Stuck!
A/N: My heart is empty. I woke up this morning to find the barn door open and the love of my life - gone. Oh, agony! Dear Julie. I am ebaying like mad right now. I have bids in for Stretch Armstrong (MIB) and a Rock'em Sock 'em Robot thingie. It says that the R&S Robots are used and that the blue robot has a weird twitch and a bent head, but we might be able to live with that. How 'bout it, Julie my dear? I mean, you'll have to use the broken blue robot because your hoofs will just smash them anyway (I don't see how you can push the little buttons with your delicate but cloven feet), but how 'bout it? I haven't been able to find a toy puddlejumper, but I found a Barbie Winnebago. Will that do, my sweet? I will continue my search as I continue my search for your love. Heart heart heart (if I were able to post symbols here, you'd see three hearts in a row). Julie be Mine!
A/N: SallyB - you're repeating yourself, but I agree. And flah7 - I always hated Twiki. I finally got my revenge on the little twerp! badgenes: you cannot sway me! My love is for Julie... but you will continue to love me anyway. Ha ha ha ha!
A/N: Ah, okay, on with the story.
Chapter Twelve: Hickory Dickory Dock, Running Down the Clock
Rodney's blunted little fingers stretched out ineffectually, curling around mid air as the toy puddle jumper skimmed past his finger tips and nose-dived toward the floor as if Beckett himself was piloting it.
McKay leaned against the catwalk railing, holding fast to Kiki's tail, trying to wrap his mind around the gene-controlled device, but ultimately watching as the little silver ship crashed cockpit first into an unspectacular fragmentation of pieces.
Firecrackers would have added a nice touch to that, he thought inanely, more explosive.
He froze as the adults below paused, stared at the broken toy and then each other.
McKay watched them, scowling at their slow reactions, their delayed mental processing. Why the hell didn't they just look up to the point of origin? They would learn nothing by staring at one another and then back down to the shattered remnants of the once super cool, self-piloting puddle jumper.
McKay once again realized that he had worked, does work, with mental midgets. They were idiots, all of them!
Rodney furrowed his brow in frustrated anger as one by one the scientist raised their eyes from the toy upward to look up at him.
When Dr. Li's kind brown eyes met his and she tapped her earpiece, he knew he was in trouble.
He flipped them off. With a snarl and heated sneer and with self-preservation first on his mind, he jumped to his feet and bolted down the catwalk away from the ogling morons that called themselves scientists.
[{O}]
Rodney ran through the quiet hallways of the upper levels. He stole fleeting glances over his shoulder as he barreled down the corridors, dragging Kiki by his tail, ignorant of the fact that his skull-adorned pink moccasins repeatedly belted the small toy, flinging it back up into the air. Kiki was taking the brunt of the mad dash.
McKay ran and ran. He ran until his breath seized in his chest; he ran until his lungs burned and his balance faulted; he ran blindly unsure of who he was running from and where he was running to. And why?
He slowed his frantic pace, peering one last time over his shoulder down the curved, dark hallway and realized he was very much alone.
The corridor stretched in both directions for as far as the eye could see, until the grey light leached into solid blackness.
He stopped. His head swam and his hands and legs shook, a cold clammy sweat suddenly covered his body. The darkness seemed to move. His blue eyes searched the empty area. Unbidden, images of the Wraith popped into his mind, emerging from the shadows. He caught his breath and listened. He strained to hear over his own racing heartbeat. Were there Wraith nearby?
He hugged Kiki to his chest and slowly backed into the wall. He wanted the Colonel. He wanted Sheppard. Sheppard could take care of the Wraiths!
His head hurt. He was hungry. His tummy was angry. It was cold. He wanted the Colonel. But Sheppard never stopped by the nursery. Sheppard made him wear pink shoes.
Rodney squeezed Kiki to his chest and shimmied down the corridor, one slight step at a time, afraid to move, but terrified to be caught out in the open should a Wraith be nearby.
The Colonel would protect him from the Wraith. Sheppard wasn't afraid of anything, and Sheppard was friends with Ronon Dex. Ronon wouldn't let anything happen to him. Rodney wasn't sure why, but he knew it to be true.
McKay's stomach growled loudly, betraying his position to any Wraith that might be nearby. He rubbed his tummy hoping to keep it quiet. His head hurt. He felt dizzy. He wanted Sheppard.
Tears spilled over long curled lashes and trickled down rosy, heated cheeks. He rubbed at his forehead irritably and closed his eyes. He lost his balance and fell into the wall.
Silent tears rolled one after another cascading from his pooling eyes and falling to his heaving chest and tiny potbelly.
His stomach growled painfully again. No one came by to see him in the nursery. They looked him in jail and left him behind, forgot about him.
McKay continued to slide along the hallway wall until he came to a door. He listened at it for a bit. He heard nothing. He stood outside trying to decide what to do.
The hurried voices of Hoffman, Thibodaux and Li suddenly sounded somewhere behind him, getting closer.
They were looking for him. Idiots. They had been saying mean things about him, making fun of him and now they called to him like a lost dog. What type of moron did they take him to be? He might be shrunken but he was still his super genius, brilliant self.
He wondered if stupidity was a pathologic condition, if it came with its own set of genes. He'd have to ask Carson about it some time. He was supposed to find Beckett but that wasn't first on the list.
Rodney didn't want to be found by the trio of pathologically stupid. They had said mean things about him. They were cruel, almost like the Wraith, but different. The Wraith, at least, left a physical mark on you so others knew you were hurt.
With Kiki tight to his chest, McKay jumped up, stretching his left arm upward and slapped his hand against the control panel. The door opened. It slid back revealing a small storage closet.
Part one of his plan of things to do after escaping the nursery! Find a storage closet! His plan was finally coming together.
With a relieved sigh of success, Rodney disappeared into the closet and grinned as the door slid shut, hiding him from the foolish scientists that strode by without so much as clue as to where he hid.
He was a giant amongst idiots. Size didn't matter. Sheppard was wrong, it wasn't a myth.
With the thought of John Sheppard, Rodney silently slid down the wall in a corner with his knees drawn up close and Kiki held tight to his chest. He wanted the Colonel. Tears once again slid unknowingly down his cheeks. He squeezed Kiki with all his four-year-old might and buried his face in it faux fur.
His shoulders heaved as fever ate his stamina and hunger gnawed as his stomach lining. His body shook and breath choked out a staccato rhythm as the wait of isolation and unnamed fear swirled around him like a suffocating wrap.
Eventually his breath evened out as he slid sideways, slumping into the corner, his death grip of Kiki lessening as sleep slipped in a stole his resolve away.
[{O}]
Sheppard, Beckett and Dex stood in the open doorway of the storage closet on level 4 of the West wing of Atlantis, staring at the small huddled shape that slept wrapped around a stuffed cat, shivering.
"Elizabeth, we found him," Sheppard said into his radio as he dropped the life sign detector to his pocket and Beckett shouldered his way into the small room. The colonel backed out of the way as he answered Elizabeth's question about Rodney's appearance, following the Scot's movements within the small confines of the closet with his eyes.
Draped by the lab coat, Beckett's broad shoulders gave the impression of Igor from behind. The colonel cracked a smile. He'd have to use it sometime, with McKay as back up. Elizabeth asked another question, and Sheppard turned his attention back to the tiny voice in his ear.
He kept his eyes on Beckett as he watched the physician squat down near the sleeping Mini-McKay. Sheppard furrowed his brow in concern when he noticed the Doctor's body language.
"Ahh, damn," Beckett muttered resting a seemingly too large hand against McKay's pale clammy forehead and cheek. "Rodney?"
Rodney's eyes fluttered up. "Colonel?"
"No, laddie, it's Carson," Beckett answered smiling kindly down at the 'child'.
"Nooo, I want the Colonel," McKay whimpered, pulling himself into a tighter ball and squeezing back into the corner. "I want the Colonel. I don't feel good—my head hurts," McKay whined. He opened his eyes a little more and stared directly at the doctor. "You left me all alone! I hate you!—Get away!"
Carson reached out to offer comfort, to ease his own flash of pain at the truthful accusations spat at him by the tiny terror.
McKay no longer acted like a miniature pit bull on speed but somehow transformed into a frightened, lonely four-year-old hiding from a too big and unfriendly world.
"No! Go away!" Rodney lashed out with a moccasined foot, but Beckett was well versed in pediatrics and unwilling patients and easily deflected the blow. The kick may have lacked the crippling physical power of an adult, but carried the brutal honesty of fear and distrust that no adult could pack into a kick. Rodney wasn't kicking out to hurt, but to defend himself. Carson recognized it and wasn't sure what would have hurt more, the actual foot connecting with his knee or knowing that Rodney was afraid of him and didn't trust him.
Beckett peered over his shoulder at Sheppard and Ronon hoping to see that he had misread McKay's actions. The confused and stunned expressions only confirmed his own.
Beckett turned back to McKay. "Come on, laddie, Colonel Sheppard is right here." Carson once again reached out to place a comforting hand on the scientist's knee only to have McKay recoil.
"No, go away," he mumbled. "I want the Colonel." His quiet pleas barely reached adult ears. Beckett watched as the frightened blue eyes flickered closed and fat tears rolled from Rodney's damp eyelashes and down tear-stained cheeks. His muscles relaxed and he seemingly melted further into his kitty cat, the corner effectively distancing himself from the adults.
"Here, I got 'im." Sheppard stepped aside from the doorway giving Carson an unarticulated order to exit the closet. Beckett pushed himself to his feet, groaning softly as his knees popped and muscles protested.
"It's hell getting old," Sheppard mocked.
"Or young," Beckett returned, staring sadly at the curled figure wedged in the corner of the closet. They had segregated Rodney, peeled him off from the rest of the population because he had become more different than they were used to and discarded him for a moment in time because he was being inconvenient.
It was lousy how history had a way of disguising itself to ensure its replication.
"He feels warm," Sheppard remarked as he gently hoisted McKay up into his arms making sure Rodney's forehead was nestled securely against his neck. The colonel held the stuff cat in his free hand and strode out of the closet. McKay latched his arms around Sheppard's neck, hanging on tight. The colonel tried not to think about the fact that just a day ago he'd had to cajole Rodney into doing that.
"Aye, he's running a bit of a fever," Beckett muttered, trying to get a better glimpse of the pale features with rosy cheeks, but only managing to see the top of unkempt light brown hair. "Let's get him to the infirmary."
[{O}]
Carson stood in front of the computer monitor at such an angle that he could keep an eye on his pint-sized patient and Teyla. The Athosian sat up in bed with a nasal canula taped to her gaunt cheeks. She sat beside a sleeping Rodney, who shared her bed, tucked into her. Teyla rubbed his small, blanketed chest with wrinkled, gnarled hands that seemed to get more twisted and contorted every few hours. She had to be in considerable pain and yet the Athosian had a smile for anyone who stopped by. Her visitors had dwindled as her joints became more knotted and gnarled, and her once statuesque features had become more sunken and melted.
Teyla didn't have a few days.
Looking back at the computer monitor, Rodney had even less time.
"Carson?" Dr. Weir's delicately spoken prompt brought the doctor back to his small audience. He stared at Dr. Weir, letting his eyes travel to Ronon who kept stealing glances over to Teyla. Last, he looked to John, who sat slouched in his chair as if he had everything under control even as the world disintegrated out from under his feet.
Beckett had noticed that Rodney had clutched to Sheppard as tightly as Sheppard had clutched to Rodney as they had traveled through Atlantis, taking a roundabout route to avoid the heavily traveled areas.
Carson recognized it and realized that Ronon did, too. The specialist would make sure that no one threatened the strengthening bond between the miniaturized scientist and the Colonel. Weir also saw it and it unnerved her. Perhaps she realized that if they lost McKay, there was a very strong chance that they would lose the Colonel John Sheppard they had all come to know and respect as well.
Beckett's eyes finally settled on Zelenka. The Czech returned the gaze and unconsciously pushed his glasses back up on his nose.
"Carson?" Dr. Weir prompted again.
"Ahh, right." Beckett pulled himself from his wanderings and stared back at the monitor. The monitor was 'safe'. It was his territory. He knew the information that scrawled by, understood the diagrams, the images. The monitor, the computer, the information it was all his within his territory, his realm of expertise. It was a territory where if he didn't immediately understand something he merely had to study it for a bit and it would make itself clear. He loved his world sometimes.
The moment he looked away from the monitors, printouts and results his somewhat detached world came crashing down around him. When his eyes landed on the ancient woman warrior who only a day or so ago could have mopped the floor with him or snapped his bones like dried pretzels with minimal effort, and was suddenly now someone who couldn't hold a simple spoon steady to feed herself, his world became unnerving and terrifying. When he cast his gaze to the unconscious four-year-old body, he felt his heart plummet to his feet knowing that the brilliant friend that lay trapped within the tiny frame with a cantaloupe-sized head was slowly and surely disappearing from them.
When Carson looked away from the monitor and its readings and stared out at the small gathering of friends, he left his comfort zone and suddenly found himself floundering.
Blame was not going to be dished around, it wasn't going to be whispered by these people, but blame had found a voice in his head and he felt the weight of responsibility that he had no right to shoulder.
He looked back at his monitor, looked at the comparison images and then turned back to the small gathering of impromptu family forged by circumstance and luck.
"We have a problem," Carson's accent dropped away as he spoke, delivering dire news with all the professionalism and detachment he had been taught in school and refined in years of practice.
He spoke clearly, concisely and with the calculating neutral inflections of someone who was lecturing a subject that held neither joy, excitement nor boredom. He conveyed information as clearly as he could, hoping not to have to repeat himself but knowing that he would. Patients only heard a tenth of what you said and fifty percent of that was heard backward. There would be questions, he would have to repeat himself, and he would have to flash up the same diagrams.
He would have to show the comparisons of Rodney's brain scans—the three dimensional images of his one time adult-self and the now child-self. He would be forced to point out the obvious areas of regression, the 'de-development' of a brilliant, arrogant, and fiercely loyal friend.
Carson spoke slowly, clearly and with the Queen's English that he did not embrace with the same love and familiarity of his own native brogue. He chose his words carefully, made sure his eyes did not wander to the fragile shriveled frame of one the most physically powerful and beautiful women he had ever met. He made it a point not to let his carefully maintained neutral eyes glance at the small bundle huddled under the white hospital blanket holding tightly to a kitty cat stuffed animal as if the toy itself was the only source of comfort in the sanitized frightening world of Atlantis and its marauding adults.
Beckett spoke on and on, meeting the eyes over those in front of him and holding their gazes. He made it a point to speak to each and every one of them for a sentence or two so that they too remained attentive, so that they understood that he did not want to repeat himself, go back through his explanations and science. He did not want to revisit the data right now. He would have to, of course, but not right now, not in front of these people.
He would go back and review his data in privacy where he could lash out and react like the human being he could not afford to let himself be now.
When he was finished, he simply stopped talking. He followed the Colonel's gaze to Teyla who now lay down beside little Rodney and rubbed the child's back as the boy buried himself into the Athosian's front with kitty cat wedged between himself and her.
And for a moment, Carson wanted to laugh, wondering if this was a ploy of 'Ivan the Terrible' Mini-McKay to get a little closer to a woman's chest.
The moment passed quickly. What was left of the Rodney they all knew was quickly disappearing.
Teyla would be no more than wasted muscle on brittle bone within a day or two and Rodney's racing metabolism and CNS regression would see him beating Teyla to the grave.
Carson stared back out into the audience and sighed quietly as he acknowledged individual questions. With a steadying breath, he changed the image on the monitor to a previous screen and once again rehashed information he so desperately wished to avoid repeating until alone in the privacy of his own office.
They were running out of time and rehashing the inevitable seemed moot.
[{O}]
A/N: Julie, the barn will be warm tonight, oats in the bin, the stall freshly swept. How about a nice milking? I promise to warm my hands in my armpits first. Please? Pretty please? Don't make me beg! Where are you? Please come back, my bovine beauty!
A/N: Okay, readers, if you'd leave me a review or two, I'm sure that'll help my plight! Julie needs to know I am LOVED! If you show her how LOVED I am, she will certain fall hoof over tail for me once again. HELP ME!