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Fiction Main
Notes: Spoilers for Trinity; Rodneycentric.
Two Dimensions
by Frostfire
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
You don't make mistakes. You don't fucking make mistakes, because everyone's out there just waiting for it, waiting for you to screw up so they can move in and shove you down, get ahead of you. Rodney knows this, has known it since high school, when he was at one of the top schools in the country and still a couple years younger than everyone else and ten times as smart. If he'd made one mistake, just one, Cory Simmons or Delilah Hartley or fucking Mr. Tindley would have moved in and taken him down. No happy life of geekdom, blowing up the chemistry lab and hacking into the system, because everyone from the freshmen to the principal hated his guts and if he'd left them a single opening, one little illegal slip, he would have been lost. He learned that lesson real fast after Delilah's mom called the fucking CIA on him when he was twelve years old.
And then college. Youngest one in a field where youth was more valuable than brains, where you wanted to be there first, where speed was everything and you had to charge in and get there and trust that you were smart enough not to have screwed up on the way. And he was, and he knew it, and that just made it worse, because everyone who had to stop and fix their mistakes was giving him the finger as he blew past them, and he knew they'd be running after him to try and grab him by the shirt collar before he got to the finish line.
It's a stupid metaphor, but it's real.
He's always had to trust that he has everything right, everything worked out, and just go, because anything else and everyone will be running him down. No errors, no mistakes, no fucking wrong answers, because you can't afford it in this field. One mistake and you're sent to Siberia and have to spend years making your career back up from the ground.
In Siberia, everything stood still. He nearly lost his mind.
He wonders what Pegasus' Siberia is going to be.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
It's worse than the last time. Last time, he didn't have as much prestige, didn't have as much seniority, and he didn't have any trust to lose.
John's face. Jesus fucking Christ.
Sam never trusted him like John did. She did her own thing. She does her own thing, and he hates her a little bit for that. This race has been Rodney's entire life, and she doesn't even realize it's happening. Crosses the finish line without even trying, and watches bemusedly as Rodney run himself into the ground. He caught himself, afterward, wanting to step through a quantum mirror into her reality, where publishing is secondary and academic standing is tertiary and she just likes playing with gadgets and saving people's lives. She doesn't need to run.
Like John, flying his helicopter in circles in Antarctica. John's Antarctica, Rodney thinks, was like Rodney's Siberia, all white and still and silent, but John fucking liked it there, wasn't even trying to leave, and then planted his ass in a chair and suddenly there he was at the finish line.
Rodney's Antarctica was his way back into the race, running full tilt and dizzy with it, knowing he was at the head of the pack. Grad school all over again, and him the wunderkind of the physics world. The finish line was Atlantis. And he got here. And here is the best race of all and the hardest run ever. And he was winning.
Until he made his one fucking mistake, and John watched him with betrayed eyes as the Durandan system went nova.
John doesn't have a fucking clue.
Sam. John. God. Like they've got a wormhole set up, and can cross light-years in a single bound, while Rodney has to run every. Single. Fucking. Step. And he can't trip once, or--a solar system blows up.
He lost, again. And this time he lost more, because he had more. And now he's going to have to start from the beginning again, work his way up from a standstill, from his labs where no one will look him in the eye, from the briefing room where Elizabeth will never take one of his suggestions without a grain of salt, from--here.
"At the very least, I hope I can earn that back," he says, and John just looks at him for a second.
"That may take a while," he answers, and here, this is the Siberia of the Pegasus galaxy. Rodney can feel the room going white and blank already.
"But I'm sure you can do it, if you really want to try," John continues, and smiles. The transporter doors close behind him.
Rodney takes a breath. He can do this. He's started over before.
John Sheppard and Samantha Carter have found a third dimension to move in. Rodney's still stuck in two, but God damn it, he is going to make it back to the finish line.
=end=
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