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If he hadn’t been dead, the whole thing would never have happened.
Dead, obviously, being a relative term.
***
It wasn’t until he was outside the Military, that John realised just how well he had fitted into it. For most of his career, he had clashed with authority, played hide and seek with the rules and spent a good portion of his time questioning his choices, his judgment, his actions, until his brain felt gnawed and ragged at the edges; his dreams too often a pit of torment, which he kept tipping himself into.
But now he could see how desperately he’d needed a team to be part of; a purpose which he could truly believe had something of good in it, despite all the murky depths. He missed that place he’d been in, of having just enough authority, but not too much, not so much that the weight of absolutely everything would have rested on his shoulders.
The only feeling which hit him in exactly the way he’d expected, was the loss of flying. His injuries would improve, with time and physiotherapy, but he was unlikely to ever be fit enough to become a professional pilot again.
And the crash had been …
John swallowed down the memories and glared at his shaking hand, until it finally calmed. He looked down the list of highly recommended therapists he’d been given and thought about closing his eyes and picking one. Of making the call.
Tomorrow. Maybe.
He couldn’t concentrate on reading right now. Didn’t quite want to just stare into space. Instead, he put his laptop on and listlessly, aimlessly, let his mind drift and his mouse just wander and click.
***
“So, it’s three am, I can’t sleep and I have all these ideas running around in my head, like a herd of wild horses, constantly galloping a little way out of reach, so I can’t snag just one. I, um, don’t think that anyone I know will appreciate being woken up right now to hear them, so … I guess this will have to do. Let’s start with some thoughts on cosmic inflation … oh, which reminds me, what I really hate about bicycle pumps …”
Rodney had started the videos in his second year of university and kept them up, on and off, ever since. At first, it had only been when insomnia pushed him into overflowing with so many and contradictory ideas - not just on groundbreaking physics theories, but other matters naturally arising, such as the perfect ratio of peanut butter to bread; ghosts and why they categorically weren’t (along with some encounters he’d had which definitely, absolutely, weren’t ghost-related); his friends; his enemies; some discussion of the fact that the latter outweighed the former; some - in retrospect - maybe slightly upsetting things about his childhood; dissection of his favourite comics; quite a lot about cats.
Later on, Rodney would just bring out the camera whenever he particularly wanted to talk, just really talk: without interruption, contradiction, threats, or inducing that glazed over expression, which he was starting to understand meant that people really wanted him to shut the hell up, but were too polite to actually say that, in as many words.
Oddly, given his conviction that he was going to be famous - the Nobel prize was not a matter of if, but when - it had never crossed his mind that these might ever be watched by anyone else. He wasn’t making them for posterity, but just because he had no one in his life to whom he could just express himself that freely, about anything; anything at all.
Rodney really ought to have deleted the tapes. But, then, he didn’t expect to be in a plane crash, on the way to an important conference in Siberia, and declared dead, due to a mixture of bureaucratic incompetence and his own spell of amnesia, which was so very much like something straight out of a particularly implausible soup opera, that he was retrospectively appalled by the sheer temerity of reality.
Even worse, though, was the fact that, in the six months during which he didn’t know he was Rodney McKay, his sister had decided that her grieving process would involve making her dead brother an internet sensation.
***
John didn’t recall afterwards, the exact chain of links which had led him to ‘The Meredith Diaries’ but, once started, he had been unable not to keep clicking on the next; and the next.
It took him a while to pull back and get more of the context behind them; the tragic early death of a respected astrophysicist - John even recognised the name, from some well-known books - and his estranged sister’s feeling that the ‘real’ Meredith Rodney McKay, ought to be known.
The first video on the channel was Jeannie Miller’s introduction.
“I know that my brother will go down in history for his contributions to physics, and he would have been more than okay with that. But he never really understood the importance of also showing his humanity, his secretly caring heart, his passion, his imperfections and the stupid, endearing quirks which made him, him. He never shared who he really was with many people, including - in the last few years of his life - me, but I’m damned if I’m going to let him be remembered as just another arrogant genius.”
The videos weren’t uploaded in chronological order, so that Meredith - or rather, Rodney, as he seemed to have preferred to have been known - leapt around disconcertingly in age, from his late teens, to his mid-thirties. Without any sort of obvious structure to the time jumps, John found that the similarities between each version of the man, were even more striking than the differences. Rodney’s energy and passion always remained strong, along with his awkwardness, long-winded phraseology, astonishing ability to dig deep, and intensely, into any topic, from the most complicated, to the most trivial; and his utterly endearing tendency to be sidetracked by the subjects of food - which was clearly never far from his mind - and cats, as if he had a constant supply of mental felines, who kept nagging him for attention and verbal strokes.
“ … the one good part of being in hospital so frequently as a child, was that the food was really good. Admittedly, some people don’t enjoy meals which are bland, mushy and what, in many cases, is strongly reminiscent of the regurgitated, but I have to say that I have a real thing for it …”
“ … true that cats will wake you at strange hours, throw up in your slippers, shed fur like a blizzard and nest in your research papers, but on the other hand, when they purr, the vibrations go right down to your soul and give it a thorough massage, so …”
He was, by turns, fascinating, brilliant, pompous, arrogant, rambling, ridiculous, and genuinely funny; and then would casually drop something in which was so heartfelt, or heartbreaking, that John felt ambushed. Sometimes he even had to stop the video and leave it for a while; but he always came back.
There should have been something morbid, and a little disturbing, about watching a dead guy, who had never intended to be watched, but John somehow found himself connecting anyway. Becoming addicted.
Maybe it was because he felt a little bit dead himself.
***
Rodney’s plane had crashed in Norway and he had been very well looked after at first, except for the fact that it had been summarily determined, by somebody, somewhere, that he was one Harold Beckersby, a Sociology teacher, with absolutely no family or friends at all, as far as anyone could discover.
Nobody particularly wanted to take responsibility for a scared and cranky man, with only fragments of an identity - none of them yet very helpful - and persistent, severe headaches, which would take months to lessen. As for Rodney, he hadn’t known exactly who he was, but he was absolutely certain it wasn’t Harold Beckersby. Every last molecule of his being rejected the idea that himself and the subject of Sociology could be anything other than inimical to each other.
He had left the hospital after a free and frank exchange of opinions on the subject; exchanged the money in the wallet they had given him - which he was certain was not his own - for Kroner and got drunk in the nearest bar, on the general principle that both the immediate state of drunkenness, and the hangover after, would be an improvement over his current messed-up condition.
Fortunately, Norwegian was a language he knew well enough to get by in - he tended to pick up languages from his coworkers, if only so he could tell when they were insulting him (and note down the better ones) - and he had lucked into a bartender who was both sympathetic and not fussy about his staff being strictly legal. Rodney had worked there, tending bar and playing piano, until he had gathered back enough of himself to have a pretty good idea who he actually was.
He had surprised himself, by being kind of sad to leave.
***
“You are doing very well, John. But you must remember not to push yourself too hard. Recovery is a gradual process and it is not a failing to accept that you have limits.”
Teyla was an excellent physiotherapist and, unfortunately for John, very sharp at spotting psychological quirks, like his own tendency to castigate himself for not improving fast enough and to use the exercises as a method of self-punishment, rather than self improvement.
“I just … hate feeling useless.”
“Perhaps you should reconsider what you term ‘useful’. And also, whether you are not just insulting yourself with your assumptions.”
Teyla smiled, to take the sting out of her words.
“John, it is understandable to feel frustrated and angry. But this is not something to blame yourself for and you will only slow your recovery by doing so.”
John bit back his instinctive bitterness, about how ‘recovery’ didn’t feel like the right word, when he would never regain the full use of his leg, and nodded. He had actually been feeling slightly better recently, though he wasn’t planning to admit that, in case he also admitted the reason why.
Rodney McKay’s untethered ramblings had been a regular daily boost to his mood, providing amusement, interest, new ideas, blank disbelief and regular shots of emotion, which wore thin, but definite, cracks in his stubborn shell of depression.
John had even gone so far as to read his books, to build a rounder picture of the man and found himself engaged and challenged; and sometimes amused by the contrast of such sheer intellectual brilliance from someone who could yet be so unexpectedly naive; and also, not only have very fiercely argued views on things like comic book heroes and villains but, in one of John’s favourite videos, spent an entire hour in happy reminiscence of his favourite moments of eating jello.
The problem was that, the more that John became emotionally involved, the harder it had begun to hit him that the man was dead. He felt that he was growing a grief from seed and that, when the time came that he ran out of videos - when he would have to acknowledge that there would never be any more - then it would hit him like the death of a friend; one who had died at that very moment, after a long illness, which you had thought you were prepared for; and which took you down anyway, in a tidal wave of sorrow.
Perhaps it would be wise to stop now, before he had to face that moment.
Or perhaps … just one more.
***
“How could you do this to me?”
“Well, you were dead, Mer. I think that’s a pretty mitigating circumstance.”
Rodney still had holes in his memories, in his life. It may be that he would never get them all back, but he had finally retrieved his identity, and his life’s work, and grabbed onto them with both hands.
Unfortunately, it turned out that so had a considerable portion of the population.
Rodney had anticipated some initial legal difficulty in persuading people that he was actually himself, as well as working out new living arrangements and finances; which is why he had gone direct to his sister first, as she could not only vouch for him instantly, but would have been in charge of sorting out his effects.
What he hadn’t expected, was for the intimate details of his life - including some of the most excruciatingly embarrassing parts of it - to be widely known by anyone who happened to stop by Jeannie’s Youtube channel, plus a number who picked up on the subsequent news stories.
He even had his own Discord site, subsections in several forums and nineteen separate memes which now roamed across the internet, popping up and haunting him in a slightly different shape each time he saw them.
Rodney had always wanted to be someone of significance, a major player in science, even someone who merited a scholarly biography; but this was like walking naked in front of strangers - worse, even, as though they had been rifling through his mind and emotions at will and making judgements.
Rodney had always been proud of his sense of humour, but now he seemed to be a universal joke; and that was a very different matter.
Jeannie’s mixture of shock and relief and instinctive defensiveness appeared to be settling into something more like compassion, as she took in just how shaken and upset he was.
She sat him down on the couch, with a blanket and a coffee and spoke to him more gently than he could remember, for a long, long time.
“Mer, I’m so sorry, really. If I’d thought for a moment that you were alive, I’d never have done it. But … when I lost you I was so angry, for a while there, that we’d had that stupid argument and now we could never fix it. We’d never get to be part of each other’s lives again. I know we’ve always had our clashes, but that doesn’t mean I ever stopped caring. When I found those tapes … it was a chance to feel close to you again. And then, there were those stuffy obituaries and glowing mentions of your work, but nothing about you. I think I just wanted people to love you like I did. Like I do.”
Which was a wholly unfair speech to lay on someone who had a justifiable right to be angry; but somehow Rodney found himself hugging Jeannie instead, his memories of her still ragged and incomplete; and suddenly, desperately insufficient. It wasn’t just Jeannie who had been gifted the chance to reconnect with, and relearn, someone they loved.
But none of that changed the fact that Rodney was now famous in a way which he would have preferred remained strictly in his nightmares and that his former colleagues now knew things about him which he would never have confessed under the direst torture.
Well, okay, no, in that case, he would have confessed everything immediately - and quite a lot of it, even under just the influence of someone getting him slightly off-guard - but that wasn’t really the point.
When the reporters started appearing, he seriously considered going straight back to Norway and brushing up on his Grieg and glass-polishing; and being as thoroughly invisible as possible.
***
John had been congratulating himself on a milestone walking distance without pain (or nothing which he considered really counted) when he turned on the news and was immediately confronted with his emotional support ghost.
“ … astonishing story of the renowned physicist, turned internet sensation, who returned from the dead …”
It was like being punched with a fistful of joy. John’s legs wobbled - even the structurally sound one - and he sat down to watch with the vague concern that he must have fallen asleep at some point and not noticed that he was dreaming.
It was only afterwards that he fully took in the strength of his response and realised quite how invested he had really been in Rodney McKay. How much he had relied on those videos to pull him out of the echoing well of despair he had sometimes fallen into, where there had seemed to be no real point to anything.
Part of him thought vaguely that the videos would probably be taken down now; but, oddly, that didn’t upset him or even register strongly at all.
It was hard to process just how Rodney’s being alive made him feel; but perhaps it was something like the stirrings of Spring. A reminder that endings were not always just endings and that maybe he had a future too, even if it wasn’t what he had intended it to be.
He picked up his abandoned list of therapists, circled a few names; and, finally, made a call.
***
After the initial mortification and siege by the press, things mostly improved. Rodney had fully intended to get Jeannie to take all of the videos down, but she had forwarded him some messages first - comments on the videos and more personal, private exchanges - from people who had been affected by them.
Apparently he wasn’t entirely a joke after all.
“It’s up to you, Mer. I understand if you just want to put this behind you. But, it’s out there now, you can’t undo that completely. And maybe you’ll find that people don’t judge you as harshly as you think.”
Actually, Rodney had a pretty good idea by now of the range of opinions on him and some of them were exactly as harsh as he’d thought; but there was a majority sense of positivity and general liking towards him, which he was completely unused to.
And, instead of destroying his employment opportunities, it seemed to have widened them. Rodney had been offered several prestigious positions already, including a presenting job for a major science series, which he would also have a chance to be heavily involved in shaping and researching and which still would give him enough time (and money) to pursue his own theories.
It was hard to keep a handle on what he was being offered on merit and what was solely related to his current fame, and it was all a lot to deal with, while he was still feeling full of gaps and missing spaces; unsure how much of himself he would have to build anew.
He flew back to the States to discuss the presenter role, still unsure of whether he really wanted it, or was fully prepared to be that visible and open to so many strangers again - only deliberately this time. But he was too viscerally aware of pointing, whispering and staring, for the whole flight, to come to any reasoned conclusions. Even snacking failed to appeal; in the end, having an hour or so free, he decided to take a brisk walk down the most deserted streets he could find, until that all too familiar sense of emotional nakedness went away.
It was only at the point when he was considering the fact that ‘deserted’ was an excellent setting for the joys of being robbed and/or murdered, that footsteps came up behind him; which was why he reacted with an unbecoming yelp.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to …”
The voice trailed off and Rodney found himself being stared at intensely by a stranger; which was a sensation he was becoming increasingly familiar with, if not actually comfortable about.
At least this one wasn’t immediately quoting back lines he’d forgotten he’d even said, like the one about getting high and eating an entire loaf of white bread, or the parts of his childhood which, as he had been made incredibly aware, should not have come as standard.
“You’re Rodney McKay.”
“Well, thank you for not calling me Meredith, at least. No more keeping that name under wraps any more.”
The man shrugged, somehow making it seem like a skill.
“You’re definitely more of a Rodney.” He smiled - hazel eyes lighting up and bathing Rodney in warmth for a moment - then frowned, which was very much the opposite of an improvement. “Sorry, I’m sure you get people bothering you all the time. I’ll leave you alone.”
He turned away, leaning into his cane, then visibly struggled with himself, before turning back.
“I… look, I know that having your private videos out there was probably the last thing you wanted … actually, I think it might just be my worst nightmare and, trust me, I’ve had some pretty crappy ones … but, for what it’s worth, you got me through a really bad time in my life. So, thanks.”
That warmth came back and Rodney thought he could stand to bask in it a little longer. And he would need to be heading back this way soon, anyway, if he didn’t want to miss the interview.
They walked in silence together for a moment, the other man all emotional-declarationed out. Until he glanced over, with a glint of of mischief in his eye.
“But you know that your views on Back to the Future are objectively wrong, right?”
“Are you kidding me? If you’re planning to defend the sorry excuse for time travel logic in that film …”
Rodney had no time to think about the interview before he arrived, because his entire time was taken up with arguments about alternate timelines and flux capacitors; but he found that it had nicely cleared his head and got rid of most of his nerves.
It had been odd, talking to a stranger who knew parts of him better than Rodney knew himself.
“It’s not quite like that, though. I mean, I got to know mostly three a.m. Rodney, at various points in your life. You’re not quite the same you now, as you were then, and, anyway, everyone’s different in the chill, vulnerable hours of the early morning, compared to who they are when rested and after a nice, filling breakfast. Nobody out there has all the pieces of you, Rodney, whatever they might think.”
“Not even me.”
John had grinned at him.
“You have who you are now. Personally, I kind of like him.”
“I … huh. Well. You also are … nice.”
Which act of stunning verbal smoothness, had somehow got him a phone number and a concrete date for coffee after the interview, to which he was looking forward with a depth of anticipation which was surprising, on such short acquaintance.
John Sheppard was attractive, certainly, with his just-tousled hair and something about the jawline and the mixture of mischief in his smile, with something more complicated underneath. But it was more than that; an ease of talking with him, which felt like they had skipped all the awkward introductions and misunderstandings and skipped straight on to ‘friends’.
It was far too soon to build anything too much on this possible new brick in his life. But he kind of hoped that he’d get a chance to.
***
Epilogue
“You’re not uploading more of your terrible Johnny Cash covers are you?”
“I’ll have you know that I have literally tens of followers who beg me for more of those covers. My Ring of Fire has been described as ‘indescribable’.”
John had initially started his Youtube channel as a way of showing solidarity with Rodney, but he had found that talking about planes had been more therapeutic than he’d expected, with occasional bits of unexpected emotion slipping through all the technical stuff. It was helping to connect with people who loved flying as much as he did, especially those who had also been forced to give it up.
The guitar sessions, he mostly added to be contrary and to make Rodney roll his eyes; though John did enjoy them too, even if they were somewhat rough and ready.
He had hopes, someday, of persuading Rodney to do a duet with him.
Though Rodney had different ideas.
“I think there’s quite enough of me on film already.”
John slipped an arm around him, aware that he was quite capable of being smug about the positive reception of his new series and still haunted by the extant parts of himself he had never meant anyone else to see.
“I like that I get to keep some bits just to myself.”
He pulled Rodney in for a kiss, trying to tell him without words, just how grateful he was that Rodney was here and in his life. That he loved every part of him, private and public; past and present; and whatever future Rodney he would be lucky enough to get.
“Okay, that camera better be off, because this is definitely not going on Youtube.”
“I don’t know, I think you’d see an impressive surge in your ratings.”
But John carefully double-checked that it really was off - and pointed firmly away - while he and Rodney got a little more comfortable; a little less clothed; and a whole lot less family friendly.