Parting Gift

Summary: Rodney is given the task of cleaning out Carson's apartment in Colorado Springs. He discovers two turtles and decides to bring them back to Atlantis. Tag to Sunday.

Disclaimer: MGM owns them. All of them. Even the turtles.

Right now Rodney McKay wanted to be anywhere but here. Even in Paisley, at the graveside of his best friend. Not at an apartment in Colorado, removing any evidence that the gentle Scottish doctor had ever lived here. But life went on, even without Carson Beckett. At least, that's what the SGC seemed to have decided.

There was no end of sympathetic looks and remarks from General Landry and the SGC when Rodney, Sheppard and the others came through the gate carrying the casket with the flag of Scotland draped over it. Even SG-1 had given the Atlantis team their condolences immediately after returning from some mission involving the Ori. Sam had walked right up to Rodney and pulled him into a hug, which caught the astrophysicist off guard.

"I'm so, so sorry, Rodney," Sam had said in a voice that was almost a whisper. "I know how hard it is to lose your best friend. If there's anything I can do..."

"Mmm...not really," Rodney mumbled, feeling a bit uncomfortable. He pulled away from Sam. "I should go. I'm supposed to be...cleaning out his apartment. I, uh, I gotta go find it. They want all his things moved out so they can send them back to his family, and then we've gotta get back to Atlantis. More planets to explore and Wraith to fight, and whatnot."

Sam smiled at Rodney's nervous ramblings. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder for a moment and then walked away. Rodney turned and headed for the apartment.

It was torture, having to be the one to clean out the apartment. But the IOA hadn't granted Mrs. Beckett the security clearance to do the job herself, and it wouldn't have been fair to bring the grieving mother all the way to America to perform what could arguably be considered the most depressing task in the world. Bearing the casket back to the SGC, and again to the open hole in the ground in a Scottish graveyard, had been easy compared to this. Though it wasn't as difficult as telling Carson's mother what had happened to her second youngest child.

Mrs. Beckett had raised her younger children largely on her own since her husband passed away when Carson was 13. As if losing a spouse wasn't difficult enough, now she had to say goodbye to a child. A child who had kept the vast majority of the last three years of his life a secret from her. Even his death had needed a cover story. At least Rodney had been honest about the explosion, and the fact that Carson had died saving the life of another. A terrorist attack had left half a dozen dead, several wounded, and one man with live ammo inside his body. Carson had been able to remove the bomb, but it detonated before he could dispose of it safely. He and the explosives handler had been killed.

Mrs. Beckett had been surprised to hear that there were terrorists in India. Rodney had been surprised to hear that Carson had told his family he was going to India. Rodney quickly sputtered a reason, saying that there had been increased terrorist attacks from radical Hindus in...Orissa (he'd heard something about an attack there recently). When asked what he, a scientist, had been doing in India with Carson, Rodney had sad, "Ah...exploring...a new way to...fight global warming?"

Mrs. Beckett seemed to have accepted the excuse. She was too focused on her grief at the moment. But Rodney hadn't been able to escape the grilling Carson's brothers had wanted to give him. The hapless scientist had promised them that Col. Sheppard would explain everything when he arrived. The colonel's excuse?

"It's classified." Sheppard had offered the cover story prepared by the SGC, and little else. He wasn't much for talking. That was understandable. Rodney had been unusually silent over the past few days himself, in spite of Zelenka's repeated attempts to get him to talk. The Czech had finally given up on the plane trip over to Scotland, and sunk into an uncomfortable silence of his own.

Rodney stood in silence now in Carson's apartment, sorting through various items and tossing them into boxes marked either for Scotland or for the SGC. There were few items in the latter box, as personnel that lived off-base was discouraged from keeping work-related items at their place of residence. Daniel Jackson was perhaps the only exception to the rule, as most of his stargate-related possessions looked like your typical archaeological artifacts and replicas. Carson didn't have much in the apartment anyway. It hadn't been home to him. And most of what he'd kept at the apartment while on earth had eventually been moved back to Atlantis.

Rodney smirked when he came across a kilt Carson had kept folded carefully into one of his dresser drawers. It had some kind of purse on a chain stored with it. If Rodney remembered correctly, the purse was known as a sporran. He couldn't remember Carson ever wearing the kilt, either on earth or in Atlantis, though Cadman had allegedly been granted the privilege of watching Carson model his full Scottish regalia. Whether or not it was true that kilts were properly worn without underwear, Rodney didn't know, and he didn't want to know. The scientist sighed and gently placed the kilt and sporran in the box labeled 'Family.'

He moved through the apartment, packing what he could, and trying not to dwell on some of the memories conjured up by his task. He paused long enough to reflect on how different he and Carson were, and he wondered how they had become such close friends. Was it because Rodney spent so much time in the infirmary for various illnesses and injuries, be they major, minor, or even imaginary? When had he decided that Carson was his best friend? Or was that simply an assumption Sam had made, based on stories she'd heard?

No, Carson was his best friend. Or at least as close to a best friend as Rodney had ever had in his life, especially after the team's last encounter with Kolya. That's when Rodney had really come to consider Carson one of his closest friends. To be honest, he had no idea what it was like to have good friends. At least, not before Atlantis. Now most of his closest friends had just helped bury his best friend.

Overcome with emotion momentarily, Rodney sat down on a chair in the living room and buried his face in his hands, trying desperately to fight back the tears. Life right now really sucked.

He was distracted by the sound of something tapping against glass. He glanced up at the window, expecting to see someone or something. Nothing. Of course, that could have something to do with the fact that he was on the third floor of an apartment building. But the tapping persisted. He turned and looked to one side. Sitting on a table near the chair was a tank. In the tank were two small turtles. One of them was tapping its nose against the wall of the tank, as if it was trying to get Rodney's attention.

Of course, the turtles! One of the first things Carson had done when contact had been reestablished with the SGC after Atlantis had been taken back from the Replicators was to beg someone to check on his turtles and keep them fed and watered. Dr. Lam had promised to keep an eye on them.

Rodney walked over to the tank. He got down on eye level with the turtles and gave them a half-hearted smile.

"Hey there, little guys. How are you?" He noticed the box of food sitting next to the tank. "Are you hungry? Where's your dish? Or do you eat out of a dish? You know, like cats...or dogs, or something."

Rodney picked up the box and opened it, distributing some food around the tank. No sooner had he placed the box near the mouth of one turtle than it reached out and nipped at his fingers. Rodney nearly dropped the box yanking his hand out of the tank.

"Ow! What was that about? So, you bite the hand that feeds you, huh? I have to wonder why Carson was so concerned about you, if that's the way you treated him!"

The offending reptile ignored him, turning its attention to the meal on the ground in front of it. Rodney watched the turtles eat for a moment, then went back to packing.

About an hour later, Rodney had packed as much as he could of Carson's stuff. The box going to Scotland was almost full, and the box going back to the SGC held little more than a team jacket; the gray and yellow jacket Carson had worn so often during that first year in the Pegasus galaxy. The only thing Rodney didn't know what to do with was the tank containing the turtles. Would the airlines ship live animals like turtles?

Rodney studied the tank a moment. He could always give the animals to Dr. Lam. She'd been taking care of them thus far, after all. Or maybe Cadman would like to take them, as a reminder of Carson. But was it appropriate to ask a woman to take care of her dead ex-boyfriend's pets? Rodney couldn't afford any more animosity between himself and Cadman than what was already there.

He looked at his fingertips. They weren't red from the turtle bite as he'd expected. And the turtles were kind of small. They couldn't be that hard to take care of. After all, that's why Carson had chosen turtles over a dog or a cat (besides the fact that he was allergic to cats). And Rodney had come across a book on turtle care. How hard could it be? Other than putting up with the bites...

"Why couldn't you have gotten a fish instead?" Rodney asked aloud. He paused, as if waiting for the answer. He thought for a moment about the hallucination of Sam he'd experienced in that sinking puddle jumper. She had been a visual manifestation of his conscience, which was probably one of the strangest experiences Rodney had ever had, and that was saying something. But right now he wouldn't have minded having those hallucinations again; his stressed and grieving mind conjuring up images of his best friend, who would then tell him exactly why he'd gone with turtles instead of fish. Perhaps because he liked to catch fish rather than watching them swim around in a tank.

"I should have gone fishing with him," Rodney murmured, guilt washing over him anew. "I should have just..." He glanced at the turtles again. Suddenly he picked up the book on turtle care and walked purposefully over to the tank.

"You guys are coming with me," he announced, grabbing the food and the tank. He managed with some difficulty to get the reptiles and all their accessories down to his car, trying to jostle them as little as possible. He wasn't sure why Carson hadn't brought the turtles back to Atlantis with him before now, but Rodney had decided that Atlantis would now be their home. He would take care of Carson's turtles. He couldn't go back and change what had happened that day; he couldn't go fishing with Carson. But he could, somehow, at least start to make it up to the Scotsman. And he could do so with the turtles.

After he'd packed the turtles and the boxes into the car, Rodney headed back to the SGC. He would be taking a puddle jumper back to Atlantis (the midway station didn't yet have life support online), and Sheppard was waiting for him.

Rodney and Sheppard arrived back in Atlantis in time for life in the Pegasus galaxy to begin again. Elizabeth would give them a few days, but then the IOA was insisting they continue their efforts to secure Atlantis in the event of a Wraith attack or worse, the return of the Replicators. Zelenka had thrown himself into his work almost immediately after returning with Lorne the day before (something that Rodney would probably do as well), and had discovered some strange readings coming from the ocean floor a few miles from the city. When Rodney was up to it, they would explore the area for anything that could be of use to the city.

Rodney retreated to his quarters with the turtle tank, which he'd barely managed to convince Sheppard and Elizabeth to let him bring with him. He cleared some desk space for the reptiles and carefully placed their tank on the desk top.

"There, how's that? Comfy? Enough light?" Rodney tried to pick out which turtle was which. Dr. Lam had told him that Carson had informed her that one turtle was male and the other female, and had pointed out which was which. Rodney was having a hard time telling them apart, but that didn't stop him from guessing. He just wished Lam had told him their names.

"Well," Rodney said, holding up a finger. He pointed to one turtle, then to the other. "You shall be henceforth known as...Jeffery, and you...will be...Michelle." He wasn't sure where the names had come from, but they worked. The newly-christened turtles didn't respond. They simply moved sluggishly between the water and their little "beach." Jeffery seemed to be enjoying the spot he'd found in the sunlight that shone through Rodney's window. He sat there, eyes closed, seemingly unaware that his original master would no longer be coming to feed him.

Rodney watched the turtles a few moments longer. He glanced up to notice that the sun was beginning to set. He didn't want to interact with any of the team just yet, so he decided to leave his radio in his room and go out to the pier to watch the sunset and be alone with his thoughts. As he turned to leave, he cast a glance over his shoulder at Carson's treasured "wee baby turtles." He smiled slightly. Hopefully Carson would appreciate this. Even if Rodney hadn't gone fishing that day, he could make up for it somehow by taking care of Carson's pets, right?

No. The turtles weren't Rodney's punishment. They were a gift. Something to remember the compassion Carson had been known for. A last gift from the Scotsman to his irritable Canadian friend. As Rodney retreated to the loneliness of the west pier, he had to wonder anew how he'd found so great a friend as Dr. Carson Beckett.

The End

AN: For the record, I didn't like Sunday, for obvious reasons. But I couldn't ignore the turtles. Not many fans can, it seems. Hopefully I haven't depressed too many of you in light of the Christmas season. :) My excuse for this story is that I've had a recent Steven Curtis Chapman song running through my head lately, which put me in a beauty-from-ashes mood.