SGA Fic - Fortunate, Prologue

[kriadydragon]

Title: Fortunate
Rating: PG-13 for some violence and language, Gen
Characters: John, Rodney, Daniel, Lame with appearances by Landry, Ronon, Teyla
Genre: Humor, Angst, H/C, Drama, Friendship
Spoilers: Season four
Summary: Shepprd's in trouble so it's Rodney to the rescue... sort of. McKay POV, Sheppard whump and friendship galore. A mighty massive thanks goes out to my beta,wildcat88, who captured the continuity mistakes that I didn't. Blast that wily continuity! and another big thanks goes out to bratfarrar for lending me an ear and helping me iron this wrinkled plot out.

A/N: Though I really, thoroughly enjoyed writing this story, I'm a little nervous about it. For one, I feel it a bit different from what I usually write (just a bit) and for another, though I like Daneil, this is my first time writing him. Hope I did him justice. Aplologies if I didn't.

This story is complete and will be posted daily in parts (I wrote the whole thing as one, so can't say exactly how many parts there will be.

Fortunate

Rodney couldn't fix everything.

Yes, he, M. Rodney McKay with his PhDs and immeasurable intellect that probably was the size of a planet, couldn't fix one stupid Ancient shield generator. It was too old, too stubborn, too... much. It was further physical proof of Ancient fallibility and their ever present fault of aiming too high and still shooting themselves in the foot. The machine wasn't complicated; it was simply high maintenance – like the difference between a little fuel-efficient Honda and a gas-guzzling Mack truck. The power, the crystals, wires – the very consoles themselves – were burned and fused beyond recognition, probably because the Ancients, in their experiment-happy, nothing-can-possibly-go-wrong arrogance, had thought it okay to leave the thing running indefinitely.

There was no fixing the stupid thing, not without replacing each and every part. It was like busy work, and, kick-ass planet-encompassing shield or not, Rodney was getting bored with it. Repair jobs were for the little people. He was more interested in duplicating the thing on Earth and Atlantis, which couldn't happen until the SGC was confident that the thing would work without consequence.

But it was slow going, with a week gone and only a quarter of the station-one console repaired. There were five stations in all, equidistant from each other in the round Romanesque chamber of white marble and cracked pillars. The discovery of Ancient goodies had been popping up all over the Milky Way – most beyond repair. Only the shield had parts the SGC knew for a fact could be found on Atlantis, and inventory of every nut, bolt, and tube of transparent glue normally used to fix broken stained glass was as mandatory as reports on what the Wraith were currently plotting.

But it took time to locate the right item in the right quantity and send it to Earth. Rodney preferred those little hiatuses that lasted one to two days. It allowed him to work on the blue-prints for the duplicates, as well as spared him another hike through a jungle so humid that breathing the air felt like drowning.

Rodney also preferred working on the blueprints at the SGC, with its rooms of tables, computers, air conditioning, and lesser intellects that could be ordered to fetch coffee and food. He had four tables pushed together, buried under sketches, rulers, pens, pencils, and three laptops that were doing most of the calculating. The generator wasn't unlike the one that had annihilated Teranus, in that it ran on geothermal power. The difference was that its power consumption wasn't as voracious because the shield itself wasn't strong. Instead of neutralizing a threat, it merely weakened it – for example, had they such a shield on Atlantis when the Asurans had attacked, the most damage that damn beam would've caused would have been to weaken the outer walls with heat. There would have been no explosion, no needing to take the city into space, and no need to reprogram the nanites in Elizabeth's body.

So it was better protection than nothing. If it worked at all.

A laptop beeped, and three printers spit up hard copies. Rodney liked hard copies to make notes on. He stuffed them into the appropriate files to look at later. It was almost six and only a matter of minutes before some SF dropped by to kick him out per General Landry's orders. The General was under the impression that it was possible for a man – namely Rodney - to work himself to death. Utter tripe. Rodney wasn't stupid; he knew when his body had had enough; it just ran a little longer than most human bodies. And so much could be accomplished if they'd just leave him alone.

Another laptop beeped which meant current emails and data bursts from Atlantis and the SGC had been forwarded to him. He shut the three laptops down, shoved the fourth into his satchel then made sure to lock the door against the curious and those with no directional sense before heading out. He would check emails when he got home

Home was a twenty-minute drive – half hour, sometimes, depending on the traffic – to a small two bedroom townhouse outside of town. It was in a quiet little neighborhood where, thankfully, the neighbors had no real interest in each other beyond the occasional hello in passing. The trees and distance between each house was meant to create the illusion of living out in the middle of nowhere. It felt more like a glorified campsite, but it kept Rodney from feeling hemmed in by mass produced housing and people who thought you were family just because you all occupied the same street.

Home. Home was a city in another galaxy; the townhouse was just a temporary setup that was a convenience both comfort and time-wise. Inside it was open, the kitchen on the left, the living room and hallway to the bedroom, bathroom, and study on the right, and the two sides divided by a salt-and-pepper speckled, Formica-topped counter with red-padded bar stools. Rodney had had his furniture pulled from storage but had to buy a new bed – his old one still on Atlantis. The plasma screen TV and entertainment system were pure, unabashed indulgence purchased from a rent-to-own place.

As soon as Rodney entered the house, he fell into routine: dumping the satchel on the coffee table, turning on the TV then popping Chinese take-out from yesterday into the microwave. When the food was done, he piled it all onto a tray and moved it to the living room. He pulled out his laptop, booted it up, and multitasked between stuffing chow mein into his mouth and clicking open the messages sent on the data burst, never once looking the plasma screen's way.

Two from Zelenka keeping him apprised of ongoing projects and the other seven from Ronon and Teyla asking about Sheppard.

Rodney set the bowl of noodles on the glass table and sat back, rubbing his stubbled jaw. Seven messages meant Ronon was getting impatient. Ronon getting impatient meant Rodney needed to send an answer before the Satedan decided to stun his way to Earth and shake the answers out of him. But what the hell was Rodney supposed to say? Sorry, the project's been keeping me busy. I promise to visit Sheppard in the nuthouse as soon as possible. Excuses tumbled over each other in Rodney's head, all plausible he felt. Also all pointless because the whole reason he'd said yes to taking part in the project to begin with was because of Sheppard – because it hadn't felt right leaving John all alone on Earth and the project had provided the perfect excuse to stick around. Rodney had told everyone his agreeing to help was so they would stop badgering him about it, and they'd bought it.

At least he assumed they'd bought it. Only Ronon and Teyla knew the truth since he'd had a harder time ignoring their badgering.

Sheppard had gone through the 'gate fine and dandy not counting all the healing bones forcing him into some Earth-side rehab – a cave-in had nearly crushed him into powder. A week and a half later, Atlantis received an urgent message that Sheppard was in a mental hospital. He'd supposedly tried to cut open his arms, thinking mini-iratus bugs had crawled inside of him.

Words like PTSS and depression had been thrown around. It had been inevitable, said the doctors who didn't know jack about Sheppard and what went on in that spiky head of his. Yes, he'd been to hell and back more than any human should, but this was Sheppard. Sheppard, who'd never even heard of the Stargate program until he'd almost gotten killed by a drone; who'd stepped through the 'gate to another galaxy, rescued people from alien vampires, and shot his CO; who'd been beaten, fed on, and watched as bad things happened to people he cared about and who'd still kept going with a smile on his face because it was everyone else who mattered, not himself. As long as everyone else was okay, he was okay. It had made no sense, no sense, for him to up and crack as he had. And yet the doctors hemmed and hawed as though the only unnatural part about it all was that it hadn't happened sooner.

For that reason, Ronon and Teyla had felt it necessary that someone who knew Sheppard – knew him for who he was – remain close by in case there was more to this than Post Traumatic Stress. There'd had to be more to it.

That had been almost two months ago. Rodney dropped his head back and deflated his chest on a long sigh. Really, what the hell was he supposed to say? Sorry guys. I don't like visiting Sheppard anymore. He's been looking worse everyday. He barely talks, won't look at me, and I'm starting to think he might not get better.

Ever consider that, maybe, he really did crack? Ronon would certainly barrel his way to Earth and kick his ass for that one. Even if Rodney took him to the VA hospital, showed him Sheppard and the tapes of Sheppard's manic outbursts only released to Rodney because of all the cajoling for answers, the Satedan still wouldn't lose hope that Sheppard was insane against his will.

Oh, how Rodney envied that kind of mindless optimism. It had been over five days since he'd last visited Sheppard and had gone to bed guilty and pissed: at Ronon and Teyla's persistence, at Sheppard for finally giving in to all the crap he'd been through, and at himself for slowly but surely succumbing to the doctors and their technical jargon. They made it sound so possible for someone like John to break as though he'd always been made of glass. And what did Rodney know about the human psyche anyway? For all he knew, he was just one crisis away from joining Sheppard in the nuthouse himself.

Rodney had always thought he'd be the one to break down first. Then again, he'd always said of Sheppard that he was a crazy son of a bitch.

Deciding to deal with the return messages tomorrow, Rodney leaned forward and closed his account down.

It wasn't just the doctors and their certainty. Rodney had been giving in to wondering a lot more lately, and everything he wondered about made sense. In his search for the answer he'd wanted that might help John, he'd researched PTSS and read articles about soldiers who came home happy and sane one minute then... stopped being sane the next. It was scary

And it made sense in terms of what was happening to John. The last time Rodney had visited the colonel, Sheppard had been shaking, chewing his nails to the quick, and there'd been a small row of stitches on his forehead where he'd tried to bash the “life-sucking queen-bitch” out of his head – his words, not the doctor's. Rodney's quick exit afterwards had made him feel like an ass.

How was he supposed to tell Ronon and Teyla about that?

Rodney grabbed the control and spent the next fifteen minutes flipping channels until his burning eyes couldn't take it any more. Shutting the TV off, he shoved the food to one side and typed up the next grocery list to send to Zelenka tomorrow. As long as no one had decided to clean house, the parts wouldn't be hard to find. When finished, he shut the laptop down, stood, and stretched, deciding he might as well turn in. He had to go back to that planet tomorrow, something he would like to momentarily pretend wasn't happening.

Crap, he hated that damn planet. He made a mental note as he shuffled off down the hall to bring mosquito repellent this time before those giant “gnats” sucked him dry.

TBC...

On to Part One

Comments

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Thanks! The responses I've been reciveing have been incredibly reassuring, although I'm still a tad nervous because there's still lots of parts left and I haven't even gotten to the parts with Daniel, yet!

I'm not as big a fan of SG-1 as I am of Atlantis, but I do like the show. However, like you I have no interest to write SG-1 fic (unless, of course it's a crossover with Atlantis ;)). Now that I have tackled writing Dnaile... yeah, definitely don't wan to write SG-1 stuff. That guy was tough to write!