Date Completed: May. 30th, 2006
If someone were ever to say that Rodney was good with kids, they would have to be certifiably insane. Rodney McKay never liked kids. He didn't even like other kids when he was one. They were loud, unruly, obnoxious, and nowhere near his level of genius. He had been the first to disapprove of Jeannie's decision to marry that moron husband of hers and breed. He was also the last to continue to disapprove.
Oh, she was happy, sure. But she had been brilliant; she should have been at the very top of the list for candidates to accompany the Atlantis expedition. She should have been there, right alongside Rodney as he saved the city and its inhabitants time after time. Instead, she was at home on Earth, probably feeding a drooling baby mashed peas and telling her son to stop playing ball in the house.
That had been the last straw for Rodney and his not-so-friendly relationship with children. They were tiny, stupid people who took up other people's time and energy and, well, really, he could better understand his parents' attitudes with him now.
Yes, it certainly wasn't an eight-year-old's fault that Daddy went out drinking when he should have been working, or that Mommy slept with other men behind her husband's back, but he could understand that underlying blame being placed on his shoulders. If Rodney had never been born, his parents never would have felt the need to get married, or grow up too soon. It certainly wasn't fair, but he could understand the reasoning behind it.
He couldn't, however, understand why Jeannie had put her education, her research, her entire life on hold for a man and a chance to procreate and add to the growing population. He just felt he wasn't wired the right way. Children were an annoyance and, unfortunately, a necessity when it came to furthering the species and passing on knowledge.
That was why Rodney was having such a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that somewhere, somewhere out there, another version of himself and Colonel Sheppard had adopted an alien baby and raised him as their own. It wasn't even the gay 'thing,' or the Sheppard 'thing' (though the second fact was most certainly the more disconcerting of the two.)
It was the fact that in some other reality, (one that was almost certainly one quite similar to his own, otherwise he was unsure of how he would be able to send the boy back, let alone the question of how Corey jumped through dimensions without even the vaguest of explanations as to how or why) some version of Rodney McKay who was likely very much like his own self, put things on hold to raise a little boy.
Never mind the fact that Atlantis was at war with the Wraith. The entire Pegasus Galaxy was at war with them and still managed to pop out as many babies as possible. It was essential to their existence, yes, but there was the fact that it was being done. People were having babies of their own as little away as the mainland. It wasn't that there was a child in the city, or that Sheppard was in a homosexual relationship with the Chief Scientific Advisor in the program. (Although that, to be honest, was pretty insane.)
What Rodney could not wrap his head around was having the desire to raise a child. Desiring to have a family, to be tied down, to share himself with other people on a more personal level. Rodney just didn't understand, and if there was one thing Rodney McKay hated more than Kavanagh, simpletons, and mortal danger combined, was not knowing something- was not having the capacity to understand a concept.
The little boy, now clutching onto the back of Rodney's collar as he was being carried down one of the main corridors, was definitely not an angel. He was Satan Spawn, as far as Rodney was concerned. The boy hadn't let his substitute father out of his sight for more than twenty seconds since he had returned to the infirmary, feeling guiltier than he should have, with chocolate and some kinder words than he had intended to impart.