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Well, this was weird. The lights were off. Eerie silence hung over the gate room and control room. The light filtering through from outside was wrong somehow too—reddish and weird. And they’d turned up the heat worse than when it malfunctioned back in year one that time and they’d all suddenly discovered what everyone’s knees looked like.
John tried to keep breathing the stale air normally, but the hairs were standing up along his skin. What the fuck was going on here?
“If this is a surprise party, it's not my birthday,” he said, but his brain wasn’t buying the attempt at levity.
Something very fucked up was going on.
Approximately 48,000 years earlier
Rodney looked at his calculations. Read them and reread them. Walked out of the lab without even explaining it to anyone, because what was the point of anything now?
John was gone. Irretrievably, unsalvagably, gone.
When Ronon found him, he was in Sheppard's quarters, curled up around his pillow, holding it like… holding it like he'd never held John.
"He's not coming back, Ronon," he choked out, sometime later, into the big guy's chest.
Approximately 48,000 years later
John tried and failed not to panic as he looked out on a city surrounded by, half buried in, sand. Not a drop of the New Lantean Ocean in sight.
Atlantis was fallen, stricken. Bathed in a strange red light from a huge, furnace sun.
He could also see the way the sand had banked against an invisible barrier close to the centre of the city. There was some power, then, at least. He tore his eyes away from the heartbreaking sight of a foundered Atlantis, turning back inside, trying to sense the city through his mental connection and finding nothing there. When he went to the control room the consoles were dead.
And that's when he saw the note. An envelope, strangely fragile, yellowed and aged-looking. John’s brain tried to make meaning out of that, but he wasn’t ready to let it.
Hand-writing, unmistakably McKay’s, spelled out John's name.
He opened it, hands shaking. Dammit, he really should’ve stopped to eat something today. Inside was a map.
"What the fuck, McKay? I'm not in the mood for some weird treasure hunt!"
John followed it, down an interminable staircase, weary and hungry and faint in the heat when he emerged onto a walkway near the the base of the Control Tower. The outside air was still and baked under the shield. The light was weird, too-bright even with his aviators and reddish, and when he risked a swift glance toward the sun there was no mistaking the difference—either it was nearer, or it had expanded. Like a red giant, a dying sun using up the last of its fuel.
Oh jesus fucking christ.
He knew the gates could malfunction, solar flares sending you places, and times, they weren’t supposed to. The ocean disappearing? The sun starting to die? That would be an unthinkable number of years.
John gripped onto the railing of the walkway, knuckles whitening, unsteady where he stood.
Everyone was dead.
Rodney had written that note long, long ago. That was why the paper was yellowed and fragile. Which meant… oh god. Rodney was gone. Rodney was dead, long dead.
Heart thudding in his chest, his gut heaved, but there wasn’t anything in his stomach to bring up. He wanted to sink to his knees, but the damn map compelled him forward, even as the paper cracked between his fingers, even though what could be the point of anything now? If they all were gone? If Rodney was dead?
John was alone in a stricken city that was so low on power he couldn’t hear her any more. Atlantis herself was dying. He had no idea what Rodney had left for him, knowing John would turn up here, alone and bewildered. John couldn’t imagine what would be any use. A care package? A cyanide pill? A gun?
The map took him down unfamiliar streets, the city lifeless around him, to a back alley he didn’t recognise. Half way down, it assured him there was a trapdoor in the ground, but he couldn’t see anything, just the same smooth ancient paving all the way down the road. He checked the map, and yeah, the weird Ancient abstract sculpture marking the spot was right here, but no trap door.
Slightly past the end of his tether, John kicked out at the sculpture, all the impotent rage at his situation finally getting on top of him. The sculpture slid back on impact in a parody of a defensive move, and a hole opened beneath his feet, depositing him with a jarring thud on a staircase disappearing into the depths below.
“Nice one, McKay!” John shouted into the echoing black.
Switching on the light of his P90, he viewed the map again. Finding the faint symbol next to the sculpture, and on the back of the map, a key, with an explanatory note of how to open the trap door. Maybe he should’ve looked more carefully, but in his defence he was having a really bad day.
From here, there was nothing to do but descend the steps.
At the last step, a light flickered on, doors swooshing open in front of him. Cooler air rushed over his skin.The room beyond was lit blue, illuminating a long row of sleek black boxes the shape and size of large coffins, forty of them at least. On the nearest, another note on the same fragile, aged paper. Tearing it open, John found instructions directing him to a control panel at the end of the box. He pressed a series of buttons, initiating a whir and a buzz.
The lid of the box slid slowly open, and he stepped back apprehensively as thoughts of Nosferatu crept unsettlingly through his mind.
Inside, was a body. Perfectly preserved, although wrapped in a faint scent of decay, its face gaunt, hair shaggy about the deathly pale skin. John felt a flicker of recognition as he looked down in sorrow at the corpse, tears springing up in his eyes as he edited out the pallor and the the thinness and the unkempt mop of hair and realised he was looking at the face of his best friend.
Approximately 48,000 years earlier
“Honestly, Rodney, I’m so close to resigning,” Jennifer told him. “I can’t just stay here and ignore what’s happening in the rest of the galaxy.”
Rodney didn’t think his body and brain could even register another loss, not after John, after Teyla. Ronon. Sam. But her words speared him harder than he imagined anything could at this point.
“There has to be another way,” he said, his voice strained to snapping. “We can’t just let this happen.”
“What other way? The IOA—”
“We’re in another galaxy. Why do we have to even listen to those cowardly fucks? Michael is our responsibility.”
"Then what, Rodney?"
"I don't know, but I'm not just rolling over and accepting this, are you?"
Jennifer took a long look at him, and then reached for his hand.
"Maybe not."
Hardly an hour went by that Rodney didn’t think of John, turning up in that future Atlantis, He’d be so alone, and Rodney couldn’t bear that, but he had time—too much of it—to figure out how to help Sheppard. Right now, though, he had other responsibilities.
They met in ones and twos. So many of them felt they had a life debt to Pegasus, so many of them saw themselves as Lanteans. It wasn’t hard, when the time came, with Evan Lorne and thirty marines on their side, more than 100 other personnel, to launch a bloodless coup and boot out Woolsey and anyone else who didn’t want to cut ties with Earth.
They invited the remnants of Ronon’s army into the city, while Radek and Rodney collected scientists from fallen worlds—Hoff, Olesia, Sateda, to help them pivot their goals towards their new reality. Old faces became new colleagues—Eldon from Olesia, Sora Tyrus of the Genii, and the now exiled Queen Mara, who turned out to be much smarter than she pretended to be.
One tiny sliver of solace was having Carson back, when Jennifer managed to successfully create a treatment for him and bring him out of stasis. The shadow of so much grief lay over both of them—Rodney couldn’t ungrieve Carson his best friend, nor could he deny he’d since become so close to John the loss of him entirely eclipsed anything that had gone before. Meanwhile Carson’s clone was subtly different—just as kind, but a little less timid and somewhat wiser and wholly focused on curing the plague alongside Jennifer and the few Hoffan refugees they’d located.
And Rodney? Well, he was mostly out of the field and focusing on those elusive zero point energy solutions, but not a day went by that a little of his downtime didn't go on the mathematics it would require to save John.
Approximately 48,000 years later
John gripped the edge of the casket, his gut roiling and his eyes stinging as he looked down at the corpse of his friend. Why would Rodney’s map bring him to such a macabre discovery? Knowing everyone must be long dead was one thing, but this…
Then Rodney’s eyes flew open, bright and startlingly lucid. Immediately they found John’s face, fixing on him with a look so devastating John felt like he might collapse under the weight of it.
“John,” Rodney croaked. “God, John.”
He sat up gingerly and climbed out of the—stasis pod, it must be a new kind of stasis pod—approaching John with the kind of wonder he usually reserved for ZPMs and his own brilliance.
John wasn’t prepared for the moment Rodney flung his arms around him, holding onto him with surprising strength for one so frail and… a good bit older than when they'd last seen each other. A lump rose in John’s throat as he pieced together that to Rodney, he’d been gone a very long time.
Rodney didn’t let go, just let John hold him up with arms that easily slipped around his waist and held on. John didn’t even mind about the appalling smell.
Eventually, Rodney pulled back, wiping tears from his eyes and looking at John carefully.
“You, um, probably have some questions.”
“A few,” John replied, trying to sound laconic and most likely failing. “How long, Rodney?”
“Forty-eight thousand years,” Rodney replied.
“Fuck.”
John sat down on another one of the stasis pods as the enormity of that sunk in.
“How did you…”
“That’s a long story,” Rodney replied, "though the short version's we discovered those Ancient assholes had recently perfected full stasis, they just didn't want to let Weir survive, apparently."
"Bastards."
"Right?"
God, he looked so different, his shaggy hair badly scissor-hacked, his face drawn with hunger and etched with new lines, but he was still so Rodney, and his presence made everything else just a little easier to deal with.
Not that John wasn't freaking the fuck out.
"Oh hey, I seem to remember Lorne saying you’d be hungry when you got here, wanna grab some lunch?”
John thought of going to the mess, then, and bile rose in his throat at the realisation that everyone in it had been dead for thousands of years. He held his head steady for a long moment, feeling Rodney step close again, the weight of his hand coming to rest on John’s shoulder.
“I know it’s a lot.”
“Is anyone else…”
As he shook his head, Rodney’s face collapsed into grief so quickly John thought he’d cry, but then he collected himself, pulling his shoulders back and letting out a long breath.
“Just us. You got here the short way, I took the long way round.”
John didn't want to think what it meant that Rodney's presence was almost compensation for the loss of the entirety of human civilisation as he knew it.
As Rodney made his way across the room to the very last stasis pod, John noted he was walking stiffly and with a pronounced limp. John followed, looking in curiously as he opened it up. It was packed full of food supplies.
“I saved this pod for last,” Rodney said, the ghost of his old smugness apparent in his voice. “So it hasn’t been opened since it was packed. Which means…”
He reached in and lifted out two lidded, square, ceramic pots, like the ones common on Belkan.
“I brought your favourite Belkan spiced stew. And Latiran herb bread,” he added, lifting out a cloth bag.
He passed a pot to John. It was still warm. John's mind reeled. The stew had been freshly cooked… forty eight thousand years ago.
"Belkans made it in the city towards the end, in their own enclave. I wish you'd seen that. So many bad things but that... we made that right."
John stared at the stew, the familiar scent rising to his nostrils, falsely reassuring him the culture that made this food wasn't long, long dead.
"John? Did I remember wrong? About you liking the stew?"
"The stew's great, Rodney," he replied, his voice hoarse, because damn, that was a sweet gesture, "it's just…" he turned away, squeezing his eyes shut.
Next thing he knew, he felt a hand clamping round his free one. Since when was Rodney so touchy feely?
"There aren't words for the utter fuckedness of all of this."
He twined his fingers in John's and didn't let go.
John stood with a warm pot cradled against him, his brain stuttering. Rodney saying fuck only added to his thorough discombobulation. He led John out of the back of the stasis room into what might have been a store-room, still holding his hand.
It didn't feel weird. It also didn't feel related to those feelings John had had for the oblivious astrophysicist since forever. McKay felt a little child-like, a little lost, and maybe John felt that way himself. In the intervening years something in Rodney had cracked wide open. He wasn't any less beautiful for it though, was the thing.
A huge Ancient couch, made of that inconceivably durable and relatively comfy polymer, dominated the otherwise bare store-room.
“I’ve kept what I need in stasis, although hot food’s a rare treat,” Rodney told him. “Been waking up every five hundred years to check things over. The sun going red giant threw me a little, I won’t lie, so I had to stay up a little longer than planned a few times. Think I've got it mostly figured now, though.”
They sat on the sofa, Rodney passing John bread and a spoon from the bag. John was touched at what a thoughtful gesture this was from Rodney, thinking of him after he’d been gone so long. And Rodney… if the stasis hadn’t aged him, then he’d gone into the pod already older. What had happened to Atlantis, to their team and their friends, to make this a reasonable choice? And if Rodney had woken every five hundred years, if he’d been alone in all that time…
Rodney ate the food ravenously, without any regard for the fact he had company. When he was done, he eyed John's remaining bread like a hungry mutt. John handed it over to him and he devoured it gratefully. John noticed when he was done eating, Rodney started restlessly fidgeting with something tied round his wrist. When John looked closer, he realised it was a bead necklace that had once been Ronon's, and that sent a chill through him. He suspected Rodney wasn't ready to tell him what had happened.
"You haven't been eating enough," he said instead.
“I stowed a lot of food," Rodney explained, "but because I ended up staying up longer than I planned a few times, I've been here, awake, for the best part of two years when you add it all up. I didn’t want you to arrive with the cupboards bare…”
John felt a wave of sorrowful affection for his friend. That was a long time to be so alone.
“Rodney… why would you do this? What happened to everyone?”
Approximately 48,000 years earlier
Rodney carved Jen's name on the softstone memorial with shaking hands, not bothering to brush away his tears. He'd loved her, that was the truth of it. Even thought there might be something between them, something romantic perhaps, had they not been so distracted by the relentless work of saving the galaxy, had every second of his downtime not been taken up in the work of saving John.
At least she hadn't died in vain. Carson had found the cure for Michael’s plague, too late to save her but soon enough to save many. Now one of Atlantis' major projects was working to distribute it. Miraculously, Carson’s serum had protected him from the exposure that killed Jennifer.
Evan came and stood by him, took his hand, squeezed it. He wouldn't let them call him Major any more, said that wasn't what he was here for.
"She said something to me, a few weeks before she died," Evan told him. "She said, 'What's the point of work if you don't know why you're doing it? What's the point of a life if you don't know why you're living it?'"
Rodney huffed a laugh. Yeah, that sounded like her. Jen had found her purpose alright, had died feeling a sense of life well lived.
"Before, we thought we needed to fight the wraith, and now they're all but gone, we thought we had to fight Michael, but that isn't quite it, is it?"
Each day, more and more, he understood why Evan no longer called himself a soldier, even though he still killed, still blew stuff up—they all did.
"Not for me, no," Evan agreed.
"If we forget we're here to save as many folks as possible then what's the point of any of it? I think we'd forgotten that, before. I think all we knew about was the fight and not what we were trying to save or why."
"We're saving a lot of people every day. Curing them, bringing them into the city…"
Rodney nodded. The SGC, the IOA, the Ancients, none of them had allowed the possibility of Atlantis as sanctuary for Pegasus natives, as something categorically owed to these people for the ills wrought by meddling others. Imagining up a weapon to defeat evil in a quiet and protected city was so much easier than the messy business of taking in refugees and helping them find their feet, find safety, find community here without being expected to just assimilate into Earther culture or die offworld and out of sight.
Rodney had learned so much and it had… well, it had humbled him. A little. He'd treat Ronon and Teyla differently if they were alive now.
When he thought about them, his brain came undone, and the next thing he knew, he was sobbing in Evan's arms.
Approximately 48,000 years later
"It’s… it’s going to be hard to tell you."
Rodney’s hand disappeared up the opposite long sleeve, scratching away at the skin there viciously.
"It was bad, wasn't it?"
Rodney nodded.
John wanted to reach out, wrap arms around him, but Rodney was curled in on himself, lost in the past.
"You didn't find Teyla in time."
Tears were in Rodney's eyes, and John wasn't going to ask more, not with that haunted look on his face.
"That was just the start of it," Rodney said eventually, rising up off the Ancient couch and limping out of the room.
John sat frozen, alone, 48,000 years too late to save any of his team from the unnamed horrors that had befallen them. The room was drab around him, even Ancient materials bearing the taint of age. Whatever possessions Rodney had were not apparent.
They didn’t rescue Teyla. John’s mind went to that awful news and then darted away again as his heart threatened to stop in his chest. It was incomprehensible to think everything and everyone was gone, but Teyla dying at Michael’s hands? This was tangible and recent and more than he could bear and he thought his insides might just tear themselves out from it.
After an hour, Rodney still hadn’t returned, and John considered running after him, but somehow he couldn't find a way to make himself move. There was no point to anything now, it was all so far past lost. He and Rodney were marooned in a post-apocalyptic corpse of their own history.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have just fucked off like that."
Rodney's voice stirred John from a semi-slumber. He'd toppled over on the couch and curled up his legs, boots and all. Rodney was pulling a blanket over him, looking down at him with soft eyes. John could tell they were reddened from crying, even though Rodney had dimmed the lights.
"I, um, took advantage of my little meltdown to have the first shower I've had in over thirty thousand years. It's easier, going up into the city, when I'm not the only person here."
Rodney gingerly sat down on the couch and reached with a mildly exasperated air to unlace John's boots. John swallowed past the tightening in his throat as Rodney let his shaggy, shower-damp hair fall forwards, obscuring his face as he carefully unshod his friend.
"When Ronon was still in the city, which wasn't for long after we lost you and then Teyla, we… well, we used to sleep together. I mean, actually sleep, because sure Ronon is hot, like out of my league hot, but it wasn't like that for either of us, we were the last of the team, trying to hold together but it was impossible, too raw and too…"
Rodney looked up at John through a raggedly hacked fringe that fell over eyes that were extra blue from the seeds of more tears.
"Who'm I kidding? It was you, John. Missing you made everything impossible, so he left. And then he…"
Rodney's voice broke, and John could hear the loss of Ronon without the words. It was too much to think about.
"But still," Rodney continued eventually, "it was a comfort, when it happened, when we… and the thing is, I don't know if there's any way I can go sleep somewhere else knowing you're right here. Not when I've missed you for nine fucking years."
Rodney always had been brave, but this took John's breath away.
"C'mere," he said, lifting the blanket.
Rodney sat on the edge of the couch, reaching down to take off his shoes. There was a strange thump and then he was turning himself round, snuggling into John, and again there was that child-like feeling about him that brought out every bit of John's protectiveness. He missed the carefully grown-up, massively egotistical Rodney he'd grown fond of despite himself, but this grief-softened Rodney was another kind of beautiful.
He wanted to know what would happen next, but it wasn't like they were against the clock. He put his arms tight around his friend, trying to imagine what he'd been through in the last nine years, and wondering how, amid all this loss, he could feel a surge of warmth, a small spark of joy, to have Rodney in his arms.
Approximately 48,000 years earlier
"This would've solved global warming," Rodney said to Radek ruefully, looking at the newly recharged ZPM with so much less pleasure than he’d imagined for this moment. "And gotten me a Nobel."
"Well, instead is going to take a million people to safety from Michael's hybrids."
And kill John Sheppard.
It wasn't as if there was a choice. They could not make the same mistake the Ancients did, letting Atlantis become inevitably besieged. Flying the city away from New Lantea now, before Michael gathered his armies in a full attack, was the only sane plan. Rodney had grudgingly accepted this, even though it was breaking his heart.
Radek put a hand on Rodney's arm.
"Maybe one day we will have the peace we need to settle her back here," he said. "Or maybe our descendants will. There is time, Rodney."
But how ridiculous to imagine Atlantis could be there waiting for John so far into the future. Unless, of course, Rodney found a way to make it so, and he would never entirely give up on his machinations to do exactly that. But for now, he had to put that aside. The needs of the many, and all that. He understood it now, both why the needs of the many might outweigh, and why to Kirk, losing Spock might still not feel like a fair exchange.
"Get Lorne in the chair,” he said wearily. “I'm going down to the ZPM room, Radek you need to have eyes on the Star Drive. We should be able to leave New Lantea in under an hour."
But just as Rodney was sliding the second newly charged ZPM into its housing , there came a torrent of distressed Czech profanity over the radio, and Rodney's blood ran cold.
"We have a saboteur," Radek declared to all channels. “Lock down the city. Security to all stations. The city will not fly again."
Approximately 48,000 years later
John looked down at Rodney, his lined face sleep-softened, badly-cut and grown out hair framing his careworn features. John had the urge to reach out and stroke, and he marveled at how quickly the touch barriers had dissolved between them.
No more team dynamics because no more team. No more Don't Ask Don't Tell, no more United States of America. For all he knew, no more humanity, no more Earth. So many unimportant things had ceased to matter, and so many important things had ceased to be. He wasn't gonna waste what little he had left. So he let himself brush a lock of hair from Rodney's forehead, and was rewarded with blue eyes opening on him and filling with unfettered joy.
"You're really here," Rodney said.
"I really am."
"Missed you."
John remembered what just six months in that time dilation field had been like, but this… god, Rodney had been alone so long.
"Dunno why you needed to be awake all that time."
"Things to do. Plans to put in motion for when you got here," he said evasively.
"Well, I'm glad to know there's a plan, but mostly I'm just glad you're with me."
But Rodney's face clouded at that, and he looked away almost suspiciously, pulling himself upright and letting the blanket slide down his body to reveal an old, worn T-shirt that John could now see bore the faint trace of an image—a vampire panda skull with bamboo branches beneath it crossed like bones on a Jolly Roger.
Fuck, he'd been sleeping in that almost new t-shirt the night before last. It made his head spin imagining Rodney… what? trying to hold on to something that kept him close, long after his scent had faded? Because that's exactly what John would have done. He was done pretending otherwise. What was the point of pretending now, when everything else was gone?
But then he noticed something else—Rodney’s forearm was scraped and scratched raw, scabbed over and endlessly picked at, a mess of scars and self-inflicted wounds. John remembered Rodney scratching just there, under his longer sleeve, the previous day.
“It’s just a stim,” Rodney said, noticing him noticing. “Or, you could pretend I’m doing it for the attention.”
He laughed hollowly, and John realised just how fragile Rodney was.
“It’s a sign of how tough things have been for you,” John said softly.
Rodney hung his head but didn’t reply. Then he heaved in a long breath.
"We should get some breakfast," he said, "I've laid in plenty of food if we eke it out."
Only his voice cracked as he said it, and suddenly John wanted to reach out and just… hold him because he was so hurt, so vulnerable, and John absolutely couldn't take advantage of the fact that he was the only person Rodney had seen in two years.
There was something awkward about Rodney's movement as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, something wrong with what John was seeing. It was only when he pulled the blanket back that John made sense of what was missing. Rodney's right foot and most of his shin were gone, the stump covered in a greying sock.
"Oh God, Rodney…"
Rodney looked up at John's horrified face.
"Seriously?" he almost smiled. "This is the least of the things I've lost."
Approximately 48,000 years earlier
Rodney didn't much like Queen Mara. John had always been jittery around her after their visit to her planet where a wrecked sister ship of Atlantis held its populace in subjugation. For nine months after the first mission, John had warily scrutinised Mara's waistline on every visit, whilst staying carefully out of touching distance. It didn't take a genius to work out John had been jumped for his genes, and Rodney hadn't realised then, but he knew it now; John didn't like the attention he got from women nearly as much as he pretended to.
But. The woman had spunk. Since Michael's hybrids had conquered her world, she had led several raids back there to free captives before Michael turned them, and sometimes after. When she found out about the sabotaged stardrive, she was the first to suggest a mission to retrieve the drive in the sister ship.
They still hadn't found their saboteur.
Rodney, Mara, Katana of the Travelers and Sora of the Genii went in cloaked, parking the jumper and descending into the wreck of the city-ship. Lorne had wanted to come, but Rodney pointed out Lorne was their best remaining ATA gene and taking both of them offworld at the same time was a bad plan. Sora and Katana were among the best warriors they had and Mara was the right mission leader on her home turf.
Lorne wouldn't have changed how things worked out, anyhow.
Rodney's screams were what drew the hybrid guards to them. Mara had pushed his head and body clear from the falling girder when the quake hit, but it had slammed down on his foot and ankle with crushing force. She’d saved his life, but he was so fucked.
Nauseating, terror-edged, screaming agony slowly ebbed behind a flood of endorphins. Rodney was able to look at the situation almost dispassionately. The three women tried to move the beam but the structure it was part of was too large for any team of humans to move unassisted. They were cut off from the impossibly buried and almost certainly destroyed stardrive, the mission was hopeless now, and Rodney wasn't going anywhere.
"You have to go," he said. "Come back with combat engineers if you can."
As if there'd be time. As if the hybrids weren’t going to find him, and soon. Michael couldn’t be allowed to know what he knew, Atlantis couldn’t afford for him to be captured. He couldn’t allow his knowledge to do more harm than it already had.
With cold certainty, he realised his life hadn’t been saved at all.
Something almost like relief washed through him. It was over. This shitty existence, the loss after loss, the daily fear, watching their own mistakes destroy them and the worlds around them, waiting for Michael to inevitably corner them. All that would be off his shoulders.
Katana looked at him, her face deliberately hard.
"Rodney, you already lost the leg and Atlantis can't afford to lose you. You have to let me…"
Rodney looked in horror as she aimed her pulse weapon.
“Nononono!”
That's when the hybrids came into the space, instantly catching Katana with a lucky bullet to the head, through and through, neat and fatal.
The woman fell across Rodney, eyes open and unseeing, pulse weapon still gripped in her dead hand. Rodney didn't think twice before grabbing the weapon and firing over the girder that protected him from the hybrids’ weapons. Sora and Mara both scrambled to find cover, shooting P90 fire as they went, taking down two of the hybrids. Rodney took out another two, hands shaking on Katana’s weapon as her warm weight still lay across him. The final hybrid turned tail and ran, falling in a spray of fire from Mara’s weapon.
"Go!" Rodney shouted.
"NO!" the two women chorused adamantly, sorrowfully lifting Katana’s body from Rodney and closing her staring eyes.
They were right, of course they were right. They couldn’t just leave him to be captured. If he was going to end this, it had to be now. Then he looked back at the pile of debris where once had been a stardrive and connected to a sudden surge of hope amid all the fuckedness of everything.
Atlantis wasn’t going anywhere. He could still save John.
He knew what he had to do. He pointed the weapon right at the point where crushed and bloodied flesh met Ancient alloy and fired.
Approximately 48,000 years later
Rodney fitted his prosthetic carefully. John could see it was Atlantis-made, a moulded polymer socket, a metal pylon and foot encased permanently in a shabby walking shoe.
"Made it myself. Well, Carson made the medical bit and I did the engineering."
John knew he wasn't supposed to stare, but a bit of Rodney was gone and that outraged him in ways he didn't want to reflect on too hard.
"Oh for fuck's sake don't look so wounded, this happened a long time ago, even in terms of my actually breathing time-line."
"I'm… sorry I wasn't there, Rodney."
Dammit, he should've kept Rodney safe. All of them.
"Well, you and me both, but it happened, so…" Rodney stopped mid-sentence, stalked off into the next room, and returned with a laptop, as well as two hunks of nut-bread and a pair of canteens. He passed the refreshments to John without a word, opening the laptop and beginning to type.
John wanted to ask him more, but he could tell Rodney had walls up for a reason and he wasn't the bulldozing type, so he just reached and squeezed Rodney's bicep and then took himself for a walk.
He could understand why Rodney didn't go up into the city. As his walk took him along more familiar streets, the weight of the emptiness began to press. Atlantis had always been quiet, that was part of its appeal, but the soft hum of the city itself, not to mention its gentle ocean-rock, and the occasional person striding from one building to the next was very different from this stifling, utterly silent progress through the unnaturally well-preserved remains of the city he loved.
John felt his chest tighten until it was hard to breathe. He wanted to run back to Rodney, but Rodney was in enough pain and didn’t need to deal with John’s as well. So he sat at the base of the control tower on a bench where he’d sat next to Teyla, Ronon, Elizabeth, Sam, Rodney, so many times, buried his head in his hands and didn’t quite know how to move for a very long time.
When he slunk back towards Rodney's lair a long while later, he found his friend coming out to meet him, looking panicked.
"What's wrong?" he asked, bringing his hands up to Rodney's biceps as Rodney fast-stepped towards him, wild-eyed.
"You can't… you can't just go like that, okay? You just can't. I can't… It's too…"
Oh, Jesus.
John found himself pulling Rodney into his arms, because abandonment issues he understood, and Rodney's must be about as bad as they got. Rodney collapsed against him, burrowing close, out of breath but likely not from exertion.
"I'm sorry, buddy, I didn't mean to spook ya."
John laid a hand firmly between Rodney’s shoulderblades, fingertips pressing gently through the soft, worn fabric of his t-shirt, feeling the minute shake of his body. He’d do just about anything to take away that solar flare and all it had done to the man trembling in his arms, but there was nothing he could do but offer comfort. His agency had all run out, and Rodney was, as ever, the one saving the day and saving his sorry ass.
"I have so much still to do but could you… could you just stay close?"
"Sure I could. And I could help, maybe?"
Because this version of Rodney may be as fragile as that aged paper map he must have left out for John half a millennium ago, but he was still a genius, and he clearly had some sort of plan to get them both somewhere better than here.
Rodney pulled out of his arms, turned his face away.
"I, um… look, can I just have a few days? Because the whole red giant thing has thrown things off a little."
"Sure. Of course."
"I can give you a spare laptop. You can play spider solitaire. Read Wormhole X-treme fanfiction or something."
John eyerolled at that.
“Why the hell not?”
John followed Rodney into the stasis room, where he fished a battered device out of one of the pods, retrieving bread, a hunk of cheese and some sorli berries from another.
John was an absolute sucker for those things. And they went so good with the really ripe Kanxean cheese, which… oh yeah, this was the stuff.
"I saved the things you like. And there's Johnny Cash on the laptop, and a bunch of other stuff, Anna Karenina and some trashy airport novels you won't have read, films that were released after you… The Star Trek reboot. It’s good. And Avatar. It isn’t but it’s a spectacle. Plus Back to the Future. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and some games—Tomb Raider, Fifa, Golf, Sims…"
Well, wasn't that thoughtful. John considered, as he realised the enormity of what Rodney was doing for him here, that it didn't really need the frosting of nice food and entertainment, because just company and not being left alone to die was a lot, and he didn't really wanna think too hard about media from a dead civilisation, the fact that there would never be another film, another stupid TV show.
"Don't suppose you put our RC cars on ice, did ya?" he still couldn't help but ask.
"I did!" Rodney's eyes sparkled. "Maybe we can have a race later, when I'm done setting up this simulation?"
John wished he knew what Rodney was planning though. Were they just going to stay in the city? Travel offworld for supplies?
"Rodney—"
"I'm not ready for explanations yet, John. Give me some time."
Well, maybe there'd be mission reports on the laptop and some answers there.
Approximately 48,000 years earlier
Rodney didn’t remember much of Mara and Sora bringing him home. Thank god the gene therapy had worked on Mara and she’d learned to pilot the jumpers, and thank god for the toughness of both those women. He hated that they'd had to leave Katana's body but would forever be grateful to her for her weapon.
A weapon they insisted on Rodney keeping, even though he knew he'd never go offworld again.
Carson was in a funny little dance with Radek that almost had Rodney shipping them—Radek would come and consult Rodney, Carson would pretend not to notice for a little while and then usher Radek out claiming Rodney shouldn’t be working.
Rodney wasn’t stupid—they wanted him to feel useful, but he was always so damn tired. And it was hard to see the point of anything lately, he could lose hours playing with John's old Nintendo DS or just sleeping. The latest surgery had gone well, stabilising what was left of his lower leg to make him ready for a prosthetic .
The depression he was struggling with wasn’t necessarily any worse than other bouts he’d had since he’d lost John. He didn't feel particularly sorry for himself about his leg, not in the scheme of things. This was just one more loss, like the universe was ripping off pieces of him until there was nothing left worth calling a life. But he’d swap the other foot without hesitation for John, or Teyla or Ronon or even a working stardrive. But all those things were gone, and they were going to lose Atlantis, it was only a matter of time.
Rodney wasn’t sure he could bear to leave.
Radek and Carson were the two people who paid attention in the midst of citywide tensions. Lorne and Mara had finally identified the saboteur; ironically he was from Dagan. That lot were still obsessed with preventing the City of the Ancients from being misappropriated. Rodney was going to have words with Allina just as soon as he was on his feet again. Foot.
“But at least the city will be here for John now,” he said to Radek, seizing the one sliver of good in all of this.
Radek nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes! We could… we could leave him a care package, in the ultra-stasis pods! All he needs to survive out there.”
“I, um, I’ve been working on something. I think I can bring him home, actually.”
He showed Radek the math that was still half-formed, but he knew, knew for certain he could save John. Radek looked genuinely excited at the math, believing in the possibilities.
“I can change it all, Radek,” he said.
Then Radek’s face fell, and he looked unbearably sad.
“Oh my friend, it does not matter what you do 48,000 years in the future,” Radek told him gently. “All that has happened will still have happened. Teyla, Ronon, Sam, Jennifer, they will all still have died.”
“I can send John home. Before all those things happened!”
“Yes, and that will create another quantum universe, and things may turn out differently there, but all our study of Janus’ writings on time travel tell us this universe will still continue as it is.”
But Rodney already knew this. They’d seen so many quantum universes already, of course time travel would simply create one more.
“I don’t care,” he said flatly. “No, I can’t save anyone else, but I can save John.”
How did Radek not understand? John would turn up to an empty Atlantis, lost and frightened because being abandoned was just about the only thing that scared the shit out of Sheppard. Well, Rodney wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Very well,” Radek conceded. “I will help you. Copy those files to me and let me see what I can do with them.”
Approximately 48,000 years later
There were no reports on the laptop Rodney gave him—it was wiped clean of everything except highly compressed forms of all conceivable entertainment from porn to a copy of John's Doug Flutie tape. John settled in at the opposite end of the couch to Rodney, who was being secretive about whatever it was he was working on, and started in on Anna Karenina, because that was from a world already remote to John before the entirety of civilisation had been wrenched from him.
Nothing in there to set up the unbearable ache of loss.
Eventually, Rodney put the laptop aside, and stretched. He looked at John and such joy spread across his face that it made John grin back despite the objectively catastrophic situation he found himself in.
Possibly, it hadn’t sunk in yet.
"God, you have no idea how good it is to see you again," Rodney said. "Wanna go race some cars?"
"I'd like that, buddy," John responded, feeling a lump rise in his throat at the normalcy of it.
Him and Rodney racing cars, after everything else had gone to shit.
And what happens after the world ends? he wondered.
"So... later, why don't we gate offworld, go see what's around?" John asked, pretending to be casual about it.
"Um, we could do that," Rodney said, his tone negating his words.
"Only?"
"Only we couldn't come back."
"Why not?"
“I fixed it so nobody can dial in,” Rodney said, an apologetic whine in his voice. “Because with no gate shield, I couldn’t risk—somebody—coming in and plundering the place. Or worse.”
“Then how did I…”
“You’d already dialed in. Already made the connection.”
That kind of broke John’s brain.
“And you couldn’t use the shield because…”
“I didn’t want you to splat like a bug on the windshield, no.”
John shuddered.
"Actually, Eldon helped me find the code to fix the gate. He was quite a find in the end. It was him that found the stasis pods too."
"Eldon? The little guy with the stutter from those Olesian convicts? How's he doing?"
Rodney changed his voice to perfectly mimic the odd British accent of Holly from Red Dwarf.
"Dead, John. Everybody's dead, John."
John was momentarily horrified, but he couldn't help it, the absurdity of the situation, Rodney's somewhat manic comic delivery, the entire Dave Lister-ness of this setup hit him like a pie in the face and he snorted a desperate laugh. Rodney's face broke into a grin, heartbreakingly relieved, and John fell to pieces, laughing hysterically and clinging onto Rodney's arm. Rodney's own laughter was perhaps a little crazed, but fuck, he could see his friend needed it.
When they''d recovered from their desperate hysterics, John looked at his friend quizzically.
“Cars?”
“Cars,” Rodney agreed.
They made a circuitous track around the stasis pods and then it was on, with the same cars they’d been playing with just last week, not much worse for wear now they were in their own timeline seven and a half years older and gratifyingly, heartbreakingly little used. Rodney’s modifications made his faster on the straights, but John made up time taking the turns better, and he beat Rodney seven times out of ten, trash talking all the way.
“Dammit, flyboy!” Rodney protested as John beat him to the finish line once more.
His face was open and happy and just for a moment it felt normal, it felt like them. Just another moment of downtime on Atlantis and chance to goof around.
“Piloting beats sciencing for once, McKay, don’t be sore about it,” he said, grinning back.
“Hardly,” Rodney said, stepping in so close John thought Rodney might kiss him, but instead he pressed his forehead to John’s, the way Teyla used to do.
John’s heart beat wildly. For the longest moment Rodney didn’t move, just stayed like that, chest rising and falling, then his hand came up to the back of John’s head and he drew in a long breath, pulling away and immediately turning his attention onto something terribly important he needed to fix on his car.
“Hey, McKay?” John asked, as casually as he was able.
“What?” Rodney responded in his can’t you see I’m busy? tone.
"Just how long were you thinking of making that Red Dwarf joke?"
"Oh, only for the last ten thousand years or so."
Rodney’s shoulders unhunched, and he looked back up at John, his eyes a little wet but with the ghost of a smile on his face.
"Well at least you're not a hologram. Now that would suck."
Approximately 48,000 years earlier
Lorne stomped out of the jumper grim-faced.
“Well, that’s another supply-line Michael’s severed.”
They’d been counting on part of the Larziq harvest. Famine wasn’t imminent—they hadn’t taken a million people into Atlantis without a whole lot of contingency building, but Michael’s strength was growing and growing, and Rodney had to admit his R&D team had nothing remotely resembling a defence against the kind of siege the wraith subjected the Ancients to.
“It’s amazing Michael hasn’t attacked Lantea yet,” Rodney mused, propelling along next to Lorne in his wheelchair.
His walking was improving, but the chair was more nimble and less tiring. Good for his upper body strength, too.
“He’s just waiting til he’s got the power to strike definitively, doc,” Evan replied. “The longer he takes, the worse it’ll be for us.”
“There’s no way out, is there?”
“Other than to leave, no.”
“I—I don’t think I can, Evan. Leave, I mean.”
Lorne stopped abruptly and looked at him; a long, assessing gaze that left Rodney feeling like he was the subject of one of Evan’s life drawing classes.
“How bout we go grab some food?” he said gently.
Like most days, the mess smelled of seafood, increasingly their main source of protein as they lived out of the New Lantean Ocean. Rodney avoided the fish stew (there were tentacles!) and was relieved to see tava bean patties and mashed tormack.
“What I wouldn’t give for a juicy steak and fries right now,” he complained.
But the tormack was good and the pattie was deliciously spiced with a salsa-like concoction on the side, and he settled into eating, with Evan still silently evaluating him, like the mother hen he always was. Eventually, he slid a hand over Rodney’s.
“Talk to me. You’ve got me worried.”
“Isn’t much to say is there? Radek and I are close, really close, to being able to save John. So, you’re all going to leave, and I’m going to stay here and wait for him.”
Evan’s face buffered, and then crumpled into shock.
“Rodney, are you… that’s one hell of a sacrifice.”
Rodney shook his head.
“No, don’t take this the wrong way, because I love all of you, I really do. You especially. But Atlantis and John? Those are the things I can’t give up. And if it came to a choice, I’d choose John. Always, over everything.”
“You’re in love with him,” Evan said.
His face was soft and sweet and understanding and it made Rodney want to cry.
“Well of course I am.”
Rodney said it as if he’d always known this. Only he hadn’t, he’d somehow missed it entirely.
Approximately 48,000 years later
Rodney rested his head on John's shoulder as he munched his way through a home-made power-bar. John was struck by how lost and needy his friend was, and how weirdly he just accepted it, let Rodney inside his bubble like it was natural.
"Are you gonna tell me what's going on, Rodney? What happened to you? To everyone? What you're doing here? What the plan is?"
"Yes," Rodney almost whispered. "Yes, I should do that."
He went quiet, and John realised he was shaking. He brought a hand up, so easily, to rest in his shaggy, greying hair, and found himself with an armful of sobbing McKay.
"I'm sorry," a small, broken voice came out of Rodney a long time later. "It's all my fault. Losing you was all my fault."
He tried to pull away, as if to run from John's wrath, but John just held him closer. He remembered what happened to SG1—a solar flare made the wormhole divert to a different point in time—and yeah, he knew there were supposed to be failsafes on the Pegasus gate, and he remembered Rodney and Dr Z bickering about the problems with the latest updates and how to fix them. Talking about the infinitesimal risks of the same thing happening again until they worked out a patch. Those two were working as many miracles as anyone could ask for.
John missed the days when Rodney didn’t have time to second-guess himself or self-reflect. Even if it had led to the destruction of a solar system, it had also saved their lives countless times.
And besides, the hubris that had brought them all to this place? That hadn’t been Rodney’s.
Michael wasn’t Rodney’s cross to bear.
"Rodney, you didn't make a chance in a million solar flare happen. You didn’t hide the risks while the failsafes were down. You weren’t negligent. You and Radek did your best to fix a cranky old operating system. Bad shit happens."
But that was clearly the wrong thing to say because now Rodney was sobbing harder.
"I lost Teyla and Ronon. I failed the whole team."
It shouldn't have hurt so specifically and so keenly, not when his head already knew it, not when everything and everyone he ever knew was dead, but the thought of those two gone, the thought of Rodney going through that alone, was too much for John's heart. His throat closed up and he squeezed his eyes against the sting of tears.
"I'm sorry you lost them," he said, when he could speak at all. "I know you did all anyone could, Rodney, because you always have."
They… cuddled, was the only word for it, really, for the longest time, a silent little clutch of misery, no words to put it right. The loss of the two people who were the best of their team was more than could be borne.
Rodney heaved in a shuddering breath, and John watched him shake himself out of his misery, pull himself to his feet.
"I have work to do," he said, and then almost as an afterthought, "Wanna help me check the math?"
Approximately 48,000 years earlier
"You have to leave Atlantis,” Rodney told the assembled Atlantis Council. “Before Michael plays his endgame. We can sink the city again and on minimal power and close to a geothermal vent he’ll struggle to locate it but with a million people effectively under siege—Michael will find all our supply lines eventually and starve us out."
"Then it has to be another galaxy. We have the power for that at least," Queen Mara said.
"Exactly. And somewhere we can safely send a million refugees," Evan agreed.
"Well, that rules out the Milky Way galaxy given situation there,” Radek said. “We cannot guarantee safe treatment of refugees."
"Would not Earth take us? With such a huge population, one million people would surely not tax its infrastructure," Sora suggested.
Rodney shook his head sadly. Sora should be right, dammit, and Pegasus had such a generally different attitude to migration it would be hard to explain why she was wrong. So he framed his reply in terms she might understand.
"Too risky. The Milky Way isn't going to respond well to an influx of refugees in its current state of post-Ori politics, and we can't fully guarantee we won't be bringing more trouble with us. What we need is a fresh start."
"Which only leaves the Ori galaxy," Radek said.
"Um, n-not quite only," Eldon interjected.
They both turned to look at the timid but fantastically bright Olesian. It turned out Eldon was a genius at finding his way into data the Ancients had buried in their database. It was he who had discovered some of the missing pieces of information that helped Rodney finally crack zero point energy.
"A-andromeda galaxy. Th-they had a b-base there. But they didn't seed the galaxy or build a n-network of Rings. Fifty thousand years ago it was very safe, very boring, and set up much like our, um, alpha site, a remote base to run to in worst case times."
"Well, I'd say these count as worst case," Lorne said. "Michael's got eyes on most of the gates in Pegasus."
"We have enough power to do recon," Rodney said proudly.
"We can't delay," Mara put in. "Michael's going to starve us out eventually. It's getting harder and harder to resupply, and creating further infrastructure here when we know he’ll attack is short-sighted."
“Andromeda, here we come,” Sora said, her eyes bright.
Approximately 48,000 years later
“Rodney, this math… I feel like I’m on the edge of understanding what it’s for.”
Rodney’s face tried so hard to become a mask, but it had always been wide-open and now the emotion was leaking out through every pore.
“You… you’re trying to find a way to predict another solar flare! Rodney, you’re a genius.”
Rodney’s face brightened.
“Theoretically, we can send you back exactly the way you got here, using the Gate, the right address and a solar flare. The only problem is, we're waiting for something very specific—a prominence with exactly the right shape, size, characteristics and relative position in space so that it will interact with the wormhole in exactly the right manner and send you back exactly the right amount of time.”
A shiver ran through John’s body, though, on hearing these words.
“Us.”
“Huh?”
“You talked as if you’re just gonna send me back. But there are two of us here,” the shiver was growing, an icy feeling creeping through John’s veins.
“Well, obviously. There’ll already be a me in that timeline waiting at the other end, you idiot.”
John felt sick.
“But… he won’t be you.”
Rodney pulled himself to his feet and hobbled out of the room as if he hadn’t heard John. But now John was furious, jumping up and running after Rodney, grabbing him by the arm and halting his progress. Rodney whirled round, his face belligerent, his chin lifted.
“You see, this is exactly why I was reluctant to tell you. I knew you’d go all leave no man behind on me. But this is why I’m here, John. I’m the one who’s not leaving you behind. I’m fixing your timeline to how it should have been. This is how it all works out.”
John could understand how Rodney saw it. He’d go back, and life would pick up where it left off, as if none of this had happened. It was almost tidy, except for the one bitter factor twisting his insides.
“And what about you?” he asked, his voice suddenly scratchy.
“What does it matter?”
John could see tears rising in his eyes.
“It matters, Rodney,” John told him.
“I’ll get into one of the stasis pods and go to sleep.”
John had once fallen down a crevasse in Antarctica, and honestly this feeling wasn’t far different, the same horrible lurch, the same whole-body plunge into icy chill.
“You’ll euthanise yourself? Unacceptable!”
“My body. My life. My choice. You don’t get to make my decisions, Colonel.”
He pulled his arm free of John’s grip and stalked off, leaving John choking on the realisation this was the first time Rodney hadn’t called him by his first name. It opened a chasm between them, wider even than the gap of millennia that had originally separated them, leaving John frozen in place.
Approximately 48,000 years earlier
“We wanna show you the city,” Lorne said to him. “New Atlantis, we’re gonna call it. The MALP didn’t do it justice. It seems that Ancients did live there once, a great civilisation until they ascended, but the planet’s in a nebula that can’t be flown by ship, the jumpers can’t leave the atmosphere. And for reasons we can’t figure, the stargate dials Atlantis only. So, we’ll be marooned.”
“But do not be sad for us," Radek put in, seeing Rodney's frown. "We have technology there and a bountiful planet, there is nothing we will want for and no enemy but a particular sea monster we can take pains to avoid.”
“I reckon we might just be better off there than here or on Earth,” Carson said, although his tears belied his optimism.
Lorne clicked on the video and it played on the screen in the small rec room they’d retired to, just the three of them.
Lorne was holding the camera in a room that had architecture quite different from that of the city he knew. He walked out onto a high balcony, panning across the city, spread out into the distance to a point where green hills met rugged coastline. The buildings didn’t have the height of Atlantis’ spires, and were curvier, elegant and more ornate, coloured in russets and bronzes, and showing the patina of long age. Rodney could imagine the streets below milling with people, children playing. The light was strange—daylight, yes, but pinkish and hazy. The camera panned up to the sky and he could clearly see the clouds of the nebula above them even through the atmosphere.
Tears were in his eyes. He felt no regrets for the life he could have if he joined them, but to know that after so much loss the people of Pegasus would have this peaceful haven and build a life worth having was everything to him.
“I’m happy for you all,” he said through his own tears.
The three man huddled close to him.
“And while we manage the relocation,” Radek added, “I will put all hands to solving your math, Rodney.”
The exodus wasn’t quick, but slowly the city emptied, and trains of refugees filed into Atlantis and back out again. They couldn’t save everyone, but they rescued so many, and left Michael to play warlord in a relatively empty galaxy, but for his hybrids.
In the Andromeda galaxy, land was being ploughed, indigenous plants analysed and sea monsters negotiated with, after a fashion. The city housed as many as wanted it, but far more were keen to build their own autonomous settlements. Lorne and Mara had flown people to many continents on the new world. There would be no countries, no borders, but there would be room and space for different cultures to thrive.
When the last dial-out was scheduled, Rodney fixed the gate so they would never be able to dial back. Just Carson, Evan, Miko, Sora, Mara, Eldon and Radek were there to say goodbye to Rodney.
This was it. They were leaving him. Oh god, they were leaving him and he was going to be alone and there was nothing left for his life but to fix the timeline for John, to send him back to his own time and then it would end. Radek and the other scientists had worked so hard at the math and it was more or less there; he could rescue John for sure. But this was the end for him, no more science team, no more research, no more adventures other than the one with time itself.
And he would never leave the city again.
He wanted to say goodbye to them, he did, but suddenly his missing ankle hurt like fuck, and he already felt so alone and he just wanted it all to be over. He sat down on the gateroom steps, scrubbing at his damp face with his hands.
Evan came and sat next to Rodney and wrapped strong arms around him.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“You know I do.”
Approximately 48,000 years later
He wasn’t sure whose eyes were redder when Rodney returned, hours later. John tried to hold his face tight against the wobble at seeing the man he was apparently expected to say goodbye to and allow to die. He didn’t trust his voice to speak, pretending instead to be interested in a conversation between Levin and Oblonsky in the text in front of him. Rodney stood over him, reaching a hand towards him and then letting it fall.
“John, none of this was supposed to happen, don’t you see? I can put it right and then… I won’t matter. This won’t matter. I’m a broken man in a broken timeline. Let me have this.”
“I can’t,” John said simply, his voice stretched almost to breaking.
He looked up into eyes as wet as his.
“What choice do you have? What alternatives are there? I can’t go back through the gate with you. That’s not my world.”
John had done nothing but think about this for hours and yeah, it was the only way to seamlessly fix the continuity of the timeline, but the thing was that continuity had already been broken.
“If I understand this right, going back will simply create a new universe, right? It won’t end this one.”
“That’s right. All of this happened. And as far as I can tell this doesn’t all wink out of existence when I send you back.”
“And entropic cascade failure doesn’t happen in changed timelines, because Daniel Jackson shared a reality with himself when Ba’al changed the timeline.”
“Yes that’s true but not the point.”
“So, what, you’re arrogant enough to create a whole entire universe, but you don’t see the benefit of one with two Rodney McKays?”
Rodney just looked at him, open-mouthed.
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Pot, kettle.”
“Well, yes, kind of my point! I think you’ll find this model’s about ready for the scrap heap.”
Fury blazed through John, and he found himself jumping to his feet, stepping up close to Rodney, and grabbing his arms in a fierce grip.
“Don’t say that! Don’t. You matter too much to me, Rodney.”
Rodney just shook his head, looking increasingly wild about the eyes.
“He matters. He’s your friend and you’ll pick up where you left off.”
But that wasn’t right. It made some sort of cold mathematical sense, like cancelling to balance an equation, but John’s heart was refusing to hear it. Because sure, he’d always had these feelings for Rodney, but…
His breath caught. Rodney looked like a bird about to take flight, so damn fragile, and maybe he always had been but John could see it now, could see Rodney revealed and vulnerable in a way he hadn’t known before. And he couldn't tell for sure if this had changed his feelings but it had certainly changed his ability to deny them to himself.
“It’s you I’ve…”
Fallen in love with, he somehow couldn't will himself to say.
“It’s you I can’t be without,” he managed, leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss against Rodney’s mouth.
When he pulled back Rodney's eyes were wide, shocked.
“If you won’t come back with me, then I won’t go, and that’s the end of it,” John added, never surer of anything in his life.
Rodney just stared at him, for the longest time.
“Nonono!" he finally blurted. "Don’t you see? If I send you back, if you go back to him, then all this never happened!”
“Oh god, Rodney.”
John wrapped his arms tightly around Rodney and kissed the side of his head.
“I’m sorry it happened. But it did happen.”
“I wanted so much to just erase it all,” Rodney’s voice was small.
“Well, I’m sorry but you can’t. Rodney, you’re real and you’re here and I’m with you, right now, and I’m… goddammit I'm in love with you. This you. I’m not saying I don’t… care for… the you I left in the past, but what I feel for you right now is… is more.”
He closed his mouth gently over Rodney’s again. Rodney's body was swaying towards his, even as his lips were tightening against the kiss. This wasn't unwanted, John could tell that, but would Rodney allow himself to have it? Would he let himself live again?
Rodney's hand came up to his chest, a gentle push, and John's heart fell. But then the fingers closed on his shirt, and there was a noise in Rodney's throat that was almost a sob. Suddenly his lips were pressing forward, parting. He was letting John in, surrendering to the possibility of a life still to be lived. The desperation in the returned kiss had more tears rising in John’s eyes.
God, he loved this man. This Rodney. His Rodney.
John didn’t know what choice they’d make. Maybe they’d see what was left in the Andromeda galaxy. Maybe Rodney could fix the gate and they’d venture out into Pegasus. He wanted desperately to go home, to give Teyla and Ronon another chance at life. And the complications of a universe with two brilliant, blue-eyed geniuses? Well, they’d figure it out, if Rodney was willing. In different ways, they were both his, but this was the man that had claimed John’s heart unequivocally, and John wasn’t going to leave him behind.