Summary - Considering he was probably the smartest man on Earth Rodney had spent a lot of his life trying to live up to other people.

Rating – G

Disclaimer – I don't own anything or anyone, slavery is wrong

Poor Substitute

Considering he was probably the smartest man on Earth Rodney had spent a lot of his life trying to live up to other people.

When he'd been a kid he'd spent all his time trying to live up to his sister, who was the planned child, the cosseted child.

The loved child.

Rodney had been the 'too drunk to bother with a condom child' and his parents had never hesitated in letting him know.

He'd always tried to be like Jeannie, but no one had told him that Jeannie hadn't been able to calculate pi to a hundred places before she was tall enough to see out of the kitchen window.

He was still ashamed of how many years it had taken him before he'd worked out that they were never going to see him in the same way they saw her and longer still before he'd truly accepted that it hadn't been her fault. He knows it but he still hasn't completely forgiven her.

Then there had been the music, he'd spent hours listening to symphonies, listening to the music swell and fall and incite anger or fear or love or hate, until he'd been able to mimic the passion they felt, cause people to experience their own Catharsis.

It had taken a very skilled ear to realise that his passion was false. He'd been caught though and just like that, his one haven was gone and though he loves physics there's a hard place in his heart that will always despise the people who took that music away from him.

He spent a lot of his university years trying to live up to previous scientists. Forever comparing his achievements at his age with theirs, it was a habit he'd never really gotten out of and when he'd gotten involved with the Stargate Programme naturally he'd been trying to live up to the legend of Samantha Carter. A reputation he'd hated her for because she was blonde and American and a good soldier girl and it should have been him, right from the start. And even as he respects, admires and covets her he's angry because of that.

It didn't matter though, because he'd failed, dismally but that had been okay because here, in Atlantis, there was no Samantha Carter, here he was the best and he hadn't been doing too bad of a job really.

Then they'd found Her.

Ancient Elizabeth who'd lived to save the city, who had spent the last ten thousand years alone and who had told them such beautiful stories of their other selves.

The other him, drowning, still trying desperately to save them all even as the water closed over his head, not allowing them to come back for him.

And though he keeps telling himself that that was him he doesn't really believe it.

So, now, Rodney has another person to live up to.

Himself.

In his life he's been a poor substitute for Jeannie, Samantha Carter, talent… There are very few people who could manage to be a poor substitute for themselves.

Apparently he is one of them.