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�Where�d you go just now?� Holo-Rodney asked, arms crossed over his Mister Rogers� sweater-clad chest. I looked at him in what I hoped looked like confusion, picking up the pace, hoping that I wouldn�t have to explain to Rodney, even a Rodney who I would never see again, about how both Elizabeth and I, two of his best friends in the galaxy, hadn�t told him that we were in a serious relationship.
Elizabeth and I had, at the time, agreed to wait a little while, knowing how broken Rodney was by Carson�s death, but then we kept hitting crisis after crisis until� well, until Elizabeth was gone. By that time I was in no mood to reveal to anyone that it wasn�t just my boss and friend that was out there in the hands of the enemy, it was the woman I loved, the woman I was about to move in with, the woman I planned to ask to marry me on the third anniversary of our arrival on Atlantis� which came and went without any fanfare or comment four months after the Replecators captured her. Telling anyone after Elizabeth had been captured would only have made the IOA force me to step down as military commander, temporarily they�d say but those things have a way of becoming permanent, and there would never be any way I would be allowed to even begin to plan a rescue mission if anyone had known the extent of my connection to Elizabeth. And once she was declared dead, our Replecator doubles having passed along the horrible news, the only people I told were Colonel Carter, when we were boxing up Elizabeth�s belongings, and Elizabeth�s mother, who already knew about us and who I was supposed to go meet with Elizabeth once Colonel Carter and Doctor Lee got the Midway Station fully functional, something that didn�t happen until the weeks after Elizabeth was captured.
My increased pace got me to the outer door much earlier than Holo-Rodney, but when I tried to will the door open it wouldn�t work. Remembering the door to the balcony�our balcony, mine and Elizabeth�s�I started trying to pry the door open, using up precious energy that I really wished I didn�t have to expend, especially when I didn�t know exactly what lay on the other side of the door.
Holo-Rodney�s voice, just behind my left shoulder�freaking hologram stealth�caused me to give up, though.
HOLO-RODNEY
�You might have ATA superiority, but I�m actually inside the City. That door isn�t going to open until I let it,� I said.
John growled, a sound Rodney was more used to hearing from Ronan and therefore felt strange to me. �We don�t have time for this,� John bit off.
�Then out with it,� I said impatiently. Because he was right. There wasn�t time for stopping and trying to ferret out what was eating Sheppard. But if I could get him to start talking I was pretty sure he would walk and talk and the story would hit my data stores before we reached the Control Room.
Hopefully.
He problem was that, in McKay�s life, only about four people had ever been able to out-stubborn him, and John was one of them.
But I had the benefit of not being dizzy with hunger and achy with thirst and exhausted by heat. For the first time ever Rodney McKay was in better shape than John Sheppard. Only it didn�t really count because I�m not exactly Rodney and comparing humans to holograms is like comparing rotating-powered pulsars to a Markov chain; you just can�t do it.
�Look, Grandpa-Hologram, I might have spaced out for a second but I�ve got a lot on my mind right now. Everyone I�ve ever known is long dead, my closest friends�my family�all died in painful and gut-wrenching ways. I�m supposed to jump back in time over ten thousand years after being in a fucking stasis pod for a few thousand years and my body isn�t entirely awake yet. I�m tired, it feels like it�s a million degrees in here and I�m about to go outside where it�ll be a million degrees and the nearly supernovaed sun will be blasting down on me, I�ve got sand in places sand should never be, I haven�t eaten in, literally, over a couple thousand years, and I�ve got a bitchy hologram wearing a Mister Rogers� reject sweater keeping me trapped in a hallway in my own city,� John all-but growled at me.
Though my base code was telling me that he wasn�t telling me the entire truth�even though neither