In the course of my Robert Carlyle collected works marathon I stumbled over Stargate Universe and became, for lack of a better word, obsessed with Dr. Nicholas Rush. Thank you so much to JaneScarlett who has never even seen Stargate and still did the beta work on this and listened to me go on and on. You're an absolute star! Read her Doctor Who fics!

This is also for Lilgreenmomo who loves Stargate, even if she found Universe a tad dark.

None of this belongs to me. I am just borrowing Rush. I don't own Stargate or Robert Carlyle...

Insomnia

"There is a close link between insomnia and despair. The loss of hope comes with the loss of sleep. The difference between paradise and hell: you can always sleep in paradise, never in hell."

-E.M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

Chapter 1.

(I don't sleep. I hate those little slices of death –Walter Reisch)

Rush jolted awake abruptly and checked the clock. He'd been asleep for two minutes. Barely two minutes; and he felt the exhaustion heavy in his limbs, a dull ache that never seemed to leave him these days. He had slept only a handful of hours since returning from the rocky planet where he had left Simeon's corpse, which was even less than he usually did since arriving aboard the Destiny.

In his dreams he saw Simeon again: torn and bloody, lying on the ground, his eyes pleading for mercy; and Rush felt the weight of the gun in his hands, his finger tight on the trigger. All logic told him that revenge would bring no relief; revenge would not bring Amanda Perry back. She was gone, like Gloria before her; and once again Rush had been powerless to stop it. For all his genius, all he could do was stand by impotently while she was snatched away from him.

But this he had power over, this he could do. He could take his revenge, could snuff out Simeon's little life. He could do murder.

Don't pull the trigger. You don't have to do this. He could barely hear his conscience over the pounding of rage in his head. The pounding, like the beat of drums, grew louder and louder until nothing was left but that glorious cacophony. Then, without further ado, he'd unloaded the precious bullets into Simeon's skull… and now, awake, with every nerve twitching, he could still hear the ring of the shots in his ears.

Was it any wonder he couldn't sleep? When it wasn't Simeon keeping him awake, it was Mandy. In some dreams he lay stretched out on his couch back on Earth while she sat beside him, small pale hands folded in her lap where her nurse had placed them, large blue eyes shining with admiration.

Dreams of Mandy often preceded dreams of Gloria and vice versa. When it wasn't Mandy by his bedside, it was Gloria lying asleep in his bed, her breath regular, the faint huff of her exhale tickling his neck. Or sometimes her breasts were pressed against his back, her hand on his cock as her legs entwined with his own, her arms around him and her lips against his ear. Nick, I want you to take me fast and hard. He'd wake up confused, aroused and short of breath, cursing the weakness of the human body, trembling with unspent desire and disappointment.

Sometimes he didn't dream of anyone at all and he was alone with the numbers. Vast whiteboards so full so blue felt tipped numbers, they could barely be called whiteboards anymore. Pages upon pages of scribbles: the endless proofs he dreamt he'd solved. In trying to unlock the secret of the Ninth Chevron on Icarus, he often dreamt he'd solved the equations only to wake and discover his notes were incomplete. The figures he had seen while asleep were shadowy, impossible, and elusive; they had no basis in reality. Only the feeling of triumph had seemed so real that as the dreams melted away he'd still felt the joy singing in his veins. That traitorous joy that was heady, intoxicating as alcohol, as sweet as a kiss.

It was becoming increasingly impossible for Rush to tell reality from nightmare. Awake, he conversed with both Franklin and Gloria though neither of them existed in corporeal form. He had brought Destiny back from the brink of destruction too many times to count. He'd seen proof of his own demise again and again. All this should have made him uncomfortable. Who could see what he had seen and not go mad? The human mind could only take so much.

But let's face it, Rush told himself as he lay in bed, a genius' grip on reality is precarious at best. No, of everything, what made him uncomfortable was the fact that exhaustion made him sloppy. Sloppiness could mean the difference between life and death on Destiny. He couldn't afford mistakes. The others might, but not he; not Dr. Nicholas Rush. And the more he thought of failure, of falling asleep at a crucial moment, the less he could sleep.

Insomnia. Like a vast wasteland stretching before him, with no end and no beginning. He had begun to long for sleep the way one might crave the touch of a lover. Sometimes he would nod off briefly and dream of sleeping, like a parched man in the desert hallucinating of water. Or when he was awake, he would fantasise about it. He'd imagine sleeping for days, waking up revived and clear headed. Every breath was sharp and refreshing, every step sure and full of energy. He craved sleep the way he used to crave nicotine. Only he couldn't give up the former as he had given up cigarettes.

Occasionally he would crash and sleep fifteen hours straight, like a man in a coma. He would wake up to a head full of cotton wool and his entire body buzzing with needles and pins. Or he'd find Lieutenant Johansen leaning over him, checking his pulse. He'd pull away, embarrassed, irritated at the weakness of his own body and spit something abrasive at her. Johansen had gotten good at deflecting these venomous remarks. She would calmly tell him how vital it was to get enough sleep and nourishment. She would tell him that this had to stop, that he was in denial if he thought he could continue to work like this indefinitely. She would lecture him and he would promise to get more rest. And then he would carry on as he always had.

In truth he hadn't slept well in years, since long before he killed Simeon, before setting foot aboard the Destiny, even before Icarus. Perhaps since the time Gloria first fell ill; when he would lie in bed beside her listening to her breath and dreading the moment when it would stop, afraid to drift off for fear he would wake to find her still, cold body beside his. He'd pulled away from her because of that fear, abandoned her emotionally long before she actually died.

And when she was dead and he was confronted with the cold, hard reality of his grief; he chose to supress it. He swallowed it down like a bitter draught; he said he'd been expecting it and that she was better off, because at least she was no longer in pain. He told them everyone the work was what was keeping him going, the soundest way to get through grief was to keep busy; and everyone seemed to accept that…or at least he avoided anyone who didn't agree with his survival tactic.

But in actual fact there was no way for Rush to tell if he was still grieving. For years all he had known was work and it had left little space for him to contemplate his emotions. He had allowed the work to stifle them until he could barely interpret them, so that he hadn't even recognised his feelings for Mandy when she came along and attempted to pull him out of his downward spiral with her kind words and soft voice and quick mind. He hadn't realised the extent of his emotions for her until it was too late.

Because of the grief he immersed himself in his work - because of the work he couldn't sleep - and when he couldn't sleep, he worked to escape his own terrifying thoughts. And on and on it went: a vicious circle.

But if he looked back even further he realised he had always been a light sleeper, ever since he was a boy in Glasgow, waiting up for his father to come home from work. Wee Nick had believed, absurdly, that if he fell asleep before his Dad returned, his father might never come home at all; and consequently he' had slept in fits and starts, always imagining he'd heard the sound of his Dad's key in the door, the creak of his boots on the stair. Sometimes he'd sit up with his Mum till her head drooped to her chest, and her breath came out in snuffles.

"If you can't sleep, Nicholas," Mum would tell him when he explained to her that he just wasn't sleepy; "then just try to relax instead or have a cup of warm milk."

Neither solution was an option these days. There was no warm milk aboard Destiny; though he might ask Lieutenant Johansen for a sleeping pill or an herbal drink concocted from plants gleaned off one of those planets along the way. He might listen to music to relax, though music invariably made him think of Gloria. He might lie very still and clear his mind, but his mind was too busy to ever be quiet for long.

Chloe swore she slept better since she started doing yoga. (She had also suffered from blackout episodes while infected with the alien pathogen, so perhaps yoga had nothing to do with it.) Mr Brody swore the moonshine worked wonders. (Though considering how often the man walked in in the morning suffering from a hangover, Rush found Brody's solution unacceptable). And Parks had her own methods according to rumour… but Rush very much doubted they had anything to do with reading.