Fic: Shattered
Title: Shattered
Category: Gen
Spoilers: The Kindred
Summary: Sometimes the worst pressure is the self-imposed kind.
A/N: Written as an episode tag for the
sheps_atlantischallenge.
Radek didn’t bother asking. He knew where he’d find him, the same place they always found him when he was hurting - Dr. Weir’s balcony. He supposed Col. Sheppard thought they couldn’t tell. Perhaps no one had ever told him that he talked with his eyes.
At some point, every one of them had been out there - he, Rodney, Ronon, Teyla (please let them find her soon), even Col. Carter, but Col. Sheppard most of all. Zelenka wandered through the darkened control room, nodding at the skeleton crew working the night shift. Glancing through the stained glass, he could barely distinguish Sheppard’s silhouette.
John didn’t move when the doors open, but Radek had no doubt that he was aware of his presence. “Col. Sheppard? May I speak with you for a moment?”
Bowing his head slightly, John sighed deeply before turning. “What can I do for you, Dr. Z?”
“I am concerned for Rodney.”
Sheppard’s brows drew together. “Concerned how?”
Zelenka crossed then uncrossed his arms. “He is not himself.”
“What does that mean?”
“He has not been in the lab for several days now.”
The corner of John’s mouth quirked upward. “You know McKay. He’s probably holed up somewhere with a laptop.”
“That’s just it, Colonel. He isn’t. He hasn’t signed on to the system this week. He’s not hiding. He simply isn’t working.”
Sheppard blinked lazily at him as if a fog was beginning to lift. “I see. Do you know where he is?”
Taking a moment to push his glasses up, Radek contemplated the man before him, wondering when he had slept last. Even in the dim moonlight, he could see the new stress lines on his face and the smudges under his eyes. John’s team was struggling to cope. Sheppard isolated himself. Ronon had destroyed a punching bag and two practice dummies. And Rodney….
“Doc?”
“He’s in the stasis chamber.”
“What? Why?”
“This is my concern, Colonel. He’s… talking to Carson.”
Sheppard’s chin dropped to his chest as he rubbed the back of his neck. “God, Radek. I wasn’t…. I should have been paying more attention. I knew….”
“It is understandable. You have been focused on finding Teyla and stopping Michael. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, but, well, I know Rodney is not good in dealing with loss. When Dr. Weir…. He still won’t talk much about it.”
“You did the right thing, Doc. Thanks for letting me know.”
With a nod, Zelenka left as John turned back to the ocean.
oOo
He was an idiot. He had seen the look on McKay’s face as they put Carson in the pod, had watched him shy away from saying goodbye, filling the silence with words that said little. One by one, they had left the room except for Rodney who had stood at the entrance and stared. Then a relayed message from Todd had sent them out searching for Teyla. But the intel had been old and the ship gone by the time they arrived. In the intervening weeks, they had heard nothing else.
The expedition was busy relocating the Athosians for the umpteenth time in four years and helping the worlds ravaged by Michael’s virus. When John had a spare minute from that, he and Ronon were revisiting their trading partners for a word, a scrap of information on Teyla. McKay had begged off, claiming he could do more to help in his lab, and Sheppard had been too tired to argue. He should have known.
Stepping from the transporter, he navigated the corridor to the stasis room, continuing to berate himself. He heard Rodney’s voice before the doors slid open.
“… so the whales were trying to save us all along. Sheppard had some crackhead idea about using the ZPM to power the Daedalus’ shields to block the flare - it worked too; still can’t believe it. I guess they’ll die next time - we do have fifteen thousand years to come up with a plan. Did I tell you we aren’t on that planet anymore? Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Then-”
He was a flurry of waving arms and snapping fingers as he paced in front of the pod.
“McKay.”
Rodney’s shoulders hunched up to his ears, and he paused in mid-step. “Do you mind?”
John walked through PowerBar wrappers, several mess hall trays, and a darkened laptop to face him. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re having a one-sided conversation with a man in stasis.”
“There’s that Mensa intellect at work.”
“Rodney-”
“What I do in my off-time is none of your business.”
“Your off-time? When was the last time you had on-time? Have you been to your lab lately?”
“I don’t need to be in my lab to work. I’m doing fine from here.”
“Really? What are you working on?”
“I’m, uh, I’m gathering my thoughts right now, taking a break.”
“A physical or mental one because from where I’m standing-”
“Don’t talk to me about mental health, Mr. Keep-it-bottled-up-inside. I didn’t even know you had a family until a few weeks ago. You’re so blinded by the fear of losing Teyla you can’t see past the end of your nose. Why don’t you go hide on the balcony and stare at the water for a while?”
McKay’s tirade shook him, each word a blow. “I may stare at the water, but at least I haven’t spent a week in here talking to a-”
“Don’t you say it!” Rodney shouted. “Don’t you dare say it. I’ll figure this out and fix him, and he’ll be good as new.”
“Fix him? You’re not a medical doctor, McKay, and you certainly aren’t God. You can’t fix every single thing wrong in the universe.”
The pacing resumed, agitated fingers pulling at his hair. “I’m not trying to do that. I’m trying to fix him. And once he’s back to normal, he and I can fix Elizabeth.”
“What?”
“He can help me figure out a way to reprogram her nanites and we can rescue her from the replicators and fix her and we can find Teyla and then things can be the way they used to be.” Sincerity shone a little too brightly from his eyes.
Oh, God. “McKay,” he said gently, “we destroyed the replicators, remember? Elizabeth is dead. There’s nothing to fix.”
“No, no. That’s not…. I- I need, I-” Rodney’s chest heaved as his face paled then flushed. “Get out!”
In that moment, McKay’s tenuous grasp on reality slipped away in front of John’s eyes.
“Rodney, let’s go grab some dinner.” Maybe it wasn’t too late.
“No.” McKay folded his arms across his chest and backed into a corner, sliding to the floor. “I’m staying here. I can fix this. I can undo all the mistakes. Have to, have to, have to fix them.”
Sheppard slowly advanced, arms raised with palms outward. “Of course, but you need to eat. You think best on a full stomach, remember?”
Rodney’s face scrunched in concentration. “Yeah, you’re right. I do.” He pulled back when John offered him a hand up. “No, this is a trick. You’re trying to stop me. Well, I won’t let you. I’m staying right here.” He wrapped his arms around his knees and lifted his chin in defiance.
“I can’t let you do that. You need help.”
“I thought- You- Carson-” McKay’s eyes widened in panic. “No, no, no, no, no. Stay away from me.”
“OK, take it easy.” John took a step backward and activated his comm. “This is Sheppard. I need a medical team to the stasis chamber.”
“NO!” Rodney screamed, leaping up and slamming into John. “I won’t let you!”
Sheppard stumbled backward and fell as McKay punched wildly. He was stronger than he appeared. John’s head snapped back, smacking into the floor. Rodney pushed away and bolted to the door. Shaking off the blow, Sheppard scrambled after him, snagging a foot. McKay hit the ground hard, his breath whooshing audibly from his lungs.
“Damnit, Rodney! Stop. I don’t want to hurt you.”
McKay kicked and squirmed as Sheppard tried to pin him down. “I hate you,” he gasped. “Get away from me.”
John caught an elbow in the eye and a boot to the ribs. “Ow! Rodney, please-”
“Won’t let you stop me. I have to fix this.”
He scooted away until his back hit the wall. The doors opened to admit the med team, and McKay flung himself into the hallway.
“Colonel?” Keller began.
“It’s Rodney,” he replied. “We need to catch him.”
He rushed out the doors and down the corridor, spotting McKay a few steps from the transporter. With his best flying tackle, he hit his friend in the middle of the back, knocking them both to the floor. Blood squirted from Rodney’s nose, and he yelped in pain. John wrapped his arms through McKay’s, pinning his arms behind his back and pulling him to his feet.
“Let me go!” Rodney shouted. He bucked and twisted as he tried to free himself.
“Calm down, McKay.”
“No, please, please, please, don’t. Don’t do this.”
Keller stared blankly at them for a moment, looking stunned. Then she inserted a syringe in Rodney’s arm. A low, keening sound from deep in McKay’s throat echoed through the corridor. After a moment, his breathing slowed, and he stopped fighting, slumping in John’s arms..
The med team helped him load Rodney on a gurney while Jennifer turned demanding eyes to him. “What happened?”
Grief and fear paralyzed him from the inside out. Please don’t let it be too late. “He shattered.”