Lee's thoughts, approx. eight months into the 'one year' that was skipped over in LDYB part 2.
oooooooooooooooo
Nothing. That's what I've got. Abso-frakking-lutely nothing. My life is worth nothing. I can't imagine how life could get any worse than it is right now. I almost wish the cylons would show up again - at least I felt alive fighting them. Anything would be better than living in this limbo.
I was terrified when my father put me in command of Pegasus. My gods - I wasn't even supposed to be CAG yet and I'd had to step into that role cold, but to be responsible for an entire ship? Make decisions that affected the lives of hundreds of people under my command? I wasn't ready for it. But now I'd be happy to be making those decisions; living with the consequences of them. Even losing people - at least then I'd feel something. Not this empty nothingness in my soul.
Every day is the same. I get up, tell myself I should go for a run, and then decide I can't be bothered. I shower, I eat, I visit CIC to see what's up - nothing, always nothing - then retire to my office to work. People used to use the expression 'pushing paper' for those in charge and now I truly understand what it means. Ostensibly I spend my days doing paperwork, but there's nothing to do! I just move the papers around my desk, rereading them, refiling them ... doing absolutely nothing.
Nothing. It's what my life consists of here. No real work to do and people who mean nothing to me. Well, there's Dee, but ... sometimes I wonder if that's really anything at all. I thought I would be happy if she came here, so I pushed my father to transfer her. He knew I was doing it because we're sleeping together but he allowed it anyway, because he knows - he knows what it's like not to have anything else. He doesn't have me anymore, just like I don't have him, and neither of us has Kara. She belongs to Samuel now. She's one of them.
I never realized how alone I would be without them. I've always felt like there's a wall between me and my father - a wall that's begun to show some cracks in the near year we lived and worked together. But it seemed like there was a chasm we could never cross, despite the cracks in that wall. Even though it was an uncomfortable relationship most of the time, I wish I had it back now. I know my father's still out there, in orbit not far away, but it's just not the same as it was when we were on the same ship. When I was serving under him. It may have been a difficult relationship, but we were family. And we were close. As close as we've ever been.
It's the same thing with Kara. The gods alone know how frustrating I found her much of the time, but for good or bad, she's a part of my family. A part of me. A part that's been ripped out and taken away. Not by Samuel - it would be easy to blame him, he's the outsider after all, but by our own inability to deal with each other. Ours has always been a love-hate relationship - often more hate than love, especially lately. We were both hurting, and instead of turning to each other for comfort as friends should, we ended up hurting each other more. So I lost her. I was almost able to convince myself her loss wasn't that important to me by throwing myself into work, into my relationship with Dee, but now the truth is out there and it's slapping me in the face. I need Kara - she's a part of me and I've lost her. Now, I have nothing.
Nothing but the endless, empty corridors of a ship that is technically mine, but I feel no connection to. Even the crew - the only familiar face is Dee's but she means nothing to me. I thought she did - I wanted her to, but now I know - I was just using her to fill the empty void in my life. Physically it worked, but emotionally - we're as far apart as Kara and I are. She was right, damn her - I am just frakking Dee. We're no closer now than we were the day we first slept together, and I'm just afraid to let go of her because then I will have nothing. Nothing at all. And something is better than nothing.
Or is it? Every time I look into her eyes, I see the coldness. She feels the same way about me. I'm someone to fulfil her physical desires, but she doesn't feel any more than that for me either. Is that because that's who she is, or because I've kept her at arm's length and she's finally realized that though she has my body, my heart is elsewhere?
My heart is on Galactica - the 'bucket' of bolts that I despised the first time I came aboard. But it became home to me - more of a home than any I've had since I left the Academy. It's home because the people I love are there - memories we've made together are there. I can barely recall life BTA - Before the Attack, and in the year and a half since then, my time on Galactica is the only time I was truly alive.
Here, I have nothing. I am nothing. Nothing but a hollow shell of a man, lacking a heart, lacking a spirit. Nothing matters anymore. There's nothing worth living for anymore.
Fin