Chapter 15. The Planetary Equivalent of Homeless.

"Hold on, you found what?" Rodney found his hands slamming on the table as he spun toward the monitor. He couldn't have heard that right.

It figured, though. Zelenka had to be there on the Daedalus for the first test of the bridge between the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies. Rodney's untimely destruction of their ZPM had shoved this project unceremoniously into the limelight, and they got it done faster than Rodney anticipated. This first test was going to be… well, frankly, it was probably going to be really boring. It was historic, to be sure, but nothing could really go wrong. A little over a week on the Daedalus for a test that was going to take two to three hours in total. It was one Rodney could miss, and there was no reasonable way Zelenka could have messed it up.

Pippin was no longer behind on history homework, but it was worse than pulling teeth.

"Ancients, Rodney." Zelenka pushed his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose, smiling like prodigy in a hardware store.

"You found Ancients just out there in the middle of nowhere—"

"Their hyperdrive was damaged in a battle with the Wraith, so they've been flying as close as possible to lightspeed to join the others on Earth."

"But that would take them millions of years to get there."

"They knew that, but what else were they supposed to do, you know?"

Rodney didn't have any good answers for that. Zelenka probably knew he was just filling the empty space of his intense jealousy with meaningless words right now. There was no way he could have known, two weeks ago, when he was sending Zelenka off to suffer through Caldwell's command on the Daedalus that it would end up like this.

"So, what? You're bringing them back here?" Leaving that Ancient warship probably floating in the void, derelict and haunted with the knowledge it had been handily replaced with an absolutely inferior version. At least it was getting them where they needed to go.

"Yes."

And they would be here in four days. It would take four days for Rodney to even begin to catch up on all the interesting conversations Zelenka must have been having right now. "This is…" Rodney stared at the wall behind Zelenka, because he was still grinning like an idiot. "This is so completely not-cool."

"We'll be there soon."

"I know. Have fun."

The way Zelenka smiled, Rodney just knew he was enjoying every moment of this. "I will." The connection cut off.

Yeah, that was definitely malicious on Zelenka's part. Rodney figured Elizabeth already knew—anyone else who needed to know already knew, really. Sheppard was on the Daedalus, so even he had a front row seat to a convention where he wouldn't even understand the questions that needed to be asked. Rodney leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.

Ancients. On Atlantis.

"Hey, Dad?" Pippin sighed in the doorway, focusing on his tablet as he walked into the lab.

Pippin said it so casually now, like he'd always been saying it. Being called dad still felt like an electric jolt to his senses on every occurrence. But for all that, it was somehow comfortable, somehow right. He was a dad, and had been for weeks now. The newness wasn't lost. The confusion. Because sometimes he really did question how he possibly could be.

"You're done?" Rodney watched him approach, maybe finishing up the last bits of the history homework the teacher had assigned.

"Almost. Just a second."

Rodney looked back at his computer while he waited, but it wasn't like he was getting anything else done with the news that Zelenka was talking with flesh-and-blood Ancients right now. So, instead, he pulled up the spreadsheet he'd made of all the history assignments in the lesson plans. All the questions that the teacher on video had assigned to his students years ago and that were being assigned to Pippin now.

It took him almost two hours set up, but he had a system now. Because it was obvious that Pippin was, indeed, a thirteen-year-old kid with better things to do than history homework, Rodney realized he'd have to be a bit more hands-on in this area. In short, Pippin couldn't be trusted with this—for all the other areas he could be trusted. So, while his other homework got a weekly update, Pippin had to bring Rodney his completed history assignment for Rodney's perusal every day.

Pippin slid the tablet in front of him. "I did two."

"Hm." Rodney looked at Pippin's terrible handwriting scrawled across the blue-backlit screen. Rodney could only make out enough to know that there were complete sentences in there, and the topic looked appropriate to the questions. "Two days?"

"Yeah. I was thinking that, um… maybe… can we go to the mainland with Ronon and Teyla?"

Rodney nodded, even though he wasn't sure it would be a we sort of situation. Rodney had a hundred questions and even more sub-questions to record for easy reference for whenever he got to talk to an Ancient. "Hm, yeah, maybe," he said, anyway. Because they had two days to kill before the Daedalus returned. Probably plenty of time. "How's your other homework?"

"Good. I'm done with the math for ninth grade."

Rodney spun toward him. "Already?

Pippin smiled a little, and nodded. "Yeah. So when can I take the test?"

And tests. Rodney was always in the room when he was taking tests. Not because he didn't trust him not to cheat, but because it just seemed like the right thing to do. If a genius submitted a proof, but no one was there to read it, was he really a genius?

"Today, if you want."

"Okay." Pippin leaned on the table, running his fingers over the smooth surface. "Then I'm just going to do the next year stuff."

"Yeah, yeah, absolutely." Rodney didn't know whether to be completely derailed from the topic of history by the strangely exterior pride he felt, or to tell Pippin that, in that case, he ought to step it up on the history like the miniature genius he probably was. He needed to get this kid an IQ test… but later. "That's, uh, you know, that's great, Pippin." He gave Pippin a backhanded pat on the arm.

Pippin stepped in closer.

Another weird thing he'd been doing lately, and significantly outside everything Rodney had read about teenager-behavior. This was around the time Pippin should have been drawing away from parental figures, trying to find his own identity, and even being a bit flustered and frustrated about any approval Rodney might have.

Well, he was definitely flustered.

Not that Rodney thought Pippin would be textbook. Probably, no child was textbook. Which kind of made the whole field of child psychology even more useless than the regular kind… The point was that instead of turning away, instead of shutting down any relational inroads Rodney might have tried to make, Pippin was making his own. He was ever coming closer, extending invitations, and Rodney wondered how many he'd taken. How many he'd missed.

Based on Pippin's increasing good spirits, and, now, he was leaning on Rodney's arm to look at the tablet with him, Rodney hadn't missed too many.

There was no way Rodney would be able to point out one of those social cues, but he was apparently taking them anyway. That, and, Pippin's mode of expressing affection was apparently much… closer than Rodney's. He wasn't a hugger. No one in his family was.

Except, apparently, Pippin. And he was surprised how okay he was with it.

Rodney nudged Pippin, pointing at one of the sentences on the tablet. "What's that supposed to say?"

Pippin squinted at it for a few seconds. "I think it says Holy Roman Empire."

"You think."

"No, I know that's what it says."

"Holy Roman Empire is three words."

Pippin took the tablet back and held it closer to his face for a whole second before holding it back out to Rodney, pointing out the pinpricks of spaces between the letters. "Yeah, there and there? It's says Holy Roman Empire."

"You've gotta slow down or something…" Rodney sighed, and hoped Pippin didn't take that too badly. It was a criticism, but he hoped it was constructive. He couldn't make half of this out. "And that?"

"Charlemagne?"

That, Rodney could read. He just had no idea how to pronounce it. "Okay, good. When are Ronon and Teyla going to the mainland again?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"Hm." Rodney nodded and looked at his monitor. As Pippin promised, he'd done what amounted to two days on Rodney's spreadsheet. He marked them off, and the rows turned a congratulatory green. "Okay, sure, why not?"

Pippin leaned into his arm again. "Will you come?"

Probably, but Rodney didn't say that immediately. He made a mental list of the things he wanted to have done before the Ancients arrived, and three days seemed like plenty of time. It had been quiet—outside of a strange hallucinogenic machine and… death, and… really, all run-of-the-mill stuff—and that didn't happen enough. Not enough for him to do all the things he wanted to do and should have done…

"Please?" Pippin said quietly just past his shoulder.

"Yeah." Rodney looked at him. "Yeah, of course."

With a grin, Pippin straightened and went around to his chair. "Jinto told me about a mountain you can get to the top of by lunchtime if you start early enough. Ronon said he'd do it with me. Want to go?"

Oh, that sounded like some archaic version of torture—not to mention something he did on a more regular basis than he wanted. Though, for no reason at all, he found his mouth saying, "Sure," instead of what he wanted to say.

Probably because Pippin said please.

Pippin put his notebook on the desk and pulled out his pencils. If he was starting on tenth grade math, he wasn't starting today. Rodney watched for almost a minute as Pippin started sketching something new. Quickly, a series of circles took the shape of an Asgard—his favorite subject even over his green space commando.

"How's your day?" Pippin asked, and the change was so sudden Rodney almost answered more truthfully than he intended.

Fortunately, he caught himself back from lambasting Zelenka for his outlandishly good luck and his own poor luck… because Rodney had unequivocally been staying here on Atlantis because Pippin was here. There was no real reason for him to leave. It was just bad luck. "Kind of weird," he said after a moment.

Pippin grinned, but didn't look up. "It's 'kind of weird' a lot."

"Yeah, I guess so." Rodney turned back to his monitor and tried to figure out where he was. "The Daedalus, out doing the test for the 'gate bridge, found an Ancient warship with actual Ancients on it."

Pippin dropped his pencil and looked up. "No way."

Rodney shrugged, smiled at Pippin's wide eyes. "Apparently so. Their hyperdrive was knocked out in a battle with the Wraith, oh, ten thousand years ago, so the Daedalus is giving them a ride home."

Pippin looked at him for a moment, and then flipped to a new page in his notebook. "They must have been going really fast to be at the half-way point already. Like, light speed." He started shading, as though the conversation were such a trivial matter. "How many years have they been on the way, to them?"

Relativity. Smart kid. Or, at least, one that listened when he said things. "Probably, uh… six years? Six? Seven? Depends on where the battle was."

Pippin shook his head, but only seemed mildly impressed as he continued his drawing. "That's so crazy." Then he paused, squinted at his page, and then looked up at Rodney. "It would be cool if you could go so fast that you would start going backwards. You could become a baby if you waited long enough, if that was how it worked."

And just like that, Rodney figured, the plot of hundreds or thousands of bad sci-fi stories were born. "Yeah, wouldn't that be something." He turned back to his monitor with a small smile.

Pippin continued chattering, but had moved on to fictional theorizing on the ramifications of going really slowly. Rodney tried to interject some sanity with actual physics, but Pippin brushed off Rodney's attempts to shoot down the idea that, with this paradigm, outside-time would start going backwards—as opposed to the slow-moving "inside-time" one would be subjected to going really quickly. It was, Pippin explained, a way to accomplish time travel. It made absolutely no sense, but Rodney could see a blockbuster film based on the premise, probably.

On the other hand, lots of absolutely absurd things made more sense than Rodney gave credit for. Maybe if he did stop—really stop everything from cell division to atomic orbits—time might start going backwards. It was stupid, but it was fun to dream. They talked about that, and other impossible possibilities though dinner and played video games that evening. Pippin wished him good night, and Rodney went to bed with one more dad to his accounting than he had before.

#

Rodney was not built to climb mountains. He'd done it plenty of times, of course. Or something close enough. He'd been on a 'gate team for over two years. But Rodney had not anticipated Carson showing him up on this trek up the mountain when he'd invited him to come, too. Rodney was the one regularly running from Wraith and Genii and whatever else had it on their minds to kill them. He should have been better than this.

After collapsing on the nearest rock, a sack of something somewhat heavy fell on his chest. With a cough, he sat and seized the cloth of knots and glared at Ronon. "What the hell?"

"Lunch."

"Oh." Rodney untied the sack and saw one of the sandwiches from Atlantis, and a fruit that looked like an apple but tasted nothing like it that the Athosians often had. Rodney had at least three bars on him somewhere, but… "Well, thanks."

"Very thoughtful, Ronon," Carson said with a nod, raising the sandwich as if toasting Ronon with it. "Thank you."

"Any time, Doc." Ronon took a bite from his fruit. Rodney noticed he didn't seem to have a sandwich. Instead, he had more fruit and a small strip that looked like beef jerky.

Carson gestured to the vista in front of them: a view of the valley they'd just left around four hours ago. "Would you look at that?"

Rodney looked. The sky was blue and the clouds were white, and the trees hadn't grown in this side of the mountain, giving them a clear view of the entire valley. It was, he had to admit, pretty nice. Not exactly worth the trouble to get here, but since he had to be here it wasn't that bad of a reward.

"I gotta admit, I didn't expect you to keep up like that," Ronon said. Rodney took a moment to realize he was talking to Carson… maybe he wasn't surprised because Rodney didn't really keep up, per se, either.

"Me, either…" Rodney sighed and unwrapped the sandwich.

Carson scoffed, as if offended. "There are mountains in Scotland, you know." At a glare, he revised, "Alright, hills. Look, I don't know, but we would go out and climb to the top of the nearby hills on the weekends, me and my brothers."

"Hm." Rodney looked at the distant rock that Pippin and Jinto were climbing. It was at least three times as tall as they were, but sloped just enough that Rodney was pretty sure they weren't going to fall. And it looked like his fear of heights was being peer-pressured out of him. "I didn't get out much as a kid."

Carson raised an eyebrow at him.

"Alright, as an adult, either. But I'm out now, hm?"

"I don't know how much more out you could get." Carson happily bit into his sandwich and turned his face into the light breeze.

Ronon chuckled. "Thanks for coming, by the way." Ronon took a bite out of his apple-thing, crunching noisily for a few seconds. "I don't know if I would've had to stay with the Athosians for the day if you didn't."

"That's, uh…" Rodney didn't know what to say. For one thing, that was incredibly nice, that Ronon would forego an activity he would have wanted to do otherwise because it would make Pippin uncomfortable if he did. For another thing, that was much more astute than Rodney had ever given Ronon credit for. "I'm a little surprised you noticed."

Ronon scoffed. "It didn't take long to figure out he didn't want to go skateboarding if Sheppard wasn't with us. Or anyone else, really. At first I thought it was just me—but turns out he won't go anywhere with just Sheppard, either."

"What's this now?" Carson asked, though he looked dismayed enough to have already figured out the topic of conversation.

"I didn't notice until I left him alone in the house with my brother-in-law." Rodney sighed, almost shuddering at the memory of dragging Pippin back inside Jeannie's house while his heart tried to figure out its regular rhythm. Rodney turned to Carson. He still looked hurt, though probably not because he was being left out. All the same, Rodney explained. "It turns out that Pippin doesn't like to be left alone with guys. Which meant his first few days with me had to be hell for him…" No wonder he'd freaked out so badly in the hotel room that first night…

He hadn't figured out that Rodney was incapable of physically hurting anything. Except maybe a mouse, but that was only assuming he was armed.

"Oh, dear." Carson looked down, perhaps searching his memory for all the times he'd been, perhaps, alone with Pippin. "A boyfriend or something, I imagine?"

"As far as I know." He avoided thinking about that miserable excuse for a human being living in reasonable assurance of his crimes going unpunished because Rodney wasn't going to ask any questions. It was probably for the best, because Rodney had no doubt knowing the bastard's name would make Rodney a criminal in short order. Him, and John, and Ronon, and Teyla… "Hypothetically, if I had a body to bury, would you help me with that?"

The grin Ronon shot him less than a second later was almost what Rodney expected. Rodney remembered being wary of him when they first met, but this…

Carson didn't wait a whole second, either. "Hypothetically, aye."

"Huh." And Carson, too, apparently. Maybe even Radek. Right at this moment, even though he knew he, Radek, and Carson were none of them violent people under ordinary circumstances… he nevertheless had a desire to toss this mystery boyfriend of Stephanie's out a second- or third-story window. And he knew he probably couldn't do it himself.

"What are you going to do?" Carson asked.

"What can I do?"

"Oh, I don't know."

Rodney glanced at Carson to see why his tone had been so strange. Disappointed, almost. Confused. "Oh. Oh, god, no, I mean—I don't even know the guy's name. I don't have any bodies to bury."

"I know," Carson answered. This time defensive. "You said it was hypothetical."

Ronon laughed.

After a moment of silence, Carson was still looking at him. Before Rodney could ask him what he was on about, he said, "Just give me some warning beforehand. Flights are expensive. Hypothetically, of course."

Rodney scoffed in mild amusement. However sure he was that Carson couldn't hurt a fly, he now wasn't sure he wouldn't try if the fly deserved it.

Ronon brushed off one of his arms, even though Rodney didn't see any dirt there as he spoke. "Sometimes you guys talk about Earth and I think it sounds like the best place in the universe. It doesn't have the Wraith, but…"

"Yeah, well, we don't like to talk about the bad stuff." Who did? Rodney routinely left out his own bad stuff… Most of the time it served no purpose except to drag down the mood… his own, and others.

As far as he could tell, that was all it did. There was nothing he could do to change Pippin's past, and knowing what some lowlife did back then wouldn't make Rodney a better person. If anything, it was probably detrimental. Because at least he wasn't that. Sure, it was the literal least he could do, but it set a bar.

Though, his own bar for what he considered "good parenting" felt really low in other ways. It seemed like the simplest thing in the world to figure out what it was about Pippin that deserved his interest and attention—it was a mind-game, and he was good at those. It was a puzzle, in its own little way. The weird thing was, though he was no closer to figuring out what about Pippin deserved such things, he was giving them anyway. Trying. When time allowed.

He wouldn't be on a mainland mountain if he weren't.

"Hey, Ronon!" All three of them looked up at Pippin's shout from the top of the rock. The boys took Ronon's glance toward them as answer enough.

Jinto pointed. "Think you can climb that one?"

Everyone turned toward the larger boulder on the other side of the peak they occupied. It was taller, less round, and probably had only room for two people standing close together on top. Ronon took the challenge, probably only because he wanted to get out of the conversation. Rodney watched Pippin and Jinto sit on their rock, wondering what it looked like up there and on a scale of one to ten how freaked-out he'd be at the sharp drop on the other side if he could see just how close his kid was to a 100-meter drop.

"How are you, Rodney?" Carson asked quietly a second later.

"Excuse me?"

Carson shrugged, and also looked toward Pippin for a moment. He was laughing and cheering on Ronon's attempts to scale the boulder, though Ronon clearly didn't need it. "I think people probably ask you how Pippin is a lot. But probably not you."

Rodney didn't know if that was true—if it was, he hadn't noticed. "I'm fine."

"Because, I'm sure, if I were to ask you how Pippin is, you'd probably say he's fine. And that's true. If he was fine before you knew, then he's also fine after you know." Oh, that. So maybe it was a more complicated question than he realized. Because nothing really had changed, even if the suspicion paled in comparison to the confirmation. "The only difference is that you know better how much a miracle that is, aye?"

Rodney nodded. It was a bit of a miracle. Pippin was here in the sun and the breeze, having fun and smiling. Only infrequently did he fold himself into a corner. Only once that Rodney had seen. But there was still something about Pippin that had him worried—how quiet he was, how disinclined he was to believe, like Rodney did, that he was worth anyone else's effort.

Of course, for all Rodney's insistence in that area, he found the premise rarely proven, there, too.

Which meant Rodney found himself more often the one insisting that Pippin was worth the effort. Maybe one of these days Pippin would believe it, be confident in himself and his abilities like Rodney was. He'd find his place because he made it.

And Carson was right. It would be a small miracle.

"I'm okay," he said again, and this time he was sure that he meant it.

#

"How many survivors?" Ronon asked.

Rodney cast a glance at him, wondering why he was here. Why he was interested. It made sense that Teyla was her—here people were absolutely thrilled at the prospect of their "Ancestors" returning. Ronon didn't seem to care either way, though.

Maybe he was more eager for Sheppard to be home. Rodney could relate a little.

"Just over a hundred," Elizabeth answered.

The ever-present 'gate technician spun ever so slightly to address her. "Doctor Weir, the Daedalus is ready to beam down our people and the Ancient delegation."

"Thank you." With a nod at the three of them, she cantered down the steps to the open floor leading to the Stargate.

Rodney tried to shove aside the nerves at meeting an Ancient for the first time. He hadn't the faintest idea what they would be like, and then he didn't have to wonder anymore.

Sheppard, Zelenka, and five other people dressed in varying shades of beige appeared in a flash of light. Sheppard gave Rodney what he thought was a subtle nod of greeting, so Rodney returned it; then Sheppard went straight to business.

"Doctor Weir, Doctor McKay, Ronon, Teyla… this is Helia, captain of the Ancient ship Tria."

Rodney turned his attention on the short woman, her mess of coiled blond hair. Captain Helia, was it? She was, for lack of better words—

"It's a pleasure to meet you." Doctor Weir gave a demure smile and slight bow.

Rodney found himself doing the same—except for the smile. His heart was pounding and the millions of questions he hadn't written down with the thousands of others he thought about before this moment bombarded his head like sunlight in the presence of these people who must have known so much. What would they think of what they'd done with the place? Would they be impressed with their attempts—albeit, some unfortunate outcomes—to piece together the things the Ancients had left behind?

"Thank you," Helia said. "From what I'm told, you've done a remarkable job preserving our city."

"Oh, yes, of course," Rodney found himself saying. "We did what we could with what we had—which, to be fair—"

"I need to speak to the leader of your people."

Rodney snapped his mouth shut at the interruption. Sure, he was probably speaking out of turn, but that felt incredibly rude…

"I'm in charge of the Atlantis expedition."

The smile Helia gave Elizabeth was all too familiar. The smile of a mother looking down on her small child showing her an insignificant craft or homework problem that no one of her expertise or importance would care about. "You misunderstand me, Doctor Weir. I need to talk to the one who can speak for all the people of Earth."

"That can certainly be arranged. But may I ask why?"

Rodney's stomach churned, and it wasn't because he hadn't eaten. It wasn't because there was no such person on Earth or anywhere else. A console rose from the floor between himself and Helia—but Ronon took a small step top put himself between the new device and Rodney, raising his gun at it.

"What is that?" Rodney brushed past Ronon and his gun, pointing at the console. He couldn't see its control panel on the other side. "How come I've never seen that?"

Even if he'd been standing behind Helia, it would have only been visible for a moment anyway. She put her hand on it, and, behind them, Rodney could hear systems powering down.

"Excuse me," Elizabeth cut in, "what's going on?"

"Thank you for all you've done, Doctor Weir, but your guardianship of this city is no longer necessary." Helia removed her hand from the console, and smiled as if the decision had been made and everyone agreed. "The city is now under my control."

"Hang on a second!" Rodney might have said more, but he found the blade of Elizabeth's hand almost against his chest.

"I'm afraid we'll still need to use the Stargate to call Earth," she said, her tone remarkably even. "So you can talk to the one who speaks for the people of Earth?"

"Of course." Helia sounded so pleasant, so cheerful. As if they were her guests; which, to be fair—

But, no, there was no fair about this. Rodney managed to bite his tongue, but managed to find Sheppard on Ronon's other side. Zelenka stood beside him, looking as shocked and dismayed as Rodney felt. The look on Sheppard's face was another of resolute calm.

"You will be welcome to use the Stargate to call the leader of your people. We have, of course, much to discuss." Helia walked past them and up the stairs they'd just come from.

"Chuck!" Elizabeth called from where she stood. Rodney heard the beginnings of anger and frustration that hadn't quite surfaced. "Dial Earth. Sheppard? Get to a Jumper."

"Yes, ma'am." With a glance at Rodney, Sheppard turned off into the corridor.

Rodney didn't know whether to follow Sheppard to find out what the hell happened on the Daedalus or continue with Elizabeth to make sure Helia didn't start packing their things immediately.

Because that was what it sounded like. It sounded like they were leaving. They weren't welcome here. The Ancients were back and they wanted their city with none of them in it. Rodney felt like he'd been punched in the chest.

"Elizabeth?" he muttered, even though he knew he hadn't been loud enough to be heard. Instead, he slid closer to Zelenka and rasped, "What the hell happened up there?"

"Nothing!" Zelenka whispered back. "They were very pleasant. Very grateful!"

Helia walked past Chuck the 'gate technician and unlocked it with her hand. She looked at Zelenka. "You told me about the inter-galactic 'gate bridge between our galaxy and yours. You will need one of the 'gate ships?"

"Yes, he will," Rodney snapped before Zelenka could answer. He heard a cautioning whisper from Elizabeth, but he barely registered the sound.

"Very well." Helia nodded at Rodney, and fiddled with the controls again. "Tell your friend one of the 'gate ships has been opened for him." With that, Helia held an open hand to the dialing device. The buttons lit up on Chuck's touch again, but it was clear that wouldn't happen without Captain Helia's say-so.

"Elizabeth!" Rodney didn't know what he thought Elizabeth could possibly do about it, but he was rewarded with a sharp look to shut up for his efforts.

It was for the best. They wouldn't know anything until Sheppard got back, until he scrounged up whatever passed for the leader of their people. Maybe General Landry or—oh, no, one of the IOA people. In either case, Rodney knew exactly what was about to happen without having to wait.

They were going to be leaving Atlantis. If Helia had anything to say about it, they would be leaving as soon as possible. Rodney pressed the palm of his hand to his mouth and tried to breathe—tried to think. He knew he was borrowing trouble, but he also knew he was right. Since there wouldn't be any pleasant chatting about any of his questions, any of their accomplishments—Rodney turned and stalked out of the control room.

He had things to pack.

#

All things considered, Rodney should have been the one waiting around with Elizabeth and Sheppard to see what the outcome was. Rodney was right in broad terms that Sheppard brought back a general and one of the IOA's lackeys—but it was O'Neill and Woolsey. He would have guessed Woolsey if he hadn't been so ticked. But he figured he already knew what was going to happen anyway, so why agonize over it? Why pretend that if they were all sitting together in Elizabeth's office, their collective hopes and wishes would convince Helia two rooms away to let any of them stay?

They'd probably done a pretty good job screwing up the city enough, anyway. They'd want it back, and wouldn't want them around while they were cleaning up the mess. Rodney didn't want to count how many systems he'd hacked to pieces trying to get their own technology to interface.

"Rodney?" Zelenka stood at the door, his tone and expression all the information Rodney needed.

"How long do we have?"

He sighed and walked into the lab. "Forty-eight hours." He leaned on a desk and shook his head. "I'm sorry. If I hadn't noticed—"

"You couldn't have known." Rodney didn't let him finish, partially because Rodney would have liked to blame Zelenka for this. But it wasn't his fault. He couldn't have been apologizing for doing something right for the first time in his life. "And, anyway, I wanted to meet them, too." He hesitated. He should have stayed in the Central Tower. "There are only, what? A hundred of them. They could use us, couldn't they? They might even need us?"

"Apparently not." Radek sighed again, shrugged, and straightened as he looked around. "This is going to take longer than forty-eight hours to pack up, I think?"

It took six months to put everything together in a workable configuration, so… "We'll all work on it." Rodney looked at the racks of servers, the coils of wires, the computers and even some furniture they brought with them. "In my experience, it's a lot easier to take stuff apart than it is to put it together."

Radek chuckled, as if it were somehow funny. Or else it was the only emotion that was suitable for display at the moment. "I'll get started in my lab. Doctor Weir will make an announcement within the hour."

"I'd better go tell Pippin."

"Oh. Right."

Rodney wandered out of his lab, leaving Radek to begin the process of packing. He imagined the first thing to go in one of his boxes was the photo of his kids. He didn't remember their names, but maybe he'd get to see them now.

Rodney took the scenic route from the lab to his quarters, and was surprised to find Pippin inside working on something on his tablet. Rodney could see the dusty brown hair of the history teacher on the screen. He'd been pretty diligent about it lately. Or maybe he just wanted to go climb a mountain again.

Well, they could. Pikes Peak instead, maybe…

"Hey, Pippin, how you doing?"

Pippin glanced up, at the door, and then at Rodney again. "What's wrong?"

"That obvious, huh?"

Pippin pushed the tablet away a little bit and stared. Rodney figured it was cruel to let him stew for even a few seconds about what might be wrong—but his experience with the bad stuff that could happen on Atlantis was limited. As far as Pippin knew, nothing bad could happen here. And, most of the time, that was a correct assessment. It had been six months since the danger had made it here… and, now, it wouldn't matter if there was danger here or not.

"We're going back to Earth."

"Oh." Pippin didn't seem concerned, but Rodney remembered he'd been back and forth to Earth to get Jeannie once already.

"I mean, permanently." Probably. Most likely. Rodney had a kid now—he was absolutely not the prime candidate for staying here if such a station even existed. He was off Atlantis, out of the program, why would the SGC want to bother with an employee with a kid if they didn't have to? That was another problem for another time. "The Ancients want their city back. And they don't want us here."

Pippin thought about that, leaned back in his chair. "That sucks."

"Yeah." Rodney chuckled. That was definitely one way of putting it. "Yeah, it really sucks."

Pippin sighed and tapped on his tablet a few times. "So I guess I better pack." When Rodney nodded, he spoke again. "Are we going back to Canada?"

"Good question; I don't know. The, uh… you know, the US Department of Defense practically owns me. I'll probably end up at Area 51 if not the SGC."

"Area 51?"

"A military base in Nevada." Rodney didn't say how miserable it was there. How hot and boring. He didn't want to raise a kid on the outskirts of Las Vegas. It was better than Russia, which was probably another benefit to having Pippin. If nothing else, Pippin would shield him from Siberia. Another awful place.

Pippin nodded, but didn't move to start packing. All the stuff he'd brought with him took under three hours to pack on his own, so Rodney wasn't concerned about that. He hadn't picked up any Pegasus galaxy souvenirs. Except a skateboard.

With a sigh, Pippin hit the power button on his tablet. "We'll never see Ronon and Teyla again, will we? Or any of the Athosians."

Yeah… that was exactly what this meant. "No, I guess… I guess we won't. But, uh, you know Carson and Sheppard are coming back with us. I imagine Zelenka will be on the planet somewhere…"

Pippin smiled a little, but it was clear he wasn't happy about it. He stood up, and picked up his tablet. "Okay, well, I'll pack."

"Okay."

He watched Pippin until he disappeared into his bedroom. Rodney sat with it for a few minutes. Looked around the room that he'd only lived in for four months. Pippin's things made up a little less than three-quarters of the clutter in here, mostly because Rodney had removed all his scientific paraphernalia to his own room. He didn't have much.

He went back to the lab to find everyone already at the morose work of putting everything in boxes. Miko and Schreiber went to the trouble of creating a task list that included every room and major piece of equipment. They split into groups, and Rodney's luck put him with Radek and a few other scientists in the infirmary. Not that he couldn't have reassigned himself if he wanted, but Pippin showed up, and Radek was really the only other scientist he knew well enough.

It was impressive, really, how quickly everything was getting packed up and put away. Depressing.

This was home and in two days there would be virtually no evidence that he'd been here. No evidence except how crummy he was going to feel without it.

Pippin made himself more useful than he probably realized, sitting against one of the cabinets and wrapping cords into loops. Everyone caught on pretty quickly that was his job, and a mountain of labeled cords slowly accumulated beside him.

Pippin didn't complain very much. Rodney wondered if he was actually glad to be doing that—as opposed to some other miserable job packing up.

"I think we're almost done in here…" Carson looked around at one of the nearly-empty surgery rooms. Rodney didn't think it got as much use as they probably deserved. Rodney had an arrow extracted from his gluteus maximus in here.

"You know, unpacking this back on Earth is going to be just as big a chore," Rodney mumbled, wondering how many boxes of his own he'd have to dig through alone at Area 51. Relatively alone, anyway.

"I won't be sad to miss that." Radek smiled, but his tone said something different. Probably because they were all a bit miserable.

"Miss it?" Carson looked absolutely dismayed, though. More dismayed than the news that Zelenka would be elsewhere for important and delicate instrument-handling warranted. "How are you planning on getting out of it?"

"Well, I was offered a position at Masaryk University right before I came here." He shrugged, probably because Carson didn't offer any indication he knew what university that was. Neither did Rodney. "I imagine I could work there if I wanted to. What about you, Carson?"

Carson wasn't fooled by Radek's attempts to be cheery, but sighed and opened a case in front of him. "Well, they offered me a surgery position at Stargate Command. Rodney?"

Oh, they offered him a position. And, of course, Carson took it. He wondered if they did as much for Zelenka. Probably not, with the way Rodney liked to describe his peculiar competency at screwing things up… He didn't imagine that would have repercussions like that. Pippin was looking at him.

"Area 51, I guess. Tool around with as much of the database as we're able to bring back with us." Before anyone else could say much else, he looked at Zelenka. "Didn't they offer you…?

"No—I mean, yes, they offered for me to go to Area 51, too, it's just…" He shrugged uncomfortably, and then leaned on the box he'd been packing who-knew-what into. "I just have things to do. Brno doesn't seem as far from Prague as it used to. Besides, you know, in a way, I look forward to focusing on a single problem for a while? Being continually pulled off of research to put out fires can be, you know, frustrating."

"I suppose so." What that had to do with anything, Rodney didn't know. There were distinct benefits to Area 51 research. And it had to be more interesting than whatever was going on at Masaryk—wherever that was. What could possibly—? "Oh, your kids, I guess?"

"Yes." His answer was short, like he wasn't expecting much good news on that front.

"Oh, that will be nice," Carson said, almost brightly. "I hope that works out for you."

"Thank you. I will need all the hope you have to spare…" Zelenka shut his box and pulled up another.

Since he didn't offer any additional information, Rodney figured that part of the conversation was over. "I just don't know how many times I'm gonna be asked to save the day at the eleventh hour at Area 51." Because, really, anyone could tool around with the database. Zelenka could do that.

"Oh, I'm sure it will come up," Carson said, as if planetary disaster was a desired outcome.

It made for pretty damn good job security, anyway. "Yeah, not as often as I'd like."

Carson pulled up a vial of some sort of medicine and looked at it. "Well, I must admit, it's been a pleasure working with you both. In fact, out of all the people…"

Rodney glanced up when he stopped talking rather abruptly, and realized he was probably feeling the same way. As much as he hated to admit it, the only person missing from this room—those he actually liked and respected—was John. And, hell, even at a time like this he could admit to an inkling of regret that he was probably never going to see Zelenka again. It was nice to have an ever-present scapegoat, if nothing else. Sometimes he even had good ideas.

"You are not tearing up on me, are you?" With a sigh, Rodney looked at Radek, who looked concerned and even empathetic. There was no way Zelenka was going to miss him, too, was there? "Oh, he is. He's tearing up."

"I know." Zelenka's typically compassionate nature probably kept him from saying anything else.

"Now you've ruined it." With a huff, Carson slammed his case shut even though it didn't look anywhere near full.

"Oh, I'm sorry." What was he doing? Why couldn't he just tell Carson he hated this, too? Hell, both of them probably deserved to know he appreciated their virtually endless patience in working with the biggest narcissistic ass Earth had to offer all these years… even if it was only two.

It was Jeannie all over again, except this time it wasn't really going to be his fault he was never going to see them again. Radek was looking at him like he was the one who'd broken something.

"I was just about to say something!" Carson sniffed, and started to walk away with his half-full case in hand.

"It's not like we're not gonna see each other at the 'gate," Rodney mumbled, and then shrugged. "But, you know, for what it's worth, I'm gonna miss you, too."

Carson turned back to face him, and Zelenka was staring. Even Pippin was watching curiously from the floor beyond a pile of black and beige wires.

"What are you all looking at?" Damn it. This was why he hadn't been going to say anything. Now he was getting all choked up. Not as much as Carson, but still…

Radek nodded hesitantly. "You've been the best worst boss of my life. And I mean that genuinely."

Rodney waved Radek away. "Except you; I'm not going to miss you." Radek smiled as if he was completely confident that was a lie. Rodney wasn't sure it was, but he didn't feel like arguing. "I hope you have a good time at Masaryk," he said instead. He should probably thank him for all the chess games with his son, shouldn't he? That meant something.

"What do we say to a reunion?" Carson smiled, and looked between them. Rodney had no idea Carson worked with Radek enough to like him, but… well, no, Carson was friendly with everyone. He couldn't possibly like Radek. "Next April, we meet in Denver for pizza and Colorado craft beer."

Radek scoffed, but nodded anyway. "That's a long way for pizza. But, yes. That would be nice."

Even though nothing had really changed, except that Carson had been reasonably assured he would be missed, everyone seemed to be in much better spirits. Carson said, "It's settled, then," and left the infirmary.

Radek sighed and went back to his box, and Rodney did the same.

"I'm gonna be glad to be rid of you, you know," Rodney added, just in case Radek hadn't been paying attention. He was going to be glad, but… but, nothing. That was it.

Radek nodded, and sighed. "Yes, I know. The feeling is mutual."

"Good."

"Very good."