If At First You Don’t Succeed: Chapter 11

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Title: If At First You Don’t Succeed
Rating: R
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, John Sheppard
Word Count: 6359
Categories: action, drama, angst, hurt/comfort, team as family
Spoilers: none
Warnings: graphic violence and injuries; temporary character death
Summary: In a far corner of the galaxy, Ronon watches Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay die over and over again. And he follows them, over and over again.

He’s the only one who can remember, the only one who can save them—if he can figure out how.

Time isn’t running out, but that might be the problem.


Ronon made sure to leave before the others woke up the next morning.

As the first rays of sunlight touched the city, he began preparing himself for what he knew was coming. He wouldn’t avoid it, wouldn’t try to avoid them. He’d known the time would come, and if it was now then it would be now. He would just have to be ready for it.

So for the rest of the day he followed his normal routine, every moment expecting one of more of his teammates to suddenly appear, ready to corner him and coerce him into finally talking. But none of them popped up along his typical running route that morning, or interrupted the afternoon’s self-defense class he held for a group of curious scientists. He ate breakfast alone, lunch with some of the scientists from his class, and dinner with a group of new Marines who spent more time peppering him with questions about Pegasus than they did eating.

But Ronon didn’t see Sheppard, or Teyla, or McKay all day. So when the visitor alert sounded at his door not long after dark, he knew who would be on the other side.

Even so, he was momentarily surprised when he opened the door to find Sheppard standing alone in the hallway.

Ronon had anticipated the others confronting him as a team, not individually. Especially since he didn’t really see the situation as something Sheppard or McKay would willingly tackle by themselves; if anyone would have come to him alone, it would have been Teyla. But after a moment’s consideration, Ronon figured that if they were taking turns talking with him—or building up to the whole team getting together, one at a time—it made sense that Sheppard would lead the effort. That was kind of what he did.

Still, Ronon wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of possibly having to recount his story multiple times, wasn’t even sure he’d be able to. So he just stood there on one side of the open door and waited for Sheppard to make the first move from the other.

But after studying him calmly for a few seconds, Sheppard simply said, “Grab your pillow.”

It wasn’t what Ronon had expected, but even as confusion washed over him, understanding cut through it like cold water on a hot face.

Whatever was going to happen, whatever his team had planned, it wasn’t going to happen in Ronon’s room. Sheppard hadn’t come to talk with Ronon alone—he’d merely been sent to retrieve him, and they were going to join the others somewhere else. Maybe even back in McKay’s quarters, like the night before.

Briefly relieved by the revelation that he would only have to do this once—and that the memory of doing so wouldn’t be tied to his own quarters—Ronon gave a sharp nod of understanding.

At any other time, the idea of walking through Atlantis while clutching a pillow would’ve seemed unbearably ridiculous to him, whatever the circumstances. And there was a small, faint part of Ronon that grumbled as much as he approached his bed. But his anxiety about the upcoming conversation was much, much louder, and he did as Sheppard had instructed without hesitation, joining him in the hallway with a pillow gripped in one fist.

Ignoring the swish of the door closing behind him, Ronon silently followed Sheppard down the quiet corridors. He could hear noises from some of the rooms they passed, the sounds of the city settling in for the night: the murmur of voices behind closed doors, faint music, muffled laughter. He waited for them to run into someone as they walked, for their curious gaze to run over Sheppard, and then Ronon and his pillow, but the halls remained empty.

Ronon’s step faltered for a beat when, instead of taking the turn toward McKay’s quarters—or toward any other quarters, for that matter—Sheppard turned into a hallway that led away from the central area of the city. It wasn’t a move Ronon had expected, and it took him a minute or so to place them in his mental map of Atlantis. They’d moved into one of the city’s piers, the southern one, Ronon was sure.

One more turn found Ronon and Sheppard stepping into a transporter, then stepping out again on the ground floor of the pier.

Wondering why Sheppard would bring him out here—why the team would do this out here—Ronon followed Sheppard though the hallways and toward the pier’s tip. He wasn’t as familiar with this part of the city, and he tensed slightly every time they approached a door, wondering whether this would be the one Sheppard would stop at, and what could be behind it.

But Sheppard continued all the way to the end of the hall, to where it looped around to begin its path back toward the tower. Here, at the end of the loop, was one final door. Sheppard had paused beside it while Ronon caught up, and he threw Ronon a small smile over his shoulder as he waved it open, adding a unnecessary, “C’mon,” before he stepped outside.

Ronon took a breath and followed.

Beyond the door was a large room whose original use had been lost to time, but which might once have been a hangar or a dock of some sort. It had only three walls, the expanse facing the water completely open to the sea.

Close to the opening, bedrolls had been laid out in a line facing the water. McKay and Teyla were already there, sitting on their rolls, and they way they looked around at Ronon as he approached made him think think they’d been chatting when he and Sheppard had arrived. Sheppard was already settling down on the roll farthest to the right, beside Teyla, so Ronon took the cue and sank down onto the empty one on her other side, between her and McKay. Tossing his pillow toward the head of his roll, he draped his arms across his knees and stared out at the ocean.

They were at least thirty feet or more above the water level here, and it was a calm night, but Ronon could still make out the gentle sound of water lapping at the walls below them. Far out across the water to the left, the moon sat full and heavy in the sky, its bright face reflected in the still surface of the sea.

Sitting there, with the bedrolls and the sea and the stars, was almost like being off world again. Just another campsite for an overnight stay, the only thing missing the campfire. It was an oddly comforting arrangement, though whether due to the familiarity or simply the fact that he had all of others in sight again, Ronon wasn’t sure. Either way, he could feel himself relaxing, tension slowly releasing from his coiled muscles.

No one spoke, and Ronon wondered what the others were thinking. Were they considering his behavior last night, and what had led him to it? Were they contemplating what they already knew about the loops, and wondering how to ask Ronon about them? Or were they trying to determine the best way to tell him that they didn’t actually want to know more? That they never wanted to hear about it again?

He wouldn’t blame them if they wanted to forget that the entire thing had ever happened. He wished he could do the same, wished he couldn’t still see with vivid clarity each of their many deaths. If the others decided they never wanted to mention it again, he would understand. In fact, he could almost convince himself that they’d already made that decision, and that they’d brought him out onto this pier just to spend time together while they were still on mission stand-down.

But he knew better. They were here for a reason. And—he tensed slightly as the realization hit him—they were here for a reason. The decampment to this pier had been purposeful, the camp-like arrangement intentional. The others had chosen a featureless, unfamiliar place for this conversation, one that could go back to being completely nondescript once they left it. They had set this all up on neutral ground, a place he had no connections to and one he could avoid forever after if needed.

They knew this was going to be hard for him, and they were trying to make it easier.

“I did some more research on the facility.”

Ronon didn’t turn toward McKay when he spoke, instead looking sideways toward Teyla and Sheppard to see whether McKay’s statement was just for his benefit, or if they were also hearing it for the first time. It appeared it was news to them, too, if the slight rise in Teyla’s eyebrows was anything to go by. But, like Ronon, neither seemed to find it unexpected.

Shifting around slightly so that he could more easily look in McKay’s direction, Sheppard let out a mildly inquisitive, “Oh?”

“It was a lot easier once I knew what to look for,” McKay responded.

His tone was artificially casual in a way that Ronon found very telling. McKay only acted that way when he wasn’t sure whether he should have done something he’d already done. He was using nonchalance to test the team’s waters—or at least Ronon’s tolerance level.

McKay, of all people, was being careful with him, and Ronon wasn’t sure whether he was grateful or embarrassed. Instead, knowing that it was being left to him to make the next move, to decide if and how they would go about this, Ronon finally spoke.

“And?”

He couldn’t actually bring himself to look at McKay—the memory of the greedy expression he had worn back in the device room was too close to the surface at the moment—but he did tilt his head in that direction in a listening gesture. Which was apparently all the encouragement McKay needed.

“The planet itself didn’t have a lot of documentation, as you’re all well aware,” he began, tone still careful, “but once I had some details about the facility specifically, I was able to refine my searches in the database. With the additional parameters, I found information on the building of the facility, personnel records for the scientists who worked there, and even some experiment logs.”

“What did you discover, Rodney?”

McKay maneuvered himself around using his hands until he was facing Teyla before he answered. Ronon could see his face better now, even still not looking directly at him, and he swallowed hard at the enthusiasm lighting McKay’s eyes.

“So that planet is in the galactic middle-of-nowhere, right? I’d thought it was a little odd that the Ancients would bother to build a facility somewhere like that, especially one as big as Ronon described. Originally, I suspected that they’d built it there as kind of a back-up plan, y’know, a back-water hideout in case the worst should happen.”

“You mean like a Wraith invasion of Atlantis,” Sheppard supplied.

McKay flapped a hand in the air. “Or something like that.”

“But you no longer think that?” Teyla queried.

“No, because of what I found in the database. See, I wasn’t able to get a lot of specifics—a lot of the records I found have actually been treated with the Ancient equivalent of redaction, which is telling, because think of all the stupid things the Ancients have done and proudly maintained documentation of, right?”

“They do seem to lack the capacity for shame,” Sheppard agreed.

McKay nodded emphatically. “Exactly, so the fact that they would hide anything, especially from themselves, seemed super suspicious to me.”

Ronon expected that excitement and intrigue had fueled McKay more than suspicion, but he kept that to himself. There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with curiosity. Not even McKay’s brand.

“But by combining what I could find from architectural schematics, personnel records, and experiment logs, I think I know why they built the facility where they did.”

McKay paused expectantly.

“Which is?” Sheppard prompted.

“They built it there to protect Atlantis,” McKay replied. “To protect everyone and everything everywhere, really. But I think most specifically to protect Atlantis.”

Teyla was frowning faintly. “To protect it from what?”

“From the experiments that were being done. See, from what I could piece together, the facility was built specifically to house the most dangerous experiments the Ancients were attempting. The kinds of things that could go catastrophically wrong in multiple different ways. Instead of performing those experiments on Atlantis—or near any other populated areas—they found a remote planet in a remote solar system in a remote corner of the galaxy.”

“So if worse came to worst…” Sheppard began.

“It wouldn’t come to even worser, yeah.”

Ronon couldn’t deny that McKay’s theory made sense—both in terms of why the facility had been built where it had, and also why it had been so deadly when they’d gotten trapped there. He remembered the small creatures that had attacked them, and wondered if those had been experiments, too. Maybe they’d escaped the facility at some point, or had been let loose on purpose to discourage visitors from exploring the planet.

Or maybe the Ancients had picked the planet because it was already dangerous. It seemed like something they would do.

Ronon clenched his teeth together at the thought, rage flashing through him like a lightning bolt. So many deaths, and for what? Had anything good even come out of it?

He was about to ask McKay as much, see if he’d found anything about what the facility had managed to do when he caught Teyla’s expression and was brought up short. She was giving him a look that was almost apologetic, but even as Ronon registered it she focused her gaze back on McKay.

“Would the time loop device that we found be considered that dangerous?” she asked him.

“Maybe it was a failed experiment?” Sheppard suggested.

But McKay was shaking his head. “No, I’m pretty sure it was working as designed.”

Sheppard gave him a doubtful look. “So you don’t think it’s the same situation as that time device SG-1 found?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Because…?”

“About half a dozen reasons.” McKay gave a jittery shrug. “Just by design alone it’s clear that they weren’t built the same way or at the same time—maybe not even by the same person—and therefore probably didn’t have the same purpose. But mostly it’s because of how they looped. The device SG-1 found was never meant to loop; that was a defect. That’s why it replayed the same bit of time over and over, without deviation by even a second. But the device we found didn’t do that; it didn’t have a time limit.”

Teyla was frowning again. “So you believe that the device was purposefully created to make loops?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

Ronon felt everyone’s eyes move to him. It was the first question he’d asked since his single-word prompt had given McKay permission to broach this topic. And it was the one question that had been bothering him ever since they’d escaped the planet.

Why would anyone create a device that forced you relive time, to go through death again and again?

“This is mostly speculation,” McKay advised in a measured tone, “since, again, lots of redaction. But I think one of the scientists working at the facility built it. In fact, there’s one personnel file that’s almost entirely redacted, so I suspect it was that guy. I mean, think about it: you’re an Ancient scientist doing incredibly complicated and dangerous experiments that could at any point kill you. Wouldn’t you want a way to get all the time you needed to repeat tests until you found what you were looking for? With the added benefit of a built-in failsafe that would bring you back to life if that incredibly dangerous experiment just so happened to kill you?”

By the end of his explanation, McKay’s tone had taken on a tinge of longing, and Ronon’s stomach clenched, memory and reality rubbing together painfully.

“So you think this guy built the loop device so that he could experiment a bit more recklessly?” Sheppard asked, somewhat incredulously.

“No!” McKay’s quick response sounded defensive, and Ronon saw his shoulders drop slightly as he added, more evenly, “Maybe. Or he could have built the device as its own experiment.”

“And then discovered its restorative properties separately?” Teyla asked.

“Probably by accident.”

“And decided to use them for his nefarious Ancient experiments,” Sheppard concluded. “Sounds about right.” He sighed, then went very still, a hint of fear in his eyes. “McKay, what would’ve happened if we’d left the planet without turning the device back off?”

That was something that hadn’t occurred to Ronon, and he turned to McKay, too, curious and concerned in his own measure. His heart skipped a beat: had they actually turned the device off before they left?

McKay frowned faintly for a few moments, and then shrugged.

“Possibly nothing. Possibly a paradox that would have ripped a hole in the fabric of the universe.”

“Oh, is that all?” Sheppard weakly replied.

“I mean, that’s the kind of risk you take when you mess around with time,” McKay brusquely continued. “And that’s exactly the sort of thing that supports my theory about the facility. You wouldn’t want something like that lying around where anyone could get to it, or where there were too many people nearby. Imagine what could have happened if someone decided to abuse the power! Or if something went wrong with the device!”

“It did.”

Ronon’s tone was blunt, and at his words a charged, expectant silence fell. For a few moments, only the shushing of the waves could be heard. Ronon took a deep breath of the salty air, narrowing his eyes against the moonlight now pouring into the room. The setting was about as different as they could get to the facility without leaving Atlantis, and was the best he could ask for for this moment.

Here and now was the easiest it would probably ever be for him to tell the others the full story. Their story. So he did.

He’d given everyone the briefest explanation of what had happened on the planet during the mission debriefing, and had included little more than that in the after action report he’d submitted to Weir. There simply hadn’t been any reason for him to rehash all the deaths at that point—everyone had come back alive and unscathed in the end, after all—and no one had pushed for more. So he’d kept the details to himself, sticking to just a very broad summary of the events.

But now, sitting in the moonlight with his teammates, he told them everything.

He told them about suffocating, about how they’d managed to meet the same end twice in a row. Teyla took his hand as he talked about her body crumpling under his, and kept it in hers for the rest of his story, linking their fingers together like a tether. When Ronon talked about the first Wraith attack, he forced himself to look McKay in the face so that he wouldn’t lose himself in the memory of old, troubled eyes and labored breaths.

Sheppard winced when Ronon relayed the loop where they were all electrocuted, and McKay looked horrified when he described the room that had bloodlessly sliced them all apart. Then he countered that with their very bloody encounter with the tree-dwelling creatures, from first attack to mercy killing to slow, painful death.

The last death was the hardest for Ronon to share, but he did it anyway. If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right, and he was going to do it fully.

As he described the situation—the outcome of which, in the retelling, was far more obvious than it had been in the moment—he watched as McKay grew paler. By the time Ronon told of finding the team drowned, McKay was stark white.

It was then that Ronon remembered a time when he had been away from the city, a time when a jumper had been at the bottom of the sea.

For weeks after the incident, McKay had kept his back to Atlantis’ many windows, unable to bear the sight or sound of the ocean. It had taken him a long time to recover, longer than he had actually taken for it, longer than most people knew.

He’d confessed to the rest of the team that he hadn’t ever feared drowning before.

“Eaten by a whale? Crushed to death by explosive decompression? Sure! But not drowning for some stupid, unfathomable reason.” He’d let out a weak laugh. “Ha! ‘Fathoms’! And I’m a shit swimmer, too. You’d think that would’ve made me warier.”

“You’re shit at most physical stuff,” Ronon had pointed out, to Teyla’s disapproval.

“Ronon!”

“I’m just sayin’, that’s probably why he didn’t think about it.”

Teyla had given Ronon a disappointed glare, but McKay had just nodded, looking almost relieved by the explanation.

“No, no—he’s got a point…”

McKay had gotten better after that conversation, and Ronon hadn’t thought about the incident since. It certainly hadn’t occurred to him as he carried McKay’s limp body out of the waterlogged bathroom and laid it out in the hallway.

But it came back to him now, and the guilt that washed over him was so strong he felt his stomach heave. It had been bad enough knowing that he was at fault for his teammates drowning, but knowing that it was a particular fear of McKay’s—one he’d already had to face under horrifying circumstances—made everything so much worse.

Ronon closed his eyes as he finished the story, as much against the flood of emotions as to block out the others’ expressions as he relayed the final part.

“It took me a bit, but I figured out we hadn’t looped again because I was still alive. So I shot myself.”

Teyla’s hand twitched in his, an involuntary response. Then she gave his hand a hard squeeze. Ronon opened his eyes and stared out across the water.

“You know the rest,” he finished.

There was a pause before anyone spoke again. A little unexpectedly, it was Sheppard.

“So the loops only ended once we were all dead?” he quietly asked, voice tight.

“Until Ronon was,” McKay clarified. His color was coming back, and he was studying Ronon with an odd mixture of curiosity and sympathy in his eyes. “You’re the one who activated the device, so it was connected to you. That’s why you were the only one who remembered the loops.”

Ronon had come to the same conclusion after thinking about everything that happened. But it was still hard to hear his mistake described out loud, so clearly and plainly. If he’d known, if he just could have figured it out sooner, no one else would have had to die.

It didn’t matter that none of the others remembered that they’d died. Ronon did. And that was enough.

They had died and it was his fault. Simple as that.

“We are very lucky that you touched the device, Ronon.”

Having already braced himself to bear the unacceptable forgiveness he knew he would be offered—this wasn’t your fault, you did the best you could, no one blames you—Ronon had started nodding before Teyla’s words registered. Once they did his muscles went rigid with disbelief, his gaze snapping around to Teyla’s face as his mind reeled.

Forgiveness he had anticipated, but gratitude? His mind simply refused to accept that that was what Teyla had said, what she had meant, and it shut down on him in protest. He stared hollowly into her open face for a long time before he could manage a response.

“What?” he rasped.

Teyla smiled serenely, his hand—the one that had touched the device—still firmly held in hers.

“From what you have told us, the facility was full of many dangers. Ones that we no doubt would have encountered as we explored it in full. Had you not touched the device, allowing us the opportunity to relive the past—and for you to change it—we very likely would have perished permanently at the first danger we encountered.”

“Teyla’s got a point,” Sheppard added, tone thoughtful. “We’d probably have died in that first room, the suffocation one.”

Ronon’s head swam at the implications. He felt dazed and sick.

McKay looked a little sick himself. “For all intents and purposes, the device did what it was supposed to do. Maybe it was built for recovery from failed experiments, but it worked just as well for recovery from failed facilities, too.”

Ronon stared around at them, numb. While McKay looked suitably disturbed by Teyla’s revelation—probably running statistical analysis models on their survival in his mind—Teyla herself appeared entirely calm. Sheppard was frowning slightly, but his expression leaned more toward considering than horrified, as if he were simply contemplating where “dying horribly over and over again to prevent dying permanently” would rank among the brushes with death he’d had so far in Pegasus.

But Ronon couldn’t accept the idea that he had done anything good back on the planet. He had been the one to trigger the device, he had been the one who’d led the team into death or who’d left them to stumble into it on their own. And he had been the one who had taken too long to figure it out, to save them from his failings.

And they had died over and over again because of it. They’d died and it was his fault and there was no other way to view it. Was there?

“I got you killed,” he weakly argued.

McKay immediately went red, his face contorting with anger and disgust as he rounded on Ronon.

“No, the Ancients being utterly incapable of cleaning up after themselves is what got us killed!” he spat. “From what you’ve told us, you did everything you could to keep us alive until you could figure out what was going on, and then you got us off that planet before it could make our deaths stick. We survived because of you.”

It was the vehemence in McKay’s tone more than his words that drove the point home for Ronon. Maybe he’d screwed up multiple times, but he had eventually gotten everyone home safely, uninjured and unharmed. More unharmed than himself, it seemed.

He felt Teyla squeeze his hand again, and looked over at her.

“You were not spared death, either, Ronon,” she quietly advised.

“And you were forced to remember it,” McKay added. “Which is a pretty big negative if we’re talking about device side effects. Near-death experiences are traumatic enough as it is, actual death would be…” He trailed off, flapping a hand ineffectually in the air, face gray in the moonlight.

Ronon understood what he meant. They’d been through plenty of near-death experiences together, but none of them compared even marginally to what he was going through now. Dealing with his own deaths was proving difficult enough; dealing with the loss of the others was almost unbearable. He knew that he’d remember each and every one of their deaths for the rest of his days, knew that he’d relive them over and over again in his sleep.

But if that was the price he had to pay for his teammates—his friends—to have escaped the facility with their lives, then he would gladly bear the burden.

“Y’know the more we learn about the Ancients, the more I really want to kick their collective asses,” Sheppard drawled, leaning back on his hands and staring up at the ceiling. “They’re kind of the worst.”

“Arrogant, reckless, self-righteous,” McKay agreed, ticking off points on his fingers.

Sheppard shot him a crooked grin. “We aren’t talking about you, McKay.”

McKay looked affronted for a heartbeat, but simply smirked as he shot back, “We’d have to add ‘unparalleled genius’ and ‘heroic life-saver’ to the list if we were talking about me.”

“You already said ‘arrogant,’ McKay. Don’t be redundant.”

Based on the way McKay bristled, Ronon was bracing himself for an argument. He almost welcomed it, craving the normalcy and needing the distraction. But then Teyla cut in.

“Do you believe that we will continue our exploration of other Ancient facilities after this, Rodney?”

McKay sighed. “Yes. We don’t have much of a choice, do we? We need every advantage we can get. Whatever the dangers. It’s the whole risk vs. reward thing, and we need a really big reward.”

“Is there anywhere in Pegasus that isn’t dangerous?” Sheppard quipped.

“Not that we’ve found,” McKay responded with a whine.

“Atlantis is alright,” Ronon said.

It was true; Atlantis was the first place he’d found in years where he actually felt safe—at least as safe as Pegasus ever got. And it was the first place since Sateda he’d thought of as home.

McKay snorted. “This month. Next month we’ll have Genii knocking on the Gate, or Wraith falling from the skies.” He turned to glower out at the water. “I’m still waiting for somebody to try to attack us by sea.”

Sheppard gave the water a curious study. “Does the city have any defenses for water-based attacks?”

“You mean aside from the shield and the jumpers? I doubt it.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“You’d think, being a floating city, there might be more, I don’t know, naval-style defense systems?”

“It isn’t solely a floating city, y’know.”

Sheppard cut McKay an offended look. “I know it flies, McKay—”

“No, I mean we don’t have to be on the water. That’s just a hell of a lot easier to do than landing it on, y’know, actual land. Atlantis can sit on the ground just like it does on the water, but it takes more prep work than we can do with our current resources.”

“Makes sense.”

“How would one prepare the city for a ground landing, Rodney?” Teyla asked, her expression open and interested.

McKay shifted uneasily. “I… don’t actually know.”

Ronon’s eyebrows went up. It was rare that McKay didn’t know something, much less would so easily admit it. “You don’t know,” he flatly repeated.

“No, I don’t,” McKay responded with a dignified sniff.

“But you do know that Atlantis had definitely been parked on land before?” Sheppard teased.

“Yes, it has definitely been ‘parked on land’ as you so eloquently put it. There are records of that.”

“But you don’t know how,” Sheppard pushed.

McKay threw a weak glare his way as he folded his arms across his chest. “No, because while there are records of landing sites, there aren’t any that I can find about the landing procedures. Not even for water landings. Apparently it was one of those things the Ancients didn’t deign to document.”

“Why would they not have documented it?” Teyla asked.

“Who knows? Maybe because it was so well-known that they didn’t feel there was a point, or maybe they just didn’t want the information to be available for all and sundry. Or risk it falling into the wrong hands, whoever’s those might be.”

“The bastards,” Sheppard murmured, tone a mix of annoyance and amusement.

“Apparently they were above the logic of having ‘How To’ manuals,” McKay scoffed. “Explains a lot about them, really.”

“And we’re back to arrogance,” Sheppard sighed. He lowered himself down onto his back on his bedroll, hands pillowed beneath his head. His eyes scanned across the water, out to where the moon sat directly across from them now. “At least the Ancients built a pretty cool city while tinkering with death rays and reality-destroying time devices on the side.”

“It is very lovely,” Teyla agreed. “A beautiful place to live.”

With a sigh of his own, McKay scooted around so that he faced the sea. “It does have a pretty great view. If you like the ocean.”

“Figure out how to set this thing on land and we’ll aim for that next time we move,” Sheppard drowsily returned. “I’ll even let you pick the site.”

“Oh, ha ha,” McKay sarcastically shot back.

With a grunt, he flopped back onto his bedroll, wriggling around to get under his blanket. Once covered, there was a minute of two more of rustling as he got comfortable before he let out a long sigh of relief or satisfaction and went still.

Teyla’s hand slipped from Ronon’s, and he turned to watch her repeat the same procedure, though with more grace than McKay had managed. After giving him another small smile, she curled up on her side, her back to him.

Though he wasn’t all that tired—he still felt wired from the conversation they’d just had—Ronon took the cue and laid back on his own roll. Tucking one hand behind his head, he stared out at the sky, watching the stars twinkle.

For how long, he didn’t know, but he lay there and just thought.

As he’d expected, he didn’t exactly feel better having talked to the others about what happened. But he did feel a bit lighter, not having to carry the weight of the story alone. It helped, he supposed, having others know what he knew, having them understand what he had gone through.

Mostly he didn’t like that he’d had to give them all the details of the deaths they couldn’t remember suffering. In a way, it felt like getting them killed all over again, putting that on them.

But then, he wondered if it was any different from what he was going through. He’d died, too, and then hadn’t in the end. Was what he remembered any different than the stories the others now had? Was it more or less real? Was it real at all?

There was no evidence any of it had happened—no scars, no records, nothing except for Ronon’s memories. He was the only one who remembered the pain and the fear and the death. So had it been real?

The thought nagged at him and, after a while, he realized he needed to know. So he turned his head and looked over at McKay.

McKay’s eyes were closed, and from the rise and fall of his chest Ronon could see that he was breathing evenly. Every sign indicated that he was probably asleep. But Ronon knew McKay was a deep sleeper, and it would only take a whisper to draw his attention if he was still awake. So, in a gravelly breath, he called McKay’s name.

Without opening his eyes, McKay whispered back. “What?”

“Was what I—we—went through real?” Ronon hesitantly asked. “Did any of it actually happen? Or was it all just inside my head, like a dream?”

McKay’s eyes popped open and he turned his head to study Ronon’s face with an unreadable expression.

“Because of the loop, both,” he finally answered. “Essentially, the loop created little, self-contained timelines.” He circled a demonstrative finger in the air. “So, each loop—and everything in it—really happened. But when time reset, the loop was closed and a new timeline started.”

Ronon stared at him blankly, not quite understanding how that was meant to explain how what happened could be both real and not.

McKay shifted slightly, pulling his other arm out from under his blanket so he could gesture with both hands, providing manual illustration to his explanation.

“Think of it like this,” he instructed, cupping his hands together to form bubbles in the air. “Each of those loops contains a version of Sheppard, Teyla, and myself that no longer exists. Because time reset, we went back to the people we were at the start of the loop and created new versions of ourselves with each loop we went through. So, only the last version of us actually exists, since that’s the version that got out of the loop and continued following linear time.”

McKay paused, glancing over at Ronon as if to check that he was following, before continuing.

“Since you maintained your memories of each loop, you actually only ever had one version of yourself, essentially. Now there’s an entire thesis to be written on mental vs. physical existence and time anomalies—”

Ronon glowered at him and, catching sight of it, McKay waved off his own train of thought.

“Never mind, just—my point is that only the last loop was real for us.” He waved a finger along the line of bedrolls, encompassing himself, Teyla, and Sheppard. “Because that’s the only one this version of us went through and therefore can remember. But all of it occurred for you. So yes, it really happened. For you. And that matters.”

Ronon wasn’t sure if McKay’s explanation had actually helped or not, but he was still grateful McKay had provided it. What they’d gone through had been real, even if only for him, and that was enough to know. Looking back out at the sea, he let out a simple, “Okay.”

After a few moments, McKay spoke up again, his voice unusually gentle, if still blunt.

“Y’know, you shouldn’t blame yourself. I know you are and you shouldn’t. You might have touched something that you shouldn’t have, but we’ve all been there. And Teyla was right: you touching that device you shouldn’t have touched was the only reason you were able to get us off that planet alive. I’m sorry you had to live through our deaths—and your own—so many times, but the alternative is that we’d all be dead right now. Actually dead. For real. And we aren’t. So… thank you.”

Taken aback, Ronon blinked at him a few times before letting out a mumbled, “Thanks.”

McKay mumbled back, “You’re welcome,” and then, as if escaping from the awkwardness of the conversation, turned onto his side, facing away from Ronon.

Ronon stared at McKay’s back for a few minutes, before turning to his other side and studying Teyla and Sheppard as well. Then he settled down onto his pillow and shut his eyes.