BSG fic: dulce et decorum est
title: dulce et decorum est
wc: about 700
a/n: Lee (and Cain/Pegasus) character study set during RSI, and therefore contains serious, SERIOUS angst. so, uh, Happy Galentine's Day, sci_fi_shipper! Thank you for running the Lee Fan Welcome Wagon!
~standard disclaimer
He finds his way around the Pegasus fairly easily. They hadn’t just lost networks with the attacks, but architecture, equipment, raw space. The Atlantia and Pegasus were christened in the same year, follow the same floor plan, run on the same impersonal command structure; the ship he should’ve died on and the one he would, twins in every way that matters. Cain’d had a reputation, even before the attacks, always ran a tight ship. No loose ends, no ragged edges, doggedly clinging to regs, infamous for her conformity. (The people. They’re what don’t matter, what always change.) ( No, not they, we.)
He finds his way around fine and doesn’t bother to unpack into the stripped, clinical rack labeled “Pistol.” He’d wonder when Pistol died, feel some sort of obligation to care, but that’s not his responsibility here on the Pegasus.
It’s all so easy, too easy, he feels more like a frakking fraud than he has in his whole life.
The Pegasus has reveille at oh-five-hundred, just like on Galactica. He opens his eyes to light as bright as the Olympic carrier. He feels sick as soon as he realizes he doesn’t any more, now he gets up and starts his day like a man whose conscience isn’t sticky with blood, like it’s one more thing they’ve all forgotten.
The pilots do their morning run together, everyone not on morning CAP, shuffling along in silent formation, by rank and then alphabetically. Quite the honor, he thinks wryly, to be first among the lieutenants because of his name. At least he doesn’t have to face Kara, to think what they’re about to do; he blurs his vision and tries to ignore the blonde crest that slips around Volk’s head.
He runs the way he has every morning for years now, but there’s panting at his neck and elbows swinging in his eyeline and he feels crowded, desperate to be in his viper, alone. His feet feel loud and heavy, an apostate in this temple of Mars. (No, heretic, an apostate believed, once. He never has; he knows that now.)
His shower is scalding hot, his breakfast a starchy, fortified beige. Some level of his brain notes the straightforwardness of it all, a whole ship as focused and relentless as if coordinated not by an officer but a metronome.
They file into the briefing room together. It’d be strange otherwise, for the Galactica crew to break up now, especially them. Apollo and Starbuck; StarbuckandApollo. Together they’re both more and less than human.
It’s appropriate, he thinks. So is she.
Orders for their own plan wash over him (well, part of their plan). Stinger gives him back the Blackbird without sparing the effort for a condescending sneer, professional and efficient as the CO makes her way in.
Cain - the admiral - no, Cain, it doesn’t help either way - walks in; lets them go through the motions of standing and saluting.
She stands in front of the podium, back to the microphone, rigid and bold. “I am not going to insult you with some lecture about patriotism, or trust.”
He doesn’t have to look at Kara to know their jaws are twitching in sync. Some poker players, he thinks. Joking about poker right now, what the frak is wrong with you, Lee.
“This mission is of dire strategic necessity. More than that, though, it is a chance to strike back. It may not be justice, but it is the closest thing we have. They have taken everything from us, and we can take something back. Their immortality.”
(Lee has always wanted to believe in a soul, in some kind of life past this one; today he remembers with a sick twist of relief that his brother is gone, nothing but one less pair of eyes to avoid.)
“You are all professionals. You understand the nature of the enemy. You are all equally skilled and equally hungry for victory.”
She stares dead at them.
“You will do what must be done.”
And (though his limbs hang like lead, though he is too numb to flinch at her knowing gaze) he will.