Chapter Text
The Tipians were a great people, and John was feeling quite enthusiastic about the upcoming mission to their planet. He and his team, accompanied by Major Lorne’s team and about twelve random marines, would be heading off for a three-day harvest festival where they’d be helping to bring in multiple fields of not-oats and almost-wheat, along with stripping the orchards bare of a range of very tasty fruits. In return, the Tipians would be sending them home with half of the produce, ten of their goat-cow-things, and some very tasty cheese.
It was one of John’s favourite planets. The people were very friendly, openly and continuously joyous, and every night was a dance-fest around the village bonfire, the end result of which was always an orgy in the flickering light – or something more private if you preferred – and John had every intention of availing himself of what was being offered.
It’d been a bit weird the first time his team had visited because the Tipians were unusually small. The women were barely more than four feet and the men sometimes pushed as high as five feet, but most didn’t come above mid-chest for John. Their diminutive height was deceptive, though, because they packed a great deal of joie de vivre into their tiny frames, and were very – and deeply – affectionate when presented with a willing partner (or more than one partner).
John was grinning as he geared up, anticipating a very nice couple of days ahead. Even Rodney was getting ready without undue complaints about the weather forecast which had indicated the temperatures would be in the high thirties – Celsius that was; Rodney was weird about always insisting they talked about temperature in Canadian terms, not American.
Rodney’s usual always-see-the-worst-case-scenario attitude to life didn’t dim the Tipians’ pleasure at all. They laughed joyously at whatever he said, then carried on singing and dancing and touching… and since they included Rodney in their pleasures, he was usually just as happy to visit as John was.
John was smiling broadly as he led the off-world contingent to the Gate Room and signalled to Chuck to dial it up.
***** *****
The orchards had been stripped of fruit and the Jumpers were filling up with baskets of produce as John stood on a rise to the side of the fields, canteen in hand, gazing out across the landscape, assessing what was still to be done.
The first two days – and nights – had gone very well, and it was mid-afternoon again now. Considering how much of the grain had already been harvested, and how much remained, John thought that they’d probably be finished within the hour. Just long enough to have a swim in the local lake, wash all the sweat and dust away, and then regather for the evening meal and… other activities.
John took another swig of water, smiling to himself and feeling a strong sense of accomplishment as he watched his troops working hard in the hot sun. There hadn’t been a single complaint the entire time – not even from Rodney, whom he could see on the far side of the fields with Ronon and Teyla, helping to heft the almost-wheat bundles up onto the back of the dray.
As he hooked his canteen back onto his belt a sudden frisson of awareness ran over his skin, a sense of disquiet stilling his movements. He lifted his head and saw that the workers in the fields had also stopped and were gazing around, clearly feeling the same discomfort he was…
And then the ground started to move beneath his feet.
It was a subtle vibration at first, but it rapidly grew stronger until John was struggling to keep his balance. Within moments, the vibrations turned to violent shuddering and the ground suddenly buckled beneath his feet, surging upwards and tossing him aside as if he weighed nothing.
He hit the ground hard, his shoulder ramming painfully into the earth as the air was knocked out of him. He lay there for a moment, dazed and hurting, his senses overloading with the cacophony of noise echoing around him.
Scrambling awkwardly to his feet, he winced in pain, pushing a hand against his shoulder as he gazed disbelievingly at the landscape… it was rippling and tearing, fissures opening up in all directions as the earth itself screamed out in agony.
The ground directly beneath him started to tear open and he staggered before regaining his footing, then leapt across the gaping crack, scrambling upwards as he realised he needed to try and get to higher ground… to somewhere safe. But all around him, in every direction, the devastation was wreaking havoc, the ground ripping apart, lifting and dropping, entire chunks of earth disappearing from view…
The noise was deafening, the scene was from a nightmare, and John paused for a second, panting heavily, his ears ringing, struggling to keep his footing as he desperately tried to think what to do.
Looking frantically about him, he spotted a group of people struggling across the ravaged landscape towards the village… but then his eyes widened with horror as they suddenly dropped out of view, disappearing into the bowels of the earth between one moment and the next as the ground beneath them ripped apart, tumbling their bodies down, their arms windmilling without effect… and then – Oh God! – the ground suddenly snapped shut again, the earth shoving back together with a groaning, tearing sound as the fissures rammed back into each other.
Filled with horror, John stumbled away, losing his footing again as the ground shuddered beneath him. Struggling to his feet once more, his eyes were caught by a bright splash of blue in the distance as the Stargate suddenly surged to life, the wormhole forming with its familiar vortex. He exhaled sharply, knowing that was his salvation… but the people running through the event horizon looked like ants from this distance and there was no way he could get there – the entire plain was between him and safety. All he could do was try to get out of the way as the land continued to buck and shove, shake and shudder as nature rearranged itself.
The air was filled with churned up dust, burning his eyes and his lungs, making him cough, and he was thrown again and again as he staggered along, landing hard, hitting his head, bumping his knees. His shoulder was throbbing as he tried to get further away, but there were others closer that needed help and he turned and made his way across the bucking landscape, trying to get to them.
Up ahead, Jini and Natu, two of the locals, were trapped on a tiny island of solid ground, surrounded by fissures where the ground had torn itself asunder. They were clinging to each other, shaking wildly, but even as John tried to work out how to reach them, their little island of safety rocked and sank, disappearing deep into the split in the ground, their screams of terror suddenly shutting off as the earth snapped closed above them.
Tears poured down John’s face, but there was no time... there were more people, more people in danger, and so he kept going, crossing the treacherous landscape, desperate to help…
Ahead of him, the village itself began to disappear, the houses sliding sideways into a huge cavernous maw, the screams of the doomed echoing in his mind as his eyes shifted back to the Stargate, hoping to see a huge number of people running to safety… but instead, he watched through streaming eyes as the Stargate itself, that massive Ancient monolith, was subsumed by the angry earth, sinking into the ground and disappearing along with the last of the people who had been trying to escape.
John stumbled forward, trying to reach the group of people he’d seen nearby… they were just there, not far, they’d been thrown into one of the jagged tears in the ground, but it hadn’t closed yet, it was still within reach…
He fell to his hands and knees, crawling as quickly as he could towards the edge until he was lying on his belly and looking over. A flash of colour caught his eye and he spotted a tiny boy, maybe three or four years old clinging to a tree branch a bit further along. Rearing back, John quickly unthreaded his belt as he crawled closer. Wrapping the belt around his hand, he leaned forward, dropping it towards the child as the ground around him shifted and slid, still not finished with its rearranging, primeval groans echoing all around…
The little boy looked up at him, eyes wide with terror, and John called to him to take the belt, to grab hold and wrap it around his wrist, to not let go. The ground was shifting and moving around them, and as John carefully began to pull the boy up out of the crevice the sides of the fissure started to push back together, a terrible grinding noise filling his ears.
His heart was pounding in his chest but John kept his grip sure and steady, not wanting to spook the tiny lad into letting go, even as the danger grew more and more acute. The moment the boy was in reach, John slid his hand off the belt, grabbed hold of the little lad’s hand and yanked him up from the depths of near-death as the edges of the fissure slammed back together.
The ground beneath them was thrust up into the air with the force of the impact, tumbling them backwards down a newly-formed slope. Breathing unevenly, John lurched to his feet and staggered back, grasping the boy to his chest, knowing he’d only been just in time to save this little life.
Coughing away the dust, his eyes streaming, John tried to see around him, but the view in every direction was a nightmare as the ground beneath his feet continued to rock and shudder. Nearby another split opened and a mound of earth pushed suddenly up, up, up, disrupting his footing again and throwing him backwards, the boy cradled in his arms. He watched in horror as bodies started to roll down the hill that had appeared, broken and bloodied and… dead.
Pushing back up to his feet, he struggled on as best he could, the boy clinging to his chest as he searched frantically for the rest of that group of people he’d seen here… where were they? His eyes stung and the dust clouds were severely limiting his ability to see clearly, but he was determined to help, to find those people, to rescue as many as he could…
He swung the little boy onto his back, dropping to all fours and crawling close to the edge again, eventually sliding onto his belly, inching forward… forward. At the bottom of the crevasse were several dreadfully mangled bodies and he gagged, his stomach roiling, but then his eyes caught sight of a Lantean, battered and bruised and covered in muck, just below the lip, stuck on a ledge of sorts. What he could see of the face was a mask of blood and dirt, and John shouted, but there was no response.
He wasn’t leaving the man there, though. John could see the body moving slightly as the man breathed, and if he did nothing, the ground would close and take him forever.
He shifted backwards, lifting the little boy to the ground and telling him to sit, to stay, his voice rasping painfully with all the dust he’d breathed. Crawling forward again, he dropped over the edge of the crevasse and quickly heaved the unconscious man up, up, onto his shoulders, then started to climb out. It was gruelling and terrifying and used every ounce of strength John had in him, but he managed it. He rolled the body of this precious person onto the firmer ground, then hauled himself to safety as well and started to drag the man away from the edge across ground that was still settling and shifting, lifting and changing… but not as much, not nearly as much.
The noise was dissipating slightly, the upheavals not as gargantuan as they had been and John called to the child to come. When he didn’t respond – just continued to stare blankly into the distance – John changed directions, dragging his charge towards the little boy. He gathered him up into his arms, settled him on his hip, then bent and heaved the unconscious man onto his shoulders and staggered away from the scene of devastation.
***** *****
John made it part-way up the rise before he had to stop. The noise of the earthquake had gone now, leaving an unnatural silence behind, and the ground was no longer shifting and moving under his feet. He rolled the unconscious body off his shoulders to the ground, crying out as the pain in his shoulder reminded him that something was wrong there. Then he sank to the ground himself, panting and shocked, arms tightening around the tiny boy who was clinging to him as if John were the only point of safety in an otherwise terrifying landscape.
And he wasn’t wrong.
John wiped the sweat and dirt from his eyes – a bit surprised that his hand came away bloody – and looked out across the plain. This morning, it had been a lush and verdant area, green trees dotted in amongst the golden stalks of grains ready to harvest, a forest to one side, an orchard to the other, a small mountain range in the distance… now… well…
John gazed in disbelief, his mind struggling to understand, to accept, what he was seeing.
There was just… nothing. There were no trees, no orchard, no fields, no… nothing. Instead of a lush landscape indicative of a thriving community, there was a rocky, sandy, plain, devoid of life as far as the eye could see. There were mounds where before there’d been none, and dips – valleys even – where the ground used to be level. The mountains in the distance looked different – taller, smaller, both? They’d definitely changed…
But when John looked in the direction he knew the Stargate lay, his blood ran cold.
It was gone. Completely gone. There was just a barren wasteland where it had stood, proud and tall.
He felt himself shaking, could feel moisture trickling down his cheeks, and he tried to pull his mind together. He was alive. He’d survived this… this… apocalypse!
God! He’d survived. But he didn’t know if Rodney had… if Teyla and Ronon had made it to the Gate in time… Major Lorne, Sergeant Coughlin, all the marines, all the Tipians!
John’s breathing grew ragged as he thought of all the dead bodies he’d seen as he’d crossed that treacherous landscape, all the broken and battered bits of flesh that used to be humans, that used to be people…
He curled to the side and vomited, retching again and again, emptying his stomach completely and beyond. When he finally righted himself again, he felt the warmth of the child, still clinging to his side.
“Hey, little guy,” he croaked. “You’re okay. You’re safe now.” John stroked his head for a moment then reached for his canteen, wanting to wash the taste of vomit from his mouth, but his eyes suddenly widened as he remembered the unconscious Lantean he’d pulled up from the fissure in the ground.
Crying out in horror at having forgotten, he swivelled around. There. He’d dropped him on the ground just there. John struggled to his feet, impeded by his aching shoulder and the limpet-child attached to his side, then staggered across to the man he’d rescued.
He dropped to his knees, cringing at the pain that caused, and pushed the Lantean onto his back, digging his fingers in through all the muck, trying to find a pulse.
Yes. Yes, he could feel a heartbeat. John pulled his hand back and used it to swipe the muck and blood away from the man’s face. And then he let out a sigh of relief, of gratitude.
Major Lorne. It was Major Lorne.