Blame: Aiden
He should have put a stop to it. The minute he heard them talking like that, he should have put them straight. They were friends of Abrahams and Gaul, so it was natural for them to be upset that their friends had died. Natural for them to sound off and want someone to blame, but really, he should have jumped in and stopped it.
He should have pulled the plug on their bitch-fest right away. He should have ended it before it got out of hand. He didn't know why he hadn't, really. It wasn't as if he believed any of it. Rodney could be a pain in the ass, but he would never…I mean, sure he got scared, but he had never put any of them in danger. He had always backed them up.
If only he had been on that mission. He should have been on that mission. Teyla too, but definitely him. He was the Major's 2IC, not McKay. It was his job to watch the Major's back, and at the end of the day, that's just what he had done. They had swooped in like the cavalry, arriving just in the nick of time and blowing that son of a bitch wraith out of existence. He had saved him, and yet the Major showed more gratitude to McKay. Aiden barely got a thank-you while McKay got the pats on the back and the warm looks. That was plain wrong. What had McKay done? Fail to realize that there was a wraith on the loose, that's what.
McKay was supposed to know that a wraith could survive for millennia. That was his job, to know stuff. So why hadn't he? If he had been more careful, then the Major might never have been injured. Gaul and Abrahams might not have died. McKay should have foreseen the danger. He should have known. But he hadn't, and now the Major was probably blaming himself, when none of it was his fault.
Of course, McKay didn't screw up deliberately, no matter what those geeks might be saying. That was nuts. McKay simply hadn't been trained to deal with combat situations, not as he and the Major had. What could you expect from a scientist? Maybe this incident would get the Major to see that he, Aiden should be the one to be most trusted, the one to be confided in, the one to come first. Maybe next time he wouldn't be the one left behind in Atlantis.
Of course, after this fiasco, Major Sheppard would see that McKay simply wasn't hero material. McKay needed to learn to stick with what he knew, yet it seemed that these days every time Aiden turned around, there McKay would be, buddying up to the Major and handing out unsolicited opinions. It was crazy. Did McKay really think that the Major would want to be friends with a man like him?
Sure, the Major had been spending a lot of time with McKay lately, but that meant nothing. What else could he do when McKay kept dragging him off to play with the latest Ancient toy or argue about some crackpot scheme? He was just being polite. It was obvious that the Major would rather be goofing around with his own kind of people. People like Aiden, for instance.
In fact, he should probably go and check up on the Major now. The Doc should be done with him and he probably needed to kick back with a friend. Someone who would help him take his mind off everything. He had been so quiet in the puddle jumper, so remote. Then there were the frequent furtive glances at McKay whenever McKay wasn't looking. The looks that began after they had discovered exactly how Gaul had died.
Was it possible the Major blamed McKay for what had happened? I mean, okay, Kavanagh was going too far in implying that Gaul might not have committed suicide, that perhaps McKay was the one to fire the fatal shot. That was way off base, but still; there was no smoke without fire, right? Gaul was alive and in McKay's care when the Major left them, and then he was dead, an apparent suicide. You had to wonder how that happened. McKay had been surprisingly closed mouthed, especially for him. Could he be hiding something?
This was almost certainly what had been upsetting Major Sheppard. He would hate to think that he had misjudged one of his team, and if he had heard the talk, then he was probably wondering what to do about McKay. Certainly, he would appreciate some company, so that's what Aiden would do. He would seek out the Major and take him off to get drunk on that terrifyingly potent hooch the Athosians regularly brewed. Help him put all this behind him.
Maybe it was just as well that he hadn't interfered with the rumour mongering after all. It would do McKay good to realize that not everyone thought he walked on water just because he came up with a few good ideas occasionally. Besides, how could anyone know for sure what had happened on that wraith ship. Maybe McKay was to blame.