AUTHOR: Wraithfodder
CATEGORY: Gen, humor, angst
SPOILERS: Season two episode "Duet"
See Part 1 for copyright disclaimers
PART 2
Despite the fact that I got little sleep - catnaps were fine - I found myself arriving late the next afternoon to the sparring match I'd had set up with Teyla. The matches were good for releasing tension, but when the door opened, I felt my stress levels notch up a setting when I saw Teyla engaged in a healthy fight with Dex, who towered over her, like a Great Dane facing off with a tenacious terrier. It all happened in a flash. Dex took advantage of the distraction I'd created by simply showing up and knocked Teyla to the floor with such ferocity - pinning her neck down with his hand – that I'd lunged forward and grabbed the stick in his hand to prevent further mayhem. Nobody flinched - not Dex, not Teyla, nor the guards who were watching from the sides. Dex backed off, saying he wouldn't have hurt her, then left and his guards followed him out. I felt like I'd just been flipping through a book and someone had torn out several pages, leaving me with no clue as to what had just happened. Teyla composed herself, but I noticed she still rubbed at her bruised neck, saying she'd told Dex not to go easy on her. I warned her that she had to be careful with Dex.
I decided to take my 'reserved time' with Teyla to talk instead of spar. I think she'd had enough of that for the day, and quite honestly, I didn't want to add to the bruises that I knew she would be sporting on her backside from that knockdown. So we talked, about Dex, his capabilities and the future. We'd both had 'quality time' with the man when he'd captured us on that hellish world. He'd had multiple chances to kill us and hadn't. He'd saved McKay from Ford. All that counted a lot in my book, even more so than his weapons skills. I could pretty much choose whom I wanted from the soldiers now stationed on Atlantis. They were all combat veterans - no green newbies here. Major Lorne would be a good man on my team, even if he and McKay didn't see eye to eye but Dex offered something no one else could: he'd battled the Wraith for years and survived. Teyla agreed; she'd heard of runners before but had never met one, had never even been sure if the stories were true. The only thing that nagged at me was if the man could work as part of a team: he'd been forced to become a loner in order to survive and would he back up a team if they were all in trouble? There was no test for that; it could only determined in a real situation. Teyla asked if I were going to add Dex to my team. I said yes. She arched an eyebrow, smiled that mysterious smile she sometimes gives me, making me wonder what she'd truly been thinking: stupid idea, or finally, you've seen the light. She repeated her offer of a sparring match, and foolishly, I accepted. After half a dozen well-placed whacks, I was reconsidering my decision.
Zelenka got us all in the lab for a test, squelching my idea for a quick snack. Even Rodney showed up, dressed in a casual jacket. Where on earth had he gotten that? Oh yeah, Earth. Anyway, I'd heard something about a date. I don't even want to think how that went - what kind of date could you have with someone else in your head? However, the date had to have gone loads better than the test. Zelenka did a trial run of beaming up and reanimating two little white mice. However, when they got remolecularized, my appetite for a snack vanished like dew in the desert sun. The rodents were now a pair of smoking, charred black corpses. McKay stared in horror at the crispy critters and began to freak. I couldn't blame him. Get burned up or having someone else renting out half your body for all eternity was pretty bad.
It was back to the drawing board, but at least McKay and Zelenka didn't have another blow-out argument like before. McKay looked too frazzled to argue with anyone, and I know he's gone to see Heightmeyer again to deal with the escalating pressure. I don't know what the woman can offer except a kind smile and a reassuring attitude.
I managed to snag Elizabeth, approaching her about adding Dex to my team. She looks less than pleased about my query, even when I smile. Perhaps the smile just isn't working on her anymore, or maybe Colonel Caldwell's nagging bureaucratic influence – even though he's off on the Daedalus somewhere - about who picks who for what is wearing her down, but I manage to convince her to at least talk to Dex herself and make up her mind
Rodney's deteriorating. I got a call from Beckett that Rodney was back in the infirmary and it wasn't good. The details were fuzzy but he'd been having a session with Heightmeyer, engaged in a helluva argument with Cadman, when he gone into a seizure and collapsed to the floor. He was unconscious when I got there. Beckett and Heightmeyer were hovering around doing nothing more than talking medical-speak that I know Rodney despises and fortunately can't hear. I demanded to know how it had gotten this far, why Heightmeyer hadn't done something or just what the hell did she do to push him over the precipice, but Carson just pulled me aside, explaining that two minds can't exist in one body. It's not meant to be and there's going to have be a decision made that, if Zelenka can't solve the problem quickly, will cost a life. That nearly knocked me off my feet. I'm new to this sharing bodies stuff – everybody else seems to take it so much more in stride like it's no different than changing clothes – but I hadn't considered that someone might die. Go insane, yes. I could see Rodney just flipping out after a while. Heck, in a week he'd be weaving baskets if Cadman didn't let up. He's not a people person as it is and having another person constantly inside him must be driving him nuts.
My radio chirped. Some mess-up in the armory. Beckett told me to go. I wanted to stay. Shit. How could I leave McKay at a time like this, unconscious or not? Beckett said he'd call me as soon as anything new developed. I reluctantly left, hoping that 'new' didn't mean dead.
The call came less than an hour later, after I'd reamed out Sergeants Rameriz and Deeter about putting supplies in the wrong spot. The mistake was minor, but it was so petty it just ticked me off something fierce. Heightmeyer would no doubt call it 'hostility transference' as there I was counting boxes of grenades when I'd rather be standing around the infirmary waiting for Rodney to wake up and hopefully still be Rodney. Even if I were utterly useless standing there, I'd be there.
When we got to the lab, Rodney was in his scrubs and a robe, puttering around like it was just another day on Atlantis. Energetic, frenzied, the old Rodney, but none of us could believe that he was going to experiment on himself since all the mice from previous attempts were dead, dead with a capital D, but the seizure hadn't been fun, and apparently the risk of being turned into charcoal briquettes was preferable to another seizure that could possibly cause permanent brain damage or worse. I wasn't so sure of that myself, not after seeing the smoking mice, but this was Rodney's decision to make as it was his life on the line.
He was just seconds away from telling Zelenka to press the button that would decide his fate, when it was like someone had flipped a light switch. I realized that Cadman had taken over. McKay's demeanor shifted, enough that it was noticeable to someone who spent god knows how many hours stuck in a puddle jumper with the man. Cadman was at the helm. However, even I couldn't have guessed at her actions. Rodney had just walked over to Beckett, grabbed his lab coat by the lapels and planted a kiss on the physician that left the Scott looking shell-shocked. Then Cadman decided after she'd had her way with the doc – whom she obviously had the hots for - to leave McKay literally holding the bag, or in this case, Beckett. It wasn't a Kodak moment by any means, not unless I wanted to get my jaw punched for even joking about it. McKay looked like he wanted to be a charred mouse at that point, appearing a bit mortified, hugging an arm to his chest, hand to face, and telling Zelenka to just proceed. So the Czech zapped him into oblivion, atoms, whatever, dragged him into that virtual Wraith vacuum cleaner, then began doing that time-sucking science spiel of explaining everything he was doing but I didn't want all that stupid yakking. I wanted my people back. NOW! So I told him to do it. Zelenka hit the button and a second later, the beam coughed up both McKay and Cadman, looking none the worse for wear. A second later, they both collapsed to the floor. For a brief moment, I'd been really scared that they'd ended up like the test mice – dead – but Beckett found strong pulses on both of 'em. Thank god.
Now it was a matter of waiting. Beckett said both McKay and Cadman were going to be out for a while as both had gone through extreme shocks to their systems, both physically and mentally. He'd let us all know when they were awake.
Time dragged, so I caught up with Elizabeth in the control room. The multiple personality crisis had been solved and even she seemed more relaxed now that her Chief Science Officer wasn't going to end up in a padded room, so I pushed the case about Dex. That situation also couldn't drag on as if the answer was no, it would open up another kettle of fish, and I had my arguments ready for that, too. But she finally agreed, or maybe she relented, it was hard to tell, but in doing so, she placed ALL the responsibility for Dex on my shoulders. Why not? The safety of the entire city of Atlantis rested on my shoulders so what was one more person? However, if Dex broke something, he was going to have to pay for it, not me.
Rodney was out for a while, longer than Cadman. Maybe it's because Cadman's body was pretty much brand-new, spanking fresh out of being reconstituted, not being squabbled over by two people in one body. I never thought about it, but crap, was that was it was like, being taken over by a Gou'ald? Stuck in your body while someone else took it for a walk and made it do things you wouldn't dare do? Thank god Cadman wasn't a lemonade junkie or else McKay would be dead or on life support. She hadn't been on base long enough to pick up all the gossip, and I don't think 'oh by the way, I'm deathly allergic to citrus' would just crop up on a walk on another planet.
We congregated in the infirmary, just waiting. Marking time. Elizabeth found a perch on one of the Ancient medbeds that still look like pool tables to me, while I grabbed a chair and just planted an elbow on top, resting. I felt fried, even though it didn't really show. Zelenka had grabbed a chair and planted himself against another medbed. Despite all the insults that the two scientists flung back and forth between each other, and it had gotten nasty, they were like Siamese twins of sorts. Zelenka was the only scientist who could really tolerate all of McKay's acerbic wit and actually match it at times, although that was difficult for anybody to do.
I hadn't really slept a wink with all that had been going on since we'd gone to that planet, but we all shot up to our feet in an instant when Rodney McKay decided to join the rest of us and cracked open his bleary eyes. For a second, I'd seen a bit of panic in those eyes when Cadman spoke up from her bed and he'd looked in the wrong direction and, I guess, assumed she was stuck in him … forever.
Zelenka immediately went over to McKay's bedside and in their own bizarre way, the two men apologized and thanked each other. I followed Elizabeth over to Cadman's bed, knowing that I'd catch McKay later when we could talk without a zillion people around – or people inside his head. And I also knew Beckett's propensity for soothing all our worries and then kicking our collective asses out of the infirmary so his patients could rest.
One more part and then it's done!