My Lover

A Good Man

Trigger Warning: Mentions Of Suicide Attempt

Rosalie is still sitting on the floor when she hears the doors open. Looking up, she sees Colonel Sheppard walk in, a bottle in one hand and a plastic cup in the other. He asks her if he can join her. Rosalie just shrugs her shoulders and nods, wiping the tears from her face, as the man settles across from her on the floor.

She watches him pour something into the plastic cup and sliding it across the floor towards her.

-"Dr. Weir approved the drink you requested."

-"I was joking with the Doc, I wasn't expecting to actually be aloud to have a drink."

-"Well, under certain circumstances, Elizabeth will allow certain things that other Commanding Officers wouldn't."

-"Clearly." - Rosalie says, before taking a large gulp of what she's now finding is whiskey.

-"Are you okay?"

-"I've been better, but I'll be okay. I take it you heard what I told Heightmeyer. Considering you're a senior officer and I'm a possible threat to Atlantis, it makes sense that you would."

-"I did. I'm sorry that happened to you." - he tells her, looking down at the bottle in his hands.

-"All in all, I was lucky."

-"How so?"

-"Well, for one, I'm still alive and, second, I'm not a Goa'uld host. I don't know which one is worse to be honest with you. Plus, I still have a lot of fight left in me, so..." - She tells him, after finishing her drink.

-"You're right." - Sheppard agrees, filling her cup again.

-"Can I ask you a question?"

-"Sure, why not?"

-"Did you know Evan?" - Rosalie asks, seeing the man nod in response. - "Do you know if he was happy here and if he had any friends?"

-"I mean, I guess he's as happy as someone could be fighting the Wraith almost every day and there's a lot of people here who would call Lorne their friend."

-"That's good. At least he had people here for him." - Rosalie wipes a tear away.

-"Were you close?"

-"Like I said before, he was my best friend. He was there for me during my happiest of moments but also during my darkest ones. If it wasn't for him, I'd been dead a long time ago."

-"You're talking about that first mission together."

-"Yes, but not just that."

-"May I ask what you mean?"

-"A couple months after that mission, I hit rock bottom. I kept telling everyone I was okay, but I wasn't. I would have nightmares almost every night and every time I would go off-world I was always scared that something would happen."

"One night I just didn't have the strength to fake it anymore, so I called Evan and basically said my goodbyes to him. He must've known that something was wrong because that man drove like a bat out of hell all the way from the SGC to my apartment at three in the morning. How he didn't get stopped by the cops or even got himself killed is still a mystery to me."

"Anyway, by the time he got there, I had already done something really stupid. I slit my wrists and was laying in the bathtub just waiting for death to come. He was the one who found me, who patched me up, who scolded me as if I was a five year old who just broke her mother's favorite vase and made me promise him that no matter how bad things would get, I would never give up. That he would always be there, no matter what, and if I ever felt like I was hitting bottom again that I would tell him and that together we would figure it out. That promise kept me alive more times than I'm willing to admit over the last five years." - Rosalie wipes a tear away, holding her necklace tight.

-"I'm sorry you went through all you went through."

-"So am I."