Actually, he's not the last man on Earth, but more like the 500,000th. Of all the possible apocalypses they've faced over the years, they never would have expected that Armageddon would come from their own backyard in the form of a virus. It starts in Africa, the same place as Ebola, and AIDS, and human beings themselves. It's already wiped out 99% of the male population of the continent by the time they've even named it - Etoumbi, but everyone just calls it The Plague. It's airborne and it uses air-travel to it's advantage, spring from the first major city to every major hub, to most of the major cities on the planet within two weeks. They don't know why men die faster than woman, but by now, Africa is a wasteland and if they don't stop it soon, the rest of the world will follow.

Sam hasn't slept in 72 hours and Rodney in 90, but all of Atlantis' science and medical divisions haven't stopped working since that first desperate communication a week ago. For the first time, it seems, they're scrambling to strop a crisis not of their own making. But this is Earth, and as much as Atlantis might feel like an independent colony, it's still home, at least for Sam. They can't just let it fall.

The second they exit the wormhole, McKay is snapping his fingers at her. "Get the ZPM. I'll start programming the device."

Sam nods, already pulling on her biohazard suit and stepping through the medical airlock they'd installed in the puddlejumper just hours before. The control room is dark with emergency lighting, a ring of guards around the Gate stationed to prevent anyone leaving instead of coming through. The department of homeworld security has issued a moratorium on Gate travel, a planet-wide quarantine, even though they've been able to isolate the base from the chaos on the surface. Still, it only takes one break in the quarantine seal, designed more to protect the outside world from the mountain than the other way around.

Captain Hailey is waiting for her at the bottom of the ramp, ZPM from the Antarctic site held firmly in hand – yes, they are vulnerable for now, but the Ori and the Goa'uld and Lucian Alliance have all been defeated and if they want this plague, they're welcome to it. Sam can't hear anything through the thick layers of her suit and there wasn't time to synch up her radio with the base system so Hailey just nods at her sadly – she looks as tired as Sam feels, any youth and innocence in her long washed away.

Cam is the quarantined medlab after a ride in the sarcophagus SG13 sent through. Daniel is god knows where, dead probably. Lee and Siler and Lam have all succumb and Teal'c and Vala are stuck in medical research, because it's suspected that having once been host to a Goa'uld parasite makes one immune.

Sam rushes back to the jumper, ordering Rodney to lower the shield and let her through to begin decontamination before pulling off the suit and laying the ZPM down on one of the rear benches. "Are you ready?"

"Do I look ready?" Rodney snaps, frantically depressing buttons and practically tripping over himself as he maneuvers around the large device, taking up the entire front space where they removed the second row of chairs. Wires run into the jumper's systems and through generators and power interfaces like an underground root system, and Sam just stands back, admitting that she doesn't even understand it all. The second she brought up the idea, Rodney had snapped his fingers and set off running for the lab. As the expedition's leader, she'd been forced to sit back and work with the other teams on other plans – leaving Rodney and Zelenka to it.

In fact, she's not really needed here at all, as Sheppard pointed out, demanding that she send him, ‘to keep McKay in line.' But she's like Sheppard in that way – she can't stand to be left out of the action, not when her home's at stake.

Rodney bosses her around like she's an undergraduate research assistant, but she's surprised to find out that she doesn't mind. There's too much at stake and with every second they delay hundreds, maybe thousands more will die. He screams and flaps his hands and works fast and sure until the ZPM is glowing in its cradle and the machine – the Pegasus version of the one the found on Dakara, springs to life, a field growing and building and humming through them – wiping the virus as neatly from existence as it did the replicators.

Rodney practically collapses against the dash then, and Sam feels the same staggering release of tension. Now there's nothing to do but wait. She takes Rodney by the hand and leads him over to the small space of floor between the device and the quarantine shield and helps him settle before half collapsing herself, tucked up against him. She reaches out and squeezes his hand.

"Samantha, does this mean . . ." he begins.

She smiles at bit – nobody's called her Samantha since her great aunt Marge. "Go to sleep, McKay. We might've just saved the world."

"Not might've," Rodney yawns.

She laughs a little – that's Rodney McKay, ego and bluster even in the midst of the apocalypse.

When she wakes, Jennifer Hailey is on the radio. "I think it worked," she says. "There have been no new cases reported in the last 24 hours." Has she been asleep that long?

"That's good," Sam says, even though there are six billion dead and their world is in chaos.

"Yes, I suppose it is," Hailey replies. "I'll contact you when I have more, ma'am."

Rodney is drooling on the floor of the jumper, looking oddly angelic in his sleep – not like the egotistical and bitter man that she first knew him as. After a year on Atlantis, Sam has had to face a growing professional respect for Rodney McKay and the way he solves problems, the caring he displays for members of his team, and the way he keeps a kind of frantic order in the labs. She still tires of his pathetic puppy dog flirting and the awkward and angry way he postures in his feelings towards her. Sheppard keeps telling her to think of it as a compliment, but Sam still hates the thought that despite all they've been through together, McKay still behaves as though she's some sort of hollow masturbation fantasy to him.

But circumstances have changed, and he's just saved the world – even if it was at the eleventh hour. She shakes him a little. "Hey, McKay. We did it."

"Huh? Coffee?" he mumbles, scrubbing at his face and blinking up at her. Sam never ceases to be startled by the blueness of his eyes, or their strange, almost childlike innocence.

She grins at him indulgently, pulling him into a hug, which he returns awkwardly. "I said, ‘we did it,' McKay. There haven't been any new cases."

"Oh, well . . . that's good." There isn't really more to say, except that there is. "They're going to recall us, aren't they? Never mind that the solution to this crisis came from Atlantis."

"No . . ." she starts to say, but she can't justify it. The world as they know it has collapsed. Money and borders and the social fabric of Earth have been irrevocably altered. They can no longer afford to support a society like Atlantis, a galaxy away, and they'll need he best and the brightest back to rebuild. "You're not leaving, are you?" she asks, realizing that they are still sitting on the ground, so close that she can see the answer in Rodney's eyes before he speaks.

"No. I think that Atlantis is my home now." She'd known all along that she was commanding a group that had essentially gone native – especially the original expedition members. And after being kicked out once – they were never going to allow it to happen again. His smile is an ironic, if sad, half-grin. "I take it you're coming back here?"

She hasn't really thought about it yet, but the second he says it, she knows that she is. She's spent so long protecting Earth and loving it. Even after a year, she still feels like a guest on Atlantis, and even if the work she can do on Earth may no longer be grand galaxy-saving gestures, she's willing to face that future. "Yes, I am." She punches him a little on the arm. "Hey, it was . . . interesting, knowing you."

"Oh, thanks, that makes me feel so much better," he gripes, but he's smiling. "You're not as dumb as your hair color might suggest."

She laughs at that. "You sure know how to woo a girl, McKay."

He grins, looking for the first time like he's secure in never getting her – like he might be able to forget her, and she's ambushed by a sudden surge of affection. McKay isn't her type, and in the old world, she might have jerked him around meaninglessly, just because she liked the attention. But the Plague has rewritten the ways of the world, and she really does think fondly of him in all his awkward egoism, and his own particular form of bravery.

And after this, it's possible that she'll never hear him call her a dumb blonde again. It's a bittersweet loss. Maybe that's what propels her to lean forward and kiss him.

"What, so now you're going to make a joke about me being the last man on the planet?"


She shakes her head. "No," though considering the male to female ratio in this new world and he need for reproduction simply to avoid a demographic collapse, she's pretty sure that at her age she's going to have to resort to rugmunching if she ever wants to get laid again.

"Then why?"

"Can't you just accept this for what it is, McKay?"

"Yes, but what is it?" He looks sharp, almost accusatory.

She laughs. Only Rodney. "It's me trying to sleep with you, if you'd just cooperate."

"Oh," he looks stunned for a moment, before scrambling to pull his pants off, getting tangled up in them. "You'd better not be joking."

"I'm not," she answers, pulling off her shirt and surging forward to kiss him again. Compared to others, Rodney McKay is a thoroughly unimpressive kisser and far less insistent than she would have expected him to be.

"You know, I'd never have though it'd come to this. I mean, I know that I'm quite a catch, but it didn't seem like you were ever going to come to your senses, you know?"

She swats at him playfully, before yanking him down on top of her, relishing in the human contact. His skin is so warm against her, and his hands big and smooth cupping her breasts almost reverently. Even back when he was just that prick who said things couldn't be done, he was always so vital – a whirlwind of energy and theories and intellect as sharp as a knife, and it's nothing less than flattering to be the focus of all that attention.

Of course, as usual, Rodney won't shut up. "You know," he remarks, as though he's not flushed and breathless between her legs, "you weren't like this before."

She's about to distract him with more kisses but that stops her short. "Before?"

"Before when I was trapped in a jumper on the ocean floor and I hallucinated you. Remember, I told you about this?"

"And I was kissing you?"

He shrugs. "No, you were my subconscious trying to distract me from using up my power trying to escape instead of sitting and waiting for Sheppard to ride in on his white horse and rescue me."

"So you're saying that even in hallucinations, I'm smarter than you?" she asks, reaching under his shirt to tweak a nipple playfully. She has to admit that even though she was never particularly attracted to Rodney, she's noticed his nipples. With those shirts he always wears, it's kind of impossible not to.

"No, you see, because you were an hallucination, you were actually me, so I was the one who was . . ."

"Yes, but you cast me as the smarter part of your brain – the one who wanted you to be reasonable," she replies, laughing. Even with this warm tingle starting between her legs, it's fun to watch Rodney splutter. She finds that she still doesn't love him, but she actually likes him.

She kisses him again, slipping a hand through the slit in his truly visually offensive boxers. He's already hard and weeping and larger than she would have expected. He sighs, burying his face in her neck, trusting into her hand and making Sam smile before he moves on to lave her nipples, and then, pulling away from her, kiss his way down the stomach she admits is not as flat as it used to be.

If McKay is an average kisser, he's a master-technician rugmuncher. Within seconds, he has her gasping, actually burying her hands in his short hair and forcing him down deeper. She squirms and cries out, and she has no idea how many time she climaxes with him going down on her. His jaw must be tired by the time he finishes, leaning back up her body to kiss her and let her taste the sweet musk of her own juices on his tongue. He's got her wetness on his strangely long eyelashes and she laughs at him, kissing him tenderly to soothe the hurt.

"You're pretty good at that, McKay. Should have had you doing this a while ago."

He snorts. "They all say that, when they find out what they've been missing."

She chuckles, reaching out to tickle him on the little bit of pudge around his middle (despite how much he complains that Sheppard is running him until he wastes away).

"Hey!" he squeaks. "I make you come five times and this is how you repay me?!"

For a second she can forget about the scary world outside the jumper and laugh herself silly at McKay's outrage. He's laughing too, though she can see an anxious flush in his cheeks. It must be killing him. "So, are you going to fuck me or not, McKay?"

That prompts another flurry of frantic, uniquely-Rodney motion. "Do you have that," he snaps his fingers. "Shot thing?"

She shakes her head. She had Keller stop them after a few months in the city, when she realized that the likelihood of any unwanted sexual encounters was far slimmer than it had been in the field.

He laughs, then. "Ironic. We get this close and I have to go hunt for Colonel Kirk's secret half-ascended bimbo emergency sex supplies."

Sam giggles. Rodney's jealousy is almost cute – when she doesn't have to deal with it in a conflict resolution capacity.

"What?" he demands, stubbing his toe on a naquadah generator as he casts around for what she's pretty sure is a fictitious box of condoms.

"It's okay, Rodney. You are almost the last guy on Earth and we might have to repopulate the planet . . ." She grins bravely, trying not to think that after all these years of protest, she might just have become a convenient womb. She feels a stab of guilt, realizing, that after all the men she's loved or started to love before abandoning for career and ambition, the person she's actually doing this with is Rodney McKay.

"You know that's not half as sexy as you seem to think it is," he grumbles, but comes back to kiss her anyway. "You know, I don't . . . I do have a duty to pass my genes on to the next generation, and you're not stupid, so our children would be . . . but my lifetime exposure to radiation is not ideal, and even SPF100 sunscreen can only do so much. Are you sure . . ."

"Shut up, McKay," Sam replies, drawing him back down onto her and guiding him in. She knows it's irrational, because it's not as though she can feel the latex inside of her, but there's something vastly more exhilarating about doing it bareback and she finds that she has her legs twined around him, edging him onward within seconds. It's primal, and while before she might have been disgusted with herself, she embraces it now.

"Oh, god . . . Sam . . ." Rodney pants, babbling as his thrusts become more and more desperate, driving. His skin is sweat-slick and warm to the touch and she has to dig her fingers in to gain the purchase she needs to draw him in deeper. She wants it hard and fast and natural, like that time more than a decade ago when a virus shut down her higher brain functions and she was free, for the first time, of all this tedious thinking and rethinking, unashamed like Adam and Eve before they became aware of their nakedness.

Rodney gives her a few more desperate thrusts before collapsing down onto her sore muscles, hot and heavy, but perfect. "God, I love you . . ." he whispers.

She's pretty sure that he doesn't. He idealizes her, maybe, but it's not love. She pushes him off of her. "No, Rodney, you don't." If they were in love, then certainly this wouldn't be goodbye. But he's not the first guys she's left in the lurch in order to ‘do the right thing.'

He sighs, lying there quietly for a moment before speaking. "You're right. I don't. But you are pretty amazing. For a dumb blonde."

Sam pushes herself up, feeling awkward and sticky as she pulls her clothes back on. She detaches the ZPM from the machine and walks toward the door.

"What do you expect to do here, Sam?" Rodney asks. "There's still so much to explore in Atlantis. Discoveries to be made, things to occupy what I admit is not that small of an intellect. Here you'll be helping build pit toilets or something."

"I think that the world has more than enough toilets at the moment, McKay."

Rodney grunts, throwing an arm across his face, clearly entering the post-coital nap phase. She's amazed he's lasted this long.

"But I think I'll be happy with toilets." She's surprised to find that she means it. After all these years, she's tired of the harrowing last minute save or the universe-altering discovery. It's time to focus on the small victories and see if they're as satisfying as the big.

He sits up at that. "Really?"

"Really. Thank you, though. It actually means a lot that you'd want me to stay." While on Atlantis, she kind of got the impression that he and Sheppard wanted to lock her in a closet so that they could go about their business.

"Of course I'd want you to stay. Besides the whole getting laid by a hot blonde thing, possibly on a regular basis."

"Don't push your luck, McKay."

"Well, besides the occasional wildly passionate tryst, you were a good leader, Sam. It was nice to have someone almost as smart as me around. I'll … I'll miss you."

Sam takes the ZPM in hand, surprised to find that she'll actually miss him as well. "You weren't that bad to work with yourself. Don't get into too much trouble without me."

He stands then, suddenly modest and yanking his ugly boxers back on. "Hey, that's all Sheppard. Alien bimbo, cross he can martyr himself on, local fauna in love with his hair … I just get caught in the crossfire."

"Sure you do." Her smile melts, realizing how they're drawing this out – these last vestiges of the world that was. She pulls him into a tight hug then. "Goodbye, Rodney."

He doesn't say anything as she walks out through the quarantine field and into a new world, but the look in his eyes will stay with her for a long time to come – pulling Cam out of a stasis chamber, searching through riots and deserted streets for Daniel, the revelation of the Stargate program, the abandonment of three quarters of the cities on Earth, the final formation of a world government, the installation of the first ring stations and Asgard data systems, and the birth of her son, who one day, when she's old and tired and finally at peace with herself and the choices she's made, will fix her with that exact same stare.

FIN