Notes: Many thanks to Rawles for the beta, and for giving me the idea in the first place. And many apologies to Eliot for title and summary. Please don't archive without asking.
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The water's not as cold as he remembers.
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He's aware of the protocol for these situations. He wonders whether there's a passage in the books he's forgotten about floating, what it feels like to be suspended in a great weightless nothing, waiting. They probably don't write those sorts of things down; they'd never get anyone past Basic Flight.
-
He's been here many times, when he was young. He and Zak used to spend whole summers diving off the cliffs into the deep water below. He remembers how the cold and the impact would shock the breath out of him. Then he'd surface, gasping and grinning, to see his brother, equally breathless and equally triumphant.
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The explosion leaves him blind and deaf for a few seconds, and when he can see again it's just an endless starfield stretching out into nowhere. It takes him a while to realize that he's not deaf, there's simply nothing to hear.
-
Kara's standing on the shore. Lee, she calls. Lee.
Don't you know there's no sound in space, Kara?
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Panic and bile rise up in his throat and he fights to keep them down. It's okay and distress beacon and rescue team all run together in his head in one endless feedback loop that clogs his thinking and fills his ears with a low, dull buzz.
-
He can see the President, even though he's looking at the sky (When was the last time he saw a blue sky? It was an age ago, if it was a day, and it was a day; it was many long, grey, colourless days). She stands on the cliff and looks down into the water.
You were always such a great help to me, Captain Apollo, she says, smiling her real smile (a little sad at the edges, like she's lost something, and haven't they all?) and not her presidential one.
Were? The idea doesn't bother him nearly as much as it should. She's learned enough by now.
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There's a tear in his flight suit, a tiny one. Some little piece of debris managed to get through the heavy polymer and now his oxygen supply is spinning out into space one molecule at a time.
His head aches suddenly, fiercely, with certainty.
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His father looks weary and old, like someone kicked Galactica's gravity up to two G. He says, We're looking, son, and then, I'm sorry.
Me too. He means it, and regret washes over him like the water. He always thought there would be time.
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His vision might be getting dark at the edges, but then, that could just be more space. There are stories about pilots who go mad after ejecting. They stared into the void too long, and it started to stare back.
He's a little bit glad he doesn't have to worry about that.
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Kara paces, picking her way over the rocks on the beach like she knows them (Zak took her up there one summer weekend a thousand years ago. He wonders what happened then, and whether Zak had showed her this spot. Of course he had. Kara would love it) .
Lee, please. I need you.
You can do it, he says. He knows that she can (she's always been the strong one, the soldier, the pragmatist).
That's not what I meant. And yeah, he knew that too.
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He watches his oxygen seep out of the tear in his flight suit with a curiously detached interest. He doesn't need to look at his meter to know how much time he has left. The answer is: none at all.
They never had any time to begin with.
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The water shifts and laps over him as Zak breaks the surface. Lee doesn't have to look at him to know he's wearing that idiotic, victorious grin he always wore. Zak splashes him playfully, and Lee doesn't move, doesn't even wipe the water out of his eyes.
You're no fun, Lee, he says, all sulky younger brother.
You're dead.
Yeah, well.
-
His oxygen will be gone soon, and he will die gasping into his helmet. He'll go cold, as cold as space. But at least his body will be intact.
He wonders if Kara will speak at his funeral. He hopes not.
-
Why didn't we? Good question. A hundred answers supply themselves: there wasn't time, regulations, Zak. But what it comes down to, when everything is stripped away, is that they've been tracing delicate circles around each other for so long it has become who they are. The carefull, fixed distance between them is uncharted space, and he's always been terrified of crossing it.
It would never have worked out. Reason #23.
Well, we could have tried. The water deadens her voice, but he can still hear the disappointment.
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A low, dry rasp sounds in his ear, scraping like a cheese grater against metal. It's his breathing, shallow gasps reflected back at him by the dead commlink. It reverberates around his helmet, acquiring sharp edges and pressing against his eyes like knives.
"I'm sorry, Kara."
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The water's not cold at all.
- Fin