Disclaimer – I don't own them

Summary – Carson remembers as he watches Rodney going through withdrawal but maybe he's not remembering alone.

Rating – PG

Remnants of a Past Life

And people say Atlantis is stressful, believe me it has nothing on my first year as a resident.

Maybe I get more sleep on Atlantis or maybe I've just gotten used to it but either way I haven't resorted to… more desperate measures.

I never got caught, thank God. It never even occurred to them, I took a sabbatical to get the bastard things out of my system and after that I never come in contact with it again.

I turned to genetics, originally less out of love for the subject and more to do with the fact that in working in a hospital you run into people who used to be like me. I never trusted myself enough to be able to look at them and not remember how it felt to have the energy pulse through my system, to be able to push for just a little longer…

"Carson," he babbles and I close my eyes. "I'm sorry for anything I'm going to say." He chokes the words out and, shocked, I look into his face.

He's flushed and his pupils are so dilated there's no iris left but they're serious. Rodney understands.

And I remember the way Rodney always expertly rode the crest of the crash, during the siege mainly but also during any other disaster we've had before or since. The way he went through the withdrawal after with a practiced weariness.

When he wasn't screaming that was.

And I realise that if one person worked harder than me when we were young and stupid then it had to be Rodney, a man who was willing to push as far as his body could ever go and beyond it for the sake of science.

And it finally occurs to me that it might not just be me who's been here before.