It's a Conversion tag dealing with Sheppard's recovery from the retrovirus. Some Sheppard whumpage, of course, and some McKay angst.
First chapter is pretty much all McKay introspection, more chapters to follow.
Please read and review – feedback makes me write faster :)
He lays there so still. So quiet. Beckett's got him drugged up to the eyeballs, of course. There's no need for him to be awake through this. Then there's the small matter of him possibly wigging out and attacking half the infirmary staff too. Cause wouldn't that just be the perfect ending to a perfectly crappy few days?
As I sit here beside his bed I can't help but think back to the conversation we had just a few short hours ago. The one where Elizabeth told us it was time to say goodbye. Huh. Say goodbye. How the hell do you say goodbye to your best friend? I'd asked her at the time, "Are we really there?" I couldn't believe we'd come to that point, couldn't accept that we were going to lose him. I still can't believe it now. Looking back on that moment, on all that's gone on these past couple of days, it almost doesn't seem real. I can't quite believe how close we came to really losing him.
The Pegasus galaxy is a dangerous place. And Lt Colonel John Sheppard seems to have an incredible talent for running into trouble no matter where he goes. Right from the moment we stepped through the stargate, from the very moment the city of Atlantis awoke around us, our lives have been in danger. The threat is always there. If it's not the Wraith, it's the Genii. If it's not the Genii, it's a bunch of murderous convicts. If it's not convicts, it's radiation or an AI computer virus or a voracious energy being or a life-sucking bug or a malfunctioning drive pod… or a goddamn retrovirus.
And we've lost people. We've lost a lot of people. Soldiers, scientists, people I've known well, people I haven't. Colleagues. But I've never lost a friend. I don't have a lot of friends.
In many ways, we've been incredibly lucky. I want to laugh at that thought. Jeez, it sounds like the kind of dumb, half-assed, blindly optimistic, "it'll all work out in the end" claptrap that Sheppard comes out with. And yet. And yet it's true. For all the dangers we've faced, for all the times we've come close – this damn close – to losing it all, losing everyone, we've somehow muddled through. We've found a way out. By the skin of our teeth, by our wits and by sheer luck, we've survived.
I think that's why this has me so shook up. I think, subconsciously, I'd gotten used to that fact. I'd started to take for granted the fact that we always find a way out. I'd started to believe in Sheppard and his crazy goddamn optimism.
He nearly died. Dead. Gone. Forever. He had hours left. Just hours. And there was nothing any of us could do. Just sit and wait. Wait for the inevitable.
And yet somehow, once again, we'd done it. In the nick of time we'd found a solution. We'd saved the day. Saved him. The Hail Mary to end all goddamn Hail Mary's. Maybe there was something to Sheppard's optimism after all.
But for a while there it had really seemed like…I'd really thought that this was it. I'd had to sit and face the thought of a future without Lt Colonel John Sheppard. It wasn't a nice thought.
I am.. a difficult man. I know that. When you have an intellect like mine there's not much that gets by you and I'm quite aware of what other people think of me and, for the most part, I don't care. I don't let myself care. I've always been this way; it's part of who I am. I'm mostly happier with my own company anyway. And who's to say there isn't a reason why I am this way? Who's to say that social awkwardness isn't simply the price we pay for intellectual genius, hmm? Maybe that's just the way the human brain is designed, the way it's wired up. You can have one or the other but not both. If I were nicer, easier to get along with, then maybe I wouldn't be as smart, wouldn't be able to think as fast, to make the intuitive leaps that have saved us time and time again. If I was friendly and charming, maybe we'd all be dead right now.
People like me don't make friends easily. Just about everyone on this mission left friends and family behind them to come to the Pegasus galaxy. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, parents, friends, lovers. I gave my cat to my next-door neighbour. I think I can honestly say that John Sheppard is the first real friend I've ever had. Pathetic isn't it? Truthfully though, it's never really bothered me before. I accepted myself a long time ago, accepted the fact that I'm not a people person, that friends are just not on the cards for somone like me. And I didn't need friends. I had my work. I had science.
And then I come here to a galaxy far, far away – you see what happens when you get friends? Even their dumb jokes get stuck in your brain – and I meet this insane, cocky, funny, charming, stubborn, loyal, ridiculously optimistic air force Major. I came to the Pegasus galaxy to work with ancient technology, to make important discoveries that would change the face of science as we know it. The last thing I was expecting to find was a friend.
I know people look at us and wonder why. Specifically, wonder why the hell he puts up with me. He's everything I am not; friendly where I am stand-offish, relaxed where I am excitable, self-deprecating where I am arrogant. If you looked up polar opposites in the dictionary I'm pretty sure there'd be a picture of us two. Maybe that's even why this friendship works. We argue and we snap at each other and we insult each other. I never even suspected that that's what friendship was about. But, for us, it is. Why are we friends? I've no idea. It just happened. One minute he was throwing me off balance by not being the typical military grunt I've come to expect, by having a brain and actually using it, the next we were giggling like high school kids as he threw me off a balcony.
Once you've got a friend like that, your first ever, real friend, how do you even imagine the world without that person? I'd felt physically sick as Elizabeth had told us to say goodbye and I think she saw that on my face, in my eyes. I've never been so relieved to hear Carson's voice over the radio, to find that we'd done it again, come up with a crazy plan to save the day.
And now I sit here, in the darkened infirmary, watching over my friend. I don't even know why I'm here. It's not like he's going anywhere. But he nearly did. He so very nearly did.
Carson tells us the stem cell treatment is working, is reversing the damage done by the retrovirus. But it's gonna take time. Sheppard looks… looks so different. His eyes are closed – those freaky, yellow insect eyes – but his skin is still blue. Blue and scaly and ridged and hard. Little spines of exoskeleton up the sides of his neck, his face. His hands lie limply on the blankets of his infirmary bed, withered and scaled and clawed. So much of the John Sheppard I know has been taken by the retrovirus. All I can do now is wait.. wait for Carson's treatment to bring him back to us. Bring him back to me.
I nearly lost my friend today.
TBC…