First Night Challenge: We Would Certainly Have Heard by Brighid.

Challenge: First Night In Atlantis
Category: Gen
Rating: PG
Author: Brighid
Summary: We always *think* we know. But we don't.



We Would Certainly Have Heard: Kavanaugh

This is the way things go:

You work on your own and you tell yourself that it's because you're good, that they respect you enough to give you room to move but it's not that. It's never *been* that.

People are a puzzle you just don't get; they don't fit. Or you don't fit, which is subtly different and subtly damning.

But you had thought...that this could be different.

It's not.

So you listen to some no-neck asshole tell you where it's safe to store your equipment, that stuff that's probably going to do fuck-all good now, now that you *know* the way it's going to all go down, but you don't tell him nowhere is safe, not anymore. Not after they went jack-booting their way through a brand new galaxy and woke up something that'd make the fucking *Goa'uld* wet themselves.

You don't tell him you hate here, either. You hate here and *now*, you hate that smiling asshole Sheppard and that sanctimonious bitch Weir and you hate McKay perhaps most of all because he's right often enough to not get how fucking *wrong* he is.

You'd hate God, too, if you hadn't stopped believing in Him when you were eleven.

And you hate being afraid more than everything else put together.

So you just move the goddamn boxes and you keep it all to yourself; nobody will understand it, or give a shit anyway. Every time you open your mouth around here you know you're going to lose because you see things the way they are, not the way you want them to be.

But eventually you'll do it anyway, because you're not stupid enough to believe in nobility or glory or even honour because you stopped believing in them about the same time you stopped believing in God. You'll say what has to be said and fuck it, because somebody has to remind them of just how truly

goddamned

fucked

they all are.

And you're not going to die because they want to be heroes.

You've survived this long, and you refuse to die because some idiots still *believe* in heroes.

So they're going to know your name, and they're going to hate it, and who the fuck cares. Because you'll still be *here* to hate.

)0(

End

Brighid