Rodney McKay was silent. If that didn't signal the end of the world, she didn't know what did. He looked at her with those bright blue eyes - so strange that she didn't notice them before. Perhaps they only shone this way beneath the reflective coat of unshed tears. Maybe she only noticed them because there was pain there, carved into the shadows on his face, and etched in painstaking detail into the brilliance of his eyes. His lip trembled, and his fists clenched and unclenched but not with the fidgety, barely contained nervous energy that she was used to. It was too slow ... almost deliberate, more controlled then she'd ever expected him to be. And yet, it was unhinged somehow, as though restraint only showed the depth of chaos.

"You thought it would work," she said. She wanted to be reassuring, so she reached out to lay a hand on Rodney's shoulder. His eyes flashed surprise, but the hurt didn't seem to leave him. He shrugged her hand off and started pacing.

"I was wrong."

"It's not over yet, Rodney. There's more ..."

"No, Elizabeth, there's not. I understand physics. I understand relativity. I have three and a half PhDs and probably would have more honorary ones if not for the whole 'classified' thing, but you know what? It does jack-diddly good. Because I don't understand consciousness. We don't ... we can't even begin to fathom the kind of experiments the Ancients were doing with consciousness, thinking, being. I mean, we're still back at 'I think, therefore I am,' and they're on another plane of existence! We still don't fully understand how Sheppard can even control the jumper. I can do it too and I still can't understand."

And for Rodney, a man who had devoted his entire life to the cult of knowledge, that was the worst part of all. He looked at her with such intensity, she found his sadness mesmerizing. Elizabeth had always known that Rodney was a man who felt deeply, surfed the waves of anger and pride and lust and even empathy (when he thought no one was looking) but until this moment she hadn't considered how hard this was ... how much Rodney had to work to shield his delicate being from tidal waves of emotion like the ones he was drowning in now.

His eyes looked like a storm, fiercely blue and as inescapable as that wave towering above you, paused with a gasp and waiting for the exhale to break. Sometime, a long time ago, Elizabeth had wished to feel that deeply. She wanted to fall in love. Not just with a man, or a woman, or with God even, but with people. She wanted to care about people in a way that was more than just knowing that death was bad, even in a far-off land that she would never see. She wanted to be able to say that she was that one person in politics that felt for the people ... represented them in the way that was supposed to be inherent in democracy, as more than just statistics and costs and benefits.

But it proved too difficult. It was too hard to love those you would have to send to their deaths. In the end they all became accountants, the brokers and scorekeepers that tallied up lives. She used to hate McNamera. She used to say that she wouldn't make that mistake ... that she would be the one to change the system. But it was all a lie. Because when you cared, the way she did now, you lost that calm objectivity that led to good decision-making. In order to safeguard the future you always had to make sacrifices. That was the good judgment that even now she could feel slipping.

"Isn't there anything more you can ..." She tried to sound hopeful, encouraging, when in truth she even believed Rodney's much overused sense of pessimism. When it came down to it, that was her job here, after all. In all the history of politics, from the stories Plato and Aristotle told of great heroes and honorable men, to Confucius and the exalted principle of rvn, there were always allowances made for those who could inspire. She wanted to be that person, not so that people would one day tell tales about her, but because in the end, she was not a soldier or a scientist and was trying desperately not to be an accountant.

Rodney would save the day. And she would force herself to believe it, because, without the skills to find a solution herself, her faith in him was the only thing she could do to make a difference.

But he was not willing to believe - he interrupted her. "No, Elizabeth, Carson already told us: he just had a seizure. Does that even mean anything to you? Seize-zure." In truth, it did. Her youngest brother was an epileptic, and she'd learned very young not to cry when he had an episode and not to complain when she had to give him rides everywhere when her other brothers were conveniently unavailable. But she'd never tell Rodney this. It was too private, even a world away. She wanted to love people despite their faults, but she could never allow someone else to see hers.

She clenched her fists, ignoring her anger. "Yes, Rodney, I'm aware of the meaning of the word. It's not necessarily a lethal condition."

"Really? Because seeing him lying there on the gurney seemed pretty lethal to me."

She turned away, unable to face his sarcasm. "Stop it, Rodney. Just stop it. You said yourself: we don't understand John's condition. That means there might be a solution out there. We just have to keep looking until we find it." What was the famous philosophical allegory? There's a man searching for his keys in the light of the street-lamp where they're very obviously not. Another man comes along and asks if that's where he lost them, but the man replies that it isn’t; it's just the only place he can see to look.

"Oh, the naivety of your optimism never ceases to amaze me, Elizabeth."

"Will you just stop closing your mind and try! We're talking about John's life here, Rodney."

He sighed. "Don't you think I know that! I don't know what to do, okay? Everyone expects me to always come through. And I do. Because I am a genius, after all. But there's only so much I can do. With the infinite number of things that could go wrong, it’s just a statistical probability that something will, and that there will be some time when I won't be able to fix it. Face it, Elizabeth: this is that time. You asked me for a solution and I'm telling you, I've got nothing. I'm open to suggestions. Believe me, I'm open to anything ..."

"I ..." She wanted to say something, anything. She looked at Rodney, seeming almost physically wounded by his inability to solve this problem. And it wasn't just the unsolvable puzzle. It was that he cared. Maybe he even loved more deeply than she ever could, in his own guarded and abrasive way.

"But ... I'm in love with you."

"No, you're not" Selena didn't even look up from the textbook she was riffling through, sitting cross-legged on Elizabeth's bed.

"How do you know that?" she huffed exasperatedly. Selena thought she knew everything, but not even God could claim that. "You're not inside my head; you couldn't possibly know what I'm feeling."

"That's because you don't know what you're feeling."

"But you do." She rolled her eyes. Not that Selena was looking ...

Selena heaved a put-on sigh, closing her book loudly, but just short of slamming. "It's really great that you're doing your 'question my sexuality' collegiate growing phase, Lizzie. I'm proud of you. But ... I don't want to screw-up our friendship because you feel like experimenting. We've already been over this: there is no such thing as love. Love is actually a convenient combination of neurotransmitters, associated with specific stimuli, most of which are tied to imprinted sexual preferences and instinctual drives for procreation. We exalt it because it's biologically beneficial to do so. To believe in love over anarchy is to believe in collective security. And to want to be 'in love' is the just the perversion of the biological desire to find a mate and provider that will increase the actual measure of reproductive success, which is the survival of the offspring to child-bearing age. Only you and I are never going to achieve that. What good is attachment to that ideal if all it does is mislead you?"

Elizabeth had heard this before. She'd heard it and written it off as another one of Selena's amusing biologicalizations of life, the universe and everything. She hadn't actually considered that she'd try to make an argument of it. There was a difference between descriptive and prescriptive, after all. "But that doesn't mean anything! So what if it is? If everything and anything we do is just a mask over biological determinants, then that's that. Does that make it feel any different? Is that supposed to make us want it less? And if it is, what's the alternative?"

Selena stood, dark eyes leveling on Elizabeth, even though she was more than a head shorter. "The alternative is to realize it. The alternative is to look beyond the illusion and see that you don't have to reach some sort of perfect ideal to be happy, because you never really will be - not the kind of happiness that's more than just a naturally produced neurochemical high. Happiness is just a dream that we have to keep chasing after because if we didn't desire it then there would be no drive to progress."

"Wait, I think I remember this: Nietzsche, the will to power, embrace biology, eschew the slave morality of compassion and asceticism and all that useless stuff about loving your fellow hu-man. I also remember this inspiring a few 'harmless' fascists and a fair bit of genocide."

"Not everything has to be political, you know. Crazy people can distort all sorts of good ideas. Genocide is natural really, if you think about it. Speciation and all that. Love ... especially in the Christian sense," Selena nodded to the shimmering silver cross dangling around Elizabeth's neck, "has caused wars, countless sufferings: Romeo and Juliet; the face that launched a thousand ships; and who do you think pays for all those gifts fairy-tale princes laud on their beloved? Why not just admit that it's about superiority, power, procreation, progress, territoriality, all this 'low' stuff that’s really just entirely natural?"

Elizabeth reached out, let her hand caress a soft rosy cheek. "Because I feel it. And it is natural. Because selfish acts on behalf of individuals do lead to progress like an 'invisible hand.'"

"Adam Smith. How romantic ..." Selena rolled her eyes, but she didn't pull away.

"So maybe happiness is just hormones. That doesn't stop me from wanting it. And maybe we think that human beings are superior just because that's who we happen to be. But that doesn't change who we are. And that doesn't change that I'm in love with you, and that I want you to stay."

She leaned in and the kiss was as easy and natural as the sigh that followed. And as they were panting together afterwards, foreheads pressed together and cheeks flushed, Selena whispered. "Okay, I'll stay. But only because I love you too."

Elizabeth shook herself back from the memory, soul sparkling with inspiration, feeling as though even the pain when Selena eventually did leave was worth it, because, now, she knew what to do.

"The box. We need to open the box."

"See. Like I told you, there's not ... wait, that's actually a good idea." He stood abruptly, pacing and wagging his index finger at nothing. Elizabeth smiled.

Then he snapped his fingers impatiently at her. "Quick, bring me some people who love each other." As though it was as easy as that.