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sga_flashficTitle: Probability
Author: Jacqueline
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard (pre-slash)
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: Rodney wonders.
Notes: 38 minutes challenge. Spoilers for "The Siege".
For a long time now, Rodney’s been having dreams about drowning.
And waking, he thinks about possibilities. And lately, his regrets.
As he sprints down the hallways towards the jumper bay, he thinks about what he wouldn’t give for the time traveling puddlejumper to have never been destroyed. Although, logically, Rodney knows that even if the puddlejumper did still exist and he did travel back in time, nothing he did would really be saving Atlantis. He would simply be creating alternate reality after alternate reality until he came up with one where Atlantis and everyone in it weren’t destroyed by life-sucking aliens attacking the city. Rodney might have been able to leave this reality behind, but the John he left in it would still be blowing himself up in a desperate suicide attempt to strike back at the enemy. But for just a moment, Rodney is able to shove scientific reason to the back of his mind and indulge in a fantasy where everyone he loves lives happily ever after.
It’s a small comfort.
His scientific brain won’t let him retreat from reality for long.
Rodney presses his hand against the sensor to open the bay doors with a sigh, and ponders that just because you can think of something, doesn’t mean it can happen, and wanting that same something to happen doesn’t increase the odds that it will at all. Of course, things never work out the way you planned them, Rodney thinks cynically, and he should have learned that by now. He’s thinking of his first regret. He should have never listened to his stupid piano teacher. He’d thrown away his first dream because someone in wire-rimmed spectacles had thought he didn’t have soul. Rodney had locked away the part of him that dreamed and stuck to the tangible, because he had been told that logic was what he was good at, not art, even though he had suspected that maybe things like soul and heroism could be learned if you wanted them badly enough. And so, Rodney had turned to science because if the world was going to force him to make sense, then he wanted the world to do the same for him.
It must be the stimulants talking, usually he doesn’t indulge this sort of introspect.
Elizabeth isn’t even trying to talk him out of taking a jumper. Perhaps she feels that it’s only fair, since she let Sheppard go.
Rodney has never thought of himself as heroic. In fact, suspecting that he’s just the opposite has always been his greatest source of shame.
“You know, if this works, someone might have to do it again.”
Rodney regrets pushing people away, regrets being so damn self-sufficient. He regrets thinking that if nobody was going to tell him that he was important, that he made a difference, or that he was special, than he would just have to do it himself.
Rodney seats himself in front of the jumper's controls and thinks affectionately not to grip them too tight. And then, he’s back to possibilities. Rodney wonders what might have happened if he’d loosened up sooner, how much better the few friendships he’d made in Atlantis might have been. He wonders if they’d be just as strong anyways and if his friends already know what he wants them to without having been told. Still, Rodney wishes he had said something. He wonders if what he’s about to do will really make a difference at all, and if he should have just sunk Atlantis when they first heard the Wraith were coming. He’s thought enough about drowning for it to seem like a peaceful death, given the circumstances. And plus, Rodney thinks with despair, Atlantis is all but overrun now, and the chances are good that the Wraith will be able to seize that Stargate, and from there they will be able to reach Earth.
This is the most likely scenario, Rodney knows. But then again, John Sheppard’s luck does seem to defy probability, so at this point, Rodney figures that this desperate stunt could go either way. It doesn’t make any mathematical sense, but what do equations matter, when compared with actual results? Samantha Carter might have agreed with him on that one, he thinks.
For instance, he’s flying the puddle jumper more smoothly than he ever has before, even though he’s barely thinking about where’s he’s going, let alone maneuvering around incoming darts. The hive ship seems to expand to fill Rodney’s range of sight, and Rodney faces yet another dilemma. He’s about to sacrifice his life for the sake of a man who’s already dead. In the seconds before his ship explodes, Rodney has just enough time to wonder what the chances are that John Sheppard was proud of him before he died.
Author: Jacqueline
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard (pre-slash)
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: Rodney wonders.
Notes: 38 minutes challenge. Spoilers for "The Siege".
For a long time now, Rodney’s been having dreams about drowning.
And waking, he thinks about possibilities. And lately, his regrets.
As he sprints down the hallways towards the jumper bay, he thinks about what he wouldn’t give for the time traveling puddlejumper to have never been destroyed. Although, logically, Rodney knows that even if the puddlejumper did still exist and he did travel back in time, nothing he did would really be saving Atlantis. He would simply be creating alternate reality after alternate reality until he came up with one where Atlantis and everyone in it weren’t destroyed by life-sucking aliens attacking the city. Rodney might have been able to leave this reality behind, but the John he left in it would still be blowing himself up in a desperate suicide attempt to strike back at the enemy. But for just a moment, Rodney is able to shove scientific reason to the back of his mind and indulge in a fantasy where everyone he loves lives happily ever after.
It’s a small comfort.
His scientific brain won’t let him retreat from reality for long.
Rodney presses his hand against the sensor to open the bay doors with a sigh, and ponders that just because you can think of something, doesn’t mean it can happen, and wanting that same something to happen doesn’t increase the odds that it will at all. Of course, things never work out the way you planned them, Rodney thinks cynically, and he should have learned that by now. He’s thinking of his first regret. He should have never listened to his stupid piano teacher. He’d thrown away his first dream because someone in wire-rimmed spectacles had thought he didn’t have soul. Rodney had locked away the part of him that dreamed and stuck to the tangible, because he had been told that logic was what he was good at, not art, even though he had suspected that maybe things like soul and heroism could be learned if you wanted them badly enough. And so, Rodney had turned to science because if the world was going to force him to make sense, then he wanted the world to do the same for him.
It must be the stimulants talking, usually he doesn’t indulge this sort of introspect.
Elizabeth isn’t even trying to talk him out of taking a jumper. Perhaps she feels that it’s only fair, since she let Sheppard go.
Rodney has never thought of himself as heroic. In fact, suspecting that he’s just the opposite has always been his greatest source of shame.
“You know, if this works, someone might have to do it again.”
Rodney regrets pushing people away, regrets being so damn self-sufficient. He regrets thinking that if nobody was going to tell him that he was important, that he made a difference, or that he was special, than he would just have to do it himself.
Rodney seats himself in front of the jumper's controls and thinks affectionately not to grip them too tight. And then, he’s back to possibilities. Rodney wonders what might have happened if he’d loosened up sooner, how much better the few friendships he’d made in Atlantis might have been. He wonders if they’d be just as strong anyways and if his friends already know what he wants them to without having been told. Still, Rodney wishes he had said something. He wonders if what he’s about to do will really make a difference at all, and if he should have just sunk Atlantis when they first heard the Wraith were coming. He’s thought enough about drowning for it to seem like a peaceful death, given the circumstances. And plus, Rodney thinks with despair, Atlantis is all but overrun now, and the chances are good that the Wraith will be able to seize that Stargate, and from there they will be able to reach Earth.
This is the most likely scenario, Rodney knows. But then again, John Sheppard’s luck does seem to defy probability, so at this point, Rodney figures that this desperate stunt could go either way. It doesn’t make any mathematical sense, but what do equations matter, when compared with actual results? Samantha Carter might have agreed with him on that one, he thinks.
For instance, he’s flying the puddle jumper more smoothly than he ever has before, even though he’s barely thinking about where’s he’s going, let alone maneuvering around incoming darts. The hive ship seems to expand to fill Rodney’s range of sight, and Rodney faces yet another dilemma. He’s about to sacrifice his life for the sake of a man who’s already dead. In the seconds before his ship explodes, Rodney has just enough time to wonder what the chances are that John Sheppard was proud of him before he died.