14. Let's All Be Kids Again
Keller watched quietly as John talked Rodney down, patiently and intimately, as if they were talking about the weather. She only caught bits and pieces, as she was monitoring Rodney's ever-decreasing brain function. She was also eyeing the cameras that recorded Rodney's downward spiral as well as her own exhaustion.
Rodney's voice rang out suddenly, child-like and petulant, in a pitch Keller was unfamiliar with.
"I don't…I can't…I can't walk around here all alone!"
John made a noise of acquiescence. "I can't either, buddy."
Rodney looked desperate and feral. "Hold my hand then—it's your city!"
John seemed to hesitate before allowing Rodney to lace their hands together. When the Colonel spoke again, his voice was tight and desperate. "How about I walk with you?" he said, and Keller can see the way Rodney tightened around John's hand, trying to find his way back to sanity.
Rodney looked at John blearily. "I'm not a doctor; I don't know where I'm goin'…" he trailed off in misery.
John blinked, his whole frame tense, and he suddenly reaffirmed the hold on Rodney's hand. His features looked tortured, somewhere between restrained and brutally open.
Keller jumped when John finally talked, the silence had held for that long.
"Rodney…" John croaked, his voice broken and edged in sharp, painful clarity, "It's murdering me…it's fucking killing me to see you like this."
Rodney looked up, his hands jerking around as if he they should be doing something, but also like he couldn't figure out what his hands ought to be doing.
There was a jarring moment of clarity that shook Keller to the core as Rodney suddenly came back to himself. "What's wrong; I'm in the infirmary, and you're here, there's cameras, I don't know—"
The cloudiness fought and stormed over Rodney's face, and Sheppard slumped in his chair, fingers lacing and tightening in Rodney's hand as the moment of reality passed.
Rodney stared, child-like at John. "There's…" He hesitates, blue eyes much too blue and too wide for a man his age, before he went on, as if deciding John were okay, "There's…this…this old voice is in my head…he's kind of mean, and he's holding me back…"
John edged back, as if trying to draw Rodney from an edge that no one knew the scientist was even standing on. "Tell him that I miss our little talks."
Rodney pouted.
Keller took her attention away from the camera, feeling very much that she had seen more of Sheppard than Rodney, and the open, vulnerable look on Sheppard's face was suddenly far too much for her to deal with.
Rodney was humming after she had turned away, and then singing slightly. The words were slurred and made little sense.
Keller couldn't make it out, but she listened as John suddenly joined in, humming and mimicking the tune even though they were both off-key.
Like children, imagining a world of youth and song and health, John and Rodney sang about ships, truths, and the shores of a land that would see to their needs and their safety; they sang about ghosts and shadows, about tired, empty halls and little talks and varying truths.
Keller suddenly realized that the sandy shores they sang about would only ever be about Atlantis, and she redoubled her effort, because if she can save Rodney…
If she could save Rodney, that meant she could save John too.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX