Ficlet: "Look Back" (Tyrol, gen, 1000 words)
Title: Look Back
Author: Flora
Characters: Tyrol, with mentions of several others.
Words: 1000 even
Rating: gen.
Challenge: wild card week
Spoilers: through last night, I suppose (2.2).
A/N: This is a bit of an experiment with format. We'll see whether it works. Mentions of character deaths, though no one major.
Look back
"Hang on, buddy." I tell him it'll be all right. Going home, I reassure. Can't look at Cally. Can't think about-- "Going home. That's right. Something for the pain."
It isn't that people haven't died. It's that I haven't. I had to be. All right, so it was direct, and personal, and merciful, and horrible. Pilots shoot down Cylons, but those are Cylons and that isn't the same. Not like flesh and blood and bone, broken like this. Not a body; a ship. It's different.
"Going home. Here we go." I jab the needle, press the plunger, smile so he doesn't know he's dead until afterward. My man, my call, was what the LT said. He was right. My responsibility, but I still can't look. What if it had been Cally? Or Sharon? What if Sharon had been with us?
--
"Cover me." I look at Cally hard to see whether she's ready. She looks about fourteen, but she's tough. Tougher than me, I think. She was the one that went over to the prison ship, did what she had to do, didn't panic. Yes. She's ready.
Got to get him. No way he survives this, but I can't just. She's covering, and I go. Pull tug drag, and I know it hurts him, but what's the other choice? It only takes a second to see he's gone, and we have to bring the kit. "Cally. Go. Come on. Let's go." We get his tags because that's what you do, and we go, as quick as we can be quiet, working hard to breathe breathe breathe and never retch choke sob. This is Kobol, or supposed to be. There aren't supposed to be Cylons on Kobol.
I toss the tags to the LT and hand over the kit. Lose one, save one, and there's no way that comes out even, is there? Cally's pacing, and Crashdown, well. He's standing about as far away as could be called 'with' our group. Like he can't touch us, and I think, we’ll, he's just lost another, it's only fair, and then I come to understand why it's worse than that.
--
The glass, shattering, it's peculiar. It isn't as if I haven't seen broken glass before, shards and sharp angles scattered on the metal deck of the bay, or on my mother's hardwood floor. But it's really not at all the same, when the glass it flying at you, and you're in a ship struggling for a controlled descent and then you realize those hard slivers have come back into you, into the group, and someone nearby is screaming.
I don't think I panic for more than an instant, and then training sets in. Training to assess, mitigate, repair. Just another machine, chief. Just another machine, leaks sticky blood instead of slick oil. Before I'm even through trying to assess what's happening, much less what to do about it, we're crashing, landing in an open space against the edge of the forest.
So, abandoning ship. It's not that simple. It's not abandoning a ship. It's. In a situation like this, it's abandoning hope, I think. Not that there's a ton of hope here, but now, all right, we're walking back to Galactica. The open space and hard vacuum won't be an issue. Right?
LT says to pack it up, and we are, but we can't pack up bodies, can't pack up the people they were. We tromp into the forest, and I can't look back. Engineers don't usually die in battle, after all, and looking back reminds me that Sharon flies about in these fragile things all the time.
--
They've got the cart, and the paint, for it, a thousand safe landings. I look around. It's been tough, but I'm proud of my crew, such as it is. I'm proud the pilots can fly out and come back safe. We've done well, and I'm starting to think about putting together a little celebration of, well, something. The anniversary of something. I could put up a sign: 438 days without a hangar deck accident. That sort of thing.
Whoosh.
The sound is familiar, but out of place. There is nothing I can do, even had I recognized and placed it immediately, but I can't help but feel guilty as I watch the …pieces, I suppose, fly up and fall back, landing on the deck with a wet splat
I don't know how I'm going to tell the Old Man what happened. But he has to be told.
Perhaps it can wait a moment. Just until I have the names of the dead. It's only respectful. I start wading into the mess, and looking for tags, stopping to tell the commander what I know, then going right back to it.
He says he's proud of the whole ship, but right now, I feel no pride. I feel guilt, and horror, and no pride.
What if Sharon had been amongst them?
--
"A few more. Just a few. They can make it. Please." I'm screaming at him, and I know that could get me into a world of hurt, but they're my people, and I'm not leaving them.
Except, they've lost me, I suppose. I wasn't there with then, and now we have to close the doors, can't wait. I want to go back in after them, but my responsibility is to my ship first, crew second, and I know this, no matter how much I may complain to the commander later. I look at Cally, so very young--good at what she does, make no mistake, but I hate that this is happening to her.
It'll just take a couple of minutes. Frak. I just want to go back.
--
"Let's go." That's the LT. We leave the body and take the tags, then continue on as we had been. I wonder who will be next. Death is, I've concluded, more pervasive than I'd ever thought, in the head or in my rack.
At least Sharon wasn't with us.
Author: Flora
Characters: Tyrol, with mentions of several others.
Words: 1000 even
Rating: gen.
Challenge: wild card week
Spoilers: through last night, I suppose (2.2).
A/N: This is a bit of an experiment with format. We'll see whether it works. Mentions of character deaths, though no one major.
Look back
"Hang on, buddy." I tell him it'll be all right. Going home, I reassure. Can't look at Cally. Can't think about-- "Going home. That's right. Something for the pain."
It isn't that people haven't died. It's that I haven't. I had to be. All right, so it was direct, and personal, and merciful, and horrible. Pilots shoot down Cylons, but those are Cylons and that isn't the same. Not like flesh and blood and bone, broken like this. Not a body; a ship. It's different.
"Going home. Here we go." I jab the needle, press the plunger, smile so he doesn't know he's dead until afterward. My man, my call, was what the LT said. He was right. My responsibility, but I still can't look. What if it had been Cally? Or Sharon? What if Sharon had been with us?
--
"Cover me." I look at Cally hard to see whether she's ready. She looks about fourteen, but she's tough. Tougher than me, I think. She was the one that went over to the prison ship, did what she had to do, didn't panic. Yes. She's ready.
Got to get him. No way he survives this, but I can't just. She's covering, and I go. Pull tug drag, and I know it hurts him, but what's the other choice? It only takes a second to see he's gone, and we have to bring the kit. "Cally. Go. Come on. Let's go." We get his tags because that's what you do, and we go, as quick as we can be quiet, working hard to breathe breathe breathe and never retch choke sob. This is Kobol, or supposed to be. There aren't supposed to be Cylons on Kobol.
I toss the tags to the LT and hand over the kit. Lose one, save one, and there's no way that comes out even, is there? Cally's pacing, and Crashdown, well. He's standing about as far away as could be called 'with' our group. Like he can't touch us, and I think, we’ll, he's just lost another, it's only fair, and then I come to understand why it's worse than that.
--
The glass, shattering, it's peculiar. It isn't as if I haven't seen broken glass before, shards and sharp angles scattered on the metal deck of the bay, or on my mother's hardwood floor. But it's really not at all the same, when the glass it flying at you, and you're in a ship struggling for a controlled descent and then you realize those hard slivers have come back into you, into the group, and someone nearby is screaming.
I don't think I panic for more than an instant, and then training sets in. Training to assess, mitigate, repair. Just another machine, chief. Just another machine, leaks sticky blood instead of slick oil. Before I'm even through trying to assess what's happening, much less what to do about it, we're crashing, landing in an open space against the edge of the forest.
So, abandoning ship. It's not that simple. It's not abandoning a ship. It's. In a situation like this, it's abandoning hope, I think. Not that there's a ton of hope here, but now, all right, we're walking back to Galactica. The open space and hard vacuum won't be an issue. Right?
LT says to pack it up, and we are, but we can't pack up bodies, can't pack up the people they were. We tromp into the forest, and I can't look back. Engineers don't usually die in battle, after all, and looking back reminds me that Sharon flies about in these fragile things all the time.
--
They've got the cart, and the paint, for it, a thousand safe landings. I look around. It's been tough, but I'm proud of my crew, such as it is. I'm proud the pilots can fly out and come back safe. We've done well, and I'm starting to think about putting together a little celebration of, well, something. The anniversary of something. I could put up a sign: 438 days without a hangar deck accident. That sort of thing.
Whoosh.
The sound is familiar, but out of place. There is nothing I can do, even had I recognized and placed it immediately, but I can't help but feel guilty as I watch the …pieces, I suppose, fly up and fall back, landing on the deck with a wet splat
I don't know how I'm going to tell the Old Man what happened. But he has to be told.
Perhaps it can wait a moment. Just until I have the names of the dead. It's only respectful. I start wading into the mess, and looking for tags, stopping to tell the commander what I know, then going right back to it.
He says he's proud of the whole ship, but right now, I feel no pride. I feel guilt, and horror, and no pride.
What if Sharon had been amongst them?
--
"A few more. Just a few. They can make it. Please." I'm screaming at him, and I know that could get me into a world of hurt, but they're my people, and I'm not leaving them.
Except, they've lost me, I suppose. I wasn't there with then, and now we have to close the doors, can't wait. I want to go back in after them, but my responsibility is to my ship first, crew second, and I know this, no matter how much I may complain to the commander later. I look at Cally, so very young--good at what she does, make no mistake, but I hate that this is happening to her.
It'll just take a couple of minutes. Frak. I just want to go back.
--
"Let's go." That's the LT. We leave the body and take the tags, then continue on as we had been. I wonder who will be next. Death is, I've concluded, more pervasive than I'd ever thought, in the head or in my rack.
At least Sharon wasn't with us.