A/N: This work is a spin-off of "Remedy", by the amazing Nikoshinigami over on AO3. Reading that story first will probably help you understand this one better, but if you read this as a stand-alone, you can decide what already happened for yourself.
Thanks for letting me play with with your world, Nikoshinigami! :D
It was a balmy day, grey, as per usual of London and the surrounding area. If one were to stand on the knoll overlooking the entrance British Ark, one might pass it by entirely. All that gave any indication of it's existence was a grey cement door, wide and flat against the side of the hill in which it was set.
A wind swept through the surrounding grass, the soft susurrus out of place in the silence that fills the heath. Deep below the ground, machines hummed quietly, fulfilling their intended purpose- to maintain the lives of Britain's best and brightest. Eyes flicked behind their lids, their owners trapped in a limbo of REM sleep, reactivation date, undetermined.
Lungs inflated, filling with recycled, rebreathed air, the pumping of hearts suspended and exchanged for the pumping of machines, cleansing and re-cleansing the blood as it pumped through limp veins.
Heads shaved smooth via laser to prevent hair from returning and causing infection beneath the wires spiraling beneath skin, past bone and directly into each brain. Dopamine doled out in doses, serotonin, acetylcholine, simulated a life never finished, a life unable to be lived.
In their dreams, a detective and a doctor ran side by side, unscarred by bullets and disease. Take my hand, one whispered to the other. There were nights filled with music, gunshots, pools, red-heads. A frustrated DI pulled at his hair, a sergeant lashed out with her tongue, not your housekeeper, dear. And all the while a brother watched it all, a brother perhaps less omnipotent than they thought. Because even he no longer knew.
In a bullet-shaped box, six feet long to fit standard height, an army doctor held a teddy bear against his chest. Above them all, beneath tonnes of earth and plant matter, a person stumbled, bloody, ill, exhausted, and came to rest against the solid door of the Ark for the last time.
If one were to stand on that knoll overlooking the heath, one might see a long-eared rabbit, watching with disinterest as it chewed a weed. It scratched behind it's ear with one hind leg, then turned away, looking for more.
In the city, all was silent. No one there still breathed. The last of London's live, preserved in an Ark. Who will open it, you ask?
I can't say anyone ever will.
A/N: Title from the old ballad "Ye Banks and Braes". It's been floating around in my head recently, and it seemed to fit here.