You've changed.

That's what everyone always says when they end a long-term relationship.

I heard my mother scream it a thousand times, throwing all the antique scientific equipment my father kept in those sterile glass cabinets, as though sealing against dust could sealing against time, and progress, shattering the glass and mirrors and windows until the floor was a kaleidoscope, shiny objects magnify and reflecting drops of blood.

My only truly serious girlfriend said it when I was seduced secrecy of the Stargate project.

I said it to you after . . . , I never told you how much the scars running down your once-boyish face bothered me, the tender handprint on your chest where I used to run my fingers through the hair even moreso. I was afraid that I loved you because you were beautiful. Or because you'd protected me. Now, of course, I know that's not true. I can't even remember why it is that I love you, I only know that I do. But Those marks were a constant reminder that you were no longer capable of either beauty or protection.

There wasn't anything in this universe that could protect us. Not love. Not beauty. Not that charm of yours that I once thought commanded the stars.

And I once felt safe in your arms.

Did you notice how I started to shake? Did you notice how I looked away? Did you wonder why I no longer searched your features for the intense vulnerability of orgasm? Did you notice how my long moans turned to grunts? My worshiping of your body tainted by the desecration of that temple . . . . And I used to wonder how Jews could mourn the destruction of a temple more than a thousand years ago. Did you know how violated I felt? You were mine - no one, not even the Wraith, had the right to touch you . . . to hurt you. Now that they have you I know how foolish I was to think you could ever truly be mine, no matter how much we both might want it. Did you ever wonder why I turned away after the lusts that not even war and destruction and that cold glint in your eye could quell? Did you ever think that I was the one who'd changed?

I'm sure you did. You'd always been calculating. You always knew every detail around you - everything was a potential threat. You always knew what to say and when. You could be all charm and silliness one moment, and then you could snap someone's neck the next.

I've seen you do it too. Charm your way into someone's good graces. Make them trust you. You didn't know I saw, did you? I loved you enough to bear witness when you tortured that woman. And when you had what you needed, you showed the same graced mercy I'd always known in you: you snapped her neck - quick and painless. And you said you were sorry - whispered in that small, lost voice, the one I'd only heard in you breathless in my arms, murmuring sweet nothings in my ear.

Maybe that moment was more intimate than anything we'd ever shared. I've had other lovers. but none as brilliant -intense like the corona of the sun, like the inevitable tide of the moon, like the force of time painting wrinkles into our faces, drawing lines of rivers through the vast desert, hardening your heart the way God touched the soul of the Pharaoh, all so history could play itself out. History was too powerful for us, the forces of Epics, the mythology that no one but us few survivors will ever know, drowned out what I once dared call love. Yes, I've had other lovers, but none that I would willingly watch kill.

Yes, I took on some of the burdens on your conscience, foolishly assuming that they were zero sum. I'm a physicist, I should know better. The Laws of Thermodynamics tell us that things fall apart. The Universe is expanding, exploring, becoming more, and, like you with so many wonders each filed as a new threat, it's getting colder.

It would have been easy to stop loving you then. I could have told myself that the Wraith took something from you. You thought they had. But you'd lost your innocence long ago. I'd seen the cold stare before, fleetingly, because you never wanted me to see. But I saw - the funny thing about love, is it makes you see everything, yet blinds you to what things really mean - like those people with brain damage whose eyes work fine, but whose minds have forgotten how to identify shapes.

Loving you was a wash of sound and color - everything so intense it threatened to overwhelm me. You liked things fast. You moved so quickly, your hands surrounded me. You sped up my heartbeat. You made time rush by in a blur when I was with you. You made everything so passionate and bright it blinded me.

No, the darkness was always there in you - the devotion of the hero, the person that enemies might call the fanatic, the calculated intensity of a man who knows what he wants and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it. All you ever needed was to be convinced that something was 'right.'

But you were so wrong.

You thought you could end this war in one fell swoop - go out in a blaze of glory.

It never occurred to you that there was a reason the Ancients didn't eliminate the Wraith from the face of the planet the moment they learned how to ascend. But maybe that was all our fault. You saw them as a bunch of divine hippies, too stoned and fascinated by their own ethereal affairs to intervene in the petty moral coil. Everyone always let you get away with things . . . you never imagined there'd be a price.

You never thought that as evil as the Wraith were, this galaxy would be worse off without them. They were just scary enough to keep the Dark Ones at bay - the coyotes that sheepherders scare off into the night. And we called the shepherd evil. We knew so little.

But you know all that now. We all know it too well.

I'm sitting on your bed, a part of me still convinced that there is a warm space beside me, waiting for you to return from the bathroom of one of those long nights spent on the balcony letting the starlight wash the nightmares away.

But I know you're here, lurking in the silence. "You've changed." The best way to get your attention always was an insult.

I can't see the darkness in your eyes through the light that glows around you - though I know that the universe itself is darker now that you're gone. But you're not really gone. It might be lighter still if you were.

"Death'll do that to you." Your voice is muted, all of its rich tones compressed, like after a while things are so bright that it all just registers as the same. You've lost all your contrast - left the weakness behind. The Dark Ones have no use for weakness.

"I miss you."

"I know."

"You know . . . you had to be all heroic . . . you had to go an die for the cause . . . you had to let them use you . . . you had to be the vessel for their worldly action . . . you hated the Wraith so much that you'd let them take you . . . what were you thinking? You weren't thinking about the rest of us that have to live without you, you selfish little shit! You left me . . . you left me all alone . . . I hate you . . ."

Even though I can't see through the light, I know you've got that smug grin on your face, the one I hadn't seen for years, even before you left us for the next great adventure - another plain of existence, your own personal playground. I know I'm being unfair. I always expected to much of you. I believed in you even when I knew that this solution was too good to be true.

"You love me." You tease, but you say it like the curse we both know it is.

"I know, that's the problem, you fuckhead!" I scream, wanting to punch the glowing light, wanting to tear it apart, even through I know my hands will just pass right through. I've screamed at God before to the same effect.

I want to tell you how hard it is now that you're gone. Elizabeth looks so tired and gaunt. I never saw her as frail before. Even in our worst moments she was always calm and composed - confident. And Ford, he hadn't lost his innocence. Even after everything that happened, he still believed it until we defeated the Wraith. But this new enemy . . . talk about a hollow victory. No matter how hard I work I'm no closer to finding a way to stop them. What was it about the Wraith that kept them at bay?

You destroyed everything in a purifying blaze. That's what the Dark Ones do - the devils with whom you so eagerly made a deal. There's nothing of any one of their great ships left. No evidence to tell us their secret. The only mark they've left upon this world is the fear that still floats at the back of the minds of all those they oppressed. Even a memory can be painful - you've more than proven that. But as for phyical evidence - they might as well have lived as ghosts. Or maybe they never existed at all.

"Tell me how to make this better." I demand, like so many times before, even though I know it's beyond you. Still, you're one of them. You must know something.

"Rodney, I'm sorry." The light moves closer, melting and deflating, making itself smaller in sorrow, the tendrils of brilliance creeping around me, but not touching. I can almost feel a wind against my check as you speak, like waking to your warm breath against my chest in the morning, "I'm so sorry."

And that word is more frightening . . . more painful than anything I'd ever heard. Even when the universe took from you. Even when you were broken and bleeding, that infernal handprint an angry red burn on your chest, your eyes distant and your brow feverish, you never sounded so defeated. You know what they say about the devil you know . . .

"I still love you, you bastard." I want to stop. God, I want to stop. You were so wrong! You've killed so many! Generations from now, assuming anyone survives, people will be calling you evil. That's what history does to dedicated people who stray from the path. But this is now, and I could never ever hate you, no matter how hard I try. I can't even be jealous that you don't have to live in the world you've left behind, because I know you're watching.

You'll always be watching me.

I think about the intensity in your eyes - how you studied me for months before we first kissed. And when we did, you knew every button to push, every touch. You went from zero to sixty in about a second, from nothing to loving me so intensely I felt dizzy. You had it all planned out. You willed it into existence. Your belief was enough to overcome my sexuality, even.

Your belief has always been powerful. Maybe that's why they wanted you. You make things happen.

And you were born for watching.

You'll watch me and you'll cry. If you even can.

I don't know how a wisp of light can manage to look apologetic, but you manage it. You always could do things others couldn't even imagine. "I know. I'm sorry."

I won't apologize for loving you. And I won't tell you how scared I am, even if I'm sure you already know. You always could read me.

"I can't get over you either, if that makes you feel any better. Rodney McKay keeping me from enjoying a nice peaceful death."

We both know that's not true. You might have been cold and you might have been misguided . . . but you were never one of them. Not even love could have made me that blind. All this destruction would never sit easy with you. No matter what, you'll be doomed to an eternity free from peace.

Then you're standing before me, deceptively healthy and whole, wearing that tight blue shirt that I always thought looked so good on you, your eyes shinning with the tears that I know you can still shed.

"I love you and I . . ."

"I know you're sorry." We've had this conversation before. We've had it a thousand times. You never thought you were good enough for me.

And we kiss, pain exploding through me like light as you let me break the fragile peace that is the part of you that still loves me . . . the part they haven't gotten yet. And I'm in a jumble of images, screams, shards of hatred, and violence, and that collected calm, the rush of power. It's all spilled out before me, in disarray like my father's study the day my mother finally saw fit to divorce him. I scream from the pain, they way I did when I cut my fingers trying to pick up the glass - to make it better. I know how much it hurts you to have to make me feel pain like this . . . but it's the only way.

One day I will be just as cold as you were. The pain will max out like the light, and I will be left with nothing happy to contrast with that. Sometimes I long for that day - the day I will forget how it feels to be in love with you.

And then I have it . . . a list of symbols burning itself into my mind, branded and scarring, like torture, like mystic salvation.

And then I wake . . . screaming, body straining involuntarily against that Carson's put on me to keep me from harming myself in the morning despair - to keep me from running through the Gate looking for you, even though I know that the only thing I could find would be an eternity of torture like yours. If it were just about me, I think Weir would let me. She left someone behind on Earth (though Earth is the least of our concerns these days) so she knows how it feels to be torn from the one you love. She would let me go but they need me too much. The tears are streaming down my face, but I croak out the gate address. Ford doesn't even hesitate. He runs from my personal bed in the infirmary to dial the gate.

He and Weir and Teyla will go through. They'll try to convince whomever they meet on the other side that something dangerous is coming, that they need to flee through the gate to another planet we've selected, a place that's temporarily safe.

They will convince some, a few paranoid fanatics, as always. Or maybe some who have learned that it is us that defeated the Wraith. But the rest will be damned by their own disbelief.

And tomorrow, a stranger with the most beautiful green eyes and dark brown hair will step through the gate. He'll smile, confused, not knowing where he is, but looking for someone named Rodney - someone he loves, though he's forgotten what or when or how. And they'll take him in, despite the warnings, because he's so charming - his smile so bright that they won't see the coldness in his eyes.

And then the Darkness will spill out of him - the perfect vessel, tearing through the land in storms and violence and screaming, wiping another people from the world just like that, leaving nothing but a memory.

And at night I will dream about you again. And even knowing what you've done I won't be able to stop loving you.