"Reason Enough": a "Last Man" AU
This is possibly the best thing I've ever written.
It was, for the most part, finished over a year ago, but as it delves deeply into recent Czech and Czechoslovak history, I felt obliged to have it vetted by local sources. This took a little time, but it was well worth it. Too often, people, including writers for the show, have written irresponsible and inaccurate things about life in this country under the communists (for instance, Radek's family would never have had to spend the winter in a tent -the government could not have it seen that anyone in their workers' paradise did not have a roof over their heads) and I was determined not to make such mistakes. As is often the case, the true nature of life here in those times was far more complex, and actually makes a much better story. I hope you find this true yourselves.
Summary:In "Last Man" we learn of a sad, alternate future for McKay and Atlantis but only up until the point where he talks to Lorne. What happened when he got to Atlantis to install his hologram program?... and after that?
Title: Reason Enough
Author: Taylor Dancinghands -taylor@tdancinghands.com
Category: canon AU
Characters: Old!McKay, Old!Zelenka, passing reference to: Zelenka/Kusanagi, McKay/Keller, Sheppard/Larrin. Also involves an insinuation of McKay/Zelenka which does not actually take place, and an implication on Carson/OC... off screen.
Rating: Gen
Spoilers/Season: "Last Man", and everything up to that point in season 4, especially "Travelers" and "Be All My Sins Remembered".
Author's notes:
The title and the chapter headings in this story come from the Andreas Vollenweider song of the same name. Those lyrics are, in turn (as most of you will have no doubt noted) mostly lifted from a random assortment of nursery rhymes. In the song, they are juxtaposed in such a way as to deliver a mysteriously moving effect, though I cannot quite explain why. I recommend giving it a listen.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, never will, not claiming to. Just wanna play with 'em a little. Can't I, can't I, huh?
Reason Enough
OR
Requiem for a Mimeograph Machine
by Taylor Dancinghands
Prologue: Předtím
* Staring Into The Depths Of The Darkest Dream,
Hurling Your Stones In The Eye Of The War Machine
"Did I never tell you about my father's printing press?" Radek asked as he idly watched the simulation slowly progress on the screen before him.
"Um, no?" Rodney replied, pushing his glasses up onto his nose as he peered at his own notebook screen.
"You asked me earlier," Radek said, looking across at his colleague, still not used to seeing glasses on him, much less the iron gray hair, or the deep set wrinkles around his eyes, "when I had learned to be so... devious? I think that is the word you used."
"Only in the kindest sense," Rodney looked up as well and, Radek noted, not for the first time, how uncertain and nervous Rodney seemed now, all the time. That was something else that was wrong with this timeline, he mused, and wondered if their actions would have fixed that as well, though they would never know.
"Of course," he reassured. "In circumstances such as those in which we find ourselves now, deviousness is a virtue, as it was when I was young."
"I suppose so," Rodney agreed, a little sadly.
"It was my father's youngest brother, Zdeněk, who acquired the thing, and at first no one wanted anything to do with it," Radek began his tale. "He stole it from where he worked, at a scrap metal yard and, of course, it was broken when he found it, as someone had decided that it wasn't possible to be repaired and so took it to be scrapped. He put it in the trunk of a car he had borrowed from a coworker and drove from Brno to my grandfather's house, where we all lived then -before it burned down- to show to my father and convince him to fix it." Radek shook his head, remembering the old family story of events that had happened before he had been born.
"I am told that my mother nearly forbade him from entering the house ever again, she was so angry, but my grandmother said, family is family, and he will not take it out of the car while he is visiting. That was what they did, of course, because we always did whatever Babička said, and then after dinner he and my father drove to the school where my father was the školník -the man who fixes things and takes care of maintenance at the school- and left it there, in the school's coal cellar."
"So I take it he did fix it?" Rodney asked.
"Oh yes," Radek said with a fond sigh. "All my uncle Zdeněk had to say to my father was, 'Maminka says you can fix anything, Kuba,' and he had to try. And once he tried he did, because maminka was usually right about that kind of thing. Of course, the thing was always breaking down when we were using it, and eventually I learned to fix it as well. It was the first thing I took apart and put back together again that mattered... and it mattered a great deal."
"Okay," Rodney said, eyes back on his notebook, but Radek knew he was still listening.
"It was a dangerous thing to possess, and my mother and my aunts all dreaded the times when my father and uncles were out at the school, late at night, using it," he continued, "but they were, I think, a little proud as well, to show such secret defiance."
"Wait," Rodney was looking up again. "Why was it dangerous?"
"Any means to speak freely, without the sanction of authority, was dangerous where I grew up, Rodney," Radek reminded him. Rodney was neither stupid nor ignorant, Radek had to remind himself, just a little distracted. He and Rodney had taken an entirely different set of truths for granted in their youths, and sometimes Rodney forgot.
"Oh... right..." Rodney muttered, coloring slightly. "Sorry."
"Sometimes I forget those things myself," Radek offered with forgiveness. "And sometimes I would like to."
~*~
I.
* Hark, Hark, The Dogs Do Bark, the Beggars Are Coming To Town
The Atlantis gateroom, when Rodney McKay finally arrived there after his first wormhole trip in twenty five years, seemed at once both heart-breakingly familiar, and heart-breakingly different. Physically, little or nothing had changed. Twenty five years was, after all, a mere blink of an eye in the lifetime of a city that had existed for over ten thousand years. It was the mood of the place that had changed -a thing that Rodney would once have dismissed as immaterial, or just nonsense. There was no dismissing it now, however. Having set foot in his former home for no more than a few seconds, Rodney could already sense the wretchedly oppressive mood that permeated the place. This seemed so very wrong, and yet, just as he would have expected. Everything else wonderful in his life had turned to ashes. How not this as well?
The new Director, Dr Bryant, was waiting to greet him. She was a civilian, yes, and a woman, if that made any difference, but she was as different from Dr Elizabeth Weir as could possibly be imagined. Cut from the same bolt of cloth as Maggie Thatcher, Rodney thought, or Madeline Albright , but without, he suspected, the same moral fortitude. A small mind looked at him suspiciously from her narrow, steel gray eyes as they shook hands, assessing rather than welcoming. Elizabeth would have found a way to do both, Rodney reflected.
Rodney was no expert on American military services, but it was neither Air-force airmen, nor Marines that flanked Dr Bryant and served as his welcoming committee. They seemed to be... was that a patch for Navy SEALs? Rodney frowned in confusion but knew better than to comment, and handed over his bags for the soldier to carry as he was escorted to his new quarters.
They put him in what they were calling VIP quarters, which were rather more spacious than the cramped dorm room he'd once called home here. Looking around the pleasantly appointed but utterly impersonal space, Rodney found himself irrationally wishing for that old place instead -tiny, cluttered, but marked with the few terribly important things that had made it his. The pictures and diplomas he'd mounted on the wall there, and later in the office of the fine home he'd shared for that one dream-like year with Jennifer, all lay in a box in some storage locker in Colorado now. He remembered how important they had seemed to him then, and how unimportant they had come to be, in the end.
Rodney was not here, however, to reclaim his lost youth, or even to make a new home. He was here to do a job, and when he was done... well he wasn't sure about that. Best to focus on the present moment, and let the future attend to itself.
He didn't bother to really unpack, just laid his suitcase open on top of the dresser and extracted his laptop, then found a desk to set it on and power it up, linking into the local network first thing. He was pretty sure he remembered the way to the labs, but a lot could change in twenty five years, and he most certainly did not wish to get caught wandering the corridors lost. Pulling up a map of the city, however, Rodney soon saw that all the important things, the labs, the mess hall, the infirmary, were all right where he had left them. He glanced over his old accustomed routes next, checking to make sure that the transporters he'd always used were still up and running, and found it all to be unchanged.
Shutting down his laptop, Rodney did one last check before he left his quarters -a quick self assessment to be sure he had eaten recently enough. Rodney didn't really want to confront the mess hall alone first thing, but he would if he had to. Passing out in the corridors due to low blood sugar would be infinitely worse. He'd eaten a big lunch before leaving Earth, though, and figured it would be a few hours yet before he needed to deal with that. Having determined this, Rodney tucked his laptop under his arm and headed out to find the labs.
Like riding a bicycle, Rodney thought, as his feet lead him directly to the labs without a single misstep. The faces he passed along the way were not the familiar ones he recalled, and that same sense of oppression and joylessness he'd sensed in the gateroom hung over everything, but the city herself remained unchanged, and for that Rodney was properly grateful. At the door to the labs, however, he hesitated.
This had once been his domain, his realm, where he had ruled at the very pinnacle of his career. He no longer knew who worked here; the SGC hadn't even seen fit to keep him apprised as to who was running the place these days, but there was a better than even chance that he'd be recognized. There was also a good chance that among those who recognized him, he would not be remembered fondly. Rodney was realistic about such things. He'd told himself that he was ready to be mocked and humiliated, if that was the price of carrying out his plan, and he'd certainly endured enough of that recently to be used to it. It was going to be particularly hard, though, he realized, to endure such treatment here, where he had once commanded such power. Still, there was nothing for it but to stride in and get it over with. He had come to do a job, and nothing that lay through those doors had the power to stop him.
It was as he was steeling himself to take the plunge that a commotion erupted from within, and the door opened before him. An angry staccato of a language he did not speak but recognized quite well indeed burst out, and preceding it, a young woman in a lab coat, her face flushed and her eyes bright... with tears? She stormed past him, heedless of his presence so that he had to step back in order to avoid being run over, and Rodney blinked in astonishment. Was it possible...?
"And do not come back," a painfully familiar, accented voice called after her, "until you can actually show me your diploma, so that I may creditably write to MIT asking how they have allowed such incompetents to graduate!"
Rodney slipped in unseen in the wake of the commotion, finding, as might be expected, every other scientist in the lab deeply intent upon their own work. Looking around, Rodney saw that the faces, save one, were as unfamiliar as those in the halls, but here the air of oppression was considerably lessened, and the immediate oppressor, such as he was, perched before him, just as intent upon his work as everyone else.
Dr Radek Zelenka's hair was longer now, and streaked with silver and gray, and his glasses were noticeably thicker. The eyes behind the lenses, however, were still bright with intelligence and curiosity, and just at the moment they smoldered a bit with annoyance. It was all so very wonderful to see that Rodney found an unexpected smile breaking out on his face.
"Still using my methods to keep the minions in line, eh?" he said, and Zelenka's head snapped up from behind his laptop, his expression gradually shifting from one of shock to sincere delight.
"Rodney McKay!" he said, grinning. "They told me you were coming, but you know, I did not believe them."
"Radek... Zelumpka...?" Rodney could not help returning to the old joke. "I had no idea you were still here!"
Zelenka's grin grew fierce, but the question he asked next was an honest one, as honest as the latter part of Rodney's last statement. "Then they did not tell you?" he asked.
Rodney shook his head. "Bastards revoked nearly all my security clearances," he answered.
"Well then you will not have learned," Zelenka said merrily, "that I had my name changed to Dr Fumbles McStupid some time ago... for simplicity's sake."
Rodney could not have stopped the laughter that welled up from within him if he tried, and so he gave in to it, letting it render him weak in the knees, so that he had to quickly find a stool to sit on, and even squeeze a few tears from his eyes. He did not think he had laughed so hard in years... possibly twenty five of them.
Zelenka joined him, though the looks his staff gave each other as his peals of laughter filled the lab made Rodney wonder if he had not laughed in nearly as long as well.
~*~
Chapter 2
It was, for the most part, finished over a year ago, but as it delves deeply into recent Czech and Czechoslovak history, I felt obliged to have it vetted by local sources. This took a little time, but it was well worth it. Too often, people, including writers for the show, have written irresponsible and inaccurate things about life in this country under the communists (for instance, Radek's family would never have had to spend the winter in a tent -the government could not have it seen that anyone in their workers' paradise did not have a roof over their heads) and I was determined not to make such mistakes. As is often the case, the true nature of life here in those times was far more complex, and actually makes a much better story. I hope you find this true yourselves.
Summary:In "Last Man" we learn of a sad, alternate future for McKay and Atlantis but only up until the point where he talks to Lorne. What happened when he got to Atlantis to install his hologram program?... and after that?
Title: Reason Enough
Author: Taylor Dancinghands -taylor@tdancinghands.com
Category: canon AU
Characters: Old!McKay, Old!Zelenka, passing reference to: Zelenka/Kusanagi, McKay/Keller, Sheppard/Larrin. Also involves an insinuation of McKay/Zelenka which does not actually take place, and an implication on Carson/OC... off screen.
Rating: Gen
Spoilers/Season: "Last Man", and everything up to that point in season 4, especially "Travelers" and "Be All My Sins Remembered".
Author's notes:
The title and the chapter headings in this story come from the Andreas Vollenweider song of the same name. Those lyrics are, in turn (as most of you will have no doubt noted) mostly lifted from a random assortment of nursery rhymes. In the song, they are juxtaposed in such a way as to deliver a mysteriously moving effect, though I cannot quite explain why. I recommend giving it a listen.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, never will, not claiming to. Just wanna play with 'em a little. Can't I, can't I, huh?
Reason Enough
OR
Requiem for a Mimeograph Machine
by Taylor Dancinghands
Prologue: Předtím
* Staring Into The Depths Of The Darkest Dream,
Hurling Your Stones In The Eye Of The War Machine
"Did I never tell you about my father's printing press?" Radek asked as he idly watched the simulation slowly progress on the screen before him.
"Um, no?" Rodney replied, pushing his glasses up onto his nose as he peered at his own notebook screen.
"You asked me earlier," Radek said, looking across at his colleague, still not used to seeing glasses on him, much less the iron gray hair, or the deep set wrinkles around his eyes, "when I had learned to be so... devious? I think that is the word you used."
"Only in the kindest sense," Rodney looked up as well and, Radek noted, not for the first time, how uncertain and nervous Rodney seemed now, all the time. That was something else that was wrong with this timeline, he mused, and wondered if their actions would have fixed that as well, though they would never know.
"Of course," he reassured. "In circumstances such as those in which we find ourselves now, deviousness is a virtue, as it was when I was young."
"I suppose so," Rodney agreed, a little sadly.
"It was my father's youngest brother, Zdeněk, who acquired the thing, and at first no one wanted anything to do with it," Radek began his tale. "He stole it from where he worked, at a scrap metal yard and, of course, it was broken when he found it, as someone had decided that it wasn't possible to be repaired and so took it to be scrapped. He put it in the trunk of a car he had borrowed from a coworker and drove from Brno to my grandfather's house, where we all lived then -before it burned down- to show to my father and convince him to fix it." Radek shook his head, remembering the old family story of events that had happened before he had been born.
"I am told that my mother nearly forbade him from entering the house ever again, she was so angry, but my grandmother said, family is family, and he will not take it out of the car while he is visiting. That was what they did, of course, because we always did whatever Babička said, and then after dinner he and my father drove to the school where my father was the školník -the man who fixes things and takes care of maintenance at the school- and left it there, in the school's coal cellar."
"So I take it he did fix it?" Rodney asked.
"Oh yes," Radek said with a fond sigh. "All my uncle Zdeněk had to say to my father was, 'Maminka says you can fix anything, Kuba,' and he had to try. And once he tried he did, because maminka was usually right about that kind of thing. Of course, the thing was always breaking down when we were using it, and eventually I learned to fix it as well. It was the first thing I took apart and put back together again that mattered... and it mattered a great deal."
"Okay," Rodney said, eyes back on his notebook, but Radek knew he was still listening.
"It was a dangerous thing to possess, and my mother and my aunts all dreaded the times when my father and uncles were out at the school, late at night, using it," he continued, "but they were, I think, a little proud as well, to show such secret defiance."
"Wait," Rodney was looking up again. "Why was it dangerous?"
"Any means to speak freely, without the sanction of authority, was dangerous where I grew up, Rodney," Radek reminded him. Rodney was neither stupid nor ignorant, Radek had to remind himself, just a little distracted. He and Rodney had taken an entirely different set of truths for granted in their youths, and sometimes Rodney forgot.
"Oh... right..." Rodney muttered, coloring slightly. "Sorry."
"Sometimes I forget those things myself," Radek offered with forgiveness. "And sometimes I would like to."
~*~
I.
* Hark, Hark, The Dogs Do Bark, the Beggars Are Coming To Town
The Atlantis gateroom, when Rodney McKay finally arrived there after his first wormhole trip in twenty five years, seemed at once both heart-breakingly familiar, and heart-breakingly different. Physically, little or nothing had changed. Twenty five years was, after all, a mere blink of an eye in the lifetime of a city that had existed for over ten thousand years. It was the mood of the place that had changed -a thing that Rodney would once have dismissed as immaterial, or just nonsense. There was no dismissing it now, however. Having set foot in his former home for no more than a few seconds, Rodney could already sense the wretchedly oppressive mood that permeated the place. This seemed so very wrong, and yet, just as he would have expected. Everything else wonderful in his life had turned to ashes. How not this as well?
The new Director, Dr Bryant, was waiting to greet him. She was a civilian, yes, and a woman, if that made any difference, but she was as different from Dr Elizabeth Weir as could possibly be imagined. Cut from the same bolt of cloth as Maggie Thatcher, Rodney thought, or Madeline Albright , but without, he suspected, the same moral fortitude. A small mind looked at him suspiciously from her narrow, steel gray eyes as they shook hands, assessing rather than welcoming. Elizabeth would have found a way to do both, Rodney reflected.
Rodney was no expert on American military services, but it was neither Air-force airmen, nor Marines that flanked Dr Bryant and served as his welcoming committee. They seemed to be... was that a patch for Navy SEALs? Rodney frowned in confusion but knew better than to comment, and handed over his bags for the soldier to carry as he was escorted to his new quarters.
They put him in what they were calling VIP quarters, which were rather more spacious than the cramped dorm room he'd once called home here. Looking around the pleasantly appointed but utterly impersonal space, Rodney found himself irrationally wishing for that old place instead -tiny, cluttered, but marked with the few terribly important things that had made it his. The pictures and diplomas he'd mounted on the wall there, and later in the office of the fine home he'd shared for that one dream-like year with Jennifer, all lay in a box in some storage locker in Colorado now. He remembered how important they had seemed to him then, and how unimportant they had come to be, in the end.
Rodney was not here, however, to reclaim his lost youth, or even to make a new home. He was here to do a job, and when he was done... well he wasn't sure about that. Best to focus on the present moment, and let the future attend to itself.
He didn't bother to really unpack, just laid his suitcase open on top of the dresser and extracted his laptop, then found a desk to set it on and power it up, linking into the local network first thing. He was pretty sure he remembered the way to the labs, but a lot could change in twenty five years, and he most certainly did not wish to get caught wandering the corridors lost. Pulling up a map of the city, however, Rodney soon saw that all the important things, the labs, the mess hall, the infirmary, were all right where he had left them. He glanced over his old accustomed routes next, checking to make sure that the transporters he'd always used were still up and running, and found it all to be unchanged.
Shutting down his laptop, Rodney did one last check before he left his quarters -a quick self assessment to be sure he had eaten recently enough. Rodney didn't really want to confront the mess hall alone first thing, but he would if he had to. Passing out in the corridors due to low blood sugar would be infinitely worse. He'd eaten a big lunch before leaving Earth, though, and figured it would be a few hours yet before he needed to deal with that. Having determined this, Rodney tucked his laptop under his arm and headed out to find the labs.
Like riding a bicycle, Rodney thought, as his feet lead him directly to the labs without a single misstep. The faces he passed along the way were not the familiar ones he recalled, and that same sense of oppression and joylessness he'd sensed in the gateroom hung over everything, but the city herself remained unchanged, and for that Rodney was properly grateful. At the door to the labs, however, he hesitated.
This had once been his domain, his realm, where he had ruled at the very pinnacle of his career. He no longer knew who worked here; the SGC hadn't even seen fit to keep him apprised as to who was running the place these days, but there was a better than even chance that he'd be recognized. There was also a good chance that among those who recognized him, he would not be remembered fondly. Rodney was realistic about such things. He'd told himself that he was ready to be mocked and humiliated, if that was the price of carrying out his plan, and he'd certainly endured enough of that recently to be used to it. It was going to be particularly hard, though, he realized, to endure such treatment here, where he had once commanded such power. Still, there was nothing for it but to stride in and get it over with. He had come to do a job, and nothing that lay through those doors had the power to stop him.
It was as he was steeling himself to take the plunge that a commotion erupted from within, and the door opened before him. An angry staccato of a language he did not speak but recognized quite well indeed burst out, and preceding it, a young woman in a lab coat, her face flushed and her eyes bright... with tears? She stormed past him, heedless of his presence so that he had to step back in order to avoid being run over, and Rodney blinked in astonishment. Was it possible...?
"And do not come back," a painfully familiar, accented voice called after her, "until you can actually show me your diploma, so that I may creditably write to MIT asking how they have allowed such incompetents to graduate!"
Rodney slipped in unseen in the wake of the commotion, finding, as might be expected, every other scientist in the lab deeply intent upon their own work. Looking around, Rodney saw that the faces, save one, were as unfamiliar as those in the halls, but here the air of oppression was considerably lessened, and the immediate oppressor, such as he was, perched before him, just as intent upon his work as everyone else.
Dr Radek Zelenka's hair was longer now, and streaked with silver and gray, and his glasses were noticeably thicker. The eyes behind the lenses, however, were still bright with intelligence and curiosity, and just at the moment they smoldered a bit with annoyance. It was all so very wonderful to see that Rodney found an unexpected smile breaking out on his face.
"Still using my methods to keep the minions in line, eh?" he said, and Zelenka's head snapped up from behind his laptop, his expression gradually shifting from one of shock to sincere delight.
"Rodney McKay!" he said, grinning. "They told me you were coming, but you know, I did not believe them."
"Radek... Zelumpka...?" Rodney could not help returning to the old joke. "I had no idea you were still here!"
Zelenka's grin grew fierce, but the question he asked next was an honest one, as honest as the latter part of Rodney's last statement. "Then they did not tell you?" he asked.
Rodney shook his head. "Bastards revoked nearly all my security clearances," he answered.
"Well then you will not have learned," Zelenka said merrily, "that I had my name changed to Dr Fumbles McStupid some time ago... for simplicity's sake."
Rodney could not have stopped the laughter that welled up from within him if he tried, and so he gave in to it, letting it render him weak in the knees, so that he had to quickly find a stool to sit on, and even squeeze a few tears from his eyes. He did not think he had laughed so hard in years... possibly twenty five of them.
Zelenka joined him, though the looks his staff gave each other as his peals of laughter filled the lab made Rodney wonder if he had not laughed in nearly as long as well.
~*~
Chapter 2