Chapter 4

Sheppard shot a quick glance around the small room that led off the mess hall to check that McKay was alone before pausing in the entrance. It had taken him twenty minutes to locate Rodney, and finding him on his own was a stroke of luck, although possibly not a totally unexpected one. Behind John the main mess hall was almost deserted, but he wasn't surprised that even those few people were more than Rodney wanted to be around.

He leaned against the doorway and watched McKay for a moment in silence. You didn't have to know Rodney well to see that he was preoccupied with something. An almost untouched plate of food had been pushed to the far side of his tray and he was now unenthusiastically prodding a spoon into a bowl of blue Jell-O.

John found himself unwilling to move. He knew that how he handled the next few minutes of conversation might very well determine whether Rodney stayed in Atlantis or left for Earth. So, no pressure at all then.

Okay, he'd stood here long enough; it was time to start talking.

"Hi, Rodney." Sheppard tensed in alarm as Rodney's head jerked up at the sound of his name; even from the doorway he could see the flash of panic in McKay's eyes. Trying not to show his concern, he gave the startled man a wide grin. "If you've finished eating, grab your gear and meet us in the Gateroom, we're heading offworld."

The fear in Rodney's eyes faded as he caught sight of John in the doorway, but when he spoke his voice sounded strained. "I don't know if you noticed, Colonel, but Dr Weir relieved me of duty." He turned his attention back to the Jell-O, jabbing in the spoon with enough force for Sheppard to fear for the safety of the plastic bowl. "You'll have to ask Dr Zelenka if he can spare someone else to go on your mission."

John narrowed his eyes; maybe Rodney was just annoyed that Radek was now making those decisions, maybe it was something more significant, but he had never seen McKay attack his food without actually eating it. He considered his next words carefully, hoping for a reaction; something to tell him that he was on the right track.

"Don't worry; it's not exactly a mission, Rodney." He tried to sound casual. "We're just going back to M4A-635 to pick up the Puddlejumper."

At his words, the colour drained from McKay's face like water from a sponge and Sheppard tensed again. It was definitely a reaction although not precisely the one he'd wanted. Easing himself away from the door, he cautiously walked over to McKay's table and pulled up a chair, positioning it so that he was within reach of the other man before sitting down. From these close quarters he watched with concern as Rodney's eyes flicked around the room as if following some action that only he could see.

"Rodney?" Sheppard leaned forward into McKay's line of sight, his eyes locked on the other man's pale face. Suddenly, this conversation didn't seem like such a good idea. After the incident in the lab, John believed that he was prepared for any kind of behaviour from McKay, but this was beginning to alarm him. He lifted a hand to his headset, ready to call for Beckett if he was needed.

Rodney started at the movement, suddenly noticing the second figure sitting at the table. He turned and focussed on Sheppard. "We're going back to the Jumper?" McKay sounded far away, his voice close to a whisper, but Sheppard could hear the hint of hope.

John let his hand fall away from the radio. He could almost see McKay coming back from wherever he had been, the distant look in his eyes replaced by a quizzical frown.

"As soon as you're finished here." Sheppard gestured towards the tray of uneaten food while consciously ignoring the slight trembling of the hand that still gripped the Jell-O spoon.

McKay's frown deepened. "I thought we couldn't get a lock on the Gate." At least now his voice was back to normal and Sheppard relaxed slightly, feeling the tension slowly ease from his shoulders.

"Yeah. We managed to get a lock about thirty minutes ago. The MALP showed an electrical storm moving away from the Gate area." He paused. In front of him McKay seemed to come to a decision, and his expression became eager. John suddenly realised that it was a look that had been missing from the scientist's face for too long. Feeling more confident now that, somehow, the answer to Rodney's behaviour lay on M4A-635, he continued, "There's no sign of damage to either the Gate or the DHD, so, when you're ready, we're good to go."

oOo

Standing in the Gateroom with Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla, waiting to gate to M4A-635, Rodney McKay was as anxious as the first time he had ever travelled through the Stargate. Possibly even more so.

He had told Sheppard that he was tired of the stress, of always having to be the one who had the answers, but he would have given almost anything for some of that stress right now. The kind of pressure that came with knowing that whether the next mission was a success or a failure was all down to him.

Truth be told, he had no control whatsoever over what was going to happen on the other side of the Gate, and it terrified him.

When Sheppard had told him that they were going back to the Jumper, he'd almost broken down completely. The image of Teyla, lying in a pool of her own blood, had hit him so hard that he'd felt his resistance starting to crack, and if Sheppard hadn't moved his hand at that precise moment, the walls he had so carefully built would have crumbled into dust.

But then he had seen a faint glimmer of hope. If he could go back to the site of his first erroneous memory and see that the Puddlejumper hadn't crashed, fix the engine himself, prove that all of the visions were false then it might just give him the strength that he needed to defeat them.

Once again, he found himself nervously checking the five replacement crystals that he would need to repair the Puddlejumper engine. The engine that he clearly remembered simply cutting out as they made their approach to the traders' village.

He closed his eyes and swallowed down hard on the sight of Sheppard fighting the Jumper's controls after the Wraith darts' attack.

Opening his eyes again quickly, he checked that no one had noticed his momentary lapse, but around him the usual final preparations for Gate-travel continued. Until, at last, the preparations were complete and the first chevron encoded.

It was too late to back out now.

He might be going insane, but that still didn't make him an idiot. It was obvious by now that Sheppard hadn't bought any of his 'feeling the pressure' speech, and it was just as obvious that the Colonel wanted them to go back to M4A-635 for reasons other than just picking up the Jumper. And, whatever those reasons were, clearly Elizabeth had to be in agreement.

The final chevron locked and the shimmering event horizon filled the Stargate. Okay, so they all hoped that through that Gate were the answers, and now it was time to find out if that was true.

oOo

Tanayu and Palandrus stood in the deep shadows and watched as the four humans emerged through the doorway.

"Should we greet them?" Tanayu asked.

Palandrus shook his head. "I think it would be wiser to observe them without their knowledge. Just until we are sure that they have simply returned to recover their ship."

Tanayu nodded in agreement. "Their ship has been prepared to match their memories. It should take them only a short time to repair it."

Palandrus lifted his hand to silence Tanayu. "One of them has retained his original memory." He concentrated for a moment and then sighed. "The conflicting memories are causing distress. We may have to intervene."

oOo

The short walk from the Gate to the Puddlejumper had felt like an eternity to Rodney.

The team had stepped out high on a wooded hillside looking down onto the forest canopy below; the path that the Puddlejumper had taken was clearly defined by the shattered trunks of trees, but the Jumper itself remained hidden in the forest.

As they made their way through the dense woodland, Rodney's anxiety grew. His darting eyes were drawn time and again to some splintered tree or small clearing that seemed frighteningly familiar just for an instant. He clamped down hard on the overlapping images that surged around him, hoping that his teammates would assume that his gasping breath and thin sheen of sweat was due to nothing more than the humid conditions.

The Puddlejumper stood in a small, clear space that it had created as it had smashed through the surrounding trees, and Rodney approached it warily. It took an effort of will to step through the rear hatch into the Jumper, and his heart was beating wildly as he stood in the aft section. The Jumper was exactly as he remembered it, but, at the same time, utterly different; there was no structural damage, no indication of a crash and no sign of the blood that filled his mind. With a trembling hand, he took out an Ancient scanner and set about proving to himself that only one set of memories could be believed.

Sheppard moved past him, making his way towards the cockpit, where he ran his hands over the Jumper's lifeless controls. Rodney was fully aware that Sheppard was watching him, and forced his mind to focus on the hope that had brought him back here. Concentrating on nothing but the readings from his hand-held device, Rodney systematically scanned the interior of the Jumper for evidence of the truth.

Suddenly, there was the proof. If he hadn't been specifically looking for it, he would never have seen the residual trace of a Wraith energy signature. The Jumper had been hit by at least one Wraith weapon immediately before it crashed and the engine malfunction expertly faked after the Jumper had come down. It was the proof that he'd been looking for, but it wasn't what he'd expected.

The trembling in his hand grew stronger as he tried to make sense of this new knowledge. If the crash had been real, wouldn't that mean that all of his other visions were real? In his own mind he'd knelt in this very spot next to Teyla's dead body over and over again, yet now she was standing less than ten feet away from him, manifestly alive.

It was impossible. It was reality itself that was wrong.

With that realisation, his resistance finally shattered. The conflict in his mind was too much and he sank to his knees as the force of the visions overpowered him.

TBC