Thirty minutes later and Rodney was standing in the gate room, shifting the pack on his shoulders as he waited for the last chevron to be dialled into place. He looked up at the control room. It struck him how close their design was to that of the Ancients. Almost creepy, he thought, but he was glad that Atlantis was far more open.
The gate opened and the General gave him the go to walk through. He stepped up, the clang of the metal alien to his ears. It felt bizarre to be walking through the Milky Way stargate, but even more bizarre to be heading through alone.
The sensation of the going through the gate was no different than in the Pegasus galaxy. He stepped through, feeling the shakiness and cold slipping away nearly immediately as he stepped down from the platform, looking behind him out of habit. It wasn’t the same gate, as he had noticed when he returned home, and it was a strange thing to watch it disengage behind him before his team was there to greet him.
He turned back to see the two Marines lower their weapons and return to guarding the gate. He grinned as he looked up to see Carter and another Colonel approaching him. He watched as her eyes looked him over, then as her lips stretched into a smirk. He looked down at himself, then back at the partial SG-team.
“What? I’m not big on the green thing.”
“You stick out like a sore thumb,” she laughed. He scowled at her as he looked down at his Atlantis uniform. His grey did clash against their green.
“And you don’t?” He shot back at her. She humoured him by looking down at her BDU’s. Purposely shifting her P-90, she caught his eye. “Besides,” he continued, stepping past the Marines and over to where she and the Colonel had stopped. “I get by just fine in Pegasus with Wraith after me. Kind of feel weird not worrying about them.” He looked off into the tree line as he spoke. She noticed the motion, realizing somewhere that his months away had taught him some military discipline.
“You’ve got plenty else to worry about.”
“Thanks,” he slurred back at the Colonel, “I feel much better now.”
“You look a little shaky,” the Colonel smirked. Carter smacked him for it.
“Just not used to walking through the ‘gate,” he shrugged, earning him an odd glance from the two Colonels. “Oh, we use Puddle Jumpers.” His words only served to make the Colonel cock a brow at him and Sam tilt her head to the side. “You know, the Ancient ships, kind of round, it’s- you know what it is!”
The two laughed at him, both shifting so quickly from their serious confusion. “We knew what you meant, just didn’t know what you called them.”
“I wanted to call them GateShips, but Sheppard wanted Puddle Jumper.”
“Gateship’s… a very good name.” He nodded at her, Sam shaking her head as she watched his grin stretching into a cocky smirk. “But Puddle Jumper-”
It disappeared in an instant. “Oh, not you too.”
“You two coming or what?” They both looked up to see the Colonel metres ahead of them, half turned around to see where they were.
Rodney leaned over to Sam, keeping his eyes on the other Colonel as he asked. “Who is that?”
“Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell.” Rodney looked to her, face blank of recognition. “He lead the X-302’s over Antarctica-”
“During the Anubis thing?”
“Yeah. The President gave him his choice of assignments after he recovered from his injury.”
“And he chose SG-1?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Not as a first choice, no.”
She smirked, rolling her eyes. “Shall we get going?”
“After you.”
Carter led him down a path and straight into the dense trees he had noticed earlier. She entertained him with a short explanation of why they left so suddenly from the base on their expedition- she said it was mostly because Cameron had wanted something to do. He listened even as he kept on eye on the surrounding area, ears perked for the looming danger of a Wraith attack that he knew would never come. Slowly they made it to a cut out area of woods where Rodney finally caught sight of man-made stone. As they grew closer he could see that it was an archway carved into the sloping landscape.
Sam smiled at him, gesturing for him to go through first. He ducked inside, eyes darting around as a slow grin formed, as it did whenever he set eyes on some interesting find.
He recognized it as Ancient design almost immediately, but found the symbols alien, unreadable even to his broken Ancient. Entering farther into the room, he approached the center where a control console stood. It was similar to those in the control room on Atlantis. He heard Sam coming in behind him. Just as he reached a hand out to touch it, he heard her say, “We haven’t been able to get it to work.”
He just looked at her before looking back at the device. “Someone just has to initialize it.” With that, he touched it tentatively, the lights humming to light and glowing beneath the glass plates. Then he turned to her, a coy smirk. Sam sighed, shaking her head; she saw the McKay she remembered leaking through. “Didn’t you get the gene therapy?”
“Yeah, a while ago. It didn’t take.”
He nodded. “Should try again. Beckett’s done some work on it since then.”
“Yeah.”
“So,” he said slowly, looking around again. It was an Ancient lab like any other on Atlantis. The only difference was the symbols he was surrounded by. “Definitely Ancient.”
“Definitely.”
“What else have you found?”
“Nothing yet. Hoping you might know how to turn that thing on.” She pointed to the console. He looked down at it, then smiled up at her.
“Yeah, I got that under control.”
“Good. Maybe we can find something in the database.”
“Worth a look.”
/-
Rodney swung around the corner, peaking his head inside the room. He glanced quickly around, spotting the tuff of blonde hair hiding in the back. “Daniel just got here.”
“Hmm?”
He looked closer, stepping into the room, and noticed that she was engrossed with something on her laptop. “Daniel,” he said sarcastically, “You know, the geek. The one you got banned from a restaurant for defending his honour. Remember him?”
“Yeah. When’s he coming?”
Rodney sighed, rolling his eyes. He looked over at her as she sat, hunched over her laptop taking readings. It surprised him how similar they were in that regard, becoming immersed in work when they didn’t have annoyances constantly pestering them. But, now when it was him trying to get her attention, it lost its cuteness.
Rolling his eyes, he looked over at that opened doorway, pulling the radio off his shoulder. Not having an earpiece was definitely an inconvenience. “McKay to Carter. Over.”
Her fingers slowed over the keyboard. He watched from behind her as she lifted her head and pressed the radio. “McKay?”
“Could I have your attention? Over.”
“McKay, where are you?”
“Behind you. Over.”
She spun around, having to put her feet down on the grown suddenly to keep from loosing her balance. “Rodney?” she asked, her brows coming together. He pressed the radio, moving it back to his lips to respond. “Stop with the radio. I get it.” He allowed himself a smug smirk at her tone. “What were you saying?”
“Daniel just arrived. Thought you would want to go see him. It’s about time for a break anyway.”
“Yeah, sounds good.” She turned quickly to her computer to shut it off before standing and joining him. She paused at the door and looked up at him. “You don’t really talk like that on the radio, do you?”
Rodney feigned shocked, mockingly asking, “You’re not supposed to?” She laughed, smacking his arm as she walked past him to find Daniel. Rodney shook his head and, with a parting glance inside the room, followed her.
It wasn’t exactly the first time that Rodney had ever meet Daniel, but he certainly had never spent much time with the young archeologist. He wasn’t much different from the last time Rodney had seen him. His hair might have been a bit shorter, the uniform was the newest fad of black rather than green, but other than that, Rodney could see no changes.
“So, you’ve got something for me to look at?”
“Yeah. We’ve found a database here. We know that this was an Ancient lab, we’re just not sure if the notes are actually written in Ancient.”
“You mean it’s in code or a completely different language?” Rodney just shrugged. “Okay, well, where is it?”
“Down this way.”
Rodney stepped in front, leading the way back into the main room, not sparing a glance to see if Sam or Daniel were following behind. He didn’t need to, he could hear their quiet conversation following him through the lab.
He beckoned Daniel closer as he activated the controls, using guess work to get the database back on-line. Daniel hummed excitedly as he watched the symbols write themselves, seemingly in the air. He stepped closer, eyes already glazed in concentration.
“He’ll be at this for a while.” Rodney nodded at Sam’s words, but his focus was on Daniel. He had never had the pleasure of seeing a linguist work, but he found it an amazingly pointless concept to get so engrossed in a language one had no idea how to read.
“How long is a while?”
“Until he can read it?”
He looked over at her then, surprised by the soft smile on her face. She had confidence in Daniel- a confidence that developed over a long time of learning that Daniel would always figure everything out eventually.
“Why don’t we go get something to eat while we wait.”
He smirked. “A woman after my own heart.” She laughed briefly, as one does when they hear something cheesy, and turned to leave. He followed after her, but no before looking back over at Daniel. Maybe it wasn’t such a pointless concept, after all, it was exactly what he did, just with a different medium to work with.
The MREs were stashed just on the other side of the entrance. Sam pulled one out and looked over the contence, scowling before putting it aside.
“What’s that?”
“The chicken.”
“You don’t like the chicken?”
“You do?”
“Yeah… well, no, but I don’t mind the taste of macaroni and cheese so it’s edible, anyway.” She laughed, more heartedly than he thought appropriate. She just shook her head at his raised eyebrows and he imagined that she was lost in a long forgotten memory. He just shrugged and started searching for something.
Meatloaf… dangerous.
Turkey… eh, not the best, but certainly not bad.
Ham… pretty good… Oh, but not with green beans.
“Oh just pick one already.”
He laughed, looking over to find that she had already settled down against a tree and was starting to open her lunch.
“What did you get?”
“I don’t know, I just picked at random.”
“That’s pretty gutsy.”
“I’ve learned to eat just about anything after all these years.”
“Oh yeah? I lived through Russia- I’m never going to say that I’ll eat anything every again.”
She laughed and he scowled at her. She just smiled innocently.
“You lived though, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he huffed, finally settling on the pork chops. He kicked a rock away absently before he rested his back against a tree neighbouring Sam’s and slid down it, hiding his wince when he landed on a root.
“So…”
“So what?”
“So, talk about something.”
“About what?”
“Anything.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like to eat in silence.”
“Oh… um… Seen any good movies lately?”
“Haven’t had time.”
He nodded, stabbing at the meat. “Seen any good commercials for a movie lately?”
She laughed at that, titling her head until she was looking over at him. “Haven’t had time for that either.”
“Hmm… you should get out of the mountain more.”
“Amazingly enough, you’re not the first who’s told me that.”
“Shocking.”
“Well… what do you guys do on Atlantis for fun?”
“Well, I like to catch up on my mountains of paperwork and all the projects that I’m constantly being pulled off of.” She looked at him pointedly and he just shrugged. “Everyone else… sometimes as a team, we watch some of the movies people brought with them- we’ve got a pretty nice stash of them going now. There’s a mock basketball court set up, people exercise or something. You can go to the mainland occasionally and swim or whatever. Hike, I guess. There’s always something going on. Card games. Stuff.”
She just nodded, letting them fall into silence. He looked over at her before turning his focus back onto his meal. He picked at the vegetables with some distain before finally pricking them and stuffing them into his mouth.
His ears perked suddenly, his head shooting up in response. Somewhere in the distance, a heavy foot fell to the ground. And then another. And then another…
/-
One… two… three… ping… one… two… three… four… ping… one… two… ping… one… two… three… ping… one… two… three… four… five… six… ping… one… ping…
His lips had gone dry; it was instinct to wet them. Each breath made them number; each breath made his throat drier.
Ping… ping…
A leaky faucet. It was the first thought that came to him after listening for a time. The incessantly irregular dripping. Water was coming from somewhere, but he was too tired and too cold and it was too dark for him to try to search the source out. Maybe he should have, maybe he shouldn’t have surrendered so easily. Maybe he should have fought harder, found a way out, found some way to escape. But for once it just didn’t seem worth the energy.
… forty-seven… forty-eight… forty-nine… fifty… fifty-one… fifty… fifty… fifty…
He sighed. He had stopped counting the time between the drips and instead had taken to counting the drips. Already he had lost count several times, the cold numbing his brain, exhaustion weighing too heavily on it, the uneven stones causing just enough discomfort to keep him from slipping back into unconsciousness.
… one… two…
A noise blocked out the sounds of the drips. He paused, blinking a few times behind the blindfold. But the noise had stopped.
… one… two… three… four…
The noise started again. It was soft, unrecognizable, but insistent…
Stomping feet. Boots on stones. Finally the noise became loud, completely overcoming the pinging of the water against the stone. Louder, closer, storming to him. He let his eyelids fall closed, his breathing evened out, the cold numbing finally took hold and his shivering suddenly ceased, and so he just listened to the harsh crashing of feet against stone.
/-
“Rodney?” Rodney jumped, shocking Sam into pulling her hand away. Her breath caught and she watched him, his eyes glazed and his mind disoriented as he looked around. She only calmed once he looked back to her, his eyes somewhat less cloudy. “You okay?”
“Hmm? Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” He looked up to see her watching him, her eyes scrutinizing his appearance. He chose not to comment, looking away. “What’s up?”
“Daniel just called over the radio. He thinks he’s got something.”
“Really? Already?”
“Yeah,” she shrugged, finally breaking a smile as her worry left her. Rodney was standing already, holding his half eaten lunch with a look of distain. He set it aside, looking to her for any further information. “He thinks it’s some kind of code.”
“To keep just anyone from figuring it out?”
“I guess. Or maybe the scientist was just particularly paranoid.”
Rodney shrugged. Sam swallowed down her concern as she looked at him. His face was troubled, his jaw clenched, and his eyes hard. She recognized the look- he had been wearing it often not long ago- but she had hoped that whatever was troubling him had left him. But she didn’t have time to wonder what had reminded him before she was standing in the Ancient lab and Rodney was saying, “You figured it out?”
“Oh, um, yeah,” Daniel sighed, turning awkwardly to see them walking in. A smile came over him and Sam drew in a deep breath, bracing herself for the excited explanation. She wondered if she looked just like that when she had figured something out. “It struck me that most of the symbols seemed familiar, but just slightly different. What I noticed was that-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Enough with the logistical chatter. You can read it?”
“Um,” he looked to Sam. She just shrugged. “Yeah. I can read it.”
“All right.” Rodney nodded towards the control panel, “So what should we try looking for?”
He looked over at Sam. She sighed, titling her head as she thought. “Let’s try… try weapon first, see what we get.”
“Weapon?”
She shrugged at Daniel’s creased brow. “It’s our best guess.”
He nodded, though hesitantly, before a word that sounded vaguely Ancient left his lips. She watched the screen then as it seemed to shuffle through it’s entire library. The screen went blank and Daniel shook his head slowly.
“Try power source. Our second theory,” she finished with a shrug and Daniel nodded before calling something else out. She watched as the same process happened- the screen flickering through images, slowing as it neared the end. Suddenly, her face brightened and she glanced at Rodney, knowing by his wide eyes and stuttering hand that he had seen it as well.
“Wait,” he called out, his hand raised and his fingers snapping as he tried to find the words, “Go back.” Daniel glanced at him and then Sam before his fingers tapped at the console, reviewing the images one by one before both Rodney and Sam called out to him to stop.
Sam stepped closer, as if it would assist her in understanding a mess of lines that had never meant anything to her. She glanced over at Daniel, deciding to watch him instead as his eyes rapidly look over each symbol, his brain quickly adjusting it into legible Ancient, his face glowing brighter with each word he was able to understand.
“Well? What does it say?”
“Something about…” he sighed, his eyes skimming over the words again, “It… if I’m reading this right,” he glanced at them as he said that, but then looked back to the symbols as he continued. “It looks like this thing might be able to… to… recharge a ZPM.”
“Re-charge?”
“Like a battery charger?”
“I think so,” he nodded.
She turned in time to see Rodney picking up the device, his face contorting into an awkward mixture of glee and distain all at once. “How?”
“I don’t know. Hang on… something about… oh…”
“Oh what?”
He looked to them; both pairs of eyes locked on him, their breathes held in hopes of good news and dreading what was surely to be bad news. “It looks like they never finished their only prototype.”
Rodney groaned while Sam sighed in frustration. “You mean it doesn’t work.”
“It doesn’t say that it doesn’t work- it’s just not done.”
“They wouldn’t happen to have left instructions?” Rodney quipped, his eyes already looking over the device, hoping that his sweeping glance could solve the mystery that the Ancients couldn’t.
“Why to you think they didn’t finish?” she asked the room, her voice reaching both sets of ears, but neither could do anything but look over at her.
Rodney finally shrugged. “They all died from the plague.”
/-
… one… two…
A noise blocked out the sounds of the drips. He paused, blinking a few times behind the blindfold. But the noise had stopped.
… one… two… three… four…
The noise started again. It was soft, unrecognizable, but insistent…
Stomping feet. Boots on stones. Finally the noise became loud, completely overcoming the pinging of the water against the stone. Louder, closer, storming to him. He let his eyelids fall closed, his breathing evened out, the cold numbing finally took hold and his shivering suddenly ceased, and so he just listened to the harsh crashing of feet against stone.
/-
He snapped his eyes opened, heart pounding in his head. He gasped in air, desperately fighting to hold his eyes opened and stave off the images floating in the blackness of his mind.
He shifted against the smushed pillow, craning his neck to see the clock on the nightstand. He groaned. It was early. Too early to eat, too early to be up.
He fell back on to the bed, lying on his back. He pulled the blankets back around him, shocked by the cold of the night. He shifting again, his eyes drooping dangerously closed. The images came back too quickly. He tried to force them away, trying instead to focus on the ceiling of his room. It was concrete, grey, and unappealing. His eyes drooped closed.
The vivid colours already started attacking his mind. His eyes fluttered back open, closing under the weight of his exhaustion. He tried to think of Sam, tried to remember an old dream involving her, hoping that she could entertain his mind long enough to drift back into the void of sleep.
It didn’t work. Sam’s face blurred between her own and another. The intimate scenery distorted into a blend of the room and the planet.
He snapped his eyes back opened, pushing the covers away, allowing the chill of the air to wake him. He swung his legs over the bed, wincing when his bare skin made contact with the cold floor.
There were no personal showers, so Rodney redressed sloppily and headed down the dark hall towards the locker room. His way was lit by soft lights and by the lights of the random office still occupied.
He stripped easily near the showers, not worried about someone seeing him. It was too late for any one on Earth hours to be roaming in there and he didn’t think any team was off world. But, honestly, he wasn’t really giving any of that much thought.
The water dripped down on his skin, burning the sensitive nerves as it streamed down. He left it that way for a while, forcing himself to feel burning, before he turned down the temperature, shocking his system with a second wave of coldness. He stood under the water, resting his head against the wall, his eyes falling and his mind fighting off sleep. But he still feared what waited for him when he closed his eyes. He started suddenly, straightening and turning off the water. He shivered, but ignored it, stepping out into the cold locker room to find a towel and his clothes.
The commissary was empty, as he expected it, but a pot of coffee sat ready for any late night visitor. He picked it up, looking into it. It was brewed not long ago. He grabbed a mug, pouring it full. Taking a sip, he cringed. It was cold but strong enough. He stared down into his coffee for a while, shaking his head to keep from collapsing.
His feet began to walk away and he knew moving was the only way to stay awake. He wandered for some time. A few guards looked up at him, but a scientist awake at ungodly hours was nothing they weren’t accustom to. Eventually he found his way into Sam’s lab. He stopped, sighing as he looked down at the device. Setting down his empty mug, he got back to work.
It was hours later before anything interrupted him. Rubbing his eyes and wishing for another pot of coffee, he typed haphazardly at the computer, collecting his thoughts. “Rodney?” He didn’t flinch, or even respond to her voice, but instead continued to type. Sam waited a moment for him to finish his thought, but he still didn’t acknowledge her. “Rodney?” He perked at her raised tone, turning his head slightly but not pulling his eyes away from the screen.
“Hmm?”
“How long have you been here?”
“I dunno,” he shrugged, “What time is it?”
“Eight.”
“Eight?” His fingers slowed for the first time and he spun to look at her. His face was haggard, his eyes dulled by the circles beneath them.
“Have you been up all night?”
“Most of it.”
“Go to sleep then. Take a break.”
“I don’t want to take a break,” he hissed.
Her jaw tensed at the tone, but she persisted, “Rodney, you’re tired-”
“I’m fine!” She leaned away from him, the harsh tone enough to make her body straighten unconsciously. Slowly she drew in a breath and looked away, ignoring his harshness by putting it off as exhaustion.
He just shook his head and rubbed at his eyes, as if it would stave off the exhaustion leaking out through his words. His feet pushed back on the floor and his body leaned back into the chair, letting him roll backwards until he could reach out and grab the ZPM. He just stared down at the thing for a while, taking in the lifelessness of it, the dulled colours, the awkward and yet perfect cutting of its shape. It had been depleted two months ago in Antarctica but, hopefully, if they could ever figure out how to use the device, that would no longer be a problem.
“If this device does actually “recharge” a ZPM, there should be some way to interface them. Have you-”
“Yes, Sam, I have tried to shove them together. Maybe it was the interface that never got finished.” Sam blew out a breath, her brows slightly raised and her lips pursed. “Maybe if we had a working translation to know exactly how this is supposed to work, we could figure this out.”
“Yeah, well Daniel’s working as fast as he can. And it can’t be that difficult to figure out how to interface these things.” She wanted to bite her tongue for the sharpness of her words, but when he spun around to face her, his slight roll of his eyes and his huff of impatience had her straightening and leaning away from the desk.
“Yes, well you’re little minions here might find it fun to just jam things together, but I actually try to find a, I don’t know, scientific reason to what’s happening and how it all works.”
“Really? This coming from the man who blew up a solar system.”
“Five eighths!”
“Same thing.”
“At least it was more impressive that blowing up a sun.”
“At least I meant to blow up a sun.”
His next retort seemed to crumble on his tongue and his eyes fell bkack down onto the machine, his hands slowly turning the ZPM in his hands.
“Could I see that?”
“What?”
“The ZPM,” she stretched her hand over the desk, palm open for him to place it in her hand.
“For what?”
“I have an idea.”
“What?”
She pulled her hand away, letting it join the other arm over her chest. It was difficult not to roll her eyes at him.
“This panel here looks like it can be removed-”
“I know. We’ve tried that.”
“Yes, manually. The ZPM itself might be necessary-”
“What? You want to just set it on there and hope that something happens? Yeah, real scientific. It doesn’t eve look like the ZPM design.”
“Just try it.”
She thought for a moment that he wasn’t going to listen to her. That he was going to lean back into his chair, look away, and start foundling the ZPM again until he figured something out. Amazingly enough, though, he sighed and his eyes fell closed. She noticed how much more relaxed he seemed when eh didn’t have tired eyes staring up at her or eyelids drooping and threatening to close. HE shook his head after a moment and sucked in a deep breath before he forced himself to stand, the ZPM still in hand. He seemed to study both ends of the ZPM before studying the device.
“There,” he said after he had set the tip of the ZPM on the flat surface of the device.
“Turn in around.”
He sighed and she imagined that he rolled his eyes at her, but he did it, taking just the one hand to twist it around. He set the flat head of the ZPM on the device. Nothing. Sam sighed, her eyes closing for a moment in defeat.
“What about…?” She looked up at his muttering, watching as he shifted the ZPM to the left and then the right, as if trying to twist it into a snug fit. She just stood there, her eyes heavy with uncertainty and drossiness, until something finally clicked into place. They both just stared, mouths slightly agape and lips just barely contorting into smug smirks, as they watched the device twist the ZPM to the left, the flat surface retracting out of the way. The ZPM was locked into place, but nothing further happened.
A smile grew over her lips, but, by the time she had looked up at him, his pout had already returned and she couldn’t help by sigh and wonder what he was going to snip at next.
Because snipping was something he was good at. She had always known that- they had worked together enough times in the past to know that he was harsh, almost to the point of abusive, with the people he worked with. But something had changed in him since he had arrived back on Earth. She had hoped that maybe it was Atlantis that was finally doing him some good, toning down his smugness and helping to find the sweet man beneath the rough exterior. But, whether the sweet guy had just been a figment of her imagination or hunger, nerves, stress, and exhaustion were just the material that made up that exterior, she didn’t know.
“We still don’t know how it works.”
She just nodded, sighing out her last breath of air as she thought just how long a day they were in for. “I’m going to go get us some coffee.”
“Yeah.”
She sighed at the dismissive tone. Then turned, hesitating at the door before deciding not to look over at him.
She had told herself not to start liking him. She had gone so many years content with thinking of Rodney McKay as the annoying ass that he can be. But she had seen a softer side to him- a side that she actually found cute and fun and funny even- and she didn’t want to see it disappear again.