Unidentified, Part 3a
Jul. 9th, 2007 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiercelydreamedTitle: Unidentified
Details: PG-13, ~30,000 words, McKay/Sheppard. An SGA AU inspired by the documentary Unknown White Male.
Summary: Fourteen years, eight months, and seven days after John and Rodney meet, the clock starts all over again.
Notes: Very vague spoilers through season 3. See the index post for full headers and thank-yous.
[Go to previous part] [Index post]
3.
John spends the first half of Saturday underneath his car: changing the oil and the filters, checking the seals, swapping out the brake pads. He likes the straightforward physicality of the upkeep, the hard concrete under his back, how his hands pay attention. It doesn't kill his restlessness, though. He's left his phone upstairs all morning, and his thoughts keep circling back to it, to his conversation with Teyla, sniffing around the edges without taking anything head on.
By the early afternoon he's run out of patience with himself, so he wipes the grease off his hands and drives over to Rodney's. He doesn't call first, and maybe he should but no, fuck that, he never does. They're friends, that's the way it's been for nearly half their lives, and John can keep this simple while Rodney gets his bearings. He owes him more than that.
He does pause to hit the buzzer after he's already got the front door open, because there's normal and there's recognizing that someone recovering from amnesia might not want other people barging in while they're in the shower. The line clicks open. "Hello?"
"Hey -- I'm on my way up," John says. There's a pause, and he leans in closer to the speaker, one foot keeping the door propped. "That okay?"
"Yes?" Rodney's voice is a little hard to read through the static; the sound quality on this thing is perennially shitty. "Yeah, come on up."
Elevator today, for the twenty seconds of stillness it enforces. Keep things simple, he thinks as he watches his smudged reflection in the brushed steel of the doors. All he needs to do is saunter in there, smile, crack jokes if it's awkward until it isn't anymore. Taking a deep breath, he twitches his shoulders loose again, shifts his feet a little wider apart. He's been doing normal since childhood; he can handle this.
Halfway down the hall, he's hit with the recollection of Rodney standing next to him on the balcony the other night, the way things had suddenly swung around them, like the moment was a compass losing magnetic north. Fuck, he thinks, but he keeps going, it's cool, he's got this. As he walks the last few yards he can hear Rodney's footsteps on the other side of the wall, out of sync but catching up.
The knob turns under his hand, and when the door pulls away from him, Rodney's right there on the other side. "Hi," he says. Face to face, he sounds okay, but he's gripping the door kind of tightly.
John raises an eyebrow. "Hi; what's up?" It comes out a bit to the left of the hey, buddy tone he'd intended, veering toward being an actual question.
Scrubbing a hand over his mouth, Rodney paces over to the island. John steps inside and pulls the door shut behind him. "It's, ah, good to see you," Rodney says, his fingers tapping over the edges of the counter. "How was your week?"
"Great," John says, crossing the room after him, "well, not work, but I went on a hike with Teyla yesterday. You?"
"Um. I had dinner with Laura and Carson last night, that was nice," Rodney answers, which settles it: something is wrong here, because Rodney has never used the word nice before or after amnesia when his brain isn't completely disconnected from his mouth. "Ronon said he'll take me to practice driving, which would be good, only I hope he means a car and not his motorcycle ..."
Propping a hip against the island, John tries to place the strained look on Rodney's face, the way his eyes are darting over the kitchen -- then he does, and it kicks the legs out from under him, because this is what Rodney looked like when John picked him up from the hospital.
"Rodney," he says, but Rodney keeps talking ("--to the end of Vice City which, hello, is amazingly dumb, why they think anyone would bother--"), the words pressured like he's afraid of what'll happen if he runs out of them. Finally, John reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, and he goes quiet. "Hey. What's going on?"
For a moment Rodney just stands there with his mouth pulled tight, fingers still drumming arrhythmically, and then he sighs. His muscles loosen, and he spreads his hands in frustration. "I'm sorry, this is totally ridiculous," he mutters. "I just, I really thought I was starting to get the hang of everything, and then right before you showed up I got this ... weird letter, and now that I'm saying this out loud it sounds even more idiotic, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it and that sort of -- shook me up."
"It doesn't sound idiotic," John says immediately, because his own head's going from zero to paranoid: weird how, like a threat? Maybe a hint about what the hell happened-- "Can I see it?"
Nodding, Rodney walks over to the coffee table and hands John a folded sheet of white paper. The writing on it is in thick teal ink, like it was done with a marker from a kid's art set.
Hey asshole,
It's been over a month since I've heard from you -- every time I call
your cell, it goes straight to voicemail and you haven't answered any of
my emails. What the hell? If you miss Madison's birthday, I'm going to
tell her you went to Siberia again, and then next time you visit you'll get
to explain why you broke the rule and don't have a polar bear for her this
time, either.
I swear to God, Mer, if you're fine and just screening me so you can re-
write modern physics in peace, I will unload a guilt trip on you the likes of
which is culturally inappropriate for our shared Canadianism.
Yes, we're fine, thanks so much for asking, although now that mosquito
season is starting again Kaleb and I are thinking of investing our whole
retirement fund in futures of OFF!.
-J
P.S. I'm serious. Call me.
"Oh, fuck." John can't remember sitting down on the couch, but when he looks up, Rodney's standing over him. "God, Rodney. I'm so sorry."
Rodney sinks down onto the edge of the coffee table, his face pale. "What is it?" he asks hoarsely. "Is it bad? Do you--"
"No, no," John cuts him off, staring at the paper. Jesus, two weeks now and not once did he even think -- and no one else did either, but why would they, when John had found out earlier and the first thing any sane, normal, human being would do is call--
"It's Jeannie," he says, and feels the press of guilt expanding against the walls of his stomach when Rodney frowns. "It's from your sister."
Three days later, Rodney leaves on an afternoon flight to Ontario, the first half of an open-ended ticket. Carson clears him for the trip (provided he sees a neurologist up there for continued testing), Laura gives him a book for the plane ride, Ronon loans a climbing documentary, and Teyla packs him a lunch and a thermos of mint iced tea.
John drives him to the airport.
"You sure you're up for this?" he asks. They're in the transitional no-man’s-land between ticketing and security screening, people streaming past them in all directions, juggling luggage and cell phones. Commercial airports always remind John of the industrial farms he'd pass on the way to high school football games, their huge and deliberate mechanisms for shunting living things from one place to another. "If I had my own plane, I'd take you myself."
"I'm good," Rodney says, waving the offer off. "Really. I mean--" the corner of his mouth quirks upward "--it's not like it's going to take much effort on my part to get there, right? Other than several hours of sitting, which I think I've more or less mastered."
John smirks, but without any bite in it. "I wasn't talking about the flight, jackass."
Rodney grins off to the side. "Yeah, I figured. I'll admit to being mildly terrified -- okay, upgrade that to moderately -- but ..." He shrugs, hands spread. "I need to do this, you know? I need to get used to doing this. So unless you were lying when you said she didn't secretly hate me ..."
His sentence trails off into a last-second uptick. "I think you're relatively safe from fratricide," John drawls, and then he adds, more sincerely, "It'll be fine, okay? You'll be fine."
"Thanks," Rodney says. He turns toward the terminal, staring at the junction where the huge space splits off into the different arteries, whittling the crowd down. "So, um." He points back over his shoulder while his other hand fiddles with the strap of his laptop bag, rocking on his heels a little. John's seen him do this so many times, he could probably write the mathematical model for it: physicist experiencing multiple vectors, all fidget, no progress in any direction. The familiarity radiates warmly through his chest. Fuck it, he thinks, and tugs Rodney into a hug.
They don't really do this much, and it's always kind of weird. John realizes that Rodney doesn't have any memories of other times to compare this to, but it's too late so he just goes with it. He figures the better part of valor here is willingness to botch it, one more fuck-up to add to the list. After the first awkward seconds, Rodney thaws out of his impression of a human popsicle stick; his arms unfold around John's back, and he pulls in a slow breath, body curving into John's as he exhales. It's as good as they've ever managed, and it takes John by surprise -- the two of them standing in this public space, with the sounds of the crowd reverberating around them, and not being completely incompetent at this. "Give me a call sometime, okay?" he says, and it comes out scratchy. "In a few days or something; let me know how it's going."
He feels Rodney's answering nod against his shoulder and cheek. "Okay," Rodney whispers. His hands fist down into the back of John's shirt, quickly enough that the hug ends before John fully registers it. Pulling back to a more normal distance, Rodney rubs his hands briefly over each other, then repositions the strap of his bag over his shoulder and pulls out the handle of his suitcase. Eyes on John's, he takes one backward step, then turns and heads off toward the security line.
John walks out the big glass doors with the phantom heat of Rodney's hands lingering on his shoulder blades, like the skin under his shirt is still glowing faintly red.
That night, the first email shows up in his inbox.
From: e.i.pi.1.0@gmail.com
To: kittinger.iii@gmail.com
Subject: [none]
Things I have learned so far today:
1) Airplane meals are strangely appetizing.
2) Apparently, Canadian mosquitoes feel similarly about every inch of my exposed skin.
3) My little sister is frighteningly smart, as demonstrated by the fact that it took her fifteen minutes to figure out my email password for me in between wandering down the hall to help Madison with her bath.
It goes on for about a page and a half, stringing together observations and incidents with no real regard for chronological order, like every email Rodney's ever sent him when one or the other of them was somewhere else. John reads it twice before he notices the short sentence tacked on at the very end like an afterthought: 4) I think I like it here.
What he sends back is:
From: kittinger.iii@gmail.com
To: e.i.pi.1.0@gmail.com
Subject: Re 2.
R- Check the medicine cabinet. Jeannie stockpiles calamine for WWIII. -Sheppard.
And this is how the next week goes.
Rodney’s been gone for close to two weeks when John finally picks up the phone and calls Canada. "Miller residence."
"Hey, Jeannie," he says, smiling. She always answers the phone the same way: mildly, and like she's ready to remove an ear should you be wasting her time. "How are the mosquitoes?"
She snorts. "Carrying West Nile, or so the news claims, but what's a summer without the thrill of potential encephalitis? How about L.A. -- still full of waiter-slash-hookers running on amphetamines and conspicuous consumption?"
"Don't forget Mystic Tan," John deadpans as he wanders over the window. He's been around Jeannie a handful of times over the years and gone with Rodney to visit her once or twice. She's a lot like her brother, only with basic tact and much more social perceptiveness. He's always secretly thought that if things had been different, he could have ended up marrying a girl like her. It still would have been a disaster, but potentially an enjoyable one. "Is Rodney around?"
"My daughter hijacked him about forty-five minutes ago for a suburban front-lawn safari. I'm half-expecting her to knock him into the Terwilligers' pond and come running back to the house like Lassie -- which is what happened last month with Kaleb's nephew," she sighs. "You want me to stick my head out and see if they're in shouting distance?"
John grins. "Nah, I wouldn't want to interrupt the adventure. You can tell Timmy I called after you've fished him out of the well." This is the time to say hey, good talking to you and get off the phone, but somehow that doesn't happen. He watches as a flock of seagulls dive and squabble in the parking lot of the Ethiopian grocery across the street, his hand pressed against the pane of glass.
"John?" Jeannie says after several long seconds. "You okay?"
"Yeah." He turns away and leans against the sill. "Yeah, I'm okay. You?"
This time the pause is hers. "I don't know how to answer that question," she replies slowly. Over the phone line, he can hear the faint sound of her footsteps, then a quiet rise in traffic and wind, like she's sat down by a screen door or an open window. "We've spent the last few days going through old stuff -- boxes he left when he went to university, family photos, some old letters. He asked to. It's been ... intense."
It's like prodding a sore tooth, but he can't stop himself. "Does he--?"
"Remember anything? No." She lets out a short puff of air, halfway to a laugh at best. "He's been my older brother my whole life, and the earliest memory he has of me is from a couple Tuesdays ago."
Tipping his head back against the window, John rubs his eyes. "I know how you feel."
"Do you?" she asks cryptically. He winces, because way to go, jackass, she's his goddamn sister. Before he can figure out how to back away from the error, she says, "Do you know what he asked me yesterday?" She waits for a beat. "If I thought he could learn to play piano again."
He can't think of anything to say to it, so he doesn't. The glass behind him is hot in the afternoon sun, and he can hear the gulls laughing as they wheel.
"There are all these really important things, family things, that he doesn't know anymore," she says, her voice matter-of-fact. It's another thing she and Rodney share: a way of describing painful things like they're the laws of conservation, something only an idiot would deny or try to change. "Like that he made me cry at my first ballet recital because he yelled at me for going too slow, or that he wouldn't come to my wedding because of the fight we had when I quit school, but he snuck into the reception to threaten Kaleb with chemical castration if he broke my heart. It should kill me that he doesn't remember, and it's hard, but I was ready for it. Did I hope that flying over the Great Lakes might make him magically better?" She laughs, but with less derision than John would've expected. "Okay, stupidly, yes -- but I knew it was going to be like this."
The outdoor sounds over the phone line get clearer, as though she's propped her head right up against the window or door. "The thing that gets me is, I always thought Mer was innately cynical, you know? Even when we were kids, I could tell life kept disappointing him. It's the downside of having that much vision, I guess -- the real thing will always let you down." She makes a humming sound, as though surprised at how the words sound out loud. "But talking to him now ... it's like no one ever gave him the memo that everything except science was going to fall through for him. No one told him he was destined to be unhappy. God," and there's anger in her voice now, coming through clearly over other things he can't untangle, "if he had any idea how much he's lost -- but then I catch myself looking at him, and there's this tiny part of me that wonders ..."
She trails off, and John finds his free hand is gripping the window sill, instinctively braced for the end of her sentence. By some small mercy, she leaves it, instead asking, "You still there?"
He cracks his neck and switches the phone to the other shoulder. "Yeah. I'm here."
They're both quiet for a minute. When she speaks again, her tone is different, softer. "You know one of the things that hasn't changed, John?" she asks. "He still talks about you as much as he always did."
Before John can respond, a door bangs open on her end and there are loud feet and voices, a small child chattering excitedly and Jeannie calling, "Hey Mer, I've got John on the phone!" He hears the thump and fumble as she crosses the room and the phone changes hands, and then Rodney's on the line, breathless and animated as he says, "I just got an hour long entomology lesson from someone in a princess costume -- seriously, there were Latin names and everything. That was either the most amazing or the most surreal experience I've had -- well, that I can remember, anyway -- only I think we should be worried that my niece is going to hit puberty and use cockroaches to take over the world."
John stays on the line, grinning and offering the occasional dry remark, but his thoughts keep bouncing like a tennis ball between this conversation and the one before it. He’s trying not to picture Rodney at eight, at eleven, and already disappointed; he’s trying to remember the way Rodney sounded when he talked about physics, without remembering how he never sounded that way when he talked about anything else.
June takes a while to end, but the weeks add up surprisingly quickly and it’s July before John really expects it. The last month seems condensed when he looks back on it, like after it passed him it moved up to relativistic speeds. He and Rodney once had a drunken discussion about this phenomenon, how time periods were starting to seem shorter once they were over, and whether this was related to the accelerating expansion of the universe or just a sign of a more personal form of entropy.
Weir sends him on a couple of longer charters -- a week shuttling around the Mediterranean, ten days in Brazil where some producer pays him an insane bonus to stay local and then never calls him in. It’s boring but not that bad; he spends a lot of it surfing. Being back in L.A. is actually harder. He either rattles around his apartment or roams the city restlessly, at loose ends either way. There's nothing to do, or at least no one to do it with. Summer is peak season for Lost World, and Teyla's running back-to-back trips across three continents. Ronon's preparing for an MMA tournament in Tokyo. Carson's overseeing the end of an eighteen-month research trial, and Laura's whole division is hip-deep in paperwork in the wake of a bomb scare at Cleveland High.
John's not used to having trouble keeping his own company, but time alone means time to think, and these days his thoughts keep heading places he really doesn't want to go. If he had the PS2 it might be easier to fill the hours, but it's still at Rodney's and he can't bring himself to go get it. He doesn't want to see the condo vacant, all of the things it contains unmoved for a month, losing meaning. Lately, if he lets his mind wander, he keeps running up hard against the image of helping Rodney pack the place up, filling trash bags and labeling boxes -- or worse, standing there alone watching movers load it all onto a truck bound for Canada.
They're emailing each other more or less daily, and talking on the phone once a week or so. It's fine, not awkward in any way, but each interaction leaves John feeling like he's standing on a beach with the outbound tide stealing the sand from under his feet. Jeannie's started teaching Rodney physics, working up through the basic building blocks. It's fascinating, he writes to John, the way the different theories fit together. We're not really getting into specifics yet, but I think I'm starting to understand why I spent the last twenty years on this. It's hard to resist the idea that you can build the universe if you get the math right. It should be good to hear him talk about it, and it is, but it's also unfair as fuck, and every time it drags John back to the longer view.
In the timeline of his memory, Rodney has now spent longer in Ontario than L.A. Jeannie, his closest relative, is there. She also happens to have a better grasp of the bleeding edge of theoretical physics -- Rodney’s physics -- than three-quarters of the people actively publishing it. Also there are the archived possessions of the first half of his life, including ten years of sheet music and the family piano, which Jeannie says he spends more time at every day. Rodney doesn't write about the music much, but when he does there's a sense of awe in the sentences, like the scales and child's exercises are the first fragmentary translations of a Rosetta Stone.
Compared to that, what does Los Angeles have to offer him? A thousand square feet of things he can't remember buying. A prestigious job he's no longer qualified to fill. Five people he barely knows, and nine million he doesn't.
On the fourth of July, John takes Mulholland Drive up into the hills to watch the fireworks from above. Tiny domed bursts rise and fall across the city, a festive sketch of combat zone -- sound without fury, light without smoke, crayon colors instead of ocher and carbon black. Another year gone by, and he sits on the hood of his car and can't pretend any more that the next one won't be different. If there's one thing John's learned, it's not to waste time trying to recover something that's come apart. The moment it slips out of your fingers, it's already accelerating away.
You can't stop entropy.
He drives back down sometime after midnight, acceptance heavy in his chest. Two days later, Rodney calls him. "Hey, if you're around on Sunday, could you pick me up from the airport? I'm coming home."
Rodney comes off his flight with big dark circles under his eyes, tired and scattered enough that John just drops him back at the condo to order dinner and get some sleep. He's got an appointment with Carson the next morning -- "not more tests, thank God," Rodney groans from the passenger seat, but to talk.
When John picks him up for it, he looks rested but also nervous, and by the end of the drive to Cedars-Sinai, John is too. In the elevator, he keeps his hands shoved in his pockets while Rodney fidgets. It's been two months now with no answers, and it's strange to imagine that in half an hour, they might have them.
As it turns out, that won't be an issue. "You're kidding me," John says.
"They ruled out most of the major physical causes before Rodney left Cottage Hospital," Carson says, leaning back against his desk. "Since our initial tests didn't find anything they'd missed -- tiny lesions, clots, newly-formed tumors, those sorts of things," he fills in, wincing apologetically when Rodney's eyebrows shoot upward, "we decided to track your brain's electrical activity. Our hope was that by collecting data over time, we might find a pattern that would point us to the cause of your memory loss."
"And?" Rodney spreads his hands in exasperation.
"We've detected subtle changes, but nothing that indicates an initial point of damage," Carson replies. "It could your brain finding its way back to your memories, or you may simply be building new neural pathways in reaction to new experiences, the way we all do. We can continue regular testing, but there's no guarantee that we'd learn anything of value to your recovery. In my professional opinion, you need to consider whether the time and the expense is worth it to you."
"Well, that's just great," Rodney snaps, and then grimaces, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Sorry, but -- seriously, this is the best medical science has to offer?"
Glancing back and forth between the two of them, Carson sighs. "There's one possibility we haven't discussed yet."
John straightens, not liking the reluctant undertone in Carson's voice. After a couple seconds pass, Rodney looks up and demands, "Well?"
"Of the different types of memory loss, retrograde amnesia is one of the rarer ones," Carson says, "and the kind you have -- complete retrograde amnesia with no other impairments -- is among the rarest. Without a medical explanation, we have to consider that the memory loss may have a psychological basis -- dissociative amnesia, for example, or a fugue state."
Rodney laughs harshly. "So -- what, I just spontaneously went crazy? Fantastic."
"Not crazy," Carson corrects gently, "and both conditions can be brought on by trauma or extreme stress. I didn't bring it up earlier because your symptoms aren't quite right; you've lost knowledge about the world, not just personal memories. But you'd need to see a psychiatrist to really look into the possibility -- it's not my field."
"If that's what it is," John asks, "will he get his memory back?"
Carson nods. "He could. People suffering from psychogenic memory loss usually recover at least partially, but the conditions don't typically last this long. I don't know what the time factor means here."
John sets his jaw. "Is talking to a shrink going to help?" he asks, ignoring the disbelieving look Rodney shoots him.
Carson's hands open and close around the edge of the desk, then he admits, "I honestly don't know."
"Jesus." Rodney scrubs both hands through his hair. "So what am I supposed to do?"
John looks back to Carson, who's studying Rodney's face. "At this point?" he says, and there's an unexpected weight to the words that reminds John that Carson has known Rodney for half their lives, too. "I think that's up to you."
They spend the first fifteen minutes of the drive in silence, until Rodney says, with no preamble, "I spent Saturday night in the emergency room."
John doesn't run the car onto the shoulder this time, but it's a near thing. "Jesus Christ," he hisses, frantically dodging SUVs as he tries to remember what the next off-ramp is, "you bring this up now? We're going back, you're going to tell Carson--"
"Oh, for God's sake," Rodney groans. "It wasn't that, would you -- no, keep driving, I'll explain, just quit playing Burnout on the freeway already!"
John settles into the middle lane, teeth gritted. "What the fuck, McKay."
Loosening his grip on the sides of his seat, Rodney lets his breath out with relief. "I'd really prefer to keep it to one near death experience a week or less -- yes, yes, explaining. You: eyes on the road," he orders, flapping at the windshield until John turns his head forward again. "Jeannie and Kaleb took me out to this great restaurant, or so they told me. We didn't really get past the menu reading portion of the evening because it turns out they serve their water with lime."
John's hands clench on the wheel and gearshift before he forces them to ease off. "Oh, god damn it all to hell."
Rodney snorts. "It was quite the farce -- I can't breathe, Kaleb's shouting for an ambulance, and Jeannie's shouting at the waiter who, in his panic, is trying to give me the Heimlich maneuver." Poking experimentally at his side, he winces. "Moron nearly cracked one of my ribs. The hero of the hour ended up being the eleven-year-old girl who ran across the restaurant to stab me in the thigh with her EpiPen."
His laughter is low, more disgusted than amused. He leans back and crosses his arms dismissively in front of his chest. "The rest was fairly anticlimactic -- ambulance ride followed by some really big needles, then they sent me home. I have to tell you," he adds, "I don't know if you've ever had epinephrine administered to you, but I'm convinced the experience is only preferable to anaphylaxis because it doesn't actually end in death."
John was there when someone knocked a glass of lemonade over on Rodney at Caltech. Seeing it once was enough. He still remembers the shiny red mottling that had sprung up over Rodney's skin, almost too rapidly to believe, and how his swollen fingers had fumbled with the cap on the EpiPen. They'd walked to the Health Center like the losing team in a three-legged race, John keeping up a steady flow of mockery as he listened to the faint, terrifying wheeze from Rodney's chest.
And that was just from skin contact. Christ. "I can't believe -- fuck." He smacks on hand against the dash. "How did that even happen? Didn't you check?"
"It was water," Rodney grumbles defensively. "I know you told me to check the ingredients in everything, but when someone puts a glass of water in front of me and all I see in it is ice, I assume that the ingredients are: water, and frozen water. It's not like I recognized the taste, though believe me, I don't think I'll forget it anytime soon."
"And Jeannie didn't stop you?" John demands.
Rodney rolls his eyes. "When was the last time she needed to stop me? I can't imagine that my deadly allergy to citrus really slipped my mind that often."
John takes a deep breath as he merges back into the diamond lane. "Why didn't you tell me yesterday?" he asks, trying for a calmer tone.
Rodney shrugs, fingers flexing upward while his thumbs stay tucked in the crook of his armpits. "What were you going to do about it? Besides change lanes like a crazy person."
"Fine," John bites off. "Why are you telling me now?"
"Because--!" Rodney snaps, turning towards John. He goes silent for a few seconds, then slumps slowly back against the seat. "Because I can't keep doing this," he says, quietly. He props his arm along the door and taps his fingers on the glass of the window. "I can't keep fumbling around and, and waiting for someone else to explain everything. I mean, you told me about this, but ... that wasn't the same as knowing it." He breathes out shakily, a remnant of laughter as pale as his face. "Not even remotely."
From the corner of his eye, John watches Rodney flatten his hand against the window; after half a mile, it curls back in on itself and drops down into his lap. "I can't keep waiting for things to happen to me. I either need to remember -- soon, now -- or I need to start over." Tipping his head sideways against the door frame, he murmurs, "It's getting too hard not to know."
They're quiet for the rest of the drive back to the condo; there just isn't much to say.
[Continue reading part 3 ...]
Details: PG-13, ~30,000 words, McKay/Sheppard. An SGA AU inspired by the documentary Unknown White Male.
Summary: Fourteen years, eight months, and seven days after John and Rodney meet, the clock starts all over again.
Notes: Very vague spoilers through season 3. See the index post for full headers and thank-yous.
[Go to previous part] [Index post]
3.
John spends the first half of Saturday underneath his car: changing the oil and the filters, checking the seals, swapping out the brake pads. He likes the straightforward physicality of the upkeep, the hard concrete under his back, how his hands pay attention. It doesn't kill his restlessness, though. He's left his phone upstairs all morning, and his thoughts keep circling back to it, to his conversation with Teyla, sniffing around the edges without taking anything head on.
By the early afternoon he's run out of patience with himself, so he wipes the grease off his hands and drives over to Rodney's. He doesn't call first, and maybe he should but no, fuck that, he never does. They're friends, that's the way it's been for nearly half their lives, and John can keep this simple while Rodney gets his bearings. He owes him more than that.
He does pause to hit the buzzer after he's already got the front door open, because there's normal and there's recognizing that someone recovering from amnesia might not want other people barging in while they're in the shower. The line clicks open. "Hello?"
"Hey -- I'm on my way up," John says. There's a pause, and he leans in closer to the speaker, one foot keeping the door propped. "That okay?"
"Yes?" Rodney's voice is a little hard to read through the static; the sound quality on this thing is perennially shitty. "Yeah, come on up."
Elevator today, for the twenty seconds of stillness it enforces. Keep things simple, he thinks as he watches his smudged reflection in the brushed steel of the doors. All he needs to do is saunter in there, smile, crack jokes if it's awkward until it isn't anymore. Taking a deep breath, he twitches his shoulders loose again, shifts his feet a little wider apart. He's been doing normal since childhood; he can handle this.
Halfway down the hall, he's hit with the recollection of Rodney standing next to him on the balcony the other night, the way things had suddenly swung around them, like the moment was a compass losing magnetic north. Fuck, he thinks, but he keeps going, it's cool, he's got this. As he walks the last few yards he can hear Rodney's footsteps on the other side of the wall, out of sync but catching up.
The knob turns under his hand, and when the door pulls away from him, Rodney's right there on the other side. "Hi," he says. Face to face, he sounds okay, but he's gripping the door kind of tightly.
John raises an eyebrow. "Hi; what's up?" It comes out a bit to the left of the hey, buddy tone he'd intended, veering toward being an actual question.
Scrubbing a hand over his mouth, Rodney paces over to the island. John steps inside and pulls the door shut behind him. "It's, ah, good to see you," Rodney says, his fingers tapping over the edges of the counter. "How was your week?"
"Great," John says, crossing the room after him, "well, not work, but I went on a hike with Teyla yesterday. You?"
"Um. I had dinner with Laura and Carson last night, that was nice," Rodney answers, which settles it: something is wrong here, because Rodney has never used the word nice before or after amnesia when his brain isn't completely disconnected from his mouth. "Ronon said he'll take me to practice driving, which would be good, only I hope he means a car and not his motorcycle ..."
Propping a hip against the island, John tries to place the strained look on Rodney's face, the way his eyes are darting over the kitchen -- then he does, and it kicks the legs out from under him, because this is what Rodney looked like when John picked him up from the hospital.
"Rodney," he says, but Rodney keeps talking ("--to the end of Vice City which, hello, is amazingly dumb, why they think anyone would bother--"), the words pressured like he's afraid of what'll happen if he runs out of them. Finally, John reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, and he goes quiet. "Hey. What's going on?"
For a moment Rodney just stands there with his mouth pulled tight, fingers still drumming arrhythmically, and then he sighs. His muscles loosen, and he spreads his hands in frustration. "I'm sorry, this is totally ridiculous," he mutters. "I just, I really thought I was starting to get the hang of everything, and then right before you showed up I got this ... weird letter, and now that I'm saying this out loud it sounds even more idiotic, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it and that sort of -- shook me up."
"It doesn't sound idiotic," John says immediately, because his own head's going from zero to paranoid: weird how, like a threat? Maybe a hint about what the hell happened-- "Can I see it?"
Nodding, Rodney walks over to the coffee table and hands John a folded sheet of white paper. The writing on it is in thick teal ink, like it was done with a marker from a kid's art set.
Hey asshole,
It's been over a month since I've heard from you -- every time I call
your cell, it goes straight to voicemail and you haven't answered any of
my emails. What the hell? If you miss Madison's birthday, I'm going to
tell her you went to Siberia again, and then next time you visit you'll get
to explain why you broke the rule and don't have a polar bear for her this
time, either.
I swear to God, Mer, if you're fine and just screening me so you can re-
write modern physics in peace, I will unload a guilt trip on you the likes of
which is culturally inappropriate for our shared Canadianism.
Yes, we're fine, thanks so much for asking, although now that mosquito
season is starting again Kaleb and I are thinking of investing our whole
retirement fund in futures of OFF!.
-J
P.S. I'm serious. Call me.
"Oh, fuck." John can't remember sitting down on the couch, but when he looks up, Rodney's standing over him. "God, Rodney. I'm so sorry."
Rodney sinks down onto the edge of the coffee table, his face pale. "What is it?" he asks hoarsely. "Is it bad? Do you--"
"No, no," John cuts him off, staring at the paper. Jesus, two weeks now and not once did he even think -- and no one else did either, but why would they, when John had found out earlier and the first thing any sane, normal, human being would do is call--
"It's Jeannie," he says, and feels the press of guilt expanding against the walls of his stomach when Rodney frowns. "It's from your sister."
Three days later, Rodney leaves on an afternoon flight to Ontario, the first half of an open-ended ticket. Carson clears him for the trip (provided he sees a neurologist up there for continued testing), Laura gives him a book for the plane ride, Ronon loans a climbing documentary, and Teyla packs him a lunch and a thermos of mint iced tea.
John drives him to the airport.
"You sure you're up for this?" he asks. They're in the transitional no-man’s-land between ticketing and security screening, people streaming past them in all directions, juggling luggage and cell phones. Commercial airports always remind John of the industrial farms he'd pass on the way to high school football games, their huge and deliberate mechanisms for shunting living things from one place to another. "If I had my own plane, I'd take you myself."
"I'm good," Rodney says, waving the offer off. "Really. I mean--" the corner of his mouth quirks upward "--it's not like it's going to take much effort on my part to get there, right? Other than several hours of sitting, which I think I've more or less mastered."
John smirks, but without any bite in it. "I wasn't talking about the flight, jackass."
Rodney grins off to the side. "Yeah, I figured. I'll admit to being mildly terrified -- okay, upgrade that to moderately -- but ..." He shrugs, hands spread. "I need to do this, you know? I need to get used to doing this. So unless you were lying when you said she didn't secretly hate me ..."
His sentence trails off into a last-second uptick. "I think you're relatively safe from fratricide," John drawls, and then he adds, more sincerely, "It'll be fine, okay? You'll be fine."
"Thanks," Rodney says. He turns toward the terminal, staring at the junction where the huge space splits off into the different arteries, whittling the crowd down. "So, um." He points back over his shoulder while his other hand fiddles with the strap of his laptop bag, rocking on his heels a little. John's seen him do this so many times, he could probably write the mathematical model for it: physicist experiencing multiple vectors, all fidget, no progress in any direction. The familiarity radiates warmly through his chest. Fuck it, he thinks, and tugs Rodney into a hug.
They don't really do this much, and it's always kind of weird. John realizes that Rodney doesn't have any memories of other times to compare this to, but it's too late so he just goes with it. He figures the better part of valor here is willingness to botch it, one more fuck-up to add to the list. After the first awkward seconds, Rodney thaws out of his impression of a human popsicle stick; his arms unfold around John's back, and he pulls in a slow breath, body curving into John's as he exhales. It's as good as they've ever managed, and it takes John by surprise -- the two of them standing in this public space, with the sounds of the crowd reverberating around them, and not being completely incompetent at this. "Give me a call sometime, okay?" he says, and it comes out scratchy. "In a few days or something; let me know how it's going."
He feels Rodney's answering nod against his shoulder and cheek. "Okay," Rodney whispers. His hands fist down into the back of John's shirt, quickly enough that the hug ends before John fully registers it. Pulling back to a more normal distance, Rodney rubs his hands briefly over each other, then repositions the strap of his bag over his shoulder and pulls out the handle of his suitcase. Eyes on John's, he takes one backward step, then turns and heads off toward the security line.
John walks out the big glass doors with the phantom heat of Rodney's hands lingering on his shoulder blades, like the skin under his shirt is still glowing faintly red.
That night, the first email shows up in his inbox.
From: e.i.pi.1.0@gmail.com
To: kittinger.iii@gmail.com
Subject: [none]
Things I have learned so far today:
1) Airplane meals are strangely appetizing.
2) Apparently, Canadian mosquitoes feel similarly about every inch of my exposed skin.
3) My little sister is frighteningly smart, as demonstrated by the fact that it took her fifteen minutes to figure out my email password for me in between wandering down the hall to help Madison with her bath.
It goes on for about a page and a half, stringing together observations and incidents with no real regard for chronological order, like every email Rodney's ever sent him when one or the other of them was somewhere else. John reads it twice before he notices the short sentence tacked on at the very end like an afterthought: 4) I think I like it here.
What he sends back is:
From: kittinger.iii@gmail.com
To: e.i.pi.1.0@gmail.com
Subject: Re 2.
R- Check the medicine cabinet. Jeannie stockpiles calamine for WWIII. -Sheppard.
And this is how the next week goes.
Rodney’s been gone for close to two weeks when John finally picks up the phone and calls Canada. "Miller residence."
"Hey, Jeannie," he says, smiling. She always answers the phone the same way: mildly, and like she's ready to remove an ear should you be wasting her time. "How are the mosquitoes?"
She snorts. "Carrying West Nile, or so the news claims, but what's a summer without the thrill of potential encephalitis? How about L.A. -- still full of waiter-slash-hookers running on amphetamines and conspicuous consumption?"
"Don't forget Mystic Tan," John deadpans as he wanders over the window. He's been around Jeannie a handful of times over the years and gone with Rodney to visit her once or twice. She's a lot like her brother, only with basic tact and much more social perceptiveness. He's always secretly thought that if things had been different, he could have ended up marrying a girl like her. It still would have been a disaster, but potentially an enjoyable one. "Is Rodney around?"
"My daughter hijacked him about forty-five minutes ago for a suburban front-lawn safari. I'm half-expecting her to knock him into the Terwilligers' pond and come running back to the house like Lassie -- which is what happened last month with Kaleb's nephew," she sighs. "You want me to stick my head out and see if they're in shouting distance?"
John grins. "Nah, I wouldn't want to interrupt the adventure. You can tell Timmy I called after you've fished him out of the well." This is the time to say hey, good talking to you and get off the phone, but somehow that doesn't happen. He watches as a flock of seagulls dive and squabble in the parking lot of the Ethiopian grocery across the street, his hand pressed against the pane of glass.
"John?" Jeannie says after several long seconds. "You okay?"
"Yeah." He turns away and leans against the sill. "Yeah, I'm okay. You?"
This time the pause is hers. "I don't know how to answer that question," she replies slowly. Over the phone line, he can hear the faint sound of her footsteps, then a quiet rise in traffic and wind, like she's sat down by a screen door or an open window. "We've spent the last few days going through old stuff -- boxes he left when he went to university, family photos, some old letters. He asked to. It's been ... intense."
It's like prodding a sore tooth, but he can't stop himself. "Does he--?"
"Remember anything? No." She lets out a short puff of air, halfway to a laugh at best. "He's been my older brother my whole life, and the earliest memory he has of me is from a couple Tuesdays ago."
Tipping his head back against the window, John rubs his eyes. "I know how you feel."
"Do you?" she asks cryptically. He winces, because way to go, jackass, she's his goddamn sister. Before he can figure out how to back away from the error, she says, "Do you know what he asked me yesterday?" She waits for a beat. "If I thought he could learn to play piano again."
He can't think of anything to say to it, so he doesn't. The glass behind him is hot in the afternoon sun, and he can hear the gulls laughing as they wheel.
"There are all these really important things, family things, that he doesn't know anymore," she says, her voice matter-of-fact. It's another thing she and Rodney share: a way of describing painful things like they're the laws of conservation, something only an idiot would deny or try to change. "Like that he made me cry at my first ballet recital because he yelled at me for going too slow, or that he wouldn't come to my wedding because of the fight we had when I quit school, but he snuck into the reception to threaten Kaleb with chemical castration if he broke my heart. It should kill me that he doesn't remember, and it's hard, but I was ready for it. Did I hope that flying over the Great Lakes might make him magically better?" She laughs, but with less derision than John would've expected. "Okay, stupidly, yes -- but I knew it was going to be like this."
The outdoor sounds over the phone line get clearer, as though she's propped her head right up against the window or door. "The thing that gets me is, I always thought Mer was innately cynical, you know? Even when we were kids, I could tell life kept disappointing him. It's the downside of having that much vision, I guess -- the real thing will always let you down." She makes a humming sound, as though surprised at how the words sound out loud. "But talking to him now ... it's like no one ever gave him the memo that everything except science was going to fall through for him. No one told him he was destined to be unhappy. God," and there's anger in her voice now, coming through clearly over other things he can't untangle, "if he had any idea how much he's lost -- but then I catch myself looking at him, and there's this tiny part of me that wonders ..."
She trails off, and John finds his free hand is gripping the window sill, instinctively braced for the end of her sentence. By some small mercy, she leaves it, instead asking, "You still there?"
He cracks his neck and switches the phone to the other shoulder. "Yeah. I'm here."
They're both quiet for a minute. When she speaks again, her tone is different, softer. "You know one of the things that hasn't changed, John?" she asks. "He still talks about you as much as he always did."
Before John can respond, a door bangs open on her end and there are loud feet and voices, a small child chattering excitedly and Jeannie calling, "Hey Mer, I've got John on the phone!" He hears the thump and fumble as she crosses the room and the phone changes hands, and then Rodney's on the line, breathless and animated as he says, "I just got an hour long entomology lesson from someone in a princess costume -- seriously, there were Latin names and everything. That was either the most amazing or the most surreal experience I've had -- well, that I can remember, anyway -- only I think we should be worried that my niece is going to hit puberty and use cockroaches to take over the world."
John stays on the line, grinning and offering the occasional dry remark, but his thoughts keep bouncing like a tennis ball between this conversation and the one before it. He’s trying not to picture Rodney at eight, at eleven, and already disappointed; he’s trying to remember the way Rodney sounded when he talked about physics, without remembering how he never sounded that way when he talked about anything else.
June takes a while to end, but the weeks add up surprisingly quickly and it’s July before John really expects it. The last month seems condensed when he looks back on it, like after it passed him it moved up to relativistic speeds. He and Rodney once had a drunken discussion about this phenomenon, how time periods were starting to seem shorter once they were over, and whether this was related to the accelerating expansion of the universe or just a sign of a more personal form of entropy.
Weir sends him on a couple of longer charters -- a week shuttling around the Mediterranean, ten days in Brazil where some producer pays him an insane bonus to stay local and then never calls him in. It’s boring but not that bad; he spends a lot of it surfing. Being back in L.A. is actually harder. He either rattles around his apartment or roams the city restlessly, at loose ends either way. There's nothing to do, or at least no one to do it with. Summer is peak season for Lost World, and Teyla's running back-to-back trips across three continents. Ronon's preparing for an MMA tournament in Tokyo. Carson's overseeing the end of an eighteen-month research trial, and Laura's whole division is hip-deep in paperwork in the wake of a bomb scare at Cleveland High.
John's not used to having trouble keeping his own company, but time alone means time to think, and these days his thoughts keep heading places he really doesn't want to go. If he had the PS2 it might be easier to fill the hours, but it's still at Rodney's and he can't bring himself to go get it. He doesn't want to see the condo vacant, all of the things it contains unmoved for a month, losing meaning. Lately, if he lets his mind wander, he keeps running up hard against the image of helping Rodney pack the place up, filling trash bags and labeling boxes -- or worse, standing there alone watching movers load it all onto a truck bound for Canada.
They're emailing each other more or less daily, and talking on the phone once a week or so. It's fine, not awkward in any way, but each interaction leaves John feeling like he's standing on a beach with the outbound tide stealing the sand from under his feet. Jeannie's started teaching Rodney physics, working up through the basic building blocks. It's fascinating, he writes to John, the way the different theories fit together. We're not really getting into specifics yet, but I think I'm starting to understand why I spent the last twenty years on this. It's hard to resist the idea that you can build the universe if you get the math right. It should be good to hear him talk about it, and it is, but it's also unfair as fuck, and every time it drags John back to the longer view.
In the timeline of his memory, Rodney has now spent longer in Ontario than L.A. Jeannie, his closest relative, is there. She also happens to have a better grasp of the bleeding edge of theoretical physics -- Rodney’s physics -- than three-quarters of the people actively publishing it. Also there are the archived possessions of the first half of his life, including ten years of sheet music and the family piano, which Jeannie says he spends more time at every day. Rodney doesn't write about the music much, but when he does there's a sense of awe in the sentences, like the scales and child's exercises are the first fragmentary translations of a Rosetta Stone.
Compared to that, what does Los Angeles have to offer him? A thousand square feet of things he can't remember buying. A prestigious job he's no longer qualified to fill. Five people he barely knows, and nine million he doesn't.
On the fourth of July, John takes Mulholland Drive up into the hills to watch the fireworks from above. Tiny domed bursts rise and fall across the city, a festive sketch of combat zone -- sound without fury, light without smoke, crayon colors instead of ocher and carbon black. Another year gone by, and he sits on the hood of his car and can't pretend any more that the next one won't be different. If there's one thing John's learned, it's not to waste time trying to recover something that's come apart. The moment it slips out of your fingers, it's already accelerating away.
You can't stop entropy.
He drives back down sometime after midnight, acceptance heavy in his chest. Two days later, Rodney calls him. "Hey, if you're around on Sunday, could you pick me up from the airport? I'm coming home."
Rodney comes off his flight with big dark circles under his eyes, tired and scattered enough that John just drops him back at the condo to order dinner and get some sleep. He's got an appointment with Carson the next morning -- "not more tests, thank God," Rodney groans from the passenger seat, but to talk.
When John picks him up for it, he looks rested but also nervous, and by the end of the drive to Cedars-Sinai, John is too. In the elevator, he keeps his hands shoved in his pockets while Rodney fidgets. It's been two months now with no answers, and it's strange to imagine that in half an hour, they might have them.
As it turns out, that won't be an issue. "You're kidding me," John says.
"They ruled out most of the major physical causes before Rodney left Cottage Hospital," Carson says, leaning back against his desk. "Since our initial tests didn't find anything they'd missed -- tiny lesions, clots, newly-formed tumors, those sorts of things," he fills in, wincing apologetically when Rodney's eyebrows shoot upward, "we decided to track your brain's electrical activity. Our hope was that by collecting data over time, we might find a pattern that would point us to the cause of your memory loss."
"And?" Rodney spreads his hands in exasperation.
"We've detected subtle changes, but nothing that indicates an initial point of damage," Carson replies. "It could your brain finding its way back to your memories, or you may simply be building new neural pathways in reaction to new experiences, the way we all do. We can continue regular testing, but there's no guarantee that we'd learn anything of value to your recovery. In my professional opinion, you need to consider whether the time and the expense is worth it to you."
"Well, that's just great," Rodney snaps, and then grimaces, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Sorry, but -- seriously, this is the best medical science has to offer?"
Glancing back and forth between the two of them, Carson sighs. "There's one possibility we haven't discussed yet."
John straightens, not liking the reluctant undertone in Carson's voice. After a couple seconds pass, Rodney looks up and demands, "Well?"
"Of the different types of memory loss, retrograde amnesia is one of the rarer ones," Carson says, "and the kind you have -- complete retrograde amnesia with no other impairments -- is among the rarest. Without a medical explanation, we have to consider that the memory loss may have a psychological basis -- dissociative amnesia, for example, or a fugue state."
Rodney laughs harshly. "So -- what, I just spontaneously went crazy? Fantastic."
"Not crazy," Carson corrects gently, "and both conditions can be brought on by trauma or extreme stress. I didn't bring it up earlier because your symptoms aren't quite right; you've lost knowledge about the world, not just personal memories. But you'd need to see a psychiatrist to really look into the possibility -- it's not my field."
"If that's what it is," John asks, "will he get his memory back?"
Carson nods. "He could. People suffering from psychogenic memory loss usually recover at least partially, but the conditions don't typically last this long. I don't know what the time factor means here."
John sets his jaw. "Is talking to a shrink going to help?" he asks, ignoring the disbelieving look Rodney shoots him.
Carson's hands open and close around the edge of the desk, then he admits, "I honestly don't know."
"Jesus." Rodney scrubs both hands through his hair. "So what am I supposed to do?"
John looks back to Carson, who's studying Rodney's face. "At this point?" he says, and there's an unexpected weight to the words that reminds John that Carson has known Rodney for half their lives, too. "I think that's up to you."
They spend the first fifteen minutes of the drive in silence, until Rodney says, with no preamble, "I spent Saturday night in the emergency room."
John doesn't run the car onto the shoulder this time, but it's a near thing. "Jesus Christ," he hisses, frantically dodging SUVs as he tries to remember what the next off-ramp is, "you bring this up now? We're going back, you're going to tell Carson--"
"Oh, for God's sake," Rodney groans. "It wasn't that, would you -- no, keep driving, I'll explain, just quit playing Burnout on the freeway already!"
John settles into the middle lane, teeth gritted. "What the fuck, McKay."
Loosening his grip on the sides of his seat, Rodney lets his breath out with relief. "I'd really prefer to keep it to one near death experience a week or less -- yes, yes, explaining. You: eyes on the road," he orders, flapping at the windshield until John turns his head forward again. "Jeannie and Kaleb took me out to this great restaurant, or so they told me. We didn't really get past the menu reading portion of the evening because it turns out they serve their water with lime."
John's hands clench on the wheel and gearshift before he forces them to ease off. "Oh, god damn it all to hell."
Rodney snorts. "It was quite the farce -- I can't breathe, Kaleb's shouting for an ambulance, and Jeannie's shouting at the waiter who, in his panic, is trying to give me the Heimlich maneuver." Poking experimentally at his side, he winces. "Moron nearly cracked one of my ribs. The hero of the hour ended up being the eleven-year-old girl who ran across the restaurant to stab me in the thigh with her EpiPen."
His laughter is low, more disgusted than amused. He leans back and crosses his arms dismissively in front of his chest. "The rest was fairly anticlimactic -- ambulance ride followed by some really big needles, then they sent me home. I have to tell you," he adds, "I don't know if you've ever had epinephrine administered to you, but I'm convinced the experience is only preferable to anaphylaxis because it doesn't actually end in death."
John was there when someone knocked a glass of lemonade over on Rodney at Caltech. Seeing it once was enough. He still remembers the shiny red mottling that had sprung up over Rodney's skin, almost too rapidly to believe, and how his swollen fingers had fumbled with the cap on the EpiPen. They'd walked to the Health Center like the losing team in a three-legged race, John keeping up a steady flow of mockery as he listened to the faint, terrifying wheeze from Rodney's chest.
And that was just from skin contact. Christ. "I can't believe -- fuck." He smacks on hand against the dash. "How did that even happen? Didn't you check?"
"It was water," Rodney grumbles defensively. "I know you told me to check the ingredients in everything, but when someone puts a glass of water in front of me and all I see in it is ice, I assume that the ingredients are: water, and frozen water. It's not like I recognized the taste, though believe me, I don't think I'll forget it anytime soon."
"And Jeannie didn't stop you?" John demands.
Rodney rolls his eyes. "When was the last time she needed to stop me? I can't imagine that my deadly allergy to citrus really slipped my mind that often."
John takes a deep breath as he merges back into the diamond lane. "Why didn't you tell me yesterday?" he asks, trying for a calmer tone.
Rodney shrugs, fingers flexing upward while his thumbs stay tucked in the crook of his armpits. "What were you going to do about it? Besides change lanes like a crazy person."
"Fine," John bites off. "Why are you telling me now?"
"Because--!" Rodney snaps, turning towards John. He goes silent for a few seconds, then slumps slowly back against the seat. "Because I can't keep doing this," he says, quietly. He props his arm along the door and taps his fingers on the glass of the window. "I can't keep fumbling around and, and waiting for someone else to explain everything. I mean, you told me about this, but ... that wasn't the same as knowing it." He breathes out shakily, a remnant of laughter as pale as his face. "Not even remotely."
From the corner of his eye, John watches Rodney flatten his hand against the window; after half a mile, it curls back in on itself and drops down into his lap. "I can't keep waiting for things to happen to me. I either need to remember -- soon, now -- or I need to start over." Tipping his head sideways against the door frame, he murmurs, "It's getting too hard not to know."
They're quiet for the rest of the drive back to the condo; there just isn't much to say.
[Continue reading part 3 ...]