MANY, MANY THANKS TO KEYANNA!! – My beta Proof Reader for reworking my numerous errors.
Prologue;
She wakes, wrapped in her blankets. Her cheeks wet from tears and her body moist from sweat. She lay, looking up at the ceiling as she remembers her dream. She replays it in her mind, torturing herself, because it wasn't a dream: it was a memory.
Was it really five years since she and Rodney had sat in that debriefing at the SGC? Sam guiltily remembers her initial feelings when she first found out she would be off world, alone, with Rodney. She recalled that she had had the sympathy of everyone at SGC and still thought it so unfair. She'd no idea how soon things would change.
She sees them as they were then, going through the Stargate and arriving in the city. She remembers thinking she would have to put herself forward to introduce them-selves, convinced that Rodney would be his usual sarcastic, insulting self and be insensitive to the fact that these were children. And how guilty she feels that she thought so badly of him.
When the children stepped forward to crowd round the strangers, touching clothes, smiling up at them, asking question after question, she had looked nervously at Rodney ready to calm him down. The sight that met her eyes had shocked her. She smiled a bittersweet smile as she saw the image again in her minds eye.
Rodney had his arms spread out, skimming his fingers over the hands reaching for him as he spun slowly, corkscrew fashion, round and round but ever onwards. It was his face that had captured her though. He was smiling - not just smiling but beaming, and it put such light and colour in his eyes that she was captivated as he looked over to her in pure elation. Then she'd noticed the children, noticed how they looked up at him with big bright eyes. He hadn't even been there five minutes and the children already loved him, laughing every time his hands passed over their heads, trying to capture his hands. They saw something in this man that Sam was only just beginning to see. Underneath the tough, spiked exterior was a soft and loving man.
Will I ever see that look again? She wonders sadly.
As they'd neared the eldest children who stood formally in the centre square, the children started to thin out, allowing them to approach the teens who were in affect the leaders. A little dark-haired girl that she later found out was called Miarda stayed with Rodney, both of her hands clasped around his hand and forearm. One of the elders gave her a discreet nod to move to the side. She scowled at them and moved closer into Rodney's thigh, clasping tighter onto his arm. He had looked down at her and smiled and then returned his open happy face to the elders. The girl who had nodded to her gave a small shake of her head and an indulgent smile and then turned her attention to the two adults who towered above them all. Sam had often thought that it was Miarda's death that had made it most unbearable for Rodney and that if it hadn't been for her then there might have been another way.
The initial contact from SGC had explained to the children about the machine, which caused an inhibitor on their genes to kill them at a certain age so the Goa'uld would not take them for hosts. They had also explained that they would send a team that would be able to disarm the machine.
Therefore this meeting with the children was a welcoming celebration for the people who would set them free and so they had spent that first day with the children in celebration. She had found she couldn't take her eyes of Rodney through most of it. This man she saw was totally different to the man who had left SGC with her. She had never seen him so relaxed, so content, and she had to admit she had found this man appealing. He had talked to the children, told them stories and introduced them to the 'thumb war' game.
Everywhere he went she could hear children laughing. The first time she had heard him laughing she'd just stared at him, unable to associate this full, joyous laugh with the Dr. Rodney McKay she knew. There had been a bonfire later and they sat on logs around the fire. She had watched Rodney with the little girl sitting on one knee, her legs dangling and Rodney's strong arm around her waist, keeping her secure, as she played thumb wars. Their laughter had been infectious.
They were shown to their quarters that night, and they had worked the next day on the machine in the control centre. Miarda would wait outside until McKay came out and would follow him everywhere until she was fell asleep in his arms and was carried away again by one of the elders. They had held a celebration again that night, again with a bonfire and food and drinks that were obviously not alcoholic.
They followed this same sequence of events for three days and Sam enjoyed every minute of it. Rodney was still sarcastic and some of his responses could be biting, but now that she had seen the man underneath they failed to hit home. She found them amusing and found her time with him enjoyable.
This man surprised her. His softness with the children softened her heart and she had found herself seeing more and more things that she found attractive. It was hard to recognise this man as the man she had met before with a closed heart and a sharp tongue. This man who was so gentle with the children and who, here, was so quick to smile.
She recalls that on the third day, when they were near a resolution that she had asked him the question that she had wanted to ask since that first night. "You seem so relaxed with these children – how come?" And he had answered.
She sighed, heavy in heart with pity in her eyes, as she recollected his answer.
"Children are honest and always tell the truth. If they say they like you, then they like you and if they don't like you then they tell you so. You always know where you stand, and I like that"
Then he had looked at her with a slightly sad expression in his eyes as he continued, "and they accept you as you are; you don't have to pretend with children." Then he had shrugged, embarrassed.
And that had been the other revelation, that she could see what he was feeling at any time just by looking into his eyes. She wondered why she had never noticed before how easy it was to read him. There are none so blind, as them that cannot see, she thinks to herself.
Then she asks herself the same questions she had asked herself a thousand times. Why did I go to make a status report? Why didn't I stay with him? Why did I leave him alone? But she knew why, because she had needed time alone to think about what had gone between them the night before. To worry whether this man she wanted to be with forever would be gone when they returned to the SGC - and what would happen if he did hide again beneath that other persona.
She remembers their first kiss, only to feel her heart breaking again as tears began to fill her eyes. She moves her hand up to brush her lips as she reminisces how his lips had felt so soft against hers, yet full of such passion. She had become attracted to this gentle man, but she hadn't expected that under that hermit scientist was a sensitive and giving lover. He had tantalised her with soft kisses that drifted down her neck as he'd moved down her body, lighting her from inside. She had watched those skilled fingers at his keyboard and never guessed how well they could be used in other areas as they brushed her body in delicate, electrical touches.
They had made love, giving everything of themselves to each other and as they lay entwined he had fallen asleep. She had run her fingers gently through his hair and ghosted her fingers along his cheek as she had watched him sleeping, as the realisation of how deeply she felt for this man had started to scare her. In three days she had fallen in love with a man she had despised three days ago, and she'd worried about which man would return with her to the SGC. She had wondered if she could love that man while she waited for this man that lay beneath him to return. Now I know I can, I see him everyday and although I look for the man underneath, I know I love them both. Will the pain of this memory ever lessen?
Tears run slowly from her eyes as she knows she could never be with him again, never feel the tender kisses that lit up her soul, never feel that alive again because of the danger that like her if he remembered this memory, it may in turn invoke the other. In her mind's eye she again sees her return from the Stargate to the city. She had begun to run when she'd seen the dead bodies. She had found Rodney outside the control centre cradling Miarda in his arms, dead, sitting amongst hundreds. He was distraught and he had started rambling, "They kept trying to reach me. I tried to explain that I couldn't do anything. It only took minutes, but they kept trying because they trusted me. I couldn't get them to understand that it was me, that I was to blame".
As she relives the moment, she gives a body racked sob, and her hand opening to cover her mouth to stop it. Sam wraps a hand around her stomach as she curls into the foetal position to hold in the pain. She closes her eyes, trying to stop it and failing.
Rodney had been sobbing uncontrollably until he looked at the still body he cradled. As he'd pulled Miarda to him, the grief came expressed in an inhuman keening animal shout that had stopped Sam's heart and sent her cold, frozen to the spot. She had tried to comfort him, but he couldn't see anything but the children. She had looked at the small dead bodies around her. Some didn't have a mark on them, while others had a trickle of blood from their noses or mouths and some looked as if their hearts or heads had exploded.
Damn you, Nirrti. If we had known you were involved we would have moved slower; we wouldn't have attempted to shut down the inhibitor until we had checked for booby traps, unless we were sure. Damn you, Nirrti! Sam swears vehemently as the anger starts to rise again, even after all these years, as she is reminded of the pain and torment that Rodney had felt in the days afterwards, as she remembers his bright blue eyes dim further and further as the days had passed as he'd moved further and further away from her.
Nothing any of them said could reach him and she couldn't convince him that she would have made the same mistake, but he couldn't live with himself. They almost hadn't found him in time after the third attempt and Sam had realised she couldn't watch him forever. He had become spiteful, mean, trying to push away the people who were trying to save him so that he would be left alone to die by his own hand - in his own mind, to make amends. Then Daniel had found the text, had suggested a solution. Heavy sadness fills her as she recalls him in those final hours, distraught and full of hatred for himself, a broken man.
Did I do the right thing? Did I give up on him to early? Was this for him or for me? She thought as she remembered the remedy. Rodney strapped to a chair in the infirmary, the Goa'uld hand device fixed in place on her hand. She had cupped his face in her hand and kissed him for the last time with tears streaming down her face, determined to etch every second of this in her mind, the last time she would feel of his lips against hers, still soft but now dead, emotionless.
She had hoped that if she put her heart and soul into it there was a slight chance that she could reach him but as she pulled away she'd seen that he was dead inside, too consumed with guilt and hatred to see the woman who loved him. She'd looked upon the man who held her heart, who would always hold her heart as she uttered brokenly "I'm so sorry Rodney, but this is the only way".
Then she'd taken the memory from him. She stripped him of his pain so that he could live with himself again. And she had realised then that as he lost the memory of the children he was also losing the memory of their night together, of the night she fell in love and so she replayed it to herself as she stole it from Rodney and inside she swore, I will remember for both of us. I will remember always, my love, I swear, and she sobbed inside, feeling the agony of her heart breaking again and again.
I had no choice she tells herself, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Then why can't you be at peace with what you've done? If it was so right then why does it still wake you up at night? Why do you still torture yourself with memories of his kisses and of his touch and of his pain?
She knew why and she answered herself. Because I also took something precious from him as well as the pain. I torture myself because I promised I would never forget. She remembers the agony she had to hide the first time she saw him with Katie Brown. How she had to smile sweetly and talk nicely when inside she was in pain as her emotions battered her and in the stillness of her quarters she murmurs brokenly, vehemently, "He was mine, damn you, Nirrti! He was mine!" And inside she breaks again.
She knew she couldn't be with him, and part of her is glad that he was with someone who brought out the man underneath - but oh, how it hurt to know it would never be her.
I'm even jealous of Sheppard, she thinks wretchedly. He gets to be closer to him than I ever will. I see part of the man I love and know it's because of his time with Sheppard. He managed to find that man all by himself; he didn't need to be shown. If it wasn't for the children, would I ever have found him?
She lies there motionless for a long while, continuing to torture herself. To ask if maybe there was another way, a way that would have allowed him to live with himself and allowed them to be together - but there wasn't. She had to stay strong; if she faltered, if she gave in to her feelings she could have him back but it would be short lived. The other memories would follow and he would be lost to them all. She had to be strong: for Rodney, for the man she loved she had to deny her heart, deny herself. She knew eventually she would come to terms with the fact that he was lost to her and just be thankful that she was here, that she could still be part of his life. Just not on the level she longed for, dreamed for, yearned for.
Regardless of what the future held, till the end of her days she would always remember. She would never forget the night she fell in love. You will never remember, you will never know, but you will always have my heart.