BSG ficlet, untitled, Racetrack, PG
disclaimer: not mine. Written for the 12colonies challenge. 300 words.
Maggie doesn't talk about it, not to anyone. Sometimes, she'll stand in the showers, the taps off and just smell the air, but it's not the same. Nothing is, with metal boxes and endless patrols and Cylons screaming down their necks.
Every time she goes out, she thinks about being dead; wonders what's on the other side; fields and flowers, clouds and angels, pits of hell and eternal damnation.
Sometimes, she thinks that might be easiest: her afterlife would smell like new-fallen rain, and she'd dance barefoot on the grass, around and around and around (the image pulls at her sometimes, taunts her with the idea before she wakes to the grey and the stale air and the cards she knows by fold and crease).
There was the smell just before a thunder-storm, the snap-crackle of electricity in the air that made her hair stand on end. Standing in an open field was a dangerous idea, but Maggie hadn't been able to resist, even as an adult. Warm rain pouring down on her, the thunder echoing in her bones and the lightning blinding her: these were things she could only remember with a wistfulness she'd never expected to have.
Margaret Anne Edmonson, get your ass out of that field. The sound of her mother's voice echoes at the strangest moments. Part exasperation, part annoyance, part worry. I'm gonna die any day now, Ma.
Her mother would have understood. She'd understood everything else: choosing to fly, infrequent letters and even more infrequent visits.
"You done wasting your water ration?"
Starbuck's snide voice echoes, and Maggie spins the taps off and wipes her face. "Yeah. Done." She shoves past the other pilot, not caring. It's another day in the cockpit, another day of endless patrol. Another day without rain.
Maggie doesn't talk about it, not to anyone. Sometimes, she'll stand in the showers, the taps off and just smell the air, but it's not the same. Nothing is, with metal boxes and endless patrols and Cylons screaming down their necks.
Every time she goes out, she thinks about being dead; wonders what's on the other side; fields and flowers, clouds and angels, pits of hell and eternal damnation.
Sometimes, she thinks that might be easiest: her afterlife would smell like new-fallen rain, and she'd dance barefoot on the grass, around and around and around (the image pulls at her sometimes, taunts her with the idea before she wakes to the grey and the stale air and the cards she knows by fold and crease).
There was the smell just before a thunder-storm, the snap-crackle of electricity in the air that made her hair stand on end. Standing in an open field was a dangerous idea, but Maggie hadn't been able to resist, even as an adult. Warm rain pouring down on her, the thunder echoing in her bones and the lightning blinding her: these were things she could only remember with a wistfulness she'd never expected to have.
Margaret Anne Edmonson, get your ass out of that field. The sound of her mother's voice echoes at the strangest moments. Part exasperation, part annoyance, part worry. I'm gonna die any day now, Ma.
Her mother would have understood. She'd understood everything else: choosing to fly, infrequent letters and even more infrequent visits.
"You done wasting your water ration?"
Starbuck's snide voice echoes, and Maggie spins the taps off and wipes her face. "Yeah. Done." She shoves past the other pilot, not caring. It's another day in the cockpit, another day of endless patrol. Another day without rain.