Title: Divergent Revolutions (The Observer Remix)
Author: kbk
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be.
Notes: Remix of Divergent Revolutions by akire. Written as part of Remix/Redux IV.
Summary: The act of observing changes the thing observed: and, perhaps, the observer.

The first time Radek spoke to her, she was leaving Rodney's quarters just after three o'clock in the morning.

"Ah! The illustrious Doctor Colonel Carter!" he said in that hushed voice that is instinctive at such an hour. He carefully did not even hint at asking what she was doing in that particular corridor when she surely had been assigned one of the rooms in the guest corridor that is only used when the Daedalus is in orbit.

She blinked at him, putting one self-conscious hand to her tousled hair. Then she smiled, professional but bright, and Radek suddenly had an idea of why Rodney was so enamoured. "Doctor Zelenka, isn't it?" she said, holding out her hand to shake. "I'm surprised we haven't crossed paths before now."

To be perfectly honest, Radek wasn't. He had never had any great fondness for the US military, and Dr Carter had always worked within its confines. She had never visited Antarctica, and was notably absent while the Atlantis expedition prepared for departure. He does not say this, but addresses the more immediate past, explaining that he had been off-world and thus missed her arrival to the city.

"Rodney was annoyed that you weren't in the lab." Her smile was one of commiseration and slightly fond amusement. If this conversation were taking place elsewhere, Radek would not suspect the least impropriety in her relationship with McKay.

"And he the one who sent me out." Radek exaggerated his sigh, drawing a sympathetic expression from Dr Carter.

"I'll see you in the lab tomorrow, though?" She tilted her head questioningly, hair flickering metallic in the low lighting.

Radek nodded. "Of course. Perhaps we could discuss propulsion systems?"

"I'd be delighted. Goodnight, then, Dr Zelenka."

She started to walk away before Radek finished replying.

He almost forgot that Doctor Carter didn't belong there, she fit into the team so well. They called her Sam - even Miko, who took several weeks of persuading before she would call him Radek - and included her in their gossip though she had no way of knowing even half of the people under discussion. She sat in one corner with her head bowed over one of her Mark II generators, but from time to time she drifted around the room, studying the other projects and offering her assistance wherever she pleased.

She was pleasant, and useful, and brilliant, and she remembered more names than Rodney did.

It was Rodney that reminded him how wrong it was. Rodney was different with Sam there, obviously anxious to impress; he was jumpy and excited, more voluble in his self-praise and his berating of his underlings. Whenever it reached the point ten seconds before Radek would normally step in to deflect Rodney's attention, Sam was there, smiling sympathetically at the unfortunate target of Rodney's ire and drawing a besotted glance from the man himself. And then Rodney would pull her off to another part of the lab, demand her attention to another of his projects, and he would assist her work, instead of his usual pattern after such an irascible explosion: withdrawing into his own brain to avoid the rampant idiocy of his subordinates and later emerging with something off-topic but highly useful that would take any other member of the science team weeks of dedicated work.

Rodney was not himself, and he saw only her, and Radek found himself aggrieved.

Radek had lost track of the time after the people leaving on the Daedalus said their goodbyes, but when the ship left he felt it, a perceptible change in the atmosphere of the city. It was as if she and all the people in her had let out a sigh of mingled disappointment and relief, and were now settling back down to regular business operations.

It was hours later when he found Rodney, absorbed in the plans for refining the power distribution in the living quarters of the city. Radek joined him, and they fell into the middle of a discussion as though it had not halted more than a week before.

They worked together for hours, fueled by newly-delivered coffee and sweet pastries made to an Athosian recipe, and Rodney did not mention her once.

Before she left, Sam had invited each scientist that she had worked with to join her, when they went back home, for a meal in the commissary or a drink off-base - she knew, she had said, how difficult it could be to get used to everyday America when you had been elsewhere for some time. Radek did not expect to take her up on it.

The first time he goes back to Earth, she will find him waiting for the elevator, and take him to a bar in town which serves Polish beer. He will smile wryly, and thank her, and pay for her drink, and remind her, when she protests, that he has accumulated a great deal of extra-planetary extra pay.

They will talk, in veiled terms, of Atlantis and Stargate Command, of the Wraith and the Orii, of Doctor Weir and Doctor Jackson, of Colonel Sheppard and General O'Neill, of his work on Wraith Darts and hers on the replacement to the F-302. She will not ask about Rodney, and Radek will not offer any information.

He will not tell her: you see him only as you once knew him, and Atlantis has changed him, as it has changed all of us.

He will not tell her: he is happy there, without you, and you will not disturb that again if I have any say in the matter.

He will only think it, and shake her hand in farewell.