atlas wept || elly & costin
@aurelia--ferris
[She knows what she hopes he’ll say. That he has what she’s been searching for. Months scouring the Echo, comparing snippets of tidal charts and major fault lines, scraping together any kind of semblance of information that could lead her to hot spots—or alternately safe zones—that would’ve escaped the devastation.]
[It’s hard for her to imagine the entire world responding to her when she goes back in time, listening to her, but she always knew that if she did manage to get there, and could save someone, anyone, with the information that she’s gathered, all of this might be worthwhile on a cosmic level. The way she feels now, it’d pale in comparison.]
[Because once she looks past saving Lucy, the truth is that she does want to help. She wants this to be better for someone, the second time around. More than she’s ever wanted anything in her life. It’s just… not easy to admit that to herself. It puts too much on the line.]
[She wants to press him with questions—Did they take photographs? Map the damage? Did it clear at all?—just to find anything she can, but as he continues, she realizes… he did have other priorities.]
[It’s not his fault he doesn’t know what it is costing her, to accept that he might not have anything at all.]
[She wants to tell him… that she could change all that. Make sure he was on the ground, rather than in orbit, or send them warning at least, before the ISS was impacted.]
[Her teeth knead into her bottom lip.]
[Finally, unable to mask her disappointment:] You don’t have… evidence of what happened, do you? Photos, records… anything you remember about where, um. [She already knows he probably doesn’t, and it’s crushing her.] Where they hit worst, where they didn’t hit at all… Or, where did you radio first? Did you see somewhere that was safe from it? [One safe place, left green and vibrant afterwards, or one place she can warn beforehand. Just one. Please.] It’s—it’s okay, if you didn’t…
[But… please…]
[Oh no. He hadn’t anticipated this. A lot of people have asked similar questions, since Constantin and Anaya were in a unique position to get a different vantage point of the destruction. But it had always been asked from a scientific standpoint. Aurelia asks, and she looks at him with wide eyes, mouth held in tense anticipation, as if his answer matters to her. Not just that it matters. It matters on a very personal level.
It tugs at Costin’s heartstrings. It hurts. He wishes he could give her the answers she needed as a salve to the pain on her face.
The worst thing is, he has the answers. But he’s not quite sure if he’s prepared to give them to her. He doesn’t know who she is, or why she’s asking, or what she would do with the information he has. What if he told her he had a map hidden in his mattress where he’d sketched out the damage as best he could, and she took it? Showed it to the wrong people? He isn’t sure how the information could be used for harm, but he’s on high alert all the time, these days. He still understands very little of how the world has developed down here; just because he can’t imagine how the information he has hidden might be used, doesn’t mean it couldn’t be abused.]
I... first ve contact China and Peru. They are first places ve see get hit. [The asteroids had hit several of the surrounding countries at once, but when they first realised what was going to happen, China and Peru had been their first points of contact. It all went so quiet so quickly after that. He pauses then, mouth moving silently. Costin wipes his eyes, unable to stop the slow leak of tears. In part he hesitates because he isn’t sure how much he’s willing to tell her, but he is also truly struggling to talk about it. The image of earth, burning, will never leave him. Every time he closes his eyes he sees it again, and he hears his colleagues screaming as they watch everyone they love die, a million miles too far away to help.]
I think... I think novhere is really safe. Some areas maybe are not hit so badly, but... vhy it matter? In the end everyvhere lose... so much. It make no difference now.
[He elects to simply not answer her question about evidence, because he just can’t open that can of worms with a stranger. He wishes he could offer that help to Elly, because he truly feels guilty knowing that he has information that might lessen the pain in her heart, but he can’t. If nothing else, he had sworn to Anaya that their research would stay between the two of them unless they explicitly discussed sharing it. It’s not Costin’s decision to make alone.]
