When I hear that Serenade in blue
I'm somewhere in another world, alone with you
Sharing all the joys we used to know
Many moons ago

Once again your face comes back to me
Just like the theme of some forgotten melody
In the album of my memory
Serenade in blue

It seems like only yesterday
The small cafe, a crowded floor
And as we danced the night away
I hear you say forever more
And then the song became a sigh
Forever more became goodbye
Cause you remained in my heart, but

Tell me darling is there still a spark?
Or only lonely ashes of the flame we knew
Should I go on whistling in the dark?
Serenade in blue

He wakes to the sound of the wormhole disengaging. This time it echoes like the slamming of a door or a coffin shutting. In every galaxy death sounds the same. On every world they know the sound of the end of possibility. And, with the image of the gurney sliding through, buoyed by the shimmering liquid of the event horizon like invisible pallbearers burned into the back of his mind, it’s hard not to hear it in every noise around.

Even now, woken through a couple tons of concrete by some SG team that may or may not be returning, he can’t stand to hear that sound. But today is the day. Today is the day when he won’t have to have that image lurking in every whoosh of the wormhole, in every closing door, because today he’ll see him again.

Rodney rolls out of bed, cursing the freezing cold of the concrete floor as he stumbles for the shower. It’s warm, but he barely feels it.

After accidentally washing his hair with body scrub, he pulls on a new pair of jeans and an intricately woven white shirt Teyla gave him for his last birthday, rolling up the sleeves to the forearms as seems to be the fashion these days.

He shaves with one of these new sonic razors, missing the scratch of the blade against his stubble. His reflection in the mirror looks old and tired, bruises beneath his eyes still not fading after two weeks of decent night’s sleep. His hair is getting thin and surprisingly, so is he. Or maybe these old Earth mirrors aren’t as flattering as the ones on Atlantis. He looks gaunt and unsettled, even well-shaven and with his hair actually parted.

This is as good as it’s going to get.

He steps out into the hall and nearly runs into Elizabeth carrying a huge suitcase. How’d she get so much stuff in the two weeks they were confined to base? Then again, Elizabeth seemed to have brought an entire wardrobe and hair curlers to Atlantis, so he supposes it’s possible.

“Rodney! You’re looking handsome today.”

He blushes, even knowing that she’s just humoring him. “Thank you, Elizabeth. Heading out?”

“We’re going to spend some time with my family. Then I was planning to show Teyla around Earth. If you feel like being a tourist for a little while, you’re welcome to join us.”

He balks. “Do I look like a tourist to you?”

She chuckles. “With a Hawaiian shirt and a camera . . .” Her smile is warm instead of haggard like he’s used to. It looks good on her. She’s aged much more gracefully than he has, even if some strands of white are creeping into her hair at the temples.

He finds himself laughing along with her. “Keep dreaming, Elizabeth.”

“What about you? Why are you so dressed up?”

“I’m going to see John,” he says matter of factly.

“Rodney, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Why not, Elizabeth? Haven’t I been punished enough?” He sacrificed so much. Not to mention the reprimand and the whole being locked out of the 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. Still, after all the shouts and recriminations, he thought they’d moved past this, back into the easy working relationship they’d had in the beginning, and even on to friendship.

“That’s not it at all, Rodney.”

“Then what is it? After all that’s happened, don’t I have a right to see him?”

Elizabeth bits her lip, looking like a schoolgirl dragging her best friend down the hall to dish out the latest gossip. She looks both ways then lowers her voice. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but John’s the reason . . .”

But she never gets to finish as Teyla and that scary guy with the tattoo amble down the hall carrying a gigantic pile of suitcases with them.

“Elizabeth, I believe the . . .” Teyla looks to Teal’c for confirmation, “chariot awaits us.”

Elizabeth looks nervous but schools her features easily. She squeezes Rodney’s hand and then pulls him into a tight hug. “Keep in touch, okay? And please . . .”

Rodney nods curtly even though he knows that there’s no way he’s going to listen to her. Elizabeth’s always been overprotective, and he really needs this.

Without the help of two aliens with super strength, it takes Rodney about twenty minutes to make it to the carpark with his single suitcase, which is fine by him. He doesn’t need to give Elizabeth the time to convince him out of it – he knows how persuasive she can be.

The drive to Denver is utterly terrifying. Cars have gotten faster, slimmer, crazier. It feels like Boston or London or Los Angeles, only in quiet little Colorado. Tonight, he’ll probably have nightmares about the new 16-lane highway running along the base of the Rockies.

He gets lost a few times – the streets are bigger than he remembers and what the hell’s up with Clinton Drive and the Cheney Parkway? Don’t these nice suburbanites know cheaters and evil horsemen of the apocalypse when they see them?

He must’ve passed the house at least twice because it’s just 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 wasn't a hero. He remembers that midnight confession so clearly now, with John brooding and petulant in the dark of their quarters, lying 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 be. 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 gripe 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 and with a black mailbox with a little red flag and a white 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 you left in a galaxy far far away? Well, guess what? I'm baaaaaaack!' He shakes his head. It'll be awkward, finding Rodney on 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 griped 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 in 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 Genii 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, though there’s a certain sadness about her. He recognizes it from all the children living under the threat of the Wraith. It's familiar, humanizing, despite the fact that it’s something he learned from people in another galaxy. But 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 dart back and forth momentarily as she thinks. He can tell she doesn't like him. His complete and utter failure to do anything child-related is an ongoing joke on base. Melody Simpson allows Kavanagh to baby-sit before she'll let him.

Of course, this little booger-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 . . . what do we say about talking to strangers?" There's a tired and exasperated sigh and the door pulls upon.

Rodney thinks that he's ready for this moment. But he's not. Looking once again into those bright green eyes he 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. In fact, the tense set of his shoulders and the way color seems to drain from John;s features makes Rodney doubt.

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 in that deep chocolate colored hair, 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.

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 alike. But, every once and a while, he'll dream of a just a hug - the feel of John alive and solid in his arms.

What he's definitely not expecting the look of utter terror that descends upon John's face, marring the beautiful features like a wound, festering from within and scrunching that perfect smile into something even beyond a grimace. He's not expecting John to back away, fumbling to try and close the door behind him, practically tripping over the clinging brat at his feet. John was never one to run in fear. He was Captain Kirk: damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. What could have happened to change that?

Rodney's not expecting this, but he reacts anyway. That's something else he learned in Pegasus - how to react without thinking. Some people would call that art. He calls it an overexaggeration of his already considerable survival instinct. It's only philosophers and idiots (if they're not synonymous) that are deluded enough to believe that there's anything other than simple survival - Rodney has learned that lesson and learned it hard.

"John!" he calls desperately. He doesn't know what else to say . . . doesn't know what's real. It's as impossible as the Chinese occupation of Taiwan and the new dashboard display systems on these stupid fuel-efficient cars, and this new life so much like a video game. This isn't John. This isn't the man standing right up in his face, screaming at him with such distracting passion. This isn't the man with the impish grin, teasing and cajoling, if only to distract from certain doom and make it almost perversely pleasant. This isn't the man whose rough hands traced every line of Rodney's body, whose eyes looked upon him lust-darkened and questioning as he brought every inch of skin together as though they could somehow become one. But they are the same hands and the same eyes, distorted only by the subtle wrinkles at the shoals of time. It's the fear that's new.

Or has he forgotten it? Lost it to this vision of the legendary hero - the man that he kept loving eight years after they entombed him in the shroud of fate's will? It was easier to keep loving him than to mourn him. It was easier to keep working as though they'd be together again one day than it was to break down and let the cracks widen into fissures and then ravines and deep canyons until he finally broke apart. They needed him too much. And he needed his image of John, like a touchstone, always there to provide strength and inspiration, no matter what the situation.

John backs up, ignoring the little girl now crying desperately at his feet. Rodney wishes someone would just turn her off. Crying is just blatantly unproductive. He hasn't allowed himself to indulge in it since they sent John broken and bleeding through that shimmering pool, across the Styx and into the fields of possibility.

"No . . . no, not now, please," John whimpers, blinking his eyes and looking blatantly disappointed when he opens them again to find Rodney still there. So he might deserve some reproach, but Rodney would think that saying 'I love you', even if it was once upon a time, would mean that you would at least want to know that the other person was still alive.

"I'm sorry." That's all Rodney can offer. He knows that it was cruel to send John back. He knows that it was cruel to remove him from the fight - send him back only to wonder when the Wraith would descend upon a defenseless planet. He knows that it was cruel to let John go without ever letting him know that he loved him back.

"You're not real." John stumbles back against the stairs. "I am not doing this again. I can't afford this now, goddamnit!" He's not talking to Rodney. The hate burns inwards. "You're not real." John is hyperventilating now, taking in great gasping breaths. Rodney steps forward in concern, but it only worsens things, John curling his lanky form into a fetal ball.

"Don't be ridiculous," Rodney scoffs. They don't have time for this. He's waited so long for this moment. He needs to be in John's arms *now.* *He* needs to know that this is real. "John, I'm right here. Me, Rodney McKay, genius, hunky love god, savior of planets and helpless children . . . well, maybe not the children part. But it's me! I know it's been a while, but . . ."

John is shaking now, eyeing Rodney warily, tears in his eyes. "You're not real. You're one of them . . . you're just trying to trick me into telling you about Atlantis. You're Wraith. You can afford to wait until now. Well, you can forget it. You may have forever. But I can die, and I will before I tell you anything."

Rodney sighs exasperatedly. *This is not happening.* Why can't they just forget about all this and make love, in a real house, on their home planet, in a time of peace, not war? Wasn't this something they talked about sometime in that amorphous space of the post-coital haze? Wasn't it the dream, the delusion that fueled them when there was seemingly no hope?

"No, John. I don't give a flying fuck what's on Atlantis. I know almost everything there is to know about almost everything, remember? I just want . . ." What does he want? He doesn't know. A nice little suburban house in Denver with an idiotic green door and a toothless munchkin following him around? One last fuck? Just a chance to say 'I love you' seven years too late? Or maybe just a chance to make this work - to see if it can work without wars and death and nights of clinging desperately together because the only other option was to break down, to crack under the weight of worlds.

"No . . ." John shakes his head, crying now. "No, no, no . . ." he's rocking himself back and forth now, incoherent. Rodney makes his way towards him. John is too deep in whatever episode he seems to be having to notice the approach. But then Rodney hears the door slam behind him and whirls around. In retrospect, this is an incredibly stupid thing to do when the man he's turning his back to has extensive combat experience, and seems to be markedly unstable . . . he might be a prime candidate for a presidential assassination - or at least an attempted one.

"Fuck!" Rodney yells. "Just what I need, renegade brats. Stupid children have absolutely no sense . . ." He hears John pound up the polished wood of the stairs, but doesn't follow. He might be 'only if the sky's falling' on the babysitting list, but he's grown to know enough of children to know that you just didn't let ordinary ones go running out into the street without a leash. Normal children, the ones whose parents care about them, don't seem to have the sense to sit quietly doing their work instead of running about trying to get themselves killed. He curses more as he stubs his toe on the stupid green door, spotting the flutter of a tattered pink skirt disappearing around one of the neighbor's hedges. Definitely John's daughter - the little monster's fast.

He can't deal with this right now. He has enough trouble with John a psychotic mess, him walking a minefield of emotional confusion, and the fact that he's not exactly supposed to be here. Daniel and Sam wanted him to wait. They wanted him to sit unproductively on his ass going over reports he'd written years ago, sitting through meetings in chairs that actually managed to be less comfortable than the modernist monstrosities on Atlantis (military issue, so it figured) and enlightening Sam's team of trained monkeys in excruciating detail. But how could he? Especially when all they would tell him about the man he'd last seen carved up like a piece of Swiss cheese with shrapnel, eyes closed in a coma, was that he was alive and well. What the hell did they expect?

Before he thought that they were refusing to give him clearance to leave the mountain because they didn't know about him and John, and thought it would be more productive to pick his brain than waste his time seeing a colleague he'd gone a full eight years without. Carson and Elizabeth had known about him and John from the beginning, and Ford and Teyla hadn't even needed to be told. Parker knew too, and by proxy, Zelenka, but even with Sam and Daniel in charge of the SGC he wasn't free to demand the right to see his once-lover. Ten years, and these Neanderthals back on Earth still hadn't thought to repeal the stupid 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. Fuckbrains. Even the Catholic Church had done better. But now he's thinking that maybe Daniel is much more astute than the ditzy academic exterior would suggest - that maybe the reason why he's been confined to the mountain is because they know that the first thing he'll try to do is to track John down. Maybe he should’ve listened to Elizabeth when she tried to warn him.

But they should have suspected that even with the constant stream of meetings and report-giving, he'd be able to figure out the new base operating system within a week and the government classified document encryption within a day. But he couldn't afford to get caught now . . . and he was sure the little brat was screaming to the nearest neighbor. He panted behind her. He'd gotten used to fieldwork, but he wasn't as young as he used to be, and his right knee always acted up when it was about to rain. He still had enough breath left to curse a few gods as the kid hoped a fence into the neighbor’s back yard. He was tempted to give up entirely, but this was John's daughter and he couldn't just *lose* her. Annie was always teasing him about having the parental instinct of a rosebush, but he felt at least mildly responsible.

He curses as he manages to get a couple of splinters pulling himself over the top of a poorly constructed wooden gate and some bruises from toppling over onto the other side. Lucky for him, the speedy little demon’s wearing a completely conspicuous shade of pink as she sits crouched in the topmost branches of a nearby tree. Rodney sighs and makes for the lowest branch, hanging and hooking his legs around it before hefting himself up like a beached whale. *How in the hell did the tiny terror make it to the top*? Oh yeah, it’s John's daughter. Rodney stands on the branch and tests the one above him. Even if he'd never done anything like this before he’d know enough to know that the branch above can't support his weight. He isn't a physicist to get the ladies, after all.

The kid is three branches above him, huddled up against the tree, cradled in its protective embrace. He can see her Minnie Mouse underwear from here. He's not a pervert, but he does note it, surprised that kids still care for stuff like that these days. But John always did go for the 'classics.' Looking up at her he feels this wave of tenderness, remembering how John and Ford found these huge redwood-like trees on the mainland, with seeds the size of his head and thorns like rungs spread throughout. He remembers looking up at John just like this as he smiled and beckoned. For years he's wished he'd climbed, seen the great vista of an alien world he'll likely never see again from that near godly height. He wishes he'd climbed now, just because it would be another one of John's heart-stopping smiles that he could file away in the miserly coffers of his memory.

So, how does one talk to children? And god, he hopes the neighbors aren't home, because he doesn't want to go to prison and make Sam or Daniel bail him out for attempted child abduction. He'd never live that down. "Um . . ." How did Teyla do this? And Ford. The kids fucking loved Ford. They obviously had no taste. "Hey . . . look, I'm not going to bite. I'm worried about you. You can't just go wandering off like that, you know. John's not . . . well, he obviously has enough to worry about right now. You don't want him to worry, do you? You could fall down from there and um . . . break your neck or something. Or your leg or arm and you could be paralyzed and that's bad. I can tell you from experience, that even for a short time being completely immobile around your father really sucks. And he'd worry and he'd blame me and you . . . just get down here right now, Young Lady."

But the midget obviously isn't listening. Children don't listen to reason - that much he knows. He sighs and rolls his eyes. He's really bad at this. "Hey, why don't you just come down one more branch? I can't reach, see?" He holds his hands above his head. "But it'll be safer. Your daddy wouldn't want you to fall, would he?"

She shakes her head, wild frizzy brown hair falling in her face.

"Good, now come down. Come on. Ah . . . that's a good little girl, eh? You can do it."

She moves gracefully, even as her scuffed little knees are shaking.

Now what? "Now . . . um . . . we . . . uh . . . we never got properly introduced. I'm Doctor Rodney McKay. I used to be friends with your dad. What's your name?"

The girl buries her face in her lap, shaking her head, sobs crescendoing into gasps and hiccups.

"Hey . . . hey . . . no need to cry. Turn off the waterworks; it'll do you some good. Just tell me your name. What harm can that do, eh? I know your dad is John David Sheppard and that he used to be a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. And that his favorite food is a turkey sandwiches on rye and that he likes to fly planes and go fast and he really really likes Ferris wheels, lord knows why. He's allergic to chocolate and his favorite band is the Grateful Dead and his favorite movie is Blade Runner, which you are far far too young to see, by the way." Not that Rodney saw the point in that. When he was young his parents just treated him like a miniature adult. Of course, he was never the picture of normalcy.

The girl is peering down at him now, with those familiar green eyes open wide, calculating. She's clearly intrigued, so he pushes onward. "He likes slasher flicks and he likes to tell you stories to try and scare you, but he does it so silly that you just laugh. And he has a big scar on his right arm," from a close encounter with the Energizer bunny of the Wraith, "and one on his hip." John refused to mention the cause of that one. "And he got into a fight in grade school because one of his friends was picking on the class geek and he didn't like it. And he played quarterback for his high school team, despite the fact that football is the most idiotic sport known to man. Stupid Americans wouldn't know a real sport if it crawled up their butt and died. Barbarians. Not that the uniforms aren't . . . well, you wouldn't get that."

The girl smiles at that slightly, choking in her next sob. "Mommy used to say that."

"Really? Where's she now?" Rodney can't hide his interest. *Used too*? So that means that if John doesn't completely hate him, or isn't utterly terrified of him, or won't try to slam a door in his face, then they might actually have a chance. Rodney's gone after chances like that before. Sam Carter can attest to that.

Unfortunately, he's lost any ground he might have gained from the football joke, because that sets off another round of tears. "She's up in heaven watching over me along with Jerry and Ringo and Shadow and John Elway and Elizabeth and Teyla and Rodney."

Rodney feels his jaw drop. It's one thing to know that you haven't seen someone in seven years, that they might think you're dead, and completely another to hear a kid refer to you as a ghost.

"I'm Rodney," he says it as much for himself as for her.

"No, you're not," she says defiantly, with a hint of the childish sarcasm he was so fond of in John.

"And how would you know that? I just *said* my name was Doctor Rodney McKay. How would I have known that if I were trying to trick you?"

"You're not."

"I am."

"You're not."

"I am."

“You’re not.”

He throws up his hands in exasperation. *So goddamn illogical.* "Do you have any *reason* why not?"

She leans fully over the branch, lopsided pigtails and messy bangs falling in her face. He could make a grab for her, but he won't dare risk it. "You don't look like an angel."

He doesn't know whether or not to be insulted by that. "That's because I'm not. I didn't die. Your dad just thinks I did."

She bites her lower lip, chewing on it annoyingly. "Oh. If you weren't dead how come you didn't come back before when he asked for you?"

"I didn't come because I was . . . wait, what?"

"He asked for you. A . . . after Mommy went to heaven, he asked for you. I wasn't supposed to hear because he was talking to Father Perry and you're not supposed to listen to stuff like that because it's . . . confident, but I wasn't *trying* to listen. And he said that he wanted you back, and it was stupid but he just wished that you weren't dead. He wished that you would show up and everything would be like it was before. And you have to be an angel because you protected him and you gave him your strength the way that God does when he’s sad."

Rodney wants to cry. He wants to cry in amazement that John said those things. He wants to relish in the warmth of being loved again. He wants to cry because he didn't come, because John couldn't say those things to his face.

"I wanted to come for him," Rodney manages, hiding the emotions, and knowing that he's doing a horrible job of it. "I . . . it’s complicated." He doesn't know why he's even bothering to try to justify himself to her. "I tried, okay? It took me longer than I expected." He hadn't expected that his efforts to send John back to Earth 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 them . . . he hadn't expected the Goa'uld war to take so long. He hadn't expected to come 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.

"Oh." She seems to curl back in to herself, uncertain now that she's no longer convinced of his divinity.

"But, hey, I'm back here now. And I need you to come down from there so we can go get your daddy and make sure that he's okay, hm?" God, he hopes John hasn't hurt himself. He hopes that he's come to his senses after the initial shock. "I'm going to take care of him." If only it were that simple. "Don't worry."

Rodney reaches up his hand and feels a tiny hand grasp it, still sticky from tears and grimy from the climb. Rodney can't believe she touched her face with hands that dirty. "Daddy needs somebody to protect him. I promised Mommy I would take care of him. But I'm too little sometimes. Daddy needs big people sometimes. People like Dr. Jane or Mr. and Mrs. Paterson. And he needs angels, because he gets sad sometimes and he looks through things and he has bad dreams and he doesn't know who he is until God reminds him."

Rodney helps her down to his branch and she drops easily down to the ground from there, while he swings and flails and huffs, making her giggle, tears dried now, but not quite forgotten.

He starts walking back towards the house and she seems to automatically take his hand. He looks down at it skeptically, but tries not to seem too awkward or squeeze it too hard or get a sweaty palm. It reminds him of his first real date with Leila Robinson. The brat swings his hand back and forth, not noticing his discomfort.

"So . . . er . . . you . . . ah . . . you never told me your name." He tries to smile non-threateningly.

She flashes him a bright smile, as entrancing as John's but not almost impossibly wide and lopsided with a hint of sarcasm and smugness. Her smile is tiny and honest, exposing her missing teeth and making her freckles dance. "I'm Omega Sheppard, but you can call me Meg. Daddy likes to call me Megathon, but I don't think you should. Mommy always said it was dorky."

"Yeah, you're daddy's a big dork," he says absently, encouraging her mindless chatter as he wonders about John - why he's so afraid, why he doesn't want to see someone he once claimed to love, if this is all a waste of his time, waiting seven years only to have his heart torn apart. But most of all, he wonders if John will ever be okay. Because the one thing he doesn't have to wonder about is the fact that he's still in love with John Sheppard; broken, and surreal, and coming with a brat in tow, that will never change.

Meg pouts. "You're supposed to be protecting him."

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with being a dork. I like him that way." He smiles at John's love of sci-fi movies, and his renegade tickle attacks that he'd turn into wrestling matches the second any witnesses might come by, and his closet math abilities, the fact that he could slaughter Kavanagh at chess and Elizabeth at poker.

Meg smiles again. "So do I. But Dr. Roddy, do you think that Daddy is okay? You're a doctor so you can fix him, right?"

He's not sure he can fix John. And not just because he's not that kind of doctor. But looking at the hope on that grimy little face, the soft little fingers gripping his tight as they walk up the disgustingly suburban path to the ugly green door, there's no way he can deny her. "I can fix him."

"Promise?"

He fights not to grimace at the lie. "I promise." And he never used to understand why people would lie to children and risk scarring them for life.

"Cross your heart and hopes to die?" She tugs on his hand, eyes imploring.

He sighs and rolls his eyes. "Cross my heart and *hope* to die." He even makes the hurried signs for her. They walk into the house. He has to search for John, he knows, but he can't just leave the kid to roam around like an urchin or something. Not all kids are as responsible as he was at this age . . . whatever age this is. Maybe he should call Daniel. Maybe he should call a hospital. Do hospitals do nervous breakdowns? He doesn't know. And so much has changed since he's been gone - even more since he's been actively participating in the civilian life.

*TV.* Kids like TV - that mustn't have changed. That's what all those Saturday morning cartoons and such were for. Not that it was Saturday morning, but it'd have to do. John probably taught the brat to watch Monday night football or something. He'd at least have cable for ESPN or the Sci-Fi network. "So, do you wanna watch . . . er . . . Sesame Street?"

She turns to him, forcing him to kneel on his bad knee to make eye contact. *Ow ow ow ow ow.* "What's that?"

"What kind of depraved education . . . never mind. How about TV?"

"No, thank you." So startlingly polite, and un-John-like. "I want my daddy, please."

*But irrational. * And just when he thought he was getting somewhere. "Look, your daddy's . . . sick. I have to go check on him now so we can make him better."

"How?"

"I don't know. I have to *see* him first." He doesn't mean to snap, honestly.

"Why?"

"Jesus, what is this? Twenty questions? Go play with a Barbie or something. Watch TV. I'll be back." He heads for the stairs.

Tears are shining in her eyes and he tries not to notice. He needs to find John. He's left him too long already. "Mrs. Walker says that your aren't 'posed to say the lord's name in vain. You're gonna go to hell."

"Yeah, well, aren't we all?" he mumbles.

"I'm not. Daddy's not and mommy's already up in heaven." She pouts, crossing her arms across her chess.

"Sure." He's not in the mood for a theological debate, even if having one with a six-year-old will probably be more intelligent than with the average fundamentalist. He needs to find John. "Look, I don't have time for this. Go play dress-up or . . . whatever it is you do, okay? I need to go fix your daddy." Not that he has any idea how . . .

She shuffles her feet, words slurring together. "Sometimes, when daddy would get sick, Mommy would call Dr. Jane, and she would come to fix him." She sniffles.

Rodney turns slowly. "And, do you know how I can call Dr. Jane?"

She wrinkles her nose as she thinks, then nods and goes to grab his hand, pulling him over to a telephone, next to which there is a laminated list of numbers written in bubbly writing with shiny pink pen. He has trouble imagining Mr. Tough-guy John Sheppard with someone who'd write in pink pen, probably with a fluffy pink tassel on the end, but he supposes that people change, or maybe, as well as he thought he knew John, he's just crappy at predictions. He predicted they'd be all right, didn't he? He was just pessimistic enough to protect his deep-seated sense that things *would* work themselves out, because that's what he had to believe in order to go on, if nothing else.

Predictably, there's no 'Doctor Jane' on the list. But the kid points a grubby finger, half coated in magenta nail polish, at one 'Dr. Lewis.'

"Thanks," he mumbles, picking up the phone and dialing the number as he makes his way up the stairs. "I'll be right back. Please . . . please be good, okay?"

The brat nods and goes over to the big screen TV in the living room, curling up with a dog-patterned blanket on the plush white carpet before it.

The phone rings eight times before someone picks up, and Rodney is already at the top of the stairs by then. "Hello, Dr. Jane Lewis speaking." The voice on the other end of the line is stingingly professional, and slightly distracted.

"Hi . . . um . . . I'm calling on behalf of John Sheppard. I think he's a patient of yours."

"Yes, he is. What can I do for you?" She sounds slightly annoyed, but now he seems to have more of her attention.

"He . . . he kind of had a . . . a, you know, a breakdown. I . . . I haven't seen him in a long time. I . . . he . . . ah . . . freaked out and ran up the stairs . . . I had to chase down the . . . his . . . Meg, and then . . . look, you need to do something about this, okay?" He knows he sounds panicked, justifiably so, of course.

She says something to someone, muffled by a hand over the mouthpiece, and then she's back. "You're at his house?"

"Yes." He doesn't add the 'duh' lurking on his tongue. He is trying to solicit her help, after all. And one thing serving under Annie Parker these past four years has taught him is that you don't insult people whose help you want, unless you want to receive a steel-toed military-issue boot to the shin.

"I'm on my way over there as we speak." He hears a rustling in the background, the honk of cars. "You need to tell me exactly what happened, Mr. . . . I don't actually think I got your name?"

"Rodney McKay." He doesn't bother to add that 'Dr.' "I showed up and . . . he looked horrified. He had reason to be surprised, granted, but he slammed the door in my . . ."

"*Rodney* McKay?"

"Yes, that would be what I said, wouldn't it?" People could be so stupid sometimes. Who he was was so obviously beside the point. "Look, Dr. Jane . . ." He winces, picking up words from the brat, just what he needs. "I don't know where John is right now, but he was shaking and telling me that I wasn't real and spacing out, and frightened and I need you to tell me what the fuck is going on before somebody gets hurt."

"They told me you were dead. He remembers seeing you . . ."

"I was wounded, yes, but he was worse. We . . ." He doesn't know how much clearance she has. "We . . . ah . . . we sent him back for treatment. The rest of us were . . . Missing in Action." That's what it had said on his file, though his will prevented any premature movements of his assets - boy, was he glad for that.

"Is that what they're calling it nowadays?" She mutters under her breath.

He's angry. It's not like he can help it. It's not as though he had any other choice. It was either send John back to Earth and the possibility of emergency surgery or watch him waste away in a coma back on Atlantis. This woman . . . this *bitch* doesn't have the right to judge him. She doesn't know what it's like. Her puny little brain probably can't even comprehend the vast distance between him and John, the laws of physics he had to bend to get him here. He's about to respond when he hears a muffled sob coming from around the corner and a mumbled voice, deep and melodic despite its obvious melancholy.

"John?"

The woman is saying something . . . babbling a harsh reprimand that reminds him far too much of Elizabeth in mommy-mode. Naturally, he tunes it out.

One of the doors at the end of the hall is opened a crack. And as Rodney walks towards it, he finally notices the pictures. They permeate the space, filling the mundane suburban white with some life. Though by their content, it is partially the life of ghosts.

Distracting himself from the knot in his stomach, approaching the door that holds answers and fears and a possible future where all hopes might be dashed, 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.

But pictures are just moments in time, snapshots, a dream of a 'now' that you can hold on to, whether happy or sad, because Rodney can spot some of the sadness in John's eyes even in these smiling photos. They are hopes that something of what is good in life can sustain you, that things can stand still long enough for you to fully enjoy them, even when you know you can never be fulfilled. There are always swords hanging over your head, whether they be work or school or other men and women or the fate of the known universe or even just your own mortality. Things always change, and those happy moments slip away, leaving you with a glossy piece of paper, all color and smiles, and only the tattered fluidity of your memory to support it.

"Just make sure he hasn't hurt himself . . . don't try to interact with him . . ." Dr. Jane orders him, but Rodney ignores her, switching the phone off absentmindly. John is behind this too-white door with the polished gold handle and he's hurting. That's the only thought in Rodney's mind, so overwhelming that it melds seamlessly with instinct, as he twists the knob.

There is a bed with a white quilt and mahogany bedposts. Rodney remembers how John used to complain about the lack of bedposts on Atlantis, until Rodney built him some for his birthday. It was kind of one of those presents you get for someone else when you're really the one that benefits. He can just see the dark mop of John's hair on the other side of the disgustingly homey quilt, as messy as ever and vibrating with the sobs that send a reciprocal shudder down Rodney's spine.

"John?" He rounds the corner of the bed to see John huddled up against the wall, legs tucked into his chest and shaking.

"You're not real. This is just another hallucination. I'm just going crazy. You can leave me alone now, Rodney, because they're going to take her away whether you're here or not." He tucks his face up against his knees. "And I'm over this. I don't need . . . I don't want . . . please, just leave me alone this once?"

Rodney's shaking now too, and he feels tears streaming down his face. Seeing John like this . . . it almost hurts more to see all the regal strength he fell so in love with fade, leaving this fragile shell.

"I am real, John." He moves closer. "We just came back from Atlantis. I blew the control crystal sending you through, but we found a stockpile of ZPMs and I found a way to use one to power a hive ship. We won the war . . . we beat the Wraith. Do you really think I'd leave you?" It was one of those sappy romantic things they mumbled to each other after mind-blowing sex, an indulgence in a world where neither had the power to keep a promise like that. But the thing about Rodney is that even when people label him a pessimist, Mr. Certain-Doom, he wants to believe in things. And deep down, beneath all of the cynicism he uses as a shield for when things don't work out, he does.

"Easy for you to say; you're a figment of my imagination," John sniffles, petulantly.

Rodney is getting impatient, so he just does this half- rush half- stumble forwards, figuring that if he can just touch John . . . get him to feel him as alive and breathing and solid, they won't be stuck here talking in circles. Of course, he receives an elbow to the eyeball for his initiative.

"Ow . . . ow, ow! *John!* In the eye? Why in the eye? I still need these, you know - for seeing." He flops back onto his bottom, covering the offended eye as the swelling starts.

But when his vision clears he finds John Sheppard staring at him, eyes wide and infused with wonder and questions . . . so many questions. "Rodney?" It's barely a whisper as John reaches out tentatively for Rodney's arm.

"Yes? You know, John, most hallucinations I know don't tend to mind if you smack them in incredibly sensitive –and, might I add, vital- organs."

"Rodney," John repeats, as though if he says it with enough conviction, it will become true. And then his hand brushes Rodney's forearm, and it seems as though the same second, Rodney is being tackled onto his back, covered in an armful of Sheppard. "God, Rodney, I missed you. You don't know how much I needed you." It's almost a sob, but John has stopped crying, seemingly to focus on the task of crawling into Rodney's skin. It's so desperate, especially slightly tinged with lunacy, that Rodney has trouble believing that it's real.

*His* John Sheppard is a hero. His John Sheppard would never cry - not even after he lost man after man to the fight against the Wraith and he went out to the balcony and sat through a storm until Rodney had to drag him inside and into a warm bath. That’s the thing: even though he knew that John loved him, he never thought of John as *needing* him, needing anybody. John was a cowboy, and he'd resigned himself to that long ago - he had always needed his freedom.

But John had changed, obviously. Even as Rodney holds him, smoothes his hair back from his face, traces the familiar line of his jaw to the strong point of his chin and down over the new scars that mar him, reminding Rodney of the time that has passed, the sorrow that stands like a wall between then and now.

“Shhhh . . .” he says. “Shhh . . .“ because he really needs John to stop this. He really needs John to be strong for him, even when he knows that it’s an unfair request.

They stay like that until Rodney’s knees start to cramp and he wonders how long he’ll have to put up with this. It’s not that he wouldn’t do anything for John. He already has. It’s that he feels so out of his league, so out of control that he doesn’t even know if he’s helping or hurting and the very thought of ever hurting John is so painful that he can barely bring himself to think it.

And then the door opens and she steps in to rescue him. She’s tall and slim with bright grey eyes and wavy brown hair. She’s wearing jeans and a silk blouse, done in the patchwork that seems to be inexplicably in-style these days. She steps around the bed and kneels before them, not batting an eye at the embrace.

“Hello, John. It’s me, Jane. Can you hear me?”

Rodney wants to snap, ‘of course he can hear you! It’s not like he’s deaf,’ but instead he waits with bated breath for John’s response. He’s never been this lost before.

“Jane?” John looks up but tightens his grip around Rodney’s waist so much that he can barely breathe.

“I’m here, John.”


John chuckles almost childishly, gripping Rodney’s shirt. “Well, Jane, this is McKay. Well, Rodney. You can see him too, right?”

Jane doesn’t even blink, in good shrink form. “Yes, I can see him, John.”

“Good,” John says, nodding against Rodney’s chest and gripping tighter.

This time Rodney really can’t breath, so he coughs. “Well, now that we’ve established that we can all see me, how about you let me breathe?”

John pulls back, but stays hovering close. “Sorry, Rodney. It’s just . . . you know. I thought you died.” John sounds almost normal now.

“Well, I obviously didn’t.”

John grins stupidly. “I’m glad. God, Rodney, I have so much . . . God.” John’s smile is amazing, even better than he remembers it.

Rodney has almost forgotten about Dr. Jane until she speaks. “John,” apparently John’s forgotten too because he gives her a blank confused stare. “I want to speak alone with Rodney for just a moment. Will you be okay?” She sounds like she’s talking to a five-year-old. Rodney hates her already.

“I’m great.” John almost looks stoned.

“Good.” Dr. Jane pats one of John’s legs and walks into the hall, Rodney reluctantly following, like a kid just ordered to the principal’s office.

“What’s wrong with him?” The first words out of Rodney’s mouth.

“Doctor Patient Confidentiality.” She almost spits it back in his face.

“O-kay, then at least tell me how to help him.”

“You’ can probably do that best by checking yourself into a hotel. If you can’t afford it, there’s one very close to my house that gives good rates.”

He has plenty of money, so it doesn’t matter. But . . . does he really want to leave John after he’s just found him again? Can he? But there’s this tiny part of him that’s terrified, that wants to deny that things are the way they are and that he can keep believing the dream if he doesn’t see all the grief and ugliness and things that he never imagined. It’s that part that answers. “I . . . I can do that. I’ll um . . . l’ll be at the Marriott.”

Jane cocks her head to the side briefly. “Marriott went bankrupt two years ago.”

“Oh . . . Hilton, then?”

Jane nods. “I’ll be getting back to my patient then.”

“Yeah, you do that. I’ll just . . . um . . . be going then.” And then, he doesn’t quite know why, but he says, “Thanks.” Maybe because he’s glad that he doesn’t have to deal with it.

But instead of the usual polite ‘you’re welcome’ he was expecting, he receives an icy glare. “Look, I accept that you came back. John has to deal with it, so we’ll deal. But don’t think that after what you did, you can just waltz back into his life and expect everything to be like it used to.”

Rodney splutters, for once without a sarcastic rejoinder, wondering what she’s heard and seen and what cover story they fed her, and what John thinks he did and if John hates him.

He checks himself into the Hilton where the Marriott used to be, watching really bad new episodes of the Twilight Zone remake and thinking about nothing.

He wakes to a disturbing clicking sound. And then there’s only an explosion of sound and light and so much blood. And where John was standing, beautiful and whole and intense like he’s made to be, there’s a body covered in blood and Rodney’s forgotten the bullet in his arm and the fact that he’s still standing in the middle of a minefield and the fact that Teyla and Ford are too far away to help, and he runs to the body and feels for breath and pulse and hopes, even as he knows every fault of the fragile human form, that things will turn out all right.

But this time it’s not a mine clicking, just the telephone, frighteningly mundane.

He reaches a groggy hand over and gropes for the receiver in the dark.

“Hello?” He rubs the sleep from his eyes, not used to deep slumber.

“Rodney?” The voice is small and trembling. He doesn’t recognize it.

“Yeah?” He’s impatient, looking over to the wall projection clock to find that it’s two in the morning. “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to make sure you’re still here.”

“John?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry I’m such a basket case, Rodney. I’m really okay, though. You have to understand. I thought you *died.*”

“How come?” He was the one who had to go seven years wondering if John had survived when all the odds were against him.

“Last I saw you, we were in the middle of a war zone. You were bleeding. I heard a sound and then the next thing I know I’m on Earth. There’s a voice in my head and it wants to know about Atlantis.”

“Oh my God . . .” The war with the Tok’ra, the implantation gone wrong, the only recourse Carson was really talking about . . . He hadn’t connected it before, but maybe he hadn’t wanted to.

“I thought it was the Wraith. I thought it was some mind trick.” Of course, they’d just sent John through without a note, without an explanation. He’d been lying unconscious on life support and then he was the only one sent back. Of course the SGC would do anything in their power to find out about the Atlantis mission when all they had was a comatose patient, beyond the help of Earth medicine.

John continues, “But it didn’t stop. Not even when I cut it out with a goddamn scalpel. It was like a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. They put me in a padded cell for three months before I calmed down. Then I just left. I couldn’t deal with the SGC anymore. I’m sorry, Rodney, I’m so fucked up.”

“No, John. You survived. Most people wouldn’t. I’m the one that should be sorry. I should’ve thought . . . I was just so worried . . . there wasn’t time.” Poor excuses for stupidity and carelessness and so much suffering.

“It’s okay, Rodney. I’m fine.”

Rodney snorts before he catches himself, wondering if he’s being too cruel.

“Fine, so I’m not fine, but I will be. You’re back.”

Rodney doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know if things will work out anymore. He’s just as lost as in the dark of this strange hotel room on this strange planet where so much has changed.

John, who was never afraid of anything, seems afraid of the silence because he cuts it. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Sorry. Oops. Look, you don’t have to feel obligated to, you know, keep seeing me or anything. I’m just . . . I’m just glad to know you’re alive.”

“I . . . I feel the same way.” It’s hard in the darkness like this, voices in a void. They used to be able to say how they felt without words. “Look. It’s kinda weird having this conversation over the phone. How about I come over? If you want me to, I mean.” He hasn’t been this awkward since before Atlantis, and never with John.

“Of course I want you to, Rodney.” John sounds like he’s trying not to sound too eager.

Rodney drives over there like he’s trying not to drive too eager.

They don’t end up talking much. John opens the door, looking young and innocent in the shadows of the house. They walk quietly past the brat’s room where John stops a moment to gaze on her sleeping form. Rodney’s almost disgusted by the tenderness in his eyes, searching his own memory for a time where John looked at him so openly.

John turns and smiles in the darkness. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

Rodney nods, not sure if John can even see it.

Then John takes his hand and walks him back to the bedroom where he went hysterical just that afternoon. It feels strange, almost naughty, like the first time Christy Anderson took him drunkenly by the hand and dragged him back to her dorm room.

John turns the light on with a switch instead of his thoughts and pulls Rodney down beside him on the bed. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too.” That’s probably the most sincere statement he’s ever made.

“I wish . . .” It’s such a strange statement coming from John, who used to pride himself on shoving aside what could’ve happened and dealing with what actually did.

“Me too. But . . . you . . . er . . . made a life for yourself.” He can’t keep the slight tinge of resentment from his voice, unfortunately. Why did John get the luxury of trying to move on when he didn’t? Weren’t they supposed to be forever?

“Yeah, look how well that turned out,” John huffs.

Rodney inches closer, so unsure, but relieved when John rests his head on his shoulder. They fit together as perfectly as they always did.

“You have a family.”

“I *had* a family, before Amy died.”

“I’m sorry.” It sounds as empty as it feels. “But still, you’re happy. I didn’t even know you wanted children.” He’s ashamed. He should’ve known. They should’ve talked about it, like they should’ve talked about so many things.

“I . . . well, I didn’t.”

“Come on, I see how you are with the kid. You would do anything for her.”

John shrugs, not as casually as he seems to want to, though. “She’s my daughter. I guess I always thought it would be neat to have a kid, but I learned . . . there’s no use in wanting what you can’t have.”

“Why not? You should have talked to me about it. We could have worked something out. We could have adopted . . . I don’t know.”

John snorts. “Yeah right, Rodney. You hate kids.”

“I do not.”

“You tried to beat up a little girl on that planet . . .”

“Oh come off it, John. Ford was exaggerating . . . and it was a little boy.“

“So much better.” The snark and the eyeroll are so familiar, he hoards them even as they slip through his fingers like time itself. “And with the kind of work we did., even if I did want one, nothing was going to come of it. I was committed to my work and so were you. It was too important . . . too important to . . .”

“To do what makes you happy?”

“Look, let’s not talk about it, okay? What happened happened. We both know we did exactly what needed to be done.”

“And a good thing too. I mean, you’re happier here than . . .” He thinks back to Atlantis, all those memories that he hasn’t thought about in so many years: John yelling at him for no good reason; trying to get John to move in with him without actually asking, while John knowingly skirted the issue until it was too late; waking up late at night to an empty bed, wondering where John had disappeared off to; how John would change the subject whenever Rodney brought up the past, as though he didn’t trust Rodney to know all of him; all the questions . . . all the discussions they never dared have because what they had was the only light in the darkness of war and command and long days when they were so bone tired that all they needed was warm arms to sleep in through a too-short night, and they couldn’t risk spoiling it.

“I’m happier now that you’re here,” John says, curling closer, eyes drifting slowly shut, catlike.

Rodney stays up, stroking John’s hair like he used to and pretending that it’s not thinning just a little. He’s usually not the type to dwell on might’ve been’s or could’ve been’s or dreams about what might be, but he can’t help himself. Maybe John’s not the only one that’s changed.

He wakes to Carson shaking him, rattling him, screaming at him that he has snap out of it. Carson says he has to make a decision. He has to either send John through the Gate and possibly never see him again, or he has to face the fact that there’s nothing more they can do for him. Rodney can’t make that kind of decision. He can’t, but he did.

Only this time it’s not Carson shaking him but a matted-haired, toothless little brat jumping up and down on his bed. “Rodney. Roddy. Daddy says it’s breakfast time, Sleepyhead.”

Rodney groans and covers his head with the pillow. He’s already awake, but he doesn’t want to get out of bed, get up and face this ridiculous child and John’s adoration of her. He doesn’t want to go downstairs and find out more of how much John has changed. Maybe when he closes his eyes he’ll wake up to find himself in John’s arms and that this was all a dream.

But now the deranged midget is pulling at his shirt with those dirty little hands. “C’mon, Roddy. Daddy says the early bird gets the worm. There’s maple syrup from Canadia.”

Rodney peaks an eye out from beneath the shielding of the pillow. “Really?” His stomach growls.

“Really.” She nods, overenthusiastically, lopsided braids flopping as she grabs his hand, pulling at him until he sits up and stretches and pads his way down the stairs to the kitchen.

John is there, wearing a ridiculous, ‘Best Daddy in the World’ apron and grinning.

“Morning, Rodney. Rise and shine.”

Rodney groans. “Since when are you this chipper in the mornings, anyhow?” He rubs his eyes. He used to always be the one dragging John out of bed, succeeding only by the lure of shower-sex.

John shrugs, flipping a pancake.

Rodney does a double-take. “Wait! You’re cooking?” John’s still the only person Rodney knows who can screw up the exquisite taste of an MRE.

John grins, though his eyes are melancholy. “Took Amy about five years and a couple of toaster ovens to teach me, but yeah.”

John flips a pancake over his shoulder and catches it on a plate behind his back, sending the brat into a fit of giggles.

“Do that again, Daddy!”

John smiles indulgently, handing her the plate. “Eat up, Megathon, you’ve got Chinese school today.”

“No, Daddy. I don’t wanna go! All the other kids talk funny and Mrs. Chen is so mean and you didn’t learn until you were in college and I don’t want to!”

Rodney wants to plug his ears. He doesn’t see how John can look so amused by what is clearly abuse to delicate eardrums.

“Sorry, Megathon. You’re going.”

“But Daaaaaaddy . . .” she whines.

“No buts, Pumpkin.”

“Uncle Roddy’s here. Shouldn’t that be a special occasion?”

“Yes, it is.”

She beamed.

“But you’re still going.”

The beam turns into a pout as John flips another pancake behind his back and hands it to Rodney.

Rodney digs in, finding that it’s actually kind of good. “Oh my God, it’s edible!” he exclaims though a mouthful. “Though that might just be the real Canadian maple syrup. It makes everything taste better. I used to put it on my broccoli.”

“Ewww!” Meg and John say together in almost exactly the same voice. It’s creepy.

Rodney’s finished seven pancakes by the time Meg’s done two and is shuffling the third around in her syrup.

“No dilly dallying, Megathon. You’re carpooling with the Jongs today, so you can’t use lateness as an excuse.”

Meg pouts, but clears her plate and heads for the stairs.

John smiles. “She’s pretty damned clever. You have to watch her.”

How could John be proud of that? Stupid little whiny . . . that wasn’t clever. Clever was constructing an extendable ladder out of spare parts to sneak out of your bedroom window at night. Clever was building an A-bomb for your sixth grade science fair. Clever was three PhDs by age twenty-five.

“Hmm,” he says, noncommittally.

“So tell me, how’s everyone?” John asks, looking at his pancakes instead of at Rodney.

“Well, Elizabeth and Teyla have gone to Albany to stay with her parents . . . Parker and Radek are getting married this summer. I’m sure you’re invited to the wedding. We defeated the Wraith . . . um . . . we lost some more people.”

John stares even harder at his plate, not asking for names and Rodney’s not going to tell him about the gunshot wound Ford got to the belly or the prison where they found Bates’ tortured body or how radiation burns looked on three members of his science team. He’s not going to talk about diseases and accidents and nightmares, because he’s sitting eating pancakes in John’s kitchen in the house with the white fence and the green door and they’re finally together again.

Luckily, he’s saved the burden of awkwardly changing the topic by Meg stomping down the stairs to demand that John rebraid her hair. Rodney eats five more pancakes and nearly chokes a few times trying not to laugh at John’s attempt to style hair. No wonder he always looks like he just rolled out of bed.

“God, you’re hopeless,” Rodney snorts, pulling the little munchkin off John’s lap to show him how it’s done. It only takes a minute and two ‘ow, not so hard’s for Rodney to have woven two perfect braids.

John stares on in disbelief. “Wow, McKay, hidden talents.”

Rodney tries not to crow, even as he knows that John’s more shocked than impressed. He shrugs. “Not much harder than wiring circuitry. Plus, I had a little sister.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.” John frowns. He must’ve forgotten. Surely, Rodney would’ve told him, wouldn’t he? He loved him, after all.

“Yeah, she was a brat. Went on to become a Doctor of all the silly things.”

John seems to be about to ask more when the doorbell rings. Meg grabs onto John’s leg and hides behind it as he opens the door, smiling his most diplomatic smile and speaking in rapid Chinese to an oldish woman standing on the doorstep holding the hand of a shy-looking child a little smaller than John’s brat. Rodney waves to her, not knowing what else to do if John’s not going to introduce him. She doesn’t wave back.

John finally closes the door with a barely suppressed sigh. “Reminds me of the endless hunt for tava beans.”

“Hey, at least you’re getting something out of it this time, instead of . . . “ instead of a fucking kilo of shrapnel cutting through toned muscles and bone and vital organs.

“Yeah.” Another awkward silence, then, “Only you and me.”

“And the devil makes three,” Rodney says, with a feral grin.

They don’t need words to communicate. Words only make for awkward silences and kisses like these can write the history of the world. John tastes of pancakes and maple syrup like they never had on Atlantis, but beneath is that familiar, indefinable Johnness. Rodney’s hands tangle in John’s hair, pulling his body tight against his own, as though if they could just keep this embrace long enough, they’d never have to be alone ever again. But things happen. Promises are broken. Time stretches, and sometimes you lose even that which you hold most dear.

Rodney’s tugging at John’s sweater, pushing him back against the other side of the disgusting green door as he fumbles blindly with his pants. John sighs into his neck and Rodney realizes how much he did miss this. Not just his mind, his soul, but his body craved the touch that John scarred him with even their very first time. He’s had others since they sent John back, scattered flings, fuck buddies, an alien bimbo of his own here and there, even a little fooling around with Carson when they were both absurdly drunk and out of their minds. But none of the others could compare to this. They were just as much a physical release as his trusty right hand, better only for variety. John spoiled him to anybody else.

They’re naked and panting before Rodney realizes that this might be a really bad idea – jumping back into things as though nothing’s changed when everything has. Maybe that shrink was right after all. Maybe Rodney’s the last thing John needs right now when he’s still so obviously recovering from his wife’s death.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Rodney says, one finger still inside John, probing familiar territory, so tight, like the first time.

John moans. “You really do have the worse sense of timing, don’t you? Of course I want this! Yes, I know you think I’m a fucking headcase, but I can still decide whether or not I want to sleep with someone.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Good. Now, fuck me, goddamnit!” That sends Rodney’s dick twitching, sends his fingers plunging in deeper even when he wants to explain that he doesn’t think John’s crazy. He’d be in a padded cell if the same thing happened to him. He just . . . he doesn’t want to screw up this time around. He doesn’t want to leave anything unsaid.

Rodney lavishes in their next kiss, and the next, and the next, until he’s not even sure how he got to be thrusting into John and nibbling at his lip. This is so good. He’s missed this so much, waited so long, and now John’s coming, clenching around him and screaming his name and for a moment he can believe the brat when she says that he’s an angel, because that’s how his name sounds on John’s tongue – transcendent and celestial and more a dream than even those castles in the clouds that fools call heaven.

He wakes to the pain meds failing, Carson standing over him and saying that everything will be okay, that the Wraith didn’t take anything from him, that the pins and needles and sharp pain in his spine will all fade eventually. He wakes to find that someone else has already won the war for them and all he has to do is get them home, which is all he wanted all along.

Except this time the pain isn’t from getting tossed hard against a wall in his last desperate dash to the chair room. The pain is the hard mahogany of John’s floor against his much-abused back and this strange empty feeling of dread at waking yet again with no warm body curled against him.

He rolls gracelessly to his knees, using the arm of the couch to pull himself up. The living room reeks of sex in a way that’s deeply satisfying to his perverse mind. “John?” he calls, finding his way to the kitchen. He’s always been a little embarrassed of how he passes out so completely after sex and now he remembers all those times he woke to John staring at him, expression getting less and less unreadable by the day until John finally said what they both knew was in that gaze. Rodney only wishes he’d had the guts to say it back.

John’s sitting on a stool by the kitchen counter, clasping a letter in his hands like he wants to let it fall to the ground, but can’t. His eyes are glassy and dazed and his vulnerability is frightening.

So much has changed. It’s like that puzzle. If you have a ship and you replace every board over the years, is it the same ship? What if you improve upon the model? Rodney used to say that he’d put his standards wherever the IRS did, but now he’s not so sure. This is still John. He loves John. That’s what’s kept him going these past eight years when he’s seen so much death and destruction and come close to the brink so many times, whether it be the brink of disaster or exhaustion or defeat. Knowing that John is out there somewhere, waiting . . . that has been the thought he’s always been able to call up, a talisman against the vast unknowability of the future.

Rodney crosses the room and John doesn’t even look up. Nor does he flinch when Rodney puts a hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing that has you staring at that paper, white as a sheet. Sure. You’ve got to better than that, Sheppard.”

“It’s not your problem.”

“John, it’s a problem for you and I care about you. Tell me, please?” Rodney’s hands begin to stroke almost of their own accord. He doesn’t even know how he learned to offer comfort.

“They’re going to take her away from me, Rodney.”

Rodney doesn’t need to ask who. There’s only one person in the world who means this much to John, even if, to Rodney’s horror, it’s not him. “What?! They wouldn’t . . . they can’t . . . don’t they see how good you are? She loves you. If my parents had loved me one one-hundredth as much I would have been . . . well, things would have been a lot different.” He pauses, trying not to get lost in ‘what if.’ If his parents hadn’t practically locked him alone in his room with nothing for company but his books, he probably would have kept playing music . . . been in a band or something, been one of those slacking potheads and never gotten recruited by the Air Force . . . never met John . . . “And they want to take her away from that? Those . . . those . . .”

“They can, Rodney. Look, it’s complicated, okay?”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “Hello. Genius here.”

John chuckles. “Ego still intact, I see.”

“Of course. Look, explain it to me, John. I want to help. We can figure something out. When have I ever not?”

He puts his arm around John, smiling encouragingly.

John leans back into the embrace, scratching absently at his turtleneck. His nervous habit used to be running a hand through his hair. Rodney wonders how even stupid little things like that can change given enough time and circumstance.

“Amy’s parent’s never liked me much.”

“Why? Most everybody who’s not trying to kill you, usurp your position, or isn’t just an insipid asshole likes you.”

“Thanks for the compliment, but . . . look, a lot has changed. Amy’s parents . . . well, they’re very proper. They didn’t like the fact that I was in the military and that I’m white. They hate the fact that I didn’t really work because they saw me as using their only daughter, who worked incredibly hard to support the family – a reversal of the gender roles they’re used to. If they ever found out that I was bisexual . . . let’s just say they wouldn’t be too happy. And, if that wasn’t enough, Amy met me because I was undergoing extensive psychiatric therapy at the hospital where she works . . . worked. And . . . and we weren’t careful. As much as I love Meg, I wasn’t exactly at the best place in my life to have a child. The Wongs didn’t take too kindly to the implication for the honor of their only daughter. They would’ve cut her off, if they didn’t think I was a danger to their granddaughter. I wasn’t exactly . . . I could put up a good front most of the time.”

“So what? You’re her biological father. You don’t abuse her. What right do they have?”

“The child-protection laws have gotten a lot stricter since they started implementing population reduction incentives a few years back. And I, well . . . they’ve got me seeing another shrink for evaluation and since Amy died . . . I haven’t been very stable. I try, Rodney. I try really goddamn hard, but . . . aren’t I allowed to grieve? First I wake up back here. Then they put a goddamn snake in my head. And I think I’ve lost you and there’s nobody. They all pretend like they’re concerned for me, but I can’t know it’s real. And every time I have an episode . . . it’s all true. They say it’s paranoia. They say it’s all a delusion when it’s true. And they try to make me forget, and sometimes . . . sometimes I doubted that it all happened. Sometimes I think that I dreamed up you and Ford and Elizabeth and Teyla. Then I’d come home and I’d open the trunk in the attic, where I kept your jacket, even though it was all bloodied and disgusting and didn’t smell like you anymore.” John sounds embarrassed.

Rodney blushes. Even after he’d moved on, John cared enough about Rodney to keep him in his personal psychosis. That was kind of romantic in a really screwed up way. He wants to help John. He wants to make up for everything that’s happened. “We’ll figure something out, don’t worry. After all, I *am* the Answer Man,right?”

John chuckles softly and Rodney gives him a slow tender kiss. This is right. Even if their roles have switched and Rodney’s now the one doing the protecting, this is still exactly how they were meant to be.

He wakes to revelation, Elizabeth sprawled on the table beside him, hair matted and watch pattern imprinted on her cheek. Last night she told him that they’d find a way home. She told him about New York and Thanksgiving and finally asking Teyla to marry her, assuming that the politics of the United States haven’t regressed. She talked about seeing John again and after dreaming about it all night, Rodney finally had a solution.

Only this time the revelation might be even more profound. It’s the eerie grey light of dawn seeping through the curtains they forgot to close while making slow quiet love for hours the night before. John looks innocent in his sleep, but still so tired. Maybe it’s the grey-wash of light, but Rodney doubts it. John’s lost his quiet determination, if not all of his passion. He’s even more weary now than in the days of war and scant sleep.

Rodney prods him awake, finding the familiar grumpy John with the bedhead and the tendency to mumble obscenities at the motherfucking asshole with the goddamn twisted audacity to try and ply him from his slumber this early in the morning.

“Fuck off to you too.”

John rubs his eyes. “Rodney? What do you want?”

Rodney grins. It’s the perfect solution. “Marry me.”

John’s gorgeous green eyes fly wide open. “Excuse me?”

“Marry me. It’s legal now, isn’t it? I have enough backpay and investments and various royalties to support both you and Meg and even a hockey team, if you wanted to move back to Canada – Americans haven’t improved the last ten years - I checked.”

“You don’t have to do that,” John says, fully awake now.

“I don’t have to. But I want to. I owe you . . .”

“So this is all just about fixing your mistakes. I don’t need your fucking charity.” John’s still as stubborn as ever.

“Jesus, who do you think I am? The Red Cross? I love you. I want to make you happy.”Rodney gapes. He’s surprised at himself. He didn’t even mean to say it. It just slipped out, even though he’s even less sure of its veracity than he ever was.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I should’ve said it a long time ago.”

“I know. But . . . Rodney, you don’t even know me anymore. You don’t want to tie yourself down with me. Trust me . . . I’m better now, but I’m not exactly . . . you know. I can’t protect you anymore.”

“Then let me protect you. Even if you and I don’t work out, I’d want to do that for you.”

John looks calculating, intense like in the heat of battle. Rodney remembers the rush from when fighting was a thrill more than a bother. “Okay.” John hugs Rodney. “Okay.”

Then the door creeks open to reveal a small figure silhouetted against the light. Rodney pulls the covers tight around him even though John insisted that they pull on PJs before going to bed.

“Daddy, I had a bad dream,” Meg says timidly, tugging at the covers on John’s side of the bed.

Rodney wonders what the hell he’s getting himself into.

He wakes to a kiss, John sliding out of bed to pull on his gear for their next mission, to whispered words that he may or may not be meant to hear. He has a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, but it must be indigestion, because he doesn’t believe in signs and wonders. It’s just another trading mission, another day of twiddling his thumbs while John and Teyla haggle over tava beans.

Except this time he knows that he should’ve listened to his stomach, like he usually does, and though it’s the same man kissing him awake, everything’s different. He’s getting out of bed to drop John off at his shrink’s office while he takes Meg to see the new Imax movie on the space race and the moon colony program and tries not to laugh.

John grins at him, looking sincerely happy like Rodney’s never seen him before. He doesn’t doubt that John had moments of happiness on Atlantis, but he always kept even his joy closely guarded. “Rise and shine, Snugglebunny.”

“Yeah, keep calling me that and see what happens.”

“Whatever you say, Sugarkins,” John grins mischievously, leaning in for a quick kiss.

They’re interrupted by a loud, “Ewwwwwww!” from the doorway.

Rodney sighs exasperatedly, snapping, “What?!”

“You’re kissing my Daddy.”

“So?”

“So, ‘Ewwwww!’”

“And what’s so gross about that?”

She shrugs. “It just is.”

“Oh, that’s logical.” He rolls his eyes.

John chuckles.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t argue with her. Didn’t you cringe every time you caught your parents kissing?”

Come to think about it, he never saw his parents kiss, or practically even touch. He crosses his arms over his chest defiantly. “No.”

Instead of ignoring it and changing the subject like usual, John moves closer and wraps his arms around him, resting his chin on Rodney’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Babe.”

Rodney snorts but leans back into the embrace. “Not again with the pet names.”

John grins, mischievously, but their would-be banter is interrupted by small hands clawing at Rodney’s leg, a tiny body trying to push between them. Instead of repelling the invasive force, John bends down to scoop it up, nuzzling the girl who stole his bright green eyes. “Heya, Megathon. What’s up?”

“I want you to come to the movie too, Daddy.” She buries her face in John’s neck.

“I can’t, Pumpkin. I have to see Dr. Jane, but Rodney’ll go with you. He knows everything about just about everything,” he shoots Rodney a wry smile. “The two of you should get along great. Be prepared, Babe, once she gets going, you’ll wish you didn’t know anything at all.”

“Never,” Rodney snorts, earning himself another peck on the check, frighteningly domestic. They never did the small endearments before, not with a bunch of Marines breathing down their necks. He’s not used to being in the open like this, wonders if they would’ve lasted if they had.

He wakes to the stars flying by in a flash of motion and light, brightness and a feeling of falling. They’re going home. They’re finally going home and he’s more terrified than in the aftermath of any battle. They don’t know if Earth will even exist any more, let alone be that shining pearl of a place that they’ve kept hidden away as a reward for when the battle’s finally won.

But this time the blinding brightness isn’t the Wraith hive ship jumping to hyperspace, but rather the lights of the theater turning on. He has drool dripping down the side of his open mouth and glances over to find the seat beside him empty. Panicking, he calls out, “Meg!” Then, under his breath, “silly midgets always running off. Why didn’t I get one of those leashes . . .”

“I don’t need a leash, Uncle Roddy,” a small voice pops up from his other side.

“What? Huh? How’d you get there?”

“There was a tall man in front of me. I didn’t like the movie much. Do you wanna go to the park?” Non sequiteurs.

“Um . . .” he looks down at his watch. John said it might take a while, and it’s not quite lunchtime yet. “Okay.”

“Good. There’s one down the street. Granny and Grampy always take me there after we see movies.” She babbles on for a while and Rodney tunes it out, guiding her out of the theater and refusing entreaties to buy candy and soda and all the million things that the book he checked out of the library yesterday said will rot her teeth.

And then they’re in the unnatural green of the park, with the little monster dragging him toward a poorly constructed swing set that looks to him like a case of tetanus waiting to happen.

Then it’s all a flurry of motion and sound, the couple he’d noticed walking behind him drawing guns from beneath their yuppie cardigans. Rodney has Meg pressed to the ground, his body covering hers before he even has time to think. He gropes for his holster before realizing it’s Earth and here he can’t just can’t just carry a sidearm everywhere he goes.

“Put your hands up. Police.” A flash of golden badge he can barely see. “You are under arrest for the forcible abduction of Omega Sheppard. You have the right to remain . . .”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says, going for his ID and hearing the guns click. Crap. “Okay . . . okay,” he raises his hands. “Look, I have no idea what moronic civilian crusade you’re on, but I’m sure that you’ve made a mistake . . . this has to be a mistake.” He wants to tremble in fright, but the small body he’s protecting with his own is doing all the trembling for him. “There’s a military ID in my back pocket.”

“Stand up and leave the kid alone.” A female voice, sounding a hell of a lot like Melody Simpson when she found out that Carson let Rodney baby-sit that once.

Meg is crying now, gripping his hand. “It’ll be okay, Megathon,” he says, proud his voice doesn’t crack as he gives her shoulder a squeeze.

“But Uncle Roddy, what do the bad people with guns want from you?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll find out. Just . . . just stay calm, okay?”

She nods, wiping the tears from her eyes. Rodney’s been so focused on her that he only realizes the cops are still there when the woman speaks. “Uncle Roddy?”

She kneels down to Meg’s level, looking terrifyingly belittling. “Do you know this man, Omega?”

Meg does a double take at the use of her full name, but nods. Good girl. “Of course I do. This is Uncle Rodney. He’s my Daddy’s boyfriend.”

The woman heaves a sigh, standing. “Good one, Johnson. We got another false alarm. I’m sorry, Mister . . .”

“McKay, Rodney McKay.” He pulls out his top-level clearance badge.

“Now, if you’d just come down to the station with us while we confirm your identity . . .”

Rodney sighs, exasperatedly. “Fine. Can I have my one phone call or whatever?”

“You’re not under arrest, Mr. McKay.”

“It’s Doctor, and fine. I just need to call my fiancé and make sure he knows what’s going on.”

“Your fiancé?”

“Yeah, you know, Meg’s father, John Sheppard.” What, did the cookie cutter that made righteous policemen somehow leave off the dough-filled brain? “I could sue you for this, you know. Libel or misapprehension or back pain or something. I have a very delicate condition, you know.”

The female cop looks at him oddly. “The police are fully protected under the fourteenth amendment for charges of wrongful arrest. Wilbur vs. California, 2008.”

They won’t let him Meg’s hand as they make their way towards the cop car pulling around the corner on the other side of the park. She whines and protests, but to give them a little credit, they’re just as immune to it as he is. After making sure she’s okay, he whips out his cell phone and calls John.

“Hey, Babe, how’s it going?” John sounds tired, but happy. “Get to twenty questions yet?”

“No, actually, I kind of . . . er . . . got arrested.”

“What?!”

It’s actually the sharp look from that overprotective bitch of a cop that makes him amend that. “No, not actually arrested. They tried to arrest me for kidnapping your daughter.”

“You’re kidding.” John sounds pissed.

“Nope. What the hell’s up with that?”

“They were threatening to have me followed . . . I didn’t think . . . oh, God. Where are they taking you?”

“Who? What? The NID?”

“No, Amy’s parents. Look. I’ll meet you at the station, okay? Whatever you do, don’t talk to them.”

Like fuck he wouldn’t.

He tries to talk to Meg about the movie from the back of the cop car, but she’s too distracted by the bars and the two detectives to ask any question. Good, he’d slept through most of it anyway. Then he remembers something. “Hey, munchkin, why didn’t you like it?”

“ Well, if they wanted to send people to other planets, it would be stupid to use ships. Why not just send the people?”

He gapes. “How would you do that?”

“I dunno. Maybe something like electricity, you know, how a spark jumps from the carpet to your sock?”

Not really the basis of wormhole physics, but close enough for a six-year-old. “Good idea,” he splutters.

“Thank you,” she says, absently. “Do you think the mean police lady will want to take your fingerprints? They use this cool ink that Daddy says disappears after a minute.”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay. Can we get donuts on the way there? Like on the Simpsons?” John let his six-year-old watch the Simpsons? That show’s still on?

“No,” Detective Whatever-her-name-was says from the front. The finality of the tone keeps Meg quiet the rest of the ride. Obviously breasts and a vagina don’t guarantee a way with children.

The police station is renovated and frighteningly clean and sterile. For some reason he thinks about George Orwell and 1984.

Standing nervously in the waiting area is a wrinkled and frowning couple. The man is short and stocky, the woman looks like Yoda. They don’t really smile, even as Meg runs to them, all toothless smiles. “Grammy! Grampy!”

They say something to her in Chinese and she nods and accepts some sort of disgusting looking jelly candy. Probably citrus.

The female detective guides Rodney up to meet them. “Hello, Dr. and Mrs. Wong.”

“Why isn’t he in handcuffs?” the old woman snaps, jowls shaking in furry.

“I’m sorry,” the detective says diplomatically, “but it seems we have a case of mistaken identity. This man is Dr. Rodney McKay, your son-in-law’s fiancé. His ID checjs out,”

“Fiancé?” The old lady looks even madder than she did before, the words crisp and cool like the first chill of winter. “He never told us he was getting remarried.”

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t have to, does he?” Rodney sneers.

“You’ve known him for at most five days,” the old man snarls, his disapproval clear. “And you’re a man.”

Rodney roles his eyes. “Duh. And actually, I’ve known John for at least ten years. I’ve just been . . . out of the country.”

“And you just decided to come back and get married?” An accusation.

“No. My project with the government finished. I came back to find John. He needed someone, no thanks to you. And now I’m going to take care of him.”

“I knew he was a gold digger,” the woman murmurs to the man, just loud enough for Rodney to hear.

Rodney is in her face shouting in a second, finger jabbing into her chest. “Look, John’s a good man. He’s suffered more than you can imagine and saved you pathetic small-minded assholes more times than I can count. You have no right to judge him. He loves Meg. Can’t you see that? He’s her *father.* And, he’ll do a better job than you goddamn peanut brained . . .”

Meg’s tugging at his pant leg. “Uncle Roddy, please don’t say the Lord’s name in vain. I don’t want you to go to hell.”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “Too late.” He really doesn’t want to explain Sodom and Gomorrah to her at the moment, though.

“Father Perry says it’s never to late to turn to Jesus.”

“Does he now? Whoopee doodle dandy for him.”

“That’s not nice,” Meg says.

“Look at him,” the old woman says to the detective. “Is he really the standard of a model home?”

The detective glares at Rodney but says. “I’m not a social worker, Mrs. Wong.”

“Then where can we get one?”

“There’s already been one assigned to your custody case.”

“No good.” The woman snorts, like a dragon.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wong,” the male detective buts it, “But, religious views aside,” he looks a Rodney askance. What, is he surrounded by Christians now? Feed them to the lions, he says. “Dr. McKay does have the financial resources to provide a stable home for Omega, and while psychiatric evaluations and visitations to the home will continue, there are no longer any grounds to push forward with the case.”

“Are you a lawyer?” Mrs. Wong says, reaching for her cell phone, obviously to call one.

The detective just shakes his head. “Dr. McKay, you’re free to go. Would you like a car to take you back to your house?”

“No, I think we’ll walk,” Rodney says, grabbing Meg’s hand.

“But Uncle Roddy, it’s twenty-three blocks!” Rodney doesn’t even wonder how she knows that.

“A little exercise never hurt anyone, hmm?”

Then a forced laugh behind them. “That’s not what you used to tell me.”

Rodney whirls around to find John standing there, radiating cold fury, not directed at him, thankfully. He feels reckless. He feels like he could fly, seeing the familiar passionate determination return to John’s eyes. So what if the last time he saw that look it was directed at one Acastus Kolya down the barrel of a gun. It’s familiar, if not disturbing.

Rodney reaches out to give John one of those long, black-and-white-romance style kisses, right in the middle of the police station. It’s the first public contact they’ve ever had and the rush is even more than the familiar we’re-all-going-to-die surge of adrenaline.

When they break it off, the Wongs look angry and the detectives embarrassed and Meg is covering her eyes. “C’mon, Rodney, let’s go,” John says with a harsh finality.

“But Grammy and Grampy . . .”

“Can see you on Sunday after church.”

Meg shrugs and waves to her grandparents. “Bye.”

They get into John’s beat-up mini van and he drives like a lunatic. Rodney’s too tense to even say anything.

Meg makes a few oddly explained postulates about theoretical wormhole physics, but neither of them is really listening.

He wakes to the sound of Elizabeth’s voice, soft now instead of yelling. She can’t ask him what they hell he was thinking, because they both know. She can’t ask for his word that he’ll never do it again, because he no longer has a reason to. But it’s worse than he could’ve imagined, her disappointment the only thing left to him.

But this time Elizabeth’s not disappointed, but urgent, her voice coming loud from the answering machine. “John? Rodney? Rodney, if you’re there, please pick up the phone.”

Rodney rolls out of bed to find John sitting in the dark staring at the answering machine as its little green light blinks, hypnotic. “It’s Elizabeth,” he says.

Rodney bites back the urge to say, ‘Duh.’ “I know. I’m going to pick up, okay?”

John nods.

“Hello, Elizabeth?”

“Rodney, I’m so glad I caught you. Look, it’s Calvin. The device isn’t working anymore, but his body’s too used to the gene now. It’s rejecting his normal cells. Carson said something about blood transfusions . . . he needs all the gene carriers to come back to the base as soon as possible.”

“I’ll be right there,” Rodney says, without a thought. Kavanagh’s still an asshole, but he did save them all from the Wraith, so he definitely owes the man one.

“What happened?” John’s voice is a mix of timid and concerned.

“It’s Kavanagh. He needs blood transfusions from ATA carriers.”

“Why?”

He realizes that he hasn’t told John about their victory, that John hasn’t asked. Rodney gropes around for the light and then his jacket and keys. “He used an experimental device to simulate the ATA gene so he could use the chair to rewire Atlantis’ weapons systems.”

“Why didn’t you . . .”

“I was unfortunately incapacitated at the time and Radek was too valuable in my absence. As much as it shocks me to say it, Kavanagh saved the day.”

“Wow,” John says. “Who’d’ve thunk it?”

Rodney tosses John his coat and John just stares down at it, confused.

“Come on. What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

“Rodney . . .” John’s shaking.

“You have the strongest showing of the gene, John, and a compatible blood type.”

“Rodney . . . I can’t. I can’t go back there. Please don’t make me go back there.” John shakes his head.

“This is someone’s life, John.” That’s the thing Rodney never understood about so-called psychosis – how it made people so much less concerned about the lives of others.

“I’m sorry, Rodney,” John backs into the corner.

Rodney doesn’t have time for this. He doesn’t have time to feel resentment, to hate John’s weakness, or the fact that he’s changed so goddamned much that he’s not sure if he even loves him anymore. “Fine. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t wait up.”

He storms out the door.

He wakes again in the prison, Commander Kolya standing over him, nothing but grey walls and bright lights and so many questions for the Answer Man. Rodney doesn’t remember if he answered. All he remembers is praying for the first time, asking for someone, anyone to spare him the pain and the guilt and . . . that’s when John shows up, a blaze of gunshots and the crunch of fists meeting skin, and those eyes so intense that Rodney does believe in a savior as John puts a bullet right between Kolya’s eyes like the fucking angel of death, not even blinking as he gets splatter-painted in blood.

Except this time, John’s not here and in this secret underground bunker he’s slowing, coming out of ‘passing out’ from seeing all the blood flowing out of his arm. Carson’s there, patting his shoulder. “All done, Laddie. It went much faster after you fainted.”

“Passed out,” Rodney says half-heartedly.

“Aye.” Carson swabs his arm clean again and puts a ridiculous Lion King IV Band-Aid on it with a smirk.

“So did it work?”

Carson sighs. “Well, ideally, the treatment would be done with live blood from a natural gene carrier, but unfortunately, you’re the only one with a compatible blood type.” Carson shifts around nervously.

Rodney preempts his question. “He won’t come, Carson.”

“You’ve spoken with him, then?”

“I’m marrying him,” Rodney says, suddenly ashamed of it all. What the hell was he thinking?

“That’s a little . . . hasty, doncha think?”

Rodney waves his hands nondescriptly. “Circumstances.”

“Aye, circumstances,” Carson says, his guilt so obvious that Rodney knows they’ve let him see the official report.

“It wasn’t your fault.” Sure, Carson was the one that said sending John to Earth was their only option, but Rodney was the one responsible for the shoddy execution.

“It wasn’t yours either. Circumstances . . .”

“Can be prevented by people.” Rodney has always believed that intelligence and determination can conquer anything.

“Rodney, if you’re doing this out of guilt . . .”

“What the hell does everyone keep saying that?” he snaps. He loves John. He’s doing it because it’s the right thing to do. Didn’t John teach him that you had to do what was right no matter what circumstance threw at you?

“It’s just that it looks an awful lot like . . .”

“If you’re doing the procedure at a hospital, not here at the SGC, I think I can get him to agree to it,” Rodney says, hopping off the bed and stalking out. He’s had it with this conversation.

He wakes to the sound of bells ringing. They’re on the mainland overlooking a beautiful crater lake. Melody has flowers in her hair, wearing a flowing white gown that almost hides the swelling of her belly. Rodney’s standing proud beside Carson, trying not to think about John.

Except this time it’s John’s elbow to his ribs that jars him awake. “Way to set an example, Babe.”

Rodney groans, knees cracking as he stands from the pew. “It was your bright idea that I come to this ridiculous cult ritual.”

“Church on Sunday is hardly a cult ritual.”

“It was at the time of Jesus.”

“Okay fine, but please don’t say that in front of my daughter?”

“Why? She’s already on her way to becoming a brilliant scientist, why slow it down with all this smoke and mirrors?”

John looks proud, but flattery doesn’t get him as far as he’d hoped. “I know how much you hate organized religion, Rodney, but the Church has done a lot for us, and as part of this family, I need you to go.”

Rodney sighs. “Does this mean I have to get baptized? Because God knows what’s in that water . . .”

John grins. “Yep, He does.”

“I hate you,” Rodney groans as they stand back waiting for Meg to finish talking to some of her friends. “I swear, they’re going to fry her brains.”

“Hey, I was raised Catholic.”

“And look what happened to you.”

John punches him playfully in the shoulder. “This is what I love about you, Rodney: the romance.”

Rodney snorts, taking one of Meg’s for-once-clean hands as John takes the other. She’s getting big, but they swing her between them down the church steps anyhow.

Rodney hates to ruin the mood, but Carson called him this morning about Calvin’s treatment, and he has to ask. “John? If it was in a hospital, not at the SGC, would you do it?”

John’s smile fades and his eyebrows furrow. “I’ll think about it.”

That’s a yes, thank god. “Thanks,” Rodney says, feeling ridiculous cutesy kissing John like this on the steps of this gaudy house of voodoo.

Then John’s phone goes off. He glances at the number and groans, mouthing ‘social worker’ as he picks it up. “Hello? Fine. How are you? No, I must’ve missed it. Tomorrow? I guess I’ll try to finish it up today then. Thanks. Bye.”

“What’d she want?” Rodney asks, already feeling protective just from the grimace on John’s face.

“She’s set up a interview for tomorrow. I have to check in with the shrink, pick up some paperwork signifying I’m receiving psychiatric care.” He looks down at his watch. “Jane said she was leaving for a conference today. I should run if I want to catch her. Do you think you could take Meg to the park to meet with her grandparents?”

Rodney winces. “Yes.”

“Try to be civil, okay? I want Meg to have a good relationship with at least one pair of old folks.”

“No promises,” Rodney grumbles.

“Thanks,” John says, giving Rodney a quick peck on the cheek and telling Meg to be good before jogging off towards the car.

Meg looks up at Rodney with wide green eyes the second John’s out of sight. “Why don’t you like Grammy and Grampy?”

“Because they want to take you away from John.” Duh. He couldn’t understand why a girl who could intuitively understand wormhole physics couldn’t figure it out.

“No, they don’t. They love me.”

“They probably do.”

“Then why wouldn’t they want me to see Daddy?”

“Because they don’t like him?” Better than, ‘because they’re evil.’

“Oh. That’s not very nice.”

“No, it’s not.”

She’s silent for all of half a minute as they amble slowly down the street, stopping again to ask. “Why are you and Daddy getting married?”

“Because we love each other.”

“Oh. Does that mean I’ll have more brothers and sisters?”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “Definitely not.”

“Why?”

“Because two men can’t have children.”

“Oh. Why not?”

“Because you need sperm and eggs for children and men only have sperm.”

“You could buy some eggs at the store.”

“Not those kind of eggs.”

“Oh. Okay. Are you and Daddy going to get married at the big church like him and Mommy?”

Rodney had thought small wedding. Civil service. He and John were never the gaudy types. “No.”

“Why not?”

He knows what John told him, but he can’t very well lie, even to a child. “Because I’m not Christian.”

Meg gasps. “You’re not? Then you’re gonna go to hell.”

“So what?”

“So, I don’t want you to.”

As touching as that is, he has to put her straight. It’s one thing for John to ask him to get to like this kid and totally another for John to make him be *religious.* “Don’t worry about it. Hell is just what they tell kids to scare them out of misbehaving. Like the boogie man.”

“The boogie man isn’t real.”

“Yeah, well neither is God.”

Meg gasps, tears in her eyes. “You don’t mean that.”

“Look, I’ve seen a lot of people pretend to be gods. I’ve seen a lot of people killed because they believed in false gods. There are greater powers out there than you know,” and strangely, he wants to tell her. “But power doesn’t always mean good.” God, didn’t he learn that lesson from the Ancients? “You determine good and bad and right and wrong. Sins are what you regret and virtues are achievements you can be proud of.” That’s all there is: man in the void with the power of reason to make distinctions like good and bad, right and wrong. All he’s done in his life cannot be redeemed by some hollow promise of salvation, of all the great achievements of his lifetime. Time cannot be undone by the coming of another false prophet. He has regrets, but he also has triumphs.

“Yes, like the Golden Cow. But Jesus is real and God is real.”

“How do you know that?”

“Father Perry says so.”

“And if Father Perry jumped of a cliff, would you, too?”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah, but let’s say he did.”

“Is it a big cliff?”

Rodney sighs exasperatedly. “Okay, forget the cliff. How do you know that he’s telling the truth?”

“Because he’s giving us God’s word and He’s like . . . the truth and the light and . . . . and the way.” She smiles proudly.

“But if there is no God to make sure he’s telling the truth about there being a God, then there’s no reason to believe him.”

She frowns for a second, considering this, then smiles. “But Father Perry gets the word from the Bible, which was written by the . . . apos . . . apost . . . people who talked to God directly.”

“Yes, but who’s to say that they were telling the truth, hmmm?”

“Why would they lie?”

“I dunno, maybe to get big gaudy churches and political power and keep from being persecuted. Or maybe they were just ignorant.”

“You’re ignorant.”

“Do you even know what that means?”

“No.”

“Well, it means stupid, and I’m obviously not stupid.”

“But you’re still going to hell.”

“Look. You’re a smart girl. Think about it for a second, okay? Why is God all about killing people and the chosen ones and fire and brimstone and vengeance in the Old Testament and then suddenly touchy and feely and all for saving people in the New? If He were omniscient –all seeing- then wouldn’t he see that people’d need saving right from the beginning? And what about the Jews? If they’re really His chosen people then why have Christians spent so much time persecuting them?” He’d learned about it ad nauseam at synagogue.

“He’s God. He doesn’t have to explain himself.”

“Why not?”

“Because He doesn’t.”

He snorts. “Fine. But what about creation, hmmm? Geologists have proven that the world is couple of billion years older than the Bible says it is. And dinosaurs . . . and Neanderthals and all the DNA markers that prove that, even if we are the second evolution, we evolved from apes? That can’t explain every being created by God exactly as it is.”

“Maybe He created them as they were and then they changed. The dinosaurs are all in dinosaur heaven, like my goldfishes.”

“And, let me tell you, Earth is definitely not at the center of the universe. It’s not the only planet with sentient life. Hell, humans aren’t even all that special in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes, we’re just lunchmeat.”

“I think you’re lying.”

“I wish I were.” It would sure be nice to think that God would step in and save them, even that the fucking Ancients would step in and save them. But there were no higher powers to bail them out. They had to defeat the Wraith all on their own, pay the price or risk following the dinosaurs to the heaven for the extinct. If there was a God, if He cared, then Rodney never would’ve had to suffer so much. If there were a God, he and John would’ve been able to stay together, because if God cared about anything at all, He should care about love. “If He cares so much then why hasn’t he answered your prayers?”

She answers him in tears and for once he doesn’t feel proud to have won a debate.

He wakes to someone shouting his name. But the dream is too good. He doesn’t care if it’s not real. He’s with John again, sitting curled on his couch with Copernicus snuggling between them. They’ve been riding Ferris wheels and laughing and walking together down the beach and John was as happy to see him as he hoped. He knows it’s not real. He knows that in a few days his body’ll starve to death here in the fog, but he doesn’t fucking care. He’d rather live this dream than go back. But someone is calling his name and they sound desperate. And as much as he wants to, he can’t ignore them. And then Carson and Ford are standing above him in Hazmat gear and dragging him back to a place he can no longer call home.

Except this time the voice isn’t desperate or urgent, but rather angry, and he’s not lying on his back on another planet inhabited by the wish-granting mist, but passed out on John’s horribly uncomfortable but stylish Ikea couch.

And it’s John that’s yelling at him.

“Rodney! What the fuck were you thinking?” John grabs him by the collar and hauls him out of sleep.

“What?” he mumbles, bleary eyed.

But he doesn’t even need to be half awake to know that this is the maddest he’s ever seen John, without question. Or, correction, this is the maddest he’s ever seen John at *him.* He’d heard the cold fury in John’s voice when he finally put that final bullet in Commander Kolya’s brain, and John’s still short of that – though not by much.

“You really are as much of an arrogant selfish asshole as everyone kept telling me you were.”

“Why? What? John, what’d I do?”

“You fucking,” John’s hands move from threateningly close to Rodney’s neck to pulling at his own hair. “God, Rodney, do you have any sense of decency at all? I can’t believe I ever thought this was a good idea.”

“What? John, what are you talking about?” Actually, he’s starting to get an idea.

“Even a fucking monkey with a lobotomy would still have the social sense not to tell a six-year-old that there’s no heaven for her mom to watch her from and that there’s no God to answer her prayers when she prays every night for her daddy to be happy and for the world to be better and for everything to turn out all right.”

Yeah, that’s what this is about.

Rodney sighs. “I’m sorry, John. I just . . . you know how I am . . .”

John seems to deflate. “I know. I knew. I hoped you’d changed, but . . .” Rodney thinks it’s odd that John’s hoped that he’s changed when all he wants is for John to have stayed the same. “But . . . I always expected too much of you, I guess.”

“I can’t change who I am.” Even if John had changed so much.

“Rodney, look, I could accept that when you were a member of my team. I could accept that when you were pissing off religious aliens left and right. But I can’t accept it any more, not with my daughter.”

“Wait . . . are you . . . are you breaking up with me?”

John looks away. “Thank you so much for all you’ve tried to do for me, Rodney, but as much as I want to be with you, I can’t see you as being a part of my family.”

That hurts . . . hurts more than sending John through the wormhole into an uncertain future, than putting a bullet in Ford’s head, than watching three members of his team die of radiation poisoning from the nuke he built. It hurts more than knowing that they might never return to Earth again, because John was the only person he’d ever thought of as home, as family.

But John cares about someone else more than he cares about Rodney. John has a real family now and it’s no longer just them, two orphans carving out a safe place together in a world of war. John has a dream, and Rodney’s not a part of it.

He doesn’t fight. He just walks out.

He wakes to cold. The air is cool and he’s kicked off the blanket. He’s not used to sleeping alone anymore, though he knows he’s going to have to get used to it. Each morning he wakes hoping that it was all a dream and that he’ll be snuggling into John’s surprising warmth, but each day, he’s disappointed. He could break out of his confinement any time he wants and Elizabeth and the guard at the door both know it, but he doesn’t want to. He deserves this. He fucked up. He stranded them here in this galaxy. He broke all the rules. But he’d do it again in a heartbeat.

This time, he’s still alone in a bed. He still misses John. He still wishes that it weren’t like this. The only difference is that this time, they’re not separated by light-years and circumstance and the great unknown. This time, John’s just across town from his hotel room, alone in his own bed, and the only thing that stands between them is the fact that Rodney won’t change.

He’s worked seven hard years to come back to John. He’s killed and stolen and done the impossible. He broke all the rules and royally screwed all his friends and colleagues, all for John. After all that, why isn’t he willing to cross that last few miles? He’s gone from a scientist to a soldier, when all his life he hated the military. Why can’t he do this? He loves John enough.

There’s no good reason why not, so he stands, showers, shaves, pulls on a nice shirt and pants, and goes to the one place he knows John will be on Sunday morning.

The stained glass windows are disgustingly rosy, and the gigantic wooden beams holding up the ceiling look as though they might need replacement sometime soon if they want to be structurally sound. All the gold and satin and candles makes it look like someone ate a whole lot of bling bling then puked it up all over the altar. The choir boys with their eunuch voices and their perfect cheekbones are making his head hurt, and the preacher sounds like one of the guys who announces golf games, his voice is so flat and passionless. The Latin part (learned in the study of Ancient) isn’t all that much better.

But he listens. He opens his ears for once and tries to understand why people believe in this crap when hoping like this will only let them down, and maybe he gets it. Maybe there is something to it, after all, even if the Bible is crap.

“When his brothers threw him into a pit for the beasts to come and eat, they called Daniel a dreamer. But he escaped the pit. He went on to <. . .> and he did it not through cynicism, not by giving up hope, but through the very nature of being a dreamer. We are all dreamers. We all wish and pray and hope for a better future. We all have faith. They speak of progress and competition and nationalism. They say that it is us versus them. But all who have faith, all dreamers, can understand one another. We can all understand hope. And Jesus is the greatest hope of all. He too was a dreamer. He dreamed up a better world, where man does not sin against his brother, but rather loves him. He dreamed that mankind could be saved. And the Son of Man, like all of you, has the power to make dreams come true. But only through faith, only through hope, only through dreaming. He is the way, the truth and the light, believe in his dream and you will never die. Take up your own cross, follow your own dreams, but remember that every struggle, every suffering, every sacrifice you make, He feels too. And He is as pleased with you as His father is pleased with him.”

And hasn’t he had his own fair share of dreams, of hopes, of struggles? Isn’t he entitled to salvation, even if he has to make it for himself? Does it matter if there’s no Christ or Savior or God? Does it matter that no one will step in to catch him if he stumbles? The cross is still there for him to bear, and he’ll bear it.

With that new revelation, he finds the courage to turn his head, too look down the pew to where he’s seen from his peripheral vision that John is sitting with Meg squirming beside him. She waves and grins, and instead of the frown he was expecting from the man who’d seldom forgive and never forget, he finds a smile.

He wakes to screaming. Aiden Ford, usually such a good soldier, stoic and brave, if a little too young and naïve at times, is screaming and screaming and screaming and Rodney feels the sound as pain, feels it rip through his body and tear at his heart and he can’t stop shaking, as though he could shake out of his own skin and escape the sound of someone he cares about suffering like that. It’s been hours since Aiden was coherent enough to ask him and it’ll be hours more before a rescue team even tries to search for them. He pulls out his gun, and even as his hands shake, the shot is sure. Even it’s woeful finality is better than the screaming.

Except this time there’s no gun to make the screaming stop. Rodney bolts out of bed, searching for the source of the sound only to find it slumbering next to him.

“John! John!” Rodney shakes him frantically. “John, wake up, it’s only a dream.”

John thrashes and yells, “No, no, you’re not real!” He kicks Rodney in the shin, but he doesn’t even feel it.

“John, calm down. I’m here.” He strokes and soothes and murmurs as John pulls out of the nightmare, too slow, and too terrifyingly.

“Rodney?”

“Shhhh . . . Babe, I’m here. It was just a dream.”

“Rodney,” John says again, huddling closer, laying his head down on Rodney’s shoulder and hugging his chest. “You’re still here.”

“Not going anywhere.”

“It wasn’t a dream. It was a flashback.” Yeah, Rodney knows those. He’s had his fair share.

“The Tok’ra?”

“There was so much blood, Rodney. And even when I killed it, things didn’t change. They still wanted information. I still kept seeing you there. I . . . it was so hard.”

“I know.” He strokes John’s hair, kisses him with small sweet kisses everywhere he can reach.

“But you’re really here now.”

“I’m really here.”

John sighs, muscles finally relaxing. This feels safe and right, even if Rodney’s now the one doing the protecting.

But that’s when they get the call. Carson’s voice is urgent, high-pitched and panicked like Rodney’s been hearing less and less as he became more accustomed to the horrors of the Pegasus Galaxy.

“Rodney, thank God you’re there. Look, I don’t care what you have to do, you need to get Colonel Sheppard here now. He’s crashing. It’s the only thing we can think of to try . . .”

“To the hospital?”

“I’m ‘fraid not, Lad.”

Rodney looks over at John, teary-eyed and breathing hard, looking so small and helpless, even more so than his daughter. It hurts him to say it. He doesn’t want to say it. He wants to protect John from all the world, but there are some things that are right, and he has to do them. “We’ll be there,” he says.

“Who was that?” John asks timidly.

“Carson.”

“Oh. No. No, Rodney. I can’t go. Please, don’t make me.”

“It’s the right thing to do, John. There’s no alternative. You know I wouldn’t ask you if there was.”

John nods, slowly, reluctantly. “Yeah, I know.”

Rodney reaches out a hand to pull John up. “I’ll go with you. I’ll be there the whole time. We won’t stay any longer than we have to.”

John nods, silently.

“I love you,” Rodney says, kissing the top of John’s head and knowing that he means it. Deep down, John’s still the noble, ethical, brave man he first fell in love with. He’s still ready to face the utterly terrifying, death-distilled, because he knows it’s the right thing to do.

As they get into the car, Meg curled up in Rodney’s jacket in the backseat and John sitting pale and still on the passenger’s side, Rodney realizes that even while everything changes, nothing does.

He wakes to a pounding headache and Carson’s thick brogue mumbling beside him. The events of last night creep in with the soreness and he closes his eyes against the light. Never again will he drink that rat poison from Radek’s still.

Except this time, he hasn’t just had a really surreal buddy-fuck with his best friend. This time, Carson’s shaking him awake so he can . . . “Oh no!”

“Don’t worry, you’re not late. Elizabeth just dropped off the tux.” Carson pats him hard on the back. “You’ll be fine.”

Rodney rubs his temples, accepting he pills in Carson’s hand without opening his eyes. “Why did I ever think letting you drink me into a stupor was a good idea?”

“I dunno, you were drunk at the time.”

“Har, har.”

“Besides, you were worrying yourself too much.”

“Well, I’m worrying myself even more now that I have to remember my stupid vows through this . . . hey, those pills really work.”

“Apparently while we were researching effective bioweapons against the Wraith, the scientists of Earth were busy with the ultimate hangover cure.”

“I think I like them better.”

“Aye. If they keep me from dealing with you with a hangover, so do I. Now, let’s get you all nice and spruced up.”

“Sure.”

Rodney dresses in silence, trying not to think about what he’s doing or why. His palms are sweating and his heart fluttering as the moment draws closer. And then the door opens and John is standing there looking so incredibly handsome in a tux, even if it doesn’t hide the scarring on his neck as well. Rodney can’t see anybody else, even in the room filed with friends and family and stupid stained glass and waxy-looking priests.

Rodney doesn’t know if they’re doing the right thing, but when the words spill out of his mouth, he thinks they come with more art and passion than he’s ever had. “I honestly don’t know what to say to you.”

John raises his eyebrows, amused and delighted.

“I know that’s hard to believe, genius and all.” He thinks he hears Elizabeth laughing in the background. “I had a long time –more than seven years- to think about all the things I wanted to say to you, and still, I got nothing. I know all the things I should’ve told you, but telling you now won’t make up for that. You’ve changed a lot since the first time we fell in love. I thought I was lucky to get one time. But these past few months I’ve had the chance to fall in love with you again, seeing your kindness and your bravery and your passion, different, but not lost. I don’t like to make promises I don’t think I can keep, so I’m not going to promise you always and forever. We already know that sometimes that doesn’t work out. The only thing I can promise you is that I’ll do everything in my power. You know, sickness and health . . . all that.” He grabs John’s hand and feels him squeeze. “And . . . what comes next?”

Father Perry scowls disapprovingly. Rodney’s surprised that the Church has changed enough to even let them marry, let alone let them write their own vows, but he supposes enough lawsuits and political wrangling will do that. Meg pokes him in the shin from where she stands, holding a basket of rose petals. “With this ring, I thee wed,” she whispers loudly.

“Oh, right.” He pulls one of the simple silver rings from the cushion sitting on the altar and puts it on John’s finger. John smiles and Rodney falls in love with him a third time, for repetition’s sake.

John clears his throat, grabbing Rodney’s hands again. “Rodney McKay, you are responsible for a lot of suffering in my life.”

“Thanks.”

“Vows aren’t interactive, Babe.” And he thought the preacher couldn’t get any more constipated-looking.

“Oh, right.”

“Anyway . . . as I was saying. You’ve caused me a lot of grief. Hell, my shrink can attest to the fact that thinking that you died pretty much devastated me. And you’re also a pain in the ass. But that’s the thing about life. The extremes are what make it worth living. I always liked going fast, flying high, going beyond. That’s what you are to me, Rodney. You’re the best rush of all time. I can live without you. I did. But living without you was like time slowed down so that even the fastest plane can’t make you feel the speed. I want to promise you forever, even if I can’t, because where else can you find forever except in all-consuming moments? It feels like forever when I’m with you. My daughter says that you’re an angel. I highly doubt they come in the hypochondriacal, paranoid, sarcastic variety, but even then, you’re my grace.” John smiles, shyly, and Rodney wonders why he never noticed John’s shyness before, or if he’s simply forgotten. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

And maybe right now, this time, is as close to forever as they’ll get, but even as Rodney wants moment after moment more, he thinks that this is pretty good too.

He wakes to tiny feet pressed into his thighs, cold like the last ice age, the motion of someone squeezing between his heat and John’s. Rodney doesn’t resist the small voice whispering. “I had a bad dream, but it’s all better now.”

This time he falls back into a world of dreaming.

FIN