--------------------------------------
Title:Extinctions and relocation, (a form of love story).
Author:Keenir
For:Shushu, who asked me for a 'Stargate:Atlantis' story with Siberia and McKay/Weir in it.
I admit there's not a great deal of McWeir…sorry.
Great and many thanks to Lirenel, who beta-read this for me.
Summary:A tale of Rodney and Miko on two planets, and how they and Elizabeth handle the Ancients' ultimatum.
Author's Note:While I originally wrote this as a coda to 'The Return 1,' it could also serve as a missing scene, just prior to the main crew (Weir, McKay, and the others) on Earth. Or maybe its an AU.
Rating:PG / PG-13
Pairing:hints of Miko/Rodney and Elizabeth/Rodney.
Canon characters:Miko, Rodney, Elizabeth, Kate.
Quotation:'If we allow ourselves to praise and honor make-believe like this, the next thing will be to find it creeping into our serious business.'--reputedly stated by an Athenian statesman, about theater dramas; approximately 5 BC.
--------------------------------
'I do not know how the following manuscript came into my possession, and have less of an inkling how the text came to be. There are strange and powerful things in the universe, and perhaps they had a hand in this transcription, and perhaps not. It is an immaterial consideration in either case, as what follows is not about any Powers, but rather about two very good friends of mine.
'Rodney McKay and Miko Kubodera are more alike than they seem at first, and even second, glance. Rodney is famous across two galaxies for rubbing people the wrong way. Miko is quiet, soft, and unassuming. Yet I have come to know that these are merely their ways of dealing with strangers. When it is just the two of them, Rodney is far less abrasive and Miko is more open.
'For a long time, I had wondered why they had acted they way they did. This text answers many of my questions on the matter.'
--Radek Zelenka
-----------------------------------------
PART ONE:EARTH:
Six Years prior to the Disbanding of the Atlantis Expedition:
Siberia, Russia:
Rodney McKay watched the end of the sunrise playing on the surface of the broad river and against the sides of the cliffs on the river's far side. "Great. Now that we've done this, can we go?" he asked Sasha Romanov, his guide during his stay in Russia – and tasked with keeping the Canadian from getting lost or in trouble – had brought him out here, driving the whole way from the facility where they'd been working.
"That wasn't the reason we came down here," Sasha said.
"Oh really?" Then couldn't it have waited until the area warmed up? I don't mind waiting for global warming, you know.
"Yes. She's why," he said, pointing through the truck's windshield at one of the two sleeping heavily-bundled-up workers…no, they were excavating exactly halfway between the truck and the river, and hadn't looked up even with how close the truck had come.
"Who's she?"
"Your wife."
"No she's not."
"Not as yet. She will be. Just as I'm going to marry her." He was pointing now to the second excavating woman.
Having heard tales of Sasha's matchmaking from colleagues back at the facility, "Well then," McKay said, unbuckling himself and opening his door, "who am I to argue with fate?" and climbed out, paying no attention to Sasha's imprecations against Canadians who didn't get a joke.
Miko had been a yard-and-a-half away from the object of Sasha's affections. Both women stood up and strode the few meters to where Rodney and Sasha stood, by the headlights of the truck. "Dr. Miko Kubodera," Sasha said, making introductions, "Dr. Yelena Minke, Dr. Rodney McKay."
"Charmed," Rodney said, extending a gloved hand.
"I'm sure," Miko said, shaking said hand. She hadn't used Rodney's tone, but his jaw dropped, amazed that she had replied correctly to his greeting.
"Close your mouth," Minke told him, "or your mouth will freeze."
He shut it, then said, "No it won't."
"Want to be the first to find out?" Amusement glittered in her slate-grey eyes.
"No."
"Doctor McKay," Miko asked, "what is your field of study?"
"Did you bring us another railroad engineer?" Minke asked Sasha, her sarcasm so obvious even McKay couldn't help but see it.
"Nyet."
"I'm," Rodney said, "a theoretical physicist."
Both women groaned. Miko extended an arm to lead him to one side. "If you do not object, Doctor, I will teach you how to dig."
Before Rodney could even turn his head, Sasha told him, "Go on. This is why I brought you out here."
"Great," McKay said under his breath. To Miko he forced a smile and said, "Sounds like fun," before letting himself be led away. Sasha works for the government; there's no way he'd let me anywhere near either of these women if there was even the slightest possibility I'd be in danger. "So, Dr. Kubodera, what is it you're digging for?"
"Siberian traps," Miko said.
Why not just buy new ones? And he thought of two possible reasons why not. "Are you an archeologist or a wildlife biologist?" The first would write papers on the style and mechanics of the trap, and how people used them; and the second would gather up traps set by poachers. Were there poachers this far out?
"Neither. I am a paleocatastrophologist."
Rodney blinked. You study extinctions? "Didn't know anyone could specialize in that."
"It requires dedication," she admitted.
"And you're studying them in the middle of nowhere?" Even Tunguska wasn't in the neighborhood.
"Doctor McKay, you are standing on the Siberian traps." His first reaction did not even factor in the bit of amusement in her voice. He blamed the cold for the fact that part of his brain hadn't processed the 'paleo' part of her profession, and got him moving to get her safe: he picked her up and danced to one side and a little over -- and fell on his back, Miko landing on him. "Are you okay?" she asked, entirely concerned.
"Been better…been worse. So where exactly are these traps?" More to himself, did Sasha set it up? It certainly fit with the engineer's sense of humor: set a trap that wouldn't snap shut for love or money, and watch peoples' reactions to it.
She laughed, a sound Rodney considered quite pleasant. "Dr. McKay, the Siberian traps erupted two hundred and fifty million years ago. I am here studying the greatest extinction in the history of Earth. When all that lava flowed, nine-tenths of all life perished."
Just on Earth? "Oh."
"I should get off of you. We are here to work," she continued and helped him stand up.
-------------------------------------------
PART TWO:PEGASUS GALAXY:
PROLOGUE:
Eis Einf was the planet's name, Einf being the supercontinent. Had Einf been perfectly flat, the interior would have been so dry that nobody would have been able to come to or from the Stargate. But that was where the Ancients had put the Stargate eight million years ago: smack dab in the middle of the continental depression, which itself was off-center of the continent itself. The human cities and villages were set along the distant coastlines of the supercontinent, and the air wasn't as thin out there, but it was still thinner than sea level on most habitable worlds. The humans called themselves the Ei.
----------------------------------
Their work there done, Doctors Herlihy, Bug, and Pramanasudh had left Eis Einf when Rodney had arrived, their destination the same as so many of the others who had survived that harrowing first year in Atlantis: they were staying in Pegasus, refusing to be thrown back to Earth. They just were not staying in Atlantis any longer. Nor were they staying on Eis Eif longer than they had to: they'd been here because Dr. Weir had sent them here to work…before the Ancients had returned. There were worlds here in Pegasus that would give the doctors a home.
Rodney weathered Miko's stony silence as they sat, one tiny part of the audience watching the oscho. Oscho, whose participants and whose audience sat on a plain of wood planks. Oscho, a form of theater endemic to this one world, demanded that its actors not move like people – instead, they conveyed themselves like elements of nature; rocks, water, clouds, darts, wraith, and more. This particular play had been Rodney's suggestion; they knew the play – it was a regular favorite among the Ei – and he'd added an ending…more of a modifying of the traditional closing.
Before their eyes, lava shot from the sea, embers dancing in the steam-filled air. Thunderous drumming behind the audience. More lava oozed up through the earth. Drums pounding now, slow and stately. Then came the Wraith, who collapsed upon the earth – even their might brought low by these conditions, and all knew Wraith could live where men could not.
When the oscho came to a close, the chief stepped over to have a word with Rodney, who watched helplessly as Miko walked away from the oschogrounds. He wanted to follow her, to try and talk some sense into her… but the chief's bodyguards had already surrounded the two men. "An interesting advice for an ending, doctor," the chief said.
"Yes, yes, yes," Rodney said in his usual way. "Once Dr. Corrigan told me the roles involved," and the associated symbolism, "it was a cinch." Especially since none of the actors are allowed to represent people or cities, much less civilization as a whole.
"And you truly believe it will come to pass?"
Why does he sound like he's humouring me? "Of course I do. Don't these things forbid anyone to lie?" That'd been what Corrigan had said.
"Or to exaggerate. But I allowed this showing, as you are allied with the Emmagans who are allied to our allies the Phren."
"Wait a – wait, you don't believe me?" He supposed he should have been more shocked than he was.
Patiently, as though to a slow child the chief commented, "As you are a foreigner, you are prone to hyperbole."
"So this whole thing was – what? – just statecraft?"
"What else? It was quite dramatic, I grant you."
"I don't believe this!"
"What and why?"
"Because," Rodney said, gulping in air, "it's the truth!"
"You believe it will happen, this disaster?"
"Yes!"
"Why and for what reason?"
"Because the Ancients detected a – what?" Rodney paused when the chief started smiling, though it was a smile with a frightened look in his eyes.
"Lava has always flowed from the ground and steamed the seas. Yet still mankind has survived here."
"I don't care."
"Truth is no opinion, doctor. That is the core of oscho. And the core of our lives."
"Fine. Let me put it in plain English: what you've seen before were hiccups to this planet. This time, it's going to be bigger and louder than any of those! Comprende that?"
"I understand what you are claiming, doctor."
"But you don't believe me, do you?"
"You are –"
"A foreigner, I know."
"Worse; you are a foreigner who only came here to tell of this claim of yours."
He hadn't said 'preposterous,' not aloud, but Rodney could feel the subtext just fine. "Fine, I admit I've never been here before, but I came here," even if it was for a selfish reason, "as soon as the Ancients –"
"Doctor. Look at our rocks," the chief said and left Rodney alone, bodyguards trailing their leader like ducklings after their mother.
"'Rocks'?" McKay repeated. And he could think of only one person who could explain that comment satisfactorily. The selfsame woman who'd helped him with his Russian. Miko Kubodera.
…and he ran the way she'd gone.
Very quickly Rodney remembered why none of the Atlantis personnel ran anywhere on this planet: because only the locals could get enough air to breathe while running. Even so, he jogged as fast as he humanly could, keeping his mouth open to take in as much oxygen as possible, thankful the thin air wasn't dry air too…he doubted his throat could have taken such a one-two punch. As it was, the dirt his shoes kicked up fell back to earth swifter than similar clods would on more normal worlds, keeping any dust clouds from arising and getting in anyone's eyes.
It wasn't any exposed roots or stones that tripped Rodney up, sending him falling forwards. Quite simply, his brain had demanded he stop for a break, but had sent that memo while his one foot was in the air, and the other was pushing off the ground. He had just enough time to raise his arms to take the brunt of the fall, protecting his face.
Coughs fought with gulps of air, expelling dust and carbon dioxide warring with a thirst for oxygen. Should've brought that O2 tank Carson suggested, and knew exactly why he hadn't hauled the portable tank from the Stargate to this village: I didn't think I'd be here that long, and I certainly didn't expect to be running.
He still had not been here that long: less than a day in the village. Picking himself up, he did not shake much dust off, just in case his brain pulled that trick again. And back to running. Didn't want to lose track of Miko, didn't want to get lost here, didn't want to lose her.
It was a bit further to the nearest house, an adobe structure resting against a ten-foot cliff that clearly showed the sediments and the geological history – there was a lot of shiny gold-looking stuff in it. Past that, Rodney knew, is the ocean. Ignoring the children standing around the houses off to his left, Rodney stopped at one particular house, and put his hand on the doorlatch.Before heading inside, Rodney dusted himself off, slapping at his sleeves, picking some of the tougher bits free…and then stepped inside, shutting the door behind him, so no dust storms would take them by surprise.
And indeed, just as he had thought, here she was, kneeling alongside her books. Most of these books had been written by her. He stood there, waiting patiently, hoping she would acknowledge him.
"Rodney," she spoke after a while.
As usual, he blurted out his response – 'blurted' in the sense of not thinking beforehand –
"What's wrong?" Rodney asked, hoping to know.
--------------
INTERLUDE ON ATLANTIS:
WEIR'S BALCONY:
"Thinking?" Kate asked, standing at the balcony door.
Elizabeth nodded. "Just taking a breather."
"Can't imagine why you'd need a break," the psychologist quipped.
Looking over her shoulder at Kate, Weir asked, "Is there something on your mind, Doctor?" She was not in any mood to argue with anyone, so she figured the sooner Kate got to the point the sooner Kate would leave her to her thoughts. It was official now: the end of the human era on Atlantis. From now on, humanity would be nothing more than guests on this waystation that was so key to intergalactic travel.
"A few things. Problem is, they all come right back to you. Every problem I've heard this past week, all the stories I've been told, every one of them has your fingerprints all over it. Funny thing, eh?"
"If you're going to accuse me of something, Kate, just get it over with."
"Oh I'm not accusing. I'm just telling you that you've set in motion a lot of things, some of which you may not be aware of just yet."
Taking a wild guess, Weir asked, "And it involves the Ancients too, doesn't it?"
"They're integral to all the stories. Some people don't name the Ancients, others only suspect that it's the Ancients' backwash they've been tossed aside by."
"Colorful."
"And accurate. The Ancients came here like a tide, and everyone here's just flotsam, discardable at a moments' notice."
"Not everyone's leaving."
"You mean how they're allowing exactly one human to stay here – or do you mean them?" a clear reference to the activation just now. The ongoing evacuation was thorough and methodical, a steady stream of people and equipment leaving for Earth. Every hour, that flow stopped so other expedition members could head elsewhere. "They're heading to Hoff."
"I wish them well," Weir said with the tone of one who wishes there was another way. She had wished them all well, every group who had headed away from Earth.
"I'm going to guess that you're only now realizing you rimrocked yourself."
Rimrocked. When you climb a hill or mountain, and suddenly realize that you can't go up, and you can't go down. "You're right." In a pique of anger at herself she added to that, "I wish you weren't, but you are."
"What are we supposed to do, Elizabeth?" Kate asked her. "What exactly did you expect would happen? You lured most of us here with the prospect of making discoveries, of pushing the envelope of what was known. And as soon as a ship of Ancients shows up, you demand we all pack up and go home. Are you surprised that this many of us are staying, or are you surprised the number isn't higher?"
Of those who had survived the first year in Atlantis – the year of no Earth – fully half of them had chosen to stay in the Pegasus Galaxy. Those drawn from the various militaries of Earth tendered their resignations rather than leave. Teyla had smiled when Bates had asked if he could join the Athosian encampment.
"It wasn't my decision," Elizabeth said. "The Ancients –"
"Yes, the Ancients. How hard did you fight them?"
"Wh- ?"
"Did you even try? Or did you just sit there and say nothing when they ever-so-politely asked for we puny humans to get the hell out of Dodge?"
"You have to admit, Kate, that this is their city."
Kate Heightmeyer blinked. "Please, tell me that wasn't the best defense you can muster." Ticking the points off on her fingers, "They'd abandoned Atlantis. Unlike them, we've been able to fight the Wraith to a standstill on at least one occasion. We don't just have allies in this galaxy – we also have friends. Many of us have indeed learned more, both of the universe and of ourselves. We –"
Holding up a hand, "I get the picture."
"Do you?"
"Yes, I do."
"Did you defend us?"
Sadly, Weir shook her head. "Not as well as you just did."
"Do you intend to raise any of these points with them in the near future?"
"No."
"To think that you used to be a good diplomat," Kate growled and walked away, brushing her aside, deaf to further conversation.
Alone now, Elizabeth turned towards the railing, looking out to a random point on the ocean horizon.
"Did I surrender too quickly, too easily, too readily?" Elizabeth wondered to herself, her whispers flickering away in the breeze. The wind was starting to pick up, but she wasn't about to head back inside, not yet; she'd weathered the winds as a hurricane had approached, and lived. "Was I overeager to let the Ancients remove the weights, the increasing burden from my shoulders?
"Did I really believe the Ancients would share Atlantis with us? Like Radek, I think I believed that, once these Ancients got over their initial shock at all that'd happened, all that'd changed in their absence, that they'd accept us as equals?" Is Kavanagh right? Do they truly regard us – all of us, even Radek and Rodney – as nothing more than clever monkeys…chimpanzees at best?
----------------
BACK ON THE SUPERCONTINENT:
NEAR THE COAST on Ein Eif:
"What's wrong?" Rodney asked her.
"'What is wrong?'?" Miko asked. "The Einf strata shows an event more efficient than Siberia's."
Back on Earth, anyone with a second-grade education had heard of the dinosaurs. But, Rodney had learned, when the Siberian traps covered so much of the Earth, there were no dinosaurs. In their place, saber-toothed unmammals hunted bony-skinned prototurtles They had covered the globe, dominating next to all the niches. And then, in a geological eye-blink, there was an extinction. A mass extinction far more severe and terrible than the passing-away of the dinosaurs. 96 of all life died. The survivors evolved into turtles, dinosaurs, and mammals.
'More efficient.' Those words chilled Rodney. "Then you agree we –"
"I had the Extermination Layer dated, Rodney. Eight million years ago, Einf was flooded with oxygen. At the same time, the Ancients arrive on Einf, the precise moment of the complete extinction" To punctuate this, she held up a chunk of fool's gold. "Pyrite can't form in the presence of oxygen. Whatever strategy the Ancients used to terraform planets …"
"It put the kibosh on any more pyrite."
She nodded.
"And," he ventured, "you're afraid they're going to do it again?"
"I do not know. Perhaps they will, perhaps they won't. What I do know is that I am loathe to put stock in the words of people who excel at extinguishing a planet of life."
"You think they're lying?"
Miko shrugged. "It does not matter."
"But it does matter." It certainly should matter.
"No. I left Atlantis because they left us no options." Not with the returned Ancients and Dr. Weir in cahoots against us all, forsaking the camaraderie and plans we have developed over the years we have spent living in Atlantis.
"They cannot order me to abandon my work here."
"Nobody's asking you to retire."
"It would be a retirement only in the sense of never being permitted to work in this galaxy for the rest of my life."
"I know the feeling."
"Hai, no you do not."
"Uh, I've got to head back to Earth now that the Swiss Family van Winkle showed up," managing to avoid putting a snapping 'excuse me' at the start of his sentence.
Averting her eyes, Miko replied, "That is your decision."
When Rodney told her, "You're welcome to come with me," Miko looked up at him, then looked away, not feeling up to dashing what hopes she had left. "Classified or not, what we've done here'll let us work anywhere we want. Russia, South Africa, Mexico...just name it."
Miko was silent for a long while; Rodney patiently awaited her answer. 'Your words are tempting', Miko thought to herself, but… "No. I won't go back, not like this. I refuse to move on the orders of others when those others are like them." Not looking away, "My Emperor is not a god nor the descendant of a god. My people no longer believe in his divinity either. Why therefore should I obey the dictates of other gods?"
"They're not gods."
"How would you describe them?" she asked with no criticism.
They scour entire worlds, playing god by any definition of a god. "They're god-wannabes," Rodney admitted.
Miko nodded. "If you'd like to return to Earth, I wish you well. I would give you a message for my family, were it not that I have already sent my farewells."
------------------------------------
A DAY LATER:
Eis Einf:
Miko Kubodera sat on the ledge of the paleontological dig, looking out at the first stars of the evening. "Be well, Rodney," she said, her voice carried by the soft wind, and heard by only it and her. "Do well, but more importantly, stay safe.
"Be happy." She knew Rodney felt as strongly for her as he did for Dr. Weir. But he had more hope for a future with Dr. Elizabeth Weir…
If he stayed in Pegasus, his career would be at an end. No more access to the tools of Earth or of the Ancients, as well as any advanced civilization who wished to maintain good relations with either of the above -- and that left only the Wraith. After a while, he would have resented her: if he stayed for her, stayed with her, then he would forever associate her with the end of his intellectual life.
If he went to Earth, his career would thrive. He would see Dr. Weir, and perhaps their relationship would continue.
"If I must be a memory, let me be a happy memory."
-------------
The End