The Beckett List by Ann3

Writer's Note: Yep, I'm back again - and as everyone kind enough to read my Atlantis stories will know, I just love the 'ship between Carson and Laura.

My second biggest regret of the series (no prizes for guessing what the first one is !!) is that TPTB couldn't carry it through. Still, of course, that's what fanfic's for !

Anyway, after watching the truly priceless Duet recently, I wrote this little standalone 'missing scene' story, set after that scene

Well, it's one of my favourites from the entire series, so what do you expect ?! ;o)

Seriously, as always, I hope you enjoy - please R&R if you do !!

The Beckett List

It had always felt a bit morbid to her, that she'd started making such a ghoulish list at such a young age. But as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps, you had to be... well, prepared. You knew you could die at any time. So at just twenty eight, Laura Cadman's 'must-do-things-before-I-die' were already into double figures.

Her 'bucket list'. Or, as she'd dryly re-named it since she'd set her sights on him, her 'Beckett list'

From the moment she'd seen him, just two days earlier, all those previous ambitions had been forgotten. Currently topping her new schedule of 'things-to-do-before-I-die' was bagging Dr Carson Beckett. Before she died, as equally likely here as back on Earth, she was going to kiss the sexiest Scot alive.

Such a normal thing. Unfortunately, as she was now finding, life in this galaxy was far from normal. Here in the Pegasus Galaxy, normal didn't exist. Instead you had weird. Just plain, outright, weird.

How else could she explain this...? Her fully sentient consciousness, trapped inside another's body...?

In an ideal world, of course, that body would belong to a drop dead gorgeous, Scottish doctor, but – well, it seemed the Pegasus Galaxy kinda had a downer on the worlds within it being 'ideal' too.

Instead, in what had to be some giant, not to mention sick, cosmic joke, she'd gotten herself stuck in –

– another doctor. And a thoroughly un-gorgeous one at that.

Professional whiner, whinger, and all round pain-in-the-butt scientist, Dr Rodney McKay.

Wonderful.

And now the strain of two consciousnesses fighting to control one body was taking its inevitable toll.

Typically gently, Carson had brought the list she'd named silently after him into real, terrifying focus. In terms of his body, Rodney McKay was dying. In terms of her consciousness, she was too. Unless one of them voluntarily released control, they'd both be dead within days, maybe even hours.

Needless to say, that had set the self-professed, self lauded genius of Rodney McKay into hyper-panicked overdrive. And for all his self-interested motive, Laura knew if anyone could fix this mess, it was going to be him.

Not that she'd ever tell him that, of course. At least, not within his egotistical earshot.

Because he had fixed it. Well, no, Laura now dryly corrected herself, they'd both fixed it – a simple request to deliver a final letter to her folks giving McKay the idea to rescind that letter's need

Perversely merging Wraith technology with theirs, they'd use the Stargate to... to... hell, he'd lost her there.

All Laura knew right now was that the mass of machinery in front of her was her only chance to stay alive. If it worked, she'd be back in her own body, with her precious Carson fussing over her, and... damn it...!

What if it didn't work...? What if McKay ended up in her body instead...? Worse still, what if she...?

Died. There, she'd faced the fact that she could die here, without telling him, showing him, how she felt. So aware of his nearness, though, his deliciously doctory scent, Laura was damned if she going to accept it.

With a little subconscious help, McKay's hand shot into the air. His reason, though, came not in his voice

"Wait...!"

In front of suddenly anxious faces, Dr Rodney McKay then strode towards his friend. His best friend.

Grabbing his labcoat lapels, he then kissed Carson Beckett, long and deep and hard, full on his mouth – the reason which finally followed doing little, in fact doing nothing, to ease the gaping shock that met it.

"Just in case this doesn't work..."

Silence. Stunned silence. A CO whose eyes were on stalks. And a half-suffocated CMO, in visible need of a doctor himself.

'Oh, crap...'

Cringing too on her behalf, McKay now shuffled his rebellious body back in front of the materialiser – one arm trying, in vain hope, to hide his face while the other waved a vague 'go ahead' towards Zelenka.

"Just – Just hit it..."

'Hit' was right. A blast of energy that took her breath away, a brief flash of lucidity, then rushing darkness.

As she felt her legs buckle beneath her, Laura Cadman didn't know where, or if, that darkness would end. She could just be passing out, of course, her body overcome by this jarring trauma. Or she could be dying.

But at least she'd done it. She'd left him traumatised for life, of course, but... yes, she'd really done it. For those few precious moments, she'd achieved her 'Beckett List'. She'd cherished every one of them.

Hell, she'd done more than that. She hadn't just kissed him, she'd damn near sucked out his tonsils.

So yes, she might well be dying right now. But even if she was... hell, at least she'd die happy.