Rodney would never remember the conversation afterwards, and for the rest of his life he would not understand why Tim Horton's coffee made him philosophical. But when he shut his eyes and stilled his mind, when he tuned out the infirmary and the worried minds around him, when blue skies gave way to the blackness of space, the infinite geometry of stars and galaxies, and then to perfect dark—
He was in a shopping mall.
It was, as malls go, fairly standard in some ways. There were chain stories and fake plants and suburbanites in ugly sweats plodding about with overstuffed bags. The PA was playing one of those radio stations that tries to pass off anything made before 1985 as "oldies" and he was standing next to a fountain. In other ways, the mall was completely bizarre. The edge of the fountain was inscribed with Pegasus Gate symbols, and there was a kiosk a few meters away selling Athosian pottery, and Rodney was wearing his BDUs, expedition patch and all, without anybody making a remark.
"Hello, Dr. McKay."
He spun, and found a pretty dark-haired woman standing behind him. She wasn't wearing anything that resembled normal Earth clothing, though it wouldn't have looked out of place in Pegasus—light-colored flowy linen-like stuff, put together so that it was hard to tell if was one piece or many. "Hi," Rodney said, folding his arms. "You, ah, seem to have me at a disadvantage here, and I don't mean to be rude, but I was on my way to a higher plain of existence and I'm kind of in a hurry."
She smiled at him and extended her hand. "I know your situation, Dr. McKay, and I am not surprised you don't remember me. We met only very briefly, and to you it must seem to have been long ago. I am Teer."
He shook with her, thinking furiously. The name did ping him, but for some reason he was thinking of the Sri Lankan anthropologist who'd just arrived even though he knew that wasn't right, where would he have met someone briefly and a long time ago—well, duh, on a mission—but if she was here, if she understood—
"Oh," he said when it clicked. "You're Sheppard's Ascended girlfriend, aren't you? The hippie in the time dilation field."
"More or less," Teer said, a little wryly.
"Well, uh, nice to see you again and all," Rodney said, "but what are you doing ,here? Actually, what am I doing here, and while we're at it, where is here?"
"I sensed what was happening to you," she said. "I was granted permission by the others to visit you in this way."
Rodney looked around, but yes, this was most definitely a suburban mall, albeit one with tattooed Jaffa serving as security guards. "Somehow this isn't what I expected from the Ascended Plane Welcome Wagon."
"You are not Ascended yet," Teer said gently. "You are on the brink of transformation, but I wished to speak with you first."
Rodney blinked at her. "Why? Trying to decide if I'm allowed into the country club?"
Teer gestured for him to come closer to her, and they began to walk through the mall together. "You confuse me, Dr. McKay," she said. "You strive towards Ascension, yet you do not truly wish it."
"I don't," he said, "I mean, I do, but I don't—look, I'm sure you know that this was an accident, right? So I kind of have to Ascend or very literally die trying?"
"I understand that," Teer said. They passed a Hot Topic, where sulky teenaged Wraith in baggy jeans and heavy eye makeup watched them sullenly. "And it is natural to resent something one is forced to do. But I do not comprehend why you would find Ascension to be such a burden."
"Of course you wouldn't," Rodney said. "It was sort of your goal in life, wasn't it? You didn't exactly have much else to live for in your little commune."
Teer was silent for a moment, and they passed an FAO Schwartz full of the feral children from M7G-677. "When John was in the Cloister," she eventually said, speaking slowly, "he spoke of experiencing life in a way we had never before considered. But when you were threatened by the Beast—when he so readily put his life in danger—we realized that our attachment to our mortal form was the very thing that stood in our way. We could not progress while full of fear for what we might lose. It was by releasing our own need to exist that we were freed."
"Yes, yes, yes, sublimate the ego, lay down the burden, et cetera, et cetera," Rodney said. "I have been doing my homework on this. I know the routine."
"You have such contempt for our path," Teer asked, looking bewildered. "Why have you started down it unwillingly?"
"Ascension is a tad bit more reversible than death."
Teer looked scandalized. "You would...you mean to return to the mortal form?"
"As quickly as humanly...or, uh, maybe Anciently possible," Rodney confirmed. "Preferably before there's some kind of crisis in the city that requires my expertise to fix. Not that, you know, I don't think Radek or the others do a good job, because that's why I kept—keep them around and all, but I like a sort of hands-on approach to saving the day. It's very fulfilling."
"You say you plan to return, yet you speak as if in it is already past," Teer said gently.
Rodney sighed. "Well, I'm being realistic here. Most of the Descended people the Stargate program has encountered suffer massive amnesia, if not brain damage, from the process. It's going to be a while before I'm ready to go back to work." If he ever was. If he didn't end up like Jackson, stranded naked on a random planet with no idea of where he'd come from or who he was...
"Yet you risk this," Teer said, sounded frustrated. "You and John, you find our way of being so distasteful without ever experiencing it. You would risk damage and death to yourself to flee back to the very form that so limits you—limits all your kind."
"Well, yes, okay, it's limited," Rodney said, "but—but so are you! The non-inference thing! You've got all that power and knowledge and every one of you who tries to actually use it gets punted out on their ass or exiled to the boonies or something!"
"It is the price we pay," Teer admitted. "But you have seen the alternative ravaging your home galaxy, have you not?"
"I've seen the alternative save people in my home galaxy," Rodney said. "And yours, too. I mean, okay, personal feelings about Chaya aside, she at least took a little responsibility for the mess the Ancients made of this place when they created the Wraith. Oma Desala, Merlin, Orlin—those people actually did something constructive and useful without turning into the Ori."
"Could you not do something useful?" Teer asked quietly. "You are a scientist, Dr. McKay—are you not tempted by the knowledge you might possess?"
"Kinda," Rodney said, slowly, "but—and this is such a Sheppard thing to say, I give you permission to smack me for it—the point isn't just to have the knowledge, it's the figuring stuff out part, and the using it to figure out other stuff part. That's why I got into science, the whole discovery thing. Just having it all handed to me isn't...wouldn't...it's no fun."
Teer shook her head as they passed the mall's food court—an array of tables that seemed to stretch for miles, fringed by every fast-food outlet he could imagine. That included a Tim Horton's, and Rodney conveniently found a few loonies in his pocket—because what was the point of wandering higher plains of existence if you couldn't spend your imaginary money at the Food Court at the End of the Universe? Especially when, on close examination, the cashiers were all Asgard. He bought a coffee while Teer asked, "So there is nothing about our existence that truly tempts you? Not power, not knowledge, not wisdom?"
Rodney shrugged. "Not really. Unless this," he waved the coffee under her nose, "is real, in which case, I might hang around for a little bit, because we didn't get enough on the last Daedalus run and I'm sick of scrounging through MREs for the powdered stuff."
"You have a peculiar sense of humor, Dr. McKay," Teer said.
"Blame your boyfriend, he's a terrible influence." Rodney sipped the coffee It was the best he'd ever tasted—exactly like his personal best, in fact, down to the faintly scorched afterburn, because when he finished his second dissertation he'd put on a bag of the really good beans that Jeannie had sent him for his birthday and then dozed off at the kitchen table and let the pot sit for four hours. He wondered if Teer could possibly understand something like that—good burnt coffee and giddy exhaustion and a three-inch binder full of his best work to date, work that in hindsight looks charmingly naïve but at the time was going to take him fantastic places. He wondered if Teer had ever had a goal other than getting here.
"I still find your stance very strange," she said, as if—well, duh, she probably was reading his mind. "Perhaps you will have a change of heart once you truly experience Ascension."
Rodney sighed. "Look, even if it turns out that the Ascended Plane is full of sunshine and daisies and it rains kittens every Tuesday and there's ZPMs as far as the eye can see, I'm still going back. I have to go back. I have, you know, responsibilities. Stuff to do."
"You said yourself that your colleagues could take up your work," Teer said.
"Yeah, but—well—" Rodney took a deep swallow of coffee to cover the stammer, because somehow he didn't think but it's mine! would go over well with an Ascended being. "But that doesn't mean they should. Should have to, you know. I mean—look, I've had to, to pick up the pieces of someone else's work—someone who died. It's not easy. Stuff gets lost. And my work, my job, it's a hell of a responsibility, and Radek shouldn't have to take that on just because I was hot-dogging around Dr. Esposito. You know he can't even swim? Three years in a floating city and he can't swim!"
Teer gave him an eloquent look. "You invest too much of yourself in your achievements, Dr. McKay."
"Yes, yes, yes," Rodney sighed, "I already had this conversation with Elizabeth, thank you, and I've been working on it. I just ran out of time."
"If you would lay this burden down..."
"My friends aren't a burden," Rodney blurted.
They were standing in a junction, arms of the mall stretching outwards towards anchor stores; there was another fountain in the middle, one that looked just like Atlantis, water rippling down its sides just like the day it rose. Teer tilted her head. "We were discussing your job, your status. Is that not why you desire so deeply to return?"
"Well, yes, of course I like status," Rodney said. "Status is fun. Status means I'm allowed to yell at people when they deserve it."
"But you spoke of your friends."
"I thought—never mind." Rodney finished his coffee and tossed the crushed cup in a trashcan. "Not important."
"I disagree."
Rodney sighed. "Yes, I'm thinking of my friends, all right?"
"They mean much to you."
"They're kind of the reason I even made it this far," Rodney muttered. "I figure I sort of owe it to them to finish the job."
Teer tilted her head. "Their attachment to you does not outweigh your own well-being. It is selfish to think so."
"Oh, right," Rodney said, "Silly me, I forgot I was supposed to resent them for actually giving a damn about me. It's been so long since anybody has, I'm a little out of practice with how to totally ignore it."
"You owe them nothing," Teer insisted quietly. "And they will carry without you. They will be well."
She gestured over Rodney's shoulder, and he turned to find a large electronics store taking up a corner slot. The display windows were stacked hapazardly with a mismash of technologies—plasma screens and console TVs and fizzy Genii monitors and delicate Ancient holograms. Every single one of them showed someone Rodney knew—there was Jeanie pushing Madison on a swing, there was his mother dozing at the nursing home, there was Samantha Carter in some kind of meeting. But the big wide screen in the center—razor-sharp Ancient-quality display, movie theater aspect ratio, as big as his bed—that was Atlantis. That was the infirmary. His own malfunctioning body sprawled weakly on the bed, and around him—
"You see?" Teer asked quietly.
Rodney swallowed. "Is this—is this how you see them? Us? It is, isn't it?"
Because he could suddenly understand what it was with Sheppard and Ascended women. John glowed—they all did, but Sheppard was the brightest, so intense that it had to hurt, the light bursting out of his skin. Carson had a calmer aura, Elizabeth and Teyla were steady beacons, Ronon burned dull and hot like a candle behind smoked glass, but even he shone, all of them did, brilliant points of strength and life. A little constellation, a point of origin, and Rodney pressed his hand against the glass and wondered at the beauty of it.
They'd said that they loved him. He'd felt it was true. But somehow, he hadn't realized that he maybe sort of loved them too.
"Dr. McKay?" Teer asked quietly.
"I have to go back," Rodney said. "I have to—just—let's get this over with, okay, because I have to get back there." Back home.
"You are still committed to your course?"
He nodded, dry-mouthed. "I...yeah. We don't leave our people behind."
She sighed, "If you insist."
"Yes, I insist, so let's get it on with it, let's...whatever it is I have to do to get glowy so I can hurry up and get back where I belong, because I'm effectively brain dead back there and I have a DNR in my file and it's not like I have any other choice."
"You're certain."
Rodney tore his eyes away from the screens to goggle at her. "Have you been listening to me? Yes, I'm certain. Yes, I'm going home, and the only way back is forward because my body's shut down and Carson can't stop it and the stupid machine doesn't have a back button or a rewind or any way to undo this, not unless we can somehow give it step-by-step instructions, which is impossible because we don't have time to figure out everything it did in order to sort out what to undo, it's not like we have a template laying about somewhere, except oh my god we do, don't we?" He grabbed Teer's shoulders. "We do, the little vampire—and we input that into the primary array—but that'll take hours, I don't—I can't—"
"Dr. McKay," Teer said, and gently squeezed his wrists. "Do you trust your friends?"
Carson was a witch doctor and Zelenka was a linear thinker and Rodney wouldn't trade them for the kingdoms of the world. "I can—can I do that? Is it allowed?"
"We may make an exception," Teer said, mouth quirking in a little smile.
"Well, uh—thanks," he said, and stepped back, not sure where he was going, what the hell he was doing, what the rules were about mega-malls on the outer planes. "For, you know, this little chat. The idea. Stuff."
She smiled. "It was...interesting, Dr. McKay. Until we meet again."
And Rodney didn't remember long enough to wonder just what she meant by that.