Dream Baby Dream

A/N: Salutations. This is probably going to be a three-chapter or so story, with Rodney and Teyla ending up being the main focus, but Sheppard will have himself a sizable role as well, just as he does in the opening chapter here. Hope you enjoy, and let me know the good or the bad with a review if you'd be so kind. Thanks.

But some days, no sum of kind words uttered could put life in perspective, and as he watched his friend stare off into the distance, into that far-off point where everything and nothing become one single entity, the Colonel knew he wasn't equipped to wipe the blood from McKay's mind's eye.

It had been two hours since they'd put to rest the fragile body of the alien girl and twelve since she had been struck down by her knave captors. It was all so senseless. McKay had insisted he check out a vague energy reading not too far off. Sheppard had sent Teyla with him and proceeded back to the gate with Ronon, and then it had all gone wrong.

If it were for a political cause, he'd have been disgusted still, but at least it would have been something he could make sense of. There was no ideology in this instance, though. They were the lowest form of criminals, larcenists who bought and sold in flesh and blood. They'd thought McKay and Teyla valuable, ambushed them, taken them to the dirty, caliginous depths of one of the planet's immense caverns. That was sick. But what was sicker was that once there, the pair had shared the company of a small girl.

By the time Sheppard had seen her, she was dead, and he wondered suddenly what color her eyes were and what life they may have contained while her chest was still rich with breath. She hadn't looked peaceful. Even death hadn't been able to smooth away the wrinkles of pain on her face. She had suffered, and greatly. He only wished that it had been he who painted the cave wall with her butchers' brain matter.

Sheppard noted the dry blood in McKay's hair, the lacerations no one had bothered to tend to. A couple looked like they'd begun to bleed anew. If McKay noticed, though, he obviously didn't care, and that sent a chill through his friend's body. There was no complaint, no acerbity, only an empty-eyed spiritual bankruptcy that was so palpable, Sheppard could feel it eating away at his own soul.

McKay just sat there on a flat rock with a slight slouch and stared.

Ronon stalked up and looked over Sheppard's left shoulder.

"How long is he gonna be like that?"

Sheppard frowned a moment, his eyes hardening.

"He'll be there as long as he wants," he said churlishly. "How's Teyla?"

Ronon shrugged noncommittally, then sighed as he studied McKay.

"She's still standing there. I heard her talking to herself."

Sheppard took a few steps away, suddenly needing very much some distance between he and the taller man, lest he turn on impulse and punch him in the mouth. It was confounding how little tact Ronon had. He'd been benumbed by loss and isolation, surely, but it was more than mildly unsettling how little regard he seemed to have for pain that wasn't his own. Never before had Sheppared missed Ford's calm, dogged loyalty more.

The Colonel shut his eyes and gathered himself over the span of some seconds, then turned back and stepped toward Ronon.

"Look, take a walk or something. Find something to do with yourself. It's gonna be a while yet."

Ronon clenched his jaw a moment and Sheppard feared there might be words exchanged that they'd both regret, but something happened in the ragged man's eyes, some fleeting burst of humanity that lynched whatever callous reply had been brewing in the back of his throat. After a moment, Ronon nodded and walked off with a series of heavy, deliberate steps that John would have sworn made the ground quake.

McKay hadn't moved.

Sheppard walked over to join him, his gait not at all like that of their companion, deliberate and gentle, as if a gesture of affection for the soil, and as he drew nearer, his steps grew slower and slower. He didn't want to startle him.

McKay heard his quiet steps and saw the blur out of the corner of his eye. It was only just now that it occurred to him how long he'd been there. The sun, which had once bloodied the sky with a spastic enthusiasm, had dropped now out of sight and left in its stead an endless black void that made the astrophysicist feel as if he were looking inside himself. There wasn't anything that could bring the sky back to life, not until morning, and morning was so far away.

He thought about the girl's eyes, pictured them in his head, so full of life, so stubborn and defiant, brimming with a vitality he'd never seen every last second until she choked on her final breath. No one should die that young. No one should die that violently. No one should, but especially not her. He couldn't recall the specifics with as much clarity as he expected just now -- he supposed that was a side effect of the concussion he knew he had -- but he realized that the culpability resided with him.

They killed her because of one unwise moment, his unwise moment. In one brief, blindingly idiotic and uncharacteristic instant, McKay had lashed out with his fist as their abductors had with crude verbiage bantered about the prospect of satisfying their carnal desires with Teyla against her will. They'd beaten him for that, kicked him again and again while Teyla was left helplessly to watch. But that hadn't proven their point well enough for their liking. Without reserve, they'd taken the girl by the hair and dragged her out into McKay's line of sight, and shot her in the chest.

"Hey, McKay," Sheppard said softly, placing a tentative hand on his friend's shoulder. "How ya doin'?"

McKay turned away. If he didn't look at him, maybe the scattered, fugacious wishes for his own death would stay inside him where they belonged. Maybe if he had enough time to himself, he could find a way to pretend that none of this happened. He wished Ronon were here to look at him with pity or contempt or some yet unknown confection of both. Sheppard's eyes were so spiritually philanthropic that McKay feared he might absolve himself if he looked inside them.

"I'm fine."

Sheppard took a moment, unsure of how to proceed. He could see McKay's labored breathing now that he was up close, and he wondered if McKay had sustained more injuries than he'd let on or if it was merely a product of the day's events, which had made the air around the doctor thick with ether and blood and all else that overtaxed a human lung. After studying him a while and drawing no nearer to an answer, Sheppard smiled sadly and nudged his shoulder.

"Move over."

McKay didn't look at him, but he compiled, shifting over several inches so that the Colonel could sit down beside him. He might have protested, but the less he said, the better. As much as he hated himself, he knew that deep down in that place a man can't control, that compartment of self-preservation, he wanted someone to take his guilt away and bury it where he'd never find it. He knew that if he looked in Sheppard's eyes, his friend would do just that.

Sheppard leaned back, bracing himself against the rock with a flat hand.

"Rodney, there was nothing more you could have done."

McKay angled his body away, hunching forward, elbows against his knees, and brought a hand up to his head. He tried combing it through his hair, but the sharp, stinging pain that came with the discovery of a fresh laceration made him think better of it. Sheppard's words hung in the air. They weren't true, but they were nice, and McKay knew that he meant them.

The doctor felt tears in his treacherous eyes.

"She was so fucking beautiful."

Sheppard sat up straight and lifted his hand off the rock, bringing it to McKay's back. When his friend didn't continue, he began to rub it in smooth circles. He could tell the gesture was comforting, so he kept on with it for the myriad minutes that passed in silence. There wasn't much more he could offer. Even if he could convince McKay of the truth, that he was owed no guilt in this, it wouldn't dig that girl out of the ground.

It startled him when McKay spoke again.

"I thought when I killed them, it might make me feel better," he said. "But all it left me with was the awful truth. Men were on this world and breathing, and I sent them away."

Sheppard wasn't prepared for that, nor was he prepared when McKay turned his head and met his eyes.

Nothing happened. Nothing changed. It didn't do a God damn thing.