The Gift by
Lady_Grey
Novella,
First Time. Adventure. Angst. Horror. Romance Season 7
Prior to Heroes . Spoilers:
Stargate, The Movie, Meridian, Fallen.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Danny-whumping
in the extreme!
Notes: This story is quite the
“SG-1-steps-into-the-Twilight Zone” kind of fic. It was
fun and dark and sexy, and I had a great time writing
it. Thanks to my local Stargate buddy for the idea, and
to Jude, who had to wade through a subject that normally
turns her WAY off, but she found a way to get through it
like the trooper she is. Bless you, gal! Thanks for your
always-brilliant direction, and making me get it right
every time. Quotations
from All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque
While
on a very strange alien world, Daniel begins to change
from geek to intergalactic babe, and no one is able to
resist him -- not even Jack – but the results are
horrifying.
The Gift by
Lady_Grey
"Welcome to Wonderland," mused Jack
O'Neill with a note of uneasy suspicion in his voice as
he scanned the alien landscape upon exiting the
stargate.
The ‘gate was surrounded by forest,
but there were no trees in sight. Vegetation of a
different kind reached into the hazy, late afternoon
sky. Bare, spongy trunks the size of mature oaks
stretched upward, all ghostly pale in shades of gray,
white, yellow, and tan. High overhead, each smooth,
bark-less trunk was capped with a thickly frilled
parasol in a riot of colors.
SG-1 stood in a forest of giant
mushrooms, toadstools, and other fungi.
"Anybody seen a big honkin'
caterpillar with a hookah?" the colonel asked no one in
particular.
"This is wild," Sam breathed in
wonder. "It's just like the MALP transmissions showed it
would be, but actually experiencing it for real is just…
incredible."
"Welllll," drawled Daniel, "if the
growing conditions for these species are the same for
those on Earth, that means lots of damp and darkness."
He looked down at the verdant carpet of velvety moss
beneath his boots. "Ditto for the moss. Never seen the
stuff so deep. It's up to my ankles."
"I do not like this world," Teal'c
rumbled, frowning. His eyes shifted around as he studied
everything with a deeply suspicious expression.
The place obviously gave him the creeps.
"Yeah. My spidey-sense is tingling,
too," agreed O'Neill. “Never thought I’d hear myself say
this, but I think I’m starting to miss trees.” He
glanced around them and sidled up to the DHD, which
stood in a cleared area in a patch of wan sunlight.
Around the base grew a field of knee-high garlic plants
that would have to be trampled on to dial home.
The colonel stomped up to the device
and pressed the keys. While the gate spun up, he ambled
over to the MALP to report in to the base. "Smells like
a pizza kitchen here," he told the general once the
event horizon stabilized. "Garlic and 'shrooms
everywhere. No sign of anybody from that village the UAV
mapped out."
He glanced up at the misty sky.
"It'll probably be dark by the time we get there."
"Good luck with first contact,"
Hammond radioed back. "I'll expect a report from SG-1 in
twelve hours. Hammond out."
Jack switched off the MALP to save
the battery and ordered the team to move out.
They walked due east, taking in the
strange landscape and the odd alien creatures that
skittered and slithered out of their path. Wanting to
arrive before twilight, they jogged a good portion of
the way and arrived breathless and sweaty just as a
heavy silver-plated gate was being pulled across a gap
in the massive stone walls surrounding the town.
"Hey,
wait up!" Jack called. "Company's comin'!" He waved at the
two men straining against the gate.
The villagers glanced up at the
visitors, up at the sky, then at each other. Without a
word, one of them ran off into town and the gate stopped
its progress. The other man gestured to them to move
faster.
"Hurry," said the man, his speech
heavily accented with slurred vowels and rolled r's.
"Help me close the gate. Darkness falls, and the Ferretu
will be coming to hunt. We must be indoors by then."
The team sprinted the
last few yards.
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