[Stargate: Fiction] "Back to the Beginning" [John/Rodney, G]
Title: Back to the Beginning
Author: Ami Ven
Prompt: romancingmcshep 2023 (using a leftover prompt from 2017)
Rating: G
Word Count: 3, 581
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing(s): John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Summary: A time travel incident lands Lt. Col. Sheppard on Atlantis at the beginning of the expedition.
Back to the Beginning
John felt that something was wrong the moment he passed through the event horizon and into the wormhole. Even Milky Way stargates had a distinct Ancient feel to them, but it was different enough from the Pegasus gates that John hadn’t realized what he was feeling until it was too late.
His stomach lurched and his head pounded as soon as he materialized on the other side and he lost his balance, curling into the fall as he tumbled onto the Gate Room floor.
“That is the last time I do you a favor, Mitchell!” he called, irritably.
He heard running footsteps, but kept his arms where he’d used them to brace his head, not bothering to get up. It was already too late to save his dignity, so he might as well wait until everything stopped spinning to try and move.
Except, he didn’t hear the jokes or laughter he was expecting.
The footsteps stopped abruptly, which John’s headache appreciated, but it was still too bright for him to open his eyes - too bright, he realized, for the SGC Gate Room, twenty-eight floors under a mountain.
The light dimmed.
“Who the hell is doing that?” snapped a voice, and John realized that he was.
There was Ancient technology all around him. John frowned into the arm he still had over his face - they had taken the crystals out of the Atlantis gate while it was on Earth, how had he ended up there?
John’s headache started to fade, so he pushed himself into a sitting position.
“Not so fast,” the same voice snapped again. It was oddly familiar, but John couldn’t figure out how. “Get up slowly, hands where I can see them.”
Carefully, John levered himself to his feet. He kept his eyes closed, in case his stomach tried to object, and when he opened them, he came face-to-face with - himself.
He was young - had John really been that young? - and wearing the original Expedition uniform. Even more jarring was Rodney’s uniform, not just the khaki color but the way he was still uncomfortable in it.
“Who are you?” demanded the other him, snapping John’s attention back to him.
“Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard,” he replied.
“Try again. And it’s Major Sheppard.”
John sighed. “Yeah, I remember.”
The major scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Rodney waved a hand. “Time travel, alternate dimensions, robot duplicates… anything is possible.”
John shrugged. “You really should read the SGC mission logs,” he offered.
His alternate self’s scowl only deepened. “I don’t care how you do it, McKay, I want to know why this guy’s wearing my face.”
*
“What do you mean he’s missing!?”
Mitchell actually took a step back from the video monitor at his tone, but Sam scowled. “There was no indication that anything was wrong, McKay,” she said. “The rest of us made it through the gate okay, John should have been right behind us.”
“I should never have let him go,” Rodney grumbled, scowling right back at her through the video feed. “You people are supposed to be the best. And you don’t even know what happened!”
“Yet,” said Mitchell. “Sam’s running a diagnostic on the whole system as we speak.”
“And how long will that take?”
There was a pause on the other end of the screen. “A few hours,” Sam admitted.
“But we’ve scoured every inch of P2X-997,” put in Mitchell. “There’s no trace of Sheppard, and no one else used the stargate.”
“What about the Ancient devices you needed him to activate?” Rodney demanded.
There was another pause. “It doesn’t look like they’ve been activated,” said Sam. “But we don’t have any strong gene carriers here.”
Rodney took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m on my way,” he said. “Nobody touch anything else, there’s got to be some kind of something that’ll show where he-”
“Rodney,” interrupted Sam, gently. “I’ll arrange a transport for you. We’ll find him.”
“Yes, we will,” he snapped, and ended the call.
He had packing to do.
*
“He’s you, major,” repeated Carson, starting to sound annoyed. “I ran the DNA test three times.”
The major - John was going to think of him as Sheppard, otherwise it was going to make his continuing headache even worse - frowned. “But I’m me.”
“You are,” Carson agreed. “But so is he. Although…”
Rodney scowled. “Although what?”
“There is a small anomaly in his DNA. Not enough to even question his identity, it’s concentrated on the telomeres - the sections concerning age.”
“Oh, yeah,” said John. “That’d be Todd.”
All three turned to him, eyes wide. “Todd?”
“A wraith. He fed on me. Then un-fed on me. Carson said I was fine.”
“That’s…” Carson said, faintly.
Sheppard scowled. “Enough of this. Who are you and what are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I’m you,” said John. “And I don’t know. I was off-world, and when I came back through the gate, something was… wrong. It dumped me out here, with the worst headache and upset stomach I’ve had since flight school.”
Rodney took a step back from the gurney where John was sitting. “You’re not going to be sick, are you?”
“Probably not.”
“I can give you something for that,” said Carson, and bustled off around the privacy curtain.
“What do you mean, something was wrong with the gate?” Sheppard asked.
John paused. “Just… wrong. You know how Ancient technology usually feels?” Sheppard nodded. “It felt almost like that, but not quite.”
“So… wrong,” the major agreed.
“Exactly.”
“Hmm,” said Sheppard. “McKay, what have you got?”
“He’s you,” Rodney said, earning another scowl. “I’ve run every test I can think of. If he was from an alternate reality, he’d already be experiencing Entropic Cascade Failure. There’s no difference in his quantum signature. By process of elimination, I’d say it has to be time travel.”
John sighed. “Great.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“I-” John began, but Rodney snapped, “Be quiet.”
“McKay…” growled Sheppard.
“Time travel!” Rodney repeated. “He’s from our future, anything he says or does or tells us could have disastrous repercussions.”
“Except I don’t remember any of this,” John pointed out. “My being here already changes things, even if I don’t tell you anything and - this is making my head hurt.”
“This’ll help, lad,” said Carson, bustling back around the curtain. He held out a small cup holding two pills, and John downed them dry. “Ah, that bad is it?”
“Time travel, Carson!” said Rodney again.
He blinked. “Is that possible?”
“Oh, yeah,” muttered John. “Stupid Milky Way stargates.”
“What’s the verdict, gentlemen?” said a new voice, suddenly.
“Elizabeth,” both versions of him said - Sheppard in a tone of concern and worry, John more on a breath.
She turned to him for a long moment, then fixed a stare on Sheppard. “Major?”
He straightened slightly. “Between Dr. Beckett and Dr. McKay, our best guess is time travel.”
Elizabeth arched an eye brow. “Time travel?”
“About five years,” John agreed.
“Wait,” said Rodney. “You said Milky Way gate?”
John nodded. “I was-” he stopped, suddenly. “I probably shouldn’t say anything.”
“But you said you didn’t remember any of this,” Sheppard protested. “So this is already an altered timeline. There’s probably no harm in-”
“No,” John interrupted. “No, I…
“He’s right,” Elizabeth agreed. She looked at John again, something unreadable on her face for a moment before she smiled again. “Major, I’m sure we have some quarters for our guest. Somewhere quiet?”
Sheppard nodded. “This way…”
*
“What have you got?” demanded Rodney, pushing his suitcase at the nearest airman.
Sam nodded at the kid. “Please take Dr. McKay’s bag to the guest quarters,” she said, then frowned. “Rodney…”
“We don’t have time to be nice,” he said, following her to the elevator. “It’s been hours, if Sheppard’s in an alternate reality, he might already be suffering Entropic Cascade Failure.”
“Alright,” Sam agreed. “All our searches of the planet turned up nothing, but the gate diagnostic just finished and there is a slight fluctuation-”
“I told you!” interrupted Rodney. “When? How? What kind-?”
“We don’t know yet,” said Sam. “But so far, it doesn’t match anything in our records.”
The elevator opened onto the twenty-eighth level, and they kept walking.
“Have you accessed the Ancient database on Atlantis?” Rodney asked.
Sam nodded. “Radek is working on it. He hasn’t reported anything yet. We’ve got everyone here set up in the-”
“I’m going off-world,” Rodney interrupted. When she frowned, he added, “Whatever happened, it was on the planet you were on. Whatever we need to know to fix it is going to be there.”
“I-” she began, then sighed. “All right. Come on…”
*
John didn’t look up when the door opened, still lying on his back on the narrow Ancient bed. “Figure out how to send me back?”
“Not yet,” said Sheppard. “I think Rodney’s offended he hasn’t figured it out by now.”
“Yeah, that sounds like him.”
“He doesn’t get better, I take it?”
“I…” John hesitated.
Sheppard sighed, and came to sit at the foot of the bed. “Look,” he said, seriously. “You said you can’t tell us stuff about the future, but...”
“I can’t.”
“Yeah, but… you’re here. There. Alive, in the future. You were fine seeing McKay and Beckett, but when you saw Elizabeth, it was like you were seeing a ghost.”
“I…”
“Kinda stupid trying to lie to myself,” said Sheppard, pointedly.
“Yeah,” agreed John. He sat up, so they were side-by-side. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t want to tell you stuff. Change things. Save people. But I only know how things went the way they went. Once you change one thing, nothing will be the same. If I tell you to save-”
“Elizabeth?” the major suggested.
“-one person, everything that comes after is something new. Maybe somebody else dies who’s still alive in my timeline. Or maybe everyone lives and everything is better.”
“These are problems I never thought I’d have.”
“Tell me about it,” said John.
There was a beat of silence, then Sheppard blurted, “How are you not freaking out about this?”
“It’s amazing what can become normal after long enough.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” Sheppard scowled.
John laughed, “Yeah.”
“No, seriously. You were me, you know that I’m… coping… with aliens and Ancients and all of this. And I…”
“Yeah,” John repeated, softly. “You just got dumped into all of this and you’re suddenly the commander of a whole city in a war zone. And you can’t talk to anyone, because Sheppard men don’t talk about their feelings.”
Sheppard flopped backward. “Yeah.”
“Okay, then talk to me.”
“What?”
“I’m you,” John pointed out. “I’ve already thought all the things you’re thinking. You can’t say anything I don’t already know. So, tell me.”
“I…” The major sat back up again, then stood, pacing. “I hate talking about feelings.”
“I’m you,” repeated John.
“Right.” He continued pacing across the small room. “I didn’t ask for any of this, you know. I sat down in a chair and the next thing you know, I’m responsible for almost two hundred people in another galaxy, where there are space vampires trying to eat us and crazy people on every planet. I have no idea what I’m doing, and half the time I don’t even know if I’ve made the right decisions.
“But I can’t tell anybody that! Not anyone under my command, because I can’t lose their confidence. Not Elizabeth, because she has enough of her own problems. Not Ford, because he might be the next-highest in rank, but he’s still just a kid. Honestly, I think I’d have had some kind of breakdown already if it wasn’t for McKay.”
“Rodney?” asked John.
Sheppard turned sharply to face him. “You said you already knew all of this.”
“I did! I do, but… I never had anyone to talk to and I guess I just… didn’t think about it. And Rodney isn’t known for improving people’s mental health.”
“But we’re not most people,” the major pointed out.
“No,” John agreed. “And neither is Rodney.”
“I mean, he takes some getting used to. But he always says exactly what he’s thinking. I always know where I stand with him, even if he thinks I’m an idiot. And he… I don’t know, everything just seems easier when McKay’s around.”
“Yeah.”
Sheppard walked back across the room more slowly. “I don’t usually… We’re not good with people, you know that. We can pretend, but that’s not the same, but with Rodney…”
“It’s like he just barges past all the walls and crap I’ve had up all my life, and it should be terrifying but it’s actually really comforting.”
“Yeah,” echoed Sheppard. “I… thanks. Really.”
John offered a smile. “I’m you, remember?”
“Yeah. I should go check on Rodney, see if he’s found anything.”
“You should probably bring him something to eat,” John suggested. “It’s been a couple hours, and if he’s in Science Mode, he’ll have forgotten about his hypoglycemia.”
“Yeah,” Sheppard said again, and left.
John laid back down on the bed. He wasn’t worried about getting back to his own time, this time. He knew his Rodney - future Rodney - would be working to get him back, and two Rodneys pretty much guaranteed success.
*
When Rodney and Sam arrived on P2X-997, there were two figures already hurrying up the slight hill toward them.
“McKay!” called Mitchell, “We were just coming to get you.”
“You found something?” Rodney demanded.
“There’s a cave,” said Daniel. “Well, it’s a cave now, but it apparently used to be an Ancient-”
Rodney pushed past him, “Show me.”
“Teal’c is supervising the team digging it out,” Daniel continued, as they hurried to catch up. “It looks like the whole caved in, we’ve uncovered some debris that is definitely Ancient. That’s why we were coming to get you - I can read the Ancient, but it’s all scientific gibberish to me.”
They came over another hill to a flurry of activity, Marines hauling rocks and moving equipment. Teal’c came out and spotted them.
“Doctor-McKay,” he said. “I believe we have found what you seek. However, the cavern is unstable. We are advised by Major-Halverston to wait until it is secured.”
“Wait?” Rodney spluttered, “We don’t have time to-”
Sam put a hand on his arm. “Rodney,” she said, softly.
“No! We don’t know what this device does, where it’s sent him, what Sheppard is facing.”
“Rodney,” she repeated. “I know how badly you need to find John, but you’re not going to do him any good if you get yourself killed in the attempt.”
His eyes widened. “I don’t - We’re not - It’s not what you-”
“I don’t know anything,” said Sam. “But if I did, I’d be happy for you. Both of you. So I know that John would want you to be careful.”
Rodney let out a long breath. “Fine,” he relented. “But I want to see the Ancient writing you’ve found.”
Daniel nodded. “This way…”
*
John had actually fallen asleep when the door to his guest quarters opened again.
“Colonel?” said the Marine on guard duty, a different one than had been there when he came in. “I’ve been ordered to escort you to the Gate Room.”
“Lead on, sergeant.”
There was a circle of Marines around the gate, just like when John himself had arrived. Major Sheppard stepped back and came over.
“Colonel,” he said. “I was hoping to get your input on our visitor. I believe you know Dr. McKay…”
John’s heart sank - Rodney wouldn’t be stupid enough to come after him, would he?
The man at the center of the Marines’ half-circle certainly looked like his Rodney, the right uniform and the right amount of laugh lines around his eyes. Those eyes lit up when he spotted both Johns coming toward him.
“Sheppard!”
John couldn’t help smiling, “Hey, Rodney.”
“Don’t you Hey, Rodney me. You are never going off-world without me again, do you hear? Can’t leave you for five minutes without you finding some new kind of trouble…”
Sheppard frowned at him, then looked at John, “Is he from the same time as you?”
“Of course I am!” Rodney spluttered, “Why else would I be here?”
Rodney - the Rodney from this time, the past, and John was going to think of him as McKay from now on - joined them, as Sheppard nodded to dismiss the Marines. “Well - oh, that is not fair.”
“What?” chorused both Johns.
“You,” said McKay. “Him. You look like… and I look like…”
He gestured vaguely at Rodney, who looked insulted again. “I am in fantastic shape, thank you very much, and I-”
“Hey,” John interrupted, “you didn’t come here to argue with your past self. Did you?”
“I came to rescue you, idiot. I was about to ask if you’re all right, but you deserve to be suffering from Entropic Cascade Failure if you’re going to be stupid enough to use Ancient devices you find lying around.”
“Hey!” John repeated, indignant this time. “I didn’t use any devices!”
“No, your freakishly strong gene managed to activate one that had been buried in a cave-in ten thousand years ago,” retorted Rodney.
“But what are you doing here?” John protested, stepping past the Marines to stand beside him. “If you start getting Cascade Failure-”
Rodney waved a dismissive hand. “That only happens with alternate realities, not time travel. And this isn’t even really time travel.”
Sheppard frowned. “Then what is it?”
“True, true, but-” Rodney broke off, sharply, then breathed, “Elizabeth.”
She joined them, smiling between John and Rodney, still standing close together and facing Sheppard and McKay. “The colonel said my name the same way. I might develop a complex.”
“Oh,” said Rodney. “Elizabeth… you, well, in a few years, you’ll be dead.”
Her eyes widened, and John hissed, “Rodney.”
“This isn’t time travel,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. The Ancient device creates a… ripple, for lack of a better term. A slight deviation from the normal timeline. If you had used the device correctly, you’d have taken one of these-” he held up his wrist, sliding his sleeve up to reveal a cuff of Ancient metal, “-to get back to when you left.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” John said.
Elizabeth frowned. “Then we’re not… real?”
“You’re real,” Rodney assured her. “When we leave, you’ll reabsorb back into the normal timeline, and you won’t remember any of this happening. Sorry.”
“Then it wouldn’t have mattered if you had told us anything,” said Sheppard.
“But why?” asked McKay. “Why make a device that creates a… ripple… in time?”
Rodney frowned at him. “I do not remember being this clueless,” he said, then ignoring his past self’s indignant expression, continued, “Why did the Ancients do anything? They all wanted to Ascend, but they were all damn cheats. This was supposed to allow you to confront your past.”
“I…” John began, glancing at Sheppard. “Why here? I didn’t have any problems with myself.”
“Maybe confront is the wrong word,” said Rodney. “It was that stupid flowery Ancient, and Jackson’s translation just made it worse. But when the device activated, it sent you here because there was something you needed to experience again.”
“Huh.”
John looked around. Sheppard was standing next to McKay, much closer than he was to Elizabeth. As close as John was standing to Rodney. And, with this to jog his memory, John knew they’d always been like that.
He was usually standoffish, solitary, but from the moment he’d met Rodney, he’d wanted to be around him. Other people, even Rodney’s friends, complained about him being rude or insulting or irritating, but John had never seen it. Rodney was smart and funny and John couldn’t imagine a future without Rodney by his side.
Oh. Oh.
The Ancient cuff on Rodney’s wrist glowed faintly. “Sheppard?”
“I…” John tried again. “They’re not going to remember this, right?”
“Right…” Rodney said, slowly, the way he did when he thought John was being stupid on purpose.
“Hang on.” John turned to his past self, then smiled. “You love Rodney.”
“I…” Sheppard spluttered, as McKay said, “What!?”
“I never noticed,” John continued, “until I could see myself - you, when you talked about him. But it’s always been Rodney. I just… wow, I really never see it coming.”
“I…”
“John?” asked Rodney, softly, from behind him. “Are you… Do you really…?”
John froze. “Um, not if you don’t-”
He broke off as Rodney kissed him, hard. Distantly, he heard Elizabeth murmur, “I always suspected,” Sheppard add, “Wow, okay…” and McKay put in, “That is…oh,” but John wasn’t listening, too absorbed with the feeling of Rodney - his Rodney - pressed against him.
“I’ve been awake for three days,” Rodney said, when they broke for air. “I came back to the SGC the second I heard you were missing, and I let Daniel Jackson spout Ancient gibberish at me. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”
“So…” said Elizabeth, sounding apologetic that she was interrupting. “We won’t remember any of this?”
“Sorry,” John said. He hesitated, then moved to hug her, briefly. “And thanks, for everything.”
She stiffened, surprised, then hugged back. “Good luck. And congratulations.”
John grinned, and turned to Rodney. “Let’s go home.”
Rodney grinned back. He tapped a control on the Ancient cuff, and the stargate whooshed to life.
John held out his hand, and Rodney took it. “Home,” he repeated.
THE END
Current Mood:
busy
Author: Ami Ven
Prompt: romancingmcshep 2023 (using a leftover prompt from 2017)
Rating: G
Word Count: 3, 581
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing(s): John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Summary: A time travel incident lands Lt. Col. Sheppard on Atlantis at the beginning of the expedition.
Back to the Beginning
John felt that something was wrong the moment he passed through the event horizon and into the wormhole. Even Milky Way stargates had a distinct Ancient feel to them, but it was different enough from the Pegasus gates that John hadn’t realized what he was feeling until it was too late.
His stomach lurched and his head pounded as soon as he materialized on the other side and he lost his balance, curling into the fall as he tumbled onto the Gate Room floor.
“That is the last time I do you a favor, Mitchell!” he called, irritably.
He heard running footsteps, but kept his arms where he’d used them to brace his head, not bothering to get up. It was already too late to save his dignity, so he might as well wait until everything stopped spinning to try and move.
Except, he didn’t hear the jokes or laughter he was expecting.
The footsteps stopped abruptly, which John’s headache appreciated, but it was still too bright for him to open his eyes - too bright, he realized, for the SGC Gate Room, twenty-eight floors under a mountain.
The light dimmed.
“Who the hell is doing that?” snapped a voice, and John realized that he was.
There was Ancient technology all around him. John frowned into the arm he still had over his face - they had taken the crystals out of the Atlantis gate while it was on Earth, how had he ended up there?
John’s headache started to fade, so he pushed himself into a sitting position.
“Not so fast,” the same voice snapped again. It was oddly familiar, but John couldn’t figure out how. “Get up slowly, hands where I can see them.”
Carefully, John levered himself to his feet. He kept his eyes closed, in case his stomach tried to object, and when he opened them, he came face-to-face with - himself.
He was young - had John really been that young? - and wearing the original Expedition uniform. Even more jarring was Rodney’s uniform, not just the khaki color but the way he was still uncomfortable in it.
“Who are you?” demanded the other him, snapping John’s attention back to him.
“Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard,” he replied.
“Try again. And it’s Major Sheppard.”
John sighed. “Yeah, I remember.”
The major scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Rodney waved a hand. “Time travel, alternate dimensions, robot duplicates… anything is possible.”
John shrugged. “You really should read the SGC mission logs,” he offered.
His alternate self’s scowl only deepened. “I don’t care how you do it, McKay, I want to know why this guy’s wearing my face.”
*
“What do you mean he’s missing!?”
Mitchell actually took a step back from the video monitor at his tone, but Sam scowled. “There was no indication that anything was wrong, McKay,” she said. “The rest of us made it through the gate okay, John should have been right behind us.”
“I should never have let him go,” Rodney grumbled, scowling right back at her through the video feed. “You people are supposed to be the best. And you don’t even know what happened!”
“Yet,” said Mitchell. “Sam’s running a diagnostic on the whole system as we speak.”
“And how long will that take?”
There was a pause on the other end of the screen. “A few hours,” Sam admitted.
“But we’ve scoured every inch of P2X-997,” put in Mitchell. “There’s no trace of Sheppard, and no one else used the stargate.”
“What about the Ancient devices you needed him to activate?” Rodney demanded.
There was another pause. “It doesn’t look like they’ve been activated,” said Sam. “But we don’t have any strong gene carriers here.”
Rodney took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m on my way,” he said. “Nobody touch anything else, there’s got to be some kind of something that’ll show where he-”
“Rodney,” interrupted Sam, gently. “I’ll arrange a transport for you. We’ll find him.”
“Yes, we will,” he snapped, and ended the call.
He had packing to do.
*
“He’s you, major,” repeated Carson, starting to sound annoyed. “I ran the DNA test three times.”
The major - John was going to think of him as Sheppard, otherwise it was going to make his continuing headache even worse - frowned. “But I’m me.”
“You are,” Carson agreed. “But so is he. Although…”
Rodney scowled. “Although what?”
“There is a small anomaly in his DNA. Not enough to even question his identity, it’s concentrated on the telomeres - the sections concerning age.”
“Oh, yeah,” said John. “That’d be Todd.”
All three turned to him, eyes wide. “Todd?”
“A wraith. He fed on me. Then un-fed on me. Carson said I was fine.”
“That’s…” Carson said, faintly.
Sheppard scowled. “Enough of this. Who are you and what are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I’m you,” said John. “And I don’t know. I was off-world, and when I came back through the gate, something was… wrong. It dumped me out here, with the worst headache and upset stomach I’ve had since flight school.”
Rodney took a step back from the gurney where John was sitting. “You’re not going to be sick, are you?”
“Probably not.”
“I can give you something for that,” said Carson, and bustled off around the privacy curtain.
“What do you mean, something was wrong with the gate?” Sheppard asked.
John paused. “Just… wrong. You know how Ancient technology usually feels?” Sheppard nodded. “It felt almost like that, but not quite.”
“So… wrong,” the major agreed.
“Exactly.”
“Hmm,” said Sheppard. “McKay, what have you got?”
“He’s you,” Rodney said, earning another scowl. “I’ve run every test I can think of. If he was from an alternate reality, he’d already be experiencing Entropic Cascade Failure. There’s no difference in his quantum signature. By process of elimination, I’d say it has to be time travel.”
John sighed. “Great.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“I-” John began, but Rodney snapped, “Be quiet.”
“McKay…” growled Sheppard.
“Time travel!” Rodney repeated. “He’s from our future, anything he says or does or tells us could have disastrous repercussions.”
“Except I don’t remember any of this,” John pointed out. “My being here already changes things, even if I don’t tell you anything and - this is making my head hurt.”
“This’ll help, lad,” said Carson, bustling back around the curtain. He held out a small cup holding two pills, and John downed them dry. “Ah, that bad is it?”
“Time travel, Carson!” said Rodney again.
He blinked. “Is that possible?”
“Oh, yeah,” muttered John. “Stupid Milky Way stargates.”
“What’s the verdict, gentlemen?” said a new voice, suddenly.
“Elizabeth,” both versions of him said - Sheppard in a tone of concern and worry, John more on a breath.
She turned to him for a long moment, then fixed a stare on Sheppard. “Major?”
He straightened slightly. “Between Dr. Beckett and Dr. McKay, our best guess is time travel.”
Elizabeth arched an eye brow. “Time travel?”
“About five years,” John agreed.
“Wait,” said Rodney. “You said Milky Way gate?”
John nodded. “I was-” he stopped, suddenly. “I probably shouldn’t say anything.”
“But you said you didn’t remember any of this,” Sheppard protested. “So this is already an altered timeline. There’s probably no harm in-”
“No,” John interrupted. “No, I…
“He’s right,” Elizabeth agreed. She looked at John again, something unreadable on her face for a moment before she smiled again. “Major, I’m sure we have some quarters for our guest. Somewhere quiet?”
Sheppard nodded. “This way…”
*
“What have you got?” demanded Rodney, pushing his suitcase at the nearest airman.
Sam nodded at the kid. “Please take Dr. McKay’s bag to the guest quarters,” she said, then frowned. “Rodney…”
“We don’t have time to be nice,” he said, following her to the elevator. “It’s been hours, if Sheppard’s in an alternate reality, he might already be suffering Entropic Cascade Failure.”
“Alright,” Sam agreed. “All our searches of the planet turned up nothing, but the gate diagnostic just finished and there is a slight fluctuation-”
“I told you!” interrupted Rodney. “When? How? What kind-?”
“We don’t know yet,” said Sam. “But so far, it doesn’t match anything in our records.”
The elevator opened onto the twenty-eighth level, and they kept walking.
“Have you accessed the Ancient database on Atlantis?” Rodney asked.
Sam nodded. “Radek is working on it. He hasn’t reported anything yet. We’ve got everyone here set up in the-”
“I’m going off-world,” Rodney interrupted. When she frowned, he added, “Whatever happened, it was on the planet you were on. Whatever we need to know to fix it is going to be there.”
“I-” she began, then sighed. “All right. Come on…”
*
John didn’t look up when the door opened, still lying on his back on the narrow Ancient bed. “Figure out how to send me back?”
“Not yet,” said Sheppard. “I think Rodney’s offended he hasn’t figured it out by now.”
“Yeah, that sounds like him.”
“He doesn’t get better, I take it?”
“I…” John hesitated.
Sheppard sighed, and came to sit at the foot of the bed. “Look,” he said, seriously. “You said you can’t tell us stuff about the future, but...”
“I can’t.”
“Yeah, but… you’re here. There. Alive, in the future. You were fine seeing McKay and Beckett, but when you saw Elizabeth, it was like you were seeing a ghost.”
“I…”
“Kinda stupid trying to lie to myself,” said Sheppard, pointedly.
“Yeah,” agreed John. He sat up, so they were side-by-side. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t want to tell you stuff. Change things. Save people. But I only know how things went the way they went. Once you change one thing, nothing will be the same. If I tell you to save-”
“Elizabeth?” the major suggested.
“-one person, everything that comes after is something new. Maybe somebody else dies who’s still alive in my timeline. Or maybe everyone lives and everything is better.”
“These are problems I never thought I’d have.”
“Tell me about it,” said John.
There was a beat of silence, then Sheppard blurted, “How are you not freaking out about this?”
“It’s amazing what can become normal after long enough.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” Sheppard scowled.
John laughed, “Yeah.”
“No, seriously. You were me, you know that I’m… coping… with aliens and Ancients and all of this. And I…”
“Yeah,” John repeated, softly. “You just got dumped into all of this and you’re suddenly the commander of a whole city in a war zone. And you can’t talk to anyone, because Sheppard men don’t talk about their feelings.”
Sheppard flopped backward. “Yeah.”
“Okay, then talk to me.”
“What?”
“I’m you,” John pointed out. “I’ve already thought all the things you’re thinking. You can’t say anything I don’t already know. So, tell me.”
“I…” The major sat back up again, then stood, pacing. “I hate talking about feelings.”
“I’m you,” repeated John.
“Right.” He continued pacing across the small room. “I didn’t ask for any of this, you know. I sat down in a chair and the next thing you know, I’m responsible for almost two hundred people in another galaxy, where there are space vampires trying to eat us and crazy people on every planet. I have no idea what I’m doing, and half the time I don’t even know if I’ve made the right decisions.
“But I can’t tell anybody that! Not anyone under my command, because I can’t lose their confidence. Not Elizabeth, because she has enough of her own problems. Not Ford, because he might be the next-highest in rank, but he’s still just a kid. Honestly, I think I’d have had some kind of breakdown already if it wasn’t for McKay.”
“Rodney?” asked John.
Sheppard turned sharply to face him. “You said you already knew all of this.”
“I did! I do, but… I never had anyone to talk to and I guess I just… didn’t think about it. And Rodney isn’t known for improving people’s mental health.”
“But we’re not most people,” the major pointed out.
“No,” John agreed. “And neither is Rodney.”
“I mean, he takes some getting used to. But he always says exactly what he’s thinking. I always know where I stand with him, even if he thinks I’m an idiot. And he… I don’t know, everything just seems easier when McKay’s around.”
“Yeah.”
Sheppard walked back across the room more slowly. “I don’t usually… We’re not good with people, you know that. We can pretend, but that’s not the same, but with Rodney…”
“It’s like he just barges past all the walls and crap I’ve had up all my life, and it should be terrifying but it’s actually really comforting.”
“Yeah,” echoed Sheppard. “I… thanks. Really.”
John offered a smile. “I’m you, remember?”
“Yeah. I should go check on Rodney, see if he’s found anything.”
“You should probably bring him something to eat,” John suggested. “It’s been a couple hours, and if he’s in Science Mode, he’ll have forgotten about his hypoglycemia.”
“Yeah,” Sheppard said again, and left.
John laid back down on the bed. He wasn’t worried about getting back to his own time, this time. He knew his Rodney - future Rodney - would be working to get him back, and two Rodneys pretty much guaranteed success.
*
When Rodney and Sam arrived on P2X-997, there were two figures already hurrying up the slight hill toward them.
“McKay!” called Mitchell, “We were just coming to get you.”
“You found something?” Rodney demanded.
“There’s a cave,” said Daniel. “Well, it’s a cave now, but it apparently used to be an Ancient-”
Rodney pushed past him, “Show me.”
“Teal’c is supervising the team digging it out,” Daniel continued, as they hurried to catch up. “It looks like the whole caved in, we’ve uncovered some debris that is definitely Ancient. That’s why we were coming to get you - I can read the Ancient, but it’s all scientific gibberish to me.”
They came over another hill to a flurry of activity, Marines hauling rocks and moving equipment. Teal’c came out and spotted them.
“Doctor-McKay,” he said. “I believe we have found what you seek. However, the cavern is unstable. We are advised by Major-Halverston to wait until it is secured.”
“Wait?” Rodney spluttered, “We don’t have time to-”
Sam put a hand on his arm. “Rodney,” she said, softly.
“No! We don’t know what this device does, where it’s sent him, what Sheppard is facing.”
“Rodney,” she repeated. “I know how badly you need to find John, but you’re not going to do him any good if you get yourself killed in the attempt.”
His eyes widened. “I don’t - We’re not - It’s not what you-”
“I don’t know anything,” said Sam. “But if I did, I’d be happy for you. Both of you. So I know that John would want you to be careful.”
Rodney let out a long breath. “Fine,” he relented. “But I want to see the Ancient writing you’ve found.”
Daniel nodded. “This way…”
*
John had actually fallen asleep when the door to his guest quarters opened again.
“Colonel?” said the Marine on guard duty, a different one than had been there when he came in. “I’ve been ordered to escort you to the Gate Room.”
“Lead on, sergeant.”
There was a circle of Marines around the gate, just like when John himself had arrived. Major Sheppard stepped back and came over.
“Colonel,” he said. “I was hoping to get your input on our visitor. I believe you know Dr. McKay…”
John’s heart sank - Rodney wouldn’t be stupid enough to come after him, would he?
The man at the center of the Marines’ half-circle certainly looked like his Rodney, the right uniform and the right amount of laugh lines around his eyes. Those eyes lit up when he spotted both Johns coming toward him.
“Sheppard!”
John couldn’t help smiling, “Hey, Rodney.”
“Don’t you Hey, Rodney me. You are never going off-world without me again, do you hear? Can’t leave you for five minutes without you finding some new kind of trouble…”
Sheppard frowned at him, then looked at John, “Is he from the same time as you?”
“Of course I am!” Rodney spluttered, “Why else would I be here?”
Rodney - the Rodney from this time, the past, and John was going to think of him as McKay from now on - joined them, as Sheppard nodded to dismiss the Marines. “Well - oh, that is not fair.”
“What?” chorused both Johns.
“You,” said McKay. “Him. You look like… and I look like…”
He gestured vaguely at Rodney, who looked insulted again. “I am in fantastic shape, thank you very much, and I-”
“Hey,” John interrupted, “you didn’t come here to argue with your past self. Did you?”
“I came to rescue you, idiot. I was about to ask if you’re all right, but you deserve to be suffering from Entropic Cascade Failure if you’re going to be stupid enough to use Ancient devices you find lying around.”
“Hey!” John repeated, indignant this time. “I didn’t use any devices!”
“No, your freakishly strong gene managed to activate one that had been buried in a cave-in ten thousand years ago,” retorted Rodney.
“But what are you doing here?” John protested, stepping past the Marines to stand beside him. “If you start getting Cascade Failure-”
Rodney waved a dismissive hand. “That only happens with alternate realities, not time travel. And this isn’t even really time travel.”
Sheppard frowned. “Then what is it?”
“True, true, but-” Rodney broke off, sharply, then breathed, “Elizabeth.”
She joined them, smiling between John and Rodney, still standing close together and facing Sheppard and McKay. “The colonel said my name the same way. I might develop a complex.”
“Oh,” said Rodney. “Elizabeth… you, well, in a few years, you’ll be dead.”
Her eyes widened, and John hissed, “Rodney.”
“This isn’t time travel,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. The Ancient device creates a… ripple, for lack of a better term. A slight deviation from the normal timeline. If you had used the device correctly, you’d have taken one of these-” he held up his wrist, sliding his sleeve up to reveal a cuff of Ancient metal, “-to get back to when you left.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” John said.
Elizabeth frowned. “Then we’re not… real?”
“You’re real,” Rodney assured her. “When we leave, you’ll reabsorb back into the normal timeline, and you won’t remember any of this happening. Sorry.”
“Then it wouldn’t have mattered if you had told us anything,” said Sheppard.
“But why?” asked McKay. “Why make a device that creates a… ripple… in time?”
Rodney frowned at him. “I do not remember being this clueless,” he said, then ignoring his past self’s indignant expression, continued, “Why did the Ancients do anything? They all wanted to Ascend, but they were all damn cheats. This was supposed to allow you to confront your past.”
“I…” John began, glancing at Sheppard. “Why here? I didn’t have any problems with myself.”
“Maybe confront is the wrong word,” said Rodney. “It was that stupid flowery Ancient, and Jackson’s translation just made it worse. But when the device activated, it sent you here because there was something you needed to experience again.”
“Huh.”
John looked around. Sheppard was standing next to McKay, much closer than he was to Elizabeth. As close as John was standing to Rodney. And, with this to jog his memory, John knew they’d always been like that.
He was usually standoffish, solitary, but from the moment he’d met Rodney, he’d wanted to be around him. Other people, even Rodney’s friends, complained about him being rude or insulting or irritating, but John had never seen it. Rodney was smart and funny and John couldn’t imagine a future without Rodney by his side.
Oh. Oh.
The Ancient cuff on Rodney’s wrist glowed faintly. “Sheppard?”
“I…” John tried again. “They’re not going to remember this, right?”
“Right…” Rodney said, slowly, the way he did when he thought John was being stupid on purpose.
“Hang on.” John turned to his past self, then smiled. “You love Rodney.”
“I…” Sheppard spluttered, as McKay said, “What!?”
“I never noticed,” John continued, “until I could see myself - you, when you talked about him. But it’s always been Rodney. I just… wow, I really never see it coming.”
“I…”
“John?” asked Rodney, softly, from behind him. “Are you… Do you really…?”
John froze. “Um, not if you don’t-”
He broke off as Rodney kissed him, hard. Distantly, he heard Elizabeth murmur, “I always suspected,” Sheppard add, “Wow, okay…” and McKay put in, “That is…oh,” but John wasn’t listening, too absorbed with the feeling of Rodney - his Rodney - pressed against him.
“I’ve been awake for three days,” Rodney said, when they broke for air. “I came back to the SGC the second I heard you were missing, and I let Daniel Jackson spout Ancient gibberish at me. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”
“So…” said Elizabeth, sounding apologetic that she was interrupting. “We won’t remember any of this?”
“Sorry,” John said. He hesitated, then moved to hug her, briefly. “And thanks, for everything.”
She stiffened, surprised, then hugged back. “Good luck. And congratulations.”
John grinned, and turned to Rodney. “Let’s go home.”
Rodney grinned back. He tapped a control on the Ancient cuff, and the stargate whooshed to life.
John held out his hand, and Rodney took it. “Home,” he repeated.
THE END
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