Botanical Dream, Stargate: Atlantis, PG-13 - by theeverdream for hyperfocused, Fic + Art

[theeverdream]

For: hyperfocused for npmexchange
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Rating: PG-13 for themes
Characters/Pairing: John, Rodney, Atlantis
Warnings/Keywords: (these are spoilers; highlight to read) angst, hallucinations, OC death, implied main character death, brief second person POV
Word Count: 1.1k
Summary: For the prompt / inspired by "Metropolitan Nightmare" by Stephen Vincent Benét





Additional notes:
Huge thanks to somehowunbroken for beta and encouragement and listening to my rambles and generally being really fantastic. <3

Stock images used to make the art are from stock.xchng.

I have wallpapers from the full-size artwork made in different screen aspect ratios but they are not uploading properly. I can email them to anyone who wants - just PM me your email address. I have 4:3, 5:4, 16:9, and can do others if you let me know.







- part 1 -


It started with a seed.

It was such a tiny thing, really. It hadn’t been noticed by the man whose clothes it had latched onto, on some planet far away, nor was it noticed when it fell off, back on Atlantis.

The seed floated and drifted on the air currents until it was sucked into a ventilation shaft.

And that was the time that the city should have really become aware of it, except.

The city was so old.

And the particular subroutine that would have identified this tiny, tiny seed as a very large problem...

Well... it wasn’t working. Not really.

Not really at all.

So the seed floated on its way.

And just happened, by a substantial amount of bad luck, to end up on the top of a pile of soil in the corner of a botany lab.

~~~~~

John wasn’t sure what part of this he hated most. Atlantis hadn’t turned into a rainforest exactly, but only because a rainforest would have had more biodiversity. The humidity, though, was the same, not to mention the tripping over roots and weaving through vines when trying to get anywhere. It wasn’t just inconvenient; it was dangerous, to their computer equipment and physical safety. Then there was the whole structural thing – the trees had punched right through the walls and the floors and the roofs and there was so much broken glass and metal everywhere. Cleanup was happening around the clock but the debris just piled up higher and higher.

And to top it all off, the trees were emitting some sort of hallucinogenic compound that they hadn’t been able to identify or create an antidote for. The fine orange powder got absolutely everywhere, including through hazmat suits.

At least the hallucinations were mild, and seemed to avoid making people panicked and angry. Still there had been more than a few accidents – some fatal – and each time someone got hurt, John cursed the fact that all the resources the SGC was throwing into solving this problem hadn’t helped one bit.

~~~~~

Evacuation. No other choice.

Atlantis, their home, had been overrun.

Not by Wraith, with their darts and their drones, and the dreadful certainty that you would rather die than face their hand.

Not by the mechanical terror of the Replicators and their human-sounding words skittering in the back of your mind.

Not by the Genii or any others who would grasp the power of this city by intimidation and force.

But by bark and leaves, bringing sunshine streaming through the broken stained glass.

~~~~~

Some had stayed behind to fend off the ever-growing branches and thickening powder. Biologists and engineers from the SGC were still trying to salvage an unsalvageable city. Rodney was here of course; Atlantis was his ship and he was determined to steer her to better waters, although John knew he would just end up going down with her in the end.

And there was John.

While Rodney’s devotion was to the city John’s was to its people. The evacuees were safe under Cheyenne Mountain; there was no one left to worry about except the people still here.

Oh, they’d tried to order him to come – home, they called it – but he’d refused. They’d said that he’d be safer on Earth and they’d try of course to pull everyone out before the city sank but there was no guarantee.

They’d said they needed his gene so stop acting foolish, and did John want a few marines to literally drag him back home or would he walk on his own two feet?

They’d claimed there was nothing for him to do there, no reason to stay – but John knew better.

He knew Rodney always worked better when John was somewhere nearby.

It wasn’t hubris. Just the truth.

And no force in the universe could make him leave.

~~~~~

Those with the gene had resisted the hallucinations at first. But bit by bit they creep into John's mind.

~~~~~

Things get really bad, at the end.

In the chair room, the last safe place, Rodney desperately talks to the city.

Most people have gotten out. There were a few engineers that didn’t.

In the chair room via radio John listens to them die, choking on orange dust and laughing.





- part 2 -


Oh, Atlantis. Trying to strengthen your walls, trying to shelter your people, and now fighting back the only way you can: creating neural interfaces with the ones you love, giving them a safe, shared place in which to dream... and to die - your last brave act before you crumble into the sea.

~~~~~


There is nothing but the wind, and he is the wind. Then there is light, and color – brown and green and orange. He pulses for a moment, disoriented, and it’s as familiar as breathing and as odd as...

The colors change, and all at once his world is now a vast expanse of blue.

Once, he remembers, he climbed a tree to watch the sun rise, a child full of wonder at how the sky could change from black to red and pink and then to blue. He looked at the birds and he wished and he jumped, and the ground was green and brown and cold and hard and sad.

This time when he jumps, he starts to fly.

He flies downwards and downwards, towards where the blue is deeper, richer. Now going faster than he ever has before in his life and this, this is what he knew he’d be missing if he chose to ascend in that field that day, this experience right here even though he couldn’t have known. How could he have known that something so wonderful (this dizziness without disorientation and breathlessness without breath, and this beautiful anticipation and hope and promise, like everything he’d ever known and loved distilled into an essence of itself and then made ten thousand times more perfect than it could ever have been before), how could he have known something so beautiful existed?

Rushing, rushing downwards, and the hope and the promise became visible in the form of a single figure standing on a solitary pale blue cloud.

And due to the speed it was no time at all before John recognized it as Rodney, and even less time than that before John landed next to him, smiling with the brilliance of revelation.

~~~~~

Rodney?

John. I tried to save -

I know. I know. But, hey, don't worry about that. We should go that way.

Down?

Yeah, Rodney, down. We're gonna go down so far we go through and when we're out the other side we'll be higher than we've ever been.

Okay, John.

~~~~~

And John takes Rodney's hand and leads him on.