SGA Fic: Distance From Here to Wherever You Are (2/4)
Distance From Here to Wherever You Are (part 2)
( part 1) ( part 2) ( part 3) ( part 4)
Elizabeth had heard Teyla’s call for help through the radio and headed straight to the infirmary. Before long John had been brought in, unconscious and battered from a second seizure. Behind them Teyla was assisting Dr. Zelenka, who was cradling what turned out to be a broken arm. After grilling Teyla about what happened Beckett had ushered both women out of the infirmary, promising to call them the minute he knew anything. From the defeated look on Dr. Beckett's face when he walked into Elizabeth’s office just as she was pouring tea for Teyla, she knew it couldn’t be good news.
“Carson.” Elizabeth waved him to an empty chair. “It looks like you need to sit down. Can I offer you some tea?”
Carson sat down and waved distractedly, putting the charts he brought on the table in front of him. “That would be lovely. Thank you.”
“How is Colonel Sheppard?” Teyla asked.
“Well.” Carson ran a hand through his hair. “I have some idea what’s causing the seizures but no idea why or how to stop it. And I’m afraid it’s just going to get worse. We’ve induced a coma for now, but I don’t know.” He shook his head.
“Tell us what you do know,” Elizabeth said calmly, giving him a reassuring smile.
“Right. Off-world team members get frequent scans so we have good records of what his brain used to look like.” Carson pulled out an Ancient brain scan. The date in the corner indicated it had been taken last month.
“Used to?” Elizabeth asked. She recognized the scan as an image of a brain, but couldn’t tell anything else.
Carson nodded and held out a second scan. This one looked much the same but there were several green spots, as though someone had gently flicked a paintbrush with green paint at the picture. “This was taken yesterday morning - after the sleepwalking. The green spots are a protein I colored so you could see better. They don’t show up in any earlier scans and I didn’t even really notice them until I saw this.” He pulled out a third scan.
Elizabeth put a hand to her mouth. “That can’t be good.” This scan was more than just speckled with green. There were small green dots everywhere, clumping together in spots.
“It’s not,” Carson agreed. “This was the scan I was taking when Dr. Zelenka called to borrow Colonel Sheppard earlier. Something had been nagging me about the earlier image and it wasn’t until after seeing this that I found the protein in the earlier one. It’s propagating at an alarming rate and seems to be concentrating in certain areas. And given this scan I took twenty minutes ago, we don’t have much time to stop it.”
He set the final picture face-up on her desk. Nearly the entire image was covered in green dots weaving together, concentrating in spaces and leaving others free. Horrified, Elizabeth picked it up. “Carson, do you know what it is?”
“That’s the weird part,” he told her. “This protein had to be coded for somewhere, so we looked back at John’s DNA. We know John has the ATA gene more strongly than anyone we know. Actually in his DNA the ATA gene has more base pairs than in, say, my ATA gene or anyone else we’ve found who has it naturally. Most of the proteins the ATA gene codes for are never actually transcribed in our bodies, but somehow the inhibitor for this protein has been removed from John’s DNA. I checked back and he used to have it - his DNA has been completely altered.”
“So this could be something from the Ancients? Could it have been caused by something he ran into in the city?” Elizabeth asked.
“It’s possible, but somehow that doesn’t feel right,” Carson said. “At the moment I’m more concerned with finding some way to slow down its rate of replication, It’s altering the blood flow to his brain - which is what’s causing the seizures. I don’t know that this will kill him exactly, but I also don't know if we'll be able to repair whatever changes it's making.”
“How can we help?” Teyla asked.
Carson shook his head. “I have no idea, love. I’ve given him some inhibitors that I hope will slow it down but we can’t stop it completely.”
Elizabeth looked at the charts again. “You developed a gene therapy to give some of us the ATA gene. Could you use a similar process to recreate the inhibitor in John’s DNA?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think John has the time it would take for us to develop it. And we don’t know if whatever removed the inhibitor is still in his system and would just do it again. I did find something else near his cerebellum I haven’t yet identified,” Carson told her.
“Excuse me, Dr. Weir?” Dr. Zelenka stood in the doorway to her office. His right wrist was enclosed in a cast and held to his body with a sling.
“Radek! Come in.” Elizabeth nodded to an empty chair that Dr. Zelenka refused. “How are you feeling?”
Dr. Zelenka looked down at his arm. “Okay. Dr. Beckett says the break is clean and should heal well. But…you wanted to know as soon as we found what the lab with broadcasted signal was for?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Zelenka took a step into the office and his next words sent a chill down Elizabeth’s spine. “It appears to have been a nanite research facility. From what we've cracked the signal is not words but Arusan base code.”
Elizabeth looked at her hands briefly to compose herself and looked up again. In the corner of her eye she could see Carson hastily pick up the scans off her desk, rifling through ones he hadn’t yet shown her. “You’re sure of this? Do we know what the code is for or anything about the facility? Are there nanites there?”
Dr. Zelenka shook his head. “We have not detected any nanites. Encryption is only partially cracked but appears lab was given to the Asurans for research, before project was abandoned.”
“Oh, crap!” Everyone turned to look at Beckett as he held up an image, horrified comprehension crossing his face. “Look here.” He pointed to a part of the image near the base of John’s skull. There appeared to be a tiny pattern among the grey lobes. “Here and here - these cells look just like the nanites that invaded Dr. Weir but they’re entirely organic - human even - so we didn't detect them as foreign when we scanned. If I had to bet I’d say he got infected long ago, when he broke your quarantine.” Carson nodded to Dr. Weir. “They must have lain dormant for some time, and we know they could easily replicate and alter John’s DNA. But why are they activating now?”
“Because,” Teyla pointed out, “we just finally gained access to that lab?”
“Could be,” Carson muttered. He looked back at the scan, tracing some pattern with his finger, and looked up again as an alarm klaxon went off.
Elizabeth stood instantly when the unfamiliar flashing lights and alarm echoed through her office. She was halfway to her door when it slammed shut, along with every other door in the control center. Teyla joined her in tugging at the door but it refused to yield to their attempts to open it. A minute later, barefoot and still in scrubs from the infirmary, John walked onto the gateroom floor. Elizabeth raised a fist to bang on the glass, but before she could he drew a stunner and shot the two techs manning the DHD as he climbed the stairs. She lowered her fist and watched, horrified, as John began dialing a gate address.
“Teyla, help me,” Elizabeth said, grabbing a chair to fling at the window. John must have heard because, without looking, he reached over and pushed a few buttons. When the chair hit the window there was the brief green glow of a shield, and it bounced harmlessly to the ground.
“How did he do that?” Dr. Zelenka marveled as the chevrons locked in place and a wormhole opened.
“Teyla, do you know that address?” Elizabeth asked.
The Athosian shook her head. “It is unfamiliar to me.”
As John descended the stairs Elizabeth tried banging on the glass, only to have the shield fling her across the room. As she hit the wall she could hear Teyla shouting, “Colonel Sheppard, do not do this!” but the sound of the wormhole closing was already reaching the office and Elizabeth knew John would be on the other side.
“Are you okay?” Carson asked, kneeling next to Elizabeth and helping her sit up. She put a hand on the back of her head and winced at the already-forming lump, but nodded as he helped her to her feet.
“Dr. Weir to Ronon.” Elizabeth tapped her radio. The silent response came back loud and clear. There wasn’t even static.
“Something is jamming our radios,” Dr. Zelenka muttered. He was crouched in a corner of the room frantically typing one-handed on the laptop he’d already plugged into the Ancient computer console behind her desk. He shook his head in disgust. “Hloupy stroje kontolovatelny vse! He has managed to completely lock us out of the computer.”
“Is that possible?” Elizabeth asked him.
Dr. Zelenka shook his head. “Shouldn’t be. But he has ATA gene and" - he waved his good hand in the air - "nanites in his brain. They know more about the city than we do. Who knows what is possible?”
“Can you fix it? Get us some control?”
“Can try,” Dr. Zelenka muttered, already poking again at the laptop. “Don’t tell him I said, but McKay is better at things like this.”
Elizabeth turned to Beckett. “I thought you said you’d induced a coma. How’d he get here?”
“I have no idea. I think we have to assume the nanites took over and they can overcome the drugs we were giving Colonel Sheppard." Carson shook his head. "Elizabeth, I fear it may be too late to do anything.”
The next few hours felt painfully futile. Teyla paced like a caged cat while Dr. Zelenka frantically worked at the computer. Elizabeth occasionally tried to help, periodically punching in her command code, but every try proved useless. They’d been completely locked out. After a few hours she was sure that even Carson would happily sit in the drone chair if it would help.
Just as Zelenka had exploded into his third tirade of Czech swears, the gate activated. “Look.” Teyla pointed but her hand fell as she saw what came through the gate. “What did they do to him?” John came through, supported on each side by an Asuran and flanked by several more. His face was aged, his hair partly gray, and his torn shirt exposed a fresh Wraith feeding mark. He slumped against the Asurans as they dragged him up the stairs. One of them waved John's hand over the control panel to open Elizabeth’s door enough to fling him in before it slammed shut again.
“What did you do to him?” Elizabeth demanded through the glass, but they simply turned their backs and began working at the main controls. By her side Teyla crouched next to John’s crumpled form.
“Colonel Sheppard?” Teyla asked, tentatively turning him over. His eyes snapped open and he frantically backpedaled along the ground until he was pressed against the glass. Teyla watched him helplessly, arms open at her sides as though approaching a frightened animal.
“No, no, no,” John muttered, shaking his head violently from side to side.
Elizabeth shot a questioning look at Carson and slowly knelt down a few feet from John. “John? It’s Elizabeth. Can you tell us what’s happening?”
John looked wildly around the room and turned around to look at the control room, banging on the glass. “You promised,” he whispered, pulling himself upright. “You promised, you promised, you promised!” He was practically shouting and Elizabeth could hear the tapping of his finger splints as he clawed at the glass.
“Colonel Sheppard!” Teyla reached out to him. “You must calm down or you will hurt yourself further.” He spun around in her arms, pushed her away, and collapsed back to the ground. He continued shaking his head and muttering to himself, then suddenly stopped and lifted his head rigidly to stare at all of them.
The voice that came from his mouth was cold, nearly mechanical, and raised the hairs on the back of Elizabeth’s neck. “We have destroyed the Wraith as Oberoth promised. The High Queen has fed upon this body and become infected. Soon every Wraith will fall. Now we will destroy this city and finally remove the scourge of our creators. This individual" - one of John’s arms raised robotically to point to his chest - "has proven stubborn. He has convinced us to let you live. We will let you go to the mainland before we destroy the city. But you must go now.”
John collapsed back down like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He curled in on himself, rocking slightly, and when he looked up again, Elizabeth could see fear and pain in his eyes. “I tried to fight them,” he whispered in his own voice. “But they were too strong. I just…walked up to the Wraith queen and let her feed. The deal was all I could manage.” He faded out again, closing his eyes and leaning back against the glass.
His eyes cracked open and Elizabeth could see his mouth moving. She sat next to him and took his hand, stroking his arm. “I’m sorry John, I can’t hear you. What are you trying to say?”
He coughed long and hard and looked at her again, fighting to stay conscious. “They agreed to let you call SGC to send the Daedalus. Do what they tell you. They’ll know if you try anything.” He smiled a little and tapped his own head. “I’m sorry - it was all I could do to save you. I couldn't save Atlantis too.” His eyes closed again as he sank to the ground.
Elizabeth looked around the room. Dr. Zelenka was unplugging his laptop and shaking his head. Carson stood with slumped shoulders and Teyla sat on the other side of John with her head cocked slightly to one side. “Carson?” Elizabeth asked. “Can you do anything for him?”
Dr. Beckett knelt down, checked John’s pulse, and shook his head at Elizabeth. “Not here, I’m afraid. He’s breathing and has a pulse but I have no idea what they did to him.”
Carson jumped back when John suddenly stood up and looked mechanically around the room. “Dr. Weir?” he asked. Elizabeth nodded and his eyes focused on her. “Your radio will work now. Inform your people to report to what you call the jumper bay for immediate evacuation. Anyone not going straight there will not leave the city. When your people have evacuated you may call your SGC and leave on the last ship.”
“What about Colonel Sheppard? Can you fix what you did to him?” Elizabeth asked, fearing the answer.
John’s head cocked to the side. “This individual is badly damaged, yet he risked much to save the rest of you. We will leave him when he reaches the mainland but can do nothing more. You must call your people. Now.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “You don’t have to do this. Your creators no longer live here and we are no threat to you. Let us remain here in peace - we could still be allies. We are not your creators.”
“That is why we are allowing you to live. But you must tell your people to leave now.” John’s whole body sagged against the glass and he looked at her pleadingly. “Elizabeth, it’s the only way. Please just do as they say. I can’t hold them off much longer.”
Elizabeth nodded and raised a trembling hand to her radio. “All hands, this is Dr. Weir. We must evacuate the city immediately. Report to the jumper bay as quickly as you can for transportation to the mainland.”
“McKay!” Carter embraced Rodney as he walked into SGC. “It’s good to see you.”
“Yes, yes, you too,” Rodney said, distractedly patting her back. Any other time he would have been thrilled to get a hug from Carter but right now there was too much else on his mind.
“How was your flight?” She asked.
“Claustrophobic,” Rodney informed her. SGC had been kind enough to send an Air Force jet to pick him up: sleek, speedy and very, very small. “You said Elizabeth sent ahead some reports? Can I read them?”
“I thought you might ask that,” Carter said, leading Rodney to one of SGC's visitor quarters. She handed Rodney a file of papers that he immediately started leafing through, surprised by how much was there - he hadn't been gone that long. “I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet but Colonel Caldwell radioed when they were within range.”
Rodney waved a distracted hand at her and looked up in surprise when she caught it in her own hands. “Rodney?” her voice was softer this time. “They lost Atlantis.”
For just a minute Rodney waited for Carter to finish her sentence with something like “but we’re sending a team to get it back” or “but Dr. Zelenka thinks he can raise it from the ocean again” or “but Colonel Sheppard says the city will be okay until we return.” But she just sat and looked at him and slowly he felt the ground drop beneath him. “That’s okay,” he muttered indistinctly. “We’ll just get it back like before.”
Carter shook her head. “No, Rodney, it’s not like that. The Asurans set off the self-destruct. It’s completely gone, along with its gate.” She squeezed his hand tighter. “And, Rodney, it sounds like Colonel Sheppard is in bad shape.”
Rodney thought about this a minute and pulled away from Carter’s hand. “If I know Dr. Beckett he’s already got twenty different ideas on how to make Sheppard better. He’ll be fine by the time they get here, you’ll see.” He picked up the mission report - any distraction was worth it.
“Right,” Carter said worriedly. “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
“Hm? Oh, yes, coffee would be good,” Rodney said, already engrossed in the first page. “And do you have any sandwiches?”
“What kind?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He didn’t look up when she left, or when some young Air Force lieutenant brought him coffee and a turkey sandwich. It tasted like sawdust in his mouth anyway.
Several hours later most of the coffee still sat cold and untouched, and the sandwich, minus two bites, was still clutched in his hand like a security blanket. He’d read the report four times and it had never gotten any better. Elizabeth’s words had been interspersed with Carson’s and Radek’s and Teyla’s, and even Ronon had overcome his caveman ways enough to write something, but none of it was good. Rodney put the sandwich on the table and stood up to stretch.
He couldn’t get Elizabeth’s final paragraphs out of his head: As Dr. Beckett piloted the jumper away from Atlantis we could see multiple explosions throughout the city. The central tower crashed down, taking down the smaller towers like dominos. By the time we were out of sight the city had completely disappeared beneath the ocean. We stayed at the Athosian settlement until the Daedalus arrived and settled the Athosians, along with Ronon Dex, on a suitable planet before heading back to Earth. The Daedalus’s sensors could detect nothing of Atlantis beyond rubble at the ocean’s floor.
Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard fought the Asurans as hard as he could but lost consciousness soon after we reached the mainland. He has yet to wake. Dr. Beckett believes the nanite invaders have left him as promised but they left large amounts of damage behind. He tells us that until he fully understands what they did to Sheppard he will have no idea if it can be repaired but I fear he has lost hope. We will all remember the sacrifice Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard made and how hard he fought to buy our lives. His bravery and self-sacrifice deserve commendation
Rodney wasn’t sure if he was sad or angry or frustrated or just plain old depressed. For all his complaining to Sheppard about premonitions before he’d left Atlantis, he hadn’t actually expected anything like this to happen. A plumbing problem or flickering lights, sure; maybe even some new flooding or a Wraith attack. But not the loss of the entire city. And of Sheppard.
He realized he was pacing up and down the room. If Teyla were around he’d find her to teach him that Athosian stick fighting right now - anything to get the itchy feeling of helplessness off his skin. Without thinking he grabbed a pillow off the bed and flung it at the wall, accidentally knocking the alarm clock off the dresser and onto his foot..
“Ow, ow, ow. Smart move Rodney,” he scolded himself, hopping on one foot. “You’re mad about what happened so you try to break your toe. That’ll help. Real smart.”
“Rodney?” He froze at the voice and turned to find Elizabeth standing in the doorway. She looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks and had cried more than once in the interim. He stared at her a minute, unsure, then walked over and opened his arms. She stepped into his embrace and he wrapped his arms around her a little awkwardly. He could swear she started crying on his shoulder.
After a minute she pulled back, wiping her eyes with her sleeve and looked at him again. “It’s good to see you, Rodney,” she said quietly.
“So it’s true then? Atlantis is gone?” he asked. She nodded without offering up any more information. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “Where’s Colonel Sheppard?”
“They beamed him straight to the isolation room in the infirmary. I just came from there - Carter told me you were here. Would you like to see him?” she asked, already turning to lead him down the hallway, away from his cold coffee and uneaten sandwich.
Rodney sat next to Elizabeth on one of the stools and peered through the windows into SGC's bare, concrete isolation room. Sheppard lay in red scrubs on the bed in the middle of the room, and Rodney stared at the streaks of grey in his hair. Only the steady heartbeat displayed on the monitor next to him betrayed that he was still alive, and several doctors wore full hazmat gear as they bustled around the room filled with a variety of Ancient, Asgard, and Earth-based equipment. One of the doctors looked up, waved to them and headed for the door.
A minute later Carson joined them in the viewing area. Rodney couldn’t help noticing that he looked even more tired than Elizabeth, if that was possible. “Rodney. I never thought it’d be so good to see you,” Cason sighed as he sat next to Rodney. “Have you heard what happened?”
“Yes.” He was surprised at how angry he sounded and softened his tone. “So what magic trick are you going to pull out this time, Carson?”
Carson put his head in his hands, elbows on the rail in front of him. “I’m afraid there may very well be nothing we can do. The Asurans completely re-wired his brain so they could control him and then they left - we’re sure of that now - but the damage is extensive. They removed all of John’s controls to create new pathways and, medicine’s come a long way but we just don’t know how to rewire a brain. Neural tissues don’t regenerate well.”
“Are you saying John might still be in there? That he might be conscious and aware?” Elizabeth asked in a voice full of hope.
“There’s no way to be certain, but it’s a possibility. But even if he were, there’s no way to know, and we don’t know how to get him free.” Carson sounded small and lost to Rodney’s ears.
“So what, you’re just giving up?” Rodney snapped. He knew it wasn’t fair, he knew they were hurting too and doing the best they could, but he just didn’t care.
“No, Rodney, we’re not. But I don’t know if we have any miracles left. Colonel Sheppard’s already cheated death so many times. Maybe he’s used up his luck.” Rodney marveled at Carson’s ability to stay calm through all this. But then, he'd had longer to process what happened.
“Carson…?” Elizabeth said questioningly as she rose from her stool and pointed through the window. The doctors had been halfway through removing their hazmat gear and suddenly were swarming around Sheppard. “What’s happening? Carson?” But Beckett was already partway down the hallway. Elizabeth took one look at Rodney and they hurried after him.
“Excuse me. Move aside, please,” Carson elbowed the other doctors aside and Elizabeth and Rodney followed in his wake. It took Rodney a minute to realize what the commotion was about - Shepard’s eyes were open and watching the movement around him.
“Colonel Sheppard!” Elizabeth called, but got no response. “John? Can you hear us?” she asked quietly. Sheppard continued to lie motionless until she took his hand. His head angled slowly towards her but Rodney saw no recognition in his eyes.
Rodney stood with Elizabeth as the doctors examined Sheppard. His head turned toward them when they talked or touched an arm or leg, but there was no indication of recognition or understanding, no attempt to move or speak. After a while Rodney couldn’t stand it any longer, and he left the infirmary and kept walking until he hit the first elevator, then the second, and eventually he’d climbed partway up one of the hills outside SGC.
Carter found him out there, half an hour later, shivering slightly in the cold. He ignored her as she draped his jacket over his shoulders and sat down next to him, shifting to find a comfortable place among the rocks. At first he was thankful for her silence, but eventually it began to feel like a battle of wills and somehow, with Carter, he knew he was going to lose.
Rodney picked up a rock and tossed it between his hands before standing up to throw it at the lengthening shadows. He turned his back to Carter before he spoke. “If you’re here to tell me to go back in there and everything’s going to be fine, don’t bother.”
Carter was quiet longer than he expected and he finally gave in and turned to face her. She sat with her chin resting on her knees and arms wrapped around her legs, her face glowing red in the light of the setting sun. After a minute she looked up at him, shielding her eyes and shook her head. “I wasn’t going to tell you that.”
“Oh.” He stooped down to pick up another rock, rubbing his thumb over the gritty smoothness and small imperfections. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
“I know.” Her words were quiet.
“I mean…we knew it was risky when we went. We almost lost Sheppard…Atlantis lots of times, but we always managed to win her back. How could they let this happen - how could they just give up like that?” He tried to work up a good rant but it just stuttered and died. “How could I leave them?”
“It’s not your fault, McKay,” Carter told him.
“Like hell it’s not! I knew something wasn’t right but I left them anyway and flew off to another galaxy just so I could be with Jeannie. I selfishly left them and now Atlantis is gone and Sheppard is…is…I don’t know. Gone too, I think.” He threw the rock as hard as he could, starting a miniature avalanche of pebbles.
Carter waited for the sound of sliding rocks to subside before she sighed and looked up at Rodney. “You don’t know if you could have done anything had you been there. It’s awfully arrogant to assume you could have saved everything.”
“Yes, well, as you’ve pointed out, I’m an extremely arrogant man,” Rodney snapped.
Carter stood to look Rodney in the eye. “Rodney, trust me, eating yourself up with guilt isn’t going to change what happened. It isn’t going to help you, and it isn’t going to help them. Dr. Weir, Dr. Beckett, Dr. Zelenka, even Colonel Sheppard - they need you now. Being angry at yourself isn’t going to help.”
“I have to be angry at myself,” Rodney met Carter’s eye, then looked away. “It’s the only way I can not be furious at them.”
“Oh,” Carter said quietly. “I’m not going to say I know how you’re feeling.” Rodney snorted at her and she looked at him sternly. “But I’ve had a lot of things happen over my years going through the stargate and I think I understand better than most. When you realize you need to talk, you can come find me.” She didn’t wait for him to respond but simply turned and walked away. Rodney watched her back slowly retreat into the setting sun and sat down with a sigh. He didn’t come back inside until the stars came out and the night's chill had begun settling into his bones.
Over the ensuing weeks they sat through unceasing debriefs and meetings. They inventoried what they’d managed to salvage from the city - information from the database, random Ancient devices that had been sent back to SGC for investigation, and a handful of puddle jumpers. Sheppard showed no improvement - he’d react to stimulus but there was no sign of recognition or consciousness, no attempt to communicate in any way. Rodney avoided everyone as much as possible, hiding in his temporary quarters or abandoned corners of labs whenever he could.
By the time they finished the last debrief and closed the book on the Atlantis mission, Rodney was itchy to get away from all this, even turning down an offer to be back to work at Area 51. He had fled the minute the meeting was over and was settling into his room with the newest pop-culture physics book - hoping to relax by writing a nasty letter telling the author everything he was wrong about - when there was a knock on the door. He tried ignoring it but the person just wouldn’t go away. Finally he yanked open the door in disgust. “What do you want?”
Zelenka stood there glaring back at Rodney. He raised a hand - there was a brace on the wrist under which Rodney could see pale skin from where the cast had been - and shook a finger in front of Rodney’s nose. “You,” he said sternly, “are being an ass.”
“What?” Rodney squeaked. “Just because I want a nice quiet night reading doesn’t mean…”
Zelenka interrupted him. “I’m not talking about that.”
“Then why am I an ass?” Rodney snapped back, glaring at Zelenka as he crossed his arms on his chest.
Zelenka matched his glare and began counting off on his fingers. “You’ve left us to take care of all the Ancient equipment for study. You avoid Colonel Sheppard’s bed like he has a plague. You snap at Dr. Beckett whenever he asks you anything. You won’t look Dr. Weir in the eye. And you hide in here rather than talking to any of us.”
“Yeah? So?” Rodney knew Zelenka was right, but he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of admitting it.
“So. You will put on nicer clothes. And you will come to dinner with us. I will be back in ten minutes and if you are not ready I will fetch team of marines to drag you out.” Zelenka gave Rodney one final glare and stalked down the hallway. Rodney watched his retreating back before turning in and riffling through his drawers for a shirt that wasn’t too dirty or wrinkled.
Zelenka led Rodney down the corridor and opened a door to a small room with a table and plates of food. Elizabeth looked up as Rodney entered. “I see Radek convinced you to join us. Pull up a chair.” Rodney sat in the seat she indicated and gave the spaghetti in front of him his full concentration until the door opened and Carson entered, pushing a wheelchair in which Sheppard was sitting, staring at nothing. Rodney put his fork back on his plate and struggled to swallow the food still in his mouth.
“Why’d you have to bring him here?” he asked, looking anywhere but at Sheppard.
“Because, Rodney,” Carson said, sitting next to Sheppard. “This is our last meal together - Radek is heading to Antarctica in the morning and Colonel Carter told us you were going back to Canada.” Carson left no room to wonder whether he thought that sort of information ought to have come from Rodney himself, and Rodney felt the smallest twinge of guilt at not telling them his plans to leave.
“Yes, well, we’re done here and Jeannie and Caleb could use help with the new baby and…” Rodney let his voice fade because he really had no good excuse for wanting to leave them so soon.
“Oh, right, the baby!” Elizabeth exclaimed, putting her fork down. “With everything else I forgot to ask. Is it a boy or girl? Did you bring pictures?”
“A boy - they named him Bradley after, after our father,” Rodney stole a glance at John and looked away. “And no, I didn’t bring pictures. I had other things on my mind. But he looks just like any other baby - he’s wrinkly, doesn’t have much hair and all he seems to do is sleep, eat, and poop. Honestly, I don’t see the appeal.”
“I think it may be because they eventually grow beyond that,” Elizabeth told him, smirking slightly. “You’ll have to send us pictures when you get back.”
“Yeah, sure.” Rodney looked down at his plate but felt an unusual lack of appetite. “So you’re sticking around for a bit?”
“Yes, well, SGC wants me to work on some negotiations and, believe it or not, there’s still some final work to do on Atlantis - a few more strings to tie up, some stuff I want to translate.” Elizabeth twirled her fork through her spaghetti. “And I don’t want to leave John yet. Carson…”
Carson broke in. “I’m not going anywhere until I figure out what they did to Sheppard. I can’t just walk away from a patient.”
“Don’t you understand?” Rodney couldn’t hold it all inside anymore. “Sheppard is gone! You let him sacrifice himself like he always does and it worked this time. They should have just killed him but instead they gave him back worse…” He looked over at Sheppard. The colonel sat slumped in the wheelchair staring uncomprehendingly across the table, through Zelenka, into the opposite wall and, for all Rodney knew, to the far side of the galaxy. There was no Sheppard glimmer of mischief in his eyes, no smirk turning up the corner of his mouth. He just sat there. “Worse than dead!”
“Rodney!” Elizabeth reached out a hand to take Rodney’s. “We don’t know that. You shouldn’t give up on him just yet.”
Rodney stood up, wrenching his arm from Elizabeth’s grasp. He was done with dinner. “They should have just killed him,” he said quietly as he headed to the door. He stopped before he opened it and turned back. “You have fun with the Ancient toys in Antarctica.” He pointed to Zelenka, then Weir, then Beckett. “I hope the Asgard give you some slack on the negotiations and you, good luck on your hopeless task.”
He had the door partly opened when Elizabeth called his name. Something in her voice - the way it was nearly cracking - made him freeze in the doorway. “Rodney, you can’t just give up. You know John wouldn’t give up if it was you.”
“Yes, well, I suppose that just made him better than me,” Rodney sniffed. He looked longingly at the open doorway but closed the door and turned back around. “They took his mind, Elizabeth. They didn’t torture him or cut off a leg or shoot him or kill him, they just snuck in and took away his mind. We’re ultimately just a bunch of chemical reactions and electronic discharges and they destroyed him as easily as I could wipe the hard drive of your computer. And last I checked we couldn’t make back-ups of people.”
Radek put his face in his hands, Carson poked at his spaghetti and Elizabeth just stared at Rodney. The only sound in the room was the quiet, nearly mechanical rhythm of Sheppard’s breathing. “Look.” Rodney slumped against the door. “I know it’s not your fault. I know you did everything you could. And I admire the way you’re hanging onto hope, I really do. But I just can’t do it. Not now, maybe not ever. It’s not that I don’t care. I just…” He stopped and looked at them, waving his hand dismissively. The words were gone.
“At least stay with us a while, Rodney,” Elizabeth told him quietly, waving her arm at the chair he’d left vacant. Rodney slumped his shoulders, defeated, and sat in the chair to poke disinterestedly at his plate. Zelenka nodded to him approvingly. Dinner passed in good-natured small talk and a lot of conversations that started with “Do you remember when…” and soon Rodney was in his small room shoving wrinkled shirts and piles of paper into suitcases.
The walk down the corridors of SGC felt somehow final and he stopped for a while to stare at the Earth stargate and its primitive analog dialing - so much less impressive than Atlantis’s. As he headed for the elevator his feet carried him to one more room.
The lights were dim in Sheppard’s room, and monitors beeped quietly on the wall. Rodney couldn’t tell if Sheppard was asleep or awake, but he supposed it didn’t really matter much. Taking a deep breath, he approached Sheppard’s bedside and looked at the colonel, relieved his eyes were closed because Rodney could at least pretend he was just asleep.
“Well, I guess this is good-bye then. I know I’ve been acting like an ass lately and I just wanted to say…I'm sorry. I know we had a habit of saving each other’s lives and I know I let you down sometimes, but I’m sorry I wasn’t there the one time you really needed me.” He looked at Sheppard another minute, reaching a hand to brush the silver-tinged black hair away from the colonel's eyes. If Sheppard's chest hadn’t been slowly rising and falling Rodney would have thought he was looking at a corpse. He turned to go but paused in the doorway. “I really do hope Carson finds the answer.”
Rodney McKay straightened his back and walked down the hallway, up the elevators and out of SGC into the cool morning light. He never looked back.
Continue to ( part 3)
( part 1) ( part 2) ( part 3) ( part 4)