arrow_of_apollo | TM 244

244 - "That's something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings." -- Alice Munro

It isn't the way Lee Adama imagined it would happen

Once, the battlestar Pegasus was one of the most largest, powerful and technologically advanced warships in the Colonial Fleet. At that moment, it was a flaming deathtrap. Lee-- that is, Commander Lee Adama-- runs down her corridors, dodging showers of sparks as power conduits rupture and avoiding plumes of smoke as atmospheric lines break, all thanks to the unrelenting artillery assault of the Cylon baseships. There's a giant crack, a sound like thunder, and time slows to a crawl.

Lee looks up to see a bulkhead has come loose from the ceiling. Blue arcs of electricity shoot from a broken light fixture on one of its ends, and the whole thing, which must weigh more than five hundred pounds, is aimed right at him. The captain goes down with the ship, Lee thinks to himself. Whether he wants to or not, it seems.

It's a hero's death, that's sure. He and the Pegasus have just finished playing cavalry to the Admiral's desperate rescue operation on New Caprica. Without Lee's arrival, the Galactica would have been destroyed long before the refugees could escape the Cylon-occupied world. But that's how he'd expected to go out.

He didn't think about his own mortality much before the Cylon attack. After that, life turned into a struggle just to survive and just to keep things in their rag-tag fleet held together just well enough that they didn't tear each other apart. As a fighter pilot, Lee flew knowing that each sortie could be his last, that every shot a Raider took could be the one with his name on it.

Lee knows that his thinking started to change when they found New Caprica. Even though he wasn't among the thousands settling on the planet, the idea of stopping and settling down took root in his head. He could see things, especially with Dee in the picture-- brilliant, beautiful, patient Dee-- that he hadn't before. If this was really the end of running, then maybe he could start to hope.

In fact, he'd let himself do just that. Maybe he'd die quietly, gray haired and weathered. Maybe he would have retired from the Fleet and done something like follow in his grandfather's footsteps, into the law. Maybe he and Dee would have kids, and they'd be sitting outside the room. Hell, maybe he'd go on long enough to have grandkids. Anything was possible.

But no, no happy endings. Not if the bulkhead, making its impossibly slow way from the ceiling to Lee, finally connected. Not if this was how he was going to die.

"LEE!"

Dee's voice lances through the thought, and Lee's body lurches forward before he can form the thought to move out of the way. But move he does, and the bulkhead fragment crushes the deck plating not a hand's width behind him. Lee mutters, "thanks" and continues following his wife to the escape pods.

Maybe he'll live to see a happy ending yet.

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