sheppard, I decided to look for the names to all the things we--,” McKay takes a long look at John, sitting there with a half-contented smirk on his face, pleased like a fucking child at a fairground sitting in the bowels of a ship that is thrumming with just how pleased she is to see him and bites down on his rant. “No,” he says, finally, possibly even meekly. “Well, it’s a ship. That goes through the gate.”
Sheppard rubs his beard thoughtfully. “Gateship?”
The word sounds wrong on Sheppard’s tongue, and so McKay waves his arms dismissively. “No, no. Ugh.”
“Well, I thought it was clever.”
*
Hank Landry watches the ship go through the wormhole from the screens behind the blast doors and sighs. “Do you ever get the creeping sense of déjà vu, Harriman?” He asks the gate technician.
Harriman whimpers. “I think I just got held hostage by John Sheppard, sir.”
“Mmm,” Landry agrees.
“Just out of curiosity, sir. Did we know he was…” Harriman searches for the right word, then decides not to bother, and chalk it up to PTSD if it becomes a problem. “Did we know he was batshit insane when we gave him a job?”
“I think that may have been one of the requirements.”
*
PART FIVE: EPILOGUE
*
They arrive at the midway point, McKay frantically trying to patch together the macro from the traces still left on the system (with a little help from Sam) and Sheppard trying to come to grips in a world where flying an F-16 is not the coolest thing in the world. They both stop what they are doing to take in the view: a field of stars spinning into blackness.
“All it needs is a small blinking sign pointing towards us and saying ‘you are here’,” Rodney mumbles.
Sheppard laughs, and it’s so fucking comforting that Rodney thinks his chest is going to split open. “So.”
The comm system comes on with a low whir and Landry’s face appears on the screen, overlaying the edge of the Milky Way.
“Gentlemen. You’ve gone impressively far. You’ve proved your point, just come back and everything will be forgiven. You’ve done enough for your country for us to--,” Landry stops, as if slightly pained. “Just turn the Jumper around, Sheppard. We’ll-- give you back your memories.”
“No thanks,” Rodney says blithely, from the back of the Jumper. “We’re good.”
Landry boggles, it’s a response he’s genuinely never heard. “Where do you boys think you’re going to go?”
Sheppard and McKay look at each other and realise that they can go anywhere. As close to infinite as it is possible to humanly get.
“The man has a point,” McKay says.
John reaches out and touches McKay‘s face, slowly rolling his head towards Landry, daring him to look away. Rodney shivers as Landry swallows but does not look particularly surprised.
“Well, Sheppard? Where are you going to go?”
“Frogstar World B.” John says curtly, and clicks off the screen, and in that moment McKay knows they’re going to be okay.
He found John Sheppard, and it is going to be okay.
There are an infinity of choices arrayed out before them, and our individual self in any given universe is-- according to the theory-- just a sum of the choices made in this timeline, a line of addition with a fixed and simple outcome but neither mathematics nor the universe is really that simple.
In this universe, and the next, and every other you might visit, if they’ve gotten this far, Rodney McKay and John Sheppard drink in infinity for a full and silent moment before giving each other a grin and dialling home, fresh and clean and without the weight of the universe on their shoulders.
*
Feedback.
Lots of your everyday SGA fandom plot-devices (ie, amnesia) mixed in with some missing scenes from 5.06 'The Shrine', so obviously, there are spoilers within. Also a grab bag of references to Star Trek, Hitchhiker's Guide, Proust just in passing, and Firefly. Along with millions of dialogue quotes from various episodes across the seasons, spot them all. It's also quite obviously Sheppard/McKay, but more friendship than porn, I'm afraid. Though if you've read my fic from any other fandom, you'll know that's just par for the course.
Also, I'm laughing hysterically because I've just written a fic that is totally going to be jossed by the next episode, I swear.
This is for toft_froggy, cause she told me that procrastination was an important part of being a real girl.
remembrance of things past
Many, many years later, people would occasionally ask why Rodney McKay called his best friend and oftentimes commanding officer (though of course, he’s not in the military, and so that’s irrelevant) Madeleine, and the explanation either involves a seven-volume work of literature by Proust or a catastrophic attempt at French cookery, but the short answer is ‘involuntary memory’.
PART ONE: OXFORD
*
Rodney McKay watches as the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is an undergraduate Chemistry lecture mutters and disperses, congratulating himself on the wan recrimination and verge-of-tears looks he sees on the faces of a large proportion of the students. Most of them won’t be back next week, and he won’t be sorry to see them go. The lectures are scheduled for 8am Monday morning, the dead slot, the kill-me-now slot, the I’m-a-research-scientist-and-can’t-be-bothered-with-teaching-despite-the-fact-that’s-what-pays-my-bills slot. McKay takes a grim satisfaction in informing the lecture hall attendants that he’ll only need one of the smaller rooms on the first floor next time.
A couple of the bastards are still milling around and waiting for him when he strides back to pick up his notes and he half greets, half snarls at them. Their questions are, for the most part, juvenile and trite (both, to be expected) but then he’s left with last one, who’s been hanging back, waiting to catch him alone.
“Hi, I’m Andrew,” he says, looking even younger than twenty, messy dark hair, shadowed blue eyes, skinny and sort of laid-back with a slow smile.
McKay groans inwardly and makes a note to ring up his college provost and apologise in advance of this inevitable crisis. He is just brilliant enough that they’re willing to overlook his occasional weaknesses. Especially when his weaknesses display such enthusiastic consent.
*
McKay is sprawled out on his bed, asleep and snoring slightly with one arm pressed against Andrew whateverhisname is when a low beeping sound
“Hi,” a younger, bemused looking Rodney McKay says. “I’m your friendly neighbourhood AI failsafe and--,”
McKay cuts him off by throwing a shoe at him, which sails straight through, causing a bit of a shimmer.
“--did you just throw a shoe at me? Seriously? A younger, more attractive and more brilliant version of yourself materialises in your living room and that’s the first thing you do?”
“Right, ok, prioritise, McKay. Hologram?” He asks, faintly hopefully.
“Yes. Though if you hadn’t worked that out, I would be even more worried than I currently am about the inevitability of my intellectual and--,” the hologram gives him a once-over. “Physical decline.”
“Hey.”
“And also. Could you get rid of the jailbait in the bedroom? He’s really going to cramp my top secret, message in a bottle style and- oh,” the jailbait in question wanders into the living room dressed only in boxer shorts and grins sleepily at both of them. “Oh, please be joking, future dilapidated McKay.”
“About what, exactly?”
“This is your type? What happened to the, you know, blondes, with the breasts. The pert, pert breasts.”
Rodney draws the strings of his dressing gown tighter together before drawing himself up to his full height and putting on his best professorial voice. “Right, that’s enough. You, hallucination-boy, sit. Or stay. Or whatever. You,” he gestures at Andrew. “Out. And read that book on polymers that I recommended.”
Andrew is quick to oblige, probably still in a susceptible sleep state, and the moment the door is closed the hologram blinks at him. “Are you a…chemistry teacher?”
“Yes?” McKay offers.
The hologram wails and clutches his hands to his face. “It’s worse than I thought!”
“When were you made?”
“Stardate 3090 point 041,” the hologram deadpans, and then casts him a disgusted look. “Five years ago, idiot, right after the brain parasite adventure. Now stop gaping at me like a goldfish and gather together whatever faint shreds of intellectual integrity you have left and sit down, because you’re really going to have to make an effort to understand what I’m about to say to you.” The hologram pauses for a breath, even though it really shouldn’t need to. “I’ll use small words.”
It really ought to be no surprise that his blank disregard for other people’s intellects should extend, to his own past or future selves.
McKay considers arguing, but then sits down and surprises himself by saying, “Okay. Go.”
“Right. Step one, and remember this one, this is the most important thing: you need to find John Sheppard. Everything will be okay if you find John Sheppard.”
*
Sheppard has a theory and it goes something like this: the Pegasus Galaxy strips away self-delusion and superfluity away from what it means to be a human being. All the hypothetical scenarios and little clichés that exist on earth to test the bounds and bonds of your friendships and your own soul are-- at some point or another-- edged into reality. It is a very literal place. Sometimes you have to die a couple times for it to really take you seriously.
But, when he’s trying to explain it to Rodney as he’s waiting for Keller to come back with some more test results it comes out more like:
“Ok, so, this is basically the Pegasus Galaxy leaning over you and saying,” Sheppard pauses and makes a gesture that is clearly meant to be menacing but really ends up more Ghost of Christmas Past. “Have you ever heard of Shan Yu?”
McKay blinks and for a moment Sheppard’s innards twist because crap, maybe he’s forgotten and oh fuck but then McKay laughs, sharply.
“Does that make me Mal Reynolds? Actually, no, don’t even answer that, Lieutenant Colonel Tightpants.”
*
PART TWO: IRAQ
*
Rodney finally tracks down John Sheppard in a small provincial capital of Iraq called Amarah, which sits quite close to the banks of the Tigris. He’s hefting his standard issue M9 in one hand and what looks suspiciously like a fishing rod in the other, glittering under a clear, almost Mediterranean midafternoon sun. He’s wearing aviators and looks so damned American it makes Rodney’s teeth hurt. Also, his hair is ridiculous, and do they not have rules about that in the army?
“I’m Air Force, they like it when we look cool,” the quite pretty rather gung-ho looking man Rodney has been looking for grins sickeningly. “And who are you?”
He sounds very, very casual but Rodney recognises it surprisingly quickly for what it is: an elegant farce. Sheppard’s fingers have tightened up on the gun; his body has moved into a convenient position to discreetly observe whether Rodney has any friends in the vicinity and given himself some room to launch to his feet at short notice, all the while looking-- for want of a better word-- languid. McKay is by turns freaked out that he can read all this stuff from Sheppard’s tiny non-verbal cues and smugly impressed because obviously he was right all along, and most definitely not suffering from acute psychosis.
Well. At the very least, he was right.
“I’m- erm,” McKay floundered for a name in a sudden and somewhat inexplicable fit of paranoia and caution. “Arthur.” He says, weakly. “And you’re John Sheppard.”
“Yep.”
“What if I told you that there was a reason that you’ve always felt like everything is wrong. That you don’t belong here.”
“The reason is…?”
“That you don’t belong, Sheppard.”
Sheppard-- who in Rodney’s mind is coming to resemble, more and more, a snake or some kind of glittering, multiwinged, delicate limbed insect-- holds his arms out and shrugs. It’s a universal gesture, and not one without merit. Sheppard looks incredibly at home here, tanned and fit and fishing in the Tigris. The water reflects off his face, and it curves and warps his features-- giving him secret smiles, ghost expressions that aren‘t quite right but getting there. Sheppard probably speaks the local dialect of Arabic and has a band of street children that follow him around all day long and try and imitate his hair, god help the poor bastards.
“Things aren’t meant to be this way. Something weird…or like, not normal has taken away our memories.”
“And you know this, because…?” Sheppard is just indulging him now, like a small child, or toy.
“Well, as you probably don’t know at all, apparently this is not the first time the-- uh-- losing my memories thing has happened to me,” McKay says, trying to sound more sure than he is. “And of course, given the fact that I am almost unbelievably brilliant, my past self instituted certain failsafes.” At Sheppard’s sceptical look, McKay huffs. “Oh come on, Sheppard, if you’re backing up your system you want it to exist in as many places as possible.”
“You’re a very bad spy, Arthur. And I thought Canada were our allies. What are they doing sending incredibly blatant spies after good ole American servicemen?”
“You think I’m a Canadian spy?” McKay’s voice has reached a shriek. “Are you…brain-damaged or something? Were you dropped on your head as a baby? Should I use smaller words?” He stops and kicks at the sand with his foot. “I am going to build a time-machine and kill my past self because he obviously has no idea what he’s talking about.”
“Are you from psych? Because, I know I sort of skipped that last- um- ten or twenty sessions, and I know that you said it was mandatory but hey, I’m all good. I haven’t tried to kill or rescue anyone against orders in years; I’m so over all that.”
McKay counts to ten, which for him was a feat of incredible restraint. “Are you seriously telling me that you don’t think that there’s been something…off…about the last ten years of your life?”
Sheppard looks at him sharply and finally grits out, “More like the last twenty.” He loses that calculating look and slips back into his easy grin so fast McKay wants to smack him in the face. “So you’ve come here to tell me this and…what exactly?”
“I’ve come here to…you know…rescue you.”
Sheppard looks at him, all eyes and lazy trust and says, “You’re a good friend, Arthur.”
Something kicks in McKay’s chest and he rubs it absently.
“Look, everything I’ve been doing for the last ten years is sort of, exactly everything I wanted. Except…it’s…the stuff that someone who knows me pretty well would think I wanted. There’s a difference.”
“You think that our entire lives are some sort of…evil conspiracy wish-fulfilment?”
“Uh huh.”
Sheppard cocks his head. “Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“I just- well, I thought there’d have been more hot girls.”
McKay rocks back on his heels and grimaces. “I know!”
*
“Rodney, this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done and I am going to kill you.”
Pause.
McKay keeps staring at his shoes.
“Zelenka’s giving the science team a day off. Right now. They’re going- totally crazy in there. They’re probably…spilling beer…all over your research.”
“When you wake up, we are gonna do some serious investigating about why people in this galaxy keep losing their memories. Or turning into bugs. Maybe the bugs first, huh, cause that was way worse than this.” John kicks Rodney’s medically approved trainers (‘I have flat feet, Sheppard, it’s a medical condition. Oh yes, Major, laugh it up. You’d mock someone with diabetes, or cancer, wouldn’t you, you smug, soulless sonofa--’) and gets a kick back in response but no corresponding glare. He leaves his foot there. “So. Hey. Footsie.”
Something clicks on in McKay’s face. “John! John. You’re here.”
He smiles in contentment and Sheppard pulls back his foot as if burned, wanting anything but the openfaced trust that was just a tearing reminder of how badly he had fucked up.
“Remember that mission on M1B-129?”
McKay’s posture goes taut and he looks up at Sheppard with wide eyes that should be accusatory and says, in a perfect mime of himself, “You shot me.”
Sheppard’s laughing before he realises that McKay is laughing with him, there’s no real venom in his words, this McKay would forgive him anything, and God, was there no mercy in the world, had it really and truly come to him wishing McKay would chew him out instead of sitting there with that big insipid grin--
--but instead he smiles tightly and says, “Yeah, buddy. Sorry about that.”
*
PART THREE: CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN
*
As they’re frogmarched to the interrogation rooms or death chambers or whatever secret caverns exist in this underground mountain complex, Rodney manages to hiss, “If you’d told me your grand plan to get into Cheyenne mountain was to get caught I’d have seriously reconsidered my participation.”
They’re finally left in what looks like quite a nice meeting room, with an oak table and comfortable chairs and-- mother of god-- pastries in the centre of the table. Rodney tears his eyes away and ignores the rumble in his stomach, deciding to check for…secret gas vents or machine guns posing as security cameras while Sheppard takes a quick, searching look around what is most definitely a façade and settles comfortably into a chair.
“Don’t tell them anything, Sheppard,” Rodney folds his arms and resists the tray of pastries on the table between them.
“Don’t worry, Arthur. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
A tall, greying, slightly twinkly man walks in and Sheppard-- after a quick glance at the man’s stripes-- makes the deliberate decision not to salute, and compromises with a quick nod and, “General,” out of the corner of his mouth.
“Arthur?” The General asks.
McKay coughs. “Er, secret codename,” he says shiftily.
Sheppard looks hurt, and then bemused.
“Dr Rodney McKay,” the General provides, in the silence between them. “And Colonel John Sheppard. I’m General Landry, and this is-,”
“Stargate Command, yes, yes, we know.”
Landry fixes McKay with a look and then sits down across from them. “So, your memories have been altered by a rewired Goa’uld memory device. Which you helped with, Doctor. You’ve also had false memories imprinted to cover your seven years of service with the Stargate program, helped along by the US government giving you a very impressive and thorough paper trail for that period.”
Rodney breaks in, lurching up from his chair, an expression of mixed panic and annoyance that John almost recognises on his face. “This--,” he sweeps his hand across the table, as if to include it, them, time and space and reality itself in the gesture. “This isn’t the-- first time this has happened, is it?”
Landry smiles at him. “Every time I meet you, Dr. McKay, I’m impressed. And no. It isn’t.”
“Oh God, I probably have irreparable brain damage.” McKay slumps down, and begins muttering something that sounds suspiciously like ‘my beautiful, genius brain’ while clutching at his hair.
“Impressed. Then irritated beyond belief,” Landry says, quirking an eyebrow at Sheppard, as if they’re buddies, which they’re clearly not, and so Sheppard keeps his face impassive despite every part of his body wanting to relax and shoot something appropriately insulting back.
He compromises on a grunt.
“You know, it probably would have been simpler just to kill us,” Sheppard says consideringly, as Rodney makes frantic cut-it-out signs and mutters ‘jeez, way to give them ideas, colonel moron’.
Landry looks at them with suspiciously kind eyes. “Nah, we couldn’t kill you, Colonel,” he says, with a hint of bitterness. “We’d have to give you too many god damned posthumous medals. Besides,” he adds. “You asked, and it was the least we could do.”
“We…asked?”
“You asked.”
“You don’t really seem all that bothered that we‘re regaining our memories-- General,” Sheppard adds the title as an afterthought, magnanimously.
“Well, Colonel, frankly, I’m not.” Landry spreads his hands. “The thing is, every time you remember something, you always come here.” He smiles, in a sad, beaten up sort of way. “You always come home.”
McKay scrutinises him for a brief moment and announces. “We’re going to die horribly.”
“What, McKay?”
“He shouldn’t be telling us any of this stuff. He’s monologuing harder than Doctor No, we’re in some sort of secret underground facility, cut off from the tempestuous mistress that is cell phone signal, lured by the siren call of--,”
“Doctor No…?” Asks John.
“Siren call…?” Echoes Landry.
The two of them chuckle, and then stop abruptly. “Well, then,” Landry says, bracing his hands on the table and getting up. “Gentlemen, welcome to SPECTRE. These nice marines are going to show you to your rooms.”
McKay and Sheppard think he’s gone when they hear the door again and look up. Landry comes back in, holding two steaming mugs of coffee. He sets one down next to each of them, and then moves a step back to observe Rodney’s immediate cooing and burbling response as he pounces on the mug. Sheppard fixes him with a shadowed look that is just on this razor edge of threatening, but lowers it when Landry returns his look with a warm, conciliatory one and a step back. Moving out of his territory. Even though there were some really really fancy buttons and ribbons on his uniform. “It really is-,” his voice may even be cracking a little bit, but he’s stepping back. “So good to see you two.”
*
“It’s okay, McKay,” says Keller, very gently, like she is speaking to a child. “You said you loved me when you had a brain parasite. That really is the definition of impaired consent. Oh, and the other time we got together everyone you loved was dead.”
“Also, parallel universe,” he adds, helpfully.
Keller pats him slightly unsurely on the arm. “Yes, Rodney,” she says.
*
PART FOUR: MEETINGS
WEEK ONE
*
“Landry was wrong, you know,” Sheppard says experimentally, pacing the interrogation room.
“Bout what?”
“Lots of things. But mostly, this isn’t home.” Sheppard scowls at a CCTV camera. “I’m right, aren’t I, McKay?”
“Yeah,” Rodney agrees, after a moment. “This isn’t home.”
*
“So, you’re asking us to believe that Sheppard and I chose this?”
“You had almost complete authority when it came to designing your new lives. At the beginning, of course. Then we just let things progress naturally.”
“You made me believe I was a chemist,” McKay parried accusingly. “I spent the last two years working on alternative fuels and- and- giving lectures.”
Landry nodded. “And you’ve done some really quite spectacular things, Doctor. Imagine if we’d put you back into physics. You’d have ended up cobbling together an Ancient device out of sparkplugs and a toaster, and then where would we be? Now, if you don‘t mind, gentlemen,” he added smoothly. “There’s someone here who’d very much like to see you.”
A pretty, slightly serious looking blonde walks in the door wearing civilian clothes and a military gait, and Rodney is seized with a salacious grin and a desire to make seedy comments about the pertness of her ass. “McKay!” She envelops him in a hug, releasing him quickly and moving on to Sheppard. “Sheppard. I have to admit, General, I thought you may have been yanking my chain when you said they were here.”
“No chain yanking, as you can see, Colonel. Well, I’ll just let you get re-acquainted then.”
“I’m Sam Carter. I’m-- I was your friend. And your commanding officer, for a while. But that didn’t really work out,” she finishes, brightly. “Now, tell me, what the hell are you two doing back here. Again.”
“Well, it all started when Rodney got this message from his past self and, ow--,” Sheppard stops and looks reproachful. “You kicked me.”
“Well, you’re telling her things, Colonel Moron. What happened to ‘need to know basis’ or you know, tactical advantage or whatever.”
“I dunno, McKay, she looks trustworthy to me.”
“Just because she has tits and-- well, very nice tits, and hm-- a perfect little--,”
“Shut up, McKay,” Sam slaps a hand on the table, but is also grinning.
“For the record, I was going to say ‘smile’.”
“What happened, Carter?” Sheppard says, suddenly all edges and intimidation and wearing into personal space even though Rodney could swear he hadn’t actually moved a muscle.
The question doesn’t really need a qualifier, and Carter shifts a bit, but doesn’t wither under the Sheppard glare, which comforts Rodney a little, because it proves that she really does know them. (As if he really needed convincing, Carter is familiar and sweet, like the remains of a girl’s perfume left on his collar after the affair is over).
“Nothing…happened,” she says, finally, weighing her words. “The Atlantis mission ended and you two…didn’t want to do it anymore. And then after a while you couldn’t. And so we came up with this solution.”
Sheppard gets a brief, saturated flash of: McKay and Carter at their workstation, laughing, arguing, trying to wrest the whiteboard marker out of each other’s hands, blonde and brown heads bent low, unlocking the secrets of the universe, finding reality faulty and rewriting the base code.
There is a lot unsaid, and a lot conveyed by the way Carter’s mouth pinches in and her so-direct eyes don’t really want to meet theirs and McKay shivers with the sense that all of them, all of these kindly, weird people that he half-knows and half-likes who look at him like a friend are giving them this infuriating brush-off because what McKay and Sheppard decided to forget is actually, in every gutwrenching sense of the word, unspeakable.
“I’m a scientist, Carter,” McKay whines, out of habit more than anything else. “I need to know!”
Her eyes widen and she shakes her head. “Trust me, McKay, you don’t. I know this is-- awful for you, I really can’t imagine but--,” it’s okay, she doesn’t need to complete the sentence because McKay knows the rest: this is awful and infuriating and awkward but, jesus god, McKay, with your half-memories and half-self and flickering soul, you’re the lucky one-- “There were some great years, some really great years. But, then, there was. A not so great one.”
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad, Colonel Sheppard.”
“Huh.” And that’s John’s final word on the subject.
“I’ll get them to give you access to the mission reports,” she promises.
*
“Hey McKay,” Sheppard says, and this time when Rodney looks up he sees on his face what he has already filed away as Smile No. 16, or Something Incredibly Fatal Is About to Be Proposed. “Reading these reports, do you get the distinct feeling that the universe owes us a biggie?”
Looking back, that was probably where it all began.
*
WEEK TWO
*
“Hey, McKay,” Sheppard asks, pushing his hair out of his eyes, and fixing him with a look that is equal parts serious and equal parts taking the piss. “Do you ever think that maybe these guys that we were…weren’t so goddamn brilliant after all?”
“What?” The scientist is busy behind a pile of paperwork, files stacked high with information in hard copy form because they don’t trust McKay with a computer, even a non-networked one, so the guy must be at least half as brilliant as he says he is. Which is plenty, even considering the reports, which do a lot of bragging for him (even with lots of the good bits censored out). Not that he needs them to.
“Cause reading these reports I can almost feel them happening to me. When someone walks past outside the interrogation room I’m counting steps in my head and thinking about tactical advantage and how to get the drop on them, and I keep reaching for a gun that isn’t there that’s shaped like nothing I’ve ever held before. McKay, my fingers remember what it feels like to pull an alien trigger.”
“There’s a…theory…” McKay says with considerable disdain, despite not really paying attention. “The body remembers, sense-memory, events inscribed into our flesh and blood rather than our intellect. Sort of the same kind of principle as phantom limb syndrome, the body’s memory of a limb overrides the intellectual awareness that it is no longer there. Why does that make our memoried selves stupid, Sheppard?”
There is a long moment where Sheppard just looks at him piercingly, big eyes used to full effect, cataloguing his facial expression as he gives him a very small very infuriating smirk. “The thing is--,” Sheppard says, and to the unpracticed eye Sheppard looks incredibly relaxed, sprawled lazily over the chair, but Rodney McKay knows better, and is therefore expecting it when the slackness slides into tension and action and Sheppard is kneeling on the floor next to him with his fingers webbed in Rodney’s hair and neck and his tongue pushed remarkably far into Rodney’s mouth. He releases him quickly, wiping some spit away with the back of his hand, and looking at Rodney with a butter-wouldn’t-melt expression. “I don’t actually remember that. Your mouth is completely new.”
“Schmrfle.” Rodney contributes.
“Yes, McKay, that does totally prove that our past selves were idiots.”
“Not conclusively!” McKay breaks in, hurriedly, sliding to his knees to end up nose to nose with Sheppard. “I think we need more testing.”
*
A straight-backed Colonel with an impressive jawline and bright eyes saunters in, tossing a lemon between his hands. Rodney begins backing into a corner and hissing, watching the two Colonels lock eyes and grin. Of course, the two pretty military boys would be friends.
“Cam Mitchell. I run SG-1.”
“And are also trying to viciously assassinate me.”
“Relax, McKay, just thought I’d bring my old buddy here some fruit,” he hands over the lemon. “Call it-- returning a favour. Don’t know if you’ve discovered this yet, hotshot, but he works best under pressure of imminent death.”
Sheppard pockets the fruit. “I had noticed that yes,” he pats the pocket absently. “Makes me feel better, just knowing it’s there.”
Mitchell’s eyes crinkle into a genuine smile at that, and he includes Rodney in its warmth. “The boys upstairs told me to come in here and pat your hands and tell you not to make trouble. So like, stay off my lawn, you crazy kids.” He nods sagely at that and turns to leave.
“What trouble did we get into, exactly. Before.” McKay asks sharply.
“You might have tried to secede from the Milky Way,” Mitchell says lightly, with a grin. “Who knows? Does that sound likely to you, guys?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Sheppard and McKay glare at each other as Mitchell closes the door behind them.
*
WEEK THREE
*
“So, you know this plan where we step one) bust out of here, step two) recover our memories and then insert step three here?”
“Yes, Sheppard,” McKay says, poking at the Goa’uld device.
“Um. How do you feel about skipping step two?”
“What?”
“Rodney,” John says patiently. “The guys we were. They sound kind of dumb. Also, I don’t think they were very happy.”
“Happy?” Rodney echoes, like it’s a variable he never took into account.
“Yeah, genius. The guys we were wiped every memory they had of…home. And of each other. And if that wasn’t enough, picked deliberately unsatisfying fantasy lives for themselves.”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Rodney blinks up at John and despite the vast and sweeping scope of his brain, he cannot think of anything that could make him want to forget. That face. All of this. Everything. And yet it had happened, and they had done it. Or tried anyway. “I read the report,” Rodney says rapidly. “About the other time I lost my memory. The brain parasite. And. You were the last thing to go. Even when I couldn’t remember pi. I still asked for you. Even with this stupid memory device, all the guys I dated had stupid hair.”
John debates saying, ‘thanks, I think?’ but instead says, “Yeah, you’re kinda stuck with me, buddy.”
“Okay, right. In which case, we should probably, um. Un-escape. Before they notice we’re gone.”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly Sheppard, there are only so many times I can pull off a daring, bloodless escape from a top secret military facility without--,” Rodney is interrupted when John kisses him, muzzle of his stolen rifle pressing into Rodney’s chest. “Hm- yes. Well,” he amends, slightly less grumpily. “Just make it count next time, alright?”
*
“The moment you got your memories back you wouldn’t want them. You wouldn’t want to be here.”
“We don’t want our memories back, Sam,” says John, infuriatingly calm and so she turns to Rodney, shaking her head at the probability that appealing to him to be reasonable is actually going to work.
“Look, Rodney, you-- the other yous-- they didn’t want anything more to do with the Stargate program. They chose to have their memories wiped and live normal lives. It would be wrong to…take advantage of you. In your memory-less state.” Sam senses Rodney’s grin even before it appears.
“Carter, it’s not like you slipped us a roofie at a frat party and you’re now having your way with us in a dark corner,” McKay pauses to gesture grandiloquently. “Besides, we’re not planning to rejoin the Stargate program. Not, um, technically.”
John reaches over the table and grabs Sam’s hand. “We just want to go home,” he says, pleading.
Carter blinks at him and then laughs. “You’ve tried those puppy-dog eyes on me before, Sheppard.”
“And did they work?”
Sam sighs and stands up stiffly. “Colonel Sheppard, I have to inform you that what you’re suggesting amounts to desertion, if not high treason. And I strongly advise you to stop talking unless you want to be courtmartialed.”
Sheppard shrugs. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Sam gives them both curt nods and heads for the door, but there’s a weird watery look in her eye as she closes it behind her.
*
It’s Sam’s fifth visit when she casually drops a newspaper on the table between them. “I brought you the crossword, Rodney. Thought you might be getting bored.”
“Oh please, you think this crossword is going to even remotely tax my mental abilities, which, I don’t have to remind you, are rather gargan- ah,” McKay looks up from his brief perusal of the crossword puzzle to an amused looking Sam Carter. “Gargantuan. Yes. Thankyou, Colonel Carter.”
“You’re welcome, Dr. McKay.”
John is looking at the meaningful glances between them and clears his throat, most certainly not in any way jealous or uncomfortable. “What, no sudoku?” He gripes.
Sam smiles at him. “Page 7. Like I would forget, John.”
She clutches both their hands before she leaves, and this time the wateriness is even more pronounced. “It’s so good to see you two,” she says, and they think she’s going to leave it at that when she adds, “Like this. Like…” The pain in her voice is ripping, horrible, but only for a brief moment before she’s back and smiling, no trace of what she was about to say on her face. “You know. Being pains in my ass again. I never told you this, but I hated being your commanding officer, because you’re bastards.”
She hurries out after that with only one wistful look behind her.
McKay and Sheppard look at each other as she leaves, and are suddenly very glad they abandoned step two of the plan.
*
McKay wordlessly shows John the solution to the highly complicated alphanumerical code that’s embedded in the puzzle clues. John looks at it uncomprehendingly until McKay scribbles it out in plain English: ‘Atlantis, Pegasus Galaxy’ and a series of numbers, circled, with the words, ‘gate address’ written underneath, and then he smiles.
The sudoku is unlocked with the same cryptological key, and the message is short, and simple, for Sam. She speaks to them honestly through nine square boxes of numbers printed on thin paper and she says, ‘look for backdoors.’ Though really what she’s saying it, ‘I’ve got your back’.
*
WEEK FOUR
*
They’re standing in the gate room with Sheppard pointing a gun at various scientists and McKay clawing at the innards of some sort of dialling device. Sheppard shifts lazily and represses the urge to grin. He can’t actually remember the last time that things felt so…right.
“Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard, stand down immediately.” Landry’s voice crackles over the PA system. “That’s an order, son.”
Sheppard waves his gun lazily and the nearest geek flinches. “It’s my party, General,” he drawls. “And I’ll shoot who I want to.”
The PA system doesn’t respond.
“Hey, McKay?”
“Yeah?”
“All of them had stupid hair?”
McKay makes a noise of disgust and puffed air, and heaves something small and shiny like a sprocket at his wide grin. “Don’t get too cocky, Sheppard,” he yells. “I just have a thing for the unkempt.”
“Out of interest, we got any plans for after we get the, um, Stargate, working?”
“Oh of course, Sheppard. I’ve got all the time in the world to fantasise in between trying to remember a lifetime’s worth of memories and experiences, trying to activate Sam’s code for a system that I have a tenuous grasp on at best, and not blowing us up or you know, ripping a hole in the entire fabric of space-time while I open a wormhole that’s going to carry us several thousand light years in 3.2 seconds.”
Sheppard lets the tirade wash over him warmly, tilts his head and grins. “Ok. Cool.”
McKay stops dead at that. “Cool?” He mouths, aghast.
“Yeah. Cool.”
“Wait, scratch that. I think I found us our ship.”
Sheppard’s mouth thinks about falling open for a brief second but holds up at the last moment. “A…space ship?” He manages, raspily.
*
Sheppard and McKay stand in front of the ship, and McKay thinks about averting his eyes as Sheppard runs his fingers reverently, almost sexually, across the metal. “Oh sweet god,” he whispers, as it opens up for him. They go inside and Sheppard automatically heads for the pilot’s seat, and without even a single nudge he places his hands on the control panels and closes his eyes. The ship comes to life around them as McKay overrides the bay doors and curses.
“Do we have a name for this thing?” John calls, as Rodney leaps back from a panel which has begun spitting sparks at him.
“Yes, Sheppard, I decided to look for the names to all the things we--,” McKay takes a long look at John, sitting there with a half-contented smirk on his face, pleased like a fucking child at a fairground sitting in the bowels of a ship that is thrumming with just how pleased she is to see him and bites down on his rant. “No,” he says, finally, possibly even meekly. “Well, it’s a ship. That goes through the gate.”
Sheppard rubs his beard thoughtfully. “Gateship?”
The word sounds wrong on Sheppard’s tongue, and so McKay waves his arms dismissively. “No, no. Ugh.”
“Well, I thought it was clever.”
*
Hank Landry watches the ship go through the wormhole from the screens behind the blast doors and sighs. “Do you ever get the creeping sense of déjà vu, Harriman?” He asks the gate technician.
Harriman whimpers. “I think I just got held hostage by John Sheppard, sir.”
“Mmm,” Landry agrees.
“Just out of curiosity, sir. Did we know he was…” Harriman searches for the right word, then decides not to bother, and chalk it up to PTSD if it becomes a problem. “Did we know he was batshit insane when we gave him a job?”
“I think that may have been one of the requirements.”
*
PART FIVE: EPILOGUE
*
They arrive at the midway point, McKay frantically trying to patch together the macro from the traces still left on the system (with a little help from Sam) and Sheppard trying to come to grips in a world where flying an F-16 is not the coolest thing in the world. They both stop what they are doing to take in the view: a field of stars spinning into blackness.
“All it needs is a small blinking sign pointing towards us and saying ‘you are here’,” Rodney mumbles.
Sheppard laughs, and it’s so fucking comforting that Rodney thinks his chest is going to split open. “So.”
The comm system comes on with a low whir and Landry’s face appears on the screen, overlaying the edge of the Milky Way.
“Gentlemen. You’ve gone impressively far. You’ve proved your point, just come back and everything will be forgiven. You’ve done enough for your country for us to--,” Landry stops, as if slightly pained. “Just turn the Jumper around, Sheppard. We’ll-- give you back your memories.”
“No thanks,” Rodney says blithely, from the back of the Jumper. “We’re good.”
Landry boggles, it’s a response he’s genuinely never heard. “Where do you boys think you’re going to go?”
Sheppard and McKay look at each other and realise that they can go anywhere. As close to infinite as it is possible to humanly get.
“The man has a point,” McKay says.
John reaches out and touches McKay‘s face, slowly rolling his head towards Landry, daring him to look away. Rodney shivers as Landry swallows but does not look particularly surprised.
“Well, Sheppard? Where are you going to go?”
“Frogstar World B.” John says curtly, and clicks off the screen, and in that moment McKay knows they’re going to be okay.
He found John Sheppard, and it is going to be okay.
There are an infinity of choices arrayed out before them, and our individual self in any given universe is-- according to the theory-- just a sum of the choices made in this timeline, a line of addition with a fixed and simple outcome but neither mathematics nor the universe is really that simple.
In this universe, and the next, and every other you might visit, if they’ve gotten this far, Rodney McKay and John Sheppard drink in infinity for a full and silent moment before giving each other a grin and dialling home, fresh and clean and without the weight of the universe on their shoulders.
*
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