AT THE TOP

[x_erikah_x]

Title: At the Top
Author: x_erikah_x
Prompt word: 17 - Jungle Gym
Rating: PG
Word count: 1002
Character: John Sheppard
Disclaimer: Stargate belongs to MGM.
Spoilers: For Enemy at the Gate
Summary: John had always liked jungle gyms.

Author's Note: Story written for the story_lottery comm, which has given me a lot of very difficult prompts that has nothing to do with Stargate whatsoever. How I'm ever going to write all of them I have no idea. My prompt table can be found here. Many thanks to wildcat88 for the beta.

AT THE TOP
By ErikaHK

John had always liked jungle gyms. He used to play all kinds of scenarios there when he was little. From pirates, to the Wild West, to dinosaurs and space adventures. The jungle gym was always the first and only place he would run to in any park.

A dark cave, a maze, an obstacle course, an alien planet, a haunted gold mine or a temple in the heart of the jungle. There weren't any limits.

He let his imagination run wild.

And he had a different one at each house.

The one in Miami was small and red. It was near the swimming pool. He could pretend he was a pirate and there was even water for him to get wet in if he had to walk the plank.
The one in Hawaii was bigger and it was green, wide and high. When he wasn't surfing, he would be in the garden, pretending to be in a tropical jungle hunting down treasures inside a high hidden cave.

In Los Angeles, it was round and blue. It looked like a space ship. He could hunt down aliens from galaxies far, far away there.

But his favorite was at their house in Maryland, so giant that John could play there all summer, not ever repeating the same villain twice. The garden had three of them next to each other, all different shapes and sizes. He would play for hours and hours until his mother told him to come inside to eat. He would have his lunch as quickly as he was allowed, then run right back out to play until dark. Only to be called back home, take a bath, eat, sleep and run back out again.

His favorite adventure was being a pirate. He could have sword fights inside the maze and pretend he was in a cave filled with gold. Then he could go back to his ship and go up the highest mast to see the tiny piece of land growing bigger and bigger and shout 'Land ho!'.

Sometimes he would pretend he was going up a very high mountain. He could go to the Rockies and to the Himalayas. Other times it was a tall building in Gotham City, sometimes a tower, a cliff, a giant tree....

In some of those times he was Batman. Dave used to say that Batman was stupid and that John should be Spider-Man instead because that was what spiders did. John didn't like spiders. He though Batman was a lot cooler. He had a jet and all Spider-Man did was swing around with a web.

If John happened to encounter any obstacles on the way, he would always go past them victorious.

Except for one time. He slipped and fell down, breaking his foot. He had to go two months without playing. When he got well, he went right back to climb it and when he got up there, it was a hundred times cooler than before.

Every time he reached the top, he would stand up and yell in victory. Sometimes he even fought bad guys up there. He loved fighting the most evil of all villains at the top of the highest tower. In the end, the bad guys would always fall and John would be the one standing, like heroes always do.

Then, John would just stay up there, looking down from above and watching the tiny world below. People passed and couldn't see him because he was so high. Then he would sit and pretend he was flying. When he flew, he could see the whole garden and his entire house from above and it looked like one small smudge. Sometimes he would go so high he reached space. His plane would turn into a cool space ship and he looked down at planet Earth like a guardian. Evil aliens tried to invade it, but he fought them all. Their ships exploded in orbit and all the citizens of the planet yelled in happiness.

He spent all his best summers on the top of that jungle gym.

Now, he can't help but smile as he grips the stone until his fingers and knuckles turn white. Sweat drips down his forehead and in his eyes while he pushes himself up with one foot. He peeks down and grins.

Turning his gaze back towards his goal, John pushes his body up and searches for the next hold on the rock. He steps up on the stone wall and grabs the small crease on the cliff. He looks around for the next safe grip. It is higher than he can reach at the moment, so he has to give himself one small push before grabbing it. His boot finds another small foothold to support his body as he continues to climb.

He grunts as he gets past the halfway mark. He wipes the sweat on his sleeve and reaches up to another crack in the stone.

Yosemite National Park is hot today. Canyons, jagged peaks, rounded domes and waterfalls surround him, and bellow that, he can see meadows, oaks and pine forests. He invited Ronon to go with him and get to know a little more about the wilderness on Earth, but Ronon had already made other plans with Banks.

A faint breeze cools John's face before the hot air returns. He grips stone again, right hand and left foot, left hand and right foot.

John doesn't really mind spending his Sunday alone. It is a very relaxing relief from the routine paperwork he is forced to do during their prolonged stay in the Milky Way. Now at least he could explore his own planet as well.

John pushes up to the last meter of rock and checks his rope one last time before holding onto the ground above. With a grunt, he hugs the stone and places one foot up, then another. He stands and looks down from the top of the highest peak, smiling.

The scenery always made it worth it.

Fin