"Thanatophobia" by Krissy Mae Anderson
Summary: Rodney sees dead people.
Rating: T
Characters/Pairing: Rodney, mostly,& John, with some minor McShep action
Disclaimer: My evil plan to take over the world and get the rights to Stargate Atlantis hasn't succeeded yet...
Spoilers: The Defiant One, 38 Minutes, Hot Zone, Siege II, The Intruder, Runner
Warnings: Character death discussion, some slightly distrubing content
Author's note: I'm probably thanatophobic myself, and I got so tired of all the nitpicking of Rodney's behavior over the last 3 eppies that this idea popped into my head and I decided to explore a possible explanation...
In his dreams, Rodney sees dead people.
Sometimes, it's the kindly old Mrs. Vance, who used to live next door to the McKays many years ago, when they still lived in Halifax. She used to baby-sit Rodney and Jeannie when they were little, and Rodney remembers stale cookies on a cracked porcelain plate and faded family portraits on the walls of her house. One day when Mrs. Vance was watching Rodney while his parents were at work and his sister in school, she sat down in a chair and never got up again. That day Rodney finally understood what death was. He had been four when Mrs. Vance fell asleep forever, and he had seen dead birds and cats on the street, but there were always new birds and new cats, and Rodney could pretend that they were alive again. But Mrs. Vance just slept on, and no matter how much Rodney pulled on her apron and cried, she didn't get up.
On particularly bad nights, it's Amelia, his Physics lab partner at U of Toronto. She was an unremarkable, awkward girl, but she was sweet and funny, and she kissed him once when he walked her to her dorm at night. Amelia was not as smart as him – no one was, but she had some great ideas about gravitational radiation, and Rodney was almost in love – if not with Amelia then with her brain. But over Christmas break that year, something happened to her, and her work began slipping, and Rodney found himself a new lab partner. A week before midterms, Amelia didn't come to class, and on the way to the cafeteria, Rodney saw an ambulance and police cars over by her dorm, curtains flapping in the wind on the fourth floor, and knew Amelia would never come to class again, and the brain he had been almost in love with was now just dead tissue on the muddy sidewalk.
When Rodney is awake, he sees dead people too.
They die in front of his eyes all the time – they shoot themselves in the head to escape a slow, painful, debilitating death. They die screaming, their brain exploding from seeing imagined ghosts. They die from explosive decompression when they're sucked out into space. They die from guns, aliens, knives, plants, explosions, die from everything probable and improbable. Their deaths make Rodney want to scream, because he sees himself dead in their place, and he feels guilty about his self-centeredness, but he doesn't want to stop existing, he wants his heart to beat, and his brain to think, he doesn't want to be a pile of rotting flesh and bones, he doesn't want to go into nothingness. Rodney babbles and shivers and whines, and silently chants "I'm not going to die" as his heart tries to leap out of his chest, and with every day he is less and less sure that he will not die the very next moment.
When he comes back from the godforsaken radioactive planet where he has almost died yet again, Rodney can barely breathe. He stumbles around his lab, and drops things, and snaps at his assistant, and all he can think is "I am so happy I am not dead." Finally, he gives up and goes to his room, where it's safe, where there's no death, where he can close his eyes and stop thinking, stop everything but existing. Five hours later, as he's still lying on his bed and holding on to himself as he thinks of a million scenarios of himself dying, the door to his room slides open. Rodney closes his eyes, because he knows that if he looks into John's eyes he will see no fear of dying there, and it would terrify him more then his own phobia. A moment later, there are warm lips on his, and strong hands are unzipping his shirt, and he entangles his shaking hands in the forever-messy hair. When the lips move on to his neck, Rodney slides his hands down and begins pushing John's T-shirt up, stopping only when his hand is over John's heart. He has seen John die once, and he has believed him dead another time, but John is alive, Rodney can feel the regular thump-thump of his heartbeat, and for a while, Rodney forgets about death and all that matters for a few minutes is himself and John and ecstasy.