AN: The timing of this epilogue is contentious. It's supposed to be set before "Michael" but after the 2005 Christmas episode of Doctor Who. As you might be aware, "Michael" aired in January 2006. However, Carson's calendar in that episode clearly says July 2005!

How to solve this? Fanficcer's liberty. I already messed around the timeline in the last two chapters anyway, because I used airing dates. And eh...I'm not counting that July calendar page as 100% canon in this fanfic because it said Carson had a date with Cadman – somehow I don't think Nena would allow that.

Very very brief reference to Craig Veroni's appearance in SG1's "Grace". And, er, multiple references to Doctor Who.

Epilogue

Peter Grodin, decked out in a multi-coloured scarf that followed him around like a tattered, adoring puppy, hurried into the mess hall. He stopped and scanned the multitude of chattering marines, lurking scientists and other shady characters for his target. Finally spotting royalty, he coasted over, ready to deliver his announcement.

The King of Atlantis looked up in surprise, a cup of Cadman-grade coffee steaming halfway to his lips. "Peter? If I missed this week's role playing night, I'm sorry, lad, but Meredith has been keeping me busy with her attempts to rewire my coffee machine into making only hot chocolate. Quite an unsatisfactory change, believe me."

"What? Oh. No." The English technician chuckled. "I was just coming to invite you to my farewell party."

"What's this now?" Carson Beckett exclaimed, setting down his stainless steel mug.

Peter tossed an arm of his scarf over a shoulder and began cheerfully, "Well, I've been thinking about this since you saved my life, actually. Near death experiences tend to have a bearing on one's thinking."

"Aye, yer not wrong there. But surely ye like it here?"

"Of course I do," Grodin insisted. "However, we're really in the middle of nowhere. I have...maybe...a chance with a girl at the SGC. And I think it's worth trying, at the very least. This is also just one in a long line of bucket list items, to tell you the truth. I've done 'Earth's first major spaceship'. I've done 'another galaxy'. Maybe I can try getting into the IOA."

Smiling slightly, Carson pushed back the spare seat at his table. The technician plopped into it immediately and reached over to snatch one of the sugar cubes left on Carson's butter plate, which had been doubling as a saucer. Peter sucked on the sugar, his dark eyes lighting up enthusiastically.

"I like ye a damn sight more than that Woolsey fellow," the CMO told him, pushing over the plate.

"I thought he was sending you the occasional friendly memo from home."

Carson nodded. "Oh, aye, he is. But he's still trying to remind me that the IOA want an answer on their latest project. I hear that DNA splicing equipment is on its way to me on the next shipment. Not that I need it in the slightest."

"So, this party of mine..." Peter began, munching loudly on another sugar cube.

"Alright then, lad. Where is it?"

"Your wife actually suggested a rooftop view, but it's a little windy today. We settled for one of the blacked out areas of the city, no offence."

"This wouldnae happen to be the observatory would it?" Carson asked suspiciously. "And I take it Colonel Sheppard suggested it."

The technician blinked. "How did you know?"

"I had an inkling. I need to make a wee stop before I join ye."

Peter looked very nervous all of a sudden. He waited only a moment, trying to judge the polite grin that the doctor was giving him. Other pressing matters demanded his attention, naturally, and he told Carson to dress up before leaping out of the chair. Dr. Beckett watched his roleplaying friend blur around the corner and laughed. He closed his eyes briefly and concentrated.

When his blue eyes showed again, they were twinkling.

Despite the slightly damp, disused smell that filled the domed room and the lack of lighting, the partygoers were generally enjoying themselves. Radek Zelenka, manning the iPod plugged into a large set of speakers and wearing a rather fetching light blue button-up shirt, had been seen cheerfully exchanging dialogue with anyone who drifted over to ply him with spirits in exchange for song requests. Currently, he was gesturing animatedly as he talked with Major Lorne, the latter of which was still in uniform though his dogtags bore a plain silver ring. No one was entirely sure what the story was there, though this didn't stop anyone from attempting to get the information out of Bates who himself sported a black eye.

Chuck Campbell exited the party hastily when his attempt at explaining the celery stick on his collar fell flat with a female member of the physics department. He stopped abruptly in the corridor when he saw Carson and Rodney. His jaw dropped.

"Uh, this is going to make you insanely unpopular," Chuck warned the pair of them. "Grodin is a huge Fourth and Ninth fan and has forbidden anyone from saying the new guy's name, much less dressing up as him."

Rodney glared at Carson. "Oh, come on. You said this was going to get me a free drink."

His friend grinned. "Sorry, lad. I thought ye might want to take a little revenge for not being invited. Ye know they deliberately held it down here so ye wouldnae see it on the sensors?"

"That's not...really...okay, fine," Rodney conceded. "But you are not asking me to babysit for a month!"

Both men adjusted their brown pin-striped suits and trench coats before squeaking into the party in their converse shoes. The music died abruptly. Grodin froze, his hand still thrown up in a disco pose and his beloved scarf halfway off his shoulders.

"Oh. My. God!" cried Dr. Biro.

Everyone looked at her. Admittedly, no one had realised she was there, because she had been disguised with a messy blonde wig, and was cloaked in a pink hoodie. If that wasn't enough, she was wearing a sticker name tag that bore the doodle of a rose.

Dr. Beckett swallowed. "Good Lord. She's a shipper. Run."

Rodney had already made himself comfortable at the buffet table, making off with ten more instant coffee sachets than he needed. Lacking sufficient back-up, and aware of the ghastly silence filling the room, Carson ducked back out into the corridor. When he re-entered, he was wearing his favourite stripy blue shirt and jeans.

Dr. Biro sighed in disappointment. The music resumed. Peter shook himself and laughed. The awkward moment was gone.

"Why did you think it smart to come here dressed up as the Tenth Doctor?" Radek asked Carson when he floated over.

"It's no' going to be the same without Peter," Carson said, mildly changing the subject.

"Ano, who else can I show my new K-9 prototype to without hearing any sarcastic comments?"

Both men watched Rodney snatch someone's doughnut. The chocolate icing left smudges on the scientist's fingers, the only sign of his unscrupulous deed. He wiped the icing on his pin-striped pants. Carson made a small, pained sound.

"I thought you were a Ninth fan, Carson!" Zelenka pointed out, grinning.

"So did I," Carson admitted. "But it's a matter of national pride, ye know."

"Say nothing more. I understand completely."

Later, seated beside a speaker and finding some comfort in the bass throbbing up his calf muscles (they reminded Carson of a subroutine in the surveillance systems, actually), the King of Atlantis watched the partygoers. Not a single one of them seemed concerned with his presence. A few smiled and waved when their eyes met his, which was an improvement on the sneaky looks he'd been getting for several months.

We humans are a scrappy bunch, he mused. We can become accustomed to anything.

He started when Ronon sat beside him. The Satedan held out a paper plate decorated with doughnuts. Carson took one. "How are ye, lad?"

Ronon considered this. "Hungry."

"Aye, me too," Carson said, surprised. Sometimes he forgot to eat, and other times it seemed he didn't need to. The hollow feeling in his stomach was not unwelcome.

They chewed in silence for a while. Ronon tossed the plate across the dance floor, unconcerned when it hit Rodney's shins, or when the scientist hopped about as though he had been struck with a drone instead of a cardboard frisbee.

"Does McKay know you chipped him?" Ronon asked.

Carson shook his head, trying to keep the chuckle at the back of this throat. "I was working up to it. I donnae exactly want to spring it on the lad. Last time I brought the subject up, he was convinced I was trying to turn him into a cyborg. When I said it had worked for you, he said something along the lines of 'who would notice if the caveman lost the capacity to think for himself'."

"Yeah, that sounds like McKay," Ronon agreed, swiping a passerby's plate and lobbing it after Rodney who expertly dodged this time. "I can tell him if you like. It was my idea."

"You'd do that?"

Leaning his chair back against the wall, the Satedan noted, "We need to smash him first."

"Ronon, lad, I'm not going to correct ye on how that phrase should go," Carson said wryly.

"Good. Because I mean it my way."

The floor screeched in protest as John Sheppard pushed over a chair with one hand, using the other to signal Zelenka. He mouthed a song request then threw a chocolate bar at the scientist. Radek siphoned the currency away in an instant and Johnny Cash started singing about a ring of fire.

"Am I missing anything good?" John wanted to know as he sat the wrong way in his chair, leaning his elbows on the back of it.

Carson shrugged. "Plotting...scheming..."

"Eating all the good doughnuts before McKay can," Ronon finished, digging a nail into the gap between two of his front teeth.

"The usual stuff then," John decided then called out, "Teyla!"

The previously unaccounted for member of the team appeared beside them, hands behind her back, her expression devoid of any curiosity. "Yes, John?"

He indicated the space beside him. "Pull up a chair. We're watching Rodney steal the coffee sachets."

"You mean these?" Teyla asked, holding out two handfuls worth of sachets.

Three pairs of eyebrow rose. Carson briefly pitied his friend, but every once in a while Rodney deserved a joke at his expense. It was John who voiced what the three men were thinking. "Wow. Teyla, I'm impressed."

"We may need them on a future mission," she explained, somehow conjuring up a chair.

"You mean as a bribe?" John clarified.

Teyla smiled. "'Incentive' is the term, is it not?"

"Bribe," Ronon and Carson chorused.

A few minutes were spent laughing companionably until Dr Beckett's radio rasped. He held it up close to the side of his face, turning slightly away from the speaker beside him. "Elizabeth, yer missing the party of the year down here."

"I see...that explains why I can't find anyone," her exasperated voice peeped in his ear.

"Sorry about that, Elizabeth. Yer more than welcome to join us."

"Keep me posted on how the party goes."

Casting an eye around the cheerful assortment of human beings from all departments, Carson couldn't help but feel responsible somehow. And that responsibility included everyone, no matter how far up the food chain.

"Ye should pop by for a wee visit, love," he needled. "Perhaps bring some sustenance with ye, because the current supply won't survive long with Meredith here."

"Big or small Meredith?"

"What do ye think?"

A laugh echoed through the airwaves. "On my way. Weir out."

Satisfied, and suddenly craving a different sort of companionship, Carson excused himself and made his way into a discreet corridor nearby, where the lights were dim but perfectly functioning. It didn't take long for Nena to swoop into being beside him.

"What's on your mind, Carson?" she asked, once a kiss had been deposited on his cheek.

"Oh just the usual," he replied, slipping his hand into hers and guiding her into a slow walk. "Inventory time in the infirmary again. Our wee lass keeps reorganising my medical files into her own order. I prefer alphabetical, personally."

Nena smiled at him. "She'll find something else to do. I'm sure."

"To be honest, I was thinking about humanity," Carson said.

"Oh no, not this again," she murmured, her worry streaking out in data streams all over the city.

"Easy, Nena," her husband soothed, stopping to caress her cheek. "No, I was thinking of that saying – to err is human. Why not 'to err is to be human'? I've made enough mistakes to qualify several times over. And ye, my dear, have yer own claim. Ye are as human to me as our daughter and our friends. I'd wager that nearly everyone here thinks of ye as more than what ye began as. How many have thought ye looked like a chair?"

"None!" she exclaimed.

"And how many thought Meredith was goin' through her terrible twos just a wee bit early?"

"Nearly everyone."

He gave her one of those lopsided smiles and Nena truly felt weakness in her knees, a sensation that went beyond data constructing a required response. Carson vowed, "My bonnie lass, one day I intend to give ye a body to take ye back to my Mum. Ye and Meredith should see Earth."

Nena frowned. "But Meredith can go with you anytime."

"I know that, love. But it's something I wish to share with both of ye."

"About the chair..." She trailed off, raising one eyebrow impishly.

Knowing exactly where this was going, but enjoying it nonetheless, Carson leaned in to whisper, "Aye?"

"You do enjoy the sensations in it more, don't you?"

"Nena, I'm a gentleman. I'm not one to kiss and tell."

While the adults of Atlantis danced and played, the youngest inhabitant of the city found a cosy nook to curl up in both physically and virtually. Grown-ups could be weird, and it had taken her da several months to arrive at a conclusion she'd known all along.

Meredith Mary Beckett, the product of two loving parents, was surrounded by countless "uncles" and "aunts" who had made the time to treat her like anyone else. She had a very large, very caring family.

Meredith didn't need to err to know her place in the universe.

But she supposed those silly adults were allowed a bit of time to figure it out for themselves.

AN: Finished! Where to next? Tbh, I only have one Checkett fic left in me and it's the big one. I say "big one" because it will cover the Big Three – Michael, the mid-season 3 cliffhanger and that inevitable Sunday.

But it's not going to happen unless I know people actually want to read this universe one last time. Please let me know if you're interested, utilising that ancient form of communication called 'reviewing'.

Until we meet again,

Caz.