Future Past
by darkhavens
Pairing/Characters: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: G
Words: 300
Summary: Fifty years after the Stargate system became common knowledge on Earth, what does anyone really know about the people who went to Pegasus?
Official histories never tell the whole, unbridled truth. They don't tell the world how close those first intrepid travellers to Pegasus really were, how close they had to be. They pass on facts and statistics, dry words and hollow numbers. Emotions, feelings, were seen as inappropriate.
Many only skim the books named on their reading lists at school; they watch the vids and documentaries their professors use as tools to pass on personal agendas. They never know the truth.
They never know that General Sheppard almost caused a coup by losing an arm and being recalled to Earth. How Doctor McKay refused to let his lover leave the flying city, so sure that Earth would never allow him back so badly damaged. Imperfect. No longer fit for battle.
There is no government-sponsored documentary explaining just how Sheppard went from Air Force General to Doctor - inside a month. Or how he skipped the usual interview procedure and was working in the lab beside McKay before the ink was dry. That's not the tale they want to tell.
But the truth has a way of filtering out.
An alien wedding ritual caught on digital media. A flood of emails saved in haste to the wrong disc. A stack of fading photographs and obsolete memory cards carry fragments of a story that got trampled underfoot by history's Government Issue boots.
And someone, somewhere, takes an interest.
Old biographies and memoirs, personal diaries and journals, letters, all are grist for the mill that's started turning. Requests for documents and files, long unlocked by various governments who used to take their secrets to the grave. Nothing left to hide - the gates became common knowledge half a century ago.
In the end, it's not the movie of the year; it's just another space opera love story.
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