Rodney stood in the doorway of the 'Afghanistan' room, staring at the jumbled mass of boxes in front of him. Should he go inside? he wondered. Or walk away?
He couldn't deny he was curious. John would occasionally tell a story about something innocuous when they were off-world, wild parties in the barracks, descriptions of places he'd seen on leave, but never anything of what he actually did. If Ford or Teyla asked about his experiences, he would pass it off as nothing significant and change the subject. Rodney had taken his cue from John's reactions and had never bothered to ask. He knew there were several commendations and awards in John's file, but the reasons for them were usually classified.
He hesitated a few more seconds, then stepped into the room. The boxes nearest the door were labelled with what looked like dates and report numbers. "Missions?" he asked himself as he moved around the precariously balanced pile.
In a back corner of the room, he found a stack of boxes with names and dates. 'Holland', 'Vance', 'Dex', 'Mitch'. He looked around and found several more, all with dates within a few months of each other. Rodney realised these were people John had lost while stationed in Afghanistan.
Rodney wandered over to a large box shoved into a corner and found 'Court Martial' on its label. "You were court-martialed?" he asked the room. "Why?" He reached out, and his hand brushed the lock for the court-martial box. He realised what he was doing and jerked his hand off the box.
Rodney gazed around at the other boxes for a moment, then backed out of the room. If and when John wanted to tell him about what was in the boxes, he would listen. Until then, he could live with the not knowing.
He wandered along the hallway and ignored the other doors he passed. He knew where he was. He just had no idea what he was supposed to do next. How was being stuck in Sheppard's head a trial? he wondered.
The only thing he'd had to fight so far was his own overwhelming sense of curiosity to open boxes. Which he was determined to win, by the way, he silently vowed.
"Was that your test?" Rodney asked and glared at the ceiling. There was no answering voice and, more importantly, no flash of white light transporting him back to the mainland. "Lovely," he muttered to himself and kept walking.
~*~*~*~ SGA ~*~*~*~
John wasn't sure where it was safe to step. Everywhere he turned, he found more of Rodney's memories playing out in front of him. He tried to avoid the dark places as he figured those were the most private; things Rodney probably didn't want anyone to know. However, since most of the dark places also involved the loudest voices, he couldn't always help it if he heard snippets of things as he skirted around them.
"You're the one who wanted kids," he heard a male voice shout as John nearly stepped into another shadow. "He's your problem. You deal with him."
John tried to move away but froze despite himself when the yelling match continued.
"I have more important things to do", a woman yelled back. "I don't have the time to drive him halfway across town, too."
"And what? You think I do? I'm supposed to drop everything and haul him to some special high school every day?"
"He's your kid, too!" the woman sneered.
"And who's fault was that?" the man yelled back."He's fourteen. He's old enough now. He can take the bus."
"Fine," the woman agreed. "Thank god, he graduates in a few months. Then he'll go to university and be out of our hair."
John felt guilty for stopping, but the more he heard from the dark corners of Rodney's mind, the more he wanted a way to go back in time and give people like Rodney's parents a piece of his mind. His childhood hadn't been an endless stream of sunshine and ice cream, but it was apparently better than what Rodney had had to endure.
John backed away from the shadow and turned around. He wandered through a maze of screens showing various science presentations and thought he was on safer ground in the brighter areas of Rodney's mind.
"Whoa!" John exclaimed and stopped short when he walked into a brightly lit space full of images of a woman. In most of the pictures, the woman wore BDUs, but there were several obviously fanciful images of her wearing far, far less.
"You do know Carter can kill you and make it look like an accident, right?" John muttered, looking away from the scantily-clad images of Colonel Samantha Carter. "Assuming we would ever find the body," he added under his breath as he backed out of the room. He had no desire to see anything else of Rodney's fantasies.
John turned in a slow circle and saw what looked like a truncated version of the central tower of Atlantis in the near distance and headed toward it. Along the way, he watched chess pieces move themselves through game after game. A whiteboard drew and erased several different plans for a system John assumed was part of the city. Another whiteboard carefully drew out a circuit schematic in precise detail.
He also heard snippets of conversations whisper past on the breeze and smiled when he separated one voice from the other background noise and realised it was his own.
She said we were chaguo ndugu, brothers by choice. I guess she was right.
You get yourself in trouble, and we will be there to get you out.
Elizabeth asked me to put together an off-world reconnaissance team, and I want you on it.
The mark of a warrior Kalani called it.
John arrived at the base of the tower and walked around the perimeter. He found a door but hesitated before trying the controls. What sort of memories would Rodney store in Atlantis? he wondered. John hoped they were good memories, but why keep them separate from everything else he'd seen? What would he do if the tower was locked? He hesitated a moment longer, then took a deep breath and waved his hand over the access panel.
~*~*~*~ SGA ~*~*~*~
Rodney aimlessly roamed the corridors looking for a way out of Sheppard's mind. Sometimes he'd peek into a room, curious to see what sort of boxes John kept there, but for the most part, he just walked. The hallways and rooms were only dimly lit, but he thought there was a brighter area ahead of him, and he walked a little faster, hoping he'd finally found the way out.
The dim corridor ended on a well-lit atrium, and Rodney stared open-mouthed as he walked into the light. He easily recognised the clean design, the geometric patterns in the stained glass, even the water features.
"It's Atlantis," he muttered as he looked around in stunned amazement.
Boxes, far larger than anything Rodney had found in the dim rooms, sat against the atrium walls. He walked over to one of the boxes and nodded when he saw 'Puddle Jumpers' written across the top. Another read 'Gate Travel' a third said 'New People'. Rodney ran his hands over the boxes, but even though none of them were locked, he chose not to pry.
He wandered around the rest of the room and frowned when he found a corner of the atrium shrouded in gloomy shadow. He suspected he knew what sort of boxes he would find in the dark corner. He stopped next to the first box and nodded when he saw 'Wraith' written on the label and an even more intricate lock in the hasp. Another smaller box labelled 'Sumner' sat next to the 'Wraith' box.
Rodney stepped back from the boxes and saw a hallway leading away from the atrium. "Where do you go?" he muttered as he left the atrium.
It didn't take long for Rodney to find more doors. He stopped outside the first one and peeked inside. "Huh," he said and walked into what looked like the armoury in Atlantis.
He walked past the lines of weapons securely locked inside their cabinets and found a table against the back wall and another box. What surprised him was the box not only wasn't locked, but it was open, and the lid sat on the table next to the box.
Rodney glanced at the lid, noted the label read 'Ford' and peered inside. He wasn't sure what to expect and received another shock when he found the box full of what looked like snapshots of the lieutenant. In some of the pictures, Ford was smiling. In others, it looked like he was demonstrating something. A couple of the photos were from a movie night the team had had a few weeks ago, and Ford was laughing while in the process of throwing popcorn at someone.
Rodney replaced the photos in the box and walked out of the armoury. He continued down the hall, and the next room he found looked like the infirmary. "Really? You have good memories of a hospital?" He walked into the room and found a box labelled 'Beckett' on one of the beds.
As with Ford's box, Carson's was also open, and Rodney found pictures of Beckett smiling or talking. In a few, he looked serious as he explained something. He glanced around the rest of the room and found a locked box labelled 'Bug' under one of the beds in a dim corner. He almost missed two more boxes hidden under another of the beds.
He pulled them out and found one was labelled 'Cave' and the other 'P2J-496'. Both boxes were locked, and Rodney mouthed the series of letters and numbers, trying to remember why the planet designation was familiar.
"The jungle planet," Rodney said with a shudder and realised the boxes weren't from injuries to John, but bad memories from Rodney's own stays in the infirmary. He shoved the boxes back under the bed and left the infirmary.
He found Teyla's box in what looked like one of Atlantis' workout rooms. Several of the pictures were of Teyla smiling and standing in different fighting stances. There were also several images of Teyla, geared up for a mission, leading the way through a forest or talking to people they had met on other planets. Other pictures showed her talking with Elizabeth in the gateroom or control room.
Rodney glanced around the workout room one more time, then walked out of the room. The last door stood at the end of the hall. Rodney pushed open the door, curious to see what he would find next, and stopped short at what he found.
"Oh," he whispered.
The door opened on his lab, but it was hard to tell for sure as instead of a box sitting on a table, the room itself was covered in images. John standing with his arm carelessly draped over Rodney's shoulders, both of them grinning. The two of them laughing over some joke. John shooting him in the leg to test the shield. The two of them around a campfire on a planet. Rodney working on something in the lab. Rodney explaining something in Elizabeth's office. Rodney playing the keyboard in the rec room.
Rodney glanced up and felt a fresh jolt in his stomach when he saw 'Brother' written above the door. He only had a few moments to wrap his head around what he'd found and what it meant before the lab melted away and he was in a pure white room. He groaned in pain, looked down at his hands, once again bandaged and burnt, and staggered over to the nearest wall. He slid down the wall until he was on the floor, closed his eyes, and curled his hands into his chest.
~*~*~*~ SGA ~*~*~*~
John held his breath and waved his hand over the sensor. The door whispered open, and John blew out the breath and stepped into the tower. Unlike outside, the thoughts in the tower were more organised. The hallways were well lit but not eye-wateringly bright, and a ceiling had replaced the streams of equations and code running overhead. However, there was still a near-constant buzzing of loud conversation in his ears, and John resisted the urge to cover them again as he stepped away from the door.
He wandered halls filled with Rodney's chicken-scratch handwriting. Wiring diagrams, piping schematics, and translations of Ancient covered the walls in place of the usual geometric patterns. John stopped outside one of the transporters, glanced over the detailed information written on the wall, and smiled when he found the notation "Not a storage closet!" scrawled next to a diagram.
John walked into the equivalent of the control room and found shelves holding large binders lined along one wall.
"'Communication Systems', 'Environmental Systems', 'Sensors'," John read as he ran a finger along the spines. He glanced around the rest of the room and noticed the large screen behind the main console no longer streamed the lines of Ancient text. Instead, the screen was divided into smaller squares, each running a different video: Grodin checking something on one of the consoles. Zelenka typing something on one of the laptops. Elizabeth talking to someone. John looked over the balcony and saw the gateroom walls and the floor covered in a spider web of system diagrams.
John wandered up to the jumper bay and wasn't surprised to see Jumper One covered in detailed notes of every system, switch, and circuit the ship had. He wandered through the bay and noticed screens playing more videos on a loop: Rodney staring up at the newly opened sunroof. John giving Rodney a flying lesson. Rodney staring out the windscreen of the jumper as they lifted off on one mission or another. A small screen off to one side played an endless loop of John being wheeled out of the bay on a gurney.
John winced at the reminder of the bug that had nearly killed him. Both Beckett and Weir had told him how Rodney had reacted after John's near-death experience. John glanced over at the evidence drawn all over the jumper and sighed. He didn't realise that Rodney still had the event playing on a constant loop in his head even months later.
"Damn, McKay," John muttered, rubbing his chin.
He left the jumper bay and wandered down to Rodney's lab, curious to know how the familiar space would look inside McKay's head.
He stopped outside the closed door to Rodney's domain a moment later and hesitated. What would he find inside? he wondered. "Probably even worse than the chaos outside," John said with a smile. He took a deep breath, readying himself for the expected onslaught of overwhelming information, and opened the door.
To John's utter surprise, the room was lit in a peaceful glow. It took him a moment to notice the sound he was hearing was actually the lack of sound. The annoying buzz of conversations had stopped as soon as he entered the room and the door closed.
There was only one screen in the room, taking up the length and breadth of an entire wall, and the videos that played, while all different, were all the same: John and Rodney talking about something which shifted to the two of them sharing a meal that John had brought to the lab. That changed to the pair of them laughing about something, and then just the two of them sitting together, Rodney working on some gadget at the work table with John watching and saying something every now and then that made Rodney smile and reply.
As John stood next to the work table, he noticed the peace in the room. There was no frenetic movement, no loud noises. He'd known for quite some time Rodney's sanctuary was his lab. He didn't realise how much Rodney equated John being there with him to that sense of calm.
John was still digesting that revelation when the lab started to shift and melt, and moments later, he found himself in a pure white room. He heard a groan behind him and turned in time to see Rodney sag to the floor against the wall, his hands held against his chest, and his eyes closed.
~*~*~*~ SGA ~*~*~*~
"Elizabeth, we can't leave. Not yet," Carson said into his radio. Ford had radioed a progress report to Atlantis once it was morning, and he had given Carson the news they were to pack up and return to the city.
"Carson, I'm already down my senior military head as well as my chief scientist. I need my Head of Medicine back in Atlantis," Elizabeth replied.
"Would you be giving up on them, then?" Carson demanded. "It's not even been a full day yet, Elizabeth. We need to keep looking for them."
"According to Lieutenant Ford's report, you've already searched the forest surrounding the area where you think Major Sheppard and Rodney disappeared and found nothing. I'm not giving up, Carson, but I need you and the rest of the Atlantis personnel back in the city. Halling and his people have agreed to continue looking for them."
"Elizabeth -" Carson started to argue.
"I've made my decision, Doctor Beckett," Elizabeth said, and Carson winced at the formal title and last name. There was no shifting Elizabeth once she stopped using your first name.
"Fine," he ground out with a sigh.
"I'll expect you and the rest of the Atlantis personnel back here by later this morning. Weir out."
"Doc?" Ford asked and stopped at Carson's side.
"No luck," he replied. "We're to pack up and head back to the city. The Athosians have apparently agreed to keep looking for Rodney and Major Sheppard."
"Yes, sir," Ford said. He turned and waved to Joseph standing near one of the tents. "Markham! Pack it up. We've been ordered -"
"Hang on a moment, Lieutenant!" Carson exclaimed and waited for Ford to face him. "Just because we've been ordered back doesn't mean we need to be in a terrible rush, does it?"
Ford just looked at him, and Carson wondered how he'd survived in the military. "We do just as Doctor Weir says, lad," Carson said in a conspiratorial whisper. "We just take our time in the doing of it. I figure we can drag out this repacking for at least a few hours, don't you?"
Ford's face lit up as he caught on to the plan. "I see what you mean, Doctor Beckett," he said, and Carson watched as he tried to keep the grin off his face. "Your equipment, especially, needs careful packing and handling, doesn't it?"
"Now you've got it, son," Carson said with a smile of his own. "We'll give them a wee bit longer to find their way home."
~*~*~*~ SGA ~*~*~*~
"Rodney?" John asked, suddenly out of sorts to be in a white room instead of Rodney's mind. "Hey." He knelt beside Rodney and reached out to touch his arm.
Rodney jumped and opened his eyes. "Really you?" he asked and looked around with a confused expression.
John sat next to him with a thump. "Yeah, really me."
"Of course, this could all be in my head, and you're just saying what I want to hear." Rodney glanced over at him, and John smiled.
"That's true. I guess you'll just have to trust me."
Rodney shrugged and scooted over until their shoulders touched. "I can do that."
John sat for a moment thinking about everything he'd experienced and seen in Rodney's mind, all of the different ideas, the energy, the noise. He knew Rodney was a genius. He'd just never thought about what that actually meant. Rodney was always thinking, John realised. He was always working on solutions, his mind rarely at rest. Now John understood the impatience and frustration Rodney felt when others couldn't keep up with him.
He assumed Rodney had had a similar trip through his own subconscious and wondered what he'd seen and what that meant for their friendship. There were many things John kept hidden, things he didn't want to talk about. Things he didn't want anyone to know. Rodney lived to take things apart and see how they worked. Could he accept not knowing everything about John?
He felt Rodney shifting against him, looked over, and saw Rodney pull his legs up and hold his hands stiffly between his knees and his chest. "How are you doing?" John asked and nodded at Rodney's hands.
"I think they hurt worse than before." Rodney looked down at his bandaged hands. "I really want to go home now," he muttered softly and glanced over at John.
"Yeah, I hear ya," John replied with a sigh.
They sat in silence for a moment before John poked the elephant in the room. "So … that was … different."
Rodney snorted softly. "I'm impressed you survived the trip." He looked over at John, hesitated for a moment, then asked, "What, umm, what did you see?"
"Nothing I didn't already know or at least suspect," John said with a reassuring smile. "I did my best to stay away from the shadows, but I did see and hear a few things." He paused and glanced down at his hands. "I'm sorry," he added and hoped Rodney knew he meant the apology as more than just for stumbling into his bad memories.
Rodney stared back at him for a moment, then twisted his lip in an awkward smile. "Yeah," he muttered and looked away. His actions, however, spoke volumes, and when he uncurled from his defensive position enough to lean against John instead of the wall, John knew he'd been forgiven.
John shifted so they were both a bit more comfortable and rolled his head to stare at Rodney. "What about you? What did you see?"
"Boxes," Rodney replied. "Lots of boxes."He glanced at John with a puzzled frown. "How do you do that, by the way? I could never do that."
John's lips twitched at the admission.
Rodney stared at the wall in front of them for a moment. "There were a few surprises," he admitted. "And some of your boxes were open. There were … pictures, I'd guess you'd say, of Teyla and Ford, some of the others. Me. I saw those." He looked up at John. "But I didn't look in any of the boxes that were locked."
"I know," John said easily. And he did. He realised he trusted Rodney not to go snooping as much as Rodney knew he would stay away from the dark places in Rodney's subconscious as best he could.
"You okay with …" Rodney asked after another silence and waved a bandaged hand at John's head.
And that was the real question, wasn't it? John realised. For whatever reason, The Overseer had decided to dump them into each other's subconscious. Was that the test? he wondered, to see if not only seeing Rodney's inner mind but having Rodney see into his would pull them apart?
As John thought about it, he concluded he wasn't bothered by what Rodney had seen. "Yeah," he replied and glanced over at Rodney, "I'm fine. How about you?"
Rodney sat for a moment before he nodded. "As long as you still respect me in the morning," he added, and John saw the spark of humor in his eyes.
John couldn't help it. He laughed. They'd braved swords, electric shock, and certain death. He'd seen Rodney's mind up close and personal while Rodney had seen his, and wonder of wonders, they could still laugh about it.
He wrapped an arm around Rodney's shoulders and pulled him a bit closer. "I don't know, McKay. I saw how you'd dressed Carter."
Rodney pulled away, a mix of horror and embarrassment on his face. "Oh, you didn't!"
"Hey, it wasn't in one of the dark places," John replied with a grin. "Don't worry though, your secret is safe with me."
Rodney settled back against him again. "Yeah," he said quietly, "I know it is."
"Fascinating," The Overseer said as he blipped into existence.
"You again," Rodney groused, and tried to stand without using his hands.
John stood and pulled Rodney up with him. He took a step closer to The Overseer, keeping Rodney behind him. "So, did we pass your test?" he growled.
The Overseer studied both of them for a long moment before he nodded. "It has been a long time since I have seen such a strong bond between two such disparate individuals."
"Meaning what exactly?" Rodney asked.
The Overseer gave him a haughty look. "Meaning you will be returned to your waypost. Once you return to The City, the final phase will be completed."
The Overseer gave John a measured look and added, "You, in particular, seem to have a powerful mental capability. The final phase will serve you well, I think."
John was still trying to figure out what to do with that statement when he heard a thump behind him and turned to see Rodney sitting on the floor again, his knees drawn up and his face hidden in his arms. John glanced at The Overseer then knelt at Rodney's side.
"You okay?"
Rodney gave him a pathetic sounding laugh and turned his head enough for John to see his face. "You do realise everything we just went through was for nothing, right? We triggered some ten-thousand-year-old obstacle course. You nearly got vaporised, and for what? Unless there's some super-secret, automated, subroutine I haven't found yet, there is no 'final phase' to complete." He ducked his head back down. "Can we just go now? Please?"
"As you wish," The Overseer replied. "The City will know what to do."
John looked up as The Overseer held up his hand in farewell, and the white light flashed over them.