SGA FIc: A Far Better Thing 2/5
When Rodney woke up, he was alone. The IV bag was empty, and he desperately needed a piss, so he pulled the needle out of his arm and went to the bathroom. When he was finished, he took a long drink out of the faucet. Okay, so this wasn’t exactly how he’d imagined his homecoming, but at least he was among human beings, who needed water and bathrooms. He shuddered a little, thinking about how he’d had to handle that on the hive ship.
Stopping by the supply closet, he dug out a couple more MREs-one ravioli and one chicken with noodles-and went back to his bed. He wasn’t really hungry yet, but it was comforting to have them nearby.
But once he got settled down on the bed, it turned out to feel really weird to be laying down out in the open, trying to sleep, where anyone could just walk in and see him.
After ten minutes of lying there, heart pounding, trying to stop staring at the door, he threw the covers back and got up. He found another scrub shirt and tied the sleeves together, making a bag to put his MREs in.
The infirmary was full of useful stuff-food, medicine, clothes, scalpels-and he warred with the impulse to fill his makeshift bag. On the hive ship, if he found something useful, he’d learned to grab it fast and hide it, because after the Wraith had all of their victims stowed away in cocoons, they’d clean up, jettisoning whatever possessions the victims had been carrying as they fled. He had to remind himself that here, if he wanted something, he could come back and get it later.
Still, he couldn’t resist adding a few bottles of water to his stash before he slung the bag over his shoulder and crept out.
Atlantis was a big city, meant to be occupied by thousands of people, not just the few hundred members of the expedition. It was easy to move through the halls without being seen, ducking down side passageways when he heard someone approaching. Before long, he made it to his quarters.
He knew they’d still be his-he’d staked out the best set of rooms, close to his lab and with a nice view, and if he wasn’t dead, he wouldn’t have given them up. But there was something new: a number pad next to the door control. Obviously just installed. The other Rodney had beaten him here, and he’d taken precautions.
He tried a few codes-parts of his national health ID number, his birth date, John’s birth date, Einstein’s-but he knew that the other him would know what numbers he’d try. After trying the PIN from his first ATM card, he gave up. The other Rodney would have picked a completely random number; he certainly would have.
He kept walking. Several empty sets of quarters-sets that had been empty when he was here last-were now occupied, the door controls set to include only the legitimate occupants. He could have broken in-he could even have broken in past the other Rodney’s number pad, if he wanted-but he didn’t really want to break into someone else’s room. He wanted to go home.
He crawled into a nook behind a potted plant and opened one of his bottles of water. This was all wrong. He’d known that Atlantis-if it was still there, if anyone was left alive-would have moved on without him. Someone else would be head of science-maybe Zelenka, or maybe Colonel Carter-and why was she here, since the job wasn’t vacant?-but his absence would have left a gap, and they’d be glad to have him back.
But there was no gap, because he’d been here all along. The other him had. There wasn’t a place for him here.
But he couldn’t stay crouched behind a plant forever. He finished the water and stuck the bottle back in his bag. Home. The place where, when you had to go there, they had to take you in.
Suddenly, he knew where he had to go.
#
After the new Rodney went back to sleep, John tried to do some work, then stopped by Rodney’s lab. He’d thought Rodney might want to talk-he seemed pretty upset by this latest copy turning up-but Rodney just gave one-word answers to everything he tried to say, finally pointing out, “Some of us are trying to work, you know.”
Well. John could take a hint. He headed back to his quarters and tried to read his book. Too bad War and Peace wasn’t exactly a page-turner. His eyes wandered around the room, stopping when he noticed one of the curtains twitching.
Getting up, he pulled the curtain back to find-Rodney. He was huddled against the wall, empty water bottles and MRE packaging around him. “Hi,” John said.
Rodney looked up at him, his eye wide. “Hi.”
“They let you out of the infirmary already?” John already knew the answer-Rodney hated being in the infirmary when he was actually sick.
“Maybe?” Rodney started gathering up the MRE wrappers and stuffing them back into the bag. It looked like he’d eaten the candy and crackers out of a couple of them, but hadn’t opened the entrees.
John radioed Keller. “Did you lose something?”
“What?” He heard her moving around. “Oh my God! McKay’s gone!”
“Relax, he’s here,” John answered. “He’s fine.”
“Oh, good.” Keller sounded relieved. “Can you keep him for a while? He’s not supposed to be wandering around, and I don’t have someone free to watch him.”
John glanced over at Rodney. He wouldn’t appreciate the idea that he had to be baby-sat-or worse, monitored as a security risk. The best thing would be to pretend Keller was eager to get him back and John was resisting. “Yeah, I think we’re going to hang out for a while,” he said slowly.
Rodney nodded eagerly.
“I’ll bring him back if he has any symptoms,” John finished.
“I should check him again in a few hours,” Keller said.
“Okay.” He relayed that back to Rodney, and sat back down on his bed.
“I couldn’t get in my old room,” Rodney explained. “He locked me out.”
John had to admit he wasn’t surprised. “We’ll have to assign you some new quarters.”
“All of my stuff is in there.”
The idea of the two Rodneys dividing up their possessions was-completely non-humorous, when John realized that if they tried, he was going to end up as mediator, and both of them would be pissed off at him. “We’re getting regular resupply from Earth now, so you can order what you need.” How he was going to pay for it was another question. Should Rodney get back pay from the date that he’d started to exist? Even if he did, it would take some time for Stargate command to process it. On the other hand, Rodney would probably be less resistant to sharing his bank account, which was pretty abstract when you lived in a galaxy that relied on the barter system, than he would be to sharing his physical possessions.
“I’ll make a list,” Rodney said glumly.
“Do you want to watch a movie or something?” John suggested. “We have a lot of new ones.” He wanted to smack himself. Of course they did.
“Um…yeah, okay.”
So John picked a few movies he knew Rodney had liked, so he could choose without being overwhelmed, and they sat on his bed to watch.
Not too long into the movie-just after the first action sequence-Rodney said suddenly, “What’s Sam doing here?”
So John had to explain about Elizabeth, with a small detour into the incident where they’d met their Asuran-made doubles.
Rodney’s eye went wide. “So what happened to them?”
“We think they died,” John admitted, explaining how the doubles had used themselves as decoys so his team could escape. “They haven’t made contact, so we’re fairly sure they didn’t make it.”
“And Elizabeth’s--”
“Dead, unless they were lying about that.”
Rodney sighed, and jabbed the spacebar on the laptop to start the movie again.
Several more times during the movie, Rodney stopped it to ask questions about the events of the last couple of years. By the time it was over, John thought he’d filled him in on the most important developments, and had promised to send him copies of his reports on the major events.
When the movie was over, John suggested they go to the mess. Rodney hesitated. “I still have some MREs left. We could eat here.”
“Yeah, but the mess has actual food,” John pointed out. “It’s pizza day.”
Rodney touched the bandage covering his eye socket and sighed. Finally, he said “Okay,” but he didn’t sound happy about it.
It was early enough in the dinner sitting that the mess wasn’t too crowded, which John figured would be a good thing for Rodney, since he wasn’t used to being around people. “The sausage and mushroom is good,” John said as they got into the buffet line.
“Are they mushrooms someone picked in the woods, or real mushrooms?”
“They’re fine,” John said. “We eat them all the time.”
“I notice you’re not answering my question.” But Rodney took a slice of the sausage and mushroom, along with one of cheese and one of olive. John didn’t tell him where the olives came from.
They found a table and sat down. Rodney’s table manners-never ideal-appeared to have suffered, but he ate fairly slowly, not cramming food desperately into his mouth the way he had with that first MRE. After John ate his without dying, he tried the mushroom pizza. “Hey, this is actually okay,” he said, sounding surprised.
John wasn’t surprised-it was Rodney’s favorite.
Rodney noticed. “I guess you knew that.”
John didn’t bother lying. “Yeah.”
Rodney chewed another bite and swallowed carefully. “Did you guys have another meeting? After I was asleep?”
“No.”
“I just wondered. What’s going to happen to me.”
“We’ll work something out.”
“It might come in handy. Having two of me. I never had enough time to do everything I wanted to do. I was always putting off projects to deal with the latest crisis. That probably hasn’t changed.” Rodney looked at him hopefully.
“We’re still running an emergency or two a month,” John agreed. “There’s plenty to do.”
“I mean, I know he’s been here all along. I get that. And we were running a major discovery or two every month, too. So I’m out of date. But I can get caught up fast. And I know a lot more about Wraith technology than I did before.”
He was pleading his case, John realized. He was afraid they were going to send him back, and he thought he had to convince John that he should be allowed to stay. “I bet you do. As soon as you’re cleared for duty, you’ll have to write a report.” They hadn’t had a meeting-and John knew one was coming-but he had already decided to play dumb, like of course both Rodneys were staying, and the only question was how to divide up their duties.
“I made some notes, but my tablet’s still stuck in the Dart.”
“We’ll try to retrieve it. The Dart, too-we’ve captured a couple, but we could use another one.”
“Be careful,” Rodney said, touching his bandage.
It would probably be best to take Rodney-this Rodney-with them, since he knew where he’d left the Dart. But John just nodded, not wanting to bring it up while Rodney was so skittish.
Not much later, Teyla, Ronon, and the other Rodney came in. They got in line, talking, and Ronon looked around, scouting for an open table. When he saw John, he nudged Rodney (Rodney stumbled and looked affronted) and pointed him out.
When Rodney saw Rodney, he scowled for a moment, and then his face went blank. He said something to Teyla, and stalked out.
John had mentioned in their impromptu briefing that Ronon had joined their team, but Rodney still looked intimidated when Ronon sat down next to him. “Hey,” Ronon said.
“Hey,” Rodney answered, edging away from him a little.
“Welcome home, Rodney,” Teyla said.
Rodney looked away.
Fixing a polite smile in place, Teyla added, “Rodney suddenly remembered that something needed his attention back in the lab. He’s going to have dinner later.”
“I’m almost finished,” Rodney said, picking up the last piece of pizza crust from his plate.
“He won’t be back for a while,” Ronon said. “He’s avoiding you.”
“Yeah, I think we all got that.” At least Rodney didn’t let his nervousness about Ronon keep him from being sarcastic. That was encouraging.
“I met a copy of myself once,” Ronon said. “It was weird.”
“There were copies of all of us,” Teyla explained. “They were made by--”
“Sheppard told me,” Rodney interrupted.
Teyla nodded. “It was…unsettling. But I am sure that you and the other Dr. McKay will adjust.”
Rodney mumbled something that sounded like, “Yeah, right.”
#
The next day, Rodney was released from the infirmary, with antibiotics and instructions to take it easy, drink lots of fluids, and report back for a wound check and more blood tests the next day, or if he experienced any symptoms. He was a little surprised to have been turned loose without a guard-slash-babysitter, but he didn’t complain.
Someone-maybe Sheppard and the others, who did seem to be going out of their way to be nice to him, even if he was “unsettling”-had set him up with new uniforms, toiletries, some rations, and even a laptop. It was an old one of his-he recognized a scrape in the casing. Probably the other him had replaced it with a newer one.
Still, it was better than the tablet he’d left wired in to the Dart, and it had access to the Atlantis network.
The first thing he did was check his email-or tried to. He wasn’t too surprised to find out that the other him had locked him out of that, too. When he entered his old password, a window popped up. “Your userid is rmckay2.” It wasn’t signed, but he knew who had done it. Deciding to work on getting into his old account-his real account-later, he checked the new id. It was set to his old password.
The mailbox was empty, except for a couple of automatic messages that looked like they went out to all new accounts on the Atlantis network. The orientation packet. He knew he ought to look at it-even though he’d written parts of it himself. Some things would have changed in two years. But not now. He wrote a quick message asking for the files Sheppard had promised him, and changed his password to a random string. Two could play at that game.
The new ID had super-user privileges on the network-not quite as extensive as the Sysadmin privileges he used to have, but more than he’d expected, really. Maybe the other him thought that would be enough to keep him from trying to break back into his real account.
Although if he did think that, he must have sustained some kind of brain damage over the last two years.
Still, the new account gave him access to quite a bit of information-mission reports, research proposals, scientific papers that--since they had no hope of publishing on Earth-- members of the expedition had put on the server for their colleagues to appreciate.
He dove in, occasionally surfacing to eat a powerbar and browse the rec server to see what new music, video, and articles had been posted since he left.
Some time later, the door chime sounded. Wondering who it could be, Rodney got up and answered it.
Zelenka. “Rodney. I bought you this,” he said, and handed him a copy of Astronomy & Astrophysics. “Is almost a year old, but….”
“Yeah, I haven’t read it.” Obviously. “Thanks.”
“It’s good to have you back. I mean, from our perspective you were never missing, but I’m sure it is good to be back.”
“Yeah,” Rodney said unenthusiastically. “It’s great.” Realizing he was being rude, he stepped back and let Zelenka in. He didn’t really care that he was being rude, but being widely disliked was a good way to get himself shipped out. He knew that one from experience.
Once inside, Zelenka said, “The other Rodney is-well, you know how you can be. Personally, I think he is jealous not to be the smartest.”
Zelenka stayed a little longer, updating him on some of the latest news from the science department. Over the rest of the afternoon, several people stopped by, most of them bringing him small gifts: books, journals, Earth snacks. Teyla gave him a candle and some pottery, and urged him to schedule some training sessions with her when he was cleared for duty.
It was disconcerting. He was used to being sucked up to-it came hand-in-hand with being a petty, petty man in a position of power-but now he had no authority over anyone, and he was pretty sure everyone knew that.
#
Rodney wasn’t too surprised when the main item on the agenda at that afternoon’s senior staff meeting turned out to be the other Rodney. First, Dr. Keller talked about his medical test results. The DNA test results showed that he was definitely Rodney, and wasn’t a clone. “The infection in his eye is responding to treatment. He was really lucky-with the injury being that close to his brain, a few more days and it could have gotten really serious.”
If she were talking about him, Rodney would have challenged the idea that losing an eye wasn’t serious, but she wasn’t, so he kept his mouth shut.
“I’m more concerned about his liver and kidneys. There’s a pretty substantial buildup of toxins-probably from the Wraith ship substance.”
“What?” Rodney asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Sheppard told him.
“But there’s no doubt that he is Rodney McKay?” Sam asked.
“Physically? None. There are no differences that aren’t accounted for by his experience since being captured.”
Sam turned to him. “What did you find out examining the Wraith technology? Does his explanation check out?”
Right, everyone seemed to be forgetting that he’d figured it out at almost the same time as the other one. “Yes, it checks out. We can’t confirm that it did happen that way, but I was able to confirm that it could have.”
“In that case, the next question is--” Sam looked around the table “-what do we do with him?”
“I’d be willing to clear him for light duty in a couple of days, if he continues to recover,” Keller said.
“He can’t go offworld,” Rodney said quickly. “He only has one eye.” Realizing the others were looking at him curiously, he added, “With no depth perception, he won’t be any use in a firefight.”
“Right,” John said, nodding sagely. “That’s a big difference between you and him.” He turned to Sam. “I’ll work with him on the range, see just how bad he is.”
Realizing he was losing ground fast, Rodney jumped in. “I’ll move my people around to clear some lab space for him.” He’d realized last night that if he didn’t want to share his network account, his lab, hell, his underwear, he had to make sure he took the lead in making other arrangements. Consider that lesson learned when his little sister was born: if he gave her something he didn’t really want that much anymore, there was at least the chance that his parents wouldn’t let her grab anything of his that caught her eye and then tell him, “Oh, you’re too old for that anyway.”
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that,” Sam said. Rodney sincerely doubted it. The other Rodney was him, and that meant he’d know exactly what he was up to.
“I want to take him back to the planet where he escaped from the hive,” Sheppard added. “Once he’s medically cleared.” He explained that he wanted to collect the Dart and the other McKay’s tablet, which he claimed had some potentially valuable data from his time on the hive. “And see if we can help the survivors at all,” he added.
Rodney didn’t like that idea at all. “Are you sure you can trust him?” At the others’ oh-Rodney-how-could-you looks, he added, “He was on the ship for a long time, and I know I’m a coward. Who knows what he might have done to survive?”
“He’s you, only malnourished and with one eye,” Sheppard said. “If it comes down to it, I think I can take him.”
Trust Sheppard to miss the point. “Not if he calls down a hive ship on your head. Look, the Daedalus is coming back in a couple of weeks-they can pick up the Dart on the way,” Rodney argued.
“He has a point,” Sam noted. “They can bring the Dart back in one piece. We’d have to disassemble it to fit the parts in a jumper.”
“There could be survivors who can’t wait two and a half weeks,” Keller pointed out.
“True, but we don’t help every planet that’s been culled,” Sam said. “And recovering the Dart and McKay’s data isn’t time-sensitive.”
“It comes down to whether or not we trust Rodney,” Sheppard said. “And I do.”
Under the circumstances, Rodney didn’t find his declaration at all heartwarming. “He could be severely psychologically damaged.”
Sam looked past him, at Sheppard. “He won’t be cleared for duty for a while yet. Convince me it’s safe, and I’ll authorize the mission.”
After that, the discussion moved on to what Dr. Keller referred to as “Re-integrating McKay into the social milieu.” What it turned out that meant was requiring him to attend sessions with the base’s new psychiatrist (which Rodney was all right with) and having Rodney’s friends spend time with him and count it as part of their duties (which he didn’t like anywhere near as much, for reasons he found hard to pin down).
“I’ll set up a schedule,” Sheppard said. “Informally.”
“He’ll know,” Rodney pointed out.
“I’ll be subtle.”
“Hah.”
Finally, finally they moved on to other things, and then the meeting wrapped up quickly.
“Got time for a cup of coffee?” Sheppard asked as they left.
“You know it’s the other one that needs to be reintegrated into the social milieu, don’t you?” Rodney asked.
“Yeah, I know.”
“All right,” Rodney said, since he never turned down coffee, and besides, there might be cake.
Sheppard waited until they were sitting down before he said, “I know this thing is weird for you.”
Rodney recognized this one, too. It was the talk about how they didn’t really love the new baby more than him, and he should be nicer to her if he didn’t want a spanking. Only now he had another image to scrub out of his brain. Great. “I already gave him my old laptop. And his own email address.”
“I’m sure he appreciates it.”
Rodney was pretty sure he wouldn’t. If you really thought about it-and he was sure the other Rodney had really thought about it-there was no rational basis for calling one of them the real one, who got to keep on living his life, and which was the copy, the one who had to start over. If they started bandying around the c-word, the truth was, they were both copies. As was everyone else on the base, who had been dematerialized and rematerialized at least once, coming through the Gate on the way here. The Imposter had just as much right to his life as he did. But if he worked at it, if he made it look like he was being generous to the other one, the others might not figure that out.
“It’s gonna keep on being weird for a while. But we got used to living in another galaxy with life-sucking space vampires. You guys’ll get used to this.”
When he put it like that, Rodney had trouble disagreeing. “I don’t want to adjust,” he said petulantly.
“Well, you don’t really have a choice. It’s not like we can give him back to the Wraith just so you don’t have to deal with him.”
“You think I’d want that?” That almost hurt. He paused to run an internal inventory. No, it actually did hurt, that Sheppard would think that.
“No, I know you don’t. But that would be the only way to fix it so you never have to worry about him again, and that’s not gonna happen, so you might as well get started on getting over it.” He paused. “You don’t really think he’s going to betray us. You know you wouldn’t.”
Rodney wanted to say that yes, he absolutely did, and he would-but he knew he wouldn’t give Atlantis up to the Wraith. Not even if he thought Sheppard and the others had either died or abandoned him. “But he doesn’t have to stay,” he said instead. “I mean, he could go back to Earth.” He straightened up a little and added, “I mean, even with two of us, Rodney McKays are a finite and valuable resource. It seems kind of silly to keep us both in one basket. So to speak.”
“I notice you’re not volunteering to go back,” Sheppard said dryly.
He’d walked right into that one. “I have two years’ more experience running the science department here than he has.”
Sheppard ignored that. “I don’t think he wants to go either.”
“Maybe the IOA or the SGC won’t give him a choice.”
As soon as he said it, Rodney knew it was a mistake.
“They won’t be doing that without hearing from me. Neither of you is getting pulled back against your will if I have anything to say about it.”
Rodney knew that Sheppard was maybe trying to be reassuring, but what he took away was that Sheppard had figured it out. That the two of them were essentially interchangeable. For the first time in his life. Rodney McKay was replaceable.
#
Over the next few days, John kept a close eye on both Rodneys. He ate most meals with one or the other of them-never both, since they were still avoiding each other. Old Rodney-and John really had to come up with a better naming system before he called him “Old Rodney” in front of someone and he heard about it-kept to his lab, except for meetings and a routine offworld mission. The new Rodney was sticking to his quarters, only coming out when John or someone else took him somewhere or for his medical checkups. The amount of bandages covering his eye slowly decreased. “Soon it’ll be eye-patch time,” he said gloomily over dinner one night.
“What about a glass eye?”
“Hmph. I’d have to go back to Earth to have it fitted. Patch is easier.”
John nodded. “Plus you get to look like a pirate.”
“Maybe I’ll get Zelenka a parrot costume,” Rodney said, and winced. “Never mind.”
John had noticed that the lab space the other Rodney had assigned him was at the very edge of the science compound, far from both the busy main lab where Rodney and Zelenka worked on shared projects and Rodney’s small but well-appointed private lab, which the other scientists were terrified to enter even when Rodney was offworld or in the infirmary. The new lab was nice enough, befitting Rodney’s status as a senior researcher, but it was isolated.
“It could get confusing, having both of us in the main lab, and I’m not really used to crowds anymore,” Rodney said. And that was weird, too, Rodney looking on the bright side when he had the perfect opportunity to gripe about something. He poked listlessly at his Salisbury steak. “Anyway, I’m cleared for light duty starting tomorrow. He gave me a bunch of stuff out of the mostly-harmless box to get back in practice.”
“He” meant the other Rodney. John didn’t think he’d ever heard either Rodney refer to his opposite number as anything else. “We’ve found some fun stuff in the mostly-harmless box.” The mostly-harmless box-actually a mostly-harmless closet by now-held small bits of unidentified Ancient tech that, as the name implied, didn’t seem particularly dangerous-or particularly interesting. The things that got the scientists all excited were claimed as projects by someone-or-other before they made their way into the box. “That light-up game thingy.”
“That ‘thingy’ is the Ancient equivalent of a ball and cup toy.”
“Yeah, but you put the ball in the cup with your mind.”
“You still haven’t gotten the hang of it, have you?” Rodney accused.
“I’m getting there,” John defended himself. “One time, Miko found a sex toy in there.”
“Seriously?”
“It wiggled.”
Rodney looked speculative. “Did anybody….”
“No, but all the women looked suspiciously happy that week.”
Part 3