Or possibly not, when he saw Sheppard.
He was coming out of the mess in the morning, coffee in hand, still a little shy of six o’clock. Sheppard was sitting at one of the tables on the balcony, a mug in front of him, looking out at the sea. He was unshaved, and he slouched in his chair like a man most profoundly tired. There was no one else about.
Radek opened the door and came out, falling into the opposite chair. “Good morning.”
Sheppard blinked like a man called back from dreams. “Radek.”
“Yes.”
“Is it really you or an alien intelligence?”
“I think that it is me,” he said. “I do not feel so intelligent.”
“That’s what you’d say if you were an alien intelligence,” Sheppard said.
“I would,” Radek agreed. “But you will have to take it on faith.”
The sun was rising out of the distant sea, green tropic swells rolling softly under the dawn sky frosted with pink clouds. It was unbearably lovely.
“What the hell,” Sheppard said softly, not looking at him. “We get an alien intelligence, and Woolsey and Rodney both get people telling them they’re great.”
“You are great,” Radek said seriously. Sheppard looked around at that, and Radek shrugged. “You are. If you want me to say so, I shall. Without drugs or alien intelligence or any of that. I am proud to work with you and call you my friend.”
Sheppard blinked and looked away, lashes sweeping shut over bloodshot eyes, tired face heavy in profile. “It was Kolya,” he said. “I know he’s dead. But you know people don’t always stay dead around here. It seemed…plausible.”
“Of course it seemed plausible,” Radek said logically. “It was coming from your mind.”
Sheppard snorted mirthlessly. “Yeah, and what does that say?”
Radek settled back in his chair and took a drink of coffee. “That you are as whacked as the rest of us. We are all a little crazy. It comes with the territory. It seems to me, from what they have said, that the alien intelligence gave Woolsey and Rodney what they felt they deserved.” His mouth quirked. “Which says quite a bit about the size of their egos, actually.” He tried not to look at Sheppard too keenly. “It is a good thing I was not here,” he said.
He felt Sheppard’s glance, though he did not look away from the sea.
“I know far too well what I should have seen,” he said. He considered a moment, but there was truth sometimes in morning, and to gain a truth you must give truth for truth, slice your palm to show that your blood is red. “I should have been on the satellite, not Peter.”
Sheppard did not say anything. There was nothing to say to that. There was only the truth, staring back at them. The sea breeze rolled over them, cool and smelling of salt. The coffee mug was warm in his hands.
“I should have gone,” he said. “But Rodney would not hear it. And so it was Peter.” He took another drink of the coffee, clearing his voice again. “Sometimes I wish that it had been me. And other times I am afraid that I do not.” He shrugged self-depreciatingly, dared a glance at Sheppard. “Survivor’s guilt, I think they call it.”
“Yeah, that’s what they call it.” Sheppard nodded seriously, his eyes on Radek as though for the first time this morning he were actually seeing him.
“It was a little crazy that first year,” Radek said. “Intense. You know. When things are so intense, one feels things too strongly. When each day is a surprise.” He looked at Sheppard sideways. “I have tried to take it as a gift.”
Sheppard nodded, looked away, lifting his chin to the sea. Radek did not expect him to reply, but he thought he saw some of the tension in his face ease.
“That is all we can do,” he said. “We live with it, you and I.” His voice was matter of fact as he went on. “What did Kolya do? Beat you and torture you?”
Sheppard shrugged. “Basically. His usual schtick. Told me he’d killed the science team and he was going to blow up Atlantis and I had to give him the access codes. That kind of thing.”
“At least you did not go there,” Radek said.
“Where?”
“He did not torture your friends.”
Sheppard swallowed. “I don’t… This was about me.”
“Yes, I see that,” Radek said. “Torturing others would serve no purpose.”
“No.” Sheppard’s profile was clean against the morning sky. “He cut off my hand.”
“How very Biblical,” Radek observed. “Or perhaps that is Sharia law.” Sheppard looked at him sharply and Radek shrugged. “Teyla and Ronon would not know, and Rodney never reads anything that is not science.”
“That’s so screwed up,” Sheppard said.
“Yes, well. It is your head, after all.”
Sheppard smiled at that, as though the joke were on him. Which of course it was.
“There is nothing to do but live with it,” Radek said. “Or die.” He took a casual sip of his coffee. “And no, I do not think you are suicidal. If you were, you would only need to stop ducking.”
“That’s true. But I don’t.” Sheppard picked up his own mug and looked at it as if surprised that it were empty. “Like you said. Other times I don’t wish that it had been me.”
“I have tried to take it as a gift,” Radek said. “I do not think Peter would wish otherwise.”
“A gift.” Sheppard looked out to sea, then glanced back at him, one eyebrow quirking. “And that’s what you’ve got for me?”
“That is the thing I have that I think you will accept,” Radek said gently.
Sheppard looked away again, that same smile as though he were the fool. “Right.”
“I also have a bottle of Scotch, but it is six in the morning,” Radek said. “It is perhaps too early to start drinking.”
“Yeah, probably,” Sheppard said.
Radek smiled back. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
“Control, this is Jumper One,” Sheppard said over the radio. “Dialing out.”
Radek shifted out of Salawi’s way. “You will see the address lighting on your board, so that you can verify they are going where they intend to. There is the first symbol, you see, the ox head…”
She watched carefully as the symbols lit, comparing them seriously to the address displayed on her computer screen, although of course there was no error. It was not like Sheppard to make careless mistakes. The gate opened in a flash of blue fire.
Salawi smiled at the sight, and Radek couldn’t help smiling himself, remembering his own delight the first time he had seen the theoretical products of wormhole physics made real. It would be a shame to become too used to such sights to appreciate them.
The jumper lowered from the bay above, hovering above the gateroom floor, poised to thread the ring of blue.
“Good luck, sir,” Salawi said into the radio.
“Thanks,” Sheppard said. “We’re probably going to need it.”
Chapter Five: Radim’s Proposition
The Genii homeworld had not changed at all. In fact, for a moment, standing in the meadow full of flowers, the bees in the clover, John thought that he had stepped back in time as well, five years before to their first ill-fated trip there. Teyla stood beside him as she had then, but Rodney and Ford were gone.
Ford.
He wouldn’t think about Rodney being gone the same way, never to be recovered, an MIA on his file that would never be erased.
Carson bustled up behind him just as he cloaked the jumper behind them, looking up at the pristine blue sky. “Same old same old, I see.”
“Indeed,” Teyla said, as three Genii scouts rose up from the long grass, rifles pointed at them. “It is exactly the same.”