Then I Stepped on a Landmine

by abstraction

There’s a sort of poetry to it, all the preaching about destiny and arrows and rediscovering paths to something better, and the way you find your new distraction is when bombs are raining from the sky and you’re ready to go out fighting.

Then I Stepped on a Landmine
abstraction
(Battlestar Galactica isn't mine)

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You try to imagine how everything would've turned out if they'd never made them, shunned them, forgot them, and had everything bomb itself backwards again. You often remember the sky to be clearer and more blue than it really was, and something aches inside you, but up here its all sky anyways, and most of the time what you truly miss is the feeling of earth, real earth, beneath your boots instead of the cold ringing metal of the Battlestar.

When you play cards with all the other pilots, grinning like you've already won their lives (you're way too good at this game), you flashback to the last time you were gripping the yoke of your viper and those lives you think you've won are just on hold, waiting for the next raider to wipe them out.

(Your stomach turns; it might be disgust and it might be adrenaline, and you don't know which is less damning.)

You lay down your perfect hand and they all yell at the injustice, and you suck in the smoke from your cigar so you can feel the burn deep down in the bottom of your lungs.

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You think in reds sometimes, and remember all the glass jars half-filled with stained water littering your living room, with paints scattered between your mural and your perception of completion. In the comfort of your bunk your mind wades back through all the pangs of experience you didn't think you really needed back then, and it calls back the memory of your empty apartment, and you imagine its just as hollow as it was the day you left (the day you fought; lost).

You'll want to commemorate it somehow, release by way of revelation, but Caprica is ash in your mouth and you choke on the word. And anyway, now its just dust floating in the folds of space, because you've learned that nothing is definite and endings are always certain, and you sometimes wish that your fate won't be as boring as live, eat, fight, die.

You hear static on the PA system before two raiders sighted, viper pilots to docking bay immediately reaches your ears, and the jump of your heart and the drop of your stomach mean yes, this is your fate, this is the way you'll finally blow out, shooting at toasters. The thoughts you might've had about redemption against the impossible melts away into nothing, and all you can feel is the blood rushing through your body as you run to your viper.

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Sometimes, there's Lee. Lee is something you don't want to admit, and you don't want to realize what that means, or how it happened (is happening). There's too much twisted history and missed chances and clever retorts for it to fully mean anything, and you're convinced its just projection. You're projecting, you think, you know, and all this background noise is filtering in through the gaps between memory and emotion.

You have some sort of pull towards self-destruction and you're not sure you want to admit that either.

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There's more war and civil disputes and feigned suspense, and you get through it, you soldier on. Roslin's getting better at commanding, but you don't much care to notice (authority has always been such trouble for you), and Adama right with her is the same as he always was, just tired and less lenient.

You go on missions and you get in fights and there's all sorts of ways to forget who you are or what you're doing, and you try each of them on for size. And then you have to go back to the start, reverse everything you believe and try again, because you're going back home, your real home, the one you've missed and hated ever since this thing started.

But somewhere along the line, your insides get mixed up, and familiarity gets switched with feeling. There's a sort of poetry to it, all the preaching about destiny and arrows and rediscovering paths to something better, and the way you find your new distraction is when bombs are raining from the sky and you're ready to go out fighting.

Anders is something different, but the way his hands map out your skin is a sensation you won't easily forget, and the safety in them is disconcerting. You promise and then you deliver, and you're surprised you've made it this far without breaking down, or breaking out.

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A year goes by and you think it's over but deep down you somehow know it'll never end. When you realize you're right you feel sick, and then you're pulled from what you've carefully built here on this new planet to be put in a prison and damn, you really want a frakking cigar.

For a while you're stronger than you thought you'd be, but by the time you're free, a part of you still feels caged. It's unnerving, so you fall back into old routines (bottom's up).

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The day you die, you wake up feeling the same as you always have, and you stretch before climbing out of bed. It's a new, familiar day, and you strap on your boots thinking that you're ready for a victory about now (you've been ready).