Title: Switched

Author: Lady Valmar

Genre: Adventure, Humor

Rating: T

Beta: Marie-France (Chapter 1,2)

Beta 2: Silverofwingless (improvising, editing)

Archive: FF, SGAHC

Spoilers: Takes place just before Season 2 (Just before Inferno) but all Seasons 1-3 are fair game.

Summary: Rodney becomes irritated with his new assistant, Rose Whedon from the Daedulus and after she proves herself competent to him, she ends up accidentally switching bodies with Colonel Sheppard. Challenge fic.

Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis or any of the characters. I only own my character Rose Whedon and my fanfic.

Notes: Originally this was a Challenge by sliverofwingless (a friend of mine). She looked the fic over and helped me out. I chose third person for all characters.

... .LV. ...

Switched

By Lady Valmar

Song Inspiration: Flight Feet & Root Hands by Andreas Vollenweider

"No, of course not!" screamed Rodney, his hands out, a scowl on his face. "I told you to adjust the controls slowly. What part of slowly don't you understand?"

"Look," The woman said pointing at the data pad in his hand, "I did exactly what you asked but for some reason the controls are not responding. It's not my fault."

Ha! Some assistant, he thought grumpily. If anything she was adding to the problem not fixing it.

"Well maybe if you had been paying attention to the controls instead of making goo-goo eyes at the technician this wouldn't have happened!"

The woman, brushed a strand of her reddish-brown hair out of her face and made a hmfph sound.

Rodney gave her the best glare he could muster, for a 5'2", his secondary assistant, Ms. Rose Whedon could be a pain in ass. If he remembered her name correctly but it could have been a Ruth Wheon or something else. He really was so terrible with names. She wore glasses and it was without a doubt she was probably somewhere in her mid twenties. Why the hell he'd approved her for this job, was escaping his mind at the moment.

He'd figured that training would be a bit taxing on his busy schedule but he hadn't figured she would a complete klutz…maybe he was just getting his hopes too high about people.

"Goo-goo eyes?" said the woman, clearly un-amused. "I do not make goo-goo eyes at anybody and for your information I wasn't looking at him…it was someone else. Never mind." She plowed onward not giving him time to consider that statement.

"I monitored the controls and kept an eye on the fluctuations of the power distribution system but it shut down instead of simply stabilizing like it was supposed to do. I can't do anything else. I've got other smaller projects people have put on my shoulders I need to take care of those as well."

Rodney stared for a moment before considering what she had said. "Someone else…but there is only three people here! And…oh…"

"Um…" said the woman, a slight blush creeping up her face before continuing, "I was thinking it might have something to do with that new program Dr. Zelenka input into the interconnecting systems and that is why this area is having these instabilities."

Rodney raised his eyebrows. "Yes well…wait Zelenka?" Rodney thought for a moment…Radek. He snapped his fingers and picked up his tablet. "Ah…just keep monitoring the program and see if you can't bypass whatever he inputted. I'll be right back."

--

Ms. Rose Whedon raised a hand to her forehead and wiped at the sweat forming there. It was barely her first week here on Atlantis. Fresh from the Daedulus as the saying goes.

The change in scenery was really worth the wait in her opinion but being stuck on board that tin can for 18 days had been horrible. At least now she was finally free of it and that was a little exhilarating. Too bad she didn't get much time to spend in her room which faced the best pier on Atlantis or so she'd been told at least five times since she'd gotten the room.

She knew that for all the positives that came along with a job like this, which was a fantasy she could never have imagined existed, she knew there would be some negatives. The first came in a package labeled Dr. Rodney McKay. She was his secondary assistant for when his other one was off world.

She'd met his main assistant but the woman seemed always on edge that Rose found it hard to stick around any longer in her company than necessary.

The second negative? The moment she'd been introduced to Dr. McKay, he began jumping down her back about something that wasn't even her fault. In her eyes, she'd tried everything and so far she just didn't know what else to do?

At any rate, her repairs to the system hadn't worked yet. She'd done a variety of adjustments and attempts at sealing off the damaged programs from the main console but even that didn't seem to work.

Rose figured that there might simply be too much damage to get the system stabilized. There was also a weird error message that kept popping up in the coding about interference from another program; the same one, that a Dr. Zelenka implemented to help keep the other interconnecting systems from receiving the same power fluctuations as this one had.

She sighed and looked around, not quite as scenic as being in the main lab area, one of the piers or in her own room but it had a certain 'Indiana Jones' type of feel to the area. Of course she wouldn't have been forced to work in this section if it hadn't of been for someone called Kavanagh who might have caused an explosion resulting in water damage.

Just her luck. Her idea of a good time was not down a dark, malfunctioning area of Atlantis though she should have been more appreciative that she was on Atlantis at all, she couldn't help begrudging where she was. Why the hell had Dr. McKay wanted this area fixed so badly anyways. It was a small lab to begin with barely useful information in comparison to the labs they worked in currently.

In her opinion the best solution would be to shut down the area and move everything to the bigger lab that hadn't been ruined by the explosion or the water. Personally, it felt like she was just wasting time on behalf of Dr. McKay's eccentricities.

She decided if there wasn't anything she could do, she would take a break. Rose sat down and took out her bag of chips, she had smuggled from the mess hall. She had been told by one of her friends, a military wife, that she should make good with the cook because sometimes they would be more willing to help you out if you were nice to them. So far it seemed the friend had been right about that part. It was a rarity to have any comfort food on Atlantis so she took it as a compliment that the cook had been so generous.

Rose stretched and looked over the data pad again if only she could just figure out what was wrong… She wasn't the most patient person in the world but when she set her mind to something she didn't give up on it. She looked up as a shadow flickered close to her leg. She brought her eyes up to a small window that looked over the water's surface near where the sun had begun to set. It was just beautiful the way the oranges and yellows danced on the curling waves.

For a moment a wave of home sickness hit and she thought of her parents. She really missed everybody she knew back home and her pets, a cat named Sketch and two rats, Gigabyte and Romi.

Everything she'd known was how far away again?

And the fact that she couldn't tell them anything about her work made it worse but…in retrospect she had to admit the tradeoff was worth it. Just the concept of aliens or space ships or Atlantis was mind boggling to her. The most she could remember of history or art history about Atlantis was that it had been referred to in two different dialogue's of Plato's and she could remember that the story of Atlantis had been conveyed to Solon by Egyptian priests.

That was all she could remember right now her more pressing concern with history was catching up on old Sg. 1 reports and the current past three years here in the Pegasus Galaxy. Truly this was a dream she never could have guessed existed.

Rose had to admit the concept of Wraith didn't really scare her but then she'd never faced one either, been captive of one or been fed on. Certainly the idea of a white haired, dark skinned alien that wore leather and had cat like grace made her hormones jump more than anything else. Ah…she really had to stop writing Dark Elf fanfiction in her spare time.

She brought up the data pad for the second time and was relieved that Dr. McKay had caught her doing something useful instead of staring off into space. My god…his hair was really lovely. Then she chided herself for thinking that. How could she like the guy? He was an arrogant, condescending jerk but damn he was kind of adorable in spite of all that.

--

Rodney had just returned from a nasty fight with Radek about implementing programs without his permission and was in no mood for another round with this new trainee. Oh god why couldn't he remember her name? Rose? Ryan? Ruth? Rodney gave up trying to figure out her name and settled for simply stalking over and checking the tablet sitting next to her. That was when he saw the bag of chips she'd hastily put away in a brown bag nearby.

"Were those chips?"

The woman hesitated. "Uh…maybe…why?"

Rodney was about to ask her for some when he realized that right about now, knowing her name would be useful. Why did he have to be so bad with names anyways? He scanned her casually seeing if maybe she had her name on the brown bag or something.

"Uh…Dr…I well…"

"Here," she said, her brown eyes warming slightly, "You can have the rest and it's Rose. Never mind the last name. I don't like standing on protocol, after all I am your assistant."

Rodney smiled and well anyone willing to share wasn't all that bad right? Taking the bag from her he stuffed a few chips into his mouth before he realized they were really spicy.

Spitting them out, he glared at her. "You gave me…hot chips?" snapped Rodney, rushing to find a water bottle being handed to him by Rose.

"Sorry…I didn't think you'd have such a reaction to it. I tend to like spice in my food," said Rose, scratching her neck and shrugging. "I didn't think it was that spicy," she annunciated spicy with her fingers.

Rodney gulped down the water before glaring at her again. "Yes well…you could have warned me!"

"I said I was sorry."

--

Rose learned pretty quickly to divert the conversation to something else in order to stop him from insulting her so when he started in on her about the chips she chose to talk about something else. "So um…Dr. McKay…did you talk to Dr. Zelenka?"

She wasn't exactly sure if it was good idea to bring it up but then she'd rather have him ranting on about somebody else than on her. It's not like she couldn't handle taking criticism, depending on who was doing the critic. It was just she was a really sensitive person and tended to get upset more easily.

Hey she was working on it. It was just really hard for her when somebody she'd just barely met began insulting her. She just found people like that offensive. Maybe this strange, new environment was making it difficult to adjust.

"Yes well…it was his program so it wasn't your fault," said Dr. McKay, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, before turning around to pick up the tablet.

Rose smiled well he wasn't a complete monster, at least it seemed that way. Then she felt the smile drop a little as her gaze caught on his heart underwear peaking out of his pants. Okay this was a new low even for her but it wasn't like she had any other eye candy. Rose shuddered internally, Dr. McKay was a lot of things…cute maybe but eye candy? How could she think that? Jeez he was twice her age right?

Ah well if she was going to be stuck working on this damn console she might as well have a little fun it as she couldn't do that with any of the actual 'hotties' on Atlantis. She'd yet to see this Colonel Sheppard that some of the lab girls had been discussing over lunch. She was still pondering whether she might have glimpsed him and just didn't remember when Dr. McKay turned around.

Belatedly, Rose realized her eyes were still posed at his lower regions intensely and if that wasn't bad enough she had a smile plastered on her face. She looked up embarrassed and away quickly, swiping at the drool that had decided to make its way down her chin.

--