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"We are sorry, Doctor McKay. We understand the benefits would be immeasurable to everyone in the galaxy, but the risk is still too great."
Rodney spins on his heel, swallowing down the sarcastic remark on the tip of his tongue with a level of restraint that he hopes Teyla can see from her position at the high table. He flings back the canvas curtain and storms out of the central hut into the last frost of early spring. Every season he appeals to the Circle, and every season the delegates allow him to go through all the motions of his measured and reasoned petition before rejecting his request after the briefest deliberation.
It's not that they're wrong, exactly, but neither is Rodney. At some point they will have to start picking up the pieces left behind in the wake of the Wraith war, but until the vote is weighted heavily in his favour, he's stuck designing waterways and introducing younger cultures to the wheel axle, while the rest of the surviving expedition replaces everyone's worn BDUs with scratchy hemp clothing and Atlantis' automatic security system with primitive patrol routes.
At first they were all too relieved to have survived, to have won, to miss the things they'd lost. Even Rodney had found a thrill in teaching basic math and science to the most malleable minds that the Pegasus galaxy had to offer, and for a time, the very fact that there still were minds to nurture was enough to get him out of bed in the morning. Each new concept was a challenge, each enthusiastic interruption a victory, but as the seasons started cycling and people started rebuilding—losses long mourned and the horror of the Wraith starting to wane—every tallied test slate and encouraging pep talk became a stark reminder that he used to rewrite the laws of physics over breakfast.
What he wouldn't give for a laptop. A tablet. A calculator. Hell, a pad of lined paper and a biro would be enough to give him an outlet for the thrumming ideas wasting away inside his brain. He can feel his neurons dying one by one, his genius mind slipping into stagnation while everyone else settles so comfortably into a life devoid of technology, replaced so easily by farming and weaving and woodworking.
His disappointment compounds his already stormy outlook, so Rodney heads to the same place he always goes when he needs to decompress—the shore.
When Teyla finally catches up to him, she comes bearing a peace offering. Rodney scowls at the tuttleroot chips she holds in his line of sight, but the smell of the hot oil and sea salt triumphs over his entirely predictable failure to sway the leaders of the Pegasus Galaxy. Not even the unvoiced tension between them can stop him from taking the warm bag from her steady hands.
Teyla's companionably quiet for a moment, and she sits next to him on his rock and follows his gaze out to the horizon. Rodney counts in his head—three, four, five—and right on cue, she breaks the silence.
"Rodney—"
Rodney holds up a greasy finger and swallows his mouthful.
"Forget about it."
"The Circle values your—"
Rodney rolls his eyes. "The circle thinks I'm a joke! You think I don't know how they laugh behind my back?"
Teyla sighs next to him. Rodney can feel her warmth where their legs are pressed together. He should pull away, shouldn't take any comfort in the places her body shelters him from the cold breeze. Were it anyone but Teyla, he would. Instead, he tips the bag of chips in her direction without looking. She takes a handful and crunches on them quietly beside him.
"Do you honestly believe that the Circle does not hold you in high esteem?" Teyla asks after a while, wiping her fingers on the sleeve of her coat.
"Yes." Rodney shrugs. "But I don't really care."
"So what is the problem here?"
"The problem? The problem isn't that the Circle doesn't trust me, it's that you don't!"
Rodney has never, ever voiced this fear, not even to John. But it's been so many seasons now since everything changed that they can be counted in years, and he can't stop the feeling of betrayal from bubbling up and spilling over all the walls he'd tried to build to keep it in check. Appetite lost, he drops the bag of chips on the rock and tries to leave, but Teyla grabs hold of his wrist—her grip not tight enough to stop him physically, but the feel of her skin on his is enough to take the wind out of his sails.
"Rodney. I can't believe you would think this of me."
Teyla sounds hurt and genuinely surprised. Rodney lowers himself back down and looks her in the eyes for the first time in…fuck, such a very long time.
"You never back me up in the conclave," he says, months of building resentment finally pouring out of him. "Seventeen times I've tried to get them to listen, and not once have you voted for my proposals. You don't even vote against them, at least then I'd know where you stood."
"How could I, my friend?" asks Teyla softly. She lets go of Rodney's wrist and slips her hand into his. "How could I ever be objective enough to vote with my head instead of my heart on a proposal you bring?"
It's so far from what Rodney expected her to say, he's left speechless. He feels like the biggest asshole in two galaxies. He immediately feels a wave of shame wash over him, dampening the flames of his anger that were so furious a moment ago, but now feel petty and vindictive and not at all worthy of the woman who's child first lay in his arms, and whose leadership has steered not just the Athosians, but also the Earthers gently through the end of civilisation as they knew it. More than once, either her cool head or directed fury has kept everyone from falling apart in the wake of a war that took everything from them, including, at times, the best of their humanity.
Teyla squeezes his hand. "Rodney, I'm sorry if I have ever—"
"No, it's me who is sorry," says Rodney, quickly. "I should have had more faith in you."
Teyla lets go and wraps an arm around Rodney's waist, dropping her head on his shoulder. They both look back out to sea, where Atlantis still lies like a distant, floating island. A gigantic, sleeping cityship, whose only inhabitants now rest eternally; crumbling bones in her darkened rooms, not even the barest flicker of life in her walls after Rodney finally set in motion their last desperate plan to halt the escalating Wraith incursion. She's barely moved on the current since they were forced to abandon her, but in that time, the east pier has flooded so much it's slipped under the surface of the water, tilting the city on an impossible axis. One day soon, the city will either break apart or simply sink under the surface and descend to the seabed. Unless, of course, the Circle finally sees sense and allows Rodney to return to her and try to rouse her from her cold slumber.
"It won't be much longer," Teyla tells him as the breeze ripples her hair against his neck. "Every season, more of the Circle feel it might be the right time to revisit the city of the ancestors."
Rodney huffs. "I'll be long dead before anyone so much as builds a boat."
Teyla laughs and reaches to pull something out of her pocket. She clicks it in front of them—an Athosian fire starter. Banned technology, just as forbidden as the puddle jumpers and the drones and the lights in the city that turn on whenever someone with the ATA gene passes by.
"Where did you—"
"You are not the only person in Pegasus whose thoughts look to our future, my friend." Teyla douses the flame and hides the device back in her coat. "And if anyone in the Circle spoke of you the way you have feared, they would not do so twice."
It's enough. It's more than Rodney deserves. In a few days, Teyla will leave with the rest of the Circle to mediate the entirely predictable social complexities arising after the defeat of the Wraith. Rodney doesn't envy her the task of keeping so many utterly different cultures from rebounding in the silence after such a great storm. Teyla still hopes for the best, but Rodney worries it's only a matter of time before the reluctant peace breaks into too many pieces to put back together.
Rodney misses the days when their biggest problems were the machinations of the Genii.
When John returns, it's so late it's almost the next day. He thinks he's doing a good job of being quiet—already unarmed, unarmoured, and unbooted—but a herd of Belkan farm animals has more stealth than an overtired, overworked airman after a three-day mission.
There was a time Rodney would have grumbled at the noise, the mud tracked through the hut, the icy cold hands assaulting his person when John stops faffing around and finally slips under the covers to spoon him, but since losing Atlantis, both he and John have stopped pretending to be anything other than utterly relieved to be reunited every time one of them comes home.
The smell, though, is a little too much to go unmentioned.
"You stink."
John grazes the side of Rodney's neck with his teeth. "You really care?" he asks, peppering stubble-rough kisses up Rodney's jaw.
"Not—oh—not really."
John slides his cold hand down Rodney's stomach and slips it into his boxers. The unexpected chill of his skin is no match for the sudden heat between them, and Rodney bucks into John's tight grip impatiently as John sets a maddeningly slow pace, jerking him off like it's a lazy Sunday morning in a warm shower, not like John's been away playing Marine for four days and three nights.
If it's hard for a USAF pilot to be permanently grounded, you'd never know. Neither John nor Evan are built for slogging it through the mountains with a twenty-kilo backpack, but neither of them has ever complained. And for all that he always returns at some godawful hour, smelling like he's been traipsing through a swamp, Rodney doesn't either, because despite everything they've lost, John's a much happier man now than he ever was on either Earth or Atlantis.
John's body has changed over the past couple of years. Not just the new scars or the new lines that mark the passage of time, it's as though his entire being has been freed of a literal weight on his shoulders. When he slouches in the canvas doorway of their dwelling, it's because he's comfortable, not because he's faking nonchalance or sticking it to The Man. It's probably that there is no actual man anymore—no father or president or general trying to stuff him and his non-regulation hair into a box—which makes him feel less caged even though he's lost the sky. He chafed less serving under Elizabeth, and then Sam, but though they were more flexible, they still represented something he couldn't help butting his head against. A force that kept his wings clipped and his feet tethered.
Many of the worlds in Pegasus have non-hierarchical leadership, and the Circle was born from a kind of cooperation that would never have happened on Earth. Somehow, even the most isolated of Pegasean worlds were willing to put forward a representative after The Event. Even those worlds that had been shunned for unthinkable practices during the reign of the Wraith have been met with open arms and forgiving hearts. Power flows sideways now, not vertically, and every voice in the Circle has equal weight, no matter the size or strength of the community it represents.
For all that Rodney feels exasperated that the more conservative voices keep blocking his proposals—and the sheer hypocrisy that everyone is happy enough to use the stargate, but no one is willing to talk about central heating or electric lighting—he wouldn't go back to Earth. Mostly for John's sake, though perhaps a little for himself. On Atlantis, John would never have put his hands, or any other part of him, on Rodney. John was so far in the closet that even he seemed surprised when he finally snapped and leaned over Ronon's outstretched legs between them to grab Rodney by the collar and slam their lips together. His mouth tasted of Ruus wine and roasted beast, his hair smelled like the smoke from the campfire, and neither Ronon's surprised bellow nor Teyla's delighted giggle could temper his fervour.
No, Rodney wouldn't give any of this up for all the touchscreens in the universe. He wishes it hadn't come to his last, worst idea in the end, but with the Wraith adapting so well to everything they desperately threw at their organics, the only thing left was to sweep their technology out from under their feet. If only it hadn't swept it from under their own feet on the process, too.
"I miss Ronon," Rodney tells John when they've finally pulled apart, sated and sleepy.
"Not long now," John murmurs from under the arm over his face. He reaches out to pull Rodney into his side. "Next full moon."
They've taken to using the moons in the sky to track the passage of time. The Athosians don't give names to moons, any more than they do rivers or mountains, but they've indulged the Earther's attempts to designate them something that reminds them of where they came from, even though no one would still call Earth home. None of the proposals so far have stuck, but as Halling often says, they won't shine brighter for having a name.
What has stuck, and has surprised Rodney greatly, are the lengths the Athosians have gone to try to preserve what remains of the Earther's diverse cultures and keep it safe with their own. Rodney doesn't consider anything worth keeping that doesn't stand up to peer review, but even the contradictory beliefs and legends that most of the expedition left behind on Earth have been written down in Athosian script for the next generations.
When Ronon's expedition gets back, Rodney will do his part to sort through the remains that Ronon deems worth conserving of Satedan culture, and they will also be added to the collection of memories. But the Wraith stain so much of the recorded history of Pegasus, it's a hard call to make. Rodney hopes that when someone decides to record him, it's not as the man who finally eradicated the Wraith, but as one of the many people who helped them rebuild from the ashes.