Spoilers: A little one for S9 SG1 in general (Character)
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Lone Sheep
A Singularity
She calls in at six o clock, finding him still busy in his office – knowing he's blissfuly unaware right now of what's happened. He stills refers to the office as temporary even though he's been there for nearly six months. She'd guessed he might be a workaholic, it sort of came with the job, but this goes over the normal bounds. He's not working because he's on a roll or there's a deadline, no saving the world today, thankfully. Yet he'll still sit at that desk well into the night, almost every night of the week. Sometimes he'll come on days he's not scheduled to work. She'd heard he didn't care if they paid him for the overtime and that he'd tried to wangle his way onto base on a Sunday once – the one day off he'd been ordered to stick to once Dr. Lam had learnt about his compulsive need to stay on base, to keep at his projects.
What no one else knew was those extra hours didn't usually go on the assigned projects but on his own personal one. Instead, he'd be pouring over the latest readings he'd requested from all ZPM experiments, calculating variables and spinning theories out of thin air, but to no avail. He really tried. He put more effort and passion into it than even she could muster, anything to find a way to reestablish contact with Atlantis. Of course she wanted to help, and she tried to solve the problem, sometimes sitting in casually on his brainstorming sessions, "bothering" him, or so he said. She even sometimes pondered the question of recharging the ZPM at odd moments in the day, before she went to sleep, on her way to work. She never came up with anything that could be feasible, but then she didn't have anything to lose by failing. McKay, however, kept on trying, every minute of the day. Even on Mondays, she'd see him bring in a new wedge of notes that he'd worked on the previous evening, research he'd obviously done in his free time, though free time was rather illusive in his case. There was almost no free time that didn't seem to get put back into work of some kind, and inevitably all work was interrelated somehow. Anyone of their projects might lead to a revelation. If that hadn't been so, she'd wonder how he'd react, and now she has a chance to find out. She was there to break the news; the General thinking it would come better from her as his "friend", if you could consider him having any here, and as his colleague, someone he considers equal to a certain degree, she qualifies for the job.
He's being reassigned, with forced leave of at least one month in between the new assignment and the end of this one. She knows he won't like it. She just doesn't know how strongly he'll react, but she thinks it'll be quite spectacular, considering the scene he'll probably make – luckily barely anyone is around to witness it.
He glances up, distracted from his earnest interest in some new data, and she sees then how vulnerable he is. His face - the one she's so used to being twisted into a smirk or a disgruntled frown, something that makes him look vibrant – seems pale under the dim lab lights, and the dark circles under his blue eyes stand out like the shadows. He waits. It's taking longer than she expected before his patented impatience shows through and he baits her for a response.
She says it simply, hating the orders that she speaks and not being entirely sure if they're going to do as much good as the General and the doctor hope they will. She feels his fury build as he listens to all she has to say. She expects him to burst out, but he doesn't shoot the messenger. He storms out, with a fire in his eyes, and she knows he's going to confront the General. She smiles wistfully at the thought as she follows after him; McKay's nearly the only one left around here who would have the balls to do something like that at the risk of his job. Yet she knows why, and it's not the same passion she used to associate with him. All the hours he spends here, all the anger he feels at this moment, it is all for one reason, and it's not about science. He is trying to save the world; it's just not ours but his.