"Did you break it?"

"No, I didn't break it. Didn't you tell me that Lorne and Sheppard said it was jammed?"

"It looks really broken now," Ronon Dex insisted as he stood nearby, his arms folded across his chest, his hip leaned up against the table that housed a lot of technology, both Earth-based and Ancient. And also, the object, now in two pieces, that the Satedan had judged broken.

"Have you nothing better to do? These things take time," Dr. Rodney McKay explained.

"Sheppard said you'd get it working again," Ronon noted, knowing that the physicist hated to let his team leader down. The former Runner had found the relationship between the two men compelling, the love-hate aspect that the head physician had described to him before his untimely death seemed more acute than it ever had before. Ronon suspected that Carson Beckett's absence was the cause of the enhanced caustic nature in the two men's friendship. He and Teyla had talked of how Carson's sudden demise would probably bring the two closer; this current result had been unexpected, though it seemed to be the result exclusively of McKay's own tortured handling of the loss. If Teyla was worried, Ronon knew it was something he, too, should keep an eye on.

"Yes, well, the colonel has a tendency to think that I can work miracles. It's a naïve precept, to be sure. Certainly past experience would dictate more caution on his part," Rodney answered as he struggled to get the last section pulled apart in his effort to correct what had gone wrong with the piece of equipment before him.

"I don't know. Seems to me your track record is why he has such faith in you."

"Faith," McKay said softly. "Well, that was his next mistake. Relying on faith in a place like this…well, you just set yourself up for disappointment."

McKay was a long way away from recovered from Carson Beckett's death. His initial behavior upon returning from Earth had been distant – that part had been expected. He had been more cordial – nicer – than expected, to everyone. That behavior hadn't lasted as long as had been hoped. Indeed, the behavior, though pleasant, had put all of Rodney's friends on notice: the shoe had not yet dropped on the depth of Rodney McKay's despair and pain in losing his friend.

"There's different kinds of faith, McKay. Sheppard's faith in you is the good kind, it's the kind worth counting on," Ronon said, sticking with Rodney, for now, because McKay needed to know that they would all work together to get over their loss. It seemed as though Dr. Carson Beckett had befriended every single soul on Atlantis. This community in the Pegasus Galaxy would need to work long and hard to get over their collective grief.

Rodney sighed and raised his head in frustration, his neck cracking unpleasantly in the process. "You missed your calling. You should be writing greeting cards." The scientist put his head back down as he fiddled more with the largest part left on the table.

"You know, McKay, this whole loner thing you keep trying isn't going to work. I haven't figured it out yet, but you have people here who care about you. We worry about you. We even like you." Rodney gave him a skeptical glare. "Yeah, it is weird. I think it's time you got over this."

McKay slammed the bulk of the disassembled object hard onto the table in front of him.

"You're gonna break it some more," Ronon said calmly.

Rodney was angry, his face beet red, and Ronon knew that it wasn't due to his taunting of the scientist, a favorite pastime for him of late. At least it wasn't all about the taunting.

"You better watch it, McKay. Your blood pressure." Ronon had heard Beckett and Sheppard mention it more than once. "Maybe you should have Beckett…" Ronon stopped talking. Shit. Ronon Dex had thought himself immune to these feelings that had devastated his team and so many others here in the Ancient city. The physician was a man, just a man, a man like so many good men that he'd known in his life who had lost their lives, some acting bravely in war, others lost senselessly to the Wraith, and still others, those similar to Carson Beckett, who had sacrificed his own life even though that sacrifice might save just one or two others.

It no longer mattered why Beckett had died. Or how. What mattered more now was saving Rodney McKay, despite all of the frustrations that keeping him around entailed. Though this had initially felt like a misstep – bringing up Beckett's name like this – Ronon knew that Rodney McKay was smart enough to know, and no longer so selfish that he couldn't see, that he wasn't the only one still recovering from losing the Scotsman.

"McKay, I'm sorry…" he started, because for all that he'd thought about after he let slip the lost doctor's name, Ronon knew that hearing it said that way would still be for painful to the physicist.

"No," Rodney said, waving his hand in dismissal. "I get what you have been trying to say. And I promised…" McKay started to go into the 'conversation' that he'd had with Carson after he had returned from taking his best friend's body back to Scotland. And wouldn't that have been a mistake? His friends and colleagues already thought he was losing it. How would it show respect and love for Carson if he allowed that to be true? Rodney knew how he had been acting. He also knew that Carson would have slapped him hard if he were here, corporeally-speaking, to get him to snap out of it. McKay didn't really believe that Beckett was there in spirit, so even a virtual smackdown he was safe from, but it made him smile anyway to think about it. He didn't have that kind of faith, but he had faith in the curative powers of enduring friendship.

Rodney McKay knew that it was well past time that he snapped out of it.

"You know, Conan, this would go a lot faster if you'd help me instead of just standing there like a tree," Rodney said. His eyes met the large man's, a sad twinkle and a healthy and well-justified level of fear due to the Satedan's inscrutable look, showing in their blue depths.

"I think that's two insults in one sentence," Ronon stated.

"It's not a record," McKay quipped back.

Ronon stood in the same position he'd been in the entire time, just watching and now smiling, but definitely not helping McKay at all in the chief science officer's efforts to fix the weapon.

"So, this paintball…sounds like it could be fun."

The End.