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John Sheppard will be dying, out there in the twilight, in the dry desert. He might be watching the stars come out above him. He might be unconscious. He might be hoping (though hope obviously hasn't been a big part of his life in this universe) that Rodney, that the SGC, that someone will come for him.
Back in the control room at Area 51, Woolsey will be watching Rodney patiently, waiting to see if he'll crack, if Rodney's interest in Sheppard has blinded him to the cold realities of life.
John Sheppard'll die a hero's death. He'll have his redemption. He won't have to live with himself any more.
There'll be so many other Sheppards out there, so many realities. Some who've fucked up even worse. Some who are heroes.
This Sheppard, bleeding out on the dry earth, is the only one in Rodney's reality. The only one he'll be able to ... to salvage.
* * *"I don't think this is the future, Rodney," said Radek as the hatch of the gateship swung down.
"What? Why not?"
The enhanced drive had brought them through the gate, all right: not to another location in space (never mind that there was no such thing as a fixed point in space-time) but to another location in time.
"The energy signature," said Radek. "It ... it is not what we predicted. It is like — there is a massive disruption of subspace, like ..."
"Okay. Where are we?"
This was not their Atlantis. The lights were brighter: Rodney didn't recognise any of the Marines, or the military type (skinny, black-clad, P90, skidding into the docking bay) heading to intercept them. The stunning woman following him looked like, what's-her-name, Teyla Emmagan of the Athosian Council, except that Rodney'd never seen Teyla Emmagan smile. He'd never seen her in BDUs, either, but she filled them out pretty nicely.
"Doctor McKay?" she said.
"The hell?" said the guy in black, staring at Rodney and touching his earpiece. "McKay?" (Rodney twitched.) "Jumper bay. Now."
* * *"We pulled in the detective who tracked down the other Wraith," Woolsey says.
"About time," says Rodney. "Maybe he can help us: I mean, what sort of message does it send when the Vegas police do better than the entire SGC?"
"I met with him before," offers Woolsey, "back when we first became involved in the case."
Rodney waits. He can outwait Woolsey any day.
"His name's John Sheppard," says Woolsey eventually, scrutinising Rodney as if he's the suspect. "I wondered if he might be ... connected to the Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard you encountered when your team went through the rift."
Woolsey's a player, too: does he know how much time and energy Rodney's spent researching this universe's Sheppard? Has he done the same digging?
Rodney tilts his head. "Sheppard's a pretty common name," he says casually.
* * *"McKay's in the Gateroom," said Colonel Sheppard, still staring at Rodney. "He's got a problem."
"You bet I've got a problem," muttered Rodney. He gestured angrily at Zelenka and Cadman. "You heard the man: come on!"
The Marines fell in behind them, which didn't reduce Rodney's unease one iota.
The glow of the open wormhole illuminated the Gateroom (fewer dead plants than the one Rodney and his team had just left). The lights were definitely brighter here: warmer.
"Wait a minute," said Rodney. "The gate should've shut down."
"Well, it didn't," snapped a voice that sounded kind of ...
"McKay," said Sheppard, "we've got visitors."
"What? Oh. I —"
The other McKay was wide-eyed, dishevelled. (Was that really what he looked like?) There was a tablet in his hand, and he was leaning over a console, shoving some guy out of his way, jabbing buttons. "Are they Replicators?" he said over his shoulder.
"One thing at a time, Rodney," drawled Sheppard. "Any IDC coming through?"
"Negative, Colonel," said the tech at the console.
"It's not a normal wormhole," said McKay, snapping a glare at Rodney. "The energy signature's like the one on the Daedalus, that time with the Alternate Reality Drive. Is that what you were trying to do?" he said to Rodney.
"Alternate Reality Drive?" echoed Rodney. "No: that is, we ..."
"Incoming!" yelled one of the Marines: and yes, yes, there was something — Sheppard's P90 was up, he was charging down the stairs towards the Gate: hell, there were soldiers down there, uniforms Rodney'd never seen before, striding out of the gate as though they owned the place, weapons ready —
Someone shoved Rodney, rough and sudden: he rolled with the blow, fetching up against the unyielding metal of the console, as energy bolts crackled above his head.
* * *The Daedalus's infirmary will be grim and Spartan. Rodney won't know the names of the medics treating Sheppard: it won't matter. They wouldn't be here if they didn't know their business. He'll listen as they enumerate Sheppard's injuries, wounds, traumata. He'll pace the corridor outside, waiting for updates. Sheppard's tough: he'll pull through. There's Asgard tech to tip the balance. Not all the aliens are bad guys.
Then Rodney can set about the other repairs.
Sheppard's a stubborn man. Defiance tastes like life itself, the Wraith'd said, and Rodney'll begin to think it had a better handle on Sheppard than any of them. Sheppard'll turn down the chance to come to Atlantis. He'll say he doesn't want anything to do with the SGC, the US government, the Air Force. He'll demand a new identity: he'll try to vanish into the desert, the open spaces, the emptiness.
Rodney won't let him.
* * *Rodney sets the surveillance video from the casino to loop, watches it over and over, zooms in on the cards in Sheppard's hand.
(Sometimes, he just lets the video loop, and stares at Sheppard's hands: tanned, bony, scarred, elegant. Imagines those hands touching skin, not cardboard.)
The Wraith'd been playing head games, just as Rodney suspected: Sheppard could've won that hand. Rodney frowns right along with him as the Wraith rakes in its winnings. Twenty-two grand. That kind of cash'd solve all Sheppard's problems. All the financial ones, anyway.
Then again, Rodney's pretty sure those winnings are still in the motel room, or in Sheppard's car. That? That he can fix.
* * *Cadman had been taken off to the infirmary for some test or other: Rodney didn't like the way Colonel Sheppard had smirked at her, or congratulated her on making Captain. He'd set Zelenka to work on the gateship diagnostics. Now it was just him, and the other McKay, and Colonel Sheppard, and Rodney kind of wished his team were around to back him up.
"There's no way they should have been able to dial Atlantis," insisted the other McKay. "The shield —"
"Yes, Rodney, why didn't the shield keep 'em out?"
"Why don't you ask him, Colonel?" snapped McKay, gesturing at Rodney. "Because from where I'm standing — which is, oh yes, in my own universe — he's the one who's been messing with the gate."
"Messing?" said Rodney indignantly. "We tested the device: we had every reason to believe it'd open a wormhole through temporal dimensions, enabling —"
"Yes, yes, time-travel." Rodney didn't like the curl of the other McKay's lip. "What a fabulous idea, except for how it didn't work. How did you plan on getting back? Or was this a one-way mission?"
"Hey, they probably just need to recalibrate the flux capacitor —"
"Don't even get me started on Back to the Future, Sheppard! Well?"
"I don't know why the gate's jammed," said Rodney, with dignity. "Not without, oh, looking at the readings?"
McKay grudgingly handed him the tablet. His shortcuts were configured wrong.
"I just can't believe you — I — you would've come through the Gate without —"
"Rodney," said Sheppard. (Rodney looked up, but Sheppard was talking to the other McKay. He opened another graph.) "Focus. Our shield's down: we saw off those guys, but we need to fix the Gate instead of arguing about whose fault it is, okay?"
"Huh," said Rodney, ignoring his double's protest. "Look."
* * *This isn't the John Sheppard he met before. This isn't the military commander of a city in another galaxy. This Sheppard is used up, broken, depleted. Hopeless.
Rodney takes him to the room where they've hooked up the Ancient weapons chair. If Sheppard's gene is anything like as strong as O'Neill's — or that other John Sheppard's — then he should be able to feel the Chair calling to him, feel the connection. Maybe he does. This Sheppard gives nothing away.
Sheppard stares at the chair, but he doesn't sit down. Rodney's obscurely disappointed.
Sheppard was a pilot, before he was discharged. Rodney's fairly sure the other Sheppard was, too. Maybe the Darts'll spark his curiosity. He takes Sheppard up onto the gantry.
"And the guy dumping bodies in the desert?" asks Sheppard, like the assemblage of alien spacecraft is just another disappointment.
"He's an alien," says Rodney. "A Wraith." He skitters over the physiology, because it doesn't make sense. "I suppose it all sounds like science fiction to you."
"I'm not really a fan," says Sheppard.
* * *Rodney doesn't like to think of what they did to the Wraith, the ways they invented to make it talk. The application of science: the end justifying the means. It talked, all right. Nonsense. Doggerel. Harvest moons, dry deserts, a future in a handful of sand.
It wants to suck his life.
It wants Sheppard's, too. For the first time since Rodney got to Area 51, the Wraith's looking alert. Rodney can almost believe that there's something about Sheppard that the Wraith can taste. It prowls closer to the glass that separates them (Rodney knows its exact fracture toughness specs) and stares into Sheppard's eyes. Sheppard's in deep: he stares back.
The Wraith knows his name. It promises — threatens? — to show him his future.
Rodney gets Sheppard out of there PDQ. Sheppard's future has nothing to do with the creature behind the glass. Not if Rodney can prevent it. Which, as a matter of fact, he can.
* * *"Where's Sheppard?" said Conan, or whatever his name was, looming over Rodney.
"In the gateroom, I guess: how would I know?"
"Not ours. Yours." The man's eyes were curiously light, his gaze open and compelling.
Rodney shrugged, looking down at the laptop again. "I don't know of any Sheppard in our Stargate program," he said.
"Why not?"
"Maybe he's dead," said Rodney, exasperated. "Maybe he just didn't want to go on a one-way mission to another galaxy."
"I am surprised," said Teyla, turning from the simulation she was running. "Without the Colonel, we would not have survived our first year in the city."
"Yes, yes," said McKay over his shoulder. "Sheppard with his magic gene, and his Kirkish habits, and his suicidal heroics: we take it in turns," he added, turning to look at Rodney, "to save each other's lives."
"Must be your turn again," muttered the big guy. Ronon. That was his name.
"Hey, I heard —"
"He's got the gene?" interrupted Rodney. "Natural, or — because we could use a gene therapy that had more than a 20% success rate."
"You don't have it?" McKay looked smug. "Score another one for this version of me!"
Rodney scowled at the scrolling graph. McKay, this McKay, was insufferable.
* * *A sunny afternoon in Atlantis: Sheppard will be standing on one of the balconies overlooking the ocean, gazing up into a clear blue sky. He'll be a pilot again: he'll have responsibility: he'll have rediscovered the joy of the new, of the unexplored, of the unknown. He won't be hiding any more (though Rodney's sure he'll still be wearing those damned aviator shades).
Rodney, somewhere out of Sheppard's sightline, will watch him for a while. Probably, if he's honest, congratulating himself. He'll have brought John Sheppard back from the bottom of the pit, reset his failures and his guilt. Sure, there'll be too much history for him to entirely erase, but he'll have given John this new beginning.
Somehow he'll have started thinking of him as 'John'. He'll have started thinking of him. About him. About whether this Sheppard's been hiding parts of himself, like the Sheppard he met through the rift.
* * *"Rodney — our Rodney — believes that John Sheppard is vitally important," confided Teyla, as they watched the simulation's progress bar creep towards the right of the screen.
"To him?" said Rodney. "I ... I don't —"
"To the future of the city," said Teyla. "To the war against the Wraith. Perhaps even to Earth."
"What? Why would he think one man could make the difference? Unless it's me, of course." Rodney laughed a little, so that he could pass off his comment as a joke.
"Some time ago," said Teyla, "Colonel Sheppard accidentally travelled far into the future. He does not speak of what he found there. But somehow Doctor McKay returned the Colonel to his own time, at, I believe, considerable cost to himself. Since then ..." She shook her head slowly. "Since then, they have become closer."
"Wait," said Rodney, "Sheppard travelled in time? How?"
"I do not know," said Teyla calmly, with that infuriating smile. "You would have to ask Doctor McKay, or perhaps Doctor Zelenka."
"Huh," said Rodney. If it was relevant to the current problem, they'd have said something, yes? Though he didn't care for this version of Zelenka: scruffier than a post-grad with a looming dissertation, and far too prone to argument.
He filed away 'closer'. He'd think about that later.
* * *One day soon they'll gate back to Athos, take the time to mend bridges with Halling and his people. From what Rodney's seen of that other Teyla Emmagan, she'll be a valuable ally: he still doesn't know why she's so different, so much friendlier, than the cold and uncooperative version he's met. Perhaps he'll manage to convince her to help forge diplomatic ties within Pegasus, making the expedition less of an isolated outpost. Perhaps he'll even persuade her to join Atlantis. Maybe he can get her on his team.
Maybe, somewhere, they'll come across a Runner named Ronon who wants to stop running, who's looking, like John Sheppard, for somewhere to belong.
Maybe Rodney'll persuade Weir to reassign the teams. Sure, Zelenka and Cadman (and Stackhouse, who'll be out of the infirmary by then) are good people in a crisis. But they're not ... not the team he saw.
There's no way it'll be the same. They're different people: they've lived different lives. But maybe they're the same kind of misfits.
* * *Sheppard's good. (How come it took him so long to pass his detective exam? Because he didn't give a shit whether he passed or not, Rodney answers himself.) He's asking all the right questions: radioactive isotopes, what the Wraith's up to, why it's feeding so often, why he's in the casino.
"He needs untraceable currency," says Rodney, "or we would have found him by now." Though honestly? It's debatable: the SGC haven't exactly distinguished themselves in this situation.
"So he makes money playing poker," says Sheppard. "There's gotta be a better way than that."
At least the Wraith wins, Rodney doesn't say. There's a lot at stake here. "I guess he could rob a bank," he equivocates, "but it's risky and it draws a lot of attention. No, the Wraith love games — and with their mental abilities, they are very good at them."
And so, he thinks, am I.
* * *"So that's the difference between us," said Rodney to McKay as soon as they were alone in the lab. "You're gay!"
"I am not!"
"Come on. You and Sheppard: am I right or am I right?"
"That's ..." McKay's eyes dropped: it wasn't evasion. He was staring at Rodney's wedding ring. "You're married. Huh."
"Yes, to a woman. To Colonel Sam — Samantha — Carter, as a matter of fact." He elected not to mention the separation. Sam'd come around eventually.
"Sam?" said McKay. "But she —"
"Turned you down?" said Rodney, smirking. "Is that why —"
"I'm not gay! It's just ..." McKay looked back up at Rodney. "Just — just Sheppard."
"So, all that nonsense about saving each other was —"
"Team," said McKay fiercely. "I'd do it for — and as a matter of fact I have done it, several times over: remind me to tell you about Teyla's baby —"
"Rodney!" Zelenka, his Zelenka, rushed in, and Rodney could honestly say he was relieved to see the man. "We think — that is, we have reconfigured the gateship's drive."
"Good work, Radek!" said Rodney: important to demonstrate approval. "Is Cadman —"
"Here, McKay," said Cadman. There was a bandage around her wrist. "Colonel Sheppard says, um, he's eager for us to return to our own timeline as soon as possible. The city's under —"
The alarm began to sound again.
"— attack," finished Cadman, unnecessarily.
* * *He tells Sheppard not to engage, but he already knows it's too late. This Sheppard's not that different, at the core. He'll do what it takes — whatever it takes, at whatever cost to himself — to save ... to save the Earth from a threat he only half-believes.
Sometimes? Sometimes Rodney doesn't want to be proved right. Well: no. He's pleased that his stratagem worked; he's, naturally, relieved that John Sheppard's about to save them all, save the entire fucking planet. Sheppard's got that strength of character, all right. Rodney's willing to bet serious money that all the John Sheppards, in all the realities, have it. They're heroes, martyrs, saviours. They lay down their lives for their ... for their people.
Rodney's sent this universe's John Sheppard to his death, thereby saving billions of lives. He just doesn't feel very heroic about it yet.
* * *There were ten or fifteen bodies on the floor of the Gateroom — nobody that Rodney recognised — and a smell of ozone and gun-oil strong enough to make him sneeze. For the moment, the Gate itself was rippling gently, nobody coming through: but the Marines crouched ready for another incursion, and the alarm hadn't stopped.
Sheppard was standing on the balcony, looking down at the bodies: he turned as Rodney came in, and the look on his face … Rodney frowned at him, because was he meant to know what that look meant?
Sheppard looked away, scratching the back of his neck.
"Power build-up in the gate," reported Zelenka, the local Zelenka. "It was never meant to stay open this long: we have to shut it down!"
"What, and leave us stranded here?" Rodney snarled at him.
"If the power build-up continues within the event horizon —"
"The gate will explode," McKay snapped, striding forward and elbowing Zelenka aside.
"Rodney —"
From below the control room came the sound of weapons fire, P90s and a slow popping noise that Rodney didn't recognise, shouts and a man screaming. There was a new smell in the air, something strong and acrid.
"Gas!" yelled someone. "Fall back!"
"You guys ready to head out?" said Sheppard, turning to Rodney. "'Cause I don't think we can hold the gate much longer."
"Zelenka thinks he's cracked it. No promises, but —"
"Then go! McKay — no, not you, my McKay — get out of here: I'll take care of things."
"Sheppard, if you're thinking —"
"If the gate's destroyed before we can send 'em back, we'll all be dead pretty soon," said Sheppard, low and intense. "Go on, Rodney." Then, after a beat, "It's my turn."
"Just give me a minute!" said McKay, typing frantically. His face was pale: he was coughing. "The air filters —"
"We don't have a minute!" Sheppard swung round, gesturing angrily at the floor of the gateroom, where gasmasked figures were advancing towards the stairs.
"McKay!" That was Cadman, beckoning Rodney from the steps that led to the docking bay. "Come on!"
"I ..." Rodney hesitated, trying to get McKay's attention, but McKay didn't spare him a glance: he was staring at Sheppard.
"Go, McKay: we've got it!" bellowed Ronon, shoving him towards Cadman.
"Good luck!" called Teyla, P90 in her hand: as the first masked soldier reached the top of the stairs, she opened fire.
McKay was bent over the console, coughing and retching: Sheppard, beside him, yelled, "Go!"
There was another salvo of popping noises, and Rodney saw Sheppard clutch his shoulder. Fuck it. Fuck it.
He ran.
* * *Things will have changed. Rodney'll have finally given up on Sam, and his wedding ring will be back in its box at the back of a drawer. He'll have saved the universe a few more times: he'll have worked with John, and discovered what that sharp mind and stupid courage can bring to Atlantis: he'll have cheated death, mourned colleagues, celebrated triumphs.
He'll bribe John with the promise of decent beer and junk food shipped from Earth (no way he won't miss Cheetos and popcorn) and get him to sit down and actually watch some decent science fiction. Star Wars, maybe, or new Galactica. How can anyone not like Galactica?
And okay, it won't be the John Sheppard he met first. Honestly? He's not so sure he'd even want to be that McKay. (Then again, that McKay looked happier.) But maybe there'll be that spark between the two of them, him and John Sheppard. Maybe John'll lean in, hesitant and not quite believing that good stuff can happen to him too. Maybe ... maybe ...
-end-