#sostarry:asks

❛ oh? I hadn't noticed. what gave it away? was it the bullets? ❜ the words are reflex, but they leave a twinge of guilt in their wake. she is not deserving of his ill humor. ❛ what did you say to them, lucy? ❜

he half-teases — this is unlikely to be her fault — though he had, for once, thought his plan simple enough not to go awry. eventually, if he's smart, he might learn to cease considering any plan interference-proof.

the past haunts. the good, the bad. above all, the way the one morphs into the other and taints it irretrievably. perhaps traveling in time ought to put it all into perspective, to make one realize that in the grand scheme of things, their small lives are mere seconds. that in light of time's surprising ( and infuriating ) stability, their actions become insignificant. how many times had a life cut short or irrevocably altered, failed to have a momentous, transformative effect on history as they know it?

voice breaks through una's focus, and she turns, almost hesitantly, from the console before her and the stream of numbers that flash before her. despite her former absorption, there's a brusque efficiency to her tone and no delay in asking, ❛ what is it you need? ❜ she's loath, however, to forsake her own work.

❛ don't get me wrong, sam. it's a damn miracle that the rest of the world doesn't know about this yet. ❜ he does not need to remind her that they'd fought literal alien spaceships over antarctica, and still somehow the government kept hush hush the programs that enabled them to do so. he doesn't for a moment understand it, but that's the way of the world: cam accepts what is, comprehensible though it may be or not. there's too much, otherwise, that would paralyze him.

the radio signal's full of static, enough that cam nearly unclips it from his vest to hit it. not the most effective way of fixing malfunctioning technology, and even cam knows better. even cam could do better, with the right resources. which he definitely doesn't have out here in the middle of nowhere.

besides, as sam has just reminded him, time is pressing, and fixing the damn vehicle that stranded him out here in the first place is definitely a higher priority. ❛ yeah, and just how do you propose I do that, sam? ❜

not helpful, cameron. he sighs, and though he doesn't apologize for snapping, he does soften his voice and continue, ❛ I promise you, I'm working on it, quickly as I can. this thing's not put together like cars back on earth. ❜ the principles might be the same, but the implementation? nothing is where he expects it to be.

elizabeth doesn't laugh, but she might have. it would seem easier than this, than the tension in her chest that holds on with a death grip. teyla means well, she knows, even as she knows that teyla, as much as any here, has cause to know that being the right thing does not make such decisions any easier.

scant years ago, she was nothing more than a diplomat, empowered to lobby for change but, ultimately, removed from decisions made. since president hayes had drawn her into the inner circle of the stargate program, she had felt the weight of making decisions for an entire planet. atlantis's isolation had offered only a temporary respite, for all it had never felt like one.