TEAM HOME: Band of brothers, "The Greater Share of Honor"
Title: The Greater Share of Honor
Author: pollitt
Team: Home
Prompt: Band of brothers
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG
Warnings: Missing scene/tag for "This Mortal Coil" so spoilers for that episode, and includes reference to information we've learned in "Outcast".
Summary: "For he to-day that shed his blood with me/ Shall be my brother" --Henry V, Act IV, Scene III
Note: Thank you to maverick4oz for all that she did--from helping to brainstorm the first spark of an idea to helping to put the finishing touches on the story and then betaing. And huge thank yous to Team Home for being an awesome and supportive group of amazing writers.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
The Greater Share of Honor
"She's dead."
It wasn't the first time that John has heard that combination of words--and a part of him knew that it was a possibility, as much as he didn't want to consider it--but the news still hits him like a line drive directly to the chest.
The fact that it's a near-perfect replica of Elizabeth delivering the news of their own Elizabeth's demise makes it both surreal and all the more devastating.
"I need to know how," John says, looking at the Replicator copies of Elizabeth, Teyla, Ronon and himself. "I need to know whatever you can tell me."
"Let's take a walk," Elizabeth suggests.
Teyla and Ronon, both sets, exit the tent, and John--the other John--offers to wait for the McKays to come back. He touches John's arm briefly, offering a sad smile. He might be a copy, but he's as much John Sheppard as John is and he's no doubt remembering what John remembers. It's oddly comforting.
----------
"She's dead, John. Mom's dead." Dave's words had sounded hollow over the phone and it took a couple of minutes before what he was saying had sunk in. "She died this morning."
John secured leave as soon as he'd hung up the phone and he had been standing at the front door of his parents'--now his dad's--home by that evening. Dave answered the door and offered a formal hello. John could see the sadness in his eyes, and he had refrained from asking Dave for the details. It wasn't Dave's responsibility, he was a son who'd just lost his mom, too.
John had found his father in his office, making funeral arrangements with the calm confidence of a man who had been conducting business deals his entire life. Even at twenty-four, John had felt like a kid waiting for his father to finish with his phone call and pay attention to him. And when he had, when the flowers were ordered and Pastor Glenn had been contacted, John's dad had hung up the phone and explained in his calm, reserved, we-don't-show-or-tell-emotions-if-we-can-help-it way that his mother's cancer had returned, and by the time that had been discovered, her health had deteriorated quickly.
"Why didn't you tell me?" John had asked.
"You didn't need to know the extent of it. You made the decision to join the Air Force and have your secrets. You chose to distance yourself from this family, and there are costs to that choice."
"Was that Mom's decision, too?"
"No."
----------
John's still wrapping his mind around Elizabeth's death and her semi-resurrection as a clone, when the Replicator ship arrives and drones begin to explode on the ground at their feet.
The escape plan had been brilliant, and when no Replicator ships show up on the deep space sensors, John knows it's been a success.
At least this time, he's had a chance to say goodbye before Elizabeth and the other team boarded the jumper and had flown off toward death. It's a small consolation, but he'll take what he can get.
With the immediate threat over, John lets himself close his eyes and breathe, holding back the emotions that are churning in his gut. There are things to take care of first.
"Rodney, why don't you start," he starts to say but, as usual, Rodney's on the same page and a few lines ahead of him.
"Already on my way." Rodney holds the Replicator core drive up to his chest and points in the general direction of his lab. "I'll just be--"
"Good luck," John says. For a brief moment, when Rodney's tight lipped frown raises into something nowhere near a smile, but less grim than before, John thinks about stopping him, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in the crook of Rodney's neck and holding on for dear life.
He doesn't, though, and Rodney's calling Radek on his radio as John watches him walk away.
----------
In the locker room, John sees Rodney's gear has already been put away. Ronon and Teyla join him and silence hangs between them, an unlikely enemy. Before Atlantis, before the Air Force and secret missions, John had a lifetime of learning how not to show emotion, how not to talk. Back then, it would've been familiar, almost comforting, to be surrounded in the quiet. Now, it felt foreign and wrong.
The loud slam of flesh meeting metal breaks the silence.
"It's not fair," Ronon says, sitting heavily on the bench, clenching and unclenching the hand he just smashed against a locker.
"It really isn't," Teyla agrees, taking a seat next to Ronon, her hand curls around his forearm.
"She let me stay, become a part of Atlantis, make it my home, and then we still end up losing her."
John can see brightness in Ronon's eyes, and when Teyla nods at him, John takes the hint. He reaches out and places his hand on top of Teyla's and squeezes gently before heading out of the locker room. It's the most comfort he can offer at the moment without falling apart.
----------
"Did you know how bad it was? That she was dying?" John asked his brother.
"I knew it wasn't good. They didn't tell me exactly how bad, but I knew enough," Dave said, looking up from a list he was making.
"Why didn't anyone call me? Write me? Anything."
"You left."
"I didn't go to another god damn planet! I joined the Air Force. Just because I didn't take the path Dad had planned for me doesn't mean I decided not to be a part of this family. She was my mom, Dave, and he chose not to tell me she was dying."
Dave didn't answer. He returned to making the list of people for the visitation and funeral and John had retreated to his room.
----------
Major Lorne is waiting for him in his office when John arrives.
"I'm going to need you to organize the packing and shipping of Dr. Weir's personal belongings back to Earth," John says, and with those words, the reality hits home again. She's really gone. "I don't know who's supposed to get what, though."
"I've already taken the liberty of getting that information together, sir." Lorne hands John a file folder with the correct paperwork, already in order and waiting for John's signature. "I knew you'd have a lot of your mind so I thought this would help."
"Thank you, Major."
"You're welcome, sir. We all lost Dr. Weir today. She was more than just a leader."
----------
He'd spent the next several days in the same orbit as his father and brother, each keeping their distance from him and vice versa. By the time he'd returned to base, the distance that had already been established had grown. The little communication he'd had with his father became even more infrequent, a trend that had reversed itself slightly when he and Nancy had been married. When that ended, the distance had become almost impossible to cross and John walked away.
----------
The halls of Atlantis are silent this late at night, and John can hear the echo of his boots as he walks down the hallway toward Rodney's lab. He's been going for almost 24 hours straight, and has encountered Replicators, reunion, death, destruction and maybe, just maybe a way to stop at least one of their enemies, and John's been reminded time and time again tonight that they--him, Rodney, Teyla, Ronon, Lorne, Radek, Keller, Johnson, Chuck, every single person on Atlantis--are all in this together.
It's almost more than he can process, which is probably why he hasn't stopped moving and thinking yet. And if John knows Rodney, he knows Rodney's doing the same thing.
He finds Rodney in his lab, hunched over a computer, working.
"How's it going?" he asks, stopping at Rodney's side and watching as Rodney's fingers move over the keyboard.
"It's going alright," Rodney answers and John can see the tension around the corners of Rodney's mouth, the set of his brow that belies Rodney's utter exhaustion, as well as his determination to keep working.
The lab is empty, no one would see if he were to turn Rodney in his chair and hold his face and kiss him--because they survived when Elizabeth and the other team did not, because Rodney will work himself into the ground to save the day and to avoid the heartbreak of losing a friend, and because John loves him to a degree that scares him sometimes. Instead he says quietly, "Why don't you call it a night."
Of course Rodney wants to keep working, but when John mentions he approved the removal of Elizabeth's personal items, he sees Rodney deflate. John knows he wasn't the only one who thought they'd be bringing Elizabeth home.
"You've been up for a day straight, you need sleep," John rests his hand Rodney's shoulder, offering a small squeeze. "Let's go to bed. This will still be here in the morning."
"I want, I need, to keep working on this. Please, John."
"Okay. Let me know when you get this thing working." He pats Rodney's shoulder twice--their code for words they're still working on saying to one another--and begins to walk out of the lab when Rodney calls him back.
With a few keystrokes, the computer screen begins to fill with red icons locating Aurora-class Replicator ships in the galaxy, the first few appearing slowly, their numbers building until the star map looks like it's been engulfed in red.
"Oh crap," Rodney summarizes nicely.
"That's it. Bed. Now." John can barely hold back the sea of anguish that's been kept just out of reach since he'd first glimpsed Elizabeth on the video screen, and he knows it's about to all spill out and he can't do that here.
Rodney doesn't offer any resistance when John tugs on his arm and they walk together toward John's quarters.
"I can't help but feel like I failed." John says when the door slides shut. In the privacy of his room, to Rodney, he can finally say it. "I was hoping that we could save her. Somehow."
"Another Hail Mary?" Rodney offers with a sad smile.
"Something like that." John sits on the side of his bed and removes his boots. "At least we had a chance to say goodbye this time. And she wasn't alone."
"Unlike last time. This time she had us, or at least versions of us."
John watches as Rodney walks around his room, stopping to straighten a corner of a picture, or pick up a shirt that one of them had left on the floor. This is a ritual he's witnessed before, it's the way that Rodney winds himself down from impossible situations.
"That had to be a comfort, for all of them, to be with one another in the end."
John's faced death before, more times than he cares to count, and almost always alone. He remembers watching Rodney slip away, his body dying as he grew closer to Ascension, and the peace that seemed to touch him as he'd been surrounded by his friends. John hopes the last moments of the other team's lives were closer to Rodney's experience than John's.
"I can't...I can't think about it right now. If I do, I'm going to break apart. And if I do that, I'm afraid I won't fit back together."
Rodney sits on the corner of the bed, his shoulders slumped, his elbows propped on his knees with his hands hanging down. The look of exhaustion, heartbreak and defeat is radiating from almost every molecule and John feels a sympathetic ache, a hurt that mirrors the one Rodney's feeling. He wonders suddenly if the other them had found their way to one another. Back then, when they'd first been to Asuras, when Oberoth and the other had probed their minds, they'd hadn't yet reached this place where their secrets had been laid bare, where the want to reach for one another was permitted.
He hopes that they did.
He hopes that the other John had one day grabbed Rodney and kissed him, or that the other Rodney--that John's Rodney--had barged into John's room and presented a case for why they belonged together. And no matter how many times the Replicators had reset them, wiped their memories clean, that they'd always found a way back together. He hopes that the other Rodney had known how much he was loved.
John wishes that for his other self, but the answers to those questions are not something he will ever know, they are things he can't change. What he can do is to make sure this Rodney, his Rodney, knows.
"Hey," John says, moving down the bed until he's kneeling behind Rodney. He slides his hands over Rodney's shoulders and leans forward, pressing his forehead and nose against the back of Rodney's head.
"First Carson, then Elizabeth--twice," Rodney says, his voice breaking. He reaches up and wraps his fingers around John's. "I didn't think it could hurt so much."
John knew, but even with that knowledge, he also knew that it didn't mean it hurt any less.
"My mom died before I even knew she was sick." John tightens his hold on Rodney's shoulders when he feels Rodney start to turn. It's easier to talk about it this way, the words don't dry up in his throat. "My father took it as a personal affront that I chose the military rather than going into business with him like my brother did. We were never a really close family but when I left. . . Anyway, she'd been sick, had gone into remission, and then I guess it came back. I didn't know until she was gone and my brother called me."
"Why didn't they tell you before it was too late?" There's an indignation in Rodney's tone that makes John's heart squeeze.
"Spite." John tightens his hold even more as he can feel the anger surge through Rodney. "Not really. I think it was easier that way. I guess I should be happy they called me at all."
"That's just wrong." Rodney says, this time not letting John keep him in place. He turns and looks John in the eye before pulling him into a tight hug. "And the logic doesn't hold up at all. I'm sorry. And they're assholes."
"At least we had the chance to say goodbye to Elizabeth this time. Even if it wasn't our Elizabeth." John closes his eyes and rests his chin on Rodney's shoulder. "Ronon took it pretty hard."
"So did Radek. He ended up just leaving his glasses off for a while. We've all lost her."
"Yeah."
The exhaustion hits John like a tidal wave, utterly and completely and dragging him down before he knows what's hit him.
"You were right," he says, loosening his hold on Rodney.
"Of course I was." Rodney grins. "What was I right about?"
"It's past my bedtime."
Rodney's grin becomes a smile and he leans in. Their stubble makes a soft rasping noise as they kiss.
John steals a final kiss before he climbs off of the bed and begins to undress. His pants, uniform shirt and t-shirt land on the seat of his desk chair, his socks are tossed into the laundry. On the other side of the bed, Rodney strips down to his boxers, folding his clothes and piling them on John's dresser. From one of the dresser drawers Rodney retrieves a t-shirt--his i > u t-shirt that Jeannie had sent with some equations she had been working on--and pulls it on.
The beds on Atlantis, while more than adequate for one person to sleep on, leave something to be desired when the occupancy number reaches two. Through trial and error, they've discovered that if John sleeps on his back and Rodney sleeps on his front, half draped over John, they can both fit comfortably on the bed as well as not wake up with sore joints and kinks in their muscles. Plus -- and John's favorite part -- it makes most things easily accessible.
They kiss unhurriedly, with no intention of progressing any further than this--to offer comfort, to say in action what they can't say in words, at least not yet.
There are countless Replicator ships searching the galaxy for Atlantis, the Wraith might currently be at war both with one another and with the Replicators, but John knows that sooner or later they're going to join in the hunt for Atlantis as well, and who knows what other boogie men are lying in wait, but for tonight, John's not thinking about any of that.
He's thinking about family and honor and how each and every person on Atlantis would die for each other. That's a bond stronger than blood, more powerful than any enemy they've faced. He's thinking of Elizabeth and his mom and how he knows that if something happens to himself or to Rodney, the other won't be left to go through it alone. He has a brother and a father who are a galaxy away in more than just distance. But here, on Atlantis, he has a family built on loyalty and love. Here, he has Rodney who he can lay himself bare to.
Rodney, who's currently drooling on his collarbone.
He wonders what Dave and his dad would say if John were to show up at their front door, on leave from another secret mission, with Rodney at his side. He likes to think his mom would have understood Rodney, would have appreciated his inability to be anything less than truthful and would have known how much he loved John.
He's made friends in war zones around the world, he's had others he'd been more than willing to die for, but Rodney, Teyla, Ronon, hell the entire population of Atlantis, they are his family. He'd told Teyla once that he'd die for any one of them and that was still true. But what he's learned in the days since, in the people lost along the way is that he'd live for any one of them as well. Especially Rodney.
And he knows deep down that truth is the greatest testament to what he's learned from both his mom and Elizabeth. And he knows they're both smiling at that.
**
Poll Vote for this story
Author: pollitt
Team: Home
Prompt: Band of brothers
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG
Warnings: Missing scene/tag for "This Mortal Coil" so spoilers for that episode, and includes reference to information we've learned in "Outcast".
Summary: "For he to-day that shed his blood with me/ Shall be my brother" --Henry V, Act IV, Scene III
Note: Thank you to maverick4oz for all that she did--from helping to brainstorm the first spark of an idea to helping to put the finishing touches on the story and then betaing. And huge thank yous to Team Home for being an awesome and supportive group of amazing writers.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
The Greater Share of Honor
"She's dead."
It wasn't the first time that John has heard that combination of words--and a part of him knew that it was a possibility, as much as he didn't want to consider it--but the news still hits him like a line drive directly to the chest.
The fact that it's a near-perfect replica of Elizabeth delivering the news of their own Elizabeth's demise makes it both surreal and all the more devastating.
"I need to know how," John says, looking at the Replicator copies of Elizabeth, Teyla, Ronon and himself. "I need to know whatever you can tell me."
"Let's take a walk," Elizabeth suggests.
Teyla and Ronon, both sets, exit the tent, and John--the other John--offers to wait for the McKays to come back. He touches John's arm briefly, offering a sad smile. He might be a copy, but he's as much John Sheppard as John is and he's no doubt remembering what John remembers. It's oddly comforting.
----------
"She's dead, John. Mom's dead." Dave's words had sounded hollow over the phone and it took a couple of minutes before what he was saying had sunk in. "She died this morning."
John secured leave as soon as he'd hung up the phone and he had been standing at the front door of his parents'--now his dad's--home by that evening. Dave answered the door and offered a formal hello. John could see the sadness in his eyes, and he had refrained from asking Dave for the details. It wasn't Dave's responsibility, he was a son who'd just lost his mom, too.
John had found his father in his office, making funeral arrangements with the calm confidence of a man who had been conducting business deals his entire life. Even at twenty-four, John had felt like a kid waiting for his father to finish with his phone call and pay attention to him. And when he had, when the flowers were ordered and Pastor Glenn had been contacted, John's dad had hung up the phone and explained in his calm, reserved, we-don't-show-or-tell-emotions-if-we-can-help-it way that his mother's cancer had returned, and by the time that had been discovered, her health had deteriorated quickly.
"Why didn't you tell me?" John had asked.
"You didn't need to know the extent of it. You made the decision to join the Air Force and have your secrets. You chose to distance yourself from this family, and there are costs to that choice."
"Was that Mom's decision, too?"
"No."
----------
John's still wrapping his mind around Elizabeth's death and her semi-resurrection as a clone, when the Replicator ship arrives and drones begin to explode on the ground at their feet.
The escape plan had been brilliant, and when no Replicator ships show up on the deep space sensors, John knows it's been a success.
At least this time, he's had a chance to say goodbye before Elizabeth and the other team boarded the jumper and had flown off toward death. It's a small consolation, but he'll take what he can get.
With the immediate threat over, John lets himself close his eyes and breathe, holding back the emotions that are churning in his gut. There are things to take care of first.
"Rodney, why don't you start," he starts to say but, as usual, Rodney's on the same page and a few lines ahead of him.
"Already on my way." Rodney holds the Replicator core drive up to his chest and points in the general direction of his lab. "I'll just be--"
"Good luck," John says. For a brief moment, when Rodney's tight lipped frown raises into something nowhere near a smile, but less grim than before, John thinks about stopping him, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in the crook of Rodney's neck and holding on for dear life.
He doesn't, though, and Rodney's calling Radek on his radio as John watches him walk away.
----------
In the locker room, John sees Rodney's gear has already been put away. Ronon and Teyla join him and silence hangs between them, an unlikely enemy. Before Atlantis, before the Air Force and secret missions, John had a lifetime of learning how not to show emotion, how not to talk. Back then, it would've been familiar, almost comforting, to be surrounded in the quiet. Now, it felt foreign and wrong.
The loud slam of flesh meeting metal breaks the silence.
"It's not fair," Ronon says, sitting heavily on the bench, clenching and unclenching the hand he just smashed against a locker.
"It really isn't," Teyla agrees, taking a seat next to Ronon, her hand curls around his forearm.
"She let me stay, become a part of Atlantis, make it my home, and then we still end up losing her."
John can see brightness in Ronon's eyes, and when Teyla nods at him, John takes the hint. He reaches out and places his hand on top of Teyla's and squeezes gently before heading out of the locker room. It's the most comfort he can offer at the moment without falling apart.
----------
"Did you know how bad it was? That she was dying?" John asked his brother.
"I knew it wasn't good. They didn't tell me exactly how bad, but I knew enough," Dave said, looking up from a list he was making.
"Why didn't anyone call me? Write me? Anything."
"You left."
"I didn't go to another god damn planet! I joined the Air Force. Just because I didn't take the path Dad had planned for me doesn't mean I decided not to be a part of this family. She was my mom, Dave, and he chose not to tell me she was dying."
Dave didn't answer. He returned to making the list of people for the visitation and funeral and John had retreated to his room.
----------
Major Lorne is waiting for him in his office when John arrives.
"I'm going to need you to organize the packing and shipping of Dr. Weir's personal belongings back to Earth," John says, and with those words, the reality hits home again. She's really gone. "I don't know who's supposed to get what, though."
"I've already taken the liberty of getting that information together, sir." Lorne hands John a file folder with the correct paperwork, already in order and waiting for John's signature. "I knew you'd have a lot of your mind so I thought this would help."
"Thank you, Major."
"You're welcome, sir. We all lost Dr. Weir today. She was more than just a leader."
----------
He'd spent the next several days in the same orbit as his father and brother, each keeping their distance from him and vice versa. By the time he'd returned to base, the distance that had already been established had grown. The little communication he'd had with his father became even more infrequent, a trend that had reversed itself slightly when he and Nancy had been married. When that ended, the distance had become almost impossible to cross and John walked away.
----------
The halls of Atlantis are silent this late at night, and John can hear the echo of his boots as he walks down the hallway toward Rodney's lab. He's been going for almost 24 hours straight, and has encountered Replicators, reunion, death, destruction and maybe, just maybe a way to stop at least one of their enemies, and John's been reminded time and time again tonight that they--him, Rodney, Teyla, Ronon, Lorne, Radek, Keller, Johnson, Chuck, every single person on Atlantis--are all in this together.
It's almost more than he can process, which is probably why he hasn't stopped moving and thinking yet. And if John knows Rodney, he knows Rodney's doing the same thing.
He finds Rodney in his lab, hunched over a computer, working.
"How's it going?" he asks, stopping at Rodney's side and watching as Rodney's fingers move over the keyboard.
"It's going alright," Rodney answers and John can see the tension around the corners of Rodney's mouth, the set of his brow that belies Rodney's utter exhaustion, as well as his determination to keep working.
The lab is empty, no one would see if he were to turn Rodney in his chair and hold his face and kiss him--because they survived when Elizabeth and the other team did not, because Rodney will work himself into the ground to save the day and to avoid the heartbreak of losing a friend, and because John loves him to a degree that scares him sometimes. Instead he says quietly, "Why don't you call it a night."
Of course Rodney wants to keep working, but when John mentions he approved the removal of Elizabeth's personal items, he sees Rodney deflate. John knows he wasn't the only one who thought they'd be bringing Elizabeth home.
"You've been up for a day straight, you need sleep," John rests his hand Rodney's shoulder, offering a small squeeze. "Let's go to bed. This will still be here in the morning."
"I want, I need, to keep working on this. Please, John."
"Okay. Let me know when you get this thing working." He pats Rodney's shoulder twice--their code for words they're still working on saying to one another--and begins to walk out of the lab when Rodney calls him back.
With a few keystrokes, the computer screen begins to fill with red icons locating Aurora-class Replicator ships in the galaxy, the first few appearing slowly, their numbers building until the star map looks like it's been engulfed in red.
"Oh crap," Rodney summarizes nicely.
"That's it. Bed. Now." John can barely hold back the sea of anguish that's been kept just out of reach since he'd first glimpsed Elizabeth on the video screen, and he knows it's about to all spill out and he can't do that here.
Rodney doesn't offer any resistance when John tugs on his arm and they walk together toward John's quarters.
"I can't help but feel like I failed." John says when the door slides shut. In the privacy of his room, to Rodney, he can finally say it. "I was hoping that we could save her. Somehow."
"Another Hail Mary?" Rodney offers with a sad smile.
"Something like that." John sits on the side of his bed and removes his boots. "At least we had a chance to say goodbye this time. And she wasn't alone."
"Unlike last time. This time she had us, or at least versions of us."
John watches as Rodney walks around his room, stopping to straighten a corner of a picture, or pick up a shirt that one of them had left on the floor. This is a ritual he's witnessed before, it's the way that Rodney winds himself down from impossible situations.
"That had to be a comfort, for all of them, to be with one another in the end."
John's faced death before, more times than he cares to count, and almost always alone. He remembers watching Rodney slip away, his body dying as he grew closer to Ascension, and the peace that seemed to touch him as he'd been surrounded by his friends. John hopes the last moments of the other team's lives were closer to Rodney's experience than John's.
"I can't...I can't think about it right now. If I do, I'm going to break apart. And if I do that, I'm afraid I won't fit back together."
Rodney sits on the corner of the bed, his shoulders slumped, his elbows propped on his knees with his hands hanging down. The look of exhaustion, heartbreak and defeat is radiating from almost every molecule and John feels a sympathetic ache, a hurt that mirrors the one Rodney's feeling. He wonders suddenly if the other them had found their way to one another. Back then, when they'd first been to Asuras, when Oberoth and the other had probed their minds, they'd hadn't yet reached this place where their secrets had been laid bare, where the want to reach for one another was permitted.
He hopes that they did.
He hopes that the other John had one day grabbed Rodney and kissed him, or that the other Rodney--that John's Rodney--had barged into John's room and presented a case for why they belonged together. And no matter how many times the Replicators had reset them, wiped their memories clean, that they'd always found a way back together. He hopes that the other Rodney had known how much he was loved.
John wishes that for his other self, but the answers to those questions are not something he will ever know, they are things he can't change. What he can do is to make sure this Rodney, his Rodney, knows.
"Hey," John says, moving down the bed until he's kneeling behind Rodney. He slides his hands over Rodney's shoulders and leans forward, pressing his forehead and nose against the back of Rodney's head.
"First Carson, then Elizabeth--twice," Rodney says, his voice breaking. He reaches up and wraps his fingers around John's. "I didn't think it could hurt so much."
John knew, but even with that knowledge, he also knew that it didn't mean it hurt any less.
"My mom died before I even knew she was sick." John tightens his hold on Rodney's shoulders when he feels Rodney start to turn. It's easier to talk about it this way, the words don't dry up in his throat. "My father took it as a personal affront that I chose the military rather than going into business with him like my brother did. We were never a really close family but when I left. . . Anyway, she'd been sick, had gone into remission, and then I guess it came back. I didn't know until she was gone and my brother called me."
"Why didn't they tell you before it was too late?" There's an indignation in Rodney's tone that makes John's heart squeeze.
"Spite." John tightens his hold even more as he can feel the anger surge through Rodney. "Not really. I think it was easier that way. I guess I should be happy they called me at all."
"That's just wrong." Rodney says, this time not letting John keep him in place. He turns and looks John in the eye before pulling him into a tight hug. "And the logic doesn't hold up at all. I'm sorry. And they're assholes."
"At least we had the chance to say goodbye to Elizabeth this time. Even if it wasn't our Elizabeth." John closes his eyes and rests his chin on Rodney's shoulder. "Ronon took it pretty hard."
"So did Radek. He ended up just leaving his glasses off for a while. We've all lost her."
"Yeah."
The exhaustion hits John like a tidal wave, utterly and completely and dragging him down before he knows what's hit him.
"You were right," he says, loosening his hold on Rodney.
"Of course I was." Rodney grins. "What was I right about?"
"It's past my bedtime."
Rodney's grin becomes a smile and he leans in. Their stubble makes a soft rasping noise as they kiss.
John steals a final kiss before he climbs off of the bed and begins to undress. His pants, uniform shirt and t-shirt land on the seat of his desk chair, his socks are tossed into the laundry. On the other side of the bed, Rodney strips down to his boxers, folding his clothes and piling them on John's dresser. From one of the dresser drawers Rodney retrieves a t-shirt--his i > u t-shirt that Jeannie had sent with some equations she had been working on--and pulls it on.
The beds on Atlantis, while more than adequate for one person to sleep on, leave something to be desired when the occupancy number reaches two. Through trial and error, they've discovered that if John sleeps on his back and Rodney sleeps on his front, half draped over John, they can both fit comfortably on the bed as well as not wake up with sore joints and kinks in their muscles. Plus -- and John's favorite part -- it makes most things easily accessible.
They kiss unhurriedly, with no intention of progressing any further than this--to offer comfort, to say in action what they can't say in words, at least not yet.
There are countless Replicator ships searching the galaxy for Atlantis, the Wraith might currently be at war both with one another and with the Replicators, but John knows that sooner or later they're going to join in the hunt for Atlantis as well, and who knows what other boogie men are lying in wait, but for tonight, John's not thinking about any of that.
He's thinking about family and honor and how each and every person on Atlantis would die for each other. That's a bond stronger than blood, more powerful than any enemy they've faced. He's thinking of Elizabeth and his mom and how he knows that if something happens to himself or to Rodney, the other won't be left to go through it alone. He has a brother and a father who are a galaxy away in more than just distance. But here, on Atlantis, he has a family built on loyalty and love. Here, he has Rodney who he can lay himself bare to.
Rodney, who's currently drooling on his collarbone.
He wonders what Dave and his dad would say if John were to show up at their front door, on leave from another secret mission, with Rodney at his side. He likes to think his mom would have understood Rodney, would have appreciated his inability to be anything less than truthful and would have known how much he loved John.
He's made friends in war zones around the world, he's had others he'd been more than willing to die for, but Rodney, Teyla, Ronon, hell the entire population of Atlantis, they are his family. He'd told Teyla once that he'd die for any one of them and that was still true. But what he's learned in the days since, in the people lost along the way is that he'd live for any one of them as well. Especially Rodney.
And he knows deep down that truth is the greatest testament to what he's learned from both his mom and Elizabeth. And he knows they're both smiling at that.
**
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