by Charis
Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica and all associated characters belong to people who are not me. I'm just borrowing.
Notes: Vaguely stream-of-consciousness writing. A brain-dump, in other words. It just kind of kept going ... The title is a vaguely Biblical reference, I suppose, though not per se intended as such.
At first she thought she would miss the weather most. Maybe at first, she did. Up here there is only the monotony of artificial lighting and the bleak darkness of space; even on the Cloud Nine, the sunlight feels false. Sun, wind - air that hasn't been through the ship's filtration systems a hundred times - even the ceaseless rains of Caprican spring ... she'd give almost anything for a change, just to see something like that again, and know it for real.
But time passes, and she forgets what clouds and blue skies look like, and the star-spangled blackness grows familiar and comforting. Now the things she misses are more mundane: a good night's sleep, clean clothes, a proper shower, all sorts of small comforts rarely considered until they go missing. Maybe it's easier for the troops, used to this from their duty tours in space; it can't be for the civilians. She tries to remind herself that she should be above such petty discomfort, but it seldom works for long. She cannot remember the last time she truly felt clean, inside or out.
She misses being just the Secretary of Education. She misses, even more, being a simple schoolteacher. This is a role she never wanted.
She misses privacy most. It's a combination of politics and circumstances there, both people watching her every move and the inevitably close quarters. The disease which eats away at her has a humiliating course under the best of circumstances, and trying to keep it a secret only makes it worse. There is a part of her angry at the need for this furtiveness, but most of all, she is just so tired ... Every day seems to bring a new crisis, real or invented, and she has forgotten too what it felt like to relax, to not have to worry about whether there are enough supplies or the Cylons are among them or Tom Zarek is trying to pull her down yet again.
Sometimes, she wonders what would happen if she let him. Those thoughts never last for long; she accepted a sacred duty when she swore the oath of office, and she will not abandon it, no matter how much her body - and sometimes, her soul - cry out in protest.
She looks outside the small window of Colonial One, taking in the black depths of space. Elosha tells her that Earth is somewhere out there, and points at the scrolls of Pythia, and tells her that she will show them the way. Adama has told the Fleet he will lead them there, but he claims the planet is, in fact, a myth. She is not sure which of them she believes sometimes - which she wants to believe.
She believes that she will never see Earth. Each time she sees the doctor, he tells her there is less and less time; it slips through her fingers too quickly, and she wonders at the use of sleeping and sometimes even eating, when there is so much to be done in this short a space. Sometimes, too, she wonders if any of it is worth it, when she will never see blue skies nor feel the light of the sun again.
Sometimes she wonders if it is worth it, when she is forgetting the woman she used to be. She is becoming a politician, a president, a not-entirely-unwilling legend in the making, and all of that frightens her almost as much as the fact that she is dying.
Sometimes, she wonders if she is moving on pure inertia.
But mostly, she tries to remember that sky.
- finis -