AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well it has been a LONG LONG LONG while since I posted anything. Hard to get into the reaons. There are many, the least not being I am now the father of a brand spanking new baby girl! Also moved a number of times and had some business transfers and a long period of writers block didn't help. But here I am, trying to get back into the thick of things. Am starting small and will work up to continuing the other stories sometime. R&R and please be kind, it's been so long since I wrote that I bruise easily :)

HESITATION

You need some help?

No, I'm almost done. He didn't have a lot of stuff here.

You sending it all back home to his family?

Yeah. Well, I mean, we... we will... They don't know yet. We're going to send... the... body... back to Earth... And, um... I'm going to tell his mother... I should have just gone fishing with him.

Rodney sat on the stoop of the old stone house, alone except for the small fishbowl with four tiny turtles resting in his lap. The Canadian's gaze was locked on the emerald green fields that spread out across the worn dirt road, shimmering with faint yellow highlights as the wind stirred the wheat like an ocean...

He had come to accept that going fishing with Carson wouldn't have saved his dear friend. Knowing the Scotsman as well as anyone, Rodney was sure that the moment they had gotten the first radio message from Atlantis after the first explosion the Doctor would have had him fly back to Atlantis as fast as the Puddlejumper would have taken them. In some dark calculating corner of his mind Rodney did the math, comparing the distance and speed to the time-line of the explosions. The result was always the same. Carson would have arrived in the infirmary and just started the operation right as the damnable tumor exploded which would have not only killed him but his assistant and the patients, not only the one he was trying to save.

So it wasn't so much the fishing that bothered him now. It was the hesitation in his voice only a few hours ago, two galaxies away.

They don't know yet. We're going to send... the... body... back to Earth...

The body. Even to a devoted agnostic like Rodney, whom many would have felt would be an atheist if they didn't realize that he had a faith of his own, he felt that when a person died all that was left was a shell. The Body, but not the spirit.

But there wasn't a body. Not even pieces of a body. At least not of Carson's. There were pieces, charred and minute as they were, remaining of the bomb disposal officer then of his friend. Speculation between the military and science experts seemed to agree that the only reason that the officer, whom had been holding the high energy organ, had any remains compared to Carson whom had been walking away was the fact that the officer was standing in the cross section of the corridor where the explosion wasn't as focused as it was when it channelled down the more narrow corridor to Carson.

There wasn't an iota of organic residue where Carson had been standing. No teeth or bone or even organic carbon. All they found were the charred remains of clothes and a melted earpiece.

Everyone else chalked it up to freak circumstances. The whole day had been full of them so why not one more?

But Rodney felt he knew why. He hoped he knew why. He had seen it happen himself, once. Had read of multiple accounts of it happening, spread out across years of SGC reports. In fact, it had almost happened to himself not so very long before.

Ascension.

He hoped with all his heart that his friend had ascended. It was hard to lie to his best friends mother, that strong and proud lady whom did not blame Rodney at all for what happened. It was hard to lie to the woman who even in this time of mourning his eldest child considered all of his friends, even Ronan, as if they were her own children now. Brothers and sisters to her beloved and devoted son.

It was hard to lie and not tell her that the casket held nothing of her son then memories to be buried in the beautiful and nearly ancient cemetery next to Carson's father.

He so dearly hoped that his friend had ascended not only because he felt that of anyone Carson Becket deserved such a chance but because it helped him feel that the death wasn't useless. That there was a greater purpose. One beyond his own science and mathematics. One beyond arson's Voodoo.

He so hoped because if there was still a Carson Becket somewhere in all of existence watching over them then he himself, Rodney McKay, knew the universe would forever be a better place then it seemed.

He smiled at the thought and looked down into the turtle bowl, the four little green reptiles floating happily and the hesitation in his memory and his very current hopes vanished. They were happy.

And to Rodney that meant one thing.

He stood up, feeling a little better and returned inside to the party. He would forever mourn his friend's death, however strictly physical that death was, but that wouldn't stop him from celebrating not only the past but the future he now, somehow, knew his friend had.

FIN