SGA Fic: Distance From Here to Wherever You Are (3/4)
Distance From Here to Wherever You Are (part 3)
( part 1) ( part 2) ( part 3) ( part 4)
The memory of Atlantis grew less painful as each year went by. Elizabeth settled back into the world of international, not intergalactic, diplomacy, and guest-lectured at Georgetown University when she wasn't proctoring meetings on global warming in Japan or trying to broker some form of shaky peace in the Middle East. After the living pulse of Atlantis her townhouse in Georgetown felt barren, lifeless, almost skeletal - but that was something else she'd managed to get used to.
Initially she had tried to hold the Atlantis team together - arranging reunions, sending emails and Christmas cards - but over the years it began to feel more and more artificial. With members spread out from Canada to Scotland to Japan with missing pieces still in the Pegasus Galaxy, each reunion felt more a mourning of what they'd lost than an effort to continue friendships with increasingly less in common. Eventually it deteriorated into the occasional postcard from Prague or detour to Scotland while attending meetings in London. Messages from Canada were few and far between.
So when she was woken at six a.m. by a furious pounding on her door, the last thing she expected was to see Rodney McKay peering through the glass, holding a copy of The Washington Post in a futile attempt to block the deluge of rain. She must have waited a little too long looking at him through the curtain, for when she opened the door he plowed in like a personal rainstorm, handing her the newspaper and stammering, "I thought you weren't going to let me in," as he dripped in her entryway.
"You'll forgive me, Rodney," she sighed, placing the sodden, ink-smeared mess on the boot tray. "It's been a long time since an astrophysicist decided to wake me up at the crack of dawn."
"Yes. Well, I was in the area," he commented, rubbing the water out of his thinning hair. "The University of Maryland asked me to come enlighten their physics students on the newest wonders of subspace theory, and while I doubt any of them could even grasp the simplest concept of what I had to say, I did manage to draw a full lecture hall."
"Good for you. And don’t think I'm not glad to see you, but why are you dripping on my floor at six in the morning?"
“The faculty sponsored a reception - quite good actually - with those little crabcakes and shrimp and those cheeses they curl just right on a toothpick. It was at the Air and Space Museum and I kept looking at all the planes and spaceships and I spent all night walking around D.C. thinking and - you said he’d been transferred here now?”
Elizabeth didn’t have to ask whom Rodney was talking about. They’d kept John at SGC for several years and brought in the best neuroscientists in the galaxy to look at him. Carson, out of his specialty, had hovered longer than he should have. They all shared the bitter taste of his defeat when he’d finally returned to Scotland. SGC worked a little longer, ensuring there would be no intelligence leaks before finally releasing their patient.
Elizabeth nodded, ushering Rodney into her kitchen and handing him a towel. “A few years back. He's at a VA medical center about two hours north of here. I’ve seen him a few times. I take it you haven’t made it out there yourself?”
It had been a long time since she’s watched Rodney hunt for what to say, and Elizabeth recognized an underlying guilt in his eyes. “I don't like seeing him like that. I don't think he'd want me too." Rodney focused on some spot twenty feet beyond her left shoulder. "Can you take me?"
For a minute the suddenness, the audacity of this last-minute request startled her, but she owed each of these men her life several times over and the answer was easy. “Sure. I can have someone else cover my lecture today. I’ll have to call some people. Make yourself at home and I’ll be back in a bit.” He was rummaging through her refrigerator before she was out the door and calling out to ask where her coffee was before she’d reached the top of the stairs.
Soon Elizabeth found herself battling D.C. morning traffic with Rodney in the passenger seat prattling on about some new physics research he was conducting. She looked up when she caught Zelenka’s name somewhere between anti-neutrinos and Schrödinger's cat. “Rodney, did you just say you’re collaborating with Dr. Zelenka?”
“Yes, well, it turns out he’s the only scientist in academia who can almost keep up with me. I must have worn off on him a bit in Atlantis. College students seem to like the chance to visit other places so we collaborate and allow students to go on exchanges between our labs. I send fearless Canadians into the Czech Republic and he sends his best students to McGill so I can properly educate them.”
“McGill?”
Rodney squirmed a moment and addressed the rain out the window. “It’s near Jeannie. Did you know I have a godson now? Robby is only four and he's already drawing integrals with his finger paints. And Bradley just had his first piano recital and Madison won her school science fair.”
Elizabeth grinned. “I’m not surprised. With a brilliant mother and your influence on top.”
“I suppose I should ask what you’ve been up to. I notice Israel and Palestine are still fighting so you haven’t had any luck there," Rodney commented. "Did you ever manage to track down that Simon fellow again?’’
"I…we tried for a while. But there's too much I couldn't tell him about and it just didn’t work." She'd spent two months folding and unfolding the paper with Simon's new number before she'd finally called and found him single. They had tried but after the initial rush the silences between them only grew. One morning she woke and he was gone. She never bothered to look. "You're right, we haven't had a lot of success in the Middle East but SGC has called me back to re-negotiate with the Asgard. I don't think Hermiod misses you."
Rodney gave a disgusted snort and soon fell back to telling her about physics. Rodney’s science was no longer life or death for her, and she found she could tune him out. His voice was almost as soothing as the rain on the car roof. When they passed the NSA he switched briefly to his summer working there in college and the idiot mathematician they put in charge of him, but thankfully he talked himself to sleep just before the Goddard Space Flight Center so she didn’t have to hear about whichever NASA scientist tried to go toe-to-toe with Dr. Rodney McKay.
When the car reached the long bridge that spanned the meeting of the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay, Elizabeth gently nudged Rodney’s shoulder. “Wake up, McKay, we’re almost there.”
Rodney jolted awake and momentary confusion darted across his eyes. He looked out over the bridge - the expanse of water stretching to the morning mist. “At least he’s near water. He’d want that. Though it doesn’t compare to Atlantis’s ocean.”
“Nothing could,” Elizabeth commented, turning into the sleepy town and curving around towards the VA medical center. Rodney was fidgeting in the passenger seat. "Rodney, you haven't seen John since you left SGC, have you?"
"I told you, I didn't want to see him like that," Rodney pointed out, then looked over at her. "Is he bad?"
Elizabeth shook her head. "In some ways, yes. But I’m not convinced he isn’t still there somewhere. You weren’t there but he was fighting it right until the end. Sometimes, when I visit, I think he almost recognizes me. And just because you’re scared doesn’t mean you didn’t owe him a visit.”
“I’m visiting him now, aren’t I?” Rodney snapped. Elizabeth slowed down as they drove onto the VA property, greeted first by a small village of dilapidated houses. Rodney couldn’t hide his disgust. “This is how your country treats its veterans? What are these, leftovers from World War II?”
“Actually, they were built a little before that. The hospital isn’t much to look at, but it’s a good mental facility and they wanted John near somebody who’d visit,” she told him as they left the village and headed toward a cluster of old buildings huddled together against the grey day.
Elizabeth navigated the car into a spot near a white building covered in pockmarked stucco. The sweeping porch would be at home in a Southern plantation, and several patients sat in wheelchairs under the overhang, watching the choppy waters. Rodney made no attempt to unbuckle his belt after she turned the engine off. “You know, it’s not too late to turn back.”
“Rodney McKay. You woke me up, you made me reschedule a lecture, and you made me drive you up here. I’m not leaving until you’ve seen him. You owe him that much.” Rodney almost looked like a petulant child and for a second Elizabeth imagined him throwing a temper tantrum as she got out of the car.
Three steps away she heard the other car door slam behind her. Rodney's voice called out, quiet and raw, "My father had Alzheimer's."
It was probably the one thing McKay could say that would get her to stop walking. She turned and faced him. "What?"
Rodney stood with the car between him and Elizabeth, studying some imperfection on the car's roof. "He was a physicist and always wanted to make the next great discovery, but he missed out on the Manhattan Project and then I was born and he had to become a teacher to feed the family. Instead he lived through me and Jeannie - buying us electronics sets, teaching us mechanics at the kitchen table. But he started forgetting Einstein and Tesla and Planck and then he started forgetting us and then he forgot himself." Rodney looked up at Elizabeth and she saw a nakedness in his eyes she'd never seen before. "I can't think of anything more terrifying than what they did to Sheppard."
"I know, Rodney. But you still owe him a visit. C'mon, it won't be that bad. Easier than most of our days on Atlantis - no one will be bent on killing you." Elizabeth smiled and held out a hand, gently propelling Rodney toward the door.
The nurse who took them down the labyrinthine hallway was young and chatty and managed to render McKay somewhat tongue-tied. “Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard is one of the youngest patients on this ward. We’ve got mostly older veterans who have senior dementia and Alzheimer’s. Of course there’s some from the more recent wars - Iraq mostly - who are being treated for PTSD. We keep the more violent ones in another building. Sheppard is definitely one of our favorite patients - hardly ever gives the nurses any trouble.”
She opened the door to a room and announced cheerily, “Johnny, some of your friends are here to see you!”
Rodney opened his mouth at the “Johnny,” clearly ready with some clever retort, but closed it again when he looked into the room. It looked like any nursing home - a standard hospital bed with not-so-standard arm restraints next to a sink with one of those unbreakable mirrors they put in psych wards. A large window displayed the Bay and a solitary sailboat braving the choppy waters.
The man in the wheelchair half-looking out the window could not have been more clearly John Sheppard. Or more clearly not. His hair was graying, particularly at the temples, around the face, and most of his full beard. His eyes stared unfocused out the window at the sky or the water or the boats or nothing. On his lap was a lunch tray and in his trembling hand a spoon that seemed to have succeeded in getting applesauce nearly everywhere but his mouth.
“Oh, Johnny,” the nurse scolded, removing the tray from his lap and mopping his face with a damp towel. “Your friends are here to visit you! We can’t have you entertaining guests with applesauce on your shirt, now can we?” she asked, in a voice so saccharine Elizabeth could practically feel Rodney flinch. “Johnny still has decent motor skills and he can obey commands, but he doesn’t ever think to do things himself. The doctors say it’s good therapy for him to feed himself, but sometimes it gets a bit messy,” the nurse explained as she opened a drawer in the small dresser and removed a black turtleneck.
“Okay, Johnny, arms up.” Obedient as a puppet, John raised his arms and the nurse removed his dirty shirt. Elizabeth couldn’t believe how thin he’d gotten -she could nearly count his ribs from across the room. The scars on John’s body stood out in stark relief on the pale skin. Some of them she recognized from Atlantis missions, but others had origins she could only guess. Wraith feeding marks still stood out prominently on his chest.
Before long the nurse left with a quick, “Bye, Johnny! Have a good time with your friends!” and Elizabeth was left with an obviously uncomfortable McKay shifting his weight beside her.
“John?” she asked, walking over to sit on the empty chair across from John’s wheelchair. “John, it’s Elizabeth. I’ve brought Rodney here to see you. He says he’s sorry he hasn’t come sooner.” John didn’t take his eyes away from their blank stare out the window. Elizabeth watched his face a minute and reached out to take his hand, repressing her shock at how old and boney it felt. His head snapped to her and she swore she saw a flash of recognition in his eyes before he returned to staring at the water.
“Sheppard?” Rodney’s voice was tentative, almost a whisper as he crossed the room. “John? I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I just…” Rodney’s words trailed off as he sat on the end of John’s bed. He looked helplessly at Elizabeth.
Elizabeth sighed and looked back at John. “Hey, John. We miss you. Carson called the other week. His wife just had a baby girl, so Michael is a big brother now. They named her Johanna after you, John. And Zelenka just won some big physics award and helped his nephew win the school science fair. And look, this time I don’t have to tell you about Rodney because he finally came to visit you.”
Elizabeth looked pointedly at Rodney, who coughed and looked down at his feet. “Rodney. You’ve come this far.”
“Yes, yes,” Rodney sighed. “Hi, Colonel. It's been a while and I'm sorry I haven't visited you sooner. Oh, and I'm sure Jeannie says hi too - it's your fault we're talking again, you know. I, uh…"
"Good morning, Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard! Are you ready for today's therapy?" a male voice shouted into the room, causing Rodney to jump about a foot in the air. Elizabeth turned to see a young-looking doctor in the doorway. "Oh, hello there. I didn't realize Colonel Sheppard had visitors. I'm Dr. Thompson," he greeted them, holding out his hand expectantly.
Elizabeth stood, rubbed her palm on her jeans, and shook his hand. "Dr. Elizabeth Weir." He had a firm handshake that paused for just a second when she said her title. Anyone who hadn't been frequently meeting with diplomats and playing games of chess over nuclear weapons probably would have never noticed. "I'm not a medical doctor - I'm in International Relations. I teach at Georgetown. And this is…"
Rodney interrupted her, standing up to take the doctor's hand, "Dr. Rodney McKay. Astrophysics and mechanical engineering."
Dr. Thompson's eyebrows rose at the introductions. "Quite the powerful room we have here," he joked. "Elizabeth Weir," he said pensively. "Colonel Sheppard doesn't have any kin listed. Were you a girlfriend who got away?"
Rodney gave a quick laugh and Elizabeth felt her cheeks redden. "Hardly. Rodney and I worked with John on a joint civilian-military project for several years before he…before he got ill." SGC never actually told her what the official medical story was for John but she was sure this doctor didn’t have high enough security clearance to know the truth of what happened.
His eyes lit up at this bit of information. "You were with him when this happened? In that case maybe you could help me. Would you mind coming to my office briefly?" His enthusiasm reminded her a little of when Rodney entered her office on Atlantis with some new Ancient discovery and she felt the familiar thrill of excitement. She nodded to Rodney and followed the doctor into the depressingly yellow hall.
"I've been trying to get them to repaint this building ever since I got here," he told her in a babble that could almost put McKay to shame. "Nothing worse than a depressing paint job in a mental health institution. But junior doctors don't get any pull. I've been working here a few months and I have to say John is one of the most interesting patients I've ever encountered. I'm hoping you can shed some light on a few things."
He opened a door to reveal a cramped office. A wooden desk was shoved into a corner and lit by an old-fashioned desk lamp. One bookcase was full of books and another of plastic tubs stuffed with enough art supplies to make a kindergartner drool. Most of the room was taken up by easels and a table surrounded by five chairs, and the walls were covered in artwork. Elizabeth first thought he must just be a proud parent, but when she examined it more closely she could see multiple hands at work. Most of it looked the work of six year olds but a few pieces showed more refined skill, or as much as could be had using kindergarten supplies on butcher paper.
"This is very impressi -" She stopped sharply in her perusal of the room. Tucked neatly behind the door was a piece apparently done with finger paint. The medium didn't allow for fine details and the finger wielding the paint was a bit shaky, but in the center was unmistakably a stargate - and the symbols sketched haphazardly around it were etched forever into her mind and the minds of her team - the gate address to Atlantis. "I assume you are a proponent of art therapy. This must all be your patients' work?" She prayed he didn’t notice the pause in her sentence, or the picture she was looking at when it happened. She'd worked with enough counselors to know it was unlikely.
"That's right," he said, stepping over to join her by the door. "Art used to be predominately used when treating children, but I find it can be an especially effective tool with adults too, particularly ones like your friend who show no other indication of communication. Some of these pieces date back to my earliest patients while I was still earning my degree and some, like this one here done by your friend," - he removed the stargate picture from the wall and handed it to her - "are more recent."
The paint was an electric blue and the stargate a simple circle with nine triangles skirting the rim. The gate symbols were scattered almost randomly across the page, some large and some small but unquestionably Atlantis. A smudge in the paint at the rightmost symbol showed a clear fingerprint left behind by the artist.
"John drew this?" she asked quietly, knowing the answer. The painting shook a bit in her hand.
"He did. It took me several sessions to get him to freely touch the paint and several more for him to actually put it to paper. This is the first drawing I've gotten out of him and it only happened last week. I was coming to get him to try again today when I found you," he explained, guiding her to a padded armchair and sitting across from her.
"The pictures you see on the walls are a representative sampling of what I usually see in my work. Most patients draw representations of what they see - people, places, nature - or fill the page with patterns and shapes or the occasional letters, numbers, and even words," he explained. "This piece Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard did is unique. These symbols are obviously important and yet they are nothing like any language or symbol I can find. I was hoping, since you worked with him, perhaps you could give me some insight."
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” Elizabeth shook her head and placed the painting on the table next to her. “I’ve traveled the world quite a bit and I speak several languages but I’ve never seen anything like this. How can you be so sure they’re symbols and not just random doodles?” Her long career in diplomacy had served her well in learning to keep calm while lying, and she prayed that she wasn’t somehow betraying John this time.
“For patients like we have here it’s rare for a drawing to have absolutely no meaning. Plus the way these symbols are designed - the symmetry and asymmetry and the arrangement - along with the deliberation John appeared have while drawing them - all indicate they are likely to have meaning.” He looked at her appraisingly. “It’s a shame you don’t recognize them - John is such a frustrating patient sometimes. He doesn’t seem to communicate or interact at all but I get the feeling he was a very intelligent man. I hoped perhaps we’d finally found a way he could talk with us.”
Elizabeth was silent for a long time, and then shook her head. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I can’t help you.”
She could tell he didn’t quite believe her but he smiled anyway and stood up, holding out his hand. "It was nice meeting you, Dr. Weir. And if you do think of anything, you will call me? You do understand we're all on Sheppard's side here."
After shaking his hand, she looked again at the painting. "Would you mind if I borrowed this?" He wordlessly handed it to her and she walked quickly out of his office. She had to show this to Rodney.
John's room was empty when she got there, but she looked out the window to see two figures at the water's edge. The waterfront wasn't far and John's wheelchair was parked next to a set of bleachers Elizabeth suspected must be popular with summer fishermen. The breeze coming off the water smelled faintly of seawater with the sour hint of crabs and pollution. John was standing up and leaning against the railing, his arms spread wide like a child imitating an airplane, disheveled hair ruffling in the breeze. Rodney was next to him, back to the water and eyes a million miles away.
"Rodney," she called as she got close. "You have to see this."
It wasn't hard convincing Elizabeth they shouldn't tell SGC about Sheppard's newfound penchant for finger-painting - she'd never trusted the military much more than he had. And it wasn't hard arranging a sabbatical at Princeton University - Dr. Simpson had been begging Rodney for a while to come by and yell the cocky Princeton undergraduates into shape. Rodney did have a little trouble convincing them to let him stay in Einstein's house, but the bragging rights were worth the extra effort. He secretly hoped to find some scrap of paper lost behind the heater with the key to Unification Theory. Hell, after everything he'd seen in the stargate program, he wouldn't be surprised to have Einstein's ghost visit.
During the week Rodney gave lectures to befuddled undergrads and seminars to equally clueless graduate students. He worked with the other professors on their research and sat in his office scribbling notes on wormhole theory and ideas for ZedPM construction. Each Saturday morning he'd climb into his car with a stack of papers and a handful of red pens and drive down to Maryland.
After not seeing Sheppard for six years, Rodney was surprised by how quickly they settled into a comfortable routine - though Rodney was certainly the more proactive participant. He'd try to arrive after breakfast so as not to have to watch the nurses clean up the mess Sheppard inevitably made. Rodney was pretty sure even his nephews hadn't been that creative with applesauce.
Rodney would greet Sheppard and the colonel would ignore him. He'd place some paper in front of Sheppard and finger paints at first but crayons, markers, colored pencils and even watercolors as the months rolled on. Sometimes Sheppard would draw right away, spending all day intent on the page with the tip of his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth. Other times he'd stare at nothing for hours and only draw in a sudden fury as the afternoon sun left the room. Still other days the paper would still be blank when Rodney left.
Rodney would sit and grade papers - covering them in a sea of red ink and destroying Ivy League egos with every pen stroke. At first he spent Saturday nights at the nearby creepy Ramada - more truck-stop, drug-dealing, prostitute-enriched hovel than hotel - but eventually one of the nurses took pity on him and pointed him to directions on staying at the guest house in the dilapidated village. Some weekends Elizabeth would join them with her own paperwork. Zelenka stopped by once, while he was in the States for a conference, and twice Carson came with pictures and stories of his kids, staying just long enough to express shock and hope about John's "recovery" and make them swear to keep him posted.
Sheppard never really paid attention to who did and didn’t visit. Rodney could find no discernable pattern to connect when Sheppard would draw and when he wouldn't. He always drew places - forests, deserts, mountain ranges, seascapes, sometimes cities - and the detail grew with each effort. Always, somewhere in the drawing, was a stargate. Sometimes it was front and center, a looming force dominating the drawing. Sometimes you could only barely see it, hidden far away behind the trees. But it was always there and Rodney had to consistently lie to Dr. Thompson about whether he knew what it was.
The last weekend of his sabbatical arrived like any other. The entire East Coast was smashed under the oppressive humid heat of late August, and the air conditioning in Rodney's car could only barely keep it at bay. He spent most of the drive on the phone with Jeannie, actually mostly promising Robby he'd be home for his first day of kindergarten. The McKay stubbornness had certainly not skipped a generation.
He settled John down, this time with colored pencils, and relaxed with the latest issues of Science. John was so intent on his drawing that he didn't look up when Elizabeth walked in around lunchtime and collapsed on the bed.
"Next time I think it's a good idea to let them seat me with representatives from both India and Pakistan during an arms-control summit, please shoot me," she murmured, covering her face with John's pillow. "How are you doing, Rodney?"
"Well, it looks like I'm going to have to write a letter to Caltech. Why they publish articles with math this blatantly wrong is beyond me - they have a peer review process for a reason," Rodney commented, flinging the journal onto the floor. "I'm fine - mostly packed and ready to head back to Canada where it isn't too hot to move. Robby spent twenty minutes making me promise to walk him to his first day of kindergarten. When did kids start liking me?"
"I honestly couldn’t say." Elizabeth lifted the pillow, smiled at him, and looked over to John. "He looks completely engrossed in his latest masterpiece - what do you say we go across the Bay and try to find somewhere with iced coffee? I have jet lag like you wouldn't believe."
"We should get some sandwiches while we're out - even I don't like the hospital food here. It's no wonder Sheppard got so skinny," Rodney remarked, leading Elizabeth out to his car. He shoved the journal articles covering the passenger seat onto the floor so she could sit and drove across the bridge.
Sandwiches and iced coffee acquired, Rodney tried to head back only to curse as they hit another strangely angled street that dumped them at the water. He finally thought he found the way out when Elizabeth grabbed his arm. "Rodney, look."
All he saw was the same old thing - a sleepy, tiny Maryland town with random shops and restaurants and piers along the Chesapeake Bay. "What?"
"See that sign." Elizabeth pointed. "They give rides in a seaplane. Do you think John would like to fly again?"
Rodney shook his head. He'd never liked flying and had only grudgingly learned to trust Colonel Sheppard in the puddle jumpers. "Are you kidding? That plane is probably over fifty years old and I don't think this place has a mechanic capable of keeping it flying. We'd crash into the Bay and drown. Trust me, Elizabeth, it's no fun to be trapped underwater in something that's supposed to fly."
"C'mon, Rodney, where's your sense of adventure?"
"I think I left it behind in the Pegasus Galaxy," he told her, finally finding the way out of town. The entire mile across the bridge she refused to let it drop, and by the time they made it back to Sheppard's building he grudgingly agreed, if only to shut her up about it.
They entered the room to find Sheppard exactly as they'd left him - face close to the nighttime forest scene he was creating. Rodney thought it was the most detailed he'd ever seen Sheppard draw. Elizabeth lay back down on the bed and told Rodney, "Wake me when Picasso finishes."
Sheppard spent most of the day on it. Rodney finished Science and moved onto Nature and then a grant proposal one of the professors had asked him to review. Every so often he'd look up to find Sheppard hard at work, adding details to the tree line and even constellations to the sky. By the time Sheppard finally put the pencils down and resumed his normal blank stare out the window, Elizabeth was up and reading some trashy romance novel she'd brought. Rodney secretly hoped she'd forgotten her planned adventure.
"Look, he's done," she announced, bouncing off the bed and kneeling in front of Sheppard's chair. "Hey, John, do you want to go fly in an airplane?" She took his lack of response as an affirmative and pushed Sheppard's wheelchair down the hall, beckoning Rodney to follow.
The seaplane was every bit as small and shaky as Rodney feared, but at least there didn't appear to be any parts ready to fall off. The pilot was ex-Air Force himself and it took little convincing to get Sheppard into the co-pilot's seat. They bounced three times off the water, and by the time the wings lifted them into the air Rodney's eyes were shut and his hands gripped his armrests so tight his knuckles whitened.
"Rodney, stop being a wimp and look outside. It's beautiful out there," Elizabeth scolded, punching him lightly in the arm. He tentatively cracked an eye open and looked out the window. Green hills lined the Chesapeake Bay and far below he could see sailboats and crab trawlers. The sun was nearing the horizon, setting a diffuse glow on the land far below. Unfortunately this didn't make the cabin feel any larger. He almost convinced himself to relax when the plane bounced slightly before catching an updraft, and he closed his eyes again and began reciting the periodic table under his breath.
"Rodney!" Elizabeth called to him when he reached bismuth.
"Elizabeth, you made me go up in this death trap. I don't care how pretty you think it is outside, I'm not opening my eyes until we are back on the ground," Rodney told her through clenched teeth. Polonium. Astitine.
"No, Rodney." He felt a hand grab his arm. "Look at John."
He sighed exasperatedly and cracked open one eye, opening them both wide when he saw what Elizabeth was excited about. Sheppard sat in front of the windshield, giving the landscape the same blank stare he gave everything these days. But Rodney felt a shiver run up his spine when he saw Sheppard's hands. Sheppard held them out as though he were holding the controls to a puddle jumper, and his movements didn’t mimic the pilot's; they paralleled or even preceded them. Rodney watched for the rest of the flight as Sheppard guided them in lazy circles over the water and down to a gentle, splashy landing. When he stole glimpses at Elizabeth he could see her watching just as intently.
The drive back to the hospital was silent but Rodney felt the car buzzing with energy. They wheeled John back into his room and looked at each other as John stared out the window. "Do you think he's actually getting better?" Elizabeth wondered. "Trying to tell us something, remembering?"
"I have no idea. Remember, I'm the kind of doctor that actually does science," Rodney told her. "But you're not getting me back in that plane again, even if Sheppard wakes up and asks to fly it."
Elizabeth pulled her chair in front of Sheppard and gently took his face in her hands, turning it to look at her. "John? Can you hear me?" Just as Rodney expected, there was no response. He watched them for a minute and then shook his head.
"Elizabeth, it's useless. He's gone," he said, but he looked up when he heard her gasp. John's head had turned to look at the landscape he'd drawn earlier that day, still sitting on the table. Elizabeth was staring at it, one hand to her mouth. "What is it?" Rodney asked, walking over to look.
"Rodney…look at the sky, do those stars remind you of anything?" Elizabeth asked, tracing the painted sky with her finger.
Rodney looked hard and then grabbed the paper from the table to examine it more closely. "There's six constellations here! And they're all symbols from Atlantis's gate - but I don't know the address."
"It has been six years, Rodney, you can't remember every address we visited."
"Maybe." He looked up and snapped his fingers, diving across the room to rummage through the pile of artwork sitting on Sheppard's bedside table. "Look here, the patterns in the waves on this one - it's the same six symbols!"
In an instant Elizabeth was breathing over his shoulder as they stared at the two drawings. The nurse who entered the room had to cough three times to get their attention. "Excuse me, but you're going to have to leave now. We can't have visitors overnight."
"No, it's okay," Rodney said, waving a dismissive hand at the nurse without looking up. "He won't mind if we stay."
"I'm sorry," the nurse said, stepping into the room. "But I have to insist. The patients need their rest and the night staff can't worry about visitors running around."
"Fine, fine," Rodney said, grabbing the entire pile of drawings and examining a crayon sketch of a prairie as they walked out. He stopped at the car. "There it is, see," he told Elizabeth, tracing lines in the weaving of the grass, "here, here, here, here, here, and here - the same six symbols."
They pushed into the guest house and Rodney turned the air conditioner in the dining room on full blast while Elizabeth spread the papers on the living room floor. Two hours later they'd examined each piece Sheppard had drawn over the past eight months and everywhere found the same six gate symbols. They were hidden among the leaves of the trees, the sand on a beach, or within the crags of a mountain.
Elizabeth leaned back on the couch, rubbing her eyes. "Okay, Dr. McKay, you're the genius, what now?"
Rodney looked up, wishing desperately for coffee and weather that wasn't too hot to make him wince at the thought of drinking it. "We find out where it is and go there. One last mission for old times' sake."
"How do you suggest we do that?" Elizabeth asked. "Aside from the little consulting I've done, neither of us has worked for SGC for years. And I don't think they're overly eager to return to Pegasus."
Rodney just looked at her until she sighed and pulled out her cell phone. They pulled every string they had, and a few they didn't. They called people high up in SGC command and at the bottom rungs of SGC's science division. They called some senators Elizabeth knew and a few she'd never met. Rodney even called General Carter. It took begging and cajoling, promises and threats, and a few well-placed bribes, but one week later they checked Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard out of the hospital, parked the car at Elizabeth's townhouse and waited for Colonel Lorne to beam them up to the Perseus - SGC's newest vessel. Beckett and Zelenka were waiting for them when they materialized in the infirmary.
Continue to ( part 4)
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