SGA/Scrubs fusion fic: My Space Adventure
Title: My Space Adventure
Pairings: vaguely JD/Dr. Cox-ish, implied Sheppard/McKay
Word Count: 4,000+
Summary: I don’t really need glasses, but they make me feel smarter, like Leonard Nimoy.
A/N: Oh dear god, I'm so sorry. This is experimental crack, none of it makes sense, and I know everything isn't perfect, but it ate my brain.
My Space Adventure
There are two things on Atlantis I’m not allowed to touch.
“Don’t touch that!”
I jerk my hand back and pout at the shiny piece of metal. Darn it. Make that three things.
One: I’m not allowed anywhere near Dr. McKay with my ‘holistic hippie herbal hoo-hah that’s even less of a science than botany, if that’s even possible;’ and two: I’m not allowed to even look in the direction of anything that resembles a weapon, since guns + JD = missing fingers for everyone. Thank the sweet baby Jesus for surgical re-attachments. Turk always has my back.
Still. Dr. Cox says if I even think about touching anything in the armory he’ll lock me up in the Northern Tower of Girlish Screaming - so named for the legend of Nervous Guy and the supposed bleeding wall mishap while he’d been exploring with Colonel Sheppard and He of The Hairy Monikers. I can never remember that guy’s name, since Dr. McKay yells Man-ape and Yeti at him, and it’s a little like Dr. Cox calling me Julia. Except without the underlying sexual tension, since I’m pretty sure Colonel Sheppard is hitting that, the sly dog. Dr. McKay, that is, not Giant Alien Man. Not that he isn’t a dreamy Giant Alien Man. And gloriously tall. I could climb him like a monkey.
The Northern Tower of Girlish Screaming, though, is where little boys like me go to die. At least, that’s what Dr. Cox says.
“Dude,” Turk says, shaking his head sadly. He’s there for moral support in my quest to find Dr. Cox and convince him to let me on his off-world team. Dr. Weir’s finally given him one, since he’s an ex-marine and apparently knows three hundred and fifty ways to kill a man with his pinky. I don’t honestly believe that - Hello! Doctor! - but I’m not willing to question it, either. Questioning Dr. Cox only leads to excruciatingly uncomfortable facial expressions for everybody involved.
Turks’ eyes say you’re-a-better-man-than-me (or maybe that’s his JD’s-been-hitting-Kelso’s-hidden-stash-of-crazy-pills-again look) and then he’s gone like the wind, or like Major Lorne on Gumbo Friday, and Dr. Zelenka’s staring at me funny, like he wants me to stay around and stand too close to Dr. McKay so he can take more pictures for his Wall of Hilarity, so. Exit, stage right.
I can not touch things in my own lab, thank you very much. And by ‘my own lab’ I mean balcony number four hundred fifty-seven, because the Janitor likes to lounge in the herbal remedy experimental greenhouse from two to five every day and hatch evil plots.
One day, I’m gonna get Teyla to teach me how to stick fight behind Dr. Cox’s back. Or I’ll get me a unicorn from PX5-333. A unicorn would kick the Janitor’s Athosian squirrel army’s ass.
I’ll call her Sparkles and feed her gumdrops and candy canes.
**
The thing is, Dr. Cox hasn’t chosen his team yet - except for Turk’s main squeeze, the luscious Carla, and oh god, Carla’s head snaps up across from me in the mess and I didn’t say that out loud, did I?
It doesn’t matter. Carla has freaky mind reading abilities and why do I always forget that? I can feel her eyes crushing my will to live, but I valiantly try to trick her, going for my ‘you wouldn’t hurt a cute baby deer, would you?’ look, and she melts into exasperated fondness. I play that card as often as I dare. Someday it’ll come back to bite me in the ass, I’m sure of it, but not today! Woohoo!
“You’re just lucky I like you, Bambi,” she says, and I sigh, imagining her ruffling my hair like a favorite pup. Her hands are so soft.
“Have you seen Dr. Cox?” I ask, digging into a little cake that looks like a bunny. “I’ve been looking for him all day.” The commissary staff always adds a touch of whimsy to the space food. I appreciate the effort. It tastes kinda stringy, though, and I hope they don’t actually use bunnies. Although, I guess they wouldn’t be bunnies, would they?
“Believe me, you don’t want to find him,” she admonishes.
“Oh, but I-”
“JD,” she says, cleaning up her tray, “he’s never going to let you go off-world. The more you ask, the more he’ll want to choke you. And for some strange reason known only in that messed-up head of yours, the more he wants to choke you, the more you want to ask. So just leave well enough alone, all right?”
I pout. Carla just doesn’t understand.
“I understand completely,” she gets to her feet, “and your little boy-crush on Dr. Cox is... disturbing.” Her face softens again. “You’re going to get hurt if you’re not careful, Bambi.”
Is she kidding me? I’m always careful. I wear my awesomely cool helmet with the red and yellow flames whenever I’m in a puddlejumper. Careful is my middle name. Well, I don’t actually have a middle name. It was a whole big... thing, with my parents and fighting the man. My original birth certificate says Sunshine, but it only took six months for my parents to shake free of the commune and file for a change. I hope Dr. McKay never gets wind of my hippie childhood, though, or I’ll be banished to the south pier like Dr. Yamato after the Parcheesi incident.
I’m left in thought by myself - which mainly consists of daydreams about Sparkles and how cool our quarters will be once I teach her how to flush the toilet - and then Turk settles into Carla’s empty seat and steals my half-eaten bunny meat cake.
“Dude, robot races in an hour. You in?”
“Awww, yeah, fo’ shizzle.” We do our secret slap and tickle handshake minted brand new for our galactic space adventure, and he’s gone with my meat cake, and I think about how awesome it would be if my head and torso were surgically attached to the favored to win Colosso, made by Ager and Vogel. I’d be like Robocop, only more handsome.
I bet Dr. Cox would let me go off-world then.
**
I push my glasses up my nose and crouch down to check on the new plant Dr. Parrish brought in for me. One of the random Athosians always hanging around says it’s poisonous, so bonus!
I don’t really need glasses, but they make me feel smarter, like Leonard Nimoy.
Dr. Cox wears glasses, too, when he doesn’t think anyone’s around. He looks better with them on than I do, although mine are just square black ones I took out of the lost and found. There’s a strict one month and it’s yours policy in effect, and I don’t like to think about why they weren’t claimed, because maybe my work isn’t as critical as Dr. McKay’s, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have my eyes open when I agreed to ship out to another galaxy (without the glasses, of course, since whoever owned them before me was freaking blind), and… where was I?
Oh, right. Plants. I named this one Bizarro Perry, ‘cause it’s sweet and fragile on the outside, but can fell an almost-rhino with just one tiny sprig. Dr. Cox is more like a cactus, with a squishy hidden center - nourishment for the starving man if he’s clever enough to get past the nettles.
“Just what do you think you’re doing, Sarah?”
I freeze, glance up at Dr. Cox, gilded by the late afternoon sun like a Greco-Roman god, wild, curly hair kissed with gold. “Um.” What am I doing?
“’Cause it sounded an awful lot like you were singing ‘I Love the Nightlife,’ and I’ve got to say, Lucinda, that’s almost as disturbing as - are you wearing Corporal Lee’s glasses?”
I blink. “Na huh.” I’m pretty sure Corporal Lee went back with the last Daedalus run, though, so I don’t feel that bad about it.
“Hand ‘em over, Princess,” Dr. Cox says, snapping, and I get a sudden flash of McKay and Cox, dueling you-are-too-stupid-to-live faces at High Noon, snapping fingers out, only Dr. McKay would probably win that one, since Dr. Cox is usually too tired to actually kill anyone, and Dr. McKay has a curiously high turnover in the labs.
“Newbie.” He tips his head back and forth impatiently. “What did I tell you about playing with other people’s toys without permission?”
“Uh.” This has to be a trick question. Is ‘toys’ a euphemism? Are we still talking about the glasses? I opt for the sheepish nod and grin combo and pray to the Ascended Ancients he doesn’t take the slight baring of my teeth as a challenge.
“Oh for god’s sake, Cynthia, just give me the damn glasses,” he growls, and he’s no longer Playfully Irritated Dr. Cox, but Filled With Burning Rage Dr. Cox, and maybe he just really misses Corporal Lee.
Wisely, I slip the glasses off my face and hand them to him, my fingers tingling where they touch his. His fingers turn white-knuckled as he fists the black plastic. I’m starting to think Lee hadn’t been breathing when he was shipped back to Earth.
“I guess you and Corporal Lee were good friends then, eh Dr. Cox?” I ask brightly, and oh dear god, I can see my death in his pretty blue eyes.
He goes all googly-eyed and crosses his arms over his chest and leans down menacingly and I whimper and may’ve lost control of my bodily - oh, wait, no. Watering can spillage. Whew.
“Listen up, Stephanie. Open those pretty little ears of yours and carefully heed my words, ‘cause you’ve been here four months now, and I’ve given you a very, very, very very very generous window of immunity, where I haven’t maimed you beyond recognition for every stupid little thing…”
Well, he hasn’t physically hurt me, no, but I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster ever since I first stepped-beamed off the Daedalus (helpful note when dealing with Asgard: they don’t appreciate Star Trek references, and may be in league with the Janitor - the I-am-not-amused stare is uncanny) and into the coolest city ever created.
“…and I know you draw little hearts around my name in your diary every night…”
I gasp in horror. How does he know that? Did he touch that shiny thing Dr. Zelenka told me not to touch? I heard Dr. Simpson got turned into a mouse with supersonic hearing and a taste for flesh.
“Are you listening to me, Babbette?”
Say yes, say yes, say, “No.”
And now I’ve probably blown my chances of ever being on his off-world team. Fantastic.
**
I take Rowdy for a walk to the lounge and find Elliot eating a jumbo sized Hershey bar. She’s got it hidden in a paper bag like a wino, but I know her tricks. She gives me a brick before I ask.
“Boy trouble?”
I slump down next to her on the couch. “I’m never going to get to go exploring.”
“Me neither,” she says around a mound of melting chocolate. “I’m kind of happy about that.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” I exclaim. We’re in another galaxy! Filled with aliens and space ships and life-sucking vampires! Except for the last part, it’s all very, very cool.
“Ask me that again after you’ve spent five hours lost in the air ducts three stories below the surface with Dr. Kavanagh and Ted’s iPod.”
Ted’s iPod is filled with motivational podcasts from such wonderful authors as Dr. Phil, Judge Judith Sheindlin and Montel Williams. I feel her pain.
“Still,” I insist, “don’t you ever want to get off Atlantis? Meet new and exciting aliens who mostly look exactly like us?”
She shrugs. “Sure. But then I remember the time Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay came back through the gate without their clothes, so high they could barely remember their names, with little blue symbols painted all over them.”
I nod. They’d thought Dr. Beckett was going to eat them. Good times.
I don’t see that as much of a deterrent for off-world exploration, but I don’t argue with her. If I’m quiet enough she’ll give me another piece of chocolate.
**
Nervous Guy goes off-world with Dr. Cox, and Carla, and Major Lorne’s team, and doesn’t come back.
An hour after the briefing, I find Dr. Cox on my balcony, a bottle of scotch dangling from his fingers.
“Still wanna go exploring, Susan?” he asks, and his voice is thick and scary.
I don’t say anything. I’m not sure how he wants me to answer that, or even if I’m supposed to.
“Yeah,” he rasps, nodding. “Thought so.”
The next morning I stumble into my lab with a steaming cup of real coffee and nearly fumble it - I can practically hear the cries of rage and grief from Dr. McKay’s lab down the hall as a drop slides down the side of my mug in slow motion - when I spot Lee’s glasses folded up next to the pot of Bizarro Perry.
What does this mean?
**
“Hey.”
I jump back with a manly screech and trip over a ten thousand year old plant - I thought they’d gotten rid of all of them? - and the Janitor looms over me with his cold dead eyes.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” He holds out a hand.
My brain screams - it’s a trap! But my hand automatically reaches for his, and by the time I realize what I’ve done it’s too late. I feel like a fox in a steel-toothed trap, his fingers coiled around my wrist, and it’s only a matter of time until I go feral and start gnawing off my arm.
Luckily, my brain has been specifically conditioned to avoid pain by any means necessary, and I black out before the panic sets in.
**
I wake up hogtied in a small, dark room. Testing my binds, I’m reluctantly impressed. Point to the Janitor.
The door slides open and I beam at the silhouette of my savior. The competent stance, the wide shoulders, the - the lights flicker on and Dr. McKay is glaring down at me with a scowl.
“Hi, Dr. McKay,” I chirp, hoping he’ll see fit to free me, even though he rants about breathing in toxic plant fumes every time we’re in the same room.
He lifts a finger and opens his mouth, then closes it again. Then he shifts on his feet and crosses his arms and says, “You know what? I don’t care.”
What?
“I’m desperate, the colonel’s hiding like the giant girl he is, and there’s three very special things I need touched-”
Eep! Flashing red lights and warning bells are going off in my head, but when do I ever listen to them?
The Janitor pops up behind him, as if Dr. McKay has summoned him with his mind. This is not entirely out of the realm of possibility. I’ve witnessed much, much weirder things in Pegasus. Major Lorne once grew a second head. He was fantastic at stand-up comedy, and open mic night in the lounge was a hoot for four magnificent weeks. Sometimes, I still miss him.
“You,” Dr. McKay snaps, jabbing a finger at the Janitor, “let him out.” His eyes narrow on my face. “I have plans for him.”
‘Plans’ doesn’t sound good, but I’m happy enough to be released. The Janitor is really scary that close up, though, and his breath is clammy like a dead person’s - if a dead person could breathe - and I freeze as he cuts my hands free of my feet with the biggest bowie knife I’ve ever seen, and zombies don’t carry knives, right? So he can’t be a zombie. Right?
He holds the knife up close to my face and says, “Some day...” leaving me to fill in the silence, and ‘some day’ what? I’ll eat your brains? Slice your steak into neat little squares - ‘cause you can bet that knife would cut through a bone like butter and-oh. Oh.
I squeak and scuttle backwards like a crab until I hit a shelf of supplies, toppling a box of three dozen plastic spoons down on me - and why do we have three dozen plastic spoons? - and Dr. McKay grouses, “Oh my god, you’re all incompetent morons,” and “Caldwell should’ve space vacuumed every single one of you in a mass mercy killing,” and “Stop threatening my lackey, you laborious mop jockey.”
For a moment I think the Janitor is going to explode in a gorgeous fiery rebirth of rage, but nobody can do anything to Dr. McKay without serious repercussions, and the Janitor knows it.
My afternoon is not looking up.
**
In the lab, I touch Ancient device after Ancient device, each one more boring than the last. Dr. McKay isn’t really paying attention any more, since the first one he handed me - a round-edged pyramid with tri-colored panels - failed to even chirp, so I pick and choose out of the box on the table, looking for anything promising.
Everyone else gets the cool ones that make them telepathic or turn them into cats.
I’m just waiting for the one that’ll give me laser beams for eyes.
“Here,” Dr. McKay shoves the pyramid in front of my face, “try this again.”
It lights up like sunshine through stained glass as my fingers curl around it. “Pretty,” I breathe, and then the world explodes.
**
Okay, the world didn’t actually explode.
I wake up in the infirmary, though, with a slightly sheepish Dr. McKay gazing down at me, fingers twisting together.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” he says, nodding.
I groan, because my head feels swollen and my hands are bandaged and I think I’ve lost my ability to see colors. “What happened?” I ask.
Instead of answering, he says, “I need you to tell me exactly what you remember,” and all I can think of is that one time I went to a church, Easter, 1993, with Dan and our great aunt Ethel. The pastor looked like a crane, and Great Aunt Ethel kept falling asleep with her face in the hymnal, colored shards from Jesus in the Garden painting triangles of light across the back of the pew. That’s probably not what Dr. McKay wants to hear.
“Um. It was bright?”
Dr. McKay pinches the bridge of his nose. “And?”
“And...” I think really hard, staring up at the ceiling, at the rim of blue that isn’t blue now, but sort of a dusky gray to my burned irises. It’s too bright, a shade off, and I open my mouth and say, “The environmental controls are on wrong,” and I don’t even know what that means.
Except I do.
“I knew it!” Dr. McKay exclaims happily. “That Czech bastard owes me five pounds of coffee. Carson,” he calls over his shoulder, “I’m taking Dr. Girly Names back to the lab.”
“Oh, no you’re not, Rodney,” Dr. Beckett says, stepping around the privacy curtain with the mother of all needles. I shrink back against the pillow.
“Come on, what could you possibly need to keep him for?” Dr. McKay rants, waving his hands. “He burned his fingers and downloaded key knowledge about Ancient technology into his brain that could fade at any minute, and you want to sedate him? While he could be providing invaluable information about Atlantis? Are you insane?”
Wow. That sounds pretty cool.
“How are you feelin’, lad,” Dr. Beckett asks me, patting my arm.
I flick my gaze from his big needle to Dr. McKay and back to his always-kind eyes. “Fine. Really, I’m fine, it’s just. There’s a med bay on the left pier you might want to check out. Aquatic therapy.”
Dr. McKay makes a smug noise and rocks back on his heels.
**
For about a week I’m Efficiency Man, and everybody wants me. I cut the city power usage back by a whopping third, find even more cool nooks and crannies all over the as-yet unexplored parts, and Dr. Weir beams at me whenever we pass in the halls. Dr. McKay treats me like his favorite toy.
But I can’t see colors and everything tastes like paste - not the good kind, either - so popularity has a trade-off. I can’t decide if it’s worth it or not.
And then red seeps back into my vision, and blue and green and one day I wake up and I’m in my own head.
“Dr. Cox!” I shout when I pass him on my way to breakfast.
“Not today, Caroline,” he says, turning a corner and disappearing.
I jog to catch up. “But I’m normal again.” He’s been avoiding me ever since the incident. Or, well. That actually isn’t much different than usual, I suppose. I was just too busy to hunt him down.
“Good for you.”
I keep pace with him easily. This makes me suspicious. “Dr. Cox, do you think-”
“No.” His hands are in his pockets and he nods at Lieutenant Myer and Dr. Lindsay as they step into a transporter. I don’t completely trust transporters. I keep thinking I’ll get stuck, like in an elevator, only they go to all sorts of weird places in the city, so how would you ever get out?
I shake my head. “But, you don’t even-”
“Frankly, Newbie,” he stops and turns to look at me, “I don’t care what you were going to ask, so I figured an all inclusive ‘no’ would do the trick and get you off my back. But as usual, your compulsion to drive me absolutely insane has overridden your common sense, what arguable amount you have, so if you don’t want to have my hands wrapped around your throat within the next five seconds, you’ll go scampering off to your lab - oh, I’m sorry, your balcony - and leave me alone, for Christ’s sake.”
“But-”
“Ahah.” He holds up a finger, eyes scary, and I clamp my mouth shut. “Good girl,” he says, then stalks away.
He must be having a bad day. I think it’s time to break out my secret stash of snickerdoodles.
**
“For the love of all that’s holy, Angela, why do you insist on tormenting me with your constant presence?”
I settle down next to Dr. Cox and dangle my legs off the side of the balcony. He has his arms hooked through the railing posts and his voice is tired, so I decide not to take him too seriously. “Cookie?”
He looks at me blankly for a moment, then reaches into the tin.
The sky stretches powdery blue out forever and ever, and a puddlejumper zips up from the bay, a dark smudge of flying Winnebago, and over to our left sits the lushly green mainland, edged with beach. It’s the most prefect thing I’ve ever seen, and Dr. Cox snorts when I say that out loud.
“Do you think you’ll ever go back?” I ask, and he’s quiet for a while, so I start to think he’s just ignoring me. Which is okay. I’m used to it.
Finally, he says, “No, maybe not,” and it took him so long to answer that I kind of pause, stop my own automatic, “Me too,” because there’s a lot that I miss.
Like Friday night sitcoms and Burger King and my sweet, shiny moped, gathering dust in a Colorado Springs storage unit.
But there’s a lot I have on Atlantis that I couldn’t have had on Earth.
“Dr. Cox, can’t I-”
“No,” he says, though it’s the softest rebuke he’s ever given me. I think I’m wearing him down.
I nibble on a crumbling snickerdoodle, watching the ripple and break of waves, the sunlight reflecting yellow-orange off fat rolls of water. The city hums underneath me, almost alive, and it’s something I’ll probably never get used to, but would miss like hell if I ever left. Maybe Dr. Cox feels the same way.
“I’m a space explorer,” I murmur in awe, leaning my face against the railing.
“You’re a glorified botanist, Newbie,” Dr. Cox says, but he bumps my shoulder with his, and I can hear the faint smile in his voice.
Pairings: vaguely JD/Dr. Cox-ish, implied Sheppard/McKay
Word Count: 4,000+
Summary: I don’t really need glasses, but they make me feel smarter, like Leonard Nimoy.
A/N: Oh dear god, I'm so sorry. This is experimental crack, none of it makes sense, and I know everything isn't perfect, but it ate my brain.
My Space Adventure
There are two things on Atlantis I’m not allowed to touch.
“Don’t touch that!”
I jerk my hand back and pout at the shiny piece of metal. Darn it. Make that three things.
One: I’m not allowed anywhere near Dr. McKay with my ‘holistic hippie herbal hoo-hah that’s even less of a science than botany, if that’s even possible;’ and two: I’m not allowed to even look in the direction of anything that resembles a weapon, since guns + JD = missing fingers for everyone. Thank the sweet baby Jesus for surgical re-attachments. Turk always has my back.
Still. Dr. Cox says if I even think about touching anything in the armory he’ll lock me up in the Northern Tower of Girlish Screaming - so named for the legend of Nervous Guy and the supposed bleeding wall mishap while he’d been exploring with Colonel Sheppard and He of The Hairy Monikers. I can never remember that guy’s name, since Dr. McKay yells Man-ape and Yeti at him, and it’s a little like Dr. Cox calling me Julia. Except without the underlying sexual tension, since I’m pretty sure Colonel Sheppard is hitting that, the sly dog. Dr. McKay, that is, not Giant Alien Man. Not that he isn’t a dreamy Giant Alien Man. And gloriously tall. I could climb him like a monkey.
The Northern Tower of Girlish Screaming, though, is where little boys like me go to die. At least, that’s what Dr. Cox says.
“Dude,” Turk says, shaking his head sadly. He’s there for moral support in my quest to find Dr. Cox and convince him to let me on his off-world team. Dr. Weir’s finally given him one, since he’s an ex-marine and apparently knows three hundred and fifty ways to kill a man with his pinky. I don’t honestly believe that - Hello! Doctor! - but I’m not willing to question it, either. Questioning Dr. Cox only leads to excruciatingly uncomfortable facial expressions for everybody involved.
Turks’ eyes say you’re-a-better-man-than-me (or maybe that’s his JD’s-been-hitting-Kelso’s-hidden-stash-of-crazy-pills-again look) and then he’s gone like the wind, or like Major Lorne on Gumbo Friday, and Dr. Zelenka’s staring at me funny, like he wants me to stay around and stand too close to Dr. McKay so he can take more pictures for his Wall of Hilarity, so. Exit, stage right.
I can not touch things in my own lab, thank you very much. And by ‘my own lab’ I mean balcony number four hundred fifty-seven, because the Janitor likes to lounge in the herbal remedy experimental greenhouse from two to five every day and hatch evil plots.
One day, I’m gonna get Teyla to teach me how to stick fight behind Dr. Cox’s back. Or I’ll get me a unicorn from PX5-333. A unicorn would kick the Janitor’s Athosian squirrel army’s ass.
I’ll call her Sparkles and feed her gumdrops and candy canes.
**
The thing is, Dr. Cox hasn’t chosen his team yet - except for Turk’s main squeeze, the luscious Carla, and oh god, Carla’s head snaps up across from me in the mess and I didn’t say that out loud, did I?
It doesn’t matter. Carla has freaky mind reading abilities and why do I always forget that? I can feel her eyes crushing my will to live, but I valiantly try to trick her, going for my ‘you wouldn’t hurt a cute baby deer, would you?’ look, and she melts into exasperated fondness. I play that card as often as I dare. Someday it’ll come back to bite me in the ass, I’m sure of it, but not today! Woohoo!
“You’re just lucky I like you, Bambi,” she says, and I sigh, imagining her ruffling my hair like a favorite pup. Her hands are so soft.
“Have you seen Dr. Cox?” I ask, digging into a little cake that looks like a bunny. “I’ve been looking for him all day.” The commissary staff always adds a touch of whimsy to the space food. I appreciate the effort. It tastes kinda stringy, though, and I hope they don’t actually use bunnies. Although, I guess they wouldn’t be bunnies, would they?
“Believe me, you don’t want to find him,” she admonishes.
“Oh, but I-”
“JD,” she says, cleaning up her tray, “he’s never going to let you go off-world. The more you ask, the more he’ll want to choke you. And for some strange reason known only in that messed-up head of yours, the more he wants to choke you, the more you want to ask. So just leave well enough alone, all right?”
I pout. Carla just doesn’t understand.
“I understand completely,” she gets to her feet, “and your little boy-crush on Dr. Cox is... disturbing.” Her face softens again. “You’re going to get hurt if you’re not careful, Bambi.”
Is she kidding me? I’m always careful. I wear my awesomely cool helmet with the red and yellow flames whenever I’m in a puddlejumper. Careful is my middle name. Well, I don’t actually have a middle name. It was a whole big... thing, with my parents and fighting the man. My original birth certificate says Sunshine, but it only took six months for my parents to shake free of the commune and file for a change. I hope Dr. McKay never gets wind of my hippie childhood, though, or I’ll be banished to the south pier like Dr. Yamato after the Parcheesi incident.
I’m left in thought by myself - which mainly consists of daydreams about Sparkles and how cool our quarters will be once I teach her how to flush the toilet - and then Turk settles into Carla’s empty seat and steals my half-eaten bunny meat cake.
“Dude, robot races in an hour. You in?”
“Awww, yeah, fo’ shizzle.” We do our secret slap and tickle handshake minted brand new for our galactic space adventure, and he’s gone with my meat cake, and I think about how awesome it would be if my head and torso were surgically attached to the favored to win Colosso, made by Ager and Vogel. I’d be like Robocop, only more handsome.
I bet Dr. Cox would let me go off-world then.
**
I push my glasses up my nose and crouch down to check on the new plant Dr. Parrish brought in for me. One of the random Athosians always hanging around says it’s poisonous, so bonus!
I don’t really need glasses, but they make me feel smarter, like Leonard Nimoy.
Dr. Cox wears glasses, too, when he doesn’t think anyone’s around. He looks better with them on than I do, although mine are just square black ones I took out of the lost and found. There’s a strict one month and it’s yours policy in effect, and I don’t like to think about why they weren’t claimed, because maybe my work isn’t as critical as Dr. McKay’s, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have my eyes open when I agreed to ship out to another galaxy (without the glasses, of course, since whoever owned them before me was freaking blind), and… where was I?
Oh, right. Plants. I named this one Bizarro Perry, ‘cause it’s sweet and fragile on the outside, but can fell an almost-rhino with just one tiny sprig. Dr. Cox is more like a cactus, with a squishy hidden center - nourishment for the starving man if he’s clever enough to get past the nettles.
“Just what do you think you’re doing, Sarah?”
I freeze, glance up at Dr. Cox, gilded by the late afternoon sun like a Greco-Roman god, wild, curly hair kissed with gold. “Um.” What am I doing?
“’Cause it sounded an awful lot like you were singing ‘I Love the Nightlife,’ and I’ve got to say, Lucinda, that’s almost as disturbing as - are you wearing Corporal Lee’s glasses?”
I blink. “Na huh.” I’m pretty sure Corporal Lee went back with the last Daedalus run, though, so I don’t feel that bad about it.
“Hand ‘em over, Princess,” Dr. Cox says, snapping, and I get a sudden flash of McKay and Cox, dueling you-are-too-stupid-to-live faces at High Noon, snapping fingers out, only Dr. McKay would probably win that one, since Dr. Cox is usually too tired to actually kill anyone, and Dr. McKay has a curiously high turnover in the labs.
“Newbie.” He tips his head back and forth impatiently. “What did I tell you about playing with other people’s toys without permission?”
“Uh.” This has to be a trick question. Is ‘toys’ a euphemism? Are we still talking about the glasses? I opt for the sheepish nod and grin combo and pray to the Ascended Ancients he doesn’t take the slight baring of my teeth as a challenge.
“Oh for god’s sake, Cynthia, just give me the damn glasses,” he growls, and he’s no longer Playfully Irritated Dr. Cox, but Filled With Burning Rage Dr. Cox, and maybe he just really misses Corporal Lee.
Wisely, I slip the glasses off my face and hand them to him, my fingers tingling where they touch his. His fingers turn white-knuckled as he fists the black plastic. I’m starting to think Lee hadn’t been breathing when he was shipped back to Earth.
“I guess you and Corporal Lee were good friends then, eh Dr. Cox?” I ask brightly, and oh dear god, I can see my death in his pretty blue eyes.
He goes all googly-eyed and crosses his arms over his chest and leans down menacingly and I whimper and may’ve lost control of my bodily - oh, wait, no. Watering can spillage. Whew.
“Listen up, Stephanie. Open those pretty little ears of yours and carefully heed my words, ‘cause you’ve been here four months now, and I’ve given you a very, very, very very very generous window of immunity, where I haven’t maimed you beyond recognition for every stupid little thing…”
Well, he hasn’t physically hurt me, no, but I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster ever since I first stepped-beamed off the Daedalus (helpful note when dealing with Asgard: they don’t appreciate Star Trek references, and may be in league with the Janitor - the I-am-not-amused stare is uncanny) and into the coolest city ever created.
“…and I know you draw little hearts around my name in your diary every night…”
I gasp in horror. How does he know that? Did he touch that shiny thing Dr. Zelenka told me not to touch? I heard Dr. Simpson got turned into a mouse with supersonic hearing and a taste for flesh.
“Are you listening to me, Babbette?”
Say yes, say yes, say, “No.”
And now I’ve probably blown my chances of ever being on his off-world team. Fantastic.
**
I take Rowdy for a walk to the lounge and find Elliot eating a jumbo sized Hershey bar. She’s got it hidden in a paper bag like a wino, but I know her tricks. She gives me a brick before I ask.
“Boy trouble?”
I slump down next to her on the couch. “I’m never going to get to go exploring.”
“Me neither,” she says around a mound of melting chocolate. “I’m kind of happy about that.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” I exclaim. We’re in another galaxy! Filled with aliens and space ships and life-sucking vampires! Except for the last part, it’s all very, very cool.
“Ask me that again after you’ve spent five hours lost in the air ducts three stories below the surface with Dr. Kavanagh and Ted’s iPod.”
Ted’s iPod is filled with motivational podcasts from such wonderful authors as Dr. Phil, Judge Judith Sheindlin and Montel Williams. I feel her pain.
“Still,” I insist, “don’t you ever want to get off Atlantis? Meet new and exciting aliens who mostly look exactly like us?”
She shrugs. “Sure. But then I remember the time Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay came back through the gate without their clothes, so high they could barely remember their names, with little blue symbols painted all over them.”
I nod. They’d thought Dr. Beckett was going to eat them. Good times.
I don’t see that as much of a deterrent for off-world exploration, but I don’t argue with her. If I’m quiet enough she’ll give me another piece of chocolate.
**
Nervous Guy goes off-world with Dr. Cox, and Carla, and Major Lorne’s team, and doesn’t come back.
An hour after the briefing, I find Dr. Cox on my balcony, a bottle of scotch dangling from his fingers.
“Still wanna go exploring, Susan?” he asks, and his voice is thick and scary.
I don’t say anything. I’m not sure how he wants me to answer that, or even if I’m supposed to.
“Yeah,” he rasps, nodding. “Thought so.”
The next morning I stumble into my lab with a steaming cup of real coffee and nearly fumble it - I can practically hear the cries of rage and grief from Dr. McKay’s lab down the hall as a drop slides down the side of my mug in slow motion - when I spot Lee’s glasses folded up next to the pot of Bizarro Perry.
What does this mean?
**
“Hey.”
I jump back with a manly screech and trip over a ten thousand year old plant - I thought they’d gotten rid of all of them? - and the Janitor looms over me with his cold dead eyes.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” He holds out a hand.
My brain screams - it’s a trap! But my hand automatically reaches for his, and by the time I realize what I’ve done it’s too late. I feel like a fox in a steel-toothed trap, his fingers coiled around my wrist, and it’s only a matter of time until I go feral and start gnawing off my arm.
Luckily, my brain has been specifically conditioned to avoid pain by any means necessary, and I black out before the panic sets in.
**
I wake up hogtied in a small, dark room. Testing my binds, I’m reluctantly impressed. Point to the Janitor.
The door slides open and I beam at the silhouette of my savior. The competent stance, the wide shoulders, the - the lights flicker on and Dr. McKay is glaring down at me with a scowl.
“Hi, Dr. McKay,” I chirp, hoping he’ll see fit to free me, even though he rants about breathing in toxic plant fumes every time we’re in the same room.
He lifts a finger and opens his mouth, then closes it again. Then he shifts on his feet and crosses his arms and says, “You know what? I don’t care.”
What?
“I’m desperate, the colonel’s hiding like the giant girl he is, and there’s three very special things I need touched-”
Eep! Flashing red lights and warning bells are going off in my head, but when do I ever listen to them?
The Janitor pops up behind him, as if Dr. McKay has summoned him with his mind. This is not entirely out of the realm of possibility. I’ve witnessed much, much weirder things in Pegasus. Major Lorne once grew a second head. He was fantastic at stand-up comedy, and open mic night in the lounge was a hoot for four magnificent weeks. Sometimes, I still miss him.
“You,” Dr. McKay snaps, jabbing a finger at the Janitor, “let him out.” His eyes narrow on my face. “I have plans for him.”
‘Plans’ doesn’t sound good, but I’m happy enough to be released. The Janitor is really scary that close up, though, and his breath is clammy like a dead person’s - if a dead person could breathe - and I freeze as he cuts my hands free of my feet with the biggest bowie knife I’ve ever seen, and zombies don’t carry knives, right? So he can’t be a zombie. Right?
He holds the knife up close to my face and says, “Some day...” leaving me to fill in the silence, and ‘some day’ what? I’ll eat your brains? Slice your steak into neat little squares - ‘cause you can bet that knife would cut through a bone like butter and-oh. Oh.
I squeak and scuttle backwards like a crab until I hit a shelf of supplies, toppling a box of three dozen plastic spoons down on me - and why do we have three dozen plastic spoons? - and Dr. McKay grouses, “Oh my god, you’re all incompetent morons,” and “Caldwell should’ve space vacuumed every single one of you in a mass mercy killing,” and “Stop threatening my lackey, you laborious mop jockey.”
For a moment I think the Janitor is going to explode in a gorgeous fiery rebirth of rage, but nobody can do anything to Dr. McKay without serious repercussions, and the Janitor knows it.
My afternoon is not looking up.
**
In the lab, I touch Ancient device after Ancient device, each one more boring than the last. Dr. McKay isn’t really paying attention any more, since the first one he handed me - a round-edged pyramid with tri-colored panels - failed to even chirp, so I pick and choose out of the box on the table, looking for anything promising.
Everyone else gets the cool ones that make them telepathic or turn them into cats.
I’m just waiting for the one that’ll give me laser beams for eyes.
“Here,” Dr. McKay shoves the pyramid in front of my face, “try this again.”
It lights up like sunshine through stained glass as my fingers curl around it. “Pretty,” I breathe, and then the world explodes.
**
Okay, the world didn’t actually explode.
I wake up in the infirmary, though, with a slightly sheepish Dr. McKay gazing down at me, fingers twisting together.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” he says, nodding.
I groan, because my head feels swollen and my hands are bandaged and I think I’ve lost my ability to see colors. “What happened?” I ask.
Instead of answering, he says, “I need you to tell me exactly what you remember,” and all I can think of is that one time I went to a church, Easter, 1993, with Dan and our great aunt Ethel. The pastor looked like a crane, and Great Aunt Ethel kept falling asleep with her face in the hymnal, colored shards from Jesus in the Garden painting triangles of light across the back of the pew. That’s probably not what Dr. McKay wants to hear.
“Um. It was bright?”
Dr. McKay pinches the bridge of his nose. “And?”
“And...” I think really hard, staring up at the ceiling, at the rim of blue that isn’t blue now, but sort of a dusky gray to my burned irises. It’s too bright, a shade off, and I open my mouth and say, “The environmental controls are on wrong,” and I don’t even know what that means.
Except I do.
“I knew it!” Dr. McKay exclaims happily. “That Czech bastard owes me five pounds of coffee. Carson,” he calls over his shoulder, “I’m taking Dr. Girly Names back to the lab.”
“Oh, no you’re not, Rodney,” Dr. Beckett says, stepping around the privacy curtain with the mother of all needles. I shrink back against the pillow.
“Come on, what could you possibly need to keep him for?” Dr. McKay rants, waving his hands. “He burned his fingers and downloaded key knowledge about Ancient technology into his brain that could fade at any minute, and you want to sedate him? While he could be providing invaluable information about Atlantis? Are you insane?”
Wow. That sounds pretty cool.
“How are you feelin’, lad,” Dr. Beckett asks me, patting my arm.
I flick my gaze from his big needle to Dr. McKay and back to his always-kind eyes. “Fine. Really, I’m fine, it’s just. There’s a med bay on the left pier you might want to check out. Aquatic therapy.”
Dr. McKay makes a smug noise and rocks back on his heels.
**
For about a week I’m Efficiency Man, and everybody wants me. I cut the city power usage back by a whopping third, find even more cool nooks and crannies all over the as-yet unexplored parts, and Dr. Weir beams at me whenever we pass in the halls. Dr. McKay treats me like his favorite toy.
But I can’t see colors and everything tastes like paste - not the good kind, either - so popularity has a trade-off. I can’t decide if it’s worth it or not.
And then red seeps back into my vision, and blue and green and one day I wake up and I’m in my own head.
“Dr. Cox!” I shout when I pass him on my way to breakfast.
“Not today, Caroline,” he says, turning a corner and disappearing.
I jog to catch up. “But I’m normal again.” He’s been avoiding me ever since the incident. Or, well. That actually isn’t much different than usual, I suppose. I was just too busy to hunt him down.
“Good for you.”
I keep pace with him easily. This makes me suspicious. “Dr. Cox, do you think-”
“No.” His hands are in his pockets and he nods at Lieutenant Myer and Dr. Lindsay as they step into a transporter. I don’t completely trust transporters. I keep thinking I’ll get stuck, like in an elevator, only they go to all sorts of weird places in the city, so how would you ever get out?
I shake my head. “But, you don’t even-”
“Frankly, Newbie,” he stops and turns to look at me, “I don’t care what you were going to ask, so I figured an all inclusive ‘no’ would do the trick and get you off my back. But as usual, your compulsion to drive me absolutely insane has overridden your common sense, what arguable amount you have, so if you don’t want to have my hands wrapped around your throat within the next five seconds, you’ll go scampering off to your lab - oh, I’m sorry, your balcony - and leave me alone, for Christ’s sake.”
“But-”
“Ahah.” He holds up a finger, eyes scary, and I clamp my mouth shut. “Good girl,” he says, then stalks away.
He must be having a bad day. I think it’s time to break out my secret stash of snickerdoodles.
**
“For the love of all that’s holy, Angela, why do you insist on tormenting me with your constant presence?”
I settle down next to Dr. Cox and dangle my legs off the side of the balcony. He has his arms hooked through the railing posts and his voice is tired, so I decide not to take him too seriously. “Cookie?”
He looks at me blankly for a moment, then reaches into the tin.
The sky stretches powdery blue out forever and ever, and a puddlejumper zips up from the bay, a dark smudge of flying Winnebago, and over to our left sits the lushly green mainland, edged with beach. It’s the most prefect thing I’ve ever seen, and Dr. Cox snorts when I say that out loud.
“Do you think you’ll ever go back?” I ask, and he’s quiet for a while, so I start to think he’s just ignoring me. Which is okay. I’m used to it.
Finally, he says, “No, maybe not,” and it took him so long to answer that I kind of pause, stop my own automatic, “Me too,” because there’s a lot that I miss.
Like Friday night sitcoms and Burger King and my sweet, shiny moped, gathering dust in a Colorado Springs storage unit.
But there’s a lot I have on Atlantis that I couldn’t have had on Earth.
“Dr. Cox, can’t I-”
“No,” he says, though it’s the softest rebuke he’s ever given me. I think I’m wearing him down.
I nibble on a crumbling snickerdoodle, watching the ripple and break of waves, the sunlight reflecting yellow-orange off fat rolls of water. The city hums underneath me, almost alive, and it’s something I’ll probably never get used to, but would miss like hell if I ever left. Maybe Dr. Cox feels the same way.
“I’m a space explorer,” I murmur in awe, leaning my face against the railing.
“You’re a glorified botanist, Newbie,” Dr. Cox says, but he bumps my shoulder with his, and I can hear the faint smile in his voice.