New Gen Fic: Follow the Yellow Brick Road
Title: Follow the Yellow Brick Road
Author: GateGremlyn
Feedback: Most welcome!
Category: Friendship. Team. Hurt/Comfort. Humor.
Rating: G
Warnings: Not beta'd
Date: 09 June 2011
Synopsis: The poppies were more than poppies.
~::~
Sam flew away and Daniel didn't know why. He wanted her to stay so that she could tell him how to get home. But she only waved and told him to follow the yellow brick road. The road was brown.
“So if it's brown, stop bleeding on it,” said a man in a floppy hat.
“What?” He looked up at Jack who had straw sticking out all over him. “Why would my bleeding on it make it brown?”
“Red and yellow make....” Jack rolled his hand for Daniel to complete the sentence.
“Orange,” Daniel said.
“Brown,” Jack insisted.
“How do you figure that?”
“Because once there's enough of it, it dries and goes brown.”
“Indeed.” The dark man in the dark suit looked quite angry with him. “There is too much blood.”
“Are you the wizard, Teal'c?” At a single nod, Daniel continued, “Well, Sam wouldn't stay and I can't--”
“Can't what?” asked the scarecrow, brushing away his stuffing.
“Can't, um... can't remember what I was going to say.”
“Obviously you are tired,” the Wizard said. “The road is too long?”
“The road is supposed to go to Oz... um... Atlantis. On the stone, it's supposed to say something about how to get to...”
“I've got her, sir,” Glinda's voice called. Daniel thought that odd since she'd floated away only moments ago. Sam... Sam had floated away only moments ago.
“Hello, Daniel, are you awake now?” A small person with a nice smile knelt beside him.
“Are you Dorothy?” he asked. “Did you fly in with Glinda?”
“Definitely drugged,” Glinda whispered, her head beside Dorothy's. The red hair and the gold sparkled in the sunlight.
“I'm Janet, and I came through the Stargate. Do you remember me?” Dorothy asked as she stood. “I want a sample of that plant, colonel.”
“Plant? Oh, the poppies.” Daniel turned his head to see the Wizard and the Scarecrow wading in a sea of red-real red, not brown red. “Hi, Janet.”
“Hi, Daniel. I'm trying to stop the bleeding, so you just stay still, okay?” Dorothy told him. “You must have been scratched by the thorns. Be careful, colonel, Teal'c,” she yelled. “The thorns contain some kind of anti-coagulant. I'm having a hard time stopping the bleeding.”
Daniel didn't hear the answer, but Glinda patted his cheek and smiled at him.
“Are we going home, yet?” Daniel asked.
“Soon,” Dorothy said. “We've got to find--”
“--the yellow brick road,” Daniel finished, “to Atlantis. I know.”
“Sure, Daniel,” Glinda stood in a bubble of sunbeams, “we'll find it. Now just relax and let Janet--”
“Dorothy,” he muttered. “She looks like Dorothy.”
“Um... right. Let Dorothy do her work, okay?”
“Sure, sure.” His body felt swollen, but light; his fingers floated in the air before Dorothy took them. Another thorn scratched the back of his hand. “What's this?”
“An IV. Something to help with the bleeding and saline to help wash the drug out of your system,” Dorothy explained. “Leave it alone, okay?”
“Okay.”
His head felt light as well. At each blink rainbow colors appeared, dancing over his friends. The clouds overhead were lightest of all, whizzing past too fast for him to read their shapes. “Watch out, though, for the flying monkeys.” His voice slurred and slowed. “Flying monkeys,” he insisted, “are very very....”
“Very very what, Daniel?” the scarecrow asked before he turned to Dorothy. “We've got plant samples.”
Daniel wanted to tell them but the poppies were making him sleepy. Instead he heard the scarecrow say, “You know for such a bright guy, sometimes he doesn't have a brain in his head.”
Glinda agreed. “He just took off after some plinth he thought he saw, and the next thing we know, he's yelling at us not to go that way and bleeding all over the road.”
“At which point he started talking nonsense,” the wizard added.
“The thorns contain some kind of hallucinogen, as you've already figured out,” Dorothy said. “A very potent one. He's got shallow scratches on his hands, one on his face, and a deeper one on his arm.”
Glinda frowned and blocked the light as she bent over him. “But he'll be all right, right?”
“Yes. I'm pretty sure this is just temporary, but it'll take awhile to work its way out of his system. He might be a little loopy until the effects wear off. The bleeding has finally stopped, though; that's a good thing. And the wounds are clean. You'd make a good field medic, colonel.”
“I've had lots of practice. And it's not nonsense, Teal'c, to those of us in the know,” the scarecrow corrected. “This place is obviously Oz. I'm not surprised Daniel saw it.”
“You have inflicted this movie on us frequently enough that Daniel Jackson no doubt remembers it.”
Glinda waved her wand at the dazzling sky. “So should we be watching out for flying monkeys, sir?”
“The flying monkeys are cool.”
“If we encounter a witch, O'Neill, I shall be most displeased. That wicked witch person reminded me of an ugly goa'uld.”
“You can't have an ugly goa'uld, can you?” Glinda asked. “I thought their hosts--”
Dorothy interrupted them all. “Well, we can be thankful for one thing, one thing that might have prevented Daniel from ever going home, no matter how many red sequins he's got on his boots.”
“What's that?” asked three anxious voices.
“He didn't call me a munchkin. Now help me get him onto the stretcher and let's get him to the SGC. Easy now.”
He floated in the air and gasped, flailing his arms at the flying monkeys.
Glinda grabbed his hands. "It's okay. Stay still."
“Just getting back on the yellow brick road, Daniel. Relax.” The scarecrow over his head grinned an upside down grin. “I've got this end, Teal'c, whenever you're ready.”
Daniel grinned back. “Follow the yellow brick road?”
“Follow the yellow brick road.” The scarecrow called, “To Oz, people.”
“To the the infirmary, colonel.”
Daniel floated and swayed, wondering about the boots with the red sequins. He dreamed of poppies.
~::~