…pause
by Kodiak Bear Country
Warning: This is an episode tag for Epiphany, spoilers below so please don't read if you don't wish to be spoiled!
For Roxann...
Believe it or not, you were only gone a couple of hours…"Try six months," I'd said, my anger and disbelief weakening as Rodney rushed into the explanation about the time dilation field.
Six months for two hours.
I'd smiled at the right times, answered their questions – well, some of them, at any rate, and allowed myself to be led back to the portal. I knew the way better than any of them. I should've gone first.
But I didn't.
Six months for two hours.
So would I be older on my birthday? Instead of celebrating a year, I'd celebrate a year and a half?
"Colonel, are you all right?"
Carson had leaned in towards me, to ask quietly, and I appreciated his confidence. Another pilot was flying. The suggestion that maybe I shouldn't had been one I didn't even feel up to arguing with.
My eyes drifted to his and I said surprised, "I'm six months older."
What I didn't say was the inner turmoil screaming to get out. I'd lived six months while they'd only experienced the passage of two hours. Was there any possible way to make them understand what that was like?
Of course, there wasn't. And that's why I didn't even try.
The jumper landed in the bay, and everyone disembarked, and I just felt…disconnected. I was home, this city, these people, where I'd spent the last year and a half of my life, and yet, I'd lived two years away from Earth and spent a quarter of it in exile within the sanctuary. Away from Atlantis, and everyone I'd known.
I should've been happy to be back. Instead, I just felt…disconnected.
Beckett insisted I go to the infirmary, especially after I'd asserted that I was fine, that Hedda had healed me.
I saw the look on his face…on everyone's face. Healed what?
Scars – on my neck, my back, but the inside ones, the ones that I had when I thought they'd given up on me, and left me behind – those Hedda hadn't been able to heal.
But finding my friends in the field, that had started the process.
They hadn't given up.
Six months in two hours.
I got the all clear, some minor issues with nutrition, but otherwise I was good for spending the past six months on an alien planet with no medical care aside from a nearly ascended ancient touching me when things got bad.
Rodney was trying to talk to me, tell me he was sorry, yet he was completely McKay and his apology came out more like an accusation that it was my fault. I nodded in what I thought was all the right places, but I guess I nodded one to many times, or maybe not enough.
"You're not listening to me, are you?" McKay asked, watching me warily.
Everyone was watching me warily.
I shrugged. "I'm listening, just not necessarily hearing."
"I should've checked the time lapse, it was a moronic oversight," Rodney derided himself.
He was kind of irritating me. I was lost in the lapse of time, and here he was, having a self-doubt session and looking for absolution.
"Rodney?" I called.
We'd arrived at my door and I didn't even remember leaving the infirmary. Had it been more than two hours since we'd gotten back? Another six months if I were still there…
"What?" he replied, eager, because he wanted to hear that I was okay, with all of it. We'd been on shaky ground after the events on Doranda, and now this – I could understand why he was upset, but I didn't blame him anymore than I blamed myself.
Shit happens.
"I don't blame you." I offered him the absolution. It was all I had to give him right now.
The bluster façade snapped into place and Rodney straightened. "Of course you don't, why should you?" Then he paused, and peered in my room as the door opened. "Do you need anything? Dinner?"
"I need to be alone." Pointedly, I looked down the hall over his shoulder.
He straightened self-consciously. "Right." He bopped one hand into the palm of the other, a thing he often did when he was nervous. "If you need anything -"
"You'll be the first one I call," I assured him.
I watched as he left, before turning to walk into my darkened room. I expected it to be different. Dusty. Even find things packed up.
Because, savagely I told myself, I'd been gone for six months.
Why couldn't they see that?
It hadn't been two hours. Not for me. It'd been one day, turning into another, and another, and with each day that passed a part of me had given up just that little bit more of any hope I had of being rescued.
And they couldn't ever understand what it'd been like, because for them, it'd only been two hours.