Tag to Common Ground

A/N: This was supposed to be a one shot, but I've been thinking about this and I just had to write it down. Hope you like it.

Chapter 2: Beckett and Mackey

"What you got there?" Rodney Mackey asked Dr. Carson Beckett as he plopped down his breakfast tray and sat down across from the good doctor in the Atlantis mess hall and immediately started to eat

"Just reading some exam results," Dr. Beckett answered somewhat distantly as he continued to pursed the datapad he held in his hand.

"Um," Rodney answered around a mouthful of oatmeal. "Whose?"

"Colonel Sheppard," Carson answered in the same distracted tone.

This time Rodney paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth to ask, "Is everything ok?"

"Yes," Carson answered as he put the datapad down and looked at Rodney. "Everything seems to be fine. No signs at all of any trauma, aside from some signs of an adrenaline rush."

Having being assured that everything was still right in his world, Rodney had gone back to eating. "That's fine then, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course it is." Carson answered but he had a frustrated look on his face and he impatiently raked his fingers through his hair.

"Then what's got you so worried?"

"I'm not worried," Carson denied, only to be met with Rodney's skeptical look. "I'm not really; I'm just confused. How can it be that there are no signs that less than forty-eight hours ago he was fed upon three times?"

"Four," Rodney corrected him automatically, not really thinking about what he was saying.

"Excuse me?" Carson asked very softly and with a look on his face that would have alerted Rodney, if he had been paying attention. "Four?"

But Rodney was not paying attention to Carson, focused instead solely on his breakfast. They had just been through quite an ordeal and he hadn't been able to have a proper meal in at least forty hours, after all. "Yeah, he was fed upon four times," He answered and casually lifted his eyes to Carson's face. What he saw there made him stop and asked cautiously, "Didn't he tell you?"

"No, he bloody well didn't!" Carson fairly shouted, more than a little upset by the news. "How could he have kept this from me?"

It was asked rhetorically, but Rodney being Rodney felt he should answer. "Well, you know how he feels about discussing health problems."

Carson looked at him like he had just grown another head and said quite firmly, "This was not just some health problem, Rodney! This was vital information about an attack on his life that I should have been made aware of immediately."

"Yeah, well," Rodney said, privately thinking that if he had been in John's shoe he might have just kept his mouth shut too because God knew how many more test Carson would have come up with if he'd known.

"When did he tell you?" Carson wanted to know, because Rodney was right: Colonel Sheppard did not talk about health issues unless under direct questioning and even then he was rarely very forthcoming. And despite how close Rodney and he had gotten, this was not something that the Colonel would have just volunteered.

"We went over it in the briefing, this morning," Rodney answered. "It was after they had escaped. Apparently the Wraith had been shot a few times and fed on Sheppard just before the Genii discovered them. He then fought them, fed again and gave Sheppard 'the gift of life'."

Rodney paused and then added, "If he hadn't, it's likely they both would have died."

Carson was silent absorbing what he was hearing before picking up the datapadd and going through the results once again. Maybe he'd missed something the first twenty times he'd read it. But now, it was just as always. The Colonel was as health as the day he left; healthier even.

"If he was fed upon a fourth time, he would have been . . ."

"A few minutes from death," Rodney finished the thought nodding his head in agreement and pushing away his breakfast since he was suddenly no longer hungry.

Carson shook his head, more perplexed now than ever. "I don't get it! There should be some sort of evidence that such an overwhelming shock to the system happened. But there's nothing." He sounded almost pissed about it. "Nothing! How can that be?" He asked again.

Rodney shook his head as he contemplated his coffee. "Apparently, there's a lot about the Wraith we don't know."

He looked up to find Carson looking at him in surprise. He shrugged and admitted, "That was what the Wraith kept telling Sheppard. And I guess he was right. Because not even Teyla and Ronon knew that the Wraiths were capable of giving as well as taking life."

A silence fell between the two friends, each contemplating recent events; each one thinking about how different things would be today if everything they've believed about the Wraiths had been true.

"I can't decide," Rodney was the first to break the silence, "if knowing that they can give back the life they take makes them less or more frightening."

Carson, lost in his thoughts, didn't answer, but Rodney was on a roll. This was the first time that he'd actually slowed down enough to think not only about what happened but also about what could have happened. "He should be dead," he admitted for the first time. "If he was anyone else, he would be dead. I mean, how many persons do you know that could survive not one or two, but four feedings all within a twenty four hour period? Not many," He answered himself.

"In fact, he should be death many times over. It's uncanny how many times he's beaten death. Do you think his Ancient gene has anything to do with it? Because the only other person, I can think of that has beaten death as many times as Sheppard is General O'Neill. Well, him and Dr. Jackson and he doesn't have the gene. But he does seem to be a favorite of the Ancient. So, maybe there's the correlation.

"It'd be interesting to see if the strength of one's gene has anything to do with one's resistance to death. Or," he continued to theorize unaware or unconcerned that Carson haven't been paying any attention to him. He much rather tried to solve a scientific mystery than think too much about the death of one of his closest friend. "If maybe the presence of the gene somehow strengthens one's physiology. And whether having the gene therapy has the same effect as being born with it.

"What do you think, Carson?" He paused long enough to realize that Carson was lost in his own world. "Carson!"

"What?"

"You are not listening to me!" Rodney protested.

"No, I'm not. Sorry," He half-heartily apologized.

Rodney, however, was not quite as clueless as everyone thought he was. "Ok, Carson, what's going on?"

Carson seemed startled and turned to look at Rodney in the eyes. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Rodney began. "That there's something bothering you - something besides the fact that there seems to be nothing medical wrong with Sheppard."

Carson shook his head but almost before he knew he was going to do it, he started to talk. "It's just that I don't know what to make of all of this. It just seems that the world has suddenly turned up side down. We're fighting humans and making alliances with Wraith – alliance that actually work! This Wraith made a deal with the Colonel; he made a deal and he kept it. He honored his word and repaid what he felt was a debt by giving the Colonel his life.

"Rodney that Wraith had a sense of honor – a much better one than Koyla does. And if that one Wraith has it, then maybe more of them do."

"Carson I know where you are going with this," Rodney began shaking his head in disagreement.

"No, Rodney. I know what you're going to say but it was us that betray him. Not once but twice. He trusted us and we betrayed him both times. Are we really that different from Koyla?"

"Of course we are!" Rodney answered empathically, interrupting Carson. "We were fighting for our survival, Carson, not looking for some political revenge."

"Maybe," Carson agreed, sounding not at all convinced.

"No maybes about it, Carson. But were we supposed to do, huh? Just sit around and wait for them to come and eat us all? Or maybe just wait and see if they found a way to the Milky Way? We weren't only fighting for our lives but for the lives of all the people back home who have no idea that we're not alone in the universe, much less know that there exists a species that make vampires look harmless."

"No, of course not. But do we really have the right to play God?"

"We were not playing God!" Rodney protested.

"Oh, no? Then, pray tell, what were we doing?"

"We were defending ourselves and our galaxy," Rodney reiterated, speaking as if to a particularly dense five year old.

"No, Rodney, what we were doing was taking away part of who they are. We were robbing them of a part of themselves and turning them into to us."

"And what's wrong with that?" Rodney wanted to know. "We're not so bad and if it'd work we wouldn't have to fight them, would we?"

But Carson just shook his head again. "That's not the point! Who are we to decide that being us is better? What's that if not playing God?"

"Well, we don't go around killing people," Rodney started to argue but at Carson's pointed look he amended, "at least not to feed on them."

"No, we just kill for political gain or because we have different beliefs or just because we want the same territory. Is that really so much better? At least the Wraiths kill on instinct, because they have to survive."

"Carson they make a sport out of hunting us!" Rodney protested. "Look at what they did to Ronon for seven years. They weren't after him to feed; they wanted the entertainment that hunting him provided."

"Aye, I know," Carson agreed.

"If you know then what are you going on about?" Rodney asked exasperated. "We are in a middle of a war here, Carson." Rodney added, he had spent quite a lot of time around Sheppard in the last few years and his view of the world had change as a consequence. "In a war there are always casualties and sometimes we have to do things we wouldn't do under any other circumstances. But when our survival is at stake, then all bets are off." He paused for a minute and added, "You say that the Wraiths act on instinct, well so does a lion or tiger, that doesn't mean you would stay still and let him eat you, would you?"

"No, of course not. But then a lion or tiger is not a sentient being capable of honor or compassion." Carson argued.

"No," Rodney had to agree after a minute. "But then we didn't know the Wraith were capable either."

"No, and we never bothered to find out either, did we?"

Rodney snorted and sarcastically asked, "And when would we have done that exactly? Should we have stopped them in the middle of their feeding and asked whether they felt anything but hunger? Or should we have asked if there was anything we could offer them that provided the same satisfaction as our lives? We were fighting for our survival, Carson!"

"I know, Rodney. You've said that repeatedly and it's not like I'm likely to forget it. That's the reason why I developed the bloody treatment to begin with. It's just that I find myself wondering when did we start subscribing to the theory that the ends justify the means? When did survival at all costs become acceptable? And is it really worth it if in the process we lose the best part of ourselves, the thing that makes us different from them: our humanity?"

But Rodney was an astrophysicist not a philosopher and he had no answer for Carson nor did Carson really expected one. It wasn't like there were any answers to be had, after all. There were just questions after moral dilemma after more questions and none with any easy or final answers. They would all just have to deal with the consequences of their actions the best way they knew how. So, Carson looked at him in the eye a moment longer and when it was obvious that Rodney had no more to say, he nodded, got up and left, leaving behind a profound silence.