Author's Notes: This was originally a songfic, but I decided to post it here because more people will see it and it is easier to get feedback than through other websites. However, this website does not allow lyrics, so I couldn't include them. In place of them you'll see (lyrics). I strongly recommend following this link to the version with the lyrics, reading it there, and, if you like, leave feedback here. This is a crossover with SG1. I hope you enjoy!
Spoiilers: From SG1's "Redemption" and "48 Hours"; SGA's "Letters From Pegasus"
Pairing: Sam/McKay

Okay, so doesn't like me to send links either. So, here it is, just remove the spaces! littleknux2008 . livejournal . com / 7791 . html

Sam Carter settled into the chair in front of the computer, a warm cup of coffee in her hands. Ever since Stargate Command had received the data from Atlantis, she'd been looking through it, reading, sorting and printing everything. It amazed her when she realized that the discoveries from another galaxy were at her fingertips. So much information had been sent – the compression code used had been ingenious. She sighed softly, taking a quick sip of the coffee.

All that remained now was the last batch of data. As she'd discovered before leaving to get a cup of coffee to temporarily cure her falling eyelids, they were all personal messages. Maybe this job was better left to someone else, but she wanted to do it. Perhaps it was Janet's recent passing; the good doctor had never had that chance; that opportunity to tell her family how much she loved them, how much she cared about them. Sam shook her head as if to rid herself of the dismal thoughts and focused her attention back to the computer.

After pressing a few keys on the keyboard and selecting the last batch, Sam watched as many faces flashed by, afterward replaced by others, expressions of anxiety and wonder varying with the people. She smiled as she realized each message was becoming a separate file; labeled with where it should go and who it was from, leaving little work for her. Who had taken such a painstaking job to encode the messages to do that? Sam knew the answer before she even asked herself: Rodney McKay.

It seemed as if it'd been ages since she'd last seen him, but now his face filled the screen and it felt as if they said their goodbye just days ago. That last encounter had been an awkward one, standing in the mess of people preparing for their departure to Atlantis in just minutes.

"You're off in a few minutes," Sam spoke, twisting her hands as she looked at Rodney. They were a reasonable distance apart, awkwardness thick in the air between them. People bustled about them in a mesh of excitement.

"Yes," Rodney replied, shifting his weight from foot to foot anxiously.

"The Lost City," she continued, feeling a sudden need to remind everyone how much SG-1 had gone through to find the Ancient outpost that led to the discovery of the coordinates of Atlantis. Looking around, she decided against it. These people seemed to know how blessed they were to go on such a thrilling adventure. They were a good bunch of people, and they had Rodney to help them. She turned her eyes back to him. He wasn't so bad; a pain in the ass, given, but there was an odd charm about him. A long silence stretched between them.

"So..." Rodney said, trailing off, looking nearly as uncomfortable as she.

"You'd better…" she gestured behind her to the control room. There was a pause before he moved. They were both waiting for something from each other, something that wouldn't come.

"Right," he agreed, walking slowly past her and to the control room.

Sam didn't move at first, caught by the wonder that those could be her last words to him. "Rodney!" she shouted suddenly, turning to face the direction he had gone. Her voice reached his ears and he spun, looking at her with anticipation hidden in his eyes. Sam's face contorted. She didn't know what to say. There was so much to tell him, so much… But they didn't have time and there was something holding her back. "Good luck," Sam said instead, and watched as he nodded before turning and disappearing into the mass of people.

Sam had some doubts that Rodney would make it. He was always so easy to predict. Rodney relied on logic first, never intuition or human emotion. Sam had come to realize that, in this field of work, you had to rely on those things in order to survive. She wondered if Rodney had learned to trust his instinct yet; to listen to his emotions to decide matters. Evil was never clearly defined and sometimes decisions were rough and required a level mind; something that Sam wasn't sure that Rodney would ever have. Still…he was brilliant. And somewhere beneath that thick coat of sarcasm and arrogance, he had a beating heart. He could change…she had. It was hard to remember that time before SG-1 when she too had relied on logic before her gut instinct; when emotions came second.

Some days it seemed like it would be nice: logic first and emotions second. At least then the deaths and the sacrifices so many made wouldn't hurt so much; wouldn't leave as much of a scar. Saving the world, exploring the universe – bigger risks and bigger pain came with larger duties. Eventually the hurt of one loss would go away, but soon it would be replaced with another in a continuous cycle of agony.

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Knowing that path of thinking led to reflecting on all of her losses, Sam opened Rodney's message. It was her duty to go through every message to make sure no one revealed classified information, but there was a healthy dose of curiosity in her. Sam leaned back in her chair, staring at the screen as the message started.

Rodney looked nearly the same, if a little more haggard, than when she'd last seen him. She could easily see the toll stress had taken upon him – she'd grown so accustomed to seeing it in her own mirror that it was easy to spot on others now. "My friends, I'm Doctor Rodney McKay of the Atlantis expedition, and as facts of our heroic struggle against the Wraith and our untimely demise—" he continued speaking, but Sam froze for a moment before reminding herself that the recordings had taken place and the data sent before the siege was predicted to take place. She'd glanced at the data and knew that things didn't look good for the expedition, but hopefully they would make it through. The SGC, she knew, would be hell-bent on helping them, and she had faith in their resourcefulness. Despite the fear his words had instilled in her, it was comforting in an odd way to see that one person hadn't changed all so much.

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"…I almost caught mono kissing a girl in Algebra Club. Missed an entire month of school. Still, the kiss was something so it was probably worth it." By the time Sam looked up again, Rodney was sitting on a stool, gazing off into space thoughtfully. "April Bingham, cute blonde! You see, I love blondes, especially with the, uh, the short hair." He smiled nostalgically for a moment before continuing. "Mmm. Samantha Carter, if you're watching," he placed a hand over his heart, "the torch is still burning. Sadly, soon to be extinguished, but, uh…" Sam smiled. He was cute, in that awfully annoying sort of way. She had always wanted to hate him for the things he said, but then he pulled something like this out of his hat, looking undeniably adorable while he did it. Sam focused back on the computer monitor, fully expecting him to say something about how wonderful he was next. "You know, you should know… I think you are just…so…well, you're great. You're really, really great and, uh, I would go so far as saying you're the hottest scientist I've ever worked with. In fact, there's probably not a night that goes by that I don't, uh, find myself, uh… Ford, let's, let's lose that part."

Sam grinned to herself, suddenly glad that Lieutenant Ford hadn't gotten to edit the videos. Silently, she wondered how Rodney managed to wreck every assumption she'd made for him in just a sentence, and then build them all back again in the next. Rodney reminded her of a puzzle box. On the outside, he was bitter, cynical and only cared about things that were skin-deep. But every now and then, if you paid close attention, you could see something beyond that, something just out of reach; a broken person who did care, but hidden behind the mask that everyone saw.

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Seeing his face on the screen reminded Sam of the last time that Rodney had been 'helping' her with a problem nearly two years ago. A small smile appeared on her face as she remembered his concern for her injury. He'd sat on the other hospital bed, looking at her with concern, spilling little bits and pieces of his past to her through his nervousness and guilt.

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It was odd when such a little show of humanity from Rodney lifted her spirits more than the same from someone else. Perhaps it was because Rodney held fast to apathy, the uncaring nature becoming what everyone saw. That mask slipped sometimes, and when it had done so around her, she hadn't been sure whether she should be happy or annoyed. Now the same slip brought a smile to her face in the tough times that she was faced with.

"...My sister." Sam's eyes moved to the screen as Rodney said those words. She frowned in curiosity. Rodney had a sister? "Ford, if you cut everything else, just, um, keep this part, okay?" he took a breath, steeling himself for what was to come.

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"Jeannie? This is your brother, Rodney…obviously. I wanna say, uh… I want to say something. Um… Family is important. I've come to realize that because the people here have become a sort of…surrogate family to me."

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Listening to those words, Sam knew that what she had thought before was wrong. This Rodney McKay, this image sitting before her, was a completely different man than the one that she knew. She would never have thought that Rodney would be someone to refer to his subordinates as his family.

"…I really do wish you the best, you know, and I'm sorry we weren't closer. Perhaps, um, if by chance I make it out of this, perhaps one day we can be, and I would like that."

She saw it then; the long pause when all of his shields were down and he was simply Rodney. He wasn't one of the world's greatest scientists; he was just a man facing the potential of his own demise, a man who had never leaned how to heal the emotional wounds of his childhood and a man who never knew how to forget the past.

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A wave of guilt covered her as she remembered how she'd treated him. He'd told her about his past, how his parents had fought, revealed things that she doubted anyone else knew…and she'd waved him off, fighting fatigue throughout. She had been just like everyone else of his past – uncaring, brutal… In the end she'd realized what she knew so clearly now: Rodney wasn't that callous prick she'd thought him to be. Sam remembered giving him a quick peck on the cheek before his departure two years back, but now she wondered if it had been enough to make him forget her earlier behavior toward him.

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The message cut off, and Sam found herself staring at a blank monitor. The guilt his message brought was still weighing heavily on her shoulders. She was glad he had sent it, though. Whatever happened to them, at least she knew that Rodney had become a better person. Maybe he still had that shield, but she had a feeling it was a little less thick now and that he was a little more open. Sometimes a little bit went a long way. A little smaller shield led to a better person…and his brief message to Sam and Jeannie went a long way to temporarily lift the weight of Janet's death and other losses off of Sam's shoulders. Maybe this whole exploring the universe thing was all right after all. People died when they shouldn't, but it gave others a chance at things they normally wouldn't have. It gave Rodney a chance at a normal life despite how he'd been treated before.

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Did he ever look back on the experiences he'd had at the SGC? If he did, she knew he would understand now; understand why they went to such dangerous lengths to save someone instead of playing it safe and letting someone go. Sam remembered learning that on her own, remembered the confusion of her duties to the government and her duties to herself.

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She prayed for the best. Prayed that they would be okay. They were a resourceful bunch, but the Wraith appeared to be vicious and persistent. SG-1 had beaten the odds before – and she had faith now in Rodney, in AR-1. They could bring victory to Atlantis, stop the Wraith and save their world.

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Sam touched the blank screen, as if it would bring Rodney back. She never thought it would happen, but she missed him. Missed his cynicism and apathy, his quirky grin, his puzzle of a personality… What would have happened if she'd understood the significance of things he'd said to her about his past sooner, if she hadn't been so tied up in her own thoughts and concerns to pay attention to him? It was a question that there would never be an answer to.

He might never come back to Earth again. She thought of that possibly, and felt a strange tinge of remorse upon the thought that she might never see his smirking face again. Some days the pressure of saving the world got to her and she didn't think she could handle it. Thinking that Rodney was just a phone call away seemed to alleviate some of her fear that she wouldn't succeed. When things were bad, the Air Force called him in. Typically he never thought of the solution, but his grating personality and intelligent guesses steered her in the right direction. A lot of the time when things got bad he was never called, but just knowing he could be there gave her a back up plan, something to rely on if she couldn't do it. He was in Atlantis now, cut off from Earth's civilization. If she needed help, there was no one near his level of brilliance around to help her.

And what if Rodney never did come back? Even if the expedition won the war against the Wraith, would he return? He had nothing here compared to Atlantis. Rodney had become a part of a family in Atlantis. Sam wouldn't question him if he stayed there; she would understand. Yet…that didn't mean she wouldn't think of him; that she wouldn't miss him.

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