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Stargate Command is like a ghost town. Its inhabitants glide aimlessly, as if they don't quite exist yet.
Rodney sees the five of them sitting at a table. His hands tighten on his tray, which helps with the shaking a bit, and he tries to make it out before they spot him. Too late. He's almost out the door, ready for a lecture from the mess hall staff, when a hand closes around his bicep. "There you are," says Mitchell, steering him back to SG-1 before he has the chance to say no. He's sitting, flanked by Mitchell and Teal'c, and it feels like an inquisition.
There are no pleasantries. "How did it happen?" asks O'Neill.
Rodney falters. He does not want to discuss this. Ever, if possible. "I don't think..."
"McKay." It's not a request. He says it the way Sheppard says it, used to say it, before... well.
"How did it happen?" Vala whispers. She doesn't look up from the glass sitting on her tray, blue Jello sitting solemn and untouched. Blue. Instantaneously, Rodney loses his appetite for Jello forever.
It's not as though they don't have everything they need. The crew reports of the ambush, the shaky handwritten transcript of the last radio missive, the last words ever uttered by Sam Carter. Everyone at this table knows those words by heart, he knows. They don't need him here to replay it.
Still, he feels sort of honored to be here. Not that he's like the rest of the sycophants when it comes to SG-1. He always thought they were like the cocky jocks in high school, cool and irritatingly smug in their coolness.
But for better or worse, these are Sam's people, people who love her as much as he does. Being asked here, sitting amongst the elite of Sam's innermost circle, isn't quite the defining moment of his existence as it would be for the rest of the starry-eyed military goons lurking. But there's a respect to it, a recognition that whether they liked it or not, he, Rodney McKay, had been important in Sam Carter's life. They wouldn't have asked him over here if they didn't think that. If Sam hadn't made it clear at one point or another.
The thought warms him slightly.
It also breaks his heart.
"It was an ambush," he whispers. Sam should've known better. Would've known better, if she'd been well-rested and not running on adrenaline for the better part of who knew how long. He can't think of the last time he saw her not working. Not that it matters now. "Three Hive ships. They were merciless. Decimated every system running, one by one. An entire month of straight labor, me and Sam, and they opened fire on her and didn't let up." He swallowed, fingers grasping desperately at his fork to keep from shaking. "She beamed the crew out, every last one of them. You know, they'd all... they'd all volunteered, when they heard about the plan. Everyone wanted to be on that ship." He tries to steel himself. "The Phoenix took too much damage; the Asgard core blew and she lost all vital systems. She, she managed to get out a message..." He can't do this. He can't. He can't stop playing the moment in his head: himself, Lorne, Woolsey, and Jennifer assembled in the main office, a room he no longer wanted to attribute to Elizabeth or Sam, watching an airman cry as he repeated the message he'd heard, words Rodney would never forget: "...can't get out...systems down...lost transport. Get through the 'gate. That's an order."
When he looks up, Mitchell is stabbing his knife into a defenseless dinner roll, eyes red and face pulled tight. Teal'c has always been creepily solemn, but there's an echo of true grief on his face. O'Neill looks at nothing, mentally elsewhere, and while this is a quality Rodney might normally attribute to the man, it's markedly different here. Jackson's head is in his hands, but when Vala falls against him sobbing, he relents to her embrace.
Rodney resents them, being together like this. O'Neill flying in from Washington, Teal'c coming back from wherever it was Teal'c lived, the five of them convening to bury an empty casket and hold a vigil. They are unquestionably a family, the sort you choose. Rodney wishes he had that now, someone to comfort him and help him make sense of anything. He almost did, once upon a time, but then Carson died and things started spiraling. One by one by one. First John, then Teyla, Ronon, now Sam...
The people he needs most are the people he can't have again, and this makes the loss more palpable than ever.
Rodney takes one last deep breath. There is only this part left, the worst part, the most important part, the part that makes him burn with pride and fury and love. Saying it will acknowledge it, will make this increasingly hellish reality all the more true. But he admires Sam immensely for that final blaze of glory. He wants every airman and Marine who set foot in Pegasus galaxy knew what people like Sam had sacrificed for them. He'll tell the story. He wants this to be legend.
"She didn't have much left, barely any shields, or weapons, and no way to escape. But she could still fly."
"Right into the Hive ship," says Mitchell in a fierce, broken whisper.
"Which took out the other two," Rodney says. "It lit up the sky. Most of the wreckage turned to rubble in the atmosphere."
Vala speaks for them all: "And that was that."
"Always one-upping the rest of us," says Jackson.
"That's our Carter," says O'Neill.
It's hard not to be jealous, the way all of them loom over her so protectively. Rodney was never protective, only competitive. These people love her just as much as he ever has, if not more. They saw sides of her he will never get to see, might never have gotten to see, even if... They love her, indiscriminately, and he knows she always felt the same. Her feelings for Rodney were far more inconclusive. Maybe that's why he feels so empty.
"I wish I could say she had instructions, that she said some sort of goodbye," he mutters, "but, uh... Well, I mean, we all thought she was coming back. I'm sorry."
He sees a few curt nods.
"There were, ah, I mean, Woolsey thought it would be best if I did it. Clean out her office, I mean, he thought it would be disrespectful for him to do it... And her quarters, too, but I had Jennifer help me with that, I didn't want to go through..." He coughed. "Anyway, I brought it back with me, it's in my room, I think General Landry wanted to see it, but I thought... there's some, I mean, I didn't go through it or anything, not like that, but there're some things in there. About you guys. That I think you're supposed to have. Or, you know, that she'd want you to have. Pictures and things." A few glances pass between them. "You can come look, you know, whenever. I'm leaving tomorrow, but like I said, Landry wanted it. I've already given him all the files from her command and a few projects she was assisting on in her spare time, but I think he thinks I'm holding out on him, keeping all the good stuff for myself. You know, those notes are just as beneficial to Atlantis as they are to Earth, if not more so, and I think that I should at least get dibs on-"
"McKay." O'Neill holds up a hand, looking pained. "Shut up."
"Might as well go now," shrugs Mitchell. And they rise as a group, the five of them, leaving Rodney to stumble clumsily after them.
"I hope she left me something interesting," muses Vala, "and valuable."
Rodney thinks this is rude and crazy, but for some reason, it makes Mitchell laugh.
This is more members of SG-1 than he's ever worked with at one time, crammed into his tiny room. His suitcase is open on his bed, the tie from the funeral still draped across the top, a pair of socks falling out. He thinks Sam might've liked the tie, Jeannie said it was a good choice and brought out his eyes. Vala shoves the mess to the side and sits cross-legged on top of the lumpy mattress, pawing eagerly through one of Sam's boxes. They all have one, except for Rodney, who paces back and forth with nothing to do, feeling like he's intruding, but not wanting to leave.
"Man, Jackson, when was the last time you were in a suit?" cackles Mitchell, holding up a framed photo Rodney recognizes as one he scavenged from Sam's office. "Look at your hair."
"Ooh, let me see," says Vala.
Teal'c peers over their shoulders. "I believe this was taken at Captain Wentworth's wedding," he says.
"Oh, Daniel, you look delicious." Vala wraps her hands around his bicep and beams at him.
"He looks like an idiot."
"Where are the rest of us?" says O'Neill.
Teal'c almost-smirks. "Perhaps Samantha Carter did not find the rest of SG-1 as appealing as Daniel Jackson."
"Well that's just offensive. I clean up!"
"You do," purrs Vala. "You in... what do they call it, dress uniform? Awe-inspiring."
"Hey now," says Mitchell.
"You hear that?" says O'Neill. "I inspire awe."
"You all do," says Vala. "It's a great wonder Samantha didn't follow you around with a camera constantly. I would have."
"Yeah, I bet you would've," mutters Mitchell. "C'mon, there's gotta be a picture of me in here."
Rodney recognizes that anxiety, that need to be validated, to know she thought about him not just when she saw him. Rodney hadn't found a picture of himself.
Vala resumes her perch on Rodney's bed, rifling through one of the boxes from Sam's room. Rodney's memorized the contents of that one, the bric-a-brac he gathered up while Jennifer dealt with the delicacies of laundry and toiletries. Astrophysics journals. A leather-bound hardback, Great Expectations, looking like it's been opened once and read never. A framed photo, which Vala is pulling out now, of General O'Neill, mussed and off-world, a relic of Sam's past she won't ever let go.
"You look dashing, General," says Vala, eying the photograph. She flips it around to show him the picture and her eyes widen slightly. "That's odd. She wrote something on the back. 'Fishing.' I don't get it. You're not fishing here."
Rodney frowns. Once he'd seen who the nightstand picture was of (not him), he'd tossed it in the box without further investigation. He hadn't noticed anything written. But he knows enough to know O'Neill isn't fishing in the picture.
O'Neill's forehead creases. Jackson and Teal'c glance first at each other, then at the general. Mitchell lets out a wheeze, like someone punched him. "Damn. I told her to change that..."
"What?" asks O'Neill.
"It's a password, sir. To her personal files. She... I think she left that for us to find. McKay, do you have her laptop around here somewhere?"
"Yeah," says Rodney, at last glad to have something to do, and pries the machine from beneath the folded shirts in his suitcase. "I... I didn't want them to get it, just yet," he explains weakly, handing over what he should have turned in. They don't say anything. Jackson smiles tightly in understanding.
Mitchell takes a seat, props the laptop awkwardly on his knees, and taps at the keyboard, only half-paying attention to what he's saying. "Last year, remember when we had to hide that village from the Ori and Sam got shot? She told me she had letters saved that she wanted people to... Oh, wait, here we go," he interrupts himself, squinting at the screen. "Damn. Sam's been busy. There's one for everyone. Cassie, Mark, Hammond... Pete, even. All of us. Even you, McKay."
"I... what?" Sam wrote him a letter?
Mitchell's already moved on, addressing the others. "I can deliver Mark's letter myself, if you guys want. She'd want him to get it in person. And I knew him a bit when we were younger."
"Fine, that's fine," says Jackson.
"Who's Mark?" bursts Rodney, trying to tell himself it's curiosity, not jealousy.
"Her brother."
Rodney deflates. He had no idea Sam even had a brother. He remembers the way she'd urged him to reconnect with Jeannie, and wonders now if she had a vested interest, based on something that had gone down with the brother he'd never heard about. There's so much he doesn't know about Sam, the woman he loves, and now he'll never know. It's an area of knowledge which is closed off to him forever. It's not a feeling Rodney is terribly comfortable with.
"I've got a printer in my office," Jackson offers. "We can get what we need, then we should probably turn the computer over to Dr. Lee."
"That hack?" says Rodney. "Come on. He can barely manage to play minesweeper. If there's anyone that's qualified to go through Sam's data, it should be me..." He trails off as he realizes they're all staring at him. He can't gauge their expressions. He's never felt more out of place. Or more embarrassed. He's right, of course he's right, but he realizes belatedly that it's not his place to tell Sam's team what to do. If they were on Atlantis, maybe. But not here.
"I'll talk to Hank," O'Neill says quietly, surprising Rodney.
"I... thank you."
They troop, a silent vigil, to Jackson's office. Once these letters are given to the right people and read, there will be nothing new from Sam Carter, ever again. Her very last thoughts are contained in the machine tucked under Colonel Mitchell's arm.
Their parade earns looks. Rodney suspects this happens all the time whenever several members of SG-1 go anywhere, but this is different. They're holding the team at a cautious, uncertain distance, like members of the Atlantis personnel had done with Dr. Grace after her husband, Major Grace, had died off-world. They are the bereaved, the grieving widow. With this thought, Rodney finds himself repeating in his mind all the things he's never said to Sam Carter. Not to mention all the things he's said and botched. He wonders if Sam realized he really meant it. He wonders if that letter will confess her love returned in full force, or will mock him from beyond the grave, call out the foolishness of his crush.
He'll find out soon enough.
Jackson ends up making print copies and transferring the files to CDs. Vala painstakingly writes their names and the date on each disc and passes them out without ceremony. It's primitive data storage in the wake of all the technology Rodney's played with over the years, but he takes his treasures without complaint and locks himself in his quarters. SG-1 is done with him, he suspects, but he doesn't care anymore.
When he was a kid, sometimes he'd skip ahead in the books he read, sucking up plot points the way Wraith suck life, leaving a hollow shell of unknown behind. Things he really wanted to know, he took them slowly and carefully, sometimes several times over, making sure the information was planted deep in his brain. Much as he wants to skip to the highlights of the letter, either her unrequited love or her unbridled hate, he takes his time. Slowly. He rereads sentences, tries to hear her words in her voice.
In a way, he's grateful. This is the only goodbye he's gotten. He can let it speak for all the friends he's lost, because the gist is clear: Sam thought of him as a friend. Maybe never as anything more, but at least that means he hasn't lost as much. Not that he isn't still aching from the loss, one piled on top of so many others, but this the first closure he's received since initially crossing the event horizon.
It's just him now. He can't believe he's lost them all, can't believe Sam still expects him to 'fight the good fight.' He wanders the halls in a daze, spots Vala knocking on a door that's opened by Jackson, Mitchell glaring at nothing in particular, Teal'c and O'Neill in quiet conference. Rodney's spent most of his life in isolation due to his genius and his 'attitude problems', but he feels alone now in a way he never really has before. He retreats to his quarters, his urge for companionship fading once he realizes he wants specific companionship that he can't get. He can't muster up the energy for polite conversation with strangers. And he has no idea how he'll stomach it when he gets back to Atlantis in the morning.
He doesn't figure it out. He falls asleep with Sam's letter in hand.