Author blurb: I wrote this while/after watching The Hand of God last week on space. I think it's pretty straight forward. Written in second person because I've never written anything in that tense and I wanted to try it out. I think it turned out pretty well. Feed back would be lovely and archiving is fine with me as long as you let me know where. I'm having some issues with formatting that I am trying to fix.

Too Much Responsibility.

You want to cry, you want to yell. You want to hit something as hard as humanly possible. When he said those words, "Sorry, Starbuck." There was nothing you would do.

Now their giving you more responsibility then you have ever had. Responsibility you never wanted. All you want to think about is shooting Cylons out of the sky and getting your viper back in one piece.

As much as you hate to admit it, you don't think Lee can do your job. It could be your ego but you can't believe he has the stones to pull it off. You've sat through too many shit lectures about all your stupid stunts to accept he could really do anything that wasn't by-the-book.

You saw the plan he cooked up with Tigh. The old man was right to bring you in. You haven't seen Apollo leave the box since that time back at the academy when you glued his underwear drawer shut.

On second thought, doubting him so openly was probably not a good idea. The only thing it serves to do is lower his less than solid confidence. You may not believe he can do it but you still want him to come back alive. If you were totally honest with yourself, you'd admit you're jealous as frak. He gets all the glory on this while you're stuck deck-side for Gods know how long.

What's worse is you let the Commander know about the green-eyed monster living under your skin. You're letting this injury get the best of you. Everyone knows it, it's time you face facts. If you're going to be stuck doing anything besides what you love there is no point in pissing off anyone who still dares to get close.

Maybe if you just realized that flying is your forte but your still good at other things too. Your plan worked well enough and it threw the President through a loop too. You have to admit that flying through that tube was sharp thinking. Apollo has been spending too much time around you, you're wearing off on him.

It was nice to see your plan work but living with the costs is not something that will help you sleep at night. You don't know how they do it. The old man, Lee, even frakking Tigh have to make decisions that will almost certainly end more than a few pilot's lives.

The mission has saved humanity but it has allowed for more opportunities to risk yours and your fellow pilot's lives. That is assuming you ever get to see the inside of your cockpit again. You couldn't even handle three G's for frak sake.

So now, the question is what are you going to do about it? Or what CAN you do about it? Stop lying to yourself about it would be a good start. Patience might help too. Stop forgetting you're human.

What are the advantages of being deck-side then? You get more bunk time. You get your food earlier than most people. And too much time to yourself. Granted it's easier to pass time on the Galactica than inside your cockpit on an especially long afternoon. But that's assuming you have anything to do in the first place. Which face it, you don't. Your main past-times for the past two years have been gambling, drinking and smocking. Not much of the last two going around anymore. The game has lost some of it's excitement. With the constant threat of attack looming over everyone, it has gotten hard to just hang out over a good game of cards.

You also don't want to have to listen to everyone talk about flying. It just makes you more anxious to get back in the air and show them how it's done. Not that all this stops you from playing. The only other thing you have to do is work out. There is only so much time you can spend in the gym before your body never forgives you.

In the grand scheme of things, a bummed knee is not so bad. There are things much worse and you have experienced some of them. Lately you've just had too much time on your hands to think about it. If you had been out there today you wouldn't be sitting in your bunk listening to the after math of one hell of a party mulling over the recent events of your life.

743 words