Song of the Stars

Lean heard the slid of the doors opening and she tensed up, automatically placing the well built invisible walls around her. Many people on the outside viewed her as guarded and not easily approachable. She glanced up quickly to see who it was and only slightly relaxed but continued to stare down at her tablet pushing at buttons.

After two years of knowing Captain Lincoln Parrish, it was still a wonder of how this friendship got started. Lena was base personnel she didn’t go off world at least not as much as she could help it, and Link was military who was part of an off world team and did plenty of other things not in Lena’s realm. Nevertheless there was a spark, or at least he had found a way past her walls. He looked out for her, and defended her. Sometimes she wished that she could do more to reciprocate their friendship other than just fix or upgrade his gadgets.

Lena cracked a hint of a smile when she remembered the first time she met Link. She had been working an IT shift when he came in with his laptop which refused to turn on. Lena found him…charming, in a sweet way, not like other men that try and be suave.

His voice brought her back to reality, ”When do you leave?” She could feel her face drop a bit with micro expressions. She could not tell what his tone implied, happy? Concerned? New certainly did spread fast. Lena pressed a few more buttons on her tablet and saw another email that she missed before, a mass email full of personnel changes. ”Day after tomorrow,” she said coolly, ”They are giving us time to wrap up projects and lose ends, read people in to anything we’re working on. Plus….packing takes time.”

Lena did not dare look up at her balcony companion, being cool calm and collected in the face of disappointment work only so far as not facing other people and somehow talking about the situation was placing her on the verge of tears, which in itself was upsetting her, for being upset about stupid things.

“’When do you leave? Do you need help packing?’ It’s like you’re happy to see me go, like it’s a good thing. Is it a good thing? Am I over reacting by being upset, I mean, I’ve never been reassigned like this before.” Link had sat down beside her and tried to comfort her, but all she felt was trapped. Stupid emotions! She wished at times that she could function like normal and just be ok with human interaction.

Lena got up from where she was sitting. She took a deep breath in and let it out calming herself and then leaned on the balcony rail. ”I keep thinking that I haven’t done a good job here, that I’ve done something wrong, or I’m just not good enough.” she explained. Most people on Atlantis has either a doctorate or a military rank and she had neither and was once of the very few to have neither. So she was always questioning one’s value on the expedition.

Trying to shake all the emotion off of her Lena reached up and pulled the hair tie from her ponytail and tussled her red locks before promptly putting it back up in a messy bun. She turned and looked at Link, ”I’m sorry, you know me. Sometimes I get a little crazy with stupid little things.”