Any Other Day / SGA

Title: Any Other Day
Rating: PG
Fandom: SGA
Prompt: And when Autumn finally arrived.
Summary: In a (surprisingly expected) Pegasus-like move, a magical curse befalls Atlantis. And in a (completely unexpected) McKay-like move, Rodney wishes he hadn't been left out. (McShep. And in my defense, this was a good idea at the time!)



John barely remembers details of the trade mission anymore. Life has changed so drastically that those specifics are lost, added to the undiscovered secrets of Atlantis, and he has the feeling the breakthroughs they were sent to make will remain at the bottom of the ocean, in the corners of Pegasus, until their expedition dies out and the third evolution finds everything again.

But despite the carnival Atlantis has become, John hasn’t forgotten how it happened. There was a planet, of course, and a native leader who went by the name of Belronico, rumored to be a goddess in human form. She had dark hair, a red dress, and didn't enjoy anything from the city's cafeteria. They had even reached a trade agreement: food for medical supplies, shelter for manual labor, and a unified attempt to destroy the Wraith at all costs. But those promises are now over a year old, broken before they were made, and the only memento anyone has are remnants of her curse.

At first, it was almost funny. Hell, O’Neill thought it was hilarious, but when he managed to wipe the tears from his eyes and the smile from his mouth, he saw what John had seen from the beginning: mutants. Freaks. Women with fish tails, men with wings, people who started fires by accident or turned things into other things. In other words, the entire Atlantis expedition was a Halloween pageant, all strange appearances and weird powers, but no family to return to, no country. All it had taken was one string of words from a witch’s mouth. One mistake of misplaced trust. One assumption that not all of Pegasus was out to get them.

Elizabeth had hung up on O’Neill, then. For a moment, John returned to his military mindset: hang up on a General? Ignore the SGC? It wasn’t a protocol to be proud of, but Elizabeth was done with politics and grace. She was tired of bending to the rules, trying to keep the inhabitants of her precious city as sane as possible while hiding them from a race—their own race, humans—who would not be able to accept them. And the tests. There would, of course, be tests: How do these wings grow? Right from your back? How fascinating, let me take this sample, let’s cut one off, will they regenerate? Does it hurt? Are you bleeding?

Why are you so sad?

No. No tests. If their expedition (so newly transformed) was to survive, they needed each other, not Earth.

John flexes his wings and tries to remember that night. Elizabeth had arranged for a party to celebrate their new alliance with Belronico's people, a race that lived on a planet not unlike Arizona. But when she walked through the gate (in a dress the color of rock and rust), she seemed agitated, upset. She refused food, wine, and any form of celebration, and instead angrily informed them that her people, her beautiful village, had been culled only an hour earlier.

The Lanteans had not been there. They had not kept their end of the bargain.

The Wraith don’t send memos or newsletters. They don’t cheerfully inform their prey to watch that gate—we’ll be here by Friday. How was Elizabeth to know the Wraith would choose Belronico’s planet one day after their agreement had been made? But she could not understand this logic, and John, sensing her despair, understood why.

So Belronico got her revenge the only way possible: she cursed them. All of them. The entire expedition.

It wasn’t a death curse, though that was her eventual intention: by transforming them from humans into other beings, they would be defenseless against any attack, Wraith or otherwise. John can recall (in vivid Technicolor) Teyla morphing into a mermaid right before their eyes: the way her legs merged together, how her fingers became webbed so seamlessly that it was almost beautiful. Most frightening was how she collapsed, no longer possessing thighs, knees, or feet to stand upright, and began gasping for water, not air. It had only taken one sentence (in a language John can’t translate) to make the city of Atlantis, stocked with faithful soldiers and scientists, into a bizarre Halloween world.

She laughed. He can remember that sound the best of all. The laugh of a woman who’d lost everything: her people, her culture, her city, who had nothing left to lose.

And then she’d thrown herself off a balcony.

John’s sure she’s still down there, somewhere, decomposing in one sense and haunting the ocean in another. Lord knows there’s enough ghosts around here to last a lifetime: Cadman was actually turned into one, but after she got over her initial bout of terror, she began to see the critical aspect of it. “I’ll be great for intel, sir,” she'd said, and John had wanted to hug her. (He can’t, of course. Not physically.)

John thinks about his city, about the people still under his command. Teyla, a mermaid; Cadman, a ghost; Elizabeth, a firestarter; Ronon, a demon; and then there’s John himself, a man who once loved to fly planes is now capable of flying on his own. True to his soul, the curse transformed him into a winged entity (because “angel” is so girly), complete with feathers and (during certain times of the year) molting.

It’s been odd adjusting to these physical changes, to the magic constantly going on around him, but out of all the disasters that can happen in Pegasus, this is one of the better options. Sometimes (when he forgets that a damn witch walked in and cursed his city), he considers it to be kind of cool. (There are so many X-Men references he wants to make that it hurts his head to choose.) Of course, the only person who would catch them is Rodney, which leads John to a subject he doesn’t like to dwell on.

Rodney McKay.

Brilliant Rodney McKay wasn’t turned into anything.

There are days when John believes this a good thing. After all, Rodney was a hypochondriac who made his own brand of sunscreen. Needless to say, changing into an other-worldly creature would skyrocket his blood pressure. My skin was already sensitive, he’d snap. Now I get dragon scales? Or I can’t have wings! I’m allergic to bird feathers, remember? Or Great, I’m a merman. Now I can go get eaten by whales instead of Wraith.

Most days, though, John thinks it’s unfair. Rodney would bitch, sure. He’d complain and freak out. But in the end, he’d want to transform with everyone else, because 1) superpowers!, and 2) he was part of the team. What happened to the team happened to him, too. It’s a rule.

But things don’t always work out that way, and while John flies from one tower to another, Rodney takes a transporter; while Teyla swims with Lantean sea life, Rodney uses a Puddlejumper; while Cadman floats through walls, Rodney uses a door. In comparison to everyone else, he’s boring, normal, a total one-eighty from before their world was changed.

How was I left out? he asks, and John never knows what to say.

It’s kind of like now, with Rodney watching every twitch of John’s wings. It’s night out, the sky ink-black. There’s an occasional splash from many feet below—Teyla’s coming up for air as a dolphin would, before diving back down.

“Going for a ride?” he asks. John feels strangely guilty, though it’s obviously not his fault. But the way Rodney looks when John leaps and catches air—it's enough to taint the whole experience.

“Maybe,” he casually answers, then adds, “Have you ever thought that you’re actually the magical one?”

Rodney snorts.

“And how did you come up with that, Colonel?” Rodney seems crushed and amused all at once, and John wants nothing more than to touch him in any way Rodney would permit. He believes they were both building up to that, and hopes his blessing (wings!)/disfigurement (wings) won’t be too much of a turn-off.

“Well, you’re the only one who didn’t transform,” John lazily explains, leaning back against the balcony rail (though he no longer fears falling off). “That makes you the exception. Plus, you’re a genius. You were born amazing, but the rest of us had to have it done artificially. It’s like our ATA genes in reverse.”

Rodney pauses, looking thoughtful. John thinks he might have made a point, but Rodney squashes that optimism by shaking his head and saying, “Good try, but having you turn into these amazing, magical beings and me staying completely the same doesn’t have much of an upside. As a matter of fact, I’m actually a liability. You can protect yourselves with… I don’t know, fire and feathers. I’m still human.”

“Yeah, but no matter how magical we become, we’ll never be as smart as you, and we’ll never know this city as well as you do. You’re magical all by yourself, McKay, no curses necessary.”

Rodney only half-smiles. “Go get airborne, Sheppard,” he says, almost fond. “I’ll still be here if you want me to wait, then we can grab a snack. I don’t know about you, but that Powerbar we split wore off an hour ago.”

Rodney always brushes his exclusion away with something else, something familiar: food, tech, physics, idiocy. But Rodney shouldn’t feel that way, because as neat as it can sometimes be, John still doesn’t revel in his new appendages.

“I’ll be honest,” John says, ignoring his friend’s suggestion, “Flying’s cool, better than almost anything. But now that we’re different, this expedition can’t lead normal lives. Take me, for instance. I mean, who’s going to marry a Renaissance statue come to life?” He flutters his wings for emphasis.

Rodney’s mouth falls open. “Are you serious? Women would probably like those feathered monstrosities. You’re a prime catch!”

John looks at him for a long time; below him, far below, the sound of splashing is still faint. In the empty east tower, flames lick out the window as Elizabeth practices controlling the sparks. Parrish is a silhouette on a far-off balcony, trying to manage the thousand-foot vines he'd accidentally grown on the outside walls of the city (reminding John of the last few scenes of Sleeping Beauty). Cadman's cackling laughter can be heard as she whips around the wind, a barely-there form of a woman soldier. John's surrounded by abnormality and creatures from fairy tales and myths, but despite the beauty and fear of it all, he finds this moment with Rodney is the only part that matters. He swallows hard and reaches out, gently taking Rodney’s hand.

“Would you like them?” he asks, and Rodney’s eyes grow wide, his expression morphing from blank to comprehending in drawn-out seconds.

“Don’t be—God, don’t be stupid,” he rasps, and they both know he means yes, of course, I can’t believe you took so long to ask.

FIN.