Muse Topics 2

What is the best present you have ever given someone else?

I met someone… someone pretty incredible. He was nothing like Lee though, but he was filled with indomitable spirit, fighting in a hopeless situation… Despite being outgunned and out experienced. He never gave up. None of them did.

They took me in once they were sure I was safe. I became one of their own. We grew close over the days spent there… we had a lot in common and our friendship came easily. We both knew that there may be no tomorrow, that at any moment things could go bad and we would all parish in that irradiated wasteland that once was our home. So we found happiness where we could, taking comfort in the little things, a game of pyramid, a gentle touch, a teasing kiss… but there were no strings attached… neither one expected anything more beyond the moment.

He came for me when I was captured. With the others I found my way back to the relative safety of the resistance camp. We both knew I had a mission to complete… and he had kept the arrow safe all this time. I had to finish what I had started… despite the thousands here that still needed help. I had to go home, to the fleet, to the Galactica, to Lee.

Moments before I left, I took one of my dog tags and pressed it into his hand. In that simple moment, I gave more than I could have imagined… In the darkest of nights that had fallen on our former home, I gave him the one thing that could sustain him, keep him fighting….

I gave him hope.

Kara Thrace
Battlestar Galactica
272 words

Who do you miss the most?

I suppose for most people this would be a pretty straight forward question with a quick and simple answer. Family… a friend… a lover… But then I’m not most people and I don’t do simple and straightforward.

Now if I did, my answer would be something like my father. He left us when I was only about six or seven, but he was still the glue that held the world together and I was his baby girl. I never understood why he left, and I still to this day miss him. Or it could be my fiancé who was killed only a few weeks before we were to have been married. He died in a horrific crash… it was my fault, he wasn’t ready but I put him in that plane anyway because he wanted it so much and because I felt… well that’s not important now, and another topic entirely.

Ironically, with billions of people dead the person I miss the most is sleeping across the bunkroom; not 30 feet away from where I sit writing this… How can you miss someone who’s not gone? It’s really quite simple. War changes people, changes relationships, changes dynamics… and being a royal screw-up just helps to motivate those changes even further.

We barely talk anymore… when we do it’s as CAG and lead pilot… no time for friends anymore. I miss his laugh, the way blue eyes sparkle with mischief. He doesn’t laugh much anymore. He works too hard, runs himself too thin. Don’t get me wrong he’s damn good at his job, but he’s wearing himself out. I miss being able to just kick back and relax with him, when silence didn’t seem awkward and talking didn’t seem forced. I miss the shoulder to cry on, because he’s the only one who’s ever seen me really cry; there’s no time for tears anymore.

I managed to frak it all up royally… the how and why is another matter entirely. I’ve tried to do things for the right reasons… but they always come out wrong. I misinterpreted reserve for rejection… control for a cold shoulder… I’ve done some stupid things… damaged what we had… I only hope that someday we can rebuild… I guess my answer isn’t that far from the simple… he is my family, my friend… and I love him like no other…

And finally in answer to our question, who do I miss most? That’s easy… Lee Adama.

Talk about a time you realized that someone close to you was not the person you thought you knew.

Why is it when you’re at your lowest point, life decides it needs to give you one last swift kick to the gut? Things couldn’t have been much worse… there I was, on a radiation contaminated planet, having jumped thousands of lightyears from the fleet. Lee and I were not on speaking terms, beyond what we needed to do to do our jobs, my good friend of seven years just tried to kill herself; but put a bullet through her cheek instead. I get here and pretty much get my ass handed to me by a blonde cylon; only reason I beat her is because I no longer cared if I survived the fight, so long as she didn’t either. A 25 foot drop later and I’m still alive, she’s not.

For a moment things seemed to be looking up. Strong hands had lifted me from where I fell, turning me to look in the eyes of a friend I thought lost forever. He helped me up, steadied me against the wall… gods it was so good to see him again… then, there was movement over his shoulder.

Seven years I’ve know Sharon Valerii, before she even went through flight school. We’d been through a lot together… I thought I knew everything about her… boy was I wrong. There, standing on the ledge above was Sharon… only it wasn’t Sharon, my Sharon was in sickbay with a hole in her face…I know, I saw her just before I jumped here… but there she was. Flight suit and all… her arm was in a sling, her shoulder injured… but she was there, and there was no mark on her face. That’s when I realized… Sharon was a cylon… oh gods… a frakkin cylon…

I remember grabbing for Helo’s gun… my first instinct to shoot it there on the spot… then he said it… that thing was pregnant…. And my world shattered.