Fic: Inflated Frogs, Part Four
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Title: Inflated Frogs, Part Four
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Rating: borderline between R and NC-17
Word Count: ~18,700
Warnings: character death
Spoilers: Second half of Season 3, from The Return through Submersion
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
The infirmary room where the stasis units had been set up was a shambles: no lights, acrid smoke that burned the lungs, flashlights waving wildly, debris (some of it appallingly red and slimy) all over the floor.
"What the hell happened?" Rodney yelled as Beckett came into view hovering over a gurney. John had to look twice to realize the patient was Dr. Watson, bloody and oxygen-masked.
"I don't know," Beckett coughed, waving the nurses ahead with the gurney. "Hewston's dead. The explosion destroyed her stasis unit and damaged Dr. Watson's. We have five more injured, two of them badly. Dr. Torrenz is all right, but his unit lost power -- we have to get him out of there." He turned back into the smoke.
"How the hell did this happen?" Rodney demanded. "We confirmed that the tumors stopped growing under stasis."
"I know that, Rodney!" Carson's patience was apparently limited.
"I had scanners on all of them! Where's the computer that was monitoring the output?"
"Look for it yourself, man, I have patients to tend to." Carson joined Zelenka, who was holding a mask over his face and working on the one remaining stasis unit, scorched and scarred by shrapnel.
Rodney grabbed a flashlight from a passing Marine and played it over the other two stasis units -- a very gory one obviously destroyed from the inside out, and one blackened and partially caved in by the explosion. "The computer was right here," Rodney muttered to himself, standing in front of the destroyed unit. He suppressed a cough as he turned and played the flashlight over the opposite side of the room.
"There," John said, spotting a flash of plastic beneath an overturned metal table. He pulled the warped metal aside to reveal a very battered and dead tablet computer.
Covering his mouth with one hand against the smoke, Rodney crouched beside the computer as if it were an injured person too delicate to move. "Damn. It's not going to be easy to recover any data from this."
Carson turned to them as the medics started to wheel Dr. Torrenz away. "I checked the scans just a couple of minutes before the explosion," he said. "Dr. Hewston's tumour was less than 250 grams, hardly different than when we put her in there. How could this happen if the organ was still so small?"
"I don't know!" Rodney protested, cradling the dead computer carefully. He trailed after Carson out of the smoky room, and John followed.
"I think I know," said a new voice. Dr. Biro was standing in the doorway of one of the infirmary's other rooms. "The overflow has been set up in room five," she told Carson. "Dr. Cole is seeing to the other casualties. They're prepping room eight as an OR, since it's further from the others."
"Right, that's where we're headed, then," Carson said. "Make a display with the details of that procedure we were discussing; we'll have to make up the rest as we go." He hurried after the loaded gurney.
"You said you know what happened?" Rodney asked Biro.
"Yes, come in here," she said. The room was a lab, undamaged by the explosion except for some smoke lingering near the ceiling, eerie in the glow of the emergency lights. "Dr. Beckett and I have been reviewing what the database has to say about these growths, and I think I can extrapolate what happened." She typed quickly on one laptop, then turned it to face them. It had a schematic of something that looked a little bit like a misshapen heart. "The organs develop two chambers, which hold chemicals isolated from the blood and altered by some unusual enzymes. The chemistry of it is quite fascinating, actually. One chamber holds the fuel and the other holds an oxidizer, similar to nitrogen tetroxide --"
"We don't need all the details, Doc," John put in.
"Oh, right. Anyway, the oxidizer is quite corrosive. It gradually eats through the thin membrane that separates the two chambers, and when it combines with the fuel -- boom. That normally happens, as Dr. McKay found --"
John realized she didn't know that Dr. McKay wasn't really Dr. McKay. But he was trying not to think about that himself, anyway.
"-- about a kilogram," Biro was saying. "By putting the patients in stasis, we slowed down the heart rate and therefore the blood flow. The organ was unable to grow or to isolate more fuel. So the scans quite correctly showed no significant change in the mass of the organ." She pointed at the narrow line between the chambers in the picture. "But the oxidizer which had already been isolated continued to eat at the separating membrane. Eventually it broke through and the explosion happened on approximately the same schedule it would have if the patients hadn't gone into stasis, except with a much lower yield, of course."
"That was a low yield?" John demanded, thinking of the destroyed stasis unit and the damage to the room.
"Yes, it was -- maybe three or four times as powerful as a typical grenade, I'd say?" Rodney answered, looking up from his disassembly of the damaged computer. "Certainly not enough to severely damage a Wraith ship, which is what these things were intended for." He coughed and wiped at his smoke-reddened eyes. "Dammit, I liked Hewston! She had potential. She reminded me of myself, when I was -- younger," he caught himself just in time.
When he was a woman, John realized. "Yeah, shame you couldn't have swapped her into Torrenz's body before hers blew up," he drawled.
Rodney stiffened. "That's not funny."
"Wasn't intended to be." John glared at him.
Biro was oblivious to the byplay. "Dr. Beckett and I were working on a procedure for removing the organs safely. They have quite an extensive blood supply, considering how quickly it had to be grown. It will be tricky to remove them without the patient bleeding out -- especially in Dr. Watson's case, since he's already lost some blood. And of course, any pressure on the organ itself could hasten the dissolution of the membrane --"
"And boom," John finished.
"Exactly. Now, I have to get these plans up on a display for reference during the operations. Excuse me." She bustled out of the room.
Rodney had the hard drive out of the dead computer now. "This looks intact, at least. I might be able to get something off it." He started hooking up connectors between the hard drive and another computer that he must have just grabbed off someone's lab table. "So, uh, look . . . I get that you think I'm a different person now, but I'm not. I haven't changed."
"You changed years ago."
"Before we even met! As far as anyone on Atlantis is concerned, I'm still the same person."
"You never were the person I thought you were," John growled. "You've been lying to us all along!"
"It wasn't a lie! Not really. I am Rodney McKay now, as much as I'm anyone. Maybe I'm not exactly the man he would have been, but . . . I've been in this body, using this name, for half my adult life. Even if I had the chance to go back now, I . . . I'm not sure I could, or would want to."
"That's what worries me," John said.
"No, you don't get it!"
"Oh, I get it all right, Ingram. You weren't all that unhappy with the change, were you? I bet you were a tomboy as a kid. I bet kids called you 'dyke' in school, am I right? I bet you thought it was just great to have a chance to fuck your own body, and you weren't in any hurry to change back."
"Oh, so we're back to the sexual slurs again," he spat. "Only now I like having a dick too much? What happened to wanting to be fucked because I grew up female? Make up your mind, Sheppard -- am I a gay man, or a lesbian?"
"Dammit!" John gritted out, wishing the walls of Atlantis were punchable. He needed to do something to get his temper under control. "Look, this discussion is not helping anything. Why don't you just . . . get back to work."
"You want business? Fine." He started typing ferociously on the jury-rigged computer. "You know, they're going to need some pretty strong containment when those things come out. Chances are good they'll explode after removal, if not, um, during."
"You worry about your job, McK-- and let me do mine," John snapped.
He slammed the computer closed with a snarl. "Whatever you say, Colonel. I have to get this information to Carson." He carried the computer and salvaged hard drive down the hall toward the rooms where the victims of the explosion had been taken.
John strolled slowly in the same direction, controlling his voice with an effort as he called for an update on the progress of the explosives team. Standing at the intersection where the emergency lights ended and the normal lighting began, he could see Dr. Cole checking over one of the nurses who'd been helping out earlier, stitching a cut on her forehead. After a moment, John frowned. If that was room five . . . . He turned and looked down the empty hallway Rodney had just taken. Even as he was looking, the door to the hall slid closed.
"Oh, tell me he didn't," John breathed to himself. He waved at the sensor and it flashed yellow -- the Ancient sign for no access. He slammed his hand into the door. "McK-- Ingram! Open this door up right now!"
-----
Not surprisingly, Zelenka couldn't override the lockdown on the door, and given the reinforcement of Ancient shielding, it would take several hours to get through with cutting equipment. It seemed like a couple of lifetimes before anyone in the improvised OR would answer the radio. "Busy here," Rodney's voice finally snapped.
"McKay, what the hell are you doing in there?" John growled.
"Oh, so I'm McKay now? Does that mean you're not angry at me any more?"
"Why don't you come out here and I'll show you how angry I am?"
"Sorry, got work to do."
"What work? You're not a surgeon!"
"I found something in the records of those scans. It might be enough to give us some warning before the next explosion. Unfortunately, the data on disk was only being updated at one-minute intervals, so I can't tell if it's a minute of warning or five seconds, but it's better than nothing."
"Can't someone else do the scans?"
"Well, seeing how both Beckett and Biro are up to their elbows inside my scientists right now, and only one nurse insisted on staying to help them, that doesn't leave a lot of hands free for running a scanner."
"I can send in a volunteer with protective gear."
"It would take too long to explain what to look for. Anyway, I am a volunteer. They're part of my science team, you know."
"Is this about what Torrenz said? You realize no one believes him."
"Is that so? I had the impression you didn't believe me anymore."
"I . . ." John didn't know what to say to that.
"In one day, I've lost my name and reputation, maybe my job, and you -- your trust and, and friendship. So I might as well go all in and bet the farm, right? If nothing else, it proves this wasn't a plot to kill my scientists."
"No one thinks that, Rodney," John protested.
"Isn't that what you were implying earlier? I stole Rodney McKay's body, why not kill off all the witnesses as well?"
"Um, is this an open channel?" John asked weakly.
"Genius here, remember? All the headset signals go through a central control program. I encrypted this one."
" . . . Oh."
"So I'm in this until the bitter end. Might be my last chance to save Atlantis before I get shipped off, right?"
"Rodney . . ."
"Eh, what's that?" Apparently he was talking to someone else; there were sounds in the background. "Okay, hang on, Biro's almost done removing the tumor from Torrenz. Is that blast container ready?"
"There's a Marine waiting at the door."
"Okay, I'm opening the lock. He can come into the hallway."
John had an urge to run and slip through that door as soon as it opened.
"I'm not unlocking the OR. And I am watching lifesigns, so don't get any ideas."
"Dammit, McKay!"
"Okay, I have the box with the . . . thing in it. No warning signs from the scanner so far, but I have to move slowly."
"Someone else can carry it," John said.
"They're busy stitching."
There was a long wait, made worse by the fact that John kept trying to hold his breath.
"All right, I've made the handoff. It's in the containment vessel. I can't scan it in there, so I don't know how long it will take to --"
BOOM! sounded along the halls and over the headset.
"Oh. That was . . . a little closer than I wanted to cut it. Sounded like a bigger yield, too, but the blast container held. Um . . . are you still there? My ears are ringing."
John had to swallow twice before he could speak clearly. "I'm still here, Rodney."
"Right. I'm heading back to the OR. Watson seems to be taking them longer, I guess because he was bleeding so badly already. But they're both working on him, so maybe it will go faster now. You'd better get that second blast container into the hallway and ready to go. Scans are still okay . . . Carson, you're not squeezing that thing, are you? Don't squeeze it!"
Beckett's reply wasn't really audible, but John caught the sarcastic tone.
"Listen, uh . . . John. I'm really sorry if, um, if you feel like I deceived you or something."
"Never mind that now, Rodney."
"See, it wasn't my choice to keep it secret in the first place, and by the time I did have a choice a couple of years had passed. And it didn't feel like a lie."
"I get that, Rodney. Maybe I overreacted."
"Would it help if I let you call me Meredith? Or even Mer? I thought maybe . . . maybe that would help. If you want to, that's okay."
"Just forget about it, okay? Concentrate on your scans."
"The scans are . . . oh."
"What?"
"The scans are starting to change."
"Grab the doctors and get out of there!"
"No, they're almost done. They are done. Okay, okay, come on, just get it into the box and give it to me. He's not going to bleed to death in the next three seconds, is he?"
A faint beeping came over the headset.
"That's the warning signal, it's about to blow. Give me the box. No, just -- give me --"
John could hear Beckett yelling something in the background.
"Rodney, just throw the damn thing and get out of there!" he shouted.
"The yield is bigger, it might take out half the tower! I can get it to containment, just tell your man to get out of the way!"
"You get out of the way!"
"Almost there, I -- oh shit --"
BOOM!
-----
John's back hit the mat again -- hard -- and he groaned up at the ceiling. At least the flag was still under his butt, so Ronon hadn't gotten it. "Don't your people have any customs that don't involve beating the crap out of each other?" he griped breathlessly.
In his quarters afterward, with the sweat washed off and an ice pack applied to his aching head, he watched Ronon fidget with the tab of a beer can for several minutes before saying, "Why were you so mad at McKay?"
"What? I wasn't mad at him."
"Yes you were. I saw it."
"Okay, look . . ." John sighed. "I can't really tell you, all right? It involves some secrets that aren't mine to give away."
"Weir already told us."
"What?"
"She called me and Teyla into her office and explained the whole story about the body-swapping . . . thing. Said McKay wanted her to."
"Oh."
"So?"
"So, what?"
"Why did that make you mad at him?"
"Well, doesn't it bug you?"
Ronon shrugged. "Not really. Should it?"
"Finding out he wasn't always a man?"
"Teyla's not a man. Doesn't seem to matter when she beats you up."
"That's different. Rodney's not . . . he wasn't who he said he was!"
"He was the same as I ever knew him. Why should something that happened before I met him bother me? 'Specially since it was an accident."
"He lied to us. To me!"
"So? You people lie all the time."
"What? No, we don't."
"You lied to me just a minute ago, when you said you weren't mad at him."
"That's different."
"No, it's just the same. You think emotions are ugly and messy, you think you have to keep them hidden all the time and be professional -- but you can't do it forever. So it all comes out as anger." Ronon quirked an eyebrow. "I know a lot about being angry."
"I don't see what that has to do with McKay lying about who he was!"
"Doesn't it? You weren't honest with him, so why should he be?"
"I never lied to McKay! Not about something important like that."
"You didn't tell the whole truth, either, did you?" Ronon eyed John keenly. "On Sateda, if we wanted someone, we'd tell 'em so. Not stand around and watch while they date someone else and pretend we don't care."
"Is that what you did with Teyla?" John shot back.
Ronon just shrugged again, letting the jibe roll off. "I told her I was interested. She said it wouldn't work out. I disagreed. Maybe I'll get her to see it my way someday, maybe I won't. But at least I'm up front about it."
John shook his head. "It's different. McKay lying about who he was . . . it's not the same thing."
"Why? Because you were fucking him?"
John winced. "You know you're not supposed to talk about that, right?"
"Figured you knew about it already," Ronon said drily.
"Okay, fine, if that's what you want to hear, it matters because it affects what we do . . . what we did together. I want to know who I'm really sleeping with, okay?"
"And maybe he wanted to know someone really cared before he told all his secrets."
"Well, you know, that being up front thing only works if both people do it."
Ronon just raised an eyebrow.
John's words played back in his head and he felt his face grow warm. "Fine, so maybe we both made mistakes. But that's all over now, so can we stop please talking about it?"
"Don't know. Can you stop thinking about it?" Ronon asked sharply.
It was true, John thought about it a lot, and it bothered him. He was haunted by the image of Rodney in the infirmary, dazed and lonely and hurting. He'd asked John a couple of times if Elizabeth would be letting him stay on Atlantis, if there would be any disciplinary action taken for concealing the events at Area 51. But he hadn't asked the question that hung between them with every silence that fell.
If he had asked, John couldn't have answered. He couldn't really put words to what he was feeling, the sense that everything that happened between them had been false, a flimsy structure undermined by that one sin of omission. And he wasn't ready to try to describe the other half of it, the growing suspicion that if he met the real Rodney McKay he would choose Rodney-nee-Mary in his place. And where could they go from there?
But was something that happened years before they met really a reason to give up what they had? No one else seemed to be bothered by it much.
"He's coming back tonight," Ronon said into John's reverie. "You better figure out what you're going to do about it."
-----
Rodney stepped through the wormhole looking far better than when he left. His eyebrows had grown back, his stubbled hair looked more like a military cut than a casualty, and only a few red patches remained from the burns on the side of his face. He was walking easily and carrying his luggage rather than pulling it, with no sign of discomfort from the metal fragments that had gouged his side.
"Welcome home, Rodney," Elizabeth said warmly.
Rodney kept looking around until he caught sight of John, watching from the balcony. "Oh, uh, thanks. Good to be back."
"How was your trip?"
"It was . . . um, well, sort of fraught. We should, um, probably discuss this in your office?"
"No rush. You can get settled in first." She looked around. "John will help you take your things back to your quarters."
John rolled his eyes at being assigned the role of bellhop, but he knew what Elizabeth was doing and appreciated it. He descended the stairs and reached for the heavier of the bags. Rodney tried to catch his eye and John gave a short nod of reassurance before leading the way from the control room.
"So how was it, really?" he asked when they reached Rodney's quarters and privacy at last.
"Pretty awful," he said, wincing. "Jeannie was . . . well, upset would be an understatement. She lost her brother, just when she thought she was getting him back, you know? And she was angry at me for not telling her -- seven years ago, six months ago, any time in between. I couldn't really argue with that."
"So what did she decide?" John asked. Elizabeth had resolved that they should let Jeannie have a say in what they would do about the name and reputation of Rodney McKay.
Rodney sat on the corner of the bed with a whuff. "She's letting me keep it. The name, the pretense, the whole thing. She said . . . she said I'd better win a Nobel in her brother's name, that's what she said. And I think she wants some nieces or nephews . . . um. I told her about how I offered to let you call me Meredith, if that would make you feel any better about it. But that won't work for her, since she always called her brother Mer. Actually, by the end of the visit she was calling me Rodney exclusively."
"And what about your family?"
Rodney shook his head. "There's just my brother, and he thought I died years ago. He doesn't have clearance to know about alien technology, and even if I could tell him he'd never really understand. I think . . . I think it's best to let him go on believing Mary Ingram is dead. It's not that far from the truth, anyway."
"Then there's the IOA," John concluded.
"Yeah. Well, fortunately we were able to recover most of the documents surrounding the death of Mary -- of, of my body. It corroborates what I said, and one or two people on the committee had prior run-ins with Colonel Simmons so they believed me about that. I got a reprimand -- and a pay cut, can you believe that? But they're not going to fire me, anyway. I think they think I'm too valuable to the expedition."
"They're right about that," John said, and it felt good coming out of his mouth.
Rodney blinked. "So . . . does that mean you . . . I mean, am I still on the team?"
John sighed and pulled the desk chair forward so he could slump into it. "If you want it, yeah, you're still on the team."
"If I --? Yes, yes I still want it!"
"Ronon said Elizabeth told them the whole story."
"I asked her to. I couldn't do it myself -- I mean, obviously I couldn't do it while I was on Earth, and I didn't really know if I'd be allowed to come back -- but I sort of chickened out and asked her to do it for me. Are they, um, okay with it?"
"They seem to be. We'll find out soon -- we've got a mission planned for a few days from now."
"Oh yeah? Anything interesting?"
John grinned. Rodney would like this. "How about an Ancient power generation station on the sea floor?"
Rodney's eyes widened. "Of what planet?"
"This one. Zelenka found it last week."
"We have to check it out!"
"We will. We wanted to give you time to get settled in again, read the database entries, that sort of thing. And get cleared medically, too." John sobered. "Beckett says you saved his life, taking that box out of his hands. But you nearly got killed yourself."
Rodney looked at the floor. "It was . . . it was the right thing to do. They were my responsibility. How are they doing, by the way? Torrenz and Watson?"
John shrugged. "Torrenz went back to Earth, didn't you hear? Elizabeth got him reassigned inside the SGC because he didn't have the 'temperament' for intergalactic exploration. Watson's still here, recovering okay, I think. He hasn't decided whether to stay or not, but I think he wanted Beckett overseeing his care because it would be too hard to explain to the doctors on Earth."
Rodney chuckled faintly. "He could be right about that." He stood and looked around the room vaguely. "So . . . I guess I should get unpacked, talk to Elizabeth -- oh, and I need to go see Katie, tell her I'm back."
"Don't." John stood up and caught him by the arm. "Don't go to Katie. Stay here." He looked down as his hand slid to grasp Rodney's and give it a squeeze. "Stay with me . . . Mer."
-----
Final note from author: Wondering about the title? It's from H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan:
Things are seldom what they seem;
Skim milk masquerades as cream.
(...) Storks turn out to be but logs;
Bulls are but inflated frogs.
Title: Inflated Frogs, Part Four
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Rating: borderline between R and NC-17
Word Count: ~18,700
Warnings: character death
Spoilers: Second half of Season 3, from The Return through Submersion
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
The infirmary room where the stasis units had been set up was a shambles: no lights, acrid smoke that burned the lungs, flashlights waving wildly, debris (some of it appallingly red and slimy) all over the floor.
"What the hell happened?" Rodney yelled as Beckett came into view hovering over a gurney. John had to look twice to realize the patient was Dr. Watson, bloody and oxygen-masked.
"I don't know," Beckett coughed, waving the nurses ahead with the gurney. "Hewston's dead. The explosion destroyed her stasis unit and damaged Dr. Watson's. We have five more injured, two of them badly. Dr. Torrenz is all right, but his unit lost power -- we have to get him out of there." He turned back into the smoke.
"How the hell did this happen?" Rodney demanded. "We confirmed that the tumors stopped growing under stasis."
"I know that, Rodney!" Carson's patience was apparently limited.
"I had scanners on all of them! Where's the computer that was monitoring the output?"
"Look for it yourself, man, I have patients to tend to." Carson joined Zelenka, who was holding a mask over his face and working on the one remaining stasis unit, scorched and scarred by shrapnel.
Rodney grabbed a flashlight from a passing Marine and played it over the other two stasis units -- a very gory one obviously destroyed from the inside out, and one blackened and partially caved in by the explosion. "The computer was right here," Rodney muttered to himself, standing in front of the destroyed unit. He suppressed a cough as he turned and played the flashlight over the opposite side of the room.
"There," John said, spotting a flash of plastic beneath an overturned metal table. He pulled the warped metal aside to reveal a very battered and dead tablet computer.
Covering his mouth with one hand against the smoke, Rodney crouched beside the computer as if it were an injured person too delicate to move. "Damn. It's not going to be easy to recover any data from this."
Carson turned to them as the medics started to wheel Dr. Torrenz away. "I checked the scans just a couple of minutes before the explosion," he said. "Dr. Hewston's tumour was less than 250 grams, hardly different than when we put her in there. How could this happen if the organ was still so small?"
"I don't know!" Rodney protested, cradling the dead computer carefully. He trailed after Carson out of the smoky room, and John followed.
"I think I know," said a new voice. Dr. Biro was standing in the doorway of one of the infirmary's other rooms. "The overflow has been set up in room five," she told Carson. "Dr. Cole is seeing to the other casualties. They're prepping room eight as an OR, since it's further from the others."
"Right, that's where we're headed, then," Carson said. "Make a display with the details of that procedure we were discussing; we'll have to make up the rest as we go." He hurried after the loaded gurney.
"You said you know what happened?" Rodney asked Biro.
"Yes, come in here," she said. The room was a lab, undamaged by the explosion except for some smoke lingering near the ceiling, eerie in the glow of the emergency lights. "Dr. Beckett and I have been reviewing what the database has to say about these growths, and I think I can extrapolate what happened." She typed quickly on one laptop, then turned it to face them. It had a schematic of something that looked a little bit like a misshapen heart. "The organs develop two chambers, which hold chemicals isolated from the blood and altered by some unusual enzymes. The chemistry of it is quite fascinating, actually. One chamber holds the fuel and the other holds an oxidizer, similar to nitrogen tetroxide --"
"We don't need all the details, Doc," John put in.
"Oh, right. Anyway, the oxidizer is quite corrosive. It gradually eats through the thin membrane that separates the two chambers, and when it combines with the fuel -- boom. That normally happens, as Dr. McKay found --"
John realized she didn't know that Dr. McKay wasn't really Dr. McKay. But he was trying not to think about that himself, anyway.
"-- about a kilogram," Biro was saying. "By putting the patients in stasis, we slowed down the heart rate and therefore the blood flow. The organ was unable to grow or to isolate more fuel. So the scans quite correctly showed no significant change in the mass of the organ." She pointed at the narrow line between the chambers in the picture. "But the oxidizer which had already been isolated continued to eat at the separating membrane. Eventually it broke through and the explosion happened on approximately the same schedule it would have if the patients hadn't gone into stasis, except with a much lower yield, of course."
"That was a low yield?" John demanded, thinking of the destroyed stasis unit and the damage to the room.
"Yes, it was -- maybe three or four times as powerful as a typical grenade, I'd say?" Rodney answered, looking up from his disassembly of the damaged computer. "Certainly not enough to severely damage a Wraith ship, which is what these things were intended for." He coughed and wiped at his smoke-reddened eyes. "Dammit, I liked Hewston! She had potential. She reminded me of myself, when I was -- younger," he caught himself just in time.
When he was a woman, John realized. "Yeah, shame you couldn't have swapped her into Torrenz's body before hers blew up," he drawled.
Rodney stiffened. "That's not funny."
"Wasn't intended to be." John glared at him.
Biro was oblivious to the byplay. "Dr. Beckett and I were working on a procedure for removing the organs safely. They have quite an extensive blood supply, considering how quickly it had to be grown. It will be tricky to remove them without the patient bleeding out -- especially in Dr. Watson's case, since he's already lost some blood. And of course, any pressure on the organ itself could hasten the dissolution of the membrane --"
"And boom," John finished.
"Exactly. Now, I have to get these plans up on a display for reference during the operations. Excuse me." She bustled out of the room.
Rodney had the hard drive out of the dead computer now. "This looks intact, at least. I might be able to get something off it." He started hooking up connectors between the hard drive and another computer that he must have just grabbed off someone's lab table. "So, uh, look . . . I get that you think I'm a different person now, but I'm not. I haven't changed."
"You changed years ago."
"Before we even met! As far as anyone on Atlantis is concerned, I'm still the same person."
"You never were the person I thought you were," John growled. "You've been lying to us all along!"
"It wasn't a lie! Not really. I am Rodney McKay now, as much as I'm anyone. Maybe I'm not exactly the man he would have been, but . . . I've been in this body, using this name, for half my adult life. Even if I had the chance to go back now, I . . . I'm not sure I could, or would want to."
"That's what worries me," John said.
"No, you don't get it!"
"Oh, I get it all right, Ingram. You weren't all that unhappy with the change, were you? I bet you were a tomboy as a kid. I bet kids called you 'dyke' in school, am I right? I bet you thought it was just great to have a chance to fuck your own body, and you weren't in any hurry to change back."
"Oh, so we're back to the sexual slurs again," he spat. "Only now I like having a dick too much? What happened to wanting to be fucked because I grew up female? Make up your mind, Sheppard -- am I a gay man, or a lesbian?"
"Dammit!" John gritted out, wishing the walls of Atlantis were punchable. He needed to do something to get his temper under control. "Look, this discussion is not helping anything. Why don't you just . . . get back to work."
"You want business? Fine." He started typing ferociously on the jury-rigged computer. "You know, they're going to need some pretty strong containment when those things come out. Chances are good they'll explode after removal, if not, um, during."
"You worry about your job, McK-- and let me do mine," John snapped.
He slammed the computer closed with a snarl. "Whatever you say, Colonel. I have to get this information to Carson." He carried the computer and salvaged hard drive down the hall toward the rooms where the victims of the explosion had been taken.
John strolled slowly in the same direction, controlling his voice with an effort as he called for an update on the progress of the explosives team. Standing at the intersection where the emergency lights ended and the normal lighting began, he could see Dr. Cole checking over one of the nurses who'd been helping out earlier, stitching a cut on her forehead. After a moment, John frowned. If that was room five . . . . He turned and looked down the empty hallway Rodney had just taken. Even as he was looking, the door to the hall slid closed.
"Oh, tell me he didn't," John breathed to himself. He waved at the sensor and it flashed yellow -- the Ancient sign for no access. He slammed his hand into the door. "McK-- Ingram! Open this door up right now!"
-----
Not surprisingly, Zelenka couldn't override the lockdown on the door, and given the reinforcement of Ancient shielding, it would take several hours to get through with cutting equipment. It seemed like a couple of lifetimes before anyone in the improvised OR would answer the radio. "Busy here," Rodney's voice finally snapped.
"McKay, what the hell are you doing in there?" John growled.
"Oh, so I'm McKay now? Does that mean you're not angry at me any more?"
"Why don't you come out here and I'll show you how angry I am?"
"Sorry, got work to do."
"What work? You're not a surgeon!"
"I found something in the records of those scans. It might be enough to give us some warning before the next explosion. Unfortunately, the data on disk was only being updated at one-minute intervals, so I can't tell if it's a minute of warning or five seconds, but it's better than nothing."
"Can't someone else do the scans?"
"Well, seeing how both Beckett and Biro are up to their elbows inside my scientists right now, and only one nurse insisted on staying to help them, that doesn't leave a lot of hands free for running a scanner."
"I can send in a volunteer with protective gear."
"It would take too long to explain what to look for. Anyway, I am a volunteer. They're part of my science team, you know."
"Is this about what Torrenz said? You realize no one believes him."
"Is that so? I had the impression you didn't believe me anymore."
"I . . ." John didn't know what to say to that.
"In one day, I've lost my name and reputation, maybe my job, and you -- your trust and, and friendship. So I might as well go all in and bet the farm, right? If nothing else, it proves this wasn't a plot to kill my scientists."
"No one thinks that, Rodney," John protested.
"Isn't that what you were implying earlier? I stole Rodney McKay's body, why not kill off all the witnesses as well?"
"Um, is this an open channel?" John asked weakly.
"Genius here, remember? All the headset signals go through a central control program. I encrypted this one."
" . . . Oh."
"So I'm in this until the bitter end. Might be my last chance to save Atlantis before I get shipped off, right?"
"Rodney . . ."
"Eh, what's that?" Apparently he was talking to someone else; there were sounds in the background. "Okay, hang on, Biro's almost done removing the tumor from Torrenz. Is that blast container ready?"
"There's a Marine waiting at the door."
"Okay, I'm opening the lock. He can come into the hallway."
John had an urge to run and slip through that door as soon as it opened.
"I'm not unlocking the OR. And I am watching lifesigns, so don't get any ideas."
"Dammit, McKay!"
"Okay, I have the box with the . . . thing in it. No warning signs from the scanner so far, but I have to move slowly."
"Someone else can carry it," John said.
"They're busy stitching."
There was a long wait, made worse by the fact that John kept trying to hold his breath.
"All right, I've made the handoff. It's in the containment vessel. I can't scan it in there, so I don't know how long it will take to --"
BOOM! sounded along the halls and over the headset.
"Oh. That was . . . a little closer than I wanted to cut it. Sounded like a bigger yield, too, but the blast container held. Um . . . are you still there? My ears are ringing."
John had to swallow twice before he could speak clearly. "I'm still here, Rodney."
"Right. I'm heading back to the OR. Watson seems to be taking them longer, I guess because he was bleeding so badly already. But they're both working on him, so maybe it will go faster now. You'd better get that second blast container into the hallway and ready to go. Scans are still okay . . . Carson, you're not squeezing that thing, are you? Don't squeeze it!"
Beckett's reply wasn't really audible, but John caught the sarcastic tone.
"Listen, uh . . . John. I'm really sorry if, um, if you feel like I deceived you or something."
"Never mind that now, Rodney."
"See, it wasn't my choice to keep it secret in the first place, and by the time I did have a choice a couple of years had passed. And it didn't feel like a lie."
"I get that, Rodney. Maybe I overreacted."
"Would it help if I let you call me Meredith? Or even Mer? I thought maybe . . . maybe that would help. If you want to, that's okay."
"Just forget about it, okay? Concentrate on your scans."
"The scans are . . . oh."
"What?"
"The scans are starting to change."
"Grab the doctors and get out of there!"
"No, they're almost done. They are done. Okay, okay, come on, just get it into the box and give it to me. He's not going to bleed to death in the next three seconds, is he?"
A faint beeping came over the headset.
"That's the warning signal, it's about to blow. Give me the box. No, just -- give me --"
John could hear Beckett yelling something in the background.
"Rodney, just throw the damn thing and get out of there!" he shouted.
"The yield is bigger, it might take out half the tower! I can get it to containment, just tell your man to get out of the way!"
"You get out of the way!"
"Almost there, I -- oh shit --"
BOOM!
-----
John's back hit the mat again -- hard -- and he groaned up at the ceiling. At least the flag was still under his butt, so Ronon hadn't gotten it. "Don't your people have any customs that don't involve beating the crap out of each other?" he griped breathlessly.
In his quarters afterward, with the sweat washed off and an ice pack applied to his aching head, he watched Ronon fidget with the tab of a beer can for several minutes before saying, "Why were you so mad at McKay?"
"What? I wasn't mad at him."
"Yes you were. I saw it."
"Okay, look . . ." John sighed. "I can't really tell you, all right? It involves some secrets that aren't mine to give away."
"Weir already told us."
"What?"
"She called me and Teyla into her office and explained the whole story about the body-swapping . . . thing. Said McKay wanted her to."
"Oh."
"So?"
"So, what?"
"Why did that make you mad at him?"
"Well, doesn't it bug you?"
Ronon shrugged. "Not really. Should it?"
"Finding out he wasn't always a man?"
"Teyla's not a man. Doesn't seem to matter when she beats you up."
"That's different. Rodney's not . . . he wasn't who he said he was!"
"He was the same as I ever knew him. Why should something that happened before I met him bother me? 'Specially since it was an accident."
"He lied to us. To me!"
"So? You people lie all the time."
"What? No, we don't."
"You lied to me just a minute ago, when you said you weren't mad at him."
"That's different."
"No, it's just the same. You think emotions are ugly and messy, you think you have to keep them hidden all the time and be professional -- but you can't do it forever. So it all comes out as anger." Ronon quirked an eyebrow. "I know a lot about being angry."
"I don't see what that has to do with McKay lying about who he was!"
"Doesn't it? You weren't honest with him, so why should he be?"
"I never lied to McKay! Not about something important like that."
"You didn't tell the whole truth, either, did you?" Ronon eyed John keenly. "On Sateda, if we wanted someone, we'd tell 'em so. Not stand around and watch while they date someone else and pretend we don't care."
"Is that what you did with Teyla?" John shot back.
Ronon just shrugged again, letting the jibe roll off. "I told her I was interested. She said it wouldn't work out. I disagreed. Maybe I'll get her to see it my way someday, maybe I won't. But at least I'm up front about it."
John shook his head. "It's different. McKay lying about who he was . . . it's not the same thing."
"Why? Because you were fucking him?"
John winced. "You know you're not supposed to talk about that, right?"
"Figured you knew about it already," Ronon said drily.
"Okay, fine, if that's what you want to hear, it matters because it affects what we do . . . what we did together. I want to know who I'm really sleeping with, okay?"
"And maybe he wanted to know someone really cared before he told all his secrets."
"Well, you know, that being up front thing only works if both people do it."
Ronon just raised an eyebrow.
John's words played back in his head and he felt his face grow warm. "Fine, so maybe we both made mistakes. But that's all over now, so can we stop please talking about it?"
"Don't know. Can you stop thinking about it?" Ronon asked sharply.
It was true, John thought about it a lot, and it bothered him. He was haunted by the image of Rodney in the infirmary, dazed and lonely and hurting. He'd asked John a couple of times if Elizabeth would be letting him stay on Atlantis, if there would be any disciplinary action taken for concealing the events at Area 51. But he hadn't asked the question that hung between them with every silence that fell.
If he had asked, John couldn't have answered. He couldn't really put words to what he was feeling, the sense that everything that happened between them had been false, a flimsy structure undermined by that one sin of omission. And he wasn't ready to try to describe the other half of it, the growing suspicion that if he met the real Rodney McKay he would choose Rodney-nee-Mary in his place. And where could they go from there?
But was something that happened years before they met really a reason to give up what they had? No one else seemed to be bothered by it much.
"He's coming back tonight," Ronon said into John's reverie. "You better figure out what you're going to do about it."
-----
Rodney stepped through the wormhole looking far better than when he left. His eyebrows had grown back, his stubbled hair looked more like a military cut than a casualty, and only a few red patches remained from the burns on the side of his face. He was walking easily and carrying his luggage rather than pulling it, with no sign of discomfort from the metal fragments that had gouged his side.
"Welcome home, Rodney," Elizabeth said warmly.
Rodney kept looking around until he caught sight of John, watching from the balcony. "Oh, uh, thanks. Good to be back."
"How was your trip?"
"It was . . . um, well, sort of fraught. We should, um, probably discuss this in your office?"
"No rush. You can get settled in first." She looked around. "John will help you take your things back to your quarters."
John rolled his eyes at being assigned the role of bellhop, but he knew what Elizabeth was doing and appreciated it. He descended the stairs and reached for the heavier of the bags. Rodney tried to catch his eye and John gave a short nod of reassurance before leading the way from the control room.
"So how was it, really?" he asked when they reached Rodney's quarters and privacy at last.
"Pretty awful," he said, wincing. "Jeannie was . . . well, upset would be an understatement. She lost her brother, just when she thought she was getting him back, you know? And she was angry at me for not telling her -- seven years ago, six months ago, any time in between. I couldn't really argue with that."
"So what did she decide?" John asked. Elizabeth had resolved that they should let Jeannie have a say in what they would do about the name and reputation of Rodney McKay.
Rodney sat on the corner of the bed with a whuff. "She's letting me keep it. The name, the pretense, the whole thing. She said . . . she said I'd better win a Nobel in her brother's name, that's what she said. And I think she wants some nieces or nephews . . . um. I told her about how I offered to let you call me Meredith, if that would make you feel any better about it. But that won't work for her, since she always called her brother Mer. Actually, by the end of the visit she was calling me Rodney exclusively."
"And what about your family?"
Rodney shook his head. "There's just my brother, and he thought I died years ago. He doesn't have clearance to know about alien technology, and even if I could tell him he'd never really understand. I think . . . I think it's best to let him go on believing Mary Ingram is dead. It's not that far from the truth, anyway."
"Then there's the IOA," John concluded.
"Yeah. Well, fortunately we were able to recover most of the documents surrounding the death of Mary -- of, of my body. It corroborates what I said, and one or two people on the committee had prior run-ins with Colonel Simmons so they believed me about that. I got a reprimand -- and a pay cut, can you believe that? But they're not going to fire me, anyway. I think they think I'm too valuable to the expedition."
"They're right about that," John said, and it felt good coming out of his mouth.
Rodney blinked. "So . . . does that mean you . . . I mean, am I still on the team?"
John sighed and pulled the desk chair forward so he could slump into it. "If you want it, yeah, you're still on the team."
"If I --? Yes, yes I still want it!"
"Ronon said Elizabeth told them the whole story."
"I asked her to. I couldn't do it myself -- I mean, obviously I couldn't do it while I was on Earth, and I didn't really know if I'd be allowed to come back -- but I sort of chickened out and asked her to do it for me. Are they, um, okay with it?"
"They seem to be. We'll find out soon -- we've got a mission planned for a few days from now."
"Oh yeah? Anything interesting?"
John grinned. Rodney would like this. "How about an Ancient power generation station on the sea floor?"
Rodney's eyes widened. "Of what planet?"
"This one. Zelenka found it last week."
"We have to check it out!"
"We will. We wanted to give you time to get settled in again, read the database entries, that sort of thing. And get cleared medically, too." John sobered. "Beckett says you saved his life, taking that box out of his hands. But you nearly got killed yourself."
Rodney looked at the floor. "It was . . . it was the right thing to do. They were my responsibility. How are they doing, by the way? Torrenz and Watson?"
John shrugged. "Torrenz went back to Earth, didn't you hear? Elizabeth got him reassigned inside the SGC because he didn't have the 'temperament' for intergalactic exploration. Watson's still here, recovering okay, I think. He hasn't decided whether to stay or not, but I think he wanted Beckett overseeing his care because it would be too hard to explain to the doctors on Earth."
Rodney chuckled faintly. "He could be right about that." He stood and looked around the room vaguely. "So . . . I guess I should get unpacked, talk to Elizabeth -- oh, and I need to go see Katie, tell her I'm back."
"Don't." John stood up and caught him by the arm. "Don't go to Katie. Stay here." He looked down as his hand slid to grasp Rodney's and give it a squeeze. "Stay with me . . . Mer."
-----
Final note from author: Wondering about the title? It's from H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan:
Things are seldom what they seem;
Skim milk masquerades as cream.
(...) Storks turn out to be but logs;
Bulls are but inflated frogs.