Disclaimer: Better fan fiction writers than me don’t own SGA, so what makes you think I do?

AN: If you have not read synecdochic’s “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” and “and the band’s playing ‘hail to the chief’” I suggest you do so now. They are both available on LJ. There are also the two most brilliant SGA fics ever written.

However, last night, 8400 words into my dissertation and five hours after watching “The Seed” my muse decided I needed some cheering up. So here is my version of the “What happened afterwards” idea, in which everyone lives.

"Darest thou now O Soul, Walk out with me toward the unknown region, Where neither ground is for feet Nor any path to follow." Walt Whitman

Every few months Sam calls him. They chat for an hour or two, seemingly about nothing, but if his thirty-five year old self could have seen him now he’d be giddy with the delight of even that. A long time ago he had never thought the day would come when he and Samantha Carter could actually have a conversation for the sheer pleasure of it.

Of all the things that have changed now, it seems but a trivial difference. Rodney knows that once upon a time Elizabeth Weir believed that Atlantis would always be her home and that returning to Earth would mean the failure of all things. But Elizabeth has been gone now more years than Rodney wants to count, and even if once upon a time he wanted to believe the same thing he was never optimistic enough to actually think it. He had resigned himself long before the announcement came that one day he would pack up his world (again) and return to a planet that had, perhaps, once given birth to him but had long since stopped giving him anything he needed.

That it had come so soon was the only surprise. With Baal and the Replicators and the Ori defeated and gone and done with forever and ever, no one could have even dared the possibility that the Wraith would fall hard on the heels of the last victory the Milky Way would hopefully ever have to claim. None of them had looked a gift horse in the mouth, no matter what it meant for the future. It was still the end of a bloody war five years and a ten thousand in the making and they were all just immensely grateful that they could add “cleaned up another Ancient mess” to their resumes.

But suddenly faced with another galaxy free of their evil overlords (or predators, the two were mutually interchangeable as far as Rodney was concerned), the IOA had done what it did best. Used a perfect excuse to save themselves billions of dollars a year. The SGC program had already been scaled back (three times before, actually, but somehow it had never seemed to stick with the pesky evil enemy still running merrily around) and it only made sense to do the same in a galaxy safe from the Wraith and a city that was still standing only by one man’s brilliance and another’s sheer bloody determination.

Rodney still makes a yearly trip back for a few weeks. There’s a small civilian contingent that lives there with a military escort and with a ZPM on either end they’re closer to home then the scientists at McMurdo, an irony that is not lost on anyone. They still discover the odd new thing, and Rodney still feels that rush of excitement in the pit of his stomach when the files come across his desk. He is grateful for the trips, even though he knows they allow them because money alone cannot make up for all the times he’s saved the universe. They’re still trying to figure out how to thank Carter and Mitchell and Jackson, and O’Neill’s still smiling over the fact that all he wanted was permanent retirement.

Carter works at Area 51 now, though her rank as full-bird Colonel is as utterly useless among the labs of geeky scientists and half-broken technology as her husband’s two stars are to his fishing. Rodney still has to smirk whenever Sam’s conversations turn to how many days in the previous month Jack has spent not catching fish. He knows she is happier than she has ever been, because he can hear it in her voice every time she smiles over the phone.

He’s not sure exactly what Mitchell is supposed to be doing. He does know that he and John and their eagles are still causing havoc wherever they go; and they go a lot of places, hyperspace engines being almost as good as Stargates. Whenever John is on Earth he comes to visit Rodney, usually arriving at all hours by transport beam and leaving at some other ridiculous time, back to travelling the galaxy the only way he still can. Rodney is not surprised. Sheppard never could sit still and there’s no helicopter on Earth that could possibly be better than the command of an F-303. Rodney half wonders sometimes if he shouldn’t have taken the offer of engineer on John’s new wings. But he knows this comes from a desire, almost a need, to have the team in some form back together. He keeps repeating to himself that Sheppard is a trouble magnet until the urge goes away.

He is by no means unhappy where he is. There are days he also wonders if Area 51 wouldn’t be better, but he’s done that route before and he knows that Nevada is not big enough for both him and Sam, no matter how civil their phone conversations are. And he acknowledges that even though it will never be wormhole travel or sailing across the galaxies, running his own lab is still ten kinds of great even on the bad days. And sometimes it still feels like he’s back in Atlantis until he realizes he can’t smell the salt air. Things have not changed that much, except that with each passing year the IOA allows them to go public with a little bit more; each year the information a little bit bigger, and Rodney knows that he only has to be patient because soon enough either them or Area 51 or the Russians or the Chinese are going to make the next great discovery using something almost entirely Earth constructed and the world is going to change. He knows that there is every possibility that he will live to see mankind reach the stars and not just the Moon and without any help from the US military. These days he has the patience and the wonder to stand back and watch it all unfold. It’s what they’ve ultimately always been working towards and even if they can’t have Atlantis there are still plenty of other things to look forward to.

On nights when the Californian sky is crystal clear and the Moon is new he will drive out of the city and park on a hill and look up at the sky. Mostly he will wonder what Ronon and Teyla are up to (they get reports filtered through from Atlantis, but they come infrequently and only Teyla seems to take the time to send messages). In those moments he misses it most of all.

He goes about his daily life, helped along by copious amounts of coffee, Radek’s insistent desire to prove that he is in fact smarter than Rodney, and incompetent underlings that he will never remember names for. It is a constant in his life he supposes will never change. Radek has been offered substantial amounts of money to return and work for his government, and it frustrates Rodney to no end whenever Radek tells him the newest offer. He is getting paid nowhere near those amounts by the US, but he also knows that for Radek it was never about the money and even though they yell at each other six days out of seven to the consternation of their entire staff, neither of them would trade what they have for any number of zeros on a pay cheque. Rodney does not know how or when he inspired Radek’s loyalty, but he’s grateful for it nonetheless.

They have been back here six years now and some days it feels like it was only yesterday and others it feels like forever. But they are here, all of them, together, scattered though their jobs keep them, and of everything Rodney is most surprised and most grateful for this. Because he never dreamed that they would all walk through their trials and tribulations alive; so many were lost that he cannot imagine what makes them all so special. All the stupid times John risked his life; all the occasions something nearly blew up with Rodney inside; all the times they lost someone for a day, a week, a month, only to get them back. They have walked through the fire and emerged on the other side, not unscathed, but at least together. And that, he knows, makes walking this path that none of them ever wanted to imagine, even if most of them knew it was coming, the closest to happiness he ever thought he’d be.

He does not know what the future will bring, a fact that both amuses and scares him, and he is not so stupid to believe that it will be easy and peaceful the whole way. But it’s there, and he’s here and he is so absolutely ready to discover it.