Season/Episode: takes place sometime after 'The Defiant One'

Disclaimer: Stargate:Atlantis doesn't belong to me, which is too bad.

Spoilers: None in this chapter

Warnings: Scary stuff! And mild violence.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I was insane.

That was the only explanation I could come up with for the course of action I was engaged in.

I would have though, considering my massive intellect, that I could have come up with at least one other explanation. But no, apparently I had finally gone off the deep end. Round the twist, up the wall, sent to Bedlam, stark staring nuts, looney tunes. Psycho. Bonkers. Mad.

Mad was a good word: it fit most of the swirl of emotions I was experiencing, both the hot, seething fury and the freezing panic-surge of fear.

At least the focus of my feelings was clear: Major John Sheppard. My colleague, my team-mate, the man who had saved my precious ass more times than I cared to count. My against-the-odds, who'd-have-thought, nothing-in-common best friend. The man who had, earlier that very day, split my lip, cursed me, and accused me of cold-blooded murder.

And now I was going after him into a place that actually scared me even more than the Wraith. The last time I'd been to the Northwest Tower, I had ended up writhing on the floor in excruciating pain, the strange voice in my mind sending a terrible agony trickling along my nerves. I'd spent nearly seven hours searching for that idiot Hessling, who'd just wandered off on his own (although I now suspected that he had been lured to the tower) even before the assault I'd experienced in the tower. Add to that a hypoglycemic episode; being punched in the mouth by a delusional Sheppard; having to wrestle the major to the floor to keep him from going to the tower; and to top it all off, the sudden horrible awareness that the door of that appalling tower had been opened – by Sheppard, who should have been safe in the infirmary, under sedation and possibly restraints.

The bottom line was that I didn't think I could take much more. The anger and fear were fading as my initial burst of adrenaline wore off. Insanity was an easy way out. If I was insane, then I didn't need explanations for behaviors I would normally condemn as idiotic and foolish. I didn't have to think about what I was doing, or where I was going, or what I'd find when I got there. If I thought about it, I'd be paralyzed with fear. So I wouldn't think about the fact that my little rescue mission was unauthorized, or that I was heading into certain, if undefined, danger. I wouldn't think about why I was doing this. Sheppard would do it for me, and not just because it was his job. That was a good enough reason for me. That and my amateur self-diagnosis of lunacy.

I hefted the cold weight of the P-90 in my arms. I'd been surprised and gratified by my own unexpected aptitude for firearms, and thanks to Sheppard's patient training, I felt pretty confident in my ability to use the powerful weapon. I felt a good deal less confident in it's effectiveness against the thing in the tower, whatever it was. All I really knew was that something had spoken to me – spoken inside my mind -- with Hessling's voice. Something that was definitely not Anders Hessling.

As I approached the entrance of the Northwest Tower, I began to feel a pull towards the wide-open door. Centered in the pit of my stomach, almost like the subtle but inescapable pull of gravity, but also in my mind, I now knew what Sheppard must have felt. I suspected Hessling had felt the same thing.

I flipped the safety off on the P-90 and peered cautiously around the doorway. The base of the tower was empty, just like the first time I'd been there. I entered and looked up, but saw nothing apart from the stairs winding endlessly up into darkness. The pull was strong now, tugging me towards the steps, and I knew – I knew, without doubt, without proof – that Sheppard had been here before me.

I had to take a deep breath before I could give in to the compulsion to climb. I've always been a contrary person, almost instinctively saying 'no' when everyone around me said 'yes'; never able to just go with the flow, to obey without question, follow the crowd. It went against my very nature to climb those steps, entirely apart from the fear that still sat on my chest like a super-dense dwarf star.

It seemed like one moment I had put my foot on the first step, and the next I was several circuits up with no recollection of anything in between. I staggered, barely managing to catch my balance and avoid falling down the stairs. I ended up leaning against the wall and gasping for breath, heart hammering against my ribs. Something wanted me up those stairs, was blithely bypassing my brain and moving my body without me. If it wasn't for the almost irresistible compulsion to climb, I think I would have turned around right then and there.

Am I a coward? Maybe.

Was I scared almost past reasoning? Definitely.

The point is moot. I did feel the compulsion, and I went on.

The strange loss of time and space continued, speeding me up the steps with remarkable efficiency. I would climb a few steps, there would be a moment of disorientation, and I'd be several flights up from where I'd been. The farther I got from the base of the tower, the harder it became to tell what progress I'd made; and after a while the floor was lost from sight, shrouded in the dimness that pervaded the place. I had the impression that the space was filled with a thin, electrically charged smoke that made the shadows flicker and twist like live things and the hair on my arms bristle with static – or with fear.

Even with the aid of whatever was making me zip quickly and almost effortlessly up the steps, my legs began to burn with fatigue. When I finally stumbled into the platform at the top of the tower, I nearly sank to my knees, the muscles twitching with overexertion. Only the sight in front of me kept me on my feet: the large window at the far end of the platform, directly opposite the top of the staircase. A baleful light shone weakly through the window, pale red and sickly and doing little to actually illuminate the interior of the tower or the twilight landscape on the other side. I found myself staggering towards that strange vista, my legs feeling like they belonged to someone else.

The view through that window could only be described as hellish. Dark, thick-bladed grass waved gently of its own accord, more like some strange sea anemone than grass. It filled the field, up to and past the incongruously prosaic split-rail fence. On both side of the fence were trees that looked like they'd been turned upside down so that the naked, spreading roots were uppermost. The source of the reddish light was a low sky full of thickly roiling tan clouds…or possibly the sky was tan and the clouds were red. It didn't really look like clouds or sky, so it was anybody's guess.

What nearly made my heart stop in my chest – if it wasn't the exertion of climbing those stairs – was the sight of Sheppard walking across the field, and heading straight for one of those trees.

I didn't like the trees at all. Trees didn't sway smoothly like that, weirdly echoing the movement of the anemone-grass. Trees didn't shuffle slowly towards people.

And that realization had me clambering through the window and sprinting after Sheppard, all the while cursing at myself and him. The thick grass felt disgustingly fleshy underfoot, but I resolutely ignored that and the smell in the air: and odd mixture of fresh rain, the sharp ammonia scent of cat urine, the flat dirty smell of car exhaust, and something vaguely musky that reminded me of the taste of venison.

The grass was hard to run through. The knee-high blades – tendrils – whatever, grew in clumps, slapping heavily against my legs. The heavy air burned in my lungs and left a chemical taste in my mouth like over-chlorinated water.

Even if I'd had the breath to call Sheppard, I wouldn't have. Apart from a low rumbling thunder in the in the distance, the landscape was utterly silent. The only sounds were my own short-winded puffing and the heavy swish of the grass as I practically waded through it, and even that seemed like too much noise.

It seemed to take forever to catch up with Sheppard, even though he was walking slowly. He looked like he was out for a lazy Sunday afternoon stroll in the park. I put my hand on his shoulder and spun him around.

His face was slack, blank-eyed, mouth hanging open. I saw, even stronger than before, that change in his face that had made it difficult to look at him since that first trip to the tower, the echo of something monstrous and inhuman underneath his skin.

Then he blinked, and whatever tiny measure of intelligence he had seemed to creep slowly back into his brain.

"Rodney?"

"Oh, thank god," I babbled in relief, "you're okay, I thought I'd lost you. I was afraid your mind was gone and we'd be feeding you strained peas and changing your diapers –"

His face twisted like it had in the infirmary and he lunged at me with a snarl. I landed on my back in the long grass, Sheppard on top of me with his hands around my throat and the P-90 trapped awkwardly and painfully between us. If my finger had been on the trigger, we could both have kissed our asses goodbye right then and there. As it was, the sensation of that strong grip crushing my windpipe was almost paralyzing. My mind went blank, barely registering the discomfort of the butt of the P-90 in my stomach. What was happening was simply incomprehensible. John Sheppard couldn't possibly be trying to kill me, it was impossible and therefore not true. Not happening.

My body, for once, was smarter than my brain and lack of oxygen made it struggle. The muzzle of the P-90 caught him in a sensitive place and his eyes bulged, then he released my neck and rolled off me with a gasp. I took everything I had to sit up and point the weapon at him. I couldn't stop coughing, and for a few minutes I concentrated on getting my breath back and my heart rate back to normal, but I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. I was here to save Sheppard's sorry, stupid, homicidal ass, but not at the expense of my own life. If I had to I'd do my best to wound him, rather than kill him, but self-sacrifice wouldn't help either of us.

Or at least, that's what I thought.

John lay on his side in the thick grass that was visibly leaning towards him, caressing his body with those awful black tendrils. Actually, on closer inspection, they weren't quite black, but a very dark blue, dull and unreflective. In fact, everything in this lush but desolate landscape seemed to absorb the ambient light, so that my gaze just kind of slid off them, unable to properly focus. I briefly wondered if it was a property of the light emanating from the oddly colored clouds or the objects themselves. I'd probably never know, since the last thing I wanted to do was come back here to investigate – or take anything back with me.

Sheppard slowly uncurled and sat up, removing his hands from where he'd been clutching himself. His eyes were empty and dull again, and his gaze passed right over me as if I didn't even exist. He stood up without any sign of pain and walked towards the closest tree – which was, in turn, moving slowly towards us.

Cursing silently, I hauled myself to my feet and went after him again. I reached him just as the tree did, grabbed his arm at the same time as the tree reached out with a branch or root, disturbingly both gnarled and vaguely serpentine in its movements, and wrapped it around his other arm.

The tree, utterly alien an unlike anything I had ever conceived, or could ever conceive, thrust itself into my mind and intertwined with my thoughts, filament-thin wires of burning cold that froze time for me. Suspended between heartbeats, between seconds, between thoughts, I found myself invaded and stripped bare while something huge and strange and other peered at me, something so very different from any concept of life or sentience as I knew it that the very act of observation changed me.

And then the moment was over, and I let go of John's arm and staggered. Somehow I managed to stay on my feet as my heart skipped and stuttered before settling down into a steady, if a little too fast, rhythm.

"Rodney?"

The voice was slightly muffled by the ringing in my ears from the echo of the tree's presence in my mind. At first I thought the tree had spoken, because the tree was the only thing I knew. There was no room for anything else, not my memories, my identity, my thoughts – only the tree, its vast presence crushing everything else.

"Rodney, where are we? How did I get here?"

The familiar voice, along with the familiar, puzzled face that suddenly filled by vision, brought me back from the edge of the abyss I'd been sliding inexorably into. In that one brief fraction of a second as I came back to myself, I felt the lingering presence of the thing that was in no possible way at all like a tree, and I understood. I comprehended what I had lost and what I had been given, and the awful, almost Faustian bargain I had been offered.

And I had the choice, in the moment, to reject it. I could leave untouched, if not entirely unchanged…without John. Or I could accept it and take John, whole and himself, home…to Atlantis. Because this place I had come to was not on Atlantis, not on this planet, not even in the Pegasus Galaxy…possibly not in my own universe.

I accepted.

John put his hand on my arm, and I flinched. I couldn't help myself, and it wasn't because he'd hit me or tried to strangle me. It was because, after the tree, it was his touch that was strange and alien. I was distantly surprised to find myself on my feet since I felt like I had been smashed and broken and crushed into the ground. I took a breath, finding the chemical tang in the air normal and even pleasant, my eyes adjusted to the reddish light which now seemed oddly reflected on John's skin.

"Let's get out of here," I said, my own voice unfamiliar and too loud in my ears even though I knew I'd spoken so softly that he had to strain to hear me.

I turned, and was unsurprised to see a hole in the air, an image of the platform at the top of the tower. It hung there, unsupported and unmoving, a rent in this reality that led back to our own. I was almost reluctant to go back, now that I was possessed of an unconscious, instinctive understanding of this place. I knew that the grass was not grass, but the extended sense organs of a living creature that lay far below the surface. The fence was a type of parasite that spread, vine-like, for miles in its gently meandering line, following the landscape. The low, swirling clouds of almost tomato-red mixed with tan or beige were alive too, gaseous creatures that lived and died and reproduced entirely in the air. And I knew we were lucky that they completely obscured the sky.

I didn't have to look behind me to know that John was following me. I was aware of him now, of his presence. I would always know when he was near. It was part of the change the tree had made to me, whether intentional or accidental. I felt him following me through the window as we climbed through what I knew to be a natural dimensional portal, probably the discovery that had led the Ancients to devise the Stargates in the first place. After a while, he stopped asking questions and we descended the steps in silence. We met an armed party at the bottom, but when I told them we had to leave the tower immediately, they obeyed without question. I caught the look in Carson's eye that told me he felt the draw of the steps, even as diminished as it now was. Elizabeth took my calm to mean that there was no longer any danger, and I didn't disabuse her of the notion, although I wasn't calm. I was as far from calm as I could possibly get. I just didn't have the capacity for panic or fear at the moment. It was a done deal and I was resigned to it, even if I didn't yet know the extent of the consequences.

I was the last person to exit, and I closed the door of the tower behind me and lowered to bar across it. Bates crowded in beside me and I suppressed I shudder. It would take a while to get used to my own reality, my own species, again. The light was harsh, the sounds too sharp in my ears. I would recall that other place with a kind of affection now, as something familiar and forever out of reach, like a childhood home or a long-dead but fondly recalled relative.

Bates tried the bar, found it immovable.

"It's locked," I told him. "No one can open it. We won't have to worry about it."

When we returned to the inhabited section of the city, I had to sit through a debriefing during which I lied unrepentantly. I caught John's widening eyes and he clamped his mouth shut over an objection to my version of events and agreed mildly with everything I said, claiming that the last thing he remembered was starting up the steps on that first visit to the Northwest Tower, then waking to find himself struggling with me on the empty platform at the top of the steps. We didn't mention the window at all, and I didn't tell them what I alone knew of Hessling's fate. The rising bruises around my neck gave neat testimony to my greatly abridged version of events.

John and I were examined by Carson, pronounced 'fine but exhausted', and were prescribed several days rest. I received a half-hearted reprimand from Elizabeth for going after John on my own, then I was free to head for the solitude and sanctuary of my quarters, where I sat on the bed and was finally able to let my mind go blank.

Some time later, a knock on my door heralded John Sheppard's presence. I'd felt him coming down the hall, so I'd had time to shed my jacket and turn on my laptop so he wouldn't know I'd been just sitting there for the last two hours.

He seemed hesitant, skirting the question he really wanted to ask, but finally blurted out, "Rodney – what happened?"

I shook my head, and to my great relief he took that to mean that I didn't know, rather than that I didn't want to explain it.

His next question was harder to avoid.

"Are you okay?"

God, what a question! Was I okay? The answer was a resounding 'no'. I didn't think I would ever be 'okay' again. Something had been taken from me, a kind of innocence in my concept of myself, the universe, and my place in it. Something else had been put in its place: not just the knowledge I now had of that other world, which I understood to be an unimportant side effect of my brief moment of communication with the tree-being, but the seed of that creature's awareness that bled inextricably into my own senses. I might put it behind me, might spend minutes, hours, days not thinking about it. Perhaps, eventually, I could even forget, to an extent. But for the rest of my life, that seed would be watching, listening, tasting, smelling, feeling…knowing everything I knew and remembering, until its release at my death. Then it would return to its parent with all the accumulated experiences and knowledge of Rodney McKay.

Something of all this must have shown on my face, because John frowned and repeated, "Are you okay?" He put his hand on mine and squeezed gently.

"I will be," I told him, and it was enough of the truth for both of us to accept.

Fin

A/N: Yes, I do plan to write a sequel that will explain some of the questions left unanswered in this. Other questions, however, will remain forever unanswered.