It's not what he was expecting. What he was really expecting was for John to stay at the SGC, fighting the Goa'uld, keeping his hand in the whole battle-for-good thing. John was a hero. That's what heroes did. But Rodney remembers John telling him that he's not a hero. He remembers that midnight confession so clearly now, with John brooding and petulant in the dark of their quarters laying close enough to touch, but as far away as possible on their not-quite-double bed, John's voice gruff and hateful as he explained that he flipped a coin to decide whether or not to come to Pegasus. He remembers the tentative question, 'Do you still want me now?' as though John was never allowed to be anything other than the perfect hero.

Rodney was expecting a lavish bachelor pad in a downtown district, like the one that Teyla described from their dream journey home. He still remembers how odd all the words sounded on her tongue as she tried to explain this twisted version of Earth with girls in bikinis and minibars and fresh pizza and a sprawling marketplace full of so many beautiful things. He smiles at the thought of Teyla and Elizabeth together in New York City right now, walking down Broadway and Fifth Avenue and through the out-of-place and unnatural greenery of Central Park. He wonders what Teyla will make of all this - the stories she's heard come to life. He wonders if she'll be disappointed. He thinks she might. In the decade they spent on Atlantis everyone missed Earth so much that even the things they hated about it became grand and beautiful and irreplaceably necessary. Sometimes Rodney would even grip about how much he missed reruns of Seinfeld and late night TV.

A part of him thinks that maybe John has grown to these epic proportions in his own memory - beautiful and flawless and courageous, and well loved. He's become near-legend on Atlantis and Rodney supposes it's just plain naïve to assume that he's immune to the natural twisting of memory, the lines of history blurring even as the contrast increases, evil stark in comparison to all the good you can find in people you once loved.

Maybe that's why Rodney's expecting something of James Bond quality swank, not a perfectly manicured green lawn with a black mailbox with a little red flag and a sign that says 'Sheppard's World' in crisply painted black lettering that Rodney remembers well from when John painted 'Love Boat' in red on the hull of Jumper1 after they caught Teyla and Elizabeth making out inside, vehemently denying that they were there to do the same. He smiles at the phrase, a constant in their familiar banter.

He walks up the gray stones of the path, past a small garden of rose bushes, desperately clinging to the last days of fall. The door is forest green with a polished brass knocker and for some reason, that bothers him. John shouldn't have a green door. Black maybe, or red, or Air Force Blue, if not something strong and complex as oak or mahogany or stained glass and copper like Atlantis. The green door with the brass knocker is offensively suburban and trite. He resists the urge to kick it. Maybe John is living with his parents - he always said they were a humorless establishment types. Somehow, he doubts this though.

He rings the spotless brass of the bell and hears one of those annoying tones, a distortion of a poorly played version of the Minuet in C. He stands there for what seems like hours, embarrassed. John's probably not home. He might even be on vacation. Rodney didn't call ahead. What was he supposed to say? 'Hey John, remember me, Rodney, the lover your left in a galaxy far far away? Well, guess what? I'm baaaaaaack!' He shakes his head. It'll be awkward, finding Rodney at his doorstep after eight years, sure. It'll shock him. But it's better than John telling him not to come... better than looking in the file and knowing, for certain, that John has moved on. He needs to see him. He needs to touch him, see his beautiful green eyes, hear the sarcastic drawl of his voice. The last time Rodney saw him, John didn't talk, on account of the traech tube, and his eyes, though the eyelashes fluttered, did not open. And he's spent eight long years wondering if *anyone* has seen John's eyes or heard his voice. He needs this. John will understand. As much as he's ever gripped or yelled, John has always understood. He's the only one who will ever understand Rodney.

He looks up at the sky, cloudy and grey. He hopes it doesn't rain. It's been ten years since he's driven and he doesn't want to have to deal with inclement weather just yet. He could have sworn drivers in Colorado have turned insane these past few years, and despite all the engineering reports, he doesn't think hybrid cars are quite the same as the ones he's used to. With a certain fatalistic sense of irony he thinks that it would be pretty funny if he were to die of a car crash his first week back on Earth. He swears he feels a raindrop hit him in the middle of his forehead, even though the pavement is dry. "Great, just what I need."

When he looks back at the door he jumps back, seeing almond-shaped green eyes peering at him from about waist-level. Even back on Earth, in the decided absence of Wraith and ambushes and Genni assassination plots, he startles easily, the mindset of a soldier finally scalded into his neural pathways by too many near misses.

After the initial shock, he investigates the figure trapped behind the narrow glass paneling beside the door further. Those entrancing eyes belong to a small gangly form with a pink skirt, full of holes and stained with dirt and grass. The girl has frizzy dark hair pulled into two slightly lopsided French braids and a handful of freckles scattered across her nose and checks. She looks like a monster. Rodney steps back. He'll never get used to children. They're just... unnatural.

A part of his considerable intellect is telling him that with those eyes and that hair, this could be John's child. But the rest of his mind is too busy screaming 'La la la' to notice. John is single. Nothing has changed. He's going to come back here and everything will be the same again. That's what true love is. That's what happens when you sacrifice everything... it's like an investment - eight years later you've doubled your assets. He's thinking about the return welcoming... the desperate sex... the kiss worth a thousand words.

"Who are you?" he says with more distain than he knows he should around children.

She wrinkles a tiny button nose and replies, "Who are *you*?" as though saying it louder and more defiantly will defeat him somehow, mold him into a great big teddy bear instead of a nasty old man with thinning hair and a well-practiced smirk.

He rolls his eyes. "Look, I'm here to see John Sheppard, okay?"

Her small green eyes dark back and forth momentarily, clearly thinking. He can tell she doesn't like him. His complete and utter failure to do anything child-related is an ongoing joke on base. Ford won't even let him in the same room as his newborn, as though his mere presence could spoil the boy to witty cynicism for the rest of his life. And Melody Simpson allows Kavanagh baby-sit before she'll let him.

Of course, this little bogger-nosed mini-person is saved the ethical dilemma of whether or not she'll let the horrible old man in by a commanding voice coming from somewhere within the house. "Meg... was that the doorbell?" Rodney feels his heart stop. The gentle edge to John's low and expressive voice, that's one thing he didn't remember incorrectly - it's just as wonderfully familiar as he dreamed it would be.

He feels his lip trembling uncontrollably as the girl turns and shouts. "Daddy, there's a man here to see you!" And he feels his heart break. The connection he was so determined not to make, the little brat has made it for him, killing him unawares. He doesn't know her age, but he now suspects that the timing is just right - this is John's daughter.

Rodney bites his wayward lip and clasps his hands behind his back. He shifts from foot to foot and looks up at the pale grey sky. It seems like ages, though he knows it's only seconds before he sees a shadow come up behind the girl. "Meg... remember what Mommy's always telling you about talking to strangers? Well, daddy agrees" There's an exasperated sigh and the door pulls upon.

Rodney meets bright green eyes and thinks he's going to faint. He recalls the last time he's eaten and what, automatically, even though he knows the lightheadedness isn't from hypoglycemia. And he watches those beautifully soft lips drop open, as John pushes the little girl from the doorway, his hands look wet, like he's come from washing dishes, and the little girl squirms away from the water and the scent of lemons that they'll transfer to her dark frizzy hair.

Rodney smiles as wide as he can, knowing that it looks sleazy and completely fake. It's not though - he really is beyond happy to see John again in the flesh, even with a home-wrecking little midget clinging to his jeans. "Hi, John. Long time, no see." The words sound ridiculous and tactless. A part of him curses himself, but another reminds him that John will be expecting nothing less. A polite Rodney... John might not recognize him.

John's still graceful and lean, verging on skinny, though he's got a tad bit more around his belly, like he's wearing one more layer of clothing than Rodney's used to. He doesn't look the forty-six years he should be showing. He's wearing a black turtleneck sweater, so much like the ubiquitous black fleece Rodney remembers. If he doesn't look at the fine weave of the material, doesn't look close enough to see the long scar running the length of his cheek or the small specks of silver that are creeping into John's thick chocolate colored hair at the temples, he can pretend that things are just as they were.

John might hate him. He might have spent these eight long years wondering why Rodney did this... why he abandoned him to this fate. He might have forgotten about him, buried memories of their time together deep with all the other things marked as classified, a life in a dream that he cannot discuss. He might not want to see him. He might hate everything that was his other life now, because it would complicate this nice little picture of suburbia he's drawn for himself here. Rodney resists the urge to close his eyes and brace for the rejection.

John stares at him for a moment and Rodney can't read his expression - different emotions are scanning by so fast that even Rodney's considerable genius can't keep up. And then there's a flurry of movement, so sudden and fluid that Rodney almost puts his arms up to fend off and attack. When he does raise his arms he finds them wrapping around the soft woven fabric of John's sweater, feeling the heat welling up from within. John grasps him so tightly that it almost feels like an asthma attack, but he doesn't care.

"Rodney," John says into his neck, his breath warm and moist and so close, tickling Rodney's ear. And then John's fingers are tangled in his hair in such a familiar way as he pulls him deeper into the hug. If there was any space between them, it's now crushed into oblivion, every possible crack filled. Rodney sighs and sags against him, tightening his own hands around John's waist and breathing in John's scent. His normally woody and slightly tangy odor is obscured by some spicy cologne or aftershave, unfamiliar and unnecessary, considering how nice John always smelled without it. John's grip is as surprisingly strong as ever and he still fits perfectly into Rodney's embrace. "Rodney," John says again, as a sigh this time, as though the first time was just a trial to see if things would fall apart after he declared it.

Rodney wants this to go on forever. He's dreamed of this so many nights. Sometimes he dreams that John will pounce on him then and there, fuck him right up against the wall of his imaginary apartment. Other times they will be tentative and glorious and make slow tender love in John's small bed at the SGC, forced to cling tight together just so one of them doesn't fall off it. He's even dreamed that John would be waiting for him at the bottom of the gate ramp and that he'd kiss him madly in front of Generals and marines and alien dignitaries. But, every once and a while, he'll dream of a hug just like this one, just holding each other, knowing that John is alive and well and solid here in his arms.

Then he feels something wet on his neck - wet, but not entirely uncomfortable. John gives him another squeeze and he realizes that the wetness is John crying. And Rodney almost breaks. He almost starts crying himself, just like that endless night in the infirmary, the seven-hour surgery that couldn't save John - only preserve him. Or like those nights confined to his quarters, guards posted outside his door where he stared at the wall and shed silent tears, curled onto his side, hugging John's pillow. But he can't cry now, not standing here in on the perfect stone steps leading up to John's perfect little home.

He thinks that maybe this embrace *will* go on forever - that he'll never have to justify what he's done, that they can just stay in these emotions without the world that's changed so drastically around them. But then he hears a small high-pitched voice. "Daddy, who is he?"

And that makes John pull away, wiping the tears from his eyes and smiling. "He's an old friend, Meg. Why don't you introduce yourself?"

The little brat looks down at her untied sneakers and tells them. "HellonicetomeetyoumynameisMegSheppard." She sticks out a grubby little hand and Rodney's eyes bulge. But he grabs it and lets her shake it, because this is John's daughter, and that make this... that makes this something.

"Rodney?" John says expectantly.

"Yeah?"

"Aren't *you* going to introduce yourself?"

"Oh... yeah... right... um... my name is Dr. Rodney McKay. Your dad and I, we... uh... we used to..." fuck, tease, push each other off balconies, be in love, ". . . we were really good friends."

"Oh." The brat seems nonplused. She goes dancing off into the house, pigtails flopping behind her.

Then John's arm is around his shoulder. It feels so right... like it's been there all this time. "You're alive." He's awed.

"So are you. And you... you have a little... uh..."

"I have a daughter," John supplies, guiding Rodney down a shadowy hallway, covering in pictures of the little brat now retrieving some kind of toy Rodney doesn't even recognize from TV commercials or Christmastime news reports. So much has changed in ten years, yet on a cosmic scale, not much. The Wraith have been defeated, entire societies heaving a huge sigh of relief, on the precipice of change; Earth is untouched.

"You do." It's not a fact he can deny, no matter how much he wants to.

Rodney stares at the pictures: John with a little ball of terror perched on his shoulder; A petite Asian woman standing at his side, hair drawn up into a perfect pony-tail on a pier, beside a Ferris wheel; The brat in a high chair, covered head to toe in milk and cereal; John sitting on a beautiful white horse, kid tucked securely in front of him; John in a tux, looking shy and nervous and out-of-place as he raises a glass of champagne; John tipping the Asian woman in a white dress back on a dance floor, kissing her deeply; the kid in a t-ball uniform, standing at bat; John holding up a pair of skis and making a face at the camera; the woman disgustingly pregnant and looking like she's ready to pop; John looking more exhausted than Rodney has ever seen him, but smiling, cradling a small bloody bundle in his arms; all three sitting together in a mess of boxes and wrapping-paper at the base of a Christmas tree, ridiculous grins plastered on their faces. It is truly the picture-perfect family.

That's when the monstrous injustice of it hits him. He sacrificed so much. Not to mention the reprimand and the whole being locked out of control systems thing, the punishment just to prove that brilliance and compassion and love were not an excuse, his actions meant no contact with Earth for eight years. To be fair, he hadn't expected that. He hadn't expected that his efforts would fry the intergalactic travel control crystal. And he had expected that General O'Neill would send the Prometheus after them if need-be. He expected that they would find a ZPM somewhere on Earth. He hadn't expected the goddamn Tok'ra to turn on the them... he hadn't expected the Goa'uld war to take so long. He hadn't expected coming home in a Wraith hive ship. He hadn't expected they'd win their own war without any help from Earth at all. But if he could do it again, knowing the outcome... knowing how many people they'd lose those eight years, and how much suffering, he'd choose the same.

But this wasn't right. After you practically throw your life away for someone - your freedom, the trust of your friends and colleagues, your last chance at ferris wheels and stadium food and Tim Hortons for a very long time, you should at least end up with them, right? Wasn't that how love was supposed to work? Happily ever after? Trotting off to a castle in the clouds?

He was standing in a kitchen now, John's hand pressing him down into the comforting rigidity of pale wooden seats from Ikea, just as uncomfortable as all the flimsy aluminum chairs on Atlantis. He realizes that John has just asked him something and he hasn't been paying attention.

"Huh?"

"I *said,* 'Rodney, would you like anything to eat?'"

He feels like he's going to throw up. Everything is all wrong. It's not supposed to be this way. "Uh... no... I'm fine."

"Rodney. Did you get something on the drive? I don't want to see you get a hypoglycemic reaction or anything."

"What's a hypoglycemic reaction, Daddy?"

"What happens when Uncle Rodney stops eating like a hippopotamus, Meg. It's not pretty."

"Oh. Is Uncle Rodney a hippopotamus?"

"No, sweetheart, he's a *physicist.*"

"What's that, Daddy?"

"Someone who eats little girls who ask too many questions."

Meg seems to shrink into herself until John gives her a reassuring smile.

"You like macaroni and cheese? No citrus, I promise." John's gone into mother-mode overdrive - zero to smother in under ten seconds. He's gotten faster.

Before he knows it, John has heated something and thrown it in front of him. Rodney eyes the dish with mock suspicion. "*You* cooked this?" Rodney remembers nights around a camping fire when Ford and Teyla were injured or busy on some other mission where John would spill cooking oil and burn even the simplest of meals to a crisp.

"Yup. Took years of culinary training for Amy to finally certify me for use of the kitchen. Luckily I'm dealing with the sophisticated 6-year-old palette of macaroni, hot dogs, and chicken noodle soup." He smirks semi-critically at Meg and ruffles her hair. She smiles up at him adoringly, exposing the disgusting gaps where she's missing teeth. Rodney does not see any universe in which any rational beings should consider that cute.

Then he hears so commotion at the door and the brat jumps up. "Is Mommy home?" she asks excitedly.

"I don't know, Megathon. Let's check it out." John stands and scoops up the kid in his arms. She looks a little heavy for that, Rodney thinks. But then again, John's practically carried him before, when he was injured and he's sure he ways a ton more.

The door bursts open -it's white on the inside, at least- and in storms the petite Asian woman in the pictures. She's dressed elegantly but simply in black slacks and a storm grey button-down shirt, a pen stuck behind each ear, checks flushed from the cool fall weather. She dumps a bulging leather purse on a table near the door and sighs. Scanning the room but no looking at anyone. "John, have you seen the file I was looking over last night?"

"You were looking over a file last night?"

"Yes, John." She rolls her eyes exasperatedly. "Sometimes I swear you're in a whole other planet. Now, I need it for a meeting in about," she checks her watch, "fifteen minutes." She sounds very annoyed, but not distraught, delicate pink lips pursed in a frown.

"No idea." John doesn't bother trying to look guilty.

"Okay, I'll look for it."

"Um... Amy, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine," John says, lamely.

Amy looks up and jumps. "Oh, hi. I didn't see you," she greets him with a wide smile.

Rodney extends his hand. "Rodney. Dr. Rodney McKay." She smiles, but then shoots a questioning glance at John. He wonders what John has told her about him.

"Rodney worked with me while I was still in the service," John explains. "I was wondering if you could take Meg to work with you."

"No, Daddy! I want to stay with you!" She buries her face in John's neck, gripping his sweater tight.

John ignores the protest. "I haven't seen Rodney in a very long time and there are a lot of... things we need to catch up on."

Rodney catches the subtle look passing between husband and wife. John saying 'Please, I need this, I'll be all right.' And Amy responding with, 'All right, but please be careful. I'll be here if you need me.'

"Fine, you can head on out. Meg can sit in the waiting room and talk with Cynthia."

"No, Mommy. It's boring. I hate it." The girl crosses her arms over her chest and pouts. Rodney can't help but laugh as he recognizes the expression from John.

"Sorry, pumpkin, this is important. Tell you what... I'll bring you back a milkshake on my way home."

The brat continues to pout, but seems pacified as John strokes her hair, putting her down on the ground.

Amy has retrieved the missing manila file from the kitchen counter, "Will you be back for dinner?"

"Wouldn't miss it," John grabs her and gives her a quick peck on the lips. Rodney feels a brief pang of jealous, cold and intense like the bone-deep pain of a Wraith stunner.

"Drive safely," Amy chides.

"Always do," John calls over his shoulder as he drags Rodney out the door and to the garage. "I figure we should go somewhere a little more private. My work?"

There are two cars and enough sporting equipment to supply an army in John's garage. One of them is a sleek little hybrid, white and immaculately clean. The other is a slightly beat-up blue mini-van. John heads for that and Rodney raises his eyebrows. "*You* drive a minivan?"

"The fastest one. Seven cylinder diesel-electric. Magnetic containment safety system. Honda..."

"Honda?" He feels as though he's just stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone. Honda making *fast* cars?

"Yeah. Oh... I can't believe you haven't been here. Ever since the People's Work Corp Export Division took it over, they've been specializing."

"Huh?"

"China... the Hanoi Accords? God, Rodney, so much has happened."

"Oh." Rodney knows it now, about the wars in Korea and the Chinese imperialist project. He just... he read it like science fiction. He didn't quite get that all these facts he was memorizing before he was cleared to leave the mountain were *real.* "So you drive a *Chinese* mini-van."

"Yep," John seems sad about it, even as he's flashing Rodney a smile. Domesticity... at least when it comes to cars, must be like a prison to the freest spirit Rodney has even known. He doesn't see how John could possibly be happy living like this.

John starts the engine by pushing his fingerprint into a panel beside the keyhole and rambles on about his work as a flight instructor and how some of the students make Rodney look like Mr. Top Gun. He tells Rodney about all the things that have happened on Earth this decade. Rodney smiles and laughs at John's descriptions and commentary, even though he'd read as much as he could at the SGC, trying to convince them to let him out as soon as possible.

John drives like a fighter pilot, bobbing and weaving through the traffic and driving so close behind other cars that Rodney thinks he might be trying to test those magnetic safety systems. "Stop driving up their ass, John!" he exclaims when he can't take it anymore.

"Should've known you'd be a backseat driver." John keeps the vehicle a steady three feet behind the car in front.

Rodney laughs, but it strikes him as odd: all the intimate, amazing, and wonderful things they've done together and this is the first time they're both in the same car. They continue to banter until John pulls off the highway and into a small paved road leading up to a discrete old scattering of aluminum buildings, a gritty white/grey runway painted with glow-in-the-dark yellow lines, crumbling a bit at the edge where the yellowed, but tenacious, grass has encroached upon it.

John leads him over to sit on a hill next to the open door of the hanger where he can spot a few prop planes, and two battered old helicopters. "So..." Rodney says.

"So."

"So , how did you and... er... your wife meet?"

"*Amy* and I met at the hospital."

"Your usual tendency towards hurting yourself or the... uh... thing." Rodney doesn't want to talk about it... doesn't want to remember John pale and unresponsive, skin bruised and sunken like the one last peach that Melody stashed far beyond everyone else's reserves. He doesn't want to remember that scratches covering his face, the only bright spot amidst translucent tubes and sterile white.

"Neither. After... after I recovered, I had to go in for therapy. I...well, I had some issues surrounding the SGC and the Air Force. General O'Neill let me go to a regular hospital."

"You married your Doctor?!"

John snorts. "I hope not. Amy's OBGYN. We met in the parking lot. I helped her get her car out of a difficult space."

Rodney laughs. He's almost hysterical with the mudanity of it. He and John met because Carson almost blew up John and the General and John activated an Ancient weapon system by sitting in a chair. The first time they kissed was on another planet in another galaxy, hiding from a group of angry Natives John annoyed by making eyes at the Chief's daughter. The first time they made love was in the back of an incredibly powerful spaceship, hovering above a seemingly endless ocean. And the first time Rodney said 'I love you' was at gunpoint, after Koyla had just broken three of John's ribs.

"Well, that's romantic. There weren't even any planetary negotiations at stake."

"Nope. I thought it was odd at the time too, flirting with someone on Earth - someone who doesn't know about the Stargate of interplanetary travel, someone who didn't even know there are vampire-beings out there waiting to kill us. Someone that still doesn't know." John seems almost sad about it and Rodney wonders why. If he had the choice, he'd gladly forget. "We won."

John nods. "I know."

"How..."

"You're back here."

"Oh."

John doesn't ask how they defeated the Wraith, though he seems happy about it. Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he's sucked so far into mundanity that the fate of the galaxy is too far away to catch his notice. Maybe he never believed they'd lose to begin with. Maybe he doesn't want to remember anything about Atlantis at all, Rodney included.

"You're welcome," Rodney scowls.

Rodney looks around at the battered but reverently polished planes and the unmanicured grass yellowing around the runway and the rolling hill beyond, overlooking a golden valley. He remembers hearing somewhere that obstetrics is the highest paying field for female doctors and he makes a connection, a brilliant eureka, welling up from his inner genius-nature. "I don't believe it! You're a kept man!"

John whirls to face him. "Am not! I have a job."

"Teaching flying lessons." Rodney snorts.

"So?"

"So that doesn't exactly pay for a perfect little house with a green door on Ozzie and Harriet row and for you to stay home Monday afternoons to pick up the kid from school."

John gives him a playful little shove, more contact than all their previous flirtations. "She does have a name, you know."

"Meg, right?"

John looks down at the yellowing grass, suddenly shy. "I named her for you."

"Really, because last time I checked I wasn't named Megan."

John grins. "No, her full name's Omega."

"Now see, here I'm either sure you're bullshitting me or that this is just one of those things you don't understand unless you've fried your brain watching too much football."

"I never heard you speak of single woman you liked and respected whose pants you weren't trying to get into, and I was hardly going to name my daughter 'Rodney.'"

"Yeah, that would have been traumatic. Besides, what's rotational velocity have to do with me?"

"It was the geekiest thing I could think of that wouldn't get her beaten up the first day of school," John proclaims, like he's just climbed Mt. Everest.

"Oh, thanks." Rodney rolls his eyes, even though he's beaming.

"Hey, you were the one always trying to get me to join genius clubs and stuff... break out the inner dork,"

"Hey, you were dorky enough on your own. I wanted to see if we could dredge up anything useful from that overly concussed skull of yours."

John huffs. "See, this is what I've been missing these eight years - the constant insults."

"You know you love it." Rodney smirks, giving John a tentative poke.

"Yep. Amy tries to insult me, and it just bounces right off. She's gotten into screaming fits because I don't 'react' enough to things."

"Hah, if Elizabeth heard that we'd have to sedate her to stop the laughter."

"Don't you know it. I try to tell Amy that, but it's hard without the details."

Rodney pauses awkwardly. To hear John talk about his wife... when all this time he's done nothing but imagine the times they've had together. "Does she know about us?"

"She knows I've been with men, so I'm guessing she suspects." Of course. women were perceptive like that.

"You never told her anything?" He doesn't know why that disappoints him, but it does. Maybe because he expected that he was a big enough part of John's life to leave a mark - an untouchable part, dead for those eight years, just like Rodney has somewhere deep beneath the hypochondria and the cloak of sarcasm.

"What was I supposed to say? I don't like lying to my wife, even if I'm ordered to. It's better to just say nothing at all."

"Ah."

"She knows your name," John admits.

"She does?"

"From when I wake up screaming, dreaming all the scenarios I promised not to think about... about how you died."

It hits him like a ton of bricks. All this time he was having nightmares about John not surviving the surgery, of all their efforts being in vain, and he's never stopped to consider how John might feel, awaking disoriented and alone on the other side. "You... you thought I died?"

John licks his lips, still not meeting Rodney's eyes "I woke up tied to a bed in the SGC. Last thing I remember I was in the middle of a firefight. You... you got shot in the arm and you were screeching and complaining like the world was falling down over your head. And I... I heard a click. And then there was pain."

"A Telvadan mine. Quite ingenious actually - the pressure sensor is buried under the soil a certain number of feet from where the mine head can be seen. All mines in a field are buried with the sensor a certain angle to the mine. Only the Telvadans know what the degree is."

John is unimpressed. Probably because Rodney's discussing the technical specifics of the device that nearly killed him. "Oh. I've dreamed of that sound so many times. I knew that's what it was... but in dreams... when you don't know for sure it gets to be so much greater, you know?" Rodney is surprised that he does know. He's been in Pegasus too long.

He fights back the tears as he explains. John's gone eight years without knowing. He deserves the truth. "You were shot full of shrapnel. I got a few pieces in my arm - the one that got shot. I still have aches today... have to take muscle relaxants and do therapy and... well, you know." He's ashamed, complaining when John's entire body was torn apart like a piece of Swiss cheese. He pushes the images of blood and dirt and whimpers of pain to the back of his mind.

"Rodney," John warns.

"Yeah... right... sorry. So... ah... Ford and Teyla dragged you back to the Gate. I was in pain and a little bit in hysterics. Your blood was everywhere and I thought you were going to die. But you didn't'. Carson had you in surgery for hours. I was really doped up at the time, thank god, because I think I would have had a heart attack otherwise. You survived. But you were in a coma. Carson said there was spinal cord damage, not to mention lungs and kidneys and a bunch of other vital organs. He didn't have the necessary skill to get all the fragments out of you. You would've died from poisoning. I asked him if they was any way. He said, 'short of the second coming of Christ or sending him back to Earth to the best surgeons in the field.' I'm not a religious man. I chose door number two."

John has been playing with his shoelace, tearing the frayed edges into a fine downy of threads. Now he looks up. "*You're* the one who sent me back?" The pain in his voice is almost unbearable.

"It was that or watch you die. Ford and I overrode all the security codes, loaded you onto a transport and sent you through. Bates threatened to shoot me. It was funny." Rodney manages a strained grin. Nothing about the situation could really be funny - not with John.

"That's not funny."

"I know."

"Why didn't you send a note... some sort of explanation?" John is desperate now, a broken, haunted look in his eyes.

"There wasn't a lot of time. I... I didn't think..." Rodney realizes his mistake now - John had no idea what had happened.

"I woke up with a voice in my head, Rodney. Something was forcing me through every memory like... like in Clockwork Orange, with the tapes and the Ludwig Van. And I screamed and screamed, but my mouth wouldn't move. I was trapped and something was using my voice only deep and distorted... using it to explain that I didn't know anything." John is shaking now, rocking back and forth. Rodney wants to touch him and hold him, but he thinks he no longer has the right.

"Oh my god..." This is why Sam and Daniel kept exchanging worried glances, skirting the issue. "They gave you a symbiote." And he bet John didn't even know what a Tok'ra was at the time. There were no Goa'uld in Pegasus, he didn't need to know.

"How the hell else do you think they were going to cure me?" Rodney opens his mouth to say Goa'uld hand device, modern medical miracles, St. Mary, but John pushes ahead. "They thought I had important information. Two years and the first news they get is my limp body, with all the information locked inside. What would you do?"

"But General O'Neill..." Jack hated the Tok'ra.

"You gave him no other choice." John's words are angry, but the anger infuses everything, hangs around them like a cloud, not accusing anyone or anything, but all the more stifling because of it. "I don't blame you, Rodney. I really don't. But you have to understand... I was sick. I didn't know what was real. I woke up with voices in my head, General O'Neill and Dr. Jackson begging me to tell them all I knew about Atlantis. I thought it was torture, some sort of Wraith brainwashing, the double fake-out you were talking about. I didn't want to believe it was real."

Rodney shivers. He wants to cry. He wants to mourn all the pain and hardship surviving cost John. Maybe it was selfish, what he did. Maybe all this... John's perfect little life, is the punishment for cheating death, tempting fate. "But you told them... eventually."

"No. I didn't say a word. The Tok'ra forced it out of me. I think it meant well, now that I think back on it. It tried to comfort me, but I didn't want to believe. I thought it was just another trick. So I killed it."

"What?" That startles him. He doesn't know how John could get that far gone.

John pulls down his sweater, exposing the long line of his neck so Rodney can see scars. The one running down his face is just an extension of something at the side of the neck, tracing around to the back of the head and the neck. "They had me drugged so they could speak with me without a screaming fit. But the drugs incapacitated the Tok'ra as well. I was so out of it... it couldn't even feel the scalpel. I couldn't feel my hands when I cut... it felt like a dream." John is crying now, unashamedly. Rodney wonders if this is the first time he's cried over this... wonders guiltily if he's playing second-fiddle to John's wife.

"You're alive now, that's all that matters." It's cliché and it doesn't fit the scene, but Rodney can't think of anything else to say. He means it. John's worth all that. He opens his arms and John collapses into them, staining Rodney's sweater with tears.

"It's not all that matters. I killed an innocent being. I killed a being so good that even when I had irrevocably damaged it, it used the last of its energy to save my life. I started a war."

Rodney gasps. He didn't know that this was the start of it all - the war they're still fighting. "It's okay John. You didn't know what you were doing. They never should have done that to you." He means 'we' by he doesn't say it. Rodney doesn't know what to say so he says, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault, Rodney," John practically sobs. "You did... that has to be the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for me. But, I did what I did, and I'm the one who has to live with it."

"I'm still sorry you had to go through all that."

John nods against him, tears fading into quiet sniffles. "I dreamed about you. I dreamed that you would make it all stop, come up with a double fake-out of your own, you know?" He gasps some air in. "But you didn't come and... I'm sorry, Rodney. I needed to move on or I was going to go crazy. It was already a year of a padded cell and sedation before they let me out. And I still wouldn't tell them anything."

John is gripping him tight, fingers digging in tight like he needs to know that this is reality too, that this isn't another fake-out. And Rodney finds tears threatening to break loose as well, but he doesn't shed them. He just pulls John to him, kisses his neck and his cheeks and his now relatively tame hair. It's only a few inches to his lips. They're familiar and warm and just how he remembers them. John kisses back so passionately, like they're making up for so much lost time in just this moment. It's been so long since Rodney felt comfortable like this. He feels at home, here in the bubble within the bubble of John's perfect little life. So he pushes John gently back onto the soft but prickly surface of the grass, hoping they can just sink into the Earth and stay this way forever, like that immortal moment on the planet Ford wanted to name Paradiso Pegasisio, with nothing but the sun lighting a halo around John's hair, the smell of honey and spice on the air, the soft bed of red and purple flower petals coating the ground. But even those memories are fading into the tapestry of memories, glorified and modified, almost recognizable by years of separation. The memories fails, because this doesn't end that way.

"I can't, Rodney, I'm *married.*" John pushes Rodney up, looking deliciously innocent laying in the grass panting like that.

Rodney tries to push in for another kiss. He's missed this so much... needed this so much. They were meant to kiss like that. That's the only thing he's even know was right his entire life. There's nobody else... can't John feel that? "Yeah, but monogamy is a complete Christian fallacy anyhow. I mean, there's no reason why one needs to keep only one..."

John's laughing now, thick chuckles as he tumbles over onto his side.

"What?" Rodney snaps, even though he likes seeing John laugh like this.

"You are such a hypocrite!"

Rodney bristles. There's nothing he hates more than hypocrisy. He always does his best to be straightforward about things. He is the way he is. He's consistent. "I don't know what you're talking about, Major."

"Hey, I'm a civilian now. And you *are* a hypocrite. Do you remember how jealous you got that time when I was getting some from that alien priestess? I can't even remember her name now." His lips are still swollen from kissing.

"That's because we weren't together then. If you were going to fall for the delusion of monogamy, I wanted it to be with me, not with *her.*"

"You didn't think I was even a threat to the world of free love, Rodney. What was it you called me? 'Dirty little slut with a Captain Kirk complex?' Someone who was about to 'get us all killed?'"

Rodney scowls. "I did not say any of that, John."

"That's what I remember."

"Well you remember wrong." Or maybe it's Rodney whose memory is off. Maybe he didn't ask John to 'please not sleep with the alien priestess, because it might possibly be a security risk.' Maybe it's all just a wash and memory and reality and that John whose fire and charm and tenderness he remembers isn't just gone... he never existed. The only *real* John is the one sitting next to him beneath a stormy sky, playing with bits of grass because the only other place to put his hands is on Rodney's body. And the thing about this John is that he's married, and to him, it's Rodney that's not quite real.

"And I'm sure you're the expert source," John sneers. "And that's not the only time you were jealous and possessive. What about that time when I had to do that ceremony where I had my entire body cleaned by the tongues of seven virgins? I had to order Ford to lock you in the jumper before you had an aneurysm."

"Oh that... well, I was looking out for your safety. You know it's bad policy to be naked and weaponless strapped to an altar with seven untrustworthy natives surrounding you. Bad odds, you know."

John laughs again. "This... this is what I missed."

"You don't have this with you wife?"

"Rodney, do you honestly think there is another person in this entire galaxy that can annoy me the way you do? Amy can bicker with the best of them, but she's not you." John's hand is on his cheek now, and there's so much longing in his eyes that Rodney learns forward for another kiss, but John turns away. It pains Rodney that he can't understand why.

He winces as he says it. "Do... do you love her?"

John is far too quick to answer. "She's my wife. Of course I do." This reminds Rodney that John had one of those picture perfect families himself. His parents probably didn't scream or break each other's things or call the cops on each other. John had told Rodney that to him his father was distant and not afraid to use both his belt and his words as discipline, but that he'd never raise his voice to John's mother, let alone his hand. Rodney had assumed that because John had run away from home at age 16 that he wasn't interested in the whole nuclear family, white picket fence deal - that he knew as well as Rodney that it was false. But he was stupid to ever think that.

Rodney bites back the urge to ask John if he loves his wife more or less than he loved Rodney. He knows it's an unfair question and he knows that even if John is capable of making that kind of qualification, he'd rather deny it, and disrupting that denial will just cause a backlash.

John's voice is soft, and he stares down at the grass when he speaks, picking it between his fingers and pulling violently. "I loved you more. And don't try to deny that that's what you were wondering."

It's not the triumph he's expecting. It doesn't make him feel any better to know that he's the love of John's life, the way John is his, and that they've spent eight miserable years apart. Especially because he's not sure John was miserable. He saw the twinkle in his eyes when he told Meg to go with her mommy, when he bragged to Rodney about her T-ball team. Rodney can remember a thousand happy memories, on hundreds of different worlds, touches shared under foreign stars, teasing and cascading laughter, a look across a crowd of bizarre natives, but even with history distorted, he's not sure if John has ever looked at him the way he's looked at her.

So he's jealous of an awkward little munchkin who can't even keep her skirt dirt-free. He wonders what kind of sick fascination John has with her, lifting her up and risking straining his back, discussing the lives of ridiculous cartoon characters on TV with falsely sentimental values that both John and Rodney always picked apart with gleeful cynicism, braiding he unruly hair with those perfect hands meant only to fly and to set Rodney's body alight.

It's not supposed to be this way. John's supposed to drop whatever it is he's doing to be with Rodney, because love conquers all, and stuff like that. But he knows John won't. He's too good a man to tarnish the stupid illusion of family and such with this. Rodney knows this, even as he realizes that timing-wise, with Meg at six years and John locked in the base hospital for a year, there's no way John and Amy didn't have a shotgun wedding.

But he has to ask, "Are you happy?" And he has to hope.

John thinks about it for a long moment, looking out at the last golden rays of sunset, wind blowing in his hair. He wears an expression that is half smile, half frown, and he lets all the little pieces of grass he's torn up fly, watching them dance in the evening breeze. "Yes, Rodney, I'm happy."

He knows it's true, and a part of him doesn't want it to be, but it is. "You... you're sure?"

"Yes. Things aren't perfect. Amy can be difficult. I still have nightmares. And having children is just plain frightening. I'm not saying I might not have been happier with you. That this is what I wanted if I had a choice. But this is my life. And I'm content with it."

"I see." Rodney can't keep the defeat from his tone. But he does see. He knows that you can't compare what you've got to an ideal world, or you'll destroy your life chasing dreams. He still has enough of a pessimist in him to understand John's optimism.

John shivers a bit in the wind and Rodney puts his arm around him. John leans into Rodney's shoulder, sighing and closing his eyes. They stay like that until the ambers waves of the sunset have sunk into blackness and the silver planes sparkle like dreams in the twilight.

Amy is sweet and charming and commanding-but-demur in exactly the way Rodney would imagine John's wife, if he had ever thought John would end up with one. In fact, she reminds Rodney a lot of Elizabeth, without all the brooding intellectualism and the power politics. She cooks them an elaborate meal of red-pork-stuffed bao and dumplings and fried rice and ginger soup and pea pods and stringy green vegetables whose name Rodney can't pronounce. He piles them in gratefully though. As Atlantis became more and more of a community and provisions form Earth ran out, Rodney had become spoiled with home-cooked meals. When he got back to Cheyenne Mountain he was amazed to find he'd lost his love for military foods, probably an invention of necessity, nothing more.

Amy leans across the table to poor him more wine, letting him just glimpse down the front of her tailored grey blouse to note that she was wearing red lingerie beneath. It doesn't really surprise him that John still has passion in his marriage, even with at kid in the mix. John seemed like the type who would never grow out of things. "So, Dr. McKay, might I ask what it is you're a doctor of, if that's not classified."

Rodney wipes his mouth on a napkin and smiles. "I have several degrees, actually: Astrophysics from Harvard, mechanical engineering from MIT, and Computer Science from U of T, University of Toronto. I was working on Thermodynamics when I got... er... recruited by the Air Force." He doesn't bother to keep the smug superiority out of his voice, and is rewarded by John's bright smile and a leer.

"Good to see you're still modest as ever, Rodney."

Amy looks shocked at John for a brief second, but hides it well when Rodney counters, "And you're just as malnourished. I don't see how you can be, with so much wonderful food." He nods to Amy - tact learned by years of lectures from Elizabeth, Lieutenant (now, Major) Parker kicking him in the shins with her steel toed military issue boots every time he was about to make a diplomatic faux pas - learning through negative feedback response.

John raises his eyebrows but Rodney ignores him, smiling through the jealousy burning in his gut. He can't even hate Amy as much as he'd like too. It's his fault... his fault for not getting back sooner. If John has to move on, Amy seems like someone who would make him happy.

"Thank you, Dr. McKay," she blushes almost seductively. "Though, I'm wondering what such a brilliant man as yourself was every doing hanging around with my husband."

"Honey," John growls playfully. He can see the familiar fire, the teasing between the two. It's not what they used to have together, but maybe it's the years... even Rodney has gotten smoother with age.

Rodney smirks, "It's quite simple, actually: the Air Force forced us."

He sees the disbelief on John's face, the communication without words they slip into easily, 'The Air Forced forced you into my bed, did it?'

Rodney glares back, 'I wanted you for your body.' But what he actually says is, "I'm sure they regretted it a hundred times over."

Amy looks back and forth between the two. "I'm sure they did. I'm not going to venture into 'if I tell you I have to kill you' territory, but it seems as though with those kind of specialties along with John's penchant for going fast and out of control, they were asking for it."

Rodney smiles. "We didn't get into too much trouble." It's like they're teasing Elizabeth again, playing the schoolboys that just accidentally blew up the chemistry lab or something.

"Right." Amy rolls her eyes, then reaches across the table to grab John's hand. And John squeezes back. Rodney is more jealous now than hours ago when they first met, back when he was still hoping that there was no Mrs. Sheppard to go along with the brat. John was never a very tactile person, a grabber, a fidgeter. He always liked a certain amount of distance when they weren't kissing or having sex or simply lying curled together, and Rodney was happy to oblige. But now... he thought it was an isolated phenomenon with Meg, something parents who actually love their children tend to do, but now he sees that John and Amy have it too.

Amy does her duty as the suburban wife and speaks just as the silence is about to turn awkward. "So, Dr. McKay, what do you think about the latest projects in Belgium?"

"Belgium?"

Amy smiles with a bit of a laugh. "The nuclear fusion reactor that those idiots in the Edwards administration don't seem to want built."

"Oh... that." He hasn't really heard about this of course. He only knows that there are better ways... that they are slowly trying to phase-in Naquadah-based technology without revealing the source.

"Do you think CERN was right to petition the UN the way it did? I mean, they haven't been much of a political... "

"Um..."

John steps in to save him. They both know he's a terrible liar. "Actually, the project that Rodney and I worked on doesn't allow much info in or out."

"I see." Amy seems to trying to be understanding, but she also seems quite a bit hurt, if not resentful. Her glare makes Rodney wonder if John's marriage isn't as perfect as it seems.

"What was it Zelenka was always comparing us to?" Rodney asks. "The isolated whirlwind of madness?"

"I never heard him say that."

"Yes you did! That's what he was always saying in Czech when he'd hit me on the back really hard when I was upset about something not working." Which was a lot.

John laughs. "Oh. I always thought he was hitting *on* you."

"No, he was hitting on you - all those secretive little whispers together." Rodney pushes down his jealousy even though John's married and Zelenka's about to be.

John waves a hand dismissively. "Nah, he was just trying to get into Parker's pants, working me for info."

"Well it worked."

"No way! I thought she and Ford..."

"Broke up. Ford ended up with the alien princess."

John shoots a furtive glance at Amy and gives Rodney a warning glare. "She did not look like that babe in Star Trek. I rewatched the episode and you're wrong."

"What..." Rodney trails off quickly, realizing the game. He doesn't know how one deals with this classified thing and still has a life. He's a rotten liar.

"Yup, I have it. After I put Meg to bed we can watch. Who else ended up together? Uh... Tara and Elizabeth?"

"Still growing strong."

"Bates and Kellogg?"

"You knew about that? They swore me and anyone else who might've known to secrecy."

"Ha... I had my ways of knowing." John winks.

"I'm sure you did. They stayed together, until Bates died."

"Oh." John frowns, both sad and confused, like he doesn't how to mourn people he's probably already given up on long ago.

"Kellogg ended up with an... um... local."

John continues to prod him, ask questions, wonder about who stayed and who came back and who died. Discussing it all makes him disgustingly melancholy.

He's 47 and he realizes that, of all his good friends, commandos, and geeky scientists alike, he's the only one who's still single. Teyla and Elizabeth are visiting the Weir clan up in Albany. Ford's still back in Pegasus running a skeleton crew on Atlantis and acting as figurehead king of his wife's people. Zelenka and Parker are getting married in Prague this summer - he has to remember to invite John to the wedding for them. Carson and Melody have two kids and are trying for a third. Jinto even found a pretty girl the first day they let them out of the mountain. Calvin's getting some action from this insane Genii underling, one of the ones involved in Cowen's assassination. Even the ones they lost: Peter Grodin and Kyle Stackhouse and Gene Bates all seemed relatively happy with their respective love lives before they died.

When he was younger, awkward, allergic to life and sun and most anything that didn't prove him to be a hundred times smarter than everyone else, he thought he'd be lucky to even ever get laid, let alone end up with anyone. He was the single friend people sometimes invited to parties because they felt bad, or because they wanted to set him up with the buck-toothed cousin with the twitch. He'd gotten used to it, a fact of life. But John spoiled him to that. Being with John made him think, 'hey, this might just work.' He could see them growing only together, making fun of guys a year older than them, stealing people's canes at the nursing home. But life gave him hope only to take it away the second he thought that maybe he was supposed to be happy after all. But happiness isn't for people like him, he thinks as he and John and Amy continue to make strained small-talk. Happiness is for people with honor.

After Meg convinces her 'Uncle Rodney' to explain some of the details of this astronomy book John's reading her, and receives what he's convinced is a pretty unintelligible lecture, she finally consents to go to bed. Rodney burns with jealousy as he watches John kiss her forehead.

They tiptoe downstairs as Amy takes a basket of laundry up to the bedroom, and John picks on Rodney for his explanation of redshift. They pop on a DVD of Star Trek, spending more time making fun of the Styrofoam monsters and outdated computer technology than anything else. John does a mean Captain Kirk impression, explaining his so-called closet-geekiness away by saying, "Hey, learned my entire command-style from the man, according to *some* people."

"Well, it could've been worse," Rodney giggles. "You could've picked Picard."

"True. We were better at it than all of them though."

"We certainly got into more trouble."

"That's what made it fun." John is defiant.

"Yeah... if you consider running from angry natives and constantly getting your life threatened by life-sucking vampirebeings fun, then yeah."

"Hey, you were the one that left just when things started to settle down."

"I left because I thought you'd be getting into too much trouble alone in this galaxy." Rodney tries to make it sound funny... to trivialize the tragic romanticism of it all.

"Didn't want to be left out of the action?" John smiles and Rodney can tell that he's touched by his coming back, even as he keeps his tone light.

"Not at all. But after seeing your driving, I think I might've had a heart attack if I'd come back sooner."

"I drive just fine, thank you. There's no reason to waste your time going slow when there's so many beautiful things to enjoy in life."

Rodney rolls his eyes. "Yeah right. You just like going fast."

"So sue me."

"Maybe I will."

"For what?"

"Lasting emotional distress." He tries to say it jokingly, but they both know he has a damn good case.

"All proof you might want is classified, you'll never win."

"Maybe if I show off my legs a little at trial, I'll get a sympathetic jury." Rodney rolls his eyes.

John snorts then breaks down into all out laughter, falling against Rodney, until they're settled in a familiar embrace. It's a few minutes before John even moves. "God, I missed you," he says, looking down at his hands shyly. Rodney has almost forgotten how shy John can seem sometimes, like the first time Rodney kissed him, or in isolated moments when he thought it was okay to let the image of tough military commander drop. But for years those moments have been buried in the heroic image of John, the one diving into battle, smirking at a Wraith only a few inches from his face, screaming at Kavanagh in Rodney's defense. He wonders how he could forget the shy John, now that he remembers how much he loved him. "I didn't even know how much I missed you until you got back."

Rodney supposes that's fair. John moved on. He *could* move on. Rodney was damned by his surroundings, damned by the fact that everyone he could ever be interested in would be someone they knew when John was around, someone easy to compare. Teyla tried to set him up with some of her trading partners, Ford with his wife's sister. Even, Parker, his new team leader tried to get him together, with Calvin, of all people, though he was positive that it was at Zelenka's urging. Sure he'd had the isolated tryst or two whenever the encountered some incredibly friendly natives or ones of his fellow scientists was looking for a no-risk buddy-fuck. But it was a price he was willing to pay for a chance to save John's life.

"I missed you too." It's all Rodney can say. It's all there is to say. John reaches over to squeeze his hand, not letting go until the corny sixties music blurs and the credits have rolled and he stretches and heads up to bed. Rodney nods, but doesn't say anything.

He thinks maybe he should do something tragically romantic like drive all the way back to Colorado Springs in the rain, letting the storm speak for his emotions, or find a motel somewhere and take a five hour shower and write poetry, or walk down the streets and find a prostitute or something, though this is Colorado, not Vienna. But instead he lets Amy talk him into the guest bedroom, sitting up all night, listening to the sound of the rain, half-terrified and half-hoping to hear John and Amy making love across the hall.

The next morning he and John drop Meg off at school and head for a café in town, sitting and drinking good old Earth coffee and watching the rain. Rodney drinks almost every type of coffee the shop offers and John teases him, but mostly they sit in silence. There isn't a lot they can say with other people around.

They part standing in John's driveway, the air thick and full of moisture from the rain, holding in all the grief, even after it's spent a day and a night crying. They hug each other tight and long, knowing that it is a goodbye of sorts.

"You're welcome anytime, Rodney," John says with a small tragic smile.

"Yeah, sure... you too, if I don't get locked up somewhere with special clearance and all that." Even as he knows that he won't ever take John up on his offer, he knows they'll see each other again.

They meet again at Zelenka and Parker's wedding and laugh at all the scientists and how they look in suits and take each other for one spin around the dance floor, making sure to dance far enough apart to quench the always active rumor mill. He doesn't take the post at Area51 the powers that be offered him. Instead he takes comfort in his role as Colonel Carter's right hand man, always in her shadow. Somehow he finds he doesn't mind so much anymore. He's had his great love, his great fight, his years in the spotlight. Carter still gets him spitting and screaming like his new cat, Galileo, when he's frightened of something, but when they're not butting heads they develop a quiet friendship. When he's feeling alone and depressive and past his prime she smiles at him and holds his hand. He doesn't even bother to hit on her anymore.

Teyla and Elizabeth swing through every once in a while, when they're not in Beijing negotiating the clandestine role of Gate-acquired technology in the next round of ASEAN talks. Teyla loves China, apparently. People there don't expect her to behave like they do and she relishes in it, telling John and Rodney tales of wonder and cultural difference that they can all understand and relate to, for once.

Rodney sits sometimes in front of the Gate, watching teams of scientists and soldiers walk through, looking at their excited smiles and remembering Ford and Parker and Jinto before the war took their innocence, wondering what they're up to now. He watches the marines that go through into battle and wonders if they'll die at the hand of another Tok'ra spy or a tribe of the new Jaffa Zionists, but keeps that kind of tragic optimism that only one who's seen enough death to know that after it happens, the world still goes on.

One day he gets a call from John and his heart pounds, despite the fact that he's refusing to ever hope something will happen, and finds out that Meg has taken an interest in physics and would like to talk to him. She's no longer a brat but a beautiful young woman with John's smile and charm, but a level of seriousness that puts him off whenever he thinks that she's too much like his long-ago lover. Before he knows it they're discussing quantum theory that he only knows to be true because of the Stargate program and he's writing her recommendations to all his old alma maters. She calls him 'Uncle Rodney,' which he finds incredibly disturbing, even though it just makes her laugh a light airy laugh like her mother's. He doubts she can even suspect his past relationship to her father and works to keep it that way. Despite how much time he and Meg spend corresponding... despite all the daytrips over to Denver to chat with her, he doesn't see John much. In fact, he attends her graduation at her request, not John's. And when she heads off for Harvard, he makes the effort to go to alumni events just to see her, sit by the fire in Weld Hall or stroll down Kennedy where he can stop in stores and dote on her, using his stockpiled earnings for something.

By the time she's finally got her PhD he shares control of personnel with Sam, so he recruits her. He and John have the biggest fight they've ever had - even bigger than the time he thought John was cheating on him with the pigmy medicine woman, or the time he was sure they would all die if they followed John through this crystalline tunnel to the Stargate. It's the most passionate they've been in years, and they're sure to bring up every wrong of the two years they spent together in the process. It nearly turns into a fistfight, before Meg storms in and gives her father a thorough talking to. They don't speak after that, even though both Meg and Amy try to force them to. They've lost all their incentive to make things work.

Sometimes, when he's staring forlornly at the wrong Gate, wondering when the war will leave a ship free to go back to Atlantis and whether or not he'll be on it, Sam and Daniel will come sit beside him and they will all remember how it was to go through the Gate. Daniel even offers him a safe scientific investigation, Naquahda mining or scientific research on the Alpha Site. They even say he can take Meg with him for a time, but he doesn't take that job either. He doesn't know why. There's nothing left for him here on Earth except the tatters of a dream long unraveled, but he doesn't leave. He can't.

And sometimes, he dreams of a castle in the clouds with sprawling halls, twisting beyond the petty 3 dimensions, built of John's smile, furnished with his laughter, and filled with the love they once shared. So Rodney dreams, and in those moments, he's happy.

- FIN -