Chapter Text
StarWatcher made me cover art!! many many thanks!!! go thou and look upon this lovely piece of art
“I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.” – Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories
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The first time Col. Marshall Sumner, USMC, interacted with Major John Sheppard, USAF, it was as Alpha male putting down a subordinate, all front claws latched in John's tac vest, and a mouthful of extremely sharp-looking teeth not six inches away from John's eyes. John had hated submitting, but he knew he had no choice if he still wanted to go on this mission. And the more he'd thought it over, the more he realized he actually did want to go. So he'd turned his head away, displaying his throat, and let Sumner snarl in his ear and bite down on the tip, without a trace of physical resistance. But he couldn't stop some part of himself from thinking that one day he wanted to Shift and claw that snide smirk from the other man's face.
Less than a week later, their eyes met again, over the Wraith Queen's shoulder, and Sumner, just a crumpled, white-haired shell of himself, had nodded for John to take the shot. That was how he'd come to sit in Sumner's place, as First among the military. Somehow he'd managed to hold on no matter what the Pegasus galaxy threw his way, but it hadn't been easy. It hadn't been easy at all.
John had joined the Air Force despite his father's wishes, and for one reason above all others: He had wanted – no, he'd needed – to fly. He was born for that. And eventually, after hard work and training, that was the job he'd earned.
Because John Sheppard needed to fly like most men needed to breathe, he liked choppers the best of all – and the Air Force definitely had the coolest toys.
*******
“All right. Thank you, Carson. Keep me up-to-date on your findings, please.”
“Aye, Elizabeth, I will. Let me know as soon as ye get the rest of that file translated; I expect it'll be helpful once we can read it.”
And with that exchange, at long last, the meeting broke up. John made his escape with maximum speed and stealth, slinking quietly out the side door before anyone else could pester him. Why Elizabeth wanted him at these things was unfathomable to John; getting her to actually follow his advice was like pulling teeth. He hated meetings, always had. Nine out of ten meetings were a waste of time, and the tenth was a recap of the first nine. Even Rodney, famously impatient, didn't dislike meetings as much as John – but then, Rodney liked to lecture captive audiences, so, yeah.
A quick glance around the room had already showed him Rodney bearing down on Carson with a ferocious scowl, not something John wanted any part of. Cleared for launch, then. Good. He'd been bouncing his legs up and down and twitching his feet for a while now, a combination of boredom, and having missed his run last night due to having to break up a scuffle between two of the Marines and a couple of the mouthier civilians. Never his idea of a good time, much less at the end of the day. If it had just been between Marines, he could have smacked Lorne on the shoulder and told him to get it sorted. Add civilians to the mix, though, and everything went to hell in a bucket.
Once he got a safe distance away, John flowed through a few quick stretches and then headed for his favourite night-time route, starting out in an easy lope and gradually increasing his speed. Somewhere along the route he'd probably run into Ronon; the big fella had a ninja gift of slipping away quietly, as if he were cloaked like a Jumper; he was almost never present in meetings, except for maybe the first few minutes. How somebody six inches taller than him and at least 30% wider managed to sneak away so softly both pissed John off and filled him with grudging envy and respect.
Zelenka had helped him escape a few times, when both of them had hit the breaking point and realized they couldn't stand one more droning, self-important, yet so-very-pointless complaint by Kavanagh. He and Zelenka had developed a pretty unlikely friendship, given their respective Other Sides, but it worked. The Czech was also a shifter, but his Other Side was a deer, where John's was a snow leopard. But both men had to Rodney-wrangle at times, which led to a certain amount of shared understanding.
During tonight's meeting, though, Zelenka had been absent, off on a date with one of the anthropologists. Leelu something-or-other, an energetic little red-headed woman who was fluent in Czech. John couldn't begrudge him, either; the man had been pulling double-duty for days, ever since Rodney's most recent lab accident.
It hadn't been too bad, as Rodney-mishaps went. No cardiac arrest this time, no permanently-stuck-on ancient peripheral device. Just a bright blue beam of light, spiraling around him, then unwrapping in a vaguely familiar way, followed by what Rodney insisted to this day had been a simple manly loss of consciousness. Carson had grinned and called it a faint, and the battle had been raging between them ever since. He'd only cleared Rodney to return to the labs earlier that day, and his insistence on repeated medical tests had the famous McKay temper at a full, rolling boil.
It would have been pretty funny, if it wasn't such a giant pain in John's ass.
Tonight's meeting had been two-purposed; to discuss their current state of knowledge about the device, which was negligible, and to plan for tomorrow's excursion to P3X-293, in hopes of trading for supplies of some promising new foods the Athosians had told them about.
Carson had dutifully brought them up to date on his results so far, which weren't much. Rodney had gotten noticeably grumpier over the last two weeks. He'd reported that his skin was itching, all over, but Carson had found no erythema or rash except where he'd scratched too hard, and no underlying rash or elevated histamine levels. Sensors showed that Rodney's body temperature was very slowly rising; still following the normal ups and downs, but a couple tenths of a degree warmer now, right across the board. But Rodney denied feeling either fever or chills. He'd been even hungrier than usual, but he hadn't put on any weight, though he was eating nearly double his already-prodigious normal intake. He was complaining of back pain, but then, Carson had joked, Rodney always complained of back pain. That crack had gotten him the patented McKay Death Glare, but Carson hadn't even noticed, absorbed by his data. Rodney's metabolic panel showed a markedly higher metabolic rate, likewise continuing to rise, but the Ancient body scanner had emphatically ruled out any infection or malignancies. Liver enzymes were elevated, but not dangerously so, his blood counts and chemistry were stable so far, and kidney function was improving, not degrading as Carson had more than half expected it to. At the end of his presentation Elizabeth had asked Carson for his conclusions, and the doctor had been forced to admit that as of yet, he didn't have any.
The only other change he had found was a pattern of peculiar discolouration spreading slowly across Rodney's skin – a scattering of fine golden lines, lying parallel to one another, on the surface of the skin. It had started across his shoulders and was now spreading down his arms, across the backs of his hands and up the back of his neck, disappearing into his hair. They didn't raise the surface of the skin, rather they seemed to be part of its structure – but one that had never been there before. They glittered as though they were made of pure metallic gold, but the scanner insisted they were modified keratin, not much different from the skin in which they lay.
John had been worrying about this ever since it happened, but watching Carson's face as he spoke was reassuring; the Scotsman had been gleefully intent on new knowledge, not sweating over the fate of his friend.
Having finished his warm-up, John began to put on some speed as he headed into the first big loop of his run, consciously pushing his current worries to the back of his mind. No way was he going to spend tonight the way he'd spent last night – tense, grouchy, and too damned wired to sleep.
*******
“Rodney, I've already told ye, I dinna know yet! I've put yer latest samples into the analyzer, but I dinna expect any results until the morning. Now there's an end of it! I'm going to get some sleep, and if ye've an ounce of sense, ye'll go and do likewise. Otherwise that 0730 rendezvous in the Gateroom is going to be even more gruesome than usual. I never should have let Elizabeth talk me into clearing you for off-world yet, and that's a fact. Any number of things could go wrong out there, and me with nowt but a field-kit to handle them. Honestly, Rodney--”
Rodney held up one hand, palm outwards. “Ah-t-t-t-t, now just stop, Carson. I have to go along; Elizabeth found a mention in the Ancients' database of some very interesting technology that she thinks might still be on this world. Besides, so far all that's happened is I have more energy than I did before. So, made of win! You're going to be there with us, so calm down before you have a stroke.”
“You're a dreadful bully, Rodney McKay, has no-one ever told ye that?”
Rodney snorted disdainfully, hopefully concealing the jolt that ran down his spine at those words. True, it wasn't the first time someone had said such a thing to him – but it would never be less of a shock. Truth be told, Rodney had been bullied far more than bullier in his life, especially as a child.
“Other than you?” he snarked. “No. Anyway, that's enough for me. Places to go, things to do, leaving now!!” And without further ado he turned and trotted off toward his lab. He wasn't even faintly sleepy yet, and he got a lot of his best thinking done in the quiet hours when the other scientists were out of his hair. Minions were all very well and good, but they could also be insanely annoying.
But he couldn't completely control his thoughts, as they drifted back in contemplation. The whole time he spent getting organized, brewing more coffee and wiping off the whiteboard next to his desk, he was remembering how it used to be...
Rodney was diagnosed as a carrier at birth, but had never been able to Shift. He had no idea what he would become if he could. He'd never even had a Shifted dream. He'd pretended all his life to be content with it, but really, it was a source of deep grief and endless frustration.
When he and Jeannie were little, whenever their parents' bickering got to be just too damned much, Jeannie would shift into her Other Side, a small brown bear, Rodney would climb onto her suddenly-broad back, and they would take off into the woods and ramble until sunset was almost upon them. Only out there was he free of the frustration and sadness surrounding his parents, the incessant never-ending spinning of his thoughts, and the feeling of being caught in a strait-jacket with no way out. Out in the woods with Jeannie he'd been able to relax and just be. The equations would come to him and he could concentrate, in a way he could no longer do at home.
He was ten years old the first time he solved one of the Millennium Problems, and twelve when he built a fully accurate model of an atomic bomb – in his family's basement. The CIA had been drooling over him, but his parents were furious.
When Rodney was thirteen he'd graduated high school, enrolled in university, and become an Emancipated Minor. It was either leave that house, or kill himself. His only regret was that the court wouldn't allow him to take Jeannie with him.
They hadn't seen each other again for almost five years, and then it had been at their parents' funeral. And that had only happened because Jeannie, two years younger and a foot shorter than him, had dug in her heels and refused to take no for an answer.
Of all his differing regrets, that was one of the sharpest. Being in a different galaxy with a bunch of lifesucking alien vampires had a way of focusing the mind. Even though Jeannie had dropped out of her degree program to marry an English major, of all the preposterous choices, Rodney still regretted not contacting her before the Atlantis expedition left Earth. They were one another's only surviving kin; it wasn't right, the way he'd snuck off without so much as a telephone call.
However, the coffeepot was burbling now, and he hastened to pour himself a cup, inhaling deeply that most magnificent of scents and sighing contentedly. Then he swallowed, sighed happily, grabbed a fresh Dry-Erase marker and got to work.