Author's Note: Hope you like! I'll be gone from the eighth to the fifteenth on vacation in New York, so...see you when I get back!

Next Update: Saturday, July 15th.

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The Last To Fall

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The candlelight gave the tent an eerie orange glow in the dark of the night. Rodney watched the flickering flame in silence from his spot on the cot. After seeing the condition the survivors were in, the people of Opalus had offered this recently abandoned hunting outpost as a temporary home, as well as providing food and other necessities. John, Rodney, and Elizabeth had divided the tents among everyone and after their duties had been completed they'd set off to their own quarters without a word about what had occurred earlier.

Rodney had found that if he listened hard enough, he could hear the sobs coming from other tents. His own eyes were a bright shade of red, though the tears had burned his eyes hours ago. There was nothing left in him anymore, nothing but this hollow pit inside of him. He'd long since run out of questions, tears, and curses. The facts were bare and raw, his mind numbed by shock and pain.

There were nearly one hundred people dead. One hundred good people; the type of people who didn't deserve to die.

They'd been brave soldiers, no matter what their credentials.

They'd been heroes.

Rodney stood up. He couldn't stand to stay confined in this small area, his thoughts bouncing back at him, pain and agony inescapable. His eyes took but a moment to adjust to the darkness once he stepped out of the tent.

He'd been planning on taking a walk. Left, right, left; a simple process. Perhaps that would distract him. If he focused enough on mundane things, maybe he could forget. Just for a second, to have this pain lifted from him… But a soft sob reached his ears, and he found himself walking toward the noise instead.

It was Doctor Simpson. She was standing a little ways off from what Rodney assumed was her tent, her arms wrapped around herself. He knew that she would hate for him to see her this vulnerable, but he walked to her anyway.

"Simpson," he greeted her in a quiet voice once he'd reached her side.

She glanced over at him for a long moment. A fleeting instinct to hide her tears came and passed quickly before she replied, "McKay."

"I, uh, heard you," Rodney told her. "I thought you might need some company."

A wry smile claimed her tearstained face as she moved her gaze away from Rodney, instead focusing on the forest before them. "A long time ago, I never thought I'd hear those words from you," she confessed.

"And now?" he prompted, his eyes sweeping over the dark forest, too.

"I figured you out months ago, McKay," she told him softly.

A long silence settled, each of them both lost in their own chaotic thoughts and feelings, before Simpson broke it.

"It feels wrong that one person's death hurts more than the rest," she said finally, her eyes still averted. She had so many friends; friends that had tried to get her to talk about her feelings, friends that understood her. But instead of opening up to them, she found herself doing so with Rodney.

Rodney waited a moment before speaking. "Kavanagh?" he guessed cautiously.

Simpson looked at him, cocking her head. "You knew?" she questioned.

"You were the only one who would voluntarily work with him," Rodney said. "I figure you saw something in him the rest of us couldn't see."

"He kind of reminded me of you," she told him. A ghostly smile tickled the edges of her lips while tears fought to fall from her eyes. "He was a real bastard on the outside. But if you were determined to figure out what was beneath that…" she trailed off and was quiet for a long moment. "He was a good guy, underneath it all. Not the best guy, but…not the worst, either."

"I didn't bother to try to get to know him," Rodney confessed numbly. Days ago, that fact wouldn't have fazed him, but now it left him hurting. "I should've, you know. At least tried once or twice. But I was convinced he was an asshole, and I was content to leave it at that." It bothered him, somehow, knowing there had been more to Kavanagh that he didn't know. Rodney had been his superior. Wasn't it his responsibility to know the people he worked with?

As if sensing what was running through Rodney's head, Simpson placed a small hand on his shoulder. "No one bothered, McKay. No one but me."

"I'm sorry," he told her softly. And he was. Sorry that she'd gone to such lengths to find who Kavanagh really was, to fall for the man, and to lose him. If he looked in her eyes, he could see her pain. She'd loved him.

More importantly, she'd lost him.

"Simpson…" he began, but she cut him off.

"Julie," she corrected him, and her gaze moved away again. "It seems like we should know each other better..."

"Because we didn't know so many of them," Rodney finished softly, his previous statement wiped from his mind.

He, too, had listened to Elizabeth read off the entire list.

Some names had been just letters on a page to him.

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Hours and hours crawled past, and Rodney felt the agony within him condense into a throbbing numbness. He was silent, his eyes free of tears. Rodney wandered about the camp, listening to those who needed to speak, but saying nothing himself. His heart had left him. There wasn't a moment when he wasn't reminded of Carson's steadfast companionship, Novak's constant and annoying hiccups, Bates' devotion to their cause, Miko's enthusiasm… But he didn't cry; didn't say a word; didn't feel anything but the steady agony.

Rodney held Elizabeth while she cried into his chest, watched as Lorne struggled to hold himself together as the only surviving member of his team, heard Julie's quiet sobs in the night when she thought no one was listening, admired Teyla's quiet strength even as she distanced herself from everyone else, saw the pain written so clearly in Radek's eyes, knew the guilt that crushed John…

And still he felt nothing but that dull ache.

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