Post "Epiphany" piece, hence spoilers up to there.
Disclaimer: I claim no credit to the brilliance that is SGA
A/N: I wonder sometimes if it's a SGA fic writer's rite of passage to pick on McKay…
Credit to fififolle, beta – extraordinaire. Thanks for not letting me think too much
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/\/ .. Regrettably Useful .. \/\
Rodney McKay was performing manual labor, physical manual labor, and was doing it willingly above all else. He wasn't exactly sure why. Certainly the cleanliness of the lab's staging area wasn't a top priority and technically, the marines that unloaded the jumper did most of the hard work by bringing all the equipment back here anyway. Albeit sloppily.
So why was he in the staging area? By himself? Lugging around oversized storage containers, that was clearly not beneficial to his bad back, in a meager attempt to reorganize the havoc a rushed rescue mission can cause?
Maybe it was because it was the thought of a lingering mess in his region of the city. Maybe it was because it was the farthest thing from explaining Temporal Compression Theory he could think of. Or maybe it was because it would be nice to finally do something where the end result would be useful.
Regardless of the reason, it is a bit of a release for him. No pressure, no blame, no complicated plan of action that requires every last bit of brainpower. Just a simple, exhausting, and time-consuming task he could do on his own without any interruption.
Well, almost…
The sound of the swooshing door catches his attention, as does the person responsible for it. Elizabeth has come to see him about something, but expectedly the 'something' gets replaced with her curiosity regarding his current task. He gives her a vague response with some injected humor of course. He really doesn't know why he's doing what he's doing himself so it really was the best he could do. Judging by the movement of her eyebrows, she knows there's probably a little more behind the response. She always did know, but she chooses to ignore it and moves onto the 'something'.
She says she's been looking over everyone's mission reports and feels that he should probably know something. He's really not all too interested in everyone's opinion regarding his behavior on this mission. Contrary to what might be spread about, he was quite observant in his own right. Still, he manages to utter, "And what's that?" in a passable form of civility people are accustomed from him. Her especially.
She goes on, saying how everyone, in one way or another, commended his leadership and command skills during this particular mission, right down to the jumper pilot whose name he forgets and she reminds him of. He goes on, lifting and putting away storage containers as she brightly continues on with some of the highlights in the reports. He's listening and she knows it, so there's no reason for either of them to pause from what they're doing.
He can see some of the points as genuinely coming from his fellow teammates and friends and he smiles when she does. A part of him wonders whether she is "interpreting a little" for the second time today, but he says nothing and continues with the tasks at hand. His final response is to snark back a line about the irony of Sheppard having to be missing to bring those qualities out of him.
And then, right there, he catches it again. A quick and discernable look he has suddenly abashed.
On her better days she would have been adept at hiding it. Considering the circumstances that surrounded the mission, however, she was well within her right to lose her poise, if only for an instant. Besides, it was just the two of them right now and he was too busy shoving diagnostic devices into their foam habitats to have noticed, right?
Waiting the beat it takes for her to recover, he wonders why she's still standing in the chaos that he's creating in trying to clean up. As he lifts a particularly weighty container with both hands he asks,
"Was there something else Elizabeth?"
Still looking somewhat embarrassed, she slowly glides into his view and with some hesitation…she thanks him.
She personally thanks him for taking charge of the rescue mission, for organizing both the civilian and military personnel, and ultimately belaying everyone's panic-laced barrages of 'what do we do's' and 'what ifs'. She moves on, somewhat uncomfortably, to thanking him for personally keeping her calm and having the "patience" to deal with explanations under the circumstances.
"It couldn't have been easy on you," she says kindly and she's right. Just not for the reasons she probably thinks.
She eventually gets to a point where she seems to hint at feeling guilty for making it seem like she blamed him for the circumstances of the mission. A part of him is grateful that she noticed.
There's an obvious sense that she's evading what she truly wants to express, and being her friend he knows what it is. Everything from the implied blame during the day to the minor contempt she showed for his concern for her, he knows. She really just wants to thank him for leading the charge to get back Sheppard, particularly when it seemed like she couldn't. Technically speaking however, he knows the Colonel pretty much got himself out of the mess they stepped into, again, and he really has no real right to claim any credit, again.
So he forgives her on reflex, sincerely to relieve her guilt, and begins his thanks for her thanks, less sincerely to reinforce his.
The issue of a useful end result once again enters his mind, accompanied by the thoughts of another missed Zed-PM and another missed opportunity to prove himself. And in an instant he makes a decision. He pushes back a small selfish feeling of hesitation and makes a choice to help her with a long conflicting one.
''All things considered Elizabeth, I'm about as fond of returning from a mission without the Colonel as you are..."
Which gets her attention.
"Well, maybe that's not entirely true..."
Which simply stuns her.
In just one conscious nonchalant comment he has let her know that he knows. Junior High-like cliché aside, the implications are clear. It's a friendly push in the direction she wants to be going, the operative word being "friendly".
In a sense, he just told her that 'you should go through with it', 'no one will think less of you for it', maybe even...'I'm OK with it...'
The softening look on her face affirms that she has gotten the message. Which one? He'll probably never know.
Slowly she directs a thankful look his way, a nervous one that borders on being timid. He can't help himself from smiling simply because that is the power this look, her looks, have over him.
He continues with his task of placing equipment away for a few more moments. In that time she recovers enough to ask for accompaniment to the infirmary to visit the Colonel, subtly of course.
He can appreciate the need for support, if only to the entrance of the infirmary, but honestly, he can only go so far.
So, taking breath, noticeable only to him, he replies, "You go ahead, I still have some stuff to work out here."
A reply whose second meaning is thankfully lost on her at the moment, although not without a tiny pang of disappointment for him.
She goes on, leaving through the same door she came in. He goes on, continuing to stack containers of all types. He's glad that he's finally done something useful. It even had more meaning since it was for her. All things being as they are however, he wouldn't mind if it had been something else.
The End
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Two things I need to say.
Feedback of any sort in regards to the piece welcomed.
and…
May my fellow McWeir fans forgive me. :p