A/N: Just something that came to me after watching the episode where Carson... well... you know...

Every second Tuesday of every second month, Rodney McKay signs out a jumper and disappears onto the mainland for hours at a time. How long this has been going on for is anyone's guess and it's only because Sheppard has been reviewing logs for some inane IOA report that he's noticed the pattern at all. It's intriguing, so he picks his Tuesday carefully and draws on training he hasn't had to use in a while to shadow the physicist throughout the day. He's stealthily and careful and if this mission had to go on official record, it would look pretty damn good on paper. Shadowy, clandestine... everything a career in the Air Force promised and more (minus the bullets whizzing on past his head).

He signs out a Jumper behind Rodney and while his friend stays visible throughout his flight, it's John that cloaks his jumper as soon as he takes off. Sensors cannot see him, and Rodney most certainly cannot sense him, yet John still maintains a safe distance and tracks the scientist by his red blip on the radar screen and not with his eyes. Rodney sets his jumper down in a bit of cleared jungle in a part of the continent John has never seen before. He momentarily panics when there is no space for his own ship, but soon finds a safe place to land beneath the fronds of palm trees, the size of which he's never seen the equal. The fruit one tree bears is the size of a small Volkswagen Beetle (the way they used to be made) and he leaves the jumper cloaked and shielded just to be safe.

The terrain is rainforest-esque and John picks his way through a tangle of thick vine and impossibly humid air that chokes him with its greenness. He's drenched in sweat and panting by the time he reaches the other jumper but swipes the beads of perspiration from his brow and pushes on through the dense air and tall ferns and down a path Rodney has worn in the brush with his boots. If his friend had any inkling that John had followed him, this would be the perfect place to lose a tail, and John worries for a moment that Rodney's done just that and crashes a little too forcefully into the clearing Rodney occupies.

The space is small but as old as the jungle around it and Rodney's are perhaps the first footprints this ground has ever seen. The sun is setting somewhere behind the trees and the shadows they cast are long and sad and drape over the empty land devoid of any structure or growth except for the dozen or so headstones expertly carved from the soft soapstone abundant on this planet. The shadows of trees and of leaves paint a pattern that shifts in a breeze that doesn't touch John's face but paints shapes on the light colored shirt stretched across Rodney's shoulders. The scientist's head is bent and John has seen enough people pray to recognize the signs and stops dead in his tracks. The breeze may not reach him where he stands, but the music it pulls from the jungle around them does and for a moment there's a symphony of rustling leaves and of birds, the bubble of water from hidden springs beneath his feet, and suddenly he understands why Rodney chose this place. What is also clear is that this is not his place to be and before he realizes he's doing it, he's already taken two steps back the way he's come.

"I needed a place to bury them," comes a soft voice. He shouldn't have been able to hear it, but the wind and the dense foliage around him carry the words over to him. "Well, not bury them, since there's never anything left of them usually. I guess Carson's stethoscope was the last.

Do you remember it John? The one he could never seem to get warm enough and always made you jump, it was so cold?" Sad eyes turn his way and he realizes he's brought a gun and a Kevlar vest to a funeral where they have no place. He thinks about taking them off and abandoning them beneath the greenery, but Rodney deposits a fistful of purple flowers to the last of the graves and stands. Bits of grass and dirt fall from his knees and glisten in rays of sunlight that have found their way through the tress before he runs his palms over them to clear the last of it and the spell is broken.

If there were any tears, they camouflage themselves expertly in the sweat that runs down Rodney's face when he finally stands before John with his hands on his hips. He's in civilian clothes and, while he eyes John critically, it's not an admonishment for following him that comes next.

"Next time we do this, wear something more appropriate," and pushes on past him and back into the jungle with no further comment.

For a moment John does not follow but casts his eyes over to the cluster of small stones in the center of the clearing. This ground is hallowed now. Rodney made it so by burying memories of long dead friends beneath stones with their names carved into them. Carson's is the clearest but he can make out every name of every expedition member lost in these long years in Atlantis and something resembling affection for McKay settles in around his bones.

So every second Tuesday of every second month John Sheppard and Rodney McKay sign out a jumper and disappear to the mainland for hours at a time. If anyone notices, no one says anything, and how long it's been going on is anyone's guess.