Entry tags:

author: frostfire, challenge: first contact

Silva, by Frostfire
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.  2^6972593-1.

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