GIGANTIC SPOILERS FOR SUNDAY. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE EPISODE.
This is a little vigenette I wrote. It may come off as just hurt, but I mean it to express healing as well. Not beta'd and written fast just for my own healing.
Rodney was slowly beginning to heal, his final conversation with Carson helping assuage the pain just a bit, but not near enough. Now he stood outside a Carson-less infirmary, afraid to enter. He held his bleeding arm close to his chest, and though he need only take a step to receive help, he found he couldn't. Instead he turned around, returning to his refuge from that fateful night.
...
When Rodney heard the explosion he assumed, as the others had, that Carson had made it through. He paused with bated breath, waiting to hear Carson's voice over the intercom. Ready for him to say he was okay. Because that was the way the universe worked. It took them to the edge, threatening to unleash all its fury, and then it spared them. Sure, there had been those that had died before, many that still stung in Rodney's heart, but none who had been super close to him...none who had been a best friend or been like family. So when Carson's voice never came on the radio and when Rodney then raced into the rubble only to find Carson's charred body...he ran.
He ran to the piers, and when that wasn't enough to escape the image burned into his own mind, he ran to the depths, deeper and deeper into Atlantis until he couldn't even recognize where he had fled to. His body trembling, he fell against the nearest wall. For once the tears rolling down his face caused him no horror. Instead he embraced them, allowing them to wash away the impervious pain that had taken hold of him.
There was no hurt in the world greater than what he was feeling now. A thousand times worse than being shot and a hundred times more agonizing than being alone.
...
There was no noise here in the depths of Atlantis, and for the first time since Rodney could remember, he was willing to embrace that...to cherish the silence. He felt not need to fill it with his own voice or with work. He just sat there.
But not soon after, the silence threatened to suffocate him, to bury him. He brushed away his sniffles with his blood-soaked hand, and whispered, "Damn you." And when there was no answer from the universe, he shouted the same. When that failed to quell his hurt, he yelled some more. "You could have taken any of us and you take Carson? The kindest, gentlest man in this whole freaking galaxy and you take him away from us? Who the hell is supposed to mend us after my next royal fuck up, huh? You realize you just royally scewed us, right?"
And the universe provided nothing but silence, mocking his hurt and driving him to anger. He lashed out, hitting his arm against the wall, forgetting for a moment of his injury before it seared in pain. Despite himself he screamed, dropping to the floor and not bothering to stand.
There were no more words to say and the silence took over once more.
"Damn you," he whispered again, but his voice had become coarse and weary.
He had hoped that ascended Carson would appear again, encourage him perhaps to go to the infirmary and mend the arm in that mollycoddling way of his, but the ascended physicial never came. After hours passed with no word from anyone, Rodney came to his feet and began to walk. He lumbered toward the infirmary, knowing that a dizziness that had nothing to do with grief would soon overcome him. When the infirmary door came into view, he took a deep breath.
"That's it, in you go now. No more stalling," he thought he heard a voice say. And for all he knew, maybe Carson had said exactly that. So in Rodney went.