Stay Awake, by benj_inbtw (amnesty 2007, ways to die, 38 minutes)
Title: Stay Awake (PG)
Author: benj_inbtw (billie)
Summary: Maybe he just watched a western too much, read one cowboy comic too much, but still, it's what he's always wanted for himself.
Notes: ~460 words, gen, no spoilers, post-S4. Written in 38 minutes and posted just in time, which means it's unbetaed (so please point out all the grave errors that are bound to be in this). Not mine, just playing with 'em.
McKay has been dead for two and a half years now. Gardener, three years and one month. Teyla, eight months and two weeks. Zelenka and Lorne, one year and seven months. Elizabeth, four years. Simpson and Parrish, five weeks. Joaquin, half a year. Carson, four years and nine months.
There was a time when he actually thought he became a soldier in order to avoid being left behind. One of those damn shirts was enough to last him a lifetime. Now that he's older and wiser (and isn't it weird that he can say this about himself, because he never thought he would) he wonders how and when he had the time and patience to fit such a massive amount of stupidity into his head.
Mostly, Sheppard goes about business as usual. People here still need him, Atlantis wants him, and he knows he can only change things from where he is right now.
There is still a team with his name on it (or rather, he thinks affectionately, a team that uses him and the gene to get a VIP ticket to all the cool events in Pegasus) and even if it's missing two vital parts, it still functions, it's still his team; another one, but his nonetheless. And though there are bad dreams and guilt lurking in the corners of his room at night as well as in broad daylight, he still doesn't plan on dying deliberately or any time soon.
He has to admit, though, that places often feel emptier than they should and that it hurts like his chest is being ripped open when he sees a movement that could have been Teyla, hears a voice that might have been McKay's.
On some days he thinks back to when it all began, when all the world's dreams were still his to have, and he's proud that he didn't lose all of them along the way; otherwise, he probably wouldn't have made it this far. He gets to fly spaceships, there are people who respect him and goddamn, he lives in fucking Atlantis, City of the Ancients.
And no, it's not the same as if they were still around, all those people he's lost, but content means neither perfect nor happily ever after; and if he sometimes wishes things had gone differently, that's his problem to deal with.
Since he was a child, he's had this picture of himself riding into the sunset. Maybe he just watched a western too much, read one cowboy comic too much, but still, it's what he's always wanted for himself. A quiet exit, the loner slipping away unrecognized.
That's not how it goes, in the end. But it doesn't matter, then, because he doesn't care anymore, and nobody is around to tell him otherwise.