Work Text:
Spoilers: The Return, Part 1
Beta: Thanks to Kat and Jill. All further mistakes are mine.
A/N: It wasn't until after I wrote the rough draft for this piece that I realized this wasn't a slash story. This is my first non-slash story so please feel free to let me know what you think!
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His 'bad day' started the day they were coolly dismissed from Atlantis and it hadn't stopped since. Each day was another disappointment, another missed opportunity, and another friend with whom he parted ways, as they packed and headed to Earth. Though there wasn't a chance to miss much those first few days - they'd been so busy packing up their 'lives' - that it didn't sink in until, suddenly, Rodney found himself back in Area 51. He was surrounded by all the comforts of home, able to spend as much time in the lab as he wanted without the pesky interruptions of off-world missions and was never dragged away by well-meaning friends or the occasional emergency in the city.
He'd never felt so lost.
He yelled, but the scientists cried or worse, hung onto every word. He bellowed for coffee and more would instantly appear. He ranted on and on about real-world applications and only received terrifyingly blank looks in reply. He ate and drank too much, practically lived in his lab, snapped his fingers until the joints ached, and bellowed at the stupidity of the human race until he was hoarse.
Nothing made it better.
The only thing that kept him from going totally insane was the occasional call from Sheppard. They talked about stupid things; about nothing and everything. It wasn't enough, but it was the closest Rodney could get to home and it would simply have to do. At least that's what he kept telling himself.
There hadn't been a time in his life he didn't eagerly anticipate the discoveries brought about from his work, but with each day he found it harder and harder to get out of bed. Sometimes, in the middle of the night when sleep simply refused to come and it felt as if he were trapped on an alien world, he would pull out the pictures.
Over the two years they were in Atlantis, he'd found himself with a collection of pictures of his time in the Pegasus Galaxy. Pictures of smiles, of sorrow, of friendships, of work and of quiet moments. And if the pictures of his friends staring back at him made his eyes tear up, he blamed it on the dust covering the well-thumbed photos and tossed them back in the box as he went in search of something with antihistamine in it.
He tried calling Elizabeth and worried, deep down, that she was handling the separation from Atlantis even worse than he was. Calls to John and Carson only served to tell him he wasn't the only one she was ignoring and the tightness in his chest intensified.
Nights in Nevada were the worst. The sparse lights of what little civilization existed there failed to keep back the night sky and the wonders of the stars teased him cruelly. Sometimes he couldn't help but gaze up at the constellations, now strange, and feel empty. He wondered if this was what the Tin Man had felt like, hollow and echoing with the memories of a previous lifetime.
He viewed the visit to Colorado Springs and dinner with his friends as a blessing and a curse. Seeing familiar faces would lessen the ache in his chest and it would be nice to know Elizabeth was alright, but he knew that leaving his friends, again, would rip away any temporary sense of peace he might find.
Later, when the idea of returning to Pegasus hovered between them, there was no doubt in Rodney's mind.
He was going home and this bad day would finally, finally, be over.
--end