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PART 4
“Mr. McKay!”
Rodney glanced up at the shout of his name across the bay. He had been half way through walking off the ship, having said his goodbyes to everyone. Well, everyone except one person, and he was rather sad he hadn’t been able to find him. However, as he glanced to see who it was, he figured himself lucky. He could only wait, tensed, as the flying bundles of energy bombarded him, tackling him around the waist and dragging him to the ground.
Ignoring the chuckling around him, Rodney pushed himself up on his arms and sort of sat in the dirt, Arnon II sprawled across of him.
“How dare you leave me without saying goodbye!” Arnon II berated him. “I would have thought that you’d known better. I wouldn’t have let you go without a goodbye, I was looking everywhere for you, but I couldn’t find you,” God, the kid talked a mile a minute. Rodney watched with a fond smile as he continued to babble about just what he’d been through to find him.
“Arnon,” He said, and Arnon II shut up. “I wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye. I looked for you too, but I couldn’t find you.” Rodney told the boy. For some reason, there was a warm feeling in his chest when he saw Arnon’s face light up and got hugged again. Rodney had never been too fond of children - he found them far too whiny and other stuff that just generally annoyed him. But somehow, Arnon had got under his skin, and he was rather … fond of the boy. Not that he would ever let Sheppard see him like this.
“I’m going to miss you Mr. McKay,” Arnon said, once he’d stopped hugging the death out of Rodney. Rodney sighed and took a deep breathe. He hated getting all emotional and stuff.
“I’m going to miss you too, squirt,” He smirked at the nickname he’d given the boy, before gently pushing him off of him and getting up out of the dirt. Brushing it off, he turned to look at the Athosians. He saw a few that he recognised on the rare occasion that he came to the planet and he nodded to them. They nodded back. Then he turned back to face the ship. Arnon had gone and moved next to stand by his father, and looked hard to be holding back tears.
Rodney gazed at his farewell. Standing on the edge of the lift stood Leader Arnon and his son, Arnon II. To his left was Fighter Benedict, and to his right was Healer Paddy. They all looked rather tearful. If Rodney lifted his gaze up, he could see lots of people cramming to the windows and waving. He smiled sadly, sad to be leaving but glad to be finally on his way home, and waved to them all, but turning his gaze back to the four in front.
“If we never meet again, Rodney McKay, then may the faiths go with you wherever you go,” Leader Arnon said and Rodney bowed.
“It was an honour to be among your people, and I shall never forget it.” God, wasn’t that true.
“Goodbye,” And with that, the part of the ship that they stood on slowly starting to rise up. Rodney watched as they all slowly disappeared from sight, before stepping back. He hadn’t ever seen the ship from the outside before, and he found himself admiring it as it prepared to leave. The sleek, black sheen of it glinted in the morning’s sun, and it was large. It reminded him an awful lot of one of the ships from Star Wars, the death star. He had been a bit of a fan of Star Wars. Well, that was an understatement.
At least he had got rid of the figurines by the time he was 18, right?
There was a whirring noise and then the ship slowly took off. Feeling a deep sadness in his chest, Rodney couldn’t stop himself and he waved frantically at the retreating ship. He watched it as it became a small speck in the sky, before finally leaving altogether. Already he missed them. But he was one step closer to being home. Hesitantly, he reached up with one hand to grasp the necklace under his clothes. It pulsed in his hand, bright and warm. At least he had one thing to remind him of the time he was there. That it hadn’t been a dream.
“Dr. McKay?” Rodney jumped and spun around to look at him. The Athosians greeted him with friendly smiles. “It is good to see you again.”
“It’s nice to see some familiar faces as well,” Rodney admitted.
“Come with us - we have set up a room for you to stay the night. Then you can go and use the Stargate, as you call it, and go home to your own people,” they said. Rodney shook his head.
“I am touched.” He said. “But I have been away for nearly 5 months - my people think I’m dead. Now that I’m here, I can’t waste another second. I’m sorry.” He sounded sincere. The Athosians nodded.
“We have heard of your disappearance from Teyla. She was most distressed.” Rodney blinked. He had hoped that his friends would miss him, but there had always been a slight doubt that they didn’t miss him, and had a big party when he’d disappeared. He knew he wasn’t too popular within the people on Atlantis, but he had given up caring on that long ago.
“She was?” He couldn’t stop the hope in his voice. “What about the Colonel? Ronon? Are they alright? You’ve seen them!”
“They were most distressed. They were here recently, collecting the usual supplies,” The leader replied. “The Colonel and your large friend did not seem to be in the best of moods, no matter what we tried to do to help them.” The leader looked pretty sad at that. Rodney rolled his eyes.
“No duh. Obviously they had just lost an important friend, nothing that you would have done could have made them feel better.” As blunt as ever, Rodney thought to himself with an internal smirk. He had resisted the urge to even be slightly considerate. While it was weird seeing it on strangers faces, them being nice and all, it would be even weirder to not see the look of annoyance on the people he knew. So he had to get back into shape, and fast.
The leader looked slightly annoyed now, and Rodney breathed a sigh of relief.
XxX
Elizabeth Weir, leader of the people working in Atlantis, was tired.
Yes, tired was a good word. It could mean so much, or so little.
That was the only way she could describe herself - tired. There were many other descriptions for the word. Weary. Knackered. Exhausted. The word tired could be used on a variety of levels - you were tired, when you had no energy. You were tired, when you were tired of a person. You were tired, when you just felt like giving up. Wait. That one most likely came under no energy. Damn. She was the former one, of course. Although she may have got tired of some people before, that didn’t mean she was stupid enough to say it. Besides, it was only recently this ‘no energy’ thing had started to happen.
Damn you Rodney McKay, for going and dying and leaving me to deal with the consequences.
She glanced down at the work on her desk, and then at the piles on the corner. She sighed and shoved what she was working on away. She then placed her head in her hands, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply. As much as she wished to relax, she still one thousand other things she could be doing right at that moment. She couldn’t afford to take a rest, but she knew she would have to. Although she loved Atlantis base, there were times when she wished that someone else would deal with this.
But then she realised that usually, someone else had dealt with a lot of it, without her knowing, and she would feel even worse.
She stifled a yawn. Recently a team that had been out studying a deserted planet for anything useful had stumbled upon some items of the Ancients, and they had sent it to the scientists to be looked at. Of course, this had been the team that had always annoyed her, because they rambled off in their reports. With this new information, the usual 5 page report turned into a nine page report that was enough to put her to sleep twice over. Not to mention there were a few other team’s report she had to look over.
Damn you Rodney.
Once she was done with that, she had to speak to John Sheppard. He needed to reign in his temper and learn not to terrorize the scientists on his team. This would be the thirteenth one so far that he had sent to tears. Elizabeth couldn’t really blame him for acting that way, but she had to berate him anyway. She knew he missed his former scientist, and he didn’t want anybody else. That wasn’t allowed. She wasn’t looking forwards to the discussion, because John was a hard man to argue on a good day, and recently, he had been having his bad days regularly.
After that, she was certain something that needed her attention would crop up, lasting for a couple of hours, and leaving her to get in bed at 4am and wake up at 6am. She had never realised how hard it actually work without sleep, and her respect for Rodney McKay had gone up. A lot. But it was a shame that it was too late for Rodney to know that. He was the reason that all of this had happened. She would curse him, but then she would break her oath to never curse a dead man. For that was what Rodney was, after all. And that in itself was the reason why things in Atlantis had gone pear-shaped.
Why she only got 2-3 hours of sleep a night.
Why her favourite team had fallen apart.
Everyone was shocked at the loss of the arrogant scientist. Everyone had just assumed he would always be there, and had never considered he wouldn’t. He’d saved them in the life-death crisis, but when he had needed saving, they hadn’t been able to do so. His team had been hit especially hard, which was why they were currently in the situation they were in. They were distraught. She was too, but she was the leader. She had to be strong for her people. She had to help others as they cried, had to inspire them with confidence, show them that she wasn’t scared, that she wasn’t hurt, that she wasn’t tired.
Being tired was unfitting for such a person as her. She couldn’t be tired. She was the support pillar. There were many definitions for the word leader. The most prominent one was someone who led others. Who was in charge. Set an example.
She couldn’t set an example by crying every other day, now could she?
Damn you Rodney.
She hadn’t had more than 3 hours sleep a night for over a month now. Things had always cropped up, things she hadn’t even known even occurred. Situations within Atlantis, with the water system, the heating, the electricity - she had never realised just how much her scientists were doing for them until the main person who was responsible for fixing them went and got himself blown up on some stupid planet because he had wanted to save the rest of the team of scientists he had had with him, and for once, not cared about himself.
Her chief scientist. The arrogant, pompous, egotistical arse. The whiner, the complainer, the exaggerator. The smartest man she’d met. One of the bravest men out there. The honest, the blunt, the loyal. One of her closest friends.
He had many titles. Right now, all she could think of was his name. Rodney McKay. She had never realised just how much he did for Atlantis, how much he helped out, until he was gone. She hadn’t realised just how much time Rodney had spent putting Atlantis together. Things seemed to break every day. How had Rodney survived with that and on top of sending him out on off world missions, having him study the latest project, expect him to keep an eye on Atlantis base and help fix the latest life-death situation?
She had once questioned Radek about it. With a very sad look, he had told her that Rodney barely slept more than 2-3 hours a night. At the weekend he would get 4-5, and he had confided to Elizabeth that Rodney once told him that it was only because of the weekends and coffee that he made it through the rest of the week. Elizabeth had been horrified at how under appreciated Rodney really was. Sure he had complained, but that was about other things. He had never once complained about this.
As such, no one had known just how much he put into the Atlantis project.
No one had even thanked him, just expected him to keep on doing it, to keep on being there and fixing things and shouting at the scientists and making snarky comments.
Just expected him to be Rodney McKay - the grumpy, the hated chief scientist. And he hadn’t once complained.
Damn you Rodney.
It was light the next thing she knew. The sunlight was shining in through her window, but its position in the sky told her it was still early. She would look at her clock, but she remembered it was broken and therefore unable to tell the correct time. She’d always intended to get it fixed. She muttered a few unintelligible curses to herself, not able to move herself quite yet. She hadn’t realised she had fallen asleep until she woke up. She had missed out on valuable time to do paperwork. Damn.
She pushed herself up, whimpering at the pain in her back. The chair obviously wasn’t the best place for a sleep. She glanced at the paper in front of her and muttered a few more curses. She had drooled in her sleep. Double damn. She hastily wiped at the spot with her sleeve, but only succeeded in smudging the writing on the paper itself. That was not good.
She scowled. That had not been in the plan - she still had a ton of things to do that should have been done yesterday, along with everything else that was sure to pop up today. She yawned and reached inside of her desk for a brush. Pulling it through her hair, she managed to make herself look a bit better, although her clothes were still crumpled. That was a bummer. She’d have to change out of them soon.
Which meant moving.
Triple damn.
Suddenly, the crackling on her radio had her sitting up straight.
“Dr. Weir?” The voice of a young male came through the radio. Elizabeth knew him. Roger Heathlings, one of the newest people coming from in from the Deadalus. Bright, eager mind, but a bit over-exaggerating and childish.
“I am here,” She answered. She brushed away some hair from her eyes, listening to the engineer ramble his usual report. Truthfully, she couldn’t quite make sense of what he was saying, and just made noises in all the right parts, rather than her usual questioning. She needed coffee. Suddenly, the babbling in her ear cut out and she was left with silence. Concerned, Elizabeth yawned and tried to wake up a bit more. Where was the coffee when she needed it?
“Heathlings?” She prompted, glancing around her office for the coffee cup. It would be just her luck if someone had come and stolen the pot from her office.
“I think you should come see this,” He said and Elizabeth stifled a sigh. Of course. No coffee for her. No rest for the wicked. Quadruple damn.
“I’ll be right there, Weir out,” She finished and then turned off the mike. Stretching, she pushed herself out of the chair, grimacing as her neck and back protested. She rolled her shoulders and moved her head side to side, before wincing and deciding not to do that for awhile yet. Heathlings had only been working at the gate for a short time, and although he was knowledgeable, he had a habit for calling her out on problems to the gate that he thought were important. They weren’t.
It was times like this that she wished Rodney were around with some of that wit to snap the boy into shape. Yet another thing that Rodney should be around for, but wasn’t.
Damn you Rodney.
Exiting her office, she walked with a confident stride to the gate room. The only impression that something was wrong was the expression on her face as her back protested. Mental note: don’t sleep in that chair again. Not good for the body. “What is it Heathlings?” She asked, walking up behind him and stifling a sigh. The man took a hand away from his frantic typing, pointed a finger to a reading on the system, and then went back to frantically typing. Elizabeth frowned, stepping forwards.
Okay, so this was maybe a bit more important than the other calls. This was her luck - the one time it was something important, she was most likely only operating at 50 percent of her usual self. She shook her head to wake her up and bit her lip in thought. There was something familiar about that - something very familiar.
“Incoming data!” Heathling’s shout brought her out of her musings. She hurried over to his side, and watched as he fiddled with a few things. “Ma’am, its planet 5TY-55R, they have sent us a message.”
5TY-55R … that was the Athosians. How did they know how to dial the gate? Why would they dial the gate?
“Hold it,” She said, and then got her radio. “Teyla, please come to the control room,” she asked.
“I am on my way,” Teyla’s response came, after a pause and Elizabeth had called for her again. However, her voice was thick with sleep, and Elizabeth couldn’t help feeling guilty.
“I am sorry to disturb you,” She apologised.
“Do not worry. I was going to get up soon anyway,” Teyla reassured her. “I shall be there in a bit. Teyla out.” Elizabeth nodded, although it couldn’t be seen. She didn’t want a half-asleep Teyla to come into the room, dressed in her sleeping clothes and looking different than Elizabeth was used to her being. She would allow Teyla to shower and be at least half way decent. She wasn’t too much of a monster. Besides, a lot of normal, sane people who didn’t have her responsibilities were asleep. It was no surprise that Teyla was one of them, although Elizabeth knew she hadn’t been sleeping well.
None of their team had, really.
It was only about 20 minutes later that Teyla arrived in the room, giving off a calm presence. “What did you wish me for, Doctor Weir?” Teyla Emmagen asked, with a smile on her lips. For all appearances, she looked calm, composed, like nothing was wrong. Elizabeth knew her better than that. The smile on her face did not reach her eyes. The way she held herself was slightly different - it was more hunched, sadder. Her eyes were the worst, because they spoke of immeasurable sorrow. Elizabeth sighed. As much as Teyla protested, she was not alright. But Elizabeth couldn’t concentrate on that right now.
“Your home planet is contacting us,” she said and Teyla showed surprise.
“Do you know why?” She questioned, unable to stop a small smile from growing on her face. Elizabeth smiled faintly at the woman, knowing that Teyla often got homesick, although it was getting better. But the fact that her home planet was contacting her had got to have made her feel happier, especially when they had never done so before.
“They sent us a message, but I have yet to read it. I wanted to wait until you got here, in case you had an idea.” Elizabeth explained. “But I see that you don’t, so we’ll look at it together.” She turned around to look at Heathlings. “When you’re ready,” She told him and he nodded and hit a button, bringing up a message.
Doctor Weir
We wish to speak with you. Please open up a transmission with us.
Athosians
Short and to the point, Elizabeth mused. Next to her, Teyla was practically glowing. Elizabeth glanced at her, before looking back at Heathlings.
“Do it,” She ordered, and the man started to fiddle with a few things before stopping.
“Transmission signal sent … transmission accepted, connecting in 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … now.”
And then an image of the current leader of the Athosians appeared up on the screen. Teyla had once been their leader, but with her absence, they had elected one to take care of things while she was gone.
“Ah, Doctor Weir, it is a pleasure to see you again.” The leader greeted her. Elizabeth nodded back.
“It is wonderful to see you as well, Ennis.” She said.
“We were worried you would not get our message for awhile, but we are glad that you responded swiftly. This is a matter of greatest importance, but one I think you shall find pleasurable.” Elizabeth frowned as Ennis spoke, trying to make sense of them. During this time, Teyla stepped forwards.
“It is good to see you Ennis,” She greeted. Ennis turned to look at her.
“Teyla. It has been awhile,” he said cheerfully. “How are you?”
“I am well. Everyone here has been taking good care of me.” Teyla smiled. “And how are you?”
“We are well. We were recently struck with an illness, but we cured it quickly, with no one worse for the wear,” Ennis said. Teyla nodded, concerned, but glad that nothing bad had happened.
“What is this for?” Elizabeth said, deciding to re-gain control of the conversation and clear up a few questions. Ennis chuckled.
“I am sorry. I have forgotten that you are rather impatient,” he said, smiling. “We have something of yours that we wish to send back.”
“Something of ours?” Confused, Elizabeth shared a glanced with Teyla. “Did we leave something behind on our last trip?” Elizabeth had to ask. That would be the best thing that had happened since sliced bread. The teams forgetting their items or equipment on planets they had visited - by golly, that was such a good idea. She pinched the bridge of her nose, already mentally cataloguing which scientists it was most likely to be. Over half of them hadn’t seen the mainland, so that narrowed it down. But as far as she knew, there hadn’t been anything left behind.
Unless it was in that big mass of paperwork she hadn’t got to yet.
Bugger.
PART 5