AN: Thanks much for the feedback. Also, the rating has been changed from M to T, since the majority of the story isn't M-rated. I'll warn you when we get to the M content. Anything too graphic will be removed, though available at other sites where this story is posted.
Chapter Three: Truth and Lies
Once, when Rodney was little, he had accidentally taken the wrong bus back from school and ended up lost somewhere across town. It had taken his parents three hours to even notice that he was missing. In fact, if Jeannie hadn't begun to make a fuss in her crib, they might not have needed him to play with her, and therefore would have missed him even longer.
His father had driven straight to the Tim Hortons where neighbours had allegedly spotted him, picked him up and gave him hell for the whole ride back to the house. Because of him, dinner was burned and his mother missed her meeting with the real estate agent.
Fast-forwarding twenty-eight years into the future, he found himself reflecting on the incident as he, along with Elizabeth, entered the Gate room.
The crowd waiting for them was immeasurable. As they emerged from the corridor and stepped into the room, there came possibly the most rewarding round of cheers and applause he had ever heard—and it was all directed at him.
He wasn't Rodney Mckay, their beloved scientist back from the dead. He was Rodney McKay, the annoying and most useless member of Colonel Sheppard's team. Oh, sure, he was a genius beyond all measures (who would deny that?), but he was pretty sure he didn't deserve this kind of ovation.
He was pretty sure he didn't deserve Elizabeth, either.
There were people lining the balcony above the Gate and along the floor around the room. One of the security personnel clapped him on the shoulder as he passed by. McKay tried to smile gratefully, but he couldn't shake the fact that, hours ago, that same officer had been a hair's breadth away from filling his gut with bullets.
In the center of the Gate room, he stopped to blink expressionlessly at the faces surrounding him. Elizabeth placed a hand on his arm and smiled warmly.
"Rodney, you son-of-a-bitch!" said a familiar voice. John Sheppard himself came jogging down the steps. Grinning madly, he pulled the scientist into a brief hug and slapped his shoulder as he pulled away. "Ford and Teyla are on their way. Bates, too, but I'd try to avoid him as much as possible if I were you."
The back of McKay's neck prickled. "Ford?"
Weir's smile both assured him and disturbed him. "Of course," she said incredulously. "You do remember Major Ford, Rodney?"
"Major?" he blurted without thinking.
"Right here!" the unbelievably cheerful voice shouted from the balcony. Ford was the next to come careening down the steps to meet them. Contrasting Sheppard's almost hesitant, tough-guy embrace, the twenty-five-year-old grabbed McKay's arm and hugged him like a brother. "Man, you really are alive! I didn't even believe it until I saw you."
Ford. Sane. Sane Major Ford. McKay stared blankly in response. No one seemed to notice his uncharacteristic speechlessness, because the momentous celebration went on.
"Teyla's on her way back from the mainland," Ford reported with the usual bounce in his voice. "She's bringing Halling and Jinto with her. You should of seen the kid's face when he heard you were still alive. It was like lighting up a Christmas tree."
"Dr. Zelenka took off right after you did," Sheppard told Dr. Weir. "Poor guy thinks McKay's mad at him."
"Rodney? Is everything okay?" said Elizabeth gently. Most everyone had quieted down by now and listened in. "Oh, God, I am so sorry, Rodney. I can't even imagine what you've gone through, and we're making it worse by doing this."
"No, it's…it's…" His eyes darted from her, to the Gate and back.
And then the fatigue, the blood sugar and the recent attack on his understanding caught up with him. With no more than a flutter of his eyes, McKay dropped to the floor like a stone. By the time they could react, he was already lost in a dark haze.
"All right, lad, he's comin' around. Ye need tae move out of mae way for a moment. Thank ye."
The first thing he saw through his blurred vision was a face hovering above him. As it gradually came into focus, he realized that it belonged to an Athosian boy. A vaguely familiar Athosian boy. He pricked his mind carefully for the name—Jano? Jimmy? Jinta, Jint…Jinto! His eyes snapped open with sudden recollection of what had happened.
"Where am I?" he snapped suddenly, trying to sit up. His head spun, and a strong hand grabbed his arm to steady him.
"Easy, easy," came Sheppard's voice from beside the bed. "You're in the infirmary. After pulling off an Oscar-worthy faint like that, where did you think you'd be?"
"At home, in bed," McKay groaned, trying to make out the rest of the occupants of the room. Beckett, of course, was standing at the foot of the bed with a gratified look on his face. Halling, surprisingly, stood off behind Sheppard, his hands firmly resting on the shoulders of his son, Jinto. And Elizabeth…
She sat on the other side of the bed, her hand protectively covering the top of his, as it rest palm-down on the mattress. No one else seemed to think this odd, that their expedition leader was expressing more-than-friendly concern for her 'formerly deceased' scientific advisor. Knowing Elizabeth the way he thought he knew, the gesture was very foreign to him, almost frightening.
At the same time, he enjoyed the soft touch of her fingers gently squeezing his own. It inevitably caused him to briefly wonder—briefly, just how far her feelings extended for the man she assumed he was. Because he certainly could not remember ever being that man. He had never even suspected it could be realistically possible—
Realistically possible. Oh, shit. He suddenly knew. Of course. It explained everything: his supposed death, the tightened security, Ford being alive and a Major…
Elizabeth. His chest tightened when he realized that the episode in the brig, the impulsive kiss and her—she had not been meant for him. None of it had been for him. She thought he was an entirely different Rodney McKay, one who was dead in this reality. One who would never come back.
"He's doing it again," Sheppard announced with a touch of annoyance. "C'mon, McKay, we just got you back. The least you can do is stay awake long enough to hear your story."
McKay swallowed dryly, glancing about the room. "Story," he repeated in a whisper.
"You could begin by explaining how you managed to escape the Wraith," said a new voice. Rodney would have flinched if he'd had the energy. Sergeant Bates stood in the doorway to the infirmary. Always the easygoing guy.
"Bates," said Sheppard, his tone warning.
"I'm off duty, sir," the sergeant informed him, his arms folded across his chest. "Just thought I'd stop by to check up on the new arrival."
"This is an infirmary," said Carson irritably. "Not a bloody interrogation room."
"No." McKay looked down at Elizabeth's hand. It took a surprising amount of effort to pull his hand away. "He's right. As much as I hate to agree with him, I'm…not who you think I am."
Everyone responded to that the same way—blank stares, confused, tense expressions. All expect for Bates, who automatically stiffened on the defensive. Before he could move so much as a foot, Halling stepped out in front of him and stared him down. Literally. Bates was easily twelve inches shorter than the Athosian man.
And Elizabeth…looked to be the most bewildered of them all. His detaching from her touch was a shocking blow. For so long, she hadn't been able to do this; contact him, reassure herself. And for longer, he'd never once shirked from her. He was Rodney, of course, he'd been incredibly shy in terms of connection from the start, but…not the Rodney she knew.
"McKay?" John broke the silence.
"Look, none of you know me," the scientist went on with a sharpness true to his personality. "I mean, yes, I am Rodney McKay, but not the one you…the one you lost," he finished, averting his eyes ashamedly. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat, to no avail.
"Rodney," said Elizabeth softly. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," he snapped. He regretted that, too. He lowered his voice. "S-Sorry, I just…this is a lot to take in for me. What I'm trying to say is, when I came through that Stargate, I didn't just come from another place. I came from an entirely different reality."
No one moved. No one seemed to know exactly what to think, except Sheppard. He crossed his arms. "He's whacked."
"Oh, so every time I propose a perfectly reasonable explanation to seemingly impossible phenomena, Mr. MESA-test suddenly understands the constitutional laws of astrophysical anomalies?" McKay glared nefariously.
"Maybe not in so many words," said John gratingly. "But yes."
"Another reality," Elizabeth said. "I don't understand how that's even possible. Do other realities even exist?"
McKay sucked his breath in slowly, to collect his thoughts. "Yes, they do. Until recently, they were only theoretical mysteries, until SG1 discovered an alien device on another planet that could systematically transport people from one reality to another. Now, obviously, there are innumerable possible universes overlapping each other. Some of them are only slightly different from each other, but there are others..." He let that hang.
"But…you're still McKay," Sheppard pointed out.
"Yes," said the annoyed astrophysicist. "I'm still McKay."
Elizabeth was staring at the corner of the bed. The familiar, steel grip around her heart had returned in full force. Finally, she said, "How?"
Rodney cast her an apologetic look. What could he do? He had no right to take the place of someone else, even if that someone had been him at the time. It was unfair to her, misleading her into a…a…he couldn't even think of a word for it. Relationship? Until a few hours ago, Elizabeth had been no more than a well-respected, highly valued friend to him. And yet—
"Stargates," he said quickly, before that thought could fully form. "Stargates…and wormholes…wormhole physics, I mean—there's a lot we don't understand about how they work or even how they connect to one another. It…" He searched his brain for a possible explanation. "Something might have interfered with the wormhole, which caused my molecular structure to pass between the fabric of space of both realities."
"How can you be so sure?" Elizabeth asked, not for a second wanting to believe that this was true. "I mean, what makes you think that this might be another reality? Isn't it just as possible that you were sent forward through time?"
She knew immediately that she would receive odd glances for saying it. Not everyone was fully classified to read the mission reports of SG1, after all. "I have resources," she quickly explained to Rodney, when she saw his baffled expression.
"I know," McKay said. "I know, because I've…I've noticed things. The most obvious being, of course, is the fact that I'm still alive where I come from. But Lieutenant…sorry, Major Ford, he was killed when a Wraith hive ship exploded. We think," There was a pained tick in his face as he said this.
"The Wraith," Bates said out of nowhere, calmly stepping around Halling as he strode towards the bed. "What do you remember about the Wraith?"
McKay shot him a classic 'soldiers-are-dumb' look. "What do you think? They smell, they're ugly, and they always show up at the most inconvenient times. That, and they're dumb enough to think that we blew up Atlantis to prevent them from getting the Stargate."
kay, now those blank stares he hadn't been expecting. In fact, they were rather disturbing. Sergeant Bates lowered his eyes and turned his head, while everyone else shuffled nervously in their spots.
McKay paled. "Oh, no. Don't tell me…"
With an expression made of steel, Sheppard slowly sauntered to the end of the hospital bed. "Rodney, the Wraith…they…found Earth. Six months ago, they captured some of our scientists on one of the research sites—"
"No," Rodney jerked upright. The first thing he thought of was his sister. "Jeannie—"
"—is fine," said John. "So is General O'Neil, Colonel Carter, and everyone else from the SGC."
"Colonel, I think the last thing our patient needs right now is a heart attack." Beckett, who had remained silent for the bulk of the discussion, now intervened with a grim smile. "I'm afraid I'm askin' for ye all tae let him rest. As far as I can tell, he's both mentally and physically depleted."
Bates turned and left without a word. Sheppard was hesitant. He cleared his throat and acknowledged McKay with a short nod. "It's, uh…good to have you back," he said, and let that settle whilst he took his leave.
Halling started to lead his son away, but Jinto stood his ground firmly. "When are we allowed to return?" he said, looking at Beckett earnestly.
"The moment he wakes up, lad," the doctor promised. "Now be good and mind your Da."
he Athosian boy looked severely disappointed, but he allowed Halling to take him from the room. Suddenly, Elizabeth was the only one who remained. McKay watched as her face betrayed the internal struggle she was having.
Beckett caught on to the connotation and swiftly backed off. The Wraith and four months of personal torment had come between her and Rodney, and he'd sooner denounce his Scottish ancestry before he tried to separate them now. He left the room to allow them their privacy.
For a very long minute, the only sounds in the infirmary were that of a regular, soft beeping and the hum of nearby machinery. Rodney found it a lot harder to speak without the presence of others, because he knew he should say something and didn't know what it was.
Elizabeth broke the silence, after eternity had passed.
"You weren't…" A pause. "…the same, were you?"
He knew what she referred to and didn't have an elaborate answer to give her. Leaning back, his eyes flickered over the far wall. "No," he said.
"Why did you do it, then? Why did you make me believe that I had him back?" she demanded to know, grief tearing at her voice.
"I didn't know at the time!" he defended earnestly. "Of course I was confused at first—and for good reason! Don't get me wrong. Elizabeth and I were good friends. But when…when you started…I thought, maybe she wanted more than that. I had no idea that you thought I was…"
"Someone else," she finished. She was trembling as she rose from her seat. "And obviously, I did. It was my mistake. I'm sorry."
Unable to cope with the fact that she had made such a tremendous mistake, she rushed from the room, out of the infirmary and into the corridor. Rodney shouted her name after her, but she found herself unwilling to listen, walking a blind route until she reached the door of her quarters.
Once inside, she lurched with her back against the wall. Her hands pressed against the cool panels under her arms. Slowly, she let herself slide to the floor, where she buried her face in her arms and only then, she let herself cry.
Four months ago.
"Dr. Beckett, we need a medical team here, now!" Elizabeth said sharply, after triggering her headset. "I have two severely injured people and three more have been stunned by the Wraith."
"I'm halfway there already, mae dear," came the response.
"Colonel Sheppard, move these people away from the Gate!" Elizabeth shouted over the balcony. "How many more are still coming?"
"Six!" he called back, over the sounds of panicked screams and stunner fire. Three more streaks of blue shot through the open Gate, and he ducked behind some of the containers stacked there. He twisted his head to look up at her. "McKay is with them!"
Fear gripped her. Rodney. She had been so sure he was through the Gate already. What the hell was he doing behind the rest of the team?
"Dr. Weir, the DHD console just shorted out!" one of the technicians yelled to her from the control room. "We can't raise the shield!"
"Rodney, the DHD was damaged by one of the explosions," she informed the scientist over her comm.
"What?" his biting tone replied from the other side. It was accompanied by short bursts from several P90s and the sound of yet more Wraith stunners. "There are three Wraith darts headed this way! How do you expect shut Gate off once we're through?"
"We don't know, Rodney, we're asking you," Sheppard growled impatiently over his own comm.
"You want me to think of a way to manually shut down the Gate in the next thirty seconds?"
"Rodney!" both Sheppard and Elizabeth snapped.
"Well, I can't! There's only one way to shut it off now, and it happens to be from this side!" McKay shot back. "There's no time for this. I'll do it myself."
"That's a bad idea, McKay!" John warned him. The Gate room had gone eerily quiet except for the sounds of battle over the comm system. After a brief moment of no response, John obviously grew concerned. "McKay!"
Suddenly, the event horizon of the Gate erupted in a flurry of blaster shots and several moving bodies. Jinto, accompanied by three other children his age and two Athosian adults, stumbled into the Gate room. In a flash of blue light, one of the men was struck by a blast and collapsed, his P90 clattering to the floor.
Elizabeth was gripping the railing so tightly her knuckles were turning white. "Rodney?"
"I…I'm here, Elizabeth," he responded, over the comm system. "The darts…are turning around, coming back…"
"Get you ass through that Gate, Rodney!" Sheppard ordered. "I'm not asking!"
"Can't," McKay gasped. "Should be enough…sorry."
"Rodney!" she shouted into thin air. "Rodney, don't you dare do this!"
But he did. A second later, the Stargate flared slightly before shutting off.
She stared. They all stared at the empty space inside the ring for several seconds before it became obvious what Rodney had done. Even more obvious was the realization that he had not made it back.
It was that second one that brought her to her knees. The initial shock was brief. So was denial. Denial had a tendency to be brief where the Wraith were involved.
It didn't matter. He was gone.
And the nightmares began shortly after.
-----