TM 242 - Bearer of Bad News
Aug. 11th, 2008 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arrow_of_apollo242 - Write about a time that you were the bearer of bad news.
"Your father's waiting for you in his study."
When I was a kid, those were the most chilling words ever spoken, and my mother always delivered them with the kind of heavy portent that usually accompanies Oracular pronouncements and eulogies. I couldn't stand hearing those words any more than I could stand the long walk across the room from the door to the huge and heavy wood desk. My father would take off his glasses, set them down, fold his hands and wait.
I always knew why I was being sent to my father's study. As you'd guess, it typically had something to do with my getting in trouble. Maybe I'd gotten into a fight at school, or broken a flower pot in the backyard tossing the Pyramid ball around. When my parents got divorced, the little boy inside of me was glad that I'd never again have to make that walk and hear those words.
After the Cylon attack, I came to enjoy coming to the Admiral's quarters for meetings and talks. My father and I, in the middle of this insanity, found a kind of rapport that we had never managed before everything ended. Sometimes, I would come bearing a stack half as tall as I was of paperwork. And other times, it would just be to chat, very often over a glass of something strong.
I knew the meeting would be tense when I walked into it. Baltar's trial was in full swing, and Saul Tigh had taken the stand, drunk to the gills and been broken down, not that he needed Lampkin's help. But I was hoping that my father and I would be able to maintain our professionalism.
He blamed me for Tigh, accused me of feeding Lampkin privileged information about the Colonel and his wife and New Caprica-- things I couldn't have known. He called me a liar. He called me a coward.
My hand was up and my fingers on my wings before I realized it, but even when the gravity of what I was about to do hit me, I didn't hesitate. I knew damn well what I was saying and what I was telling my father, without equivocation. And I took those wings off and put them on that huge and heavy desk, standing my ground.
That was how I told my father that I was resigning my commission.
And now I find I'm afraid of that walk again.
(402, not counting direct quotes)
"Your father's waiting for you in his study."
When I was a kid, those were the most chilling words ever spoken, and my mother always delivered them with the kind of heavy portent that usually accompanies Oracular pronouncements and eulogies. I couldn't stand hearing those words any more than I could stand the long walk across the room from the door to the huge and heavy wood desk. My father would take off his glasses, set them down, fold his hands and wait.
I always knew why I was being sent to my father's study. As you'd guess, it typically had something to do with my getting in trouble. Maybe I'd gotten into a fight at school, or broken a flower pot in the backyard tossing the Pyramid ball around. When my parents got divorced, the little boy inside of me was glad that I'd never again have to make that walk and hear those words.
After the Cylon attack, I came to enjoy coming to the Admiral's quarters for meetings and talks. My father and I, in the middle of this insanity, found a kind of rapport that we had never managed before everything ended. Sometimes, I would come bearing a stack half as tall as I was of paperwork. And other times, it would just be to chat, very often over a glass of something strong.
I knew the meeting would be tense when I walked into it. Baltar's trial was in full swing, and Saul Tigh had taken the stand, drunk to the gills and been broken down, not that he needed Lampkin's help. But I was hoping that my father and I would be able to maintain our professionalism.
He blamed me for Tigh, accused me of feeding Lampkin privileged information about the Colonel and his wife and New Caprica-- things I couldn't have known. He called me a liar. He called me a coward.
My hand was up and my fingers on my wings before I realized it, but even when the gravity of what I was about to do hit me, I didn't hesitate. I knew damn well what I was saying and what I was telling my father, without equivocation. And I took those wings off and put them on that huge and heavy desk, standing my ground.
That was how I told my father that I was resigning my commission.
And now I find I'm afraid of that walk again.
(402, not counting direct quotes)
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 07:36 pm (UTC)Then again, there's a lot of things you don't know about New Caprica. There's a lot we keep even from each other. Hell, I think of everyone, I only know everything that happened to Cally, and even she doesn't know everything that happened to me. No one knows what happened to Starbuck or Roslin, Zarek.
That sort of pain. It destroys. And when it's cheapened the way Lampkin cheapened it, it doesn't just cheapen Colonel Tigh's pain. It cheapens the pain of every last person who made the decision to hang on down there.
That's why I know you didn't know about it. You might not be able to understand, but you wouldn't cheapen it.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 08:22 pm (UTC)Lampkin's... effective. I wouldn't have done that, you're right. I have a lot of respect for Tigh. But Lampkin did what he thought was necessary, the kind of decision we've all had to make. I made the same one questioning the President.
But maybe now we know "necessary" isn't enough of a reason.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 09:49 pm (UTC)Necessary's enough of a reason at the time. If it wasn't, it wouldn't have been done, would it?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 10:27 pm (UTC)True. It's always a hell of a lot easier to question decisions after they're made.