Within
by Charis

Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica and all associated characters belong to people who are not me. I'm just borrowing.

Notes: Found this cleaning out a notebook. Very rough character-exploring sketch.

She's a pragmatist. She hasn't had any other choice, since the end of the world: her time is limited, and with the weight of this new role squarely on her shoulders and her own demise looming ever closer, she's had to set aside dreams and hopes and compunctions and do what she has to do, for the sake of humanity. She couches it that way, at least, because the alternative is to concede that she has become an unscrupulous politician who uses people up and spits them out.

She repeats it as a mantra to herself almost daily, hourly when things get ugly. She reminds herself of it as she breaks with Wally Grey and he rebuffs her friendship; she reminds herself of it as she arranges Baltar's nomination; she reminds herself of it as she looks at the votes and makes the decision which has never been in doubt. Zarek will hate her further, which she had never doubted, but who else will now? She has lost at least one friendship in this, the respect (she is sure) of others, but she is doing what she must.

She is becoming the woman who calmly ordered Leoben Conoy thrown out of an airlock not even as much because he was a Cylon, but because he was a threat to the Fleet. Some days, she wishes it was Zarek she'd sent out; the days come more frequently as time goes on, and she almost hates herself, even as she wonders what might have happened if she had not given the captain of the Astral Queen that ultimatum almost two months ago, and turned her eyes away while his passengers quietly slipped into the long night.

Pragmatism. That's what this is. That's what it has to be.

She sits at the table and watches the children dancing, and sips at her drink, and tries not to feel very old and tired.

- finis -