Nothing to Fear (The Guardian Remix) [Stargate Atlantis; Atlantis, John Sheppard; G]

[ice-tealc.livejournal.com]

Title: Nothing to Fear (The Guardian Remix)
Author: ljmckay
Summary: She watches.
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Atlantis, John Sheppard
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Brad Wright and Rob Cooper own these folks.
Original Story: Fluid Circulation by Rokeon

Thanks to bookwormprinces for the beta!

Nothing to Fear

She doesn’t play favorites; she doesn’t know how.  She is, after all, essentially a machine – a highly sensitive, semi-sentient machine, but a machine nonetheless.  But just because she doesn’t have favorites doesn’t mean that some people don’t get along with her better than others.

 

The woman – the leader – she gets along with her for two reasons, really.  One is because she’s been here for ten thousand years already, which is plenty of time to get to know someone even if they are asleep for most of it.  The second reason is because she senses a sort of kindred spirit within the woman, a fierce protectiveness of her people that she understands all too well.

 

The grumpy man – the one who pokes and prods and shouts at her all the time – she gets along with him because, despite his invasiveness and his irritability, he harbors a deep respect for her, deeper even than some of her builders.  He wants to understand her, something she’s not always entirely comfortable with, and sometimes, when no one else is around, he’ll try softer methods of persuasion, whispering and stroking and pleading.  She likes those times, though she doesn’t always comply – there are some things he shouldn’t know, can’t know – and she wishes they would come more often.

 

And then there is the other man, the one that doesn’t try to understand her but just asks her so nicely if she’ll please help him defend herself and his people along with her.  The one who doesn’t realize all he is capable of and never asks her to do more than necessary, even when she would gladly do more.  She recognized him because of his gene but she responds to him because of his heart.

 

Her builders were not governed by emotions.  They were scientific people who built her to be their scientific home.  They had designed her to take in information and adapt to situations; they hadn’t counted on her absorbing other things as well.  Things like emotion.

 

The first one she learned was pride: pride in accomplishments, pride in one’s people, pride in oneself.  The second emotion she learned was fear.

 

It alarmed her when she first sensed fear in her builders.  It started very subtly, almost undetectable, like a vague odor carried on the wind.  Pride and confidence were still far stronger, overpowering the fear and burying it so that she was never quite sure if it was actually there.  Slowly, however, it grew stronger, until she could barely function for the suffocating stench of fear permeating her corridors and seeping into her very walls.

 

By the time it became necessary to submerge, the fear had gotten into her systems.  She was malfunctioning, erring, making mistakes.  Her builders tried to fix her, but the more they delved into her deeper workings the more fearful they became and the more she malfunctioned, in a vicious cycle that seemed destined to doom them all.

 

Long before any of her mistakes could have fatal consequences, however, her builders decided that the war was unwinnable.  She watched them leave – all of them – through the stargate; and had she had a heart, it would have broken.  She didn’t have much time to dwell on it, however.  The strange new woman shut down all but the most basic of her systems and left her to sleep for ten thousand years.

 

Time could do many things.  It could destroy civilizations, build new ones, keep secrets, tell secrets.  She had heard her new occupants say it could heal all wounds.  In her case, time had allowed the fear left behind by her builders to dissipate and slowly waft away until she barely remembered the awfulness of its odor.

 

She remembers the thrill she felt when the ’gate activated, though.  After so many years, could her builders have finally returned?  When she realized that the people stepping through were not her builders – when she recognized their fear with nauseating familiarity – she almost activated her own self-destruct.  She would not allow herself to fall into the hands of anyone other than her builders, and she would not subject herself to that sickening fear again.

 

Then she felt someone else come through the ’gate, someone familiar…one of her builders?  She paused, hardly daring to hope, and realized that he was not one of her builders, no, but he was certainly one of their children.  She would not harm him.

 

She sensed that there was something else these people carried alongside their fear.  She didn’t know its name, but it gave them a certain bearing, a purpose in their steps.  She had seen it before only once, in the strange woman who had come just before her builders left.  Only then did she realize that that same woman had come through the ’gate with the rest of the newcomers, looking just as she had ten thousand years ago and exuding myriad emotions which made her fear far harder to detect.

 

She decided then that she would help these people.  She would not tell them the secrets her builders had entrusted to her, would not simply open her database and let them take what they wished.  But she would allow herself to become their shelter, their refuge, their home.  She would do it for the woman who had kept her company for ten thousand years, for the grumpy man who even then had been poking around her systems, and for the man she was quickly becoming desperately protective of.

 

She watches him try to sleep, tossing and turning and at times lying on his back and staring at the ceiling.  His fear is palpable and she cannot blame him; he has just awoken the fierce enemy which defeated her builders.  She wishes she could ease his terror, soothe him somehow.

 

She whispers comforting words into the darkness, knowing that all he will hear are mechanical hums and clicks but hoping that this son of her builders will understand her intent with that part of him that allows her to understand his requests and instructions.  She watches as his restless body slowly stills and settles into the gentle rhythm of sleep.  She watches and vows to keep him safe.  She watches.