The Son Also Rises

287 - Prison

They won't let me wash the blood off my hands.

All right, they're not going to let me go to godsdamn sickbay so I can be there with my father while he's fighting for his frakking life. Tigh's being an ass and trying to be a commanding officer, and I should expect that from him. All right, they're going to throw me in hack, probably for the little time left on my misbegotten military career. I was expecting that after what I did for President Roslin.

But I've got my frakking father's blood on my hands. Frak, my arms are red almost to the godsdamn elbows and they still won't frakking let me wash it off!

It's not like I haven't seen the inside of a brig before. You're not friends with Kara Thrace and not occasionally get a remind what it's like behind bars. But it's different. Everything's smaller. Colder. Closer in. Somewhere on this tin can, my father is taking what might be his last breaths through lungs that might be shredded by some frakking toaster's bullets, and I can't even be there to watch him die.

President Roslin in the cell next door keeps wondering out loud how the Old Man is doing. She's worried, I can see it. More than that, I can hear it in her voice and I don't think I've ever heard Laura Roslin this shaken up.

And wouldn't you frakking know it, she can't stop staring at my hands.

Neither can I.

It's dry now, red turned almost black, flaking off at the edges. I have my father's blood on my hands, and all I'm thinking about are the things I can't tell him. I can't tell him how sorry I am that I had to disobey Tigh's orders, but that I'm not sorry I did. I can't tell him how much I've come to understand and appreciate the man he is and the person he was, and how grateful I am for the things that I think he was starting to understand about me.

I can't tell him I'd never leave, either.

Sitting down on the hard steel bench, I don't know what's going to happen next. All I can guess is that it's going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better.

(386)

282 - Talk about funeral arrangements.

I knew he probably wouldn't have wanted me to do it, but then I wasn't a soldier under his command any more.

( Contains spoilers for the series finale, 'Daybreak' parts 1 and 2 )

(424)

278 - What are you wearing?

( Contains spoilers through the series finale )

(501)

275 - "You can't control life, at least you can control your version."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories)

( Contains spoilers for the series finale, 'Daybreak, Part 2' )

(610)

270 - Thirteen

((A press release from the Office of the Vice-President of the Colonies))

When I was in high school, my friends and I went to a local street fair and dared one another to go into a fortune teller's tent. She wasn't an Oracle or Priestess or anything like that, just some woman in a colorful scarf and lots of bracelets that I assumed would look at my palm or deal some cards and tell me vague, imprecise predictions that would apply to anyone.

I was the one who ended up walking in, of course, and instead of cards, she asked me my birth date. She said that numbers had great significance. She jotted down the date and did some calculations, I guess... and proceeded to make a bunch of vague, imprecise predictions that would apply to anyone.

That pretty much convinced me that numbers having great significance was anything but garbage. Until now.

( Spoilers for current season of BSG )

(530)

267 - In medias res

( Contains spoilers for episode 4x12 'A Disquiet Follows My Soul' )

(302)

264 - "The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun.

You know how some people say that just before you die, your life flashes before your eyes? It actually can, sometimes. There was one time, though, when my life didn't exactly flash as much as it unspooled in slow and agonizing detail, during the longest Viper flight of my life.

( Revisited )

(545, not counting direct quotes)

259 - Write a prompt that begins with the words: "I don't understand..."

((set between 4x08 "Sine Qua Non" and 4x10 "Revelations"))

I don't understand these people. At all.

The purpose of the Quorum of Twelve was originally to give the people of the Twelve Colonies a representative voice in the government. Each member was the duly elected voice of his or her people, charged with making the best decisions that would benefit the citizens of their respective worlds. With humanity a sliver of what it once was, the Quorum has come to represent, rather than individual worlds, the sometimes disparate groups that comprise the fleet, but for the same goals and with the same responsibilities.

Instead, they act like a roomful of schoolchildren, bickering over toy starships and building blocks.

( Of the people, for the people, by the people )

(372)

253 - Awesome

The most disturbing thing about it? The quiet.

It wasn't silent on Earth, by any means. We'd picked a landing spot in a wide-open area as near to what looked like the biggest urban concentration our scanners could pick out, figuring that if it wasn't the planetary capital, then it a big city would be a good enough start. That was the plan: land, make contact with the locals and introduce ourselves to the world governing body. No one assumed that the Thirteenth Tribe would welcome us with open arms, and neither did anyone think we'd find open hostility waiting for us.

A gray, blasted and lifeless planet? That was the last thing anyone predicted.

And standing there, on that beach, the whole world feeling like it had been leeched of its color, and with no signs of life we could determine, there were still sounds. I could hear the Raptors we'd rode down in cooling off, their hulls pinging. I could hear my father sifting through the glass-like sand, and the sound of others around me, their boots crunching in it as we moved around in dazed shock.

Water rolled and splashed against jagged rocks and over black, twisted remains of what used to be buildings or a temple or... something.

But it was still too quiet. And in that quiet, the devastation and the disappointment seemed just that much more awesome.

(233)

248 - Would you make a good spy? Why or why not?

I doubt it. That's not the kind of battle I prefer to fight.

( Face off )

(335)