[Stargate: Fiction] "Not Our Kid" [John/Rodney, G]
Title: Not Our Kid
Author: Ami Ven
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,585
Prompt: mcsheplets challenge 107 ‘kid’
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing(s): John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Setting: part of my How About Forever verse
Summary: Atlantis gets a small visitor from another reality
Not Our Kid
When the intruder alarm suddenly went off in an empty auxiliary science lab, John hadn’t exactly known what he was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t an elementary school-aged girl who was glaring at the platoon of Marines.
“What do you mean you don’t recognize me!?” she demanded.
“Hey,” said John, with his most reassuring smile. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize you, either. Wanna start by telling us your name?”
The girl’s big blue eyes filled with tears. “Oh, my god,” she mumbled. “You’re not - this isn’t my Atlantis.”
She started to cry.
When John gingerly touched her arm, she let out a long sob and collapsed against his chest.
“Oh, um, okay,” he said awkwardly, putting his hands on her shoulders. He waved most of the Marines back, then caught the eye of their sergeant. “Get McKay and Beckett down here now.”
“Just Carson,” said Rodney, from the doorway behind John. “The sensor readings showed massive interdimensional - Sheppard, that is a child.”
“Good observation, buddy,” John drawled, but the girl pushed away from him, swiping at her eyes.
“Observation,” she said. “Right. I can do that. I’m… I’m in Atlantis. In the back-up lab. You’re both here. You both look the same, so it’s not time travel. But you don’t know me, and neither did Atlantis or Sergeant Morris. So… alternate reality.”
“That’s pretty good for a preliminary analysis,” said Rodney. “But we’re going to have to run some tests.”
“Sure,” she said, like that was perfectly normal.
John frowned at both of them, then said, “How about a name, then, kiddo?”
He was dreading the answer - that hair and those ears, she was almost definitely his, but did that mean she had a mother, in the reality she came from? Was there actually a place where John wasn’t hopelessly in love with Rodney McKay?
“Oh,” she said. “I’m Zoe. Zoe McKay.”
“McKay?” repeated John. “How?”
The girl - Zoe - shrugged. “You lost the coin toss.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” spluttered Rodney. “You’re practically a mini-Sheppard.”
“Except for the eyes,” said John. “She’s got your eyes.”
“You two always say that,” said Zoe, smiling now. “And Mom says the McKay blue eyes should be considered a weapon.”
“Mom?” John repeated, trying not to hope. “Am I… Am I a woman, in your reality?”
“No,” said Zoe, then paused. “Well, not all the time.”
“Okay, then,” said John.
*
“An Ancient gender swapping machine?” Rodney repeated, incredulous.
“Dad doesn’t think that’s actually what it was designed for,” said Zoe. “But that’s the only thing Mom’s been able to make it do, and he’s the only one who can operate it.”
She was sitting on one of the infirmary exam tables, waiting for the results of her tests. John had been worried about freaking her out with all the tests, but Zoe had laughed and explained that her dad was a bit of a hypochondriac and that she liked meeting the alternate version of her Uncle Carson.
Rodney looked like he wasn’t sure whether to be offended or not, so he settled for peppering their new arrival with questions.
“And where did your parents find this machine?”
“Rodney…” John began, but Zoe said, “PX-853”
“Huh,” said Rodney.
“What?”
“We’ve been there already,” said Rodney. “It was a lab of some kind. We found about a dozen Life Sign Detectors and an empty ZedPM dock. I brought it back to Atlantis, remember? It took me an hour to disassemble it carefully, and you taught Ronon how to play Crazy Eights.”
“Oh, yeah,” said John.
“But there weren’t any other machines. Or any pieces of any, either.”
“Bummer,” said Zoe, swinging her legs. “I bet you would have liked a Zoe of your own. Or an Isaac.”
“Isaac?” repeated Rodney.
“My little brother,” she said. “He’s three. Mom calls him ‘Ike’.”
John blinked. “Then you weren’t-”
He broke off, sharply, but she grinned.
“An accident? Nah. Mom turning into a girl for the first time, that was an accident. But they definitely planned for me.”
“How do you know?” Rodney demanded.
“Because I’ve seen Mom’s medical records,” said Zoe. “And because Mom and Dad both use it as an argument when I’ve done something annoying but not something I can actually be punished for.” She lowered her voice, clearly imitating him, “She was your idea, Sheppard, you deal with her.”
“Do we argue a lot?” Rodney asked, hesitantly.
“All the time,” said Zoe, in the put-upon tone only a pre-teen could truly master. “And then there’s kissing. Yuck.”
“That’s what you think now, lass,” said Carson, joining them. “Someday, you’ll think it’s sweet.”
“Not the way they do it,” Zoe protested, then she brightened. “My tests are done! Well, Uncle Carson, am I gonna die?”
“No more than the rest of us,” he said. “I ran every test we have, and everything came back normal.”
“Normal?” Rodney repeated.
“Aye, normal. She’s entirely human, with a strong expression of the ATA gene and the sort of mineral and enzyme levels that indicate long-term residence in the Pegasus Galaxy. And she is, without a doubt, the biological child of Colonel John Sheppard and Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay. Congratulations, lads.”
Rodney scowled. “She’s from an alternate reality, Carson.”
“I know that,” the doctor said. “But the only real danger from that is the Entropic Cascade Failure. But since our reality doesn’t have a Zoe McKay, she should be fine until you find a way to send her home - or her parents come to retrieve her.”
“Probably the second one, Uncle Carson,” said Zoe, swinging her feet again. “I bet Dad’s already freaking out that I’m gone.”
“I’m freaking out that you’re here,” said Rodney. “I can only imagine what your actual father is thinking.”
“Well,” said John, “we can probably help both of your anxiety by making sure she stays alive. Who’s hungry?”
*
If they hadn’t already had the DNA results saying that Zoe was Rodney’s daughter, the way she ate chocolate pudding would have proved it.
“Always kinda wondered what it’d be like if you two had a kid,” said Ronon.
“What, really?” said Rodney.
Ronon shrugged. “You used to talk about ‘genius babies’ all the time. I just never thought Sheppard could give ‘em to you.”
“But that was years ago! I was-” Rodney lowered his voice. “I was dating other people.”
Ronon shrugged again. “So?”
“You had many obstacles in your way,” said Teyla, kindly. She had been quiet since Zoe had told them about her best friend Charin - the daughter Teyla never had in this reality. “We are just pleased that you and John were finally able to acknowledge the bond between you.”
“Oh, um,” said Rodney, then turned back to Ronon, “Wait, what did you imagine our kids would be like?”
“Like her,” said Ronon. “Smart. Fun. Kinda weird.”
“Huh,” said Rodney, just as John leaned over, laughing, to wipe a bit of chocolate pudding from Zoe’s nose.
*
“I always did want kids,” said John, softly.
They were in bed, the door left open a crack so they could hear Zoe snoring away from the living room couch. The moment they’d gotten under the covered, John had curled into Rodney’s side, his nose pressed against Rodney’s collarbone, clinging in a way he usually only did when one of them had had a close call in the field.
Rodney stayed quiet, waiting for him to continue - for John, he could be patient.
“My…” said John. “My ex, Nancy, she wasn’t exactly against the idea of kids, but she had her own goals first. She wanted a career, and I could never blame her for that. I sometimes - you know, this seemed crazier before I knew there were ten-thousand-year-old alien gender change machines - I sometimes thought it’d be better if I could just have the baby, let her do her thing. I guess another me figured out how to do that.”
“You’d be a great parent,” said Rodney, pressing a kiss to John’s unruly hair. “She’s been here six hours and you’re already fantastic with her. I don’t know how the other you ever picked me to be her father.”
“Maybe you won that coin toss, too?” John offered, and Rodney could feel his smile.
There really had been a coin toss, in Zoe’s reality, to choose her legal name, after an apparently still-raging debate on whether to hyphenate it ‘Sheppard-McKay’ or ‘McKay-Sheppard’.
“Maybe there was no one else,” Rodney mused.
John leaned up to look at him, hazel eyes bright. “Of course there was no one else,” he said. “How could there ever be anyone else, after you?”
“Flatterer,” said Rodney, but he kissed him, anyway. “As soon as we figure out how to send her home, I’m going to go looking for that device. Not that I expect-”
But John was grinning at him. “You wanna knock me up, McKay?”
“I wanna knock you something,” Rodney muttered, but kissed him again.
*
“Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay, report to the auxiliary science lab.”
John exchanged a knowing look with Rodney, then keyed his radio. “We’re on our way. What’s the situation?”
“An energy spike, sir,” reported the duty sergeant. “Dr. Zelenka says it’s interdimensional.”
“Zoe,” said John.
She was still standing at the railing of the balcony in their quarters, watching the ocean, but looked up at the sound of her name.
“Yeah?” Zoe looked between them, then grinned. “They found me! I told you they would.”
“We don’t know that it’s your parents,” warned Rodney. “It could just be a random energy reading.”
“It’s them,” she insisted, grabbing his hand, then John’s. “Come on!”
Radek met them at the lab door. “Readings are clear now,” he said. “The same dimensional signature as when she arrived.”
“Told you!” Zoe cried.
John released his hand. “You stay out here until we know for sure,” he said, sternly.
The girl pouted, but said, “Fine.”
“Radek, keep an eye on her?” he added, and Radek nodded. “C’mon, McKay.”
With Rodney behind him, John entered the lab. The energy readings had grown into a visible distortion in the air, that shimmered for a moment, then resolved into an oval shape that John thought was some kind of mirror, until he realized that the John and Rodney ‘reflected’ in it weren’t moving the same way he and Rodney were on their side.
“Where is our daughter?” demanded alternate-Rodney.
“McKay,” sighed the other John, then smiled at them. “Hi. We’ve lost a kid. Did you happen to find one?”
“As a matter of fact, we did,” said John. “But we’re going to have to be sure she’s yours.”
Alternate-John nodded. “Of course. Her name is Zoe Elizabeth McKay. She’s ten, about yay high, dark hair, blue eyes. Last time I saw her, she was wearing blue jeans and that awful pink-and-blue shirt Cadman gave her.”
“That’s my favorite shirt and you know it!” called Zoe, from the doorway.
John turned. “You were supposed to stay put.”
“I’m still outside,” Zoe protested. “And those are definitely my parents. Only Mom would complain about my shirt properly.”
“You just wear it too much,” said alternate-John. “Of all the things you could have inherited from your father, you just had to get his fashion sense.”
“Hey,” protested alternate-Rodney, but his John squeezed his hand. “Fine, fine, now let us have our kid.”
“Zoe-” John began, but she was already beside him.
“Hi, Dad! Hi, Mom! I was good, I promise.”
“That’s debatable, I’m sure,” said alternate-Rodney, then his scowl faded. “Are you okay, really? We worked as fast as we could to find you - who knew what kind of… of bizarro world you’d ended up in, not to mention entropic cascade failure from sharing a reality with your double…”
Alternate-John squeezed his hand again, and Zoe said, “I’m really okay, Dad. Your other selves took good care of me. And there isn’t another Zoe here.”
“Oh,” her father said, softly.
“Zoe?” said a child’s voice, from out of view. “It’s Zoe! Charin, come on, come on!”
“Whoa, slow down, there, tiger,” said alternate-John. He scooped up a little boy with Rodney’s honey-blonde hair, holding him easily against his hip. “Your sister’s okay.”
“Zoe!” he cried, happily. “Charin, look!”
The girl who came into the portal, about Zoe’s age, could only have been Teyla’s daughter. She smiled. “I’m pleased you’re safe. When you didn’t come over yesterday, I was worried.”
“Sorry,” said Zoe. “Traveling to another reality wasn’t my idea.”
“We know, sweetheart,” said alternate-Rodney. “And the idiot responsible for that will be cleaning the waste tanks for the rest of his life.”
“Two months,” corrected alternate-John. “With another two months of probation.”
Alternate-Rodney sighed. “Your mother is much more lenient than I am. Which is why you won’t be grounded, either.”
“It wasn’t her fault that one of your scientists ignored lab safety procedures.”
“Hey,” said John, softly - he felt oddly like he was intruding on a private family moment. “You want her back or not?”
“Can we think about it?” teased his alternate self.
“Mom…” whined Zoe.
“Yes, yes, come on through,” said alternate-Rodney. “And come quickly, one big step. You may feel a low-level electrical charge, nothing to worry about.”
“Will it make my hair stick straight up in the air?” she asked.
“No,” said alternate-Rodney, then muttered, “You are so your mother’s daughter.”
Zoe hugged Rodney quickly, then John. “I hope you find your own Zoe,” she said, and stepped through the portal.
There was a flurry of motion on the other side, as everyone rushed to hug her. Alternate-Rodney seemed especially reluctant to let go of her again, but alternate-John turned back to the portal, smiling.
“Thanks for taking care of her for us,” he said.
“We enjoyed having her,” John told him.
“Still,” his other self said. “Thanks. And take care of yourselves, too.”
John nodded. “Yeah.”
Alternate-John smiled again, then took a step back. “Okay, Radek, shut it down.”
“Bye!” called Zoe, and waved until the portal disappeared.
John stood there for a long moment, just watching the spot where the portal had been, until Rodney squeezed his hand.
“C’mon, they’re serving turkey sandwiches in the mess today.”
“Yeah,” said John, and let Rodney lead him away.
*
Zoe was late for school.
Normally, she would go the long way around, avoiding the hallway outside the auxiliary science lab - her interdimensional trip had been over a year ago, and Dad was still paranoid about it - but she was very late and needed the shortcut.
She had just passed the lab door when she felt it, the same tingly electrical charge she’d felt just before arriving in another reality, and Zoe closed her eyes, tensing against it.
Nothing happened.
She opened her eyes again.
The hallway looked just exactly the same as it had a moment ago, and the background hum of Ancient equipment certainly felt like her Atlantis. Zoe frowned, trying to figure out what had happened, when she spotted something on the floor.
It was an envelope, made of thick cream-colored paper. In her mother’s familiar handwriting, it was addressed to The Sheppard-McKay Family, Atlantis, alternate reality. More familiar writing, her father’s, had crossed out Sheppard-McKay and written McKay-Sheppard.
Zoe laughed and pulled it open.
Colonel John Sheppard and Doctor M. Rodney McKay are pleased to announce the birth of their son, Patrick Charles McKay
At the bottom of the card, her mom’s alternate self had written, Rodney won the coin toss here, too.
THE END
Current Mood:
mellow
Author: Ami Ven
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,585
Prompt: mcsheplets challenge 107 ‘kid’
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing(s): John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Setting: part of my How About Forever verse
Summary: Atlantis gets a small visitor from another reality
Not Our Kid
When the intruder alarm suddenly went off in an empty auxiliary science lab, John hadn’t exactly known what he was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t an elementary school-aged girl who was glaring at the platoon of Marines.
“What do you mean you don’t recognize me!?” she demanded.
“Hey,” said John, with his most reassuring smile. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize you, either. Wanna start by telling us your name?”
The girl’s big blue eyes filled with tears. “Oh, my god,” she mumbled. “You’re not - this isn’t my Atlantis.”
She started to cry.
When John gingerly touched her arm, she let out a long sob and collapsed against his chest.
“Oh, um, okay,” he said awkwardly, putting his hands on her shoulders. He waved most of the Marines back, then caught the eye of their sergeant. “Get McKay and Beckett down here now.”
“Just Carson,” said Rodney, from the doorway behind John. “The sensor readings showed massive interdimensional - Sheppard, that is a child.”
“Good observation, buddy,” John drawled, but the girl pushed away from him, swiping at her eyes.
“Observation,” she said. “Right. I can do that. I’m… I’m in Atlantis. In the back-up lab. You’re both here. You both look the same, so it’s not time travel. But you don’t know me, and neither did Atlantis or Sergeant Morris. So… alternate reality.”
“That’s pretty good for a preliminary analysis,” said Rodney. “But we’re going to have to run some tests.”
“Sure,” she said, like that was perfectly normal.
John frowned at both of them, then said, “How about a name, then, kiddo?”
He was dreading the answer - that hair and those ears, she was almost definitely his, but did that mean she had a mother, in the reality she came from? Was there actually a place where John wasn’t hopelessly in love with Rodney McKay?
“Oh,” she said. “I’m Zoe. Zoe McKay.”
“McKay?” repeated John. “How?”
The girl - Zoe - shrugged. “You lost the coin toss.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” spluttered Rodney. “You’re practically a mini-Sheppard.”
“Except for the eyes,” said John. “She’s got your eyes.”
“You two always say that,” said Zoe, smiling now. “And Mom says the McKay blue eyes should be considered a weapon.”
“Mom?” John repeated, trying not to hope. “Am I… Am I a woman, in your reality?”
“No,” said Zoe, then paused. “Well, not all the time.”
“Okay, then,” said John.
*
“An Ancient gender swapping machine?” Rodney repeated, incredulous.
“Dad doesn’t think that’s actually what it was designed for,” said Zoe. “But that’s the only thing Mom’s been able to make it do, and he’s the only one who can operate it.”
She was sitting on one of the infirmary exam tables, waiting for the results of her tests. John had been worried about freaking her out with all the tests, but Zoe had laughed and explained that her dad was a bit of a hypochondriac and that she liked meeting the alternate version of her Uncle Carson.
Rodney looked like he wasn’t sure whether to be offended or not, so he settled for peppering their new arrival with questions.
“And where did your parents find this machine?”
“Rodney…” John began, but Zoe said, “PX-853”
“Huh,” said Rodney.
“What?”
“We’ve been there already,” said Rodney. “It was a lab of some kind. We found about a dozen Life Sign Detectors and an empty ZedPM dock. I brought it back to Atlantis, remember? It took me an hour to disassemble it carefully, and you taught Ronon how to play Crazy Eights.”
“Oh, yeah,” said John.
“But there weren’t any other machines. Or any pieces of any, either.”
“Bummer,” said Zoe, swinging her legs. “I bet you would have liked a Zoe of your own. Or an Isaac.”
“Isaac?” repeated Rodney.
“My little brother,” she said. “He’s three. Mom calls him ‘Ike’.”
John blinked. “Then you weren’t-”
He broke off, sharply, but she grinned.
“An accident? Nah. Mom turning into a girl for the first time, that was an accident. But they definitely planned for me.”
“How do you know?” Rodney demanded.
“Because I’ve seen Mom’s medical records,” said Zoe. “And because Mom and Dad both use it as an argument when I’ve done something annoying but not something I can actually be punished for.” She lowered her voice, clearly imitating him, “She was your idea, Sheppard, you deal with her.”
“Do we argue a lot?” Rodney asked, hesitantly.
“All the time,” said Zoe, in the put-upon tone only a pre-teen could truly master. “And then there’s kissing. Yuck.”
“That’s what you think now, lass,” said Carson, joining them. “Someday, you’ll think it’s sweet.”
“Not the way they do it,” Zoe protested, then she brightened. “My tests are done! Well, Uncle Carson, am I gonna die?”
“No more than the rest of us,” he said. “I ran every test we have, and everything came back normal.”
“Normal?” Rodney repeated.
“Aye, normal. She’s entirely human, with a strong expression of the ATA gene and the sort of mineral and enzyme levels that indicate long-term residence in the Pegasus Galaxy. And she is, without a doubt, the biological child of Colonel John Sheppard and Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay. Congratulations, lads.”
Rodney scowled. “She’s from an alternate reality, Carson.”
“I know that,” the doctor said. “But the only real danger from that is the Entropic Cascade Failure. But since our reality doesn’t have a Zoe McKay, she should be fine until you find a way to send her home - or her parents come to retrieve her.”
“Probably the second one, Uncle Carson,” said Zoe, swinging her feet again. “I bet Dad’s already freaking out that I’m gone.”
“I’m freaking out that you’re here,” said Rodney. “I can only imagine what your actual father is thinking.”
“Well,” said John, “we can probably help both of your anxiety by making sure she stays alive. Who’s hungry?”
*
If they hadn’t already had the DNA results saying that Zoe was Rodney’s daughter, the way she ate chocolate pudding would have proved it.
“Always kinda wondered what it’d be like if you two had a kid,” said Ronon.
“What, really?” said Rodney.
Ronon shrugged. “You used to talk about ‘genius babies’ all the time. I just never thought Sheppard could give ‘em to you.”
“But that was years ago! I was-” Rodney lowered his voice. “I was dating other people.”
Ronon shrugged again. “So?”
“You had many obstacles in your way,” said Teyla, kindly. She had been quiet since Zoe had told them about her best friend Charin - the daughter Teyla never had in this reality. “We are just pleased that you and John were finally able to acknowledge the bond between you.”
“Oh, um,” said Rodney, then turned back to Ronon, “Wait, what did you imagine our kids would be like?”
“Like her,” said Ronon. “Smart. Fun. Kinda weird.”
“Huh,” said Rodney, just as John leaned over, laughing, to wipe a bit of chocolate pudding from Zoe’s nose.
*
“I always did want kids,” said John, softly.
They were in bed, the door left open a crack so they could hear Zoe snoring away from the living room couch. The moment they’d gotten under the covered, John had curled into Rodney’s side, his nose pressed against Rodney’s collarbone, clinging in a way he usually only did when one of them had had a close call in the field.
Rodney stayed quiet, waiting for him to continue - for John, he could be patient.
“My…” said John. “My ex, Nancy, she wasn’t exactly against the idea of kids, but she had her own goals first. She wanted a career, and I could never blame her for that. I sometimes - you know, this seemed crazier before I knew there were ten-thousand-year-old alien gender change machines - I sometimes thought it’d be better if I could just have the baby, let her do her thing. I guess another me figured out how to do that.”
“You’d be a great parent,” said Rodney, pressing a kiss to John’s unruly hair. “She’s been here six hours and you’re already fantastic with her. I don’t know how the other you ever picked me to be her father.”
“Maybe you won that coin toss, too?” John offered, and Rodney could feel his smile.
There really had been a coin toss, in Zoe’s reality, to choose her legal name, after an apparently still-raging debate on whether to hyphenate it ‘Sheppard-McKay’ or ‘McKay-Sheppard’.
“Maybe there was no one else,” Rodney mused.
John leaned up to look at him, hazel eyes bright. “Of course there was no one else,” he said. “How could there ever be anyone else, after you?”
“Flatterer,” said Rodney, but he kissed him, anyway. “As soon as we figure out how to send her home, I’m going to go looking for that device. Not that I expect-”
But John was grinning at him. “You wanna knock me up, McKay?”
“I wanna knock you something,” Rodney muttered, but kissed him again.
*
“Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay, report to the auxiliary science lab.”
John exchanged a knowing look with Rodney, then keyed his radio. “We’re on our way. What’s the situation?”
“An energy spike, sir,” reported the duty sergeant. “Dr. Zelenka says it’s interdimensional.”
“Zoe,” said John.
She was still standing at the railing of the balcony in their quarters, watching the ocean, but looked up at the sound of her name.
“Yeah?” Zoe looked between them, then grinned. “They found me! I told you they would.”
“We don’t know that it’s your parents,” warned Rodney. “It could just be a random energy reading.”
“It’s them,” she insisted, grabbing his hand, then John’s. “Come on!”
Radek met them at the lab door. “Readings are clear now,” he said. “The same dimensional signature as when she arrived.”
“Told you!” Zoe cried.
John released his hand. “You stay out here until we know for sure,” he said, sternly.
The girl pouted, but said, “Fine.”
“Radek, keep an eye on her?” he added, and Radek nodded. “C’mon, McKay.”
With Rodney behind him, John entered the lab. The energy readings had grown into a visible distortion in the air, that shimmered for a moment, then resolved into an oval shape that John thought was some kind of mirror, until he realized that the John and Rodney ‘reflected’ in it weren’t moving the same way he and Rodney were on their side.
“Where is our daughter?” demanded alternate-Rodney.
“McKay,” sighed the other John, then smiled at them. “Hi. We’ve lost a kid. Did you happen to find one?”
“As a matter of fact, we did,” said John. “But we’re going to have to be sure she’s yours.”
Alternate-John nodded. “Of course. Her name is Zoe Elizabeth McKay. She’s ten, about yay high, dark hair, blue eyes. Last time I saw her, she was wearing blue jeans and that awful pink-and-blue shirt Cadman gave her.”
“That’s my favorite shirt and you know it!” called Zoe, from the doorway.
John turned. “You were supposed to stay put.”
“I’m still outside,” Zoe protested. “And those are definitely my parents. Only Mom would complain about my shirt properly.”
“You just wear it too much,” said alternate-John. “Of all the things you could have inherited from your father, you just had to get his fashion sense.”
“Hey,” protested alternate-Rodney, but his John squeezed his hand. “Fine, fine, now let us have our kid.”
“Zoe-” John began, but she was already beside him.
“Hi, Dad! Hi, Mom! I was good, I promise.”
“That’s debatable, I’m sure,” said alternate-Rodney, then his scowl faded. “Are you okay, really? We worked as fast as we could to find you - who knew what kind of… of bizarro world you’d ended up in, not to mention entropic cascade failure from sharing a reality with your double…”
Alternate-John squeezed his hand again, and Zoe said, “I’m really okay, Dad. Your other selves took good care of me. And there isn’t another Zoe here.”
“Oh,” her father said, softly.
“Zoe?” said a child’s voice, from out of view. “It’s Zoe! Charin, come on, come on!”
“Whoa, slow down, there, tiger,” said alternate-John. He scooped up a little boy with Rodney’s honey-blonde hair, holding him easily against his hip. “Your sister’s okay.”
“Zoe!” he cried, happily. “Charin, look!”
The girl who came into the portal, about Zoe’s age, could only have been Teyla’s daughter. She smiled. “I’m pleased you’re safe. When you didn’t come over yesterday, I was worried.”
“Sorry,” said Zoe. “Traveling to another reality wasn’t my idea.”
“We know, sweetheart,” said alternate-Rodney. “And the idiot responsible for that will be cleaning the waste tanks for the rest of his life.”
“Two months,” corrected alternate-John. “With another two months of probation.”
Alternate-Rodney sighed. “Your mother is much more lenient than I am. Which is why you won’t be grounded, either.”
“It wasn’t her fault that one of your scientists ignored lab safety procedures.”
“Hey,” said John, softly - he felt oddly like he was intruding on a private family moment. “You want her back or not?”
“Can we think about it?” teased his alternate self.
“Mom…” whined Zoe.
“Yes, yes, come on through,” said alternate-Rodney. “And come quickly, one big step. You may feel a low-level electrical charge, nothing to worry about.”
“Will it make my hair stick straight up in the air?” she asked.
“No,” said alternate-Rodney, then muttered, “You are so your mother’s daughter.”
Zoe hugged Rodney quickly, then John. “I hope you find your own Zoe,” she said, and stepped through the portal.
There was a flurry of motion on the other side, as everyone rushed to hug her. Alternate-Rodney seemed especially reluctant to let go of her again, but alternate-John turned back to the portal, smiling.
“Thanks for taking care of her for us,” he said.
“We enjoyed having her,” John told him.
“Still,” his other self said. “Thanks. And take care of yourselves, too.”
John nodded. “Yeah.”
Alternate-John smiled again, then took a step back. “Okay, Radek, shut it down.”
“Bye!” called Zoe, and waved until the portal disappeared.
John stood there for a long moment, just watching the spot where the portal had been, until Rodney squeezed his hand.
“C’mon, they’re serving turkey sandwiches in the mess today.”
“Yeah,” said John, and let Rodney lead him away.
*
Zoe was late for school.
Normally, she would go the long way around, avoiding the hallway outside the auxiliary science lab - her interdimensional trip had been over a year ago, and Dad was still paranoid about it - but she was very late and needed the shortcut.
She had just passed the lab door when she felt it, the same tingly electrical charge she’d felt just before arriving in another reality, and Zoe closed her eyes, tensing against it.
Nothing happened.
She opened her eyes again.
The hallway looked just exactly the same as it had a moment ago, and the background hum of Ancient equipment certainly felt like her Atlantis. Zoe frowned, trying to figure out what had happened, when she spotted something on the floor.
It was an envelope, made of thick cream-colored paper. In her mother’s familiar handwriting, it was addressed to The Sheppard-McKay Family, Atlantis, alternate reality. More familiar writing, her father’s, had crossed out Sheppard-McKay and written McKay-Sheppard.
Zoe laughed and pulled it open.
Colonel John Sheppard and Doctor M. Rodney McKay are pleased to announce the birth of their son, Patrick Charles McKay
At the bottom of the card, her mom’s alternate self had written, Rodney won the coin toss here, too.
THE END
Current Mood:
mellow