Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

“Do you have our app?”

You sigh. “No, sorry.”

The barista sounds personally offended when she adds, “You get 10 percent off every five drinks if you order via the app.” 

“Sorry,” you say again, asking yourself what exactly you’re apologizing for. 

The barista gives you one last disapproving look. “So what can I get for you?” Her hand is hovering over the touch screen of the—

— tablet that is your only connection to the rest of Atlantis because the botany lab has just gone into lockdown. You weren’t even supposed to be here today, dammit, you only filled in for Dr. Watney because he gave you the puppy eyes. Otherwise, you would have been far away when the plant you brought back from P2X-879 exploded. Yes, a planet with exploding flowers. Pretty ones, even. If anyone said anything about botany being boring again, you would throw something at them. 

The force of the explosion has ripped apart the container the flower was in, and shards of ceramic are now embedded in the wall of the lab, having missed you by mere inches. You let out a shaky breath and a very unprofessional, “fuuuck!”. Then your ears stop ringing and you hear the alarms, and someone over comms calling your name, asking if —

“ — you decided yet?” 

You stare at the barista. “I’m sorry?”

She sighs. “What kind of drink would you like?”

You’re very aware that you’re holding up the line. “Oh, uh, sorry…a coffee, please.”

The barista looks at you as if you’ve just insulted her entire bloodline. “Just coffee?”

“Uh, yes?”

“With milk? Oat milk, almond milk, soy milk, goat milk, regular milk? Full fat, low fat, no fat? Any shots? Espresso? Caramel? Vanilla? Whipped cream? Iced?”

You suddenly feel tired — the kind of tiredness that seeps into your bones and cannot be cured by coffee, no matter how many espresso shots it contains. “Just…just the coffee please. A medium one. Or whatever you guys call the middle size. To go, please.” Definitely to go. You need to get out of here. 

Payment is another moment of panic as the screen asks for a 15, 20, or 35 percent tip. Jesus . You hit 20 before your brain has a chance to do the math, and grab a napkin you don’t need. The barista tries one last time to convince you to download the app, but you’re already on your way out the door. It’s rude not to say thank you or goodbye, but you suddenly feel like you’re about to have a panic attack if you don’t get some air. 

Outside, the air smells like the ocean, pollution, and the coffee in your hand. It’s loud; seagulls, screaming children, people blasting music from their phones, cars blaring their horns, a police siren. There is a breeze from the ocean, but nothing like the one you used to get when you opened the windows in your quarters and— You mentally stop yourself. Coffee. Find a bench, sit down, drink your coffee, check your phone. Like a normal person. Definitely not like someone who has spent half a decade in another galaxy.

The bench you finally decide upon looks out into the bay. If the City hadn’t been relocated to an empty spot in the Pacific far away from any shipping lanes after the first couple days, you would be looking right at it. Your heart aches. It’s been three months, one week, and four days. You’re not allowed back on Atlantis. Nobody is. The City just floats somewhere, empty and cloaked, its exact location a secret. Some people know where it is, Rodney and Sheppard and Lorne, but even they can’t get there without holding someone from the IOA at gunpoint. Which you wouldn’t put past them if this goes on any longer. 

The coffee is awful, but you still drink it, part of the new you: a normal person doing normal things on a normal planet. Someone with a normal life who doesn't miss their coworkers so much it physically hurts. Someone with apps on their phone, like Uber, and Paypal, and something terrifying called Tinder. Someone with a work week totally devoid of Stargates and alien plant life and creepy space vampires. Someone with zero followers on Instagram, but six mysterious group chats that had sprung up in the first week after the Landing. 

A lot of your nouns have capital letters now. The Rising. The Gate. The Chair. The City. The Landing. The Family. That last one is yours and yours alone. You would probably die of shame if any of them ever found out. But it is what it is. It’s what happens when you spend five years almost dying, exploring planets, seeing the best and the worst of these people, and still liking and maybe the-other-L-word-ing them at the end of the day.

You’re still in contact with most of the people from Atlantis, and a surprising number of them haven’t left San Francisco yet. The SGC would pay for any moving costs, national or international, but very few people have taken them up on the offer. The hotel they’ve put you in is one of the nicer ones, the kind you’d never be able to afford on your own. Though strictly speaking, you have quite a bit of money in your bank account now. Five years of interest plus hazard pay (holy shit, so much hazard pay) and no way to spend any of it adds up. But you don’t want to spend it. You don’t want to think about getting an apartment, or a car, or IKEA furniture, or even some new clothes. Apparently low-rise jeans are coming back in style, and oh God , you need to get off this planet. 

You also haven’t gotten a job yet. The SGC could probably pull some strings for whatever position you want. The thing is, there is only one position you want. And that has been taken from you. So you pass the time by meeting up with the others, going to museums, volunteering at Strybing Arboretum, hiking in the Bay Area, and reading all the (boring) papers you missed while you were away. 

Back at the hotel, the receptionist greets you by name, partly because it is that kind of hotel (fancy, with a well-stocked minibar, all invoices to be sent to the US Air Force, thank you very much) and partly because you have been here way too long. 

You barely have time to take off your jacket in your room before a knock on the door makes you jump. It’s silly, but you’re still not used to people knocking. Back home, it was either a soft chime or the person could just march into the room, depending on how you had programmed the door and how the City was feeling that day. Because boy did she have a mind of her own sometimes. Of course, you are a scientist. You don't believe in sentient space city ships. Not usually. A city can't be sentient. That would be silly. But sometimes, when no one was looking, you made a point to say “thanks” to a door that reacted quickly and “well done” to a greenhouse that maintained perfect conditions even through a power outage. So what if you are a little crazy? It’s practically a job requirement.

God, you miss that place. 

The person who knocked on your door is Sofia, one of the gate technicians and a neighbor. You had quarters opposite each other on Atlantis and ironically, in this hotel too. Sofia looks ashen, her phone clutched tightly in her hand. She tries to speak, stops, tries again, several times, until — “They want to scrap her for parts.” She says it quietly, but you can hear the rage underneath. 

“What!?” You feel sick, because you don’t have to ask what she’s talking about. Sofia shoves past you into your room and starts to pace back and forth. 

“The IOA. They want to take her apart, study her, just… gut her like some dead animal.”

“They can’t do that!”

Sofia snorts, equal parts angry and defeated. “They can. Who’s gonna stop them?”

Me, you want to say, and then you feel the tears starting to form. Because you know you can’t. Not a chance in hell. As much as you’d like to think of yourself as a badass after a few sparring lessons with Teyla and hitting the target at the shooting range three out of ten times, you’re a botanist. You’re a nerd. And not one of the cool nerds either, a plant nerd. You’re scared of spiders and get shy at karaoke. You’ve never even hit a person outside of the gym. You’re not stopping anything or anyone. 

Sofia glances at her phone and winces. “The others already know.” From where you’re standing, you can see the group chats lighting up like angry little islands on her screen. 56 new messages. 77 new messages. 92. Your own phone starts to vibrate with a call. As you pick up, you meet Sofia’s eyes.

Half an hour later, Sofia leaves, her eyes full of tears and hope and defiance. It had been Chuck on the other end of the call, on a secure line, and you put him on speaker as he told both of you about the Plan—there it is, yet another capital letter. 

The Plan is completely insane and dangerous and you’d be breaking at least 14 different laws. It’s the most beautiful, unhinged thing you’ve ever heard, and if that isn’t quintessentially Atlantis, you don’t know what is. 

You don’t know every single aspect of the Plan, but that’s by design: the fewer people walking around with knowledge of the whole thing, the better. You only know that at one point, there will be a simple sentence in the main chat: “Happy birthday, Peggy!” There is no one by that name. 

On that day, cloaked Puddle Jumpers will be waiting at South Rodeo Beach at 2200 hours. It will be a 2.5 hour flight to where the City is parked. Then comes the part where you’re deliberately fuzzy on the details: cloaks dropping, shields going up, stardrives firing, way too many F-16s in the air, and angry shouting over comms. 

Sheppard has given everyone an out; no pressure, no hard feelings if you can't come to Peggy's birthday. He’s also making it clear that this is a one-way trip. If you want to go, you need to be sure.

You have never been more sure of anything in your entire life.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

It’s another couple of weeks before it happens, but you take the time to say goodbye. You visit your parents, and it’s awkward like it always is, but you hug them tight and whisper that you love them. They’re very confused. Your dad is even more confused when you give him the login details to your savings and investment accounts. You dodge his questions with a smile.

You also write a lot of long emails, carefully treading the line between saying what you need to say and not saying anything at all. The few of your belongings that don’t fit into your backpack will stay at the hotel. You do allow yourself one shopping trip: some comfortable clothes, some nicer ones, and some of the good stuff from Sephora are coming with you. You put thousands of books on your Kindle and hundreds of movies and TV shows on an external hard drive for your laptop. One last act of piracy. Put it on the list of felonies and federal offenses you're about to commit. 

If this goes south, you'll spend a long time in prison. But you'd rather risk a real prison than stay in the one with the coffee shop apps and the low-rise jeans. You take your phone with you, which feels ridiculous, but it has all your pictures and a camera. Reception might be a bit tricky, though. We're sorry, but the person you're trying to call is forever out of range. 

The backpack sits next to your hotel room door and if anyone asks, you tell them that you're scared of earthquakes and that it's your go-bag. Technically, it’s not even a lie. 

On “Peggy's birthday”, you get four separate warnings from your smartwatch because your heart rate is so high. Leaving the hotel without officially checking out brings a brief pang of guilt, but it’s too risky to let anyone know you’re going somewhere else ahead of time. Because it’s still the middle of the day and you have to kill time until nightfall, you briefly debate getting one last shitty coffee. Ultimately, you decide against it. The next coffee will be on Atlantis, and you don’t care that you’re gonna run out in a couple weeks. Maybe you’ll discover a plant that can be a substitute. You’re a botanist, after all. You also want to discover a citrus-like fruit without the allergens for Rodney, as a thank you for putting all of this in motion. 

Sofia and you meet up and do some of the more touristy stuff just to pass the time: a trip to the Golden Gate Bridge, a stroll along the waterfront, ice cream at a shop. It feels weird and more than once you want to burst into giggles. What are we doing? An hour before the deadline, you get an Uber to the parking lot where the trail to the beach starts. You pool your remaining cash and give the biggest tip in history to the driver so that he immediately forgets that he had any customers that night. In the light of the sinking sun, you see a couple of parked cars, the keys still in the ignition (finders keepers), and another couple of taxis that are just leaving.

It’s only a few seconds after you get out of the car before you hear someone shout your name, and then several people are running towards you and hugging you so hard that it knocks the air out of your lungs and the backpack from your shoulders. There are so many faces that you'd hoped to see. Your eyes burn, and you tell yourself it’s the wind and the salt from the ocean.

“Is there a party? Down at the beach? Where are y’all going?” asks the Uber driver, watching the procession of people making their way through the dunes and down to the waterline.

Sofia presses another fifty-dollar bill into the driver’s hand. “Yes, a party. But you wouldn’t know because you didn’t see anything, right?”

The driver's eyes go wide. “I ain’t seen nothin’, ma’am.” He starts his car and drives away, looking very carefully ahead and not at the beach. 

It’s cramped in the Puddle Jumper, and a nervous silence hangs between the almost 30 people on board. You sit on the floor near the front, your backpack in your lap, your back against Laura Cadman’s legs. She squeezes your shoulder and you reach up to squeeze her hand back. Nobody says a word. If you strain your neck, you can see out the window, but there is nothing to see but the night sky and the black ocean below. 

It’s after midnight when you finally arrive at your destination, and you would like nothing more than to fall into a nice warm bed, but the most dangerous part is yet to come. You can’t see anything because the City is still cloaked, but from the way your pilot is holding the Jumper in a static position, the central spire must be right in front of you. Maybe it’s the gene—you can almost feel the City. There is a low thrum; a song in your bones and in the waters below, like something powerful and huge waiting to be set loose. 

Suddenly, there’s a familiar ding from your backpack and from a few other places inside the Jumper. Apparently you’re not the only person who has brought their phone, and you’re still on a planet with a mobile network. “It’s from the group chat,” someone says, “Message from Dr. McKay. ‘Happy birthday, Peggy. I know you don’t like surprise parties, but we couldn’t resist’.” There’s laughter, finally, and some of the tension drains from the cabin. You take a deep breath and look up into the smiling faces of your friends. Laura grins. “Happy birthday, Peggy.” It is echoed by a couple of people, and you are pretty sure you’re witnessing the birth of an official holiday. 

When the Jumper passes the cloak and the spires of the City finally come into view, something in your chest loosens. You pull out your phone one last time and put it in flight mode. It’s symbolic, not like Atlantis wouldn’t be able to handle a little interference from something that runs on Android. But it’s a goodbye to a life you had for a little while and which didn't fit you at all.

After a few moments, you feel a tap on your shoulder, so you scoot forward so that Laura can stand up. The Jumper is already descending towards the central spire as Laura addresses your fellow occupants. 

“Okay, listen, I need everyone to get their stuff and exit the Jumper as soon as that door opens. We make our way to the Gateroom, do not pass go, do not collect whatever. Everyone who doesn’t have a station or a job in the Gateroom, please move somewhere out of the way and stay where you are. No swarming out into the city. I know you all wanna call dibs on the cool rooms with views, but that has to wait. I want you all in one place while we pull this off. Which we will. So stop looking like you’re about to die. We’ve got this.” 

There’s something slightly manic in her smile, and you suppose that’s reflected in every face that’s smiling back at her, including your own. A certain level of crazy comes with the territory. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

The Jumper touches down with a soft thud. As the door opens, you scramble to your feet, your backpack over your shoulder. You’re far too many people to fit into the transporter, so some of you take the stairs, yourself included. It gives you something to do and your brain time to catch up. 

When you arrive in the Gateroom, the lights are low, and there’s a flurry of activity all around you. You do as Laura has asked and stuff yourself and your backpack into a corner at the top of the stairs where you have a good view of the control room. Then you breathe.

There's the Gate, and the stained glass window behind it. There are crates and pallets of equipment and supplies, smuggled in one by one in the weeks before. You're not sure if you've ever seen so many people in the Gateroom at once. Sofia has told you that 79 of you have said yes to Peggy's birthday. Over in the control room, you see her talking to Chuck and then taking a seat at one of the stations. You look down at the stairs that are normally lit up with the Ancient writing on them, darker now, to save energy. 

“Hey, talk to me. You okay?” Laura has reappeared by your side, apparently checking in with everyone. “Nervous?” she asks, and you shake your head.

“Not nervous. Terrified.”

Laura smirks. “Yeah, me too.” 

None of you have your earpieces at the moment, so communication is done the old-fashioned way: by shouting. Rodney’s in his element. He’s managing the control room like a conductor, and everyone plays their part. 

“They’re onto us,” he says after a glance at one of the screens and rounds the console to type something into one of the laptops. “A little sooner than I had hoped, but we have about seven more minutes before they scramble the jets. We need to have the stardrive up and running by then so we can get out of here. Radek, I need you to drop the cloak and raise the shield. Now!”

Seven minutes. In seven minutes, you’ll know how this story ends. 

Outside the windows, the shimmer of the shield rises against the backdrop of the night sky. Your eyes follow it up and up until it disappears out of view, meeting at the very top, forming that familiar dome of protection. Is it weird to enjoy the possibility of impending doom? You shouldn’t feel this giddy, especially not while being scared at the same time. It’s a very confusing feeling, endorphins and adrenaline and something more ancient all coursing through your veins.

Six minutes. 

“John, I need you in the Chair.”

Colonel Sheppard nods and jogs towards the stairs. Just before he reaches them, however, he abruptly stops. He stares at the ground for a second, takes a deep breath, and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “fuck it”. Then he turns around. With a look of grim determination on his face, he strides across the control room to where Rodney is standing. Before Rodney can do anything, Sheppard grabs him by the front of his shirt, pulls him towards him and kisses him.

Five minutes.

Sheppard has run off to fly the City, McKay is furiously typing on his tablet—and grinning—and Chuck looks like he has just won the biggest betting pool in two galaxies.

Four minutes.

More systems come online, the lights in the Gateroom turn brighter, and the song in your bones gets louder.

Three minutes.

Whoever is on the other end of that comms channel—General O’Neill? Someone from the IOA? You don’t recognize the voice—is very, very angry. There are curse words and threats until the tirade cuts off mid-sentence. Dr. Zelenka shrugs. “Unless somebody wants to hear more? I could turn back on?” He grins. 

“Don’t you dare,” Chuck mutters before returning his concentration to the console in front of him. 

Two minutes.

Hi , you think at the City. I've missed you.

One minute.

The stardrive roars to life.

Zero.

It's time to go Home.

- fin -