Word Count: 999
Date: 02/28/05
Series: One
Rating: K+
Category: Character
Pairing/Focus: Lee
Warnings: Mild language.
Summary: Lee thinks about his job as CAG. Takes place during Ep 01x04-
AOC. This is for the 1000 word challenge.
Spoilers/Disclaimers: Don’t own, don’t sue. R&D and Sci-Fi
yo.
I salute sharply, my gaze straight ahead. I hear the music playing behind me.
No, that’s not true.
I don’t hear it, I feel it.
Deep inside.
That music means death.
Someone has died.
More than just one.
Several pilots.
Not the first. Not the last.
There will be more days like this.
More music playing around me that I don’t hear. I just know it’s there. It’s part of me now.
It’s who I am.
I’m the guy writing names into one of those terrible but neurotically neat horizontal columns on my dry-erase board. I’m the CAG wondering if each decision I make will be a fatal one.
This wasn’t what I wanted. This wasn’t how I saw my career going.
Life and death decisions? Sure, that’s the nature of the military and everyone from the officers down to the NCOs knows that there is always the chance for armed conflict and battles that involve the loss of good men and women.
Not one of us assumed we’d be making those decisions with only fifty thousand of us left in existence. Not a damn one of us had a clue that every soldier we sent marching to his or her grave would bring us a step closer to the eradication of our race. I shift my eyes slightly, over to where Kara is standing, her gaze a thousand miles away. I wish I could read her expression, I wish I could step into her mind for a moment. That look, it’s different than everyone else’s. She knew these people, better than I did. Some of them were good friends and I can see the pain of their loss in her body, in the rigid way she’s holding herself.
She’s not thinking about them though.
She’s thinking about him.
About sending him to his death.
Zak.
Only no matter what she says, no matter what she thinks, she didn’t. She wasn’t the one who told him to get into his Viper and fly the mission.
That was his CO.
Captain Mike Trevor. Good guy. He was anyhow. He’s dead now.
I wonder if he started feeling the music instead of hearing it too.
You see even before the Cylons murdered billions of my fellow man, us pilots were an endangered species. Okay, maybe endangered isn’t quite the right word. Being a pilot was always considered a very cool thing to be so getting new recruits was always fairly easy for the brass.
Dying on the other hand, that’s always been easy for those of us who like to pin on the wings and feel the throttle of a Viper burning impossibly hot beneath us and around us.
Oh who am I kidding? That might be Kara but it’s never been me. I didn’t become a Viper pilot because I had a need for speed or a hidden death wish like most flyboys do.
No, I entered the Academy because my father wanted me to and because it would advance my career. Being a pilot gets you exposure, makes the right people sit up and take notice.
Especially if you manage to stay sane and keep control.
Funny thing that, the military brass always wanted their pilots to be wild, crazy and willing to die just for kicks but on the other hand, people like that were never the ones who they’d look at to become their leaders. I wonder if that means bad pilots make good leaders…
What the hell kind of sense does that make?
Right.
None.
Right. Of course.
Just shut up and stop thinking, Lee.
Good leaders don’t need to think, Lee.
They just know, Lee.
And they don’t ever mourn, Lee. No, they celebrate and move on.
Yeah well, bullshit.
So much of being a leader, being the CAG is.
Like sending men and women to their deaths, knowing that your orders, your words, your signature is what sealed the deal and shoveled the dirt down on them.
I turn slightly to my side, sensing rather than hearing that the music has stopped. The service is over. The air around me shifts and the room begins to empty.
Everything else stays.
The bodies. The pain. The responsibility.
The guilt.
We all share it.
Right now it’s not about having sent these men to die. No, this is worse. This was senseless, without purpose.
They were celebrating. They were happy.
They were simply in the wrong frakking place.
And we survived.
Had it happened five minutes later, Kara, my father and I would have all been involved. Maimed or maybe even killed.
Not how it happened though.
We survived.
And I see in her eyes what I feel in my soul.
Why us?
No, not that.
When us?
That’s the right question.
When will it be our time? When will our luck finally give out?
When will it be someone’s else time to feel survivor’s guilt, to wonder if their signature sealed our deaths.
She pretends to deal with it better than I do. She’s trained hundreds of pilots, the majority of them are dead now.
She pretends not to care.
Just life.
I know better, She feels it just as much as I do.
Just knows how to hide it.
Sometimes I wonder if she should have been the one to be named the CAG. Obviously that wasn’t an option, I was the ranking officer and there was never really a discussion but I think about it a lot.
Maybe she could have handled that signature better. Maybe she could have…
No.
No, she couldn’t have.
Guilt is already working her over.
Lords know she could never handle that much slamming down on her.
I can just barely.
And they say I’m the sane one.
I should talk to her. See if I can help.
That’s my job. How I see it anyhow.
Be the leader. Be the team counselor.
Be the guy signing the orders.
Keep it together.
Someone has to.
Just the job.
-FIN