(fic) Addictive by Vega (Sickness Challenge)

[losyark.livejournal.com]

Title: Addictive

By losyark

Rating: PG-13 for language and character death

Length: about 500 words
Disclaimer: Not mine. Etc.

Author’s Notes: AU tag for “The Return” Spoilers up to “The Return part 1”.  I wanted to flesh this out into a big long angst!fic where they all lingered horribly OMGded, but decided to just drabble it sorta for now.  Maybe later...

 

***

 

The one thing no one expected was for Atlantis to be addictive.

 

The vistas were beautiful, what wasn’t to miss about the sunsets off of the salt-scented balconies? The convenience of thinking at doors to make them open was seriously underrated when one had to juggle a handful of books or lab specimens, or guns.  The ancient devices that made life so much easier – ultrasounds that found nanites, scanning equipment, life-signs detectors, transporters. Even the strange foods from other worlds, like the crunchy caramel-like sugar snack that melted so deliciously in coffee.

 

Maybe even the strange native rituals that left teams coming home dazed, covered in feathers and sparkling things and grass skirts and on one memorable occasion, with glow in the dark veins. (“Come on, Lorne, it’s not that bad. Come out.” “With all due respect, fuck no sir!”)

 

Those things they expected to miss. To mourn. To get over.  Memories to cradle in palms on lonely nights, to turn over gently and treasure, to let the light of longing refract through.

 

They did not expect for Atlantis herself to get under their skin, into their blood and guts. 

 

Apparently it was some sort of failsafe for the city.

 

Anyone who had lived on Atlantis for longer than a year, and had been away from it for exactly three months, twenty seven days, and three hours (the equivalent of four cycles of Atlantis’ moon), cried out once, shivered all over, frothed a little in the corner of their mouths, and dropped dead on the spot.

 

“We guess that it was something that kept the Wraith from using them to find the city or feeding off them after cocooning, like taking a cyanide capsule when you’re captured,” Colonel Carter explained to Landry after the sixth autopsy report came back. They were standing on either side of an occupied hospital bed. A sheet was drawn up over the face.   

“Probably something distributed in the air or water. We had no idea. Like a nanite but... stronger. Harder to kill. The EMG pulse they used to knock out the brain-attacking nanite didn’t effect it.”

 

“How many casualties?” Landry asked.

 

Carter sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose to resist the urge to throw her clipboard across the room. “All of them. The whole expedition. Wherever they were on Earth they just... fell down.”

 

“No time to save them?”

 

She blinked slowly, dryly, just once.  “None of them.”

 

Landry made a weary sighing sound that matched Carter’s. “Right. Award them all purple hearts or something. Get some memorial funds together for the geeks. The most brilliant lights on the planet winking out just like... What a fucking disaster. I don’t even want to be on the declassification committee any more.”

 

He walked out of SGC infirmary.

 

Carter waited until he was gone, then twitched back the sheet covering the corpse’s face. She took a long, soft moment to stare at the immobile face, the cold blue lips, the flesh melting to the eyelids.

 

“Sorry you never got your Nobel, Rodney,” she told it, and pressed a sad kiss to his cold forehead.

 

And seriously began to hate the Ancients.

Comments

[lady-lirenel.livejournal.com]

...Rocks fall, everyone dies.


Interesting concept, if very sad. And I already hate the Ancients, don't need any more reason. Except I just realized that in this story the Ancients would have known they were killing the expedition by kicking them out. Ok, hate them more now.

[losyark.livejournal.com]

See my response to the post below, but yeah... I really have a hate-on for the Ancients. They`re just JERKS.

[audreyscastle.livejournal.com]

Hey, cool!...NEW WAYS to hate the Ancients!

Seriously, very sad and that last bit is quite touching.

[losyark.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I really, really dislike them. I think it`s neat how the series/ franchise first introduced the Ancients as these all-perfct beings, and slowly they`re tearing them down and going, "No, really, they`re all actually arrogant assholes... even though they`re way smarter than us and we still sort of begrugingly idolize them, the intellegent BASTARDS."

I`m glad the story touched you. Thanks again.

[ellex42.livejournal.com]

WOW.

How...unexpected and shocking and total.

And very cool.

[losyark.livejournal.com]

Thanks. What a great reaction!

[khriskin]

Creepy! O_O ... *blinks* Okay, maybe I'm going crazy, but I could have sworn I've read something like this before, where everyone just drops dead. o_O;; I think I've had too much NyQuil. ^_~;;;

[losyark.livejournal.com]

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<_<
>_>

Shhh. I actually just re-vamped this drabble from something I had posted on my ff.n account a while ago. It needed work anyway...