Disclaimer: No claims of ownership coming from this poor little fangirl
written for the Burning Up challenge at SGAFlashfic
Set during "The Last Man"
Idle
Forty-eight thousand years passed and I watched the world die, waiting for you to return to me. The one you called Rodney, he remained, long after his body stopped moving. He counted down the centuries and promised that soon, soon, you would return and put right what had gone horribly wrong.
But I had seen it before. My creators did not lack for confidence, and they had many plans that would put similar wrongs to right. But soon had a tendency to become never and I had already sat in silence for ten thousand years under an ocean waiting for you to come the first time.
The world began burning somewhere around thirty-eight thousand. I knew it would happen, and tried to tell your Rodney that as he began to implement his plan. But talking to him was like communicating to a deaf man. I could raise my voice, gesture with all my might, and he would only talk over me, never hearing me, never knowing that I could help him. It was that way with all of those who were not born of my ways naturally. I know you understand in a way, because I watched for four years as Rodney talked right over you too. Perhaps it was just who he was. I soon grew tired of watching the ocean fade beneath me as Rodney counted down the years, and so I slumbered.
And then you were there, but you were alone and afraid and I could not do so much as to light your steps in greeting until Rodney's ghost whispered through my internal sensors. He awakened at the same time I did, and like a hurricane his protocols and programming came alive. He was created for this moment, and so too perhaps, was I.
Together we guided you through empty halls, the echoes of your lone footfalls fading with grim finality. Did you feel the wrongness of it? I was created to protect and shelter thriving civilizations of my people...our people. I was never intended to house such maddening silence.
You stepped into the stasis chamber and a new wait began. Time passed, and planet died a little more with each turn of a hundred years. The temperatures rose and the sands battered my ancient spires until we had no choice but to raise the shields. Still the time was not right to wake you. Five hundred, six hundred, nine hundred years passed and the long range sensors showed nothing but a Red Giant. The atmosphere burned and soon the planet was as uninhabitable as the surface of its own traitorous sun.
I could not let your die. I turned the shields inward, leaving all but the stasis chambers and the route to the gate to the wrath of the Giant. The buildings burned, metal twisting in the inferno. Rodney approved, even as the building holding his core drive was decimated.
You never knew how the Mach 12's energy was fading as you awoke. Rodney urged you to the gate room by voice alone because the hologram crystals had long ago melted into slag. I sealed the doors behind you as you moved from section to section, collapsing the shield in on your heels.
As you stood at the gate you risked one more glance behind you as if burning the image into your mind, and I feared I could not hold the shields any longer. Then you were gone, and I could only hope you would be able to save all of us just as you have so many times before. And perhaps forty-eight thousand years into the future you create, I will protect your children, and you will be their "Ancient".
"I always knew he was your favorite," Rodney comments somewhere inside me.
His voice, his words echo though me as I finally let go.
-End-
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