Title: Silva
Author: Frostfire
Rating: R
Spoilers: Vaguely for 38 Minutes
Summary: The forest's moving
Notes: Written between the hours of 1:30 and 3:30 in the morning, which
should be warning enough for anyone. Also, "Silva" is Latin for
"forest".
The sun’s setting.
Rodney tells his subconscious to
shut up and go away. He’s already lying on the forest floor with a very sharp
and possibly murderous vine wrapped around his body. Whether he does it in
broad daylight or the middle of the night really isn’t going to make any
difference. Unless there are other
dangerous alien life-forms on this planet that a) are nocturnal, and b) can
deal with these freaking plants.
Around him, the forest shifts.
“Plants shouldn’t move like
that,” he says to John. His voice isn’t very loud, compared to the constant
slide of miles of carnivorous plant matter. Of course, he’s louder than John, who
hit his head on the way down and is too busy being unconscious to say anything;
Rodney’s given up trying to yell him awake. He has been keeping an eye on John’s
chest. It isn’t moving very fast, but it’s moving, and really, Rodney thinks
he’s hyperventilating enough to compensate.
He looks at the vine. “You know,
if you’re sucking the life out of me, I have to tell you, you get no points for
originality. In fact, the Wraith may have to come along and sue you for
plagiarism, if the Major’s bug doesn’t get here first.”
The vine rustles at him. His own
voice is doing absolutely nothing to restore his calm. Let alone distract him from
the fact that he’s definitely weaker than he was fifteen minutes ago.
He does math in his head. Plays a
mental game of prime/not-prime, trying to distract himself from the way his
arms are pinned to his body and his legs are pressed tight together and he’s
lying flat on his back with no way to move before he dies. The vine twitches,
which hurts. Rodney plays more prime/not-prime solitaire. Does more math.
Counts the little points of pain where thorns are digging into his skin-stop.
Too late, and he now knows there
are sixteen little sharp vine pieces burrowing underneath his skin. His brain
ignores all the unknown variables and tries to make that number into some sort
of information about how much time he has left. Assuming the vine’s weakening
effects engage in a numerical progression related to the number of thorns in
the body, it’s half the time he’d have left if there were eight, the square
root of if there were four, the cube root of-he needs to stop. He’s going to
die eventually, and it doesn’t matter what the number of minutes is the cube
root of.
He’s not panicking. He’s not
panicking. He’s not panicking.
He’s dizzy.
And the forest won’t shut up. The
vines rustle. The trees creak. It’s getting dark, and he’s lying on his back on
an alien planet with a vine sucking the life out of him and Ford and Teyla are
probably in exactly the same position somewhere else in the forest, and
Sheppard’s unconscious damn him to hell.
Prime numbers. 1433. 779351. 3221.
30869. 26972593-1.
Doesn’t work. He’s hyperventilating,
and now he doesn’t know if he’s light-headed because of that or because of the
evil alien plant. Or, well, hungry alien plant, anyway, because he doesn’t know
if it’s sentient and really, can something that isn’t sentient be evil?
He…can’t work his brain well
enough to think of an answer to that.
Numbers are maybe safer.
Being dizzy while lying down is
such a wrong feeling, somehow. He
takes a few deep breaths and doesn’t try to move, because he’s discovered that
every time he does, the vine tightens and then he starts to panic.
He closes his eyes and he can feel
the forest moving around him, in addition to the swaying that his inner ear is
conjuring up, and maybe he’ll pass out now-
Sheppard groans.
“Major? Major!” He’s awake now, except he’s weak and sweating profusely,
but he really doesn’t care, if John’s waking up.
But there’s no further noise from
his left, just the slight whisper of breathing, which the forest mostly drowns
out anyway. If he turns his head, he can make out John’s shape about six inches
away, almost touching, close enough to touch if his hands weren’t pinned to his
sides by this goddamned plant-
Breathe.
He wants, suddenly, desperately, to reach out and touch
John. Just a little, just enough to know that there’s another warm living
person here with him, even if he can’t talk or move, even if he’s a military
idiot who pretends he isn’t as smart as Rodney knows he is, and can’t keep himself conscious to save his life, and
whose fault it probably is that they’re here,
considering his phenomenally bad luck with regards to life-sucking aliens of
whatever form.
He’s having a hard time telling,
now, whether it’s the forest or his vision that’s shifting around, whether it’s
the forest or his hearing that’s ringing in his ears, but he can still feel the
sixteen bright points of pain and the line of warmth that’s John, next to him.
He’s never going to forgive the
guy for being unconscious during their last moments. They could have…said
things. Last words. Although most of what Rodney would want to say would be
wasted on someone who was also about to die. But John’s different, and-he can’t
concentrate hard enough to finish that thought, but he knows it’s important.
That’ll have to be enough. He tries for prime numbers again and can’t get any,
which seems to be a very bad sign.
He’s getting cold. He can’t tell
if his eyes are open or closed. He knows
he can hear the forest.
When he wakes up, he panics.
“Rodney! Rodney, calm down!”
penetrates just as he realizes that he can, actually, move his arms. And then
he recognizes the accent.
“Carson.” And yeah, there he is, bending down,
looking concerned. Bending down over Rodney’s bed. His hospital bed. His hospital bed which is located in the
city of Atlantis
and not in a forest full of life-sucking plants.
He turns his head to one side and
there’s Teyla and Ford, hovering just behind Carson. He turns it to the other side and-oh
thank God-there’s John, in the next bed. He only just manages to keep himself
from reaching out.
Ford tells the
we-rescued-you-in-the-nick-of-time story, which involves P-90’s, a quick trip
through the Stargate, and then laser cutting tools and life signs detectors. In
the middle, Elizabeth
shows up, and shortly after that, John wakes up, and it’s all a big happy
party. Or something. Carson
makes noises about a poison the vine released into their system that weakened
and partially paralyzed them; they were apparently going to be eaten over a
period of days.
Rodney’s bed is very, very
narrow.
Ford’s just finished giving John
the parts of the story that he missed when Rodney finally cracks. “Look,” he
says, “I hate to be rude-”
“No, you don’t,” Ford grins.
He doesn’t snap at him. “Fine. I
love to be rude. I’m tired. It is time for all of you to leave.” So he can have
a traumatic flashback in private. Please. “My brain will be once again
available to safeguard the people of Atlantis tomorrow.”
Everybody makes their version of
a well-wishing and they all trickle out, and Rodney’s left with John and
Carson. And the bed, which is still. very. narrow. He rests his hands on his
solar plexus. “Carson?”
“Hm?” He’s fiddling with
something.
“Did I hear you say that the
plant’s toxin is basically gone from our systems?”
“That’s right.”
“Then is there any real reason
you need us here overnight? Can’t we sleep in our rooms?”
Carson frowns. “Well, the likelihood of you
suffering a relapse or a reaction, this long after you were exposed, is
vanishingly small. I was going to keep you for observation, but if you really
want to go, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
John’s watching him from the
other bed, silent. “We’ll check in tomorrow morning,” Rodney promises.
“So you’re speaking for yourself
and Major Sheppard, then?”
“Yeah, I’d like to go, too,” John
says, still watching Rodney. “I feel fine.” And he sits up, then stands, slowly
but without swaying.
“All right, then. Off you both
go, and come back tomorrow, mind.”
Standing is a bit of an effort,
but his legs remember how the walking thing goes-despite being wrapped with
vine for hours, pressed together and unable to move-and he follows Sheppard into the hall. They walk together, and
Rodney doesn’t touch John.
He can still feel the line of
pressure snaking around his body, stopping at sixteen painful little points.
Inside John’s room, Rodney
latches onto him and clings. There’s a second where John tenses, and Rodney
wonders if he’s going to have to lie awake all night after all, but then he’s
wrapping himself around Rodney and pulling him across the room. They stumble
and fall onto the bed, Rodney’s face pushed into John’s neck and John’s leg curled
around his.
“Rustling,” says John, breath
moving over Rodney’s hair. “I can still hear it. It was all around.”
Rodney shudders and covers John’s
mouth. “Don’t talk about it. Please. Not now.”
John nods under his hand, and
Rodney lifts it up and kisses him.
John’s mouth is hot and his
tongue is good and his hands are
sliding over Rodney’s body and stripping him naked, which is just, oh God, and
Rodney goes to work on John’s clothes-and then they’re naked, rubbing against
each other while Rodney licks his way back into John’s mouth. And it’s hot, and good, and they’re moving but
their surroundings are staying totally still,
which is just, Rodney can’t even express how right that is, how much of a
relief. The light’s low and John’s skin is about as far from green as colors
get, glowing golden and damp with sweat, and this is definitely, completely not a cold dark forest floor.
He can move his hands. He can put them on John’s skin,
run them up and down and watch his chest jerk with a gasp, slip fingers into
John’s mouth while he twists his hips, wrap his arms around John’s back when they roll over.
And finally, finally, when he comes, he can’t hear the rustling anymore.
end