Man of Devotion

Reading Time: 8 Minutes

Title: Man of Devotion
Author: Keira Marcos
Series: Nature Provides
Series Order: 7
Fandom: 9-1-1, Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, The Sentinel, NCIS
Relationship: Evan Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Genre:  Fusion, Romance, Established Relationship
Warnings:  Character Ascension, Canon-Typical Violence, Grammarly Beta
Author Note: I believe in happy endings with my whole chest and both tits.
Word Count: 1,902
Summary:  Evan Buckley would have done anything to protect his Guide, and that included achieving a mystical and mythical state with the psionic plane itself. He just didn’t realize the plane would keep him after the fact.

* * * *

He existed in a perpetual state of grief-fueled fury. Buck had never known such anger in his life, and in the first few months he’d outright wallowed in it. He watched, from the psionic plane, as his family grieved him. Through them, he’d learned that he’d ascended and that he wasn’t the first to do it. The other man, a Guide, had eventually been returned to Earth.

Buck had tried repeatedly to leave the plane so he could break the rules as Daniel Jackson had done, but he couldn’t. The others wouldn’t tell him how to return on his own, and despite reaching an enlightened state of being, the secrets of the universe had not been revealed to him. They were startled by his arrival, curious about his circumstances, and intent on making him accept his new existence.

They had come from another galaxy and called themselves alterans. The people on Earth called them the ancients. Buck thought they were wretched fucking assholes, and he didn’t even bother to pretend otherwise. Most of them were offended that he was not awed by them and their enlightened existence. Buck found their existence profane and their rules outright disgusting. They could do so much good in the universe, and they did nothing. They allowed people to suffer for their actions in Pegasus.

He’d gone to Pegasus when he found out about the wraith because he wanted to see it for himself. When he’d returned, his disgust for the alterans radiated off of him. They’d left their experiment to run rampant in Pegasus, and millions had died as a result. As far as he was concerned, they were guilty of genocide and the creation of biological weapons. Had he the power, he would punish every single one of them. Once he’d made that clear to them, they started to avoid him for the most part.

There was one that lingered near him, and he figured it was a mixture of curiosity and grateful shock. Within a few days of his arrival, he’d come upon an alteran having some sort of power struggle with a malevolent force. The situation had been appalling, so he’d joined her, and whatever strength he’d given her had allowed Oma Desala the strength she needed to win her fight against a creature who called himself Anubis. Between the two of them, they’d torn the thing asunder, and the psionic plane had ejected the pieces.

Oma followed the pieces. When she returned, she thanked Buck for his assistance and explained that she’d destroyed Anubis and he would no longer be a threat to anyone. Then she asked why he interfered in her fight because none of the others ever had. Buck hadn’t been surprised. The others were a bunch of cowardly motherfuckers with no empathy. He told her as much, and he’d explained that he’d never be able to turn his back on such a fight.

She’d thanked him and asked him how she could help him. He told her he wanted to go home, and he had to give her credit, she’d tried. Oma had been startled and horrified when the psionic plane clung to him and hadn’t allowed her to return him to the living. She’d promised that she would search for a way to return him to Earth and to his family.

“Focusing on the living won’t help you on your journey of self-discovery.”

Buck made a face and considered ignoring him. He wondered if the alteran had been assigned to him, like some sort of fucking arrogant and entitled missionary who was trying to convert a heathen to their religion due to vanity and self-centric belief that their way was the only way.

“You don’t belong here,” Buck said.

“What?”

He turned to the man who had introduced himself as Janus. “You don’t belong here. Your kind are just invaders that the psionic plane merely tolerates. It’s why the spirit animals, the only true and deserving occupants of the plane, avoid all of you. They’re disgusted by your greed and callous disregard for life. You didn’t even value your own life.”

Janus stared at him, clearly shocked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh.” Buck laughed. “You already knew that, didn’t you? That’s why you’re all so curious about me and why you’ve tried to lure Daniel Jackson back repeatedly. The psionic plane has loved and sheltered me since the moment I was born. You know nothing of that kind of acceptance and safety.”

Janus was silent beside him.

“It’s why you can’t make me do what you want,” Buck said. “It’s why the psionic plane pushes you away when I’m tired of your bullshit.”

“Daniel Jackson was much more pleasant,” Janus muttered.

“He believed the best of you,” Buck said flatly. “Now he knows better.”

He focused then on his family. Eddie had the kids on the beach, and they were playing in the sand. It was agonizing to watch them, but it was worse when he didn’t. Not knowing that they were okay would drive him insane.

“We’re not greedy,” Janus said. “We sacrificed everything to ascend.”

“You coveted a place beyond your existence that you had no genuine place in, and you try to hoard it. You try to control it, rule over it like you have the right to authority in this place that you did not create, cannot own, and do not truly understand,” Buck said quietly. “That is the epitome of greed.”

“We understand our circumstances and our place in the universe.”

“It’s self-centered to assume that your circumstances shape the psionic plane,” Buck pointed out dryly and exhaled slowly. “I’m not in the mood for your speech about acceptance. I’d rather watch over my family.”

“You can’t do anything to protect them for whatever is to come for them,” Janus pointed out. “Do you really want to watch over them until their mortal lives are expended?”

“I will watch over them every single day until they join me,” Buck said evenly.

“They won’t join you.”

“None of you have any control over that, and my Guide will absolutely join me once his life on Earth is done. He’s already researching it—learning about ascension and how to achieve it. There’s nothing any of you can do about it. He will certainly teach it to our children as well.”

“Neither one of those children are actually yours.”

Buck stared at the kids for a moment. Christopher was helping Bea fill a bucket with sand. The way they already loved and trusted each other was amazing. “I pity your small and ugly existence, Janus. It’s galling that your entire species thought that removing love from your existence was enlightenment. But it certainly explains a lot. Fuck off.”

He waved a hand, and psionic energy flowed around them. Janus was forced away from him.

“You drive them nuts,” Oma said in delight as she joined him. “It’s the most fun I’ve had in an entire fucking age!”

Buck laughed.

“Can you tell me about your ascension?”

It was a surprising question, as she’d avoided asking him about it. In fact, none of the others had asked him about it either. It was like they didn’t want to know or understand how he’d come to be on the psionic plane when it had certainly been nothing like their own experience or journey.

“Do you know what a bomb is?”

“An explosive device, yes,” Oma said quietly.

“There was a bombing, and I was pinned under a large truck used for my job,” Buck said. “The bomber threatened my Guide’s life, and his insanity was bleeding all over us both. I couldn’t allow him to hurt Eddie. It was a violation of my most basic imperative. As a Sentinel, it is my duty to shelter and protect my Guide.”

Oma made a soft, curious sound.

“But I was physically unable to move and severely injured. My spirit animal came to me, and it was like she was asking me a question. I was desperate. I said yes, and she entered my body. We were genuinely merged in a way I never thought possible. I felt savage and so powerful at that moment that it was overwhelming.

“Suddenly, I was free of the truck, and I grabbed the bomber. He was screaming, and Eddie was saying my name, begging me not to go. I didn’t understand. The bomber lost his mind and triggered the device, so I just wrapped myself around him and contained the explosion. I didn’t expect to survive.

“I remember trying to touch Eddie, and he was crying. I’d never seen him in such a state. I realized, then, that I no longer had a body.” Buck cleared his throat. “It was agonizing because every single one of my senses had been stripped away from me, and I was psychologically numb. I don’t know how you exist in this way, Oma. It’s disgusting.”

“Daniel said something very similar,” Oma admitted.

“Then the psionic plane reached out for me and started to pull. I had no choice but to leave Earth, but I fought anyway. I’ve never known anything so painful in my life. I trusted the psionic plane with everything, and now….” He took a deep breath. “Now I don’t. I can’t understand why it’s holding me hostage this way. It’s torture.”

“There is no ill intent in this place,” Oma said. “The psionic plane adores you, Evan. It is sheltering you, and I don’t know why. I wish I understood.”

“I wish the same,” Buck said and watched his sweet Bea gleefully dump sand all over Eddie’s feet while Christopher giggled helplessly over his dad pretending to be shocked and scared.

“One of the first things I learned after ascending was that I don’t exist on the psionic plane as I did when I was mortal.”

“What do you mean?” Buck questioned.

“My life was linear—I moved forward through time and space,” Oma said. “The psionic plane does not. I’m unsure if I’ve existed all of these many thousands of years here because ascension is immortality for the soul or because time has no meaning here. Whatever intelligence governs this place has never focused on any of my kind, Evan. It merely tolerates us, just as you said.”

“Is it focused on me?” Buck questioned.

“Yes,” Oma said. “And I don’t know why, but I have a feeling understanding what it wants from you is your path home to your family.”

“Will you help me figure it out?”

“Of course,” she said. “You saved me from an eternal fight, which was a state of torture and pain that I did not believe possible until it was happening. But even if you hadn’t, your devotion to your family is so compelling that I cannot ignore it.”

“Thank you.”

The End