Companion Pieces, "After the Good-Night Kiss," Dee
Series Title: Companion Pieces
Segment Title: After the Good-Night Kiss
Author: kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Dee, Gaeta
Pairings: I suppose it could be Dee/Gaeta if you really squint, but I lean more towards Dee, Gaeta. Dee/Billy and Dee/Lee in the background.
Series Summary: A series of mirror-images. Likely to be some angst.
Spoilers: Through Series Finale
Author's Note: This is really more a cycle of fanfics than a series. Each one stands on its own as a story, and they can be read in any order. However, the storytelling structure is the same in each, so they do share some commonalities.
The title "Companion Pieces" actually has a double meaning. Each fic in the cycle is actually two stories with a common theme; for Tyrol, it's saying goodbye to Boomer. The cycle as a whole itself is also a companion piece to "Farewell Symphony," the remix I wrote of trovia's excellent " Recapitulation." These are stories that I cut from "'Farewell' Symphony" when I decided to streamline the structure, but I liked them a lot, so I figured they deserved to be posted as freestanding stories themselves. So, these stories are essentially a part of the same 'verse as "Farewell Symphony," though both stand alone in and of themselves.
Links to the rest of the "Companion Pieces" Cycle:
Dreams for a New World, Gaeta
Gazing Skyward, Helo
Love and Bullets, Tyrol
After the Good-Night Kiss
Dee hunched down in the seat and ducked her head when she heard the hatch creak open, hoping that whoever was there wouldn’t see her and would go away. As soon as she heard the intruder’s voice, though, she knew that wasn’t going to happen.
“I know you’re in here,” called Felix. Dee sat back up in the chair. She could hear Felix walking down the center aisle, then felt him leaning over her shoulder. “I come bearing libations…or a refill, I guess,” he said, noting the nearly empty bottle in Dee’s hand. Dee heard the note of surprise in his voice. She wasn’t one to drown her sorrows in a bottle; in fact, this was the first time she’d concertedly tried to drink away a problem since she was nineteen.
Dee was sitting next to the aisle, so instead of sliding past her, Felix hopped over the chair back beside her from the aisle behind. The gesture was meant to look casual, Dee knew, but Felix’s clumsiness completely destroyed the effect, instead making it look like an awkward attempt to break etiquette by someone for whom propriety and protocol were second nature. On any other day, that would have made Dee laugh. Today, it was the first thing all day that had even made her half-smile.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” Dee asked. “It’s even closed for repairs.”
“Because I know you,” he said, taking a swig out of the bottle of liquor he’d brought with him, then handing it to Dee. She considered pouring half into her bottle and handing the other back to Felix, but her hands weren’t steady enough.
“I remembered that you’d said this was where you’d taken Billy on your first date,” Felix said, then paused. Dee gave no reaction either way. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she wanted even less to show how raw the pain was by saying she didn’t want to talk about it. Felix took the hint. “Also, I’d checked everywhere else you might reasonably be hiding, and I knew that you knew the observation deck was closed because of broken railings and not anything life-threatening.”
They sat in silence for a long time. Dee liked it and was almost angry when Felix broke it with a question. “How’s Lee doing? I haven’t been to sickbay to see him yet.”
“He’s going to be okay,” Dee answered, straining to keep her voice emotionless, dispassionate, factual. Not knowing how long she could keep that up, she changed the subject. She thrust the bottle back at Felix and asked, “How was the wake?”
“No thanks, I’m already drunk. But it was good-hence why I’m already drunk. I honestly didn’t know that that many people on Galactica knew Billy. Doc Cottle even dropped in for a minute.” Dee finally felt composed enough to venture a look at Felix. His uniform jacket was unbuttoned and he was slouched in his chair, one knee pressed up against the seatback in front of him. He didn’t notice her staring because he was looking out the observatory window at the stars. “Cottle even told a story about one time when the President sent-”
“It’s kind of stupid, having a wake after a funeral, isn’t it?” Dee wanted to say, for frak’s sake, Felix, if I’d wanted a wake, I would’ve gone to it, but for some reason, she couldn’t force herself to be as straightforward as she wanted to be, as if she were afraid a direct blow to someone else might shatter what little self-possession she still had left.
“Seems weird to me, too, but that’s how they do it on Caprica.”
“Billy wasn’t from Caprica. His parents sent him to school there, but he was originally Libran.” There was far more bite and bitterness in Dee’s voice than she’d intended.
“Oh. From the way he talked, the stories he told about living there, I just assumed…” Felix looked down and fiddled absently with a button on his uniform. Dee instantly regretted what she’d said, realizing that she’d cut Felix more deeply than she’d intended. After a few moments of silence, Felix added, “I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it to the funeral. I’m sure the Old Man would’ve given me time off if that flu bug going around hadn’t left CIC so short-staffed right now.”
“I know you would’ve, Felix. Don’t worry about it.” In truth, Dee would have given anything to have had a friendly face like Felix or Helo at the funeral the day before. As it was, she and Admiral Adama had been the only two Galactica people in attendance. The Old Man had meant well, giving Dee his arm and leading her up to the front to where the family would sit, where only Laura Roslin was sitting. Dee had no choice but to accept this seat of honor and deepest mourning, but she could feel the chill between her and the President. Dee didn’t know how much about the engagement rejection and break-up Billy had told Roslin, but Dee could tell that the President knew or at least intuited that something had happened between her and Billy. How much was impossible to tell, because everything had happened so fast.
Everything had happened so fast. That impulsive first kiss that had more to do with living than love had only been eight months ago. There were the two months of wondering if Billy even thought there was something between them, since she rarely ever saw him, followed by a brief period of something happy and playful that might’ve had the potential to be something more. Then the Pegasus arrived, and President Roslin nearly died and came back to life, and the two of them had fallen into that old pattern again, so busy holding the ship and the government together that they drifted apart themselves. Then the proposal Dee had assumed was going to be a “let’s just be friends,” until she saw his face. And then the end-a grab for a gun, a shot, a moment of bemusement crossing his face as he fell back, then nothing. Everything had happened so fast. Dee wasn’t even really sure how large the rift between her and Billy had been in the end.
Dee jumped when she felt Felix’s hand squeezing her fingers. “Dee, will you marry me?”
Dee choked. Of course, Felix didn’t know about Billy’s proposal. There’d been no time to tell him. Now, there probably was no need to. “That’s not funny, no matter how drunk you are.”
“No, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” Felix shook his head as if to shake his booze-addled brains back into line. “I meant to say that we should make a pact, that if neither of us should happen to have anybody by the time we’re old and gray, we’d marry each other. People do that, right?”
Dee let out a noise that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Felix, have you ever even been with a woman?”
Felix feigned indignation. “Two, I’ll have you know.”
Dee snorted into her bottle. “That’s only something to brag about if you were with them both at once.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll be too old to be that interested in sex at that point anyway.”
Felix was a frustrating drunk, Dee thought. Chief’s moonshine made him strange, but it rarely overcame his innate need to make everything logical. Worse yet, he never failed to remember everything the next morning. Weird as it was, it was better than talking about the wake, though, so Dee played along.
“Speak for yourself,” Dee said, good-naturedly elbowing Felix in the arm. “What’s the point of living that long? Besides, I’ll never get another date again, if the guy knows I have a stud like you just waiting in the wings.”
Felix smiled and shook his head. “Somehow, I don’t think your next date’s going to feel threatened by me. Or by anyone, for that matter.”
Frak. Felix was indeed drunk, or he never would have taken such a strange and roundabout route, but that’s where he’d been going all along. He was digging for dirt on her and Lee-no, Dee corrected herself, that wasn’t a fair characterization, even if she did need someone alive and healthy to direct some anger at far more than a shoulder to cry on. Actually, Felix had been trying to give her a way to bring up Lee without broaching the topic cold, offering her ample opportunities to open everything up with a simple “I have someone.”
But she couldn’t have said it, even if she’d figured out what Felix was up to earlier. The truth was, she didn’t know if she did have someone else, or when she’d really lost Billy, or what was between her and Billy or her and Lee to lose or gain in the first place.
Dee sat silent for a long time, and Felix let the air remain empty. Dee was grateful for that. Though her hand was shaking, Dee did the only thing she could think of to keep Felix from trying again.
“To Billy,” Dee said, lifting her bottle.
“To Billy,” Felix answered, clinking bottles and catching enough of the truth in Dee’s eyes to just sit quietly beside her until their bottles were empty.
~~**~~**~~
As she pulled the hatch shut behind her, Dee smiled so deeply she could feel it in her chest. There was no better feeling than being proud of Lee; it was even better than loving him. She felt warm and sleepy. It didn’t even matter that the heels she so rarely wore made her feet ache. Usually, she’d be worrying about how much they’d hurt when she’d have to stand for nine hours straight through her next shift in CIC.
She turned, and the first thing that caught her eye was Felix’s stump poking out from his bunk as he pulled a sock over his knee. That was inconvenient, almost frustrating, Dee mused. Maybe if she just didn’t look… She set her gaze on the far side of the bunkroom and sauntered past him, humming, focusing on the warmth inside of her, imagining it as a calm fire in the pit of her stomach. It worked when she felt his eyes on her as she passed by, as she opened her locker, but not when she looked in the mirror and saw him almost glaring at her in disbelief.
Dee had hoped she wouldn’t have to see Felix. As much as she loved him, he had no place in her perfect day, for all the reasons that she could see in his reflection. He was too pale, too broken, and most of all, too real.
“What?”
“You’re glowing,” Felix groused.
“Am I?” she almost sang.
Felix groaned as he stood up. “All I can think of is that waste of a planet.”
Dee smiled harder. “Felix, please. I just want to hang onto this feeling for as long as I can.”
Then Felix did one of the things she loved him for so much. He simply said, “Okay,” and let her have whatever peace she’d found, even if he didn’t understand it.
Dee could hear him hopping and struggling with his canes as she slipped her dogtags over her head. She fingered the ball chain and swayed gently to the music in her mind. She was a little surprised at how happy she felt when Felix didn’t leave the room like she’d thought he would but instead bent over her shoulder.
“Hm. Look at that. Little Ana’s got her smile back,” he said, looking up at the picture of a little girl on the shiny red bicycle she’d gotten for her birthday.
Nobody since her father had called her “Ana.” Both Lee and Felix knew Dee’s old nickname, and she’d told Billy, too, but none of them had ever used it. Time felt so strange now; in some ways, it felt like the last five years had been her only real life, and everything before, including Ana, had been a dream. Dee wondered for a moment if that’s how Boomer’s memories had felt to her…no. Dee quickly cut off that line of reflection. There was no place for that kind of a thought today.
“Sometimes I don’t even remember that’s me. So long ago. She has no frakking idea what’s ahead of her.”
The little hope that had been in Felix’s voice died away. “Yeah, none of us do.”
Dee had to bite her tongue as Felix shuffled away. She did. She knew. The warmth of that certainty was the only thing keeping her standing.
She hung up her dogtags. She had nothing to take off and put away like that for Felix, so she did the next best thing. Even after all the times she’d heard it in sickbay, she couldn’t sing his song. Instead, she hummed the song that had been with her all day, dredged up from the dream-world of little Ana Dualla by some other child’s abandoned jacks.
Her fingers left the ball chain and ran down the more fragile chain of her locket. The clasp opened more easily than Dee expected, given how long she’d kept it closed. She looked into her father’s eyes. Then she heard the hatch swinging shut, so she looked up and caught a glimpse of Felix’s face, even though he wasn’t looking at her.
In the end, she was glad Felix had been there. If she could face him without wavering, she knew she was right. People like Helo and Athena, who could walk through ruined streets and along a beach the color of ashes yet still carry on because it was not the worst day they’d ever had, they would hold the Fleet together now that the Old Man couldn’t. Lee was more himself than he had ever been, and probably a little smug that he was right and she was wrong, that he’d found himself by not being like his father. She could let him have that little victory, because she knew that really, she was right. He was back to being Apollo, bringer of light.
Felix had been her only real concern. That was another reason why she’d avoided him. But now, she was assured that, though he would still take it hard, eventually, he would understand. Louis would take care of him until then.
She slipped the ring off her finger and hung it reverently on the hook with the dogtags and the locket. She stopped humming in the middle of a phrase. It was odd to hear herself end the song somewhere other than at the end-what had Felix called it when she’d asked him, a cadence? It didn’t matter.
She looked in the mirror one last time. There was no Lieutenant Dualla staring back at her, no Dee, no Anastasia, no Ana, just a tired girl with eyes that had seen too much. Felix had to be half-way to CIC by now. She was ready. The girl in the mirror confronted the end the same way she’d met everything up to that point: with clear, calm eyes, never glancing away from the truth.
Segment Title: After the Good-Night Kiss
Author: kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Dee, Gaeta
Pairings: I suppose it could be Dee/Gaeta if you really squint, but I lean more towards Dee, Gaeta. Dee/Billy and Dee/Lee in the background.
Series Summary: A series of mirror-images. Likely to be some angst.
Spoilers: Through Series Finale
Author's Note: This is really more a cycle of fanfics than a series. Each one stands on its own as a story, and they can be read in any order. However, the storytelling structure is the same in each, so they do share some commonalities.
The title "Companion Pieces" actually has a double meaning. Each fic in the cycle is actually two stories with a common theme; for Tyrol, it's saying goodbye to Boomer. The cycle as a whole itself is also a companion piece to "Farewell Symphony," the remix I wrote of trovia's excellent " Recapitulation." These are stories that I cut from "'Farewell' Symphony" when I decided to streamline the structure, but I liked them a lot, so I figured they deserved to be posted as freestanding stories themselves. So, these stories are essentially a part of the same 'verse as "Farewell Symphony," though both stand alone in and of themselves.
Links to the rest of the "Companion Pieces" Cycle:
Dreams for a New World, Gaeta
Gazing Skyward, Helo
Love and Bullets, Tyrol
After the Good-Night Kiss
Dee hunched down in the seat and ducked her head when she heard the hatch creak open, hoping that whoever was there wouldn’t see her and would go away. As soon as she heard the intruder’s voice, though, she knew that wasn’t going to happen.
“I know you’re in here,” called Felix. Dee sat back up in the chair. She could hear Felix walking down the center aisle, then felt him leaning over her shoulder. “I come bearing libations…or a refill, I guess,” he said, noting the nearly empty bottle in Dee’s hand. Dee heard the note of surprise in his voice. She wasn’t one to drown her sorrows in a bottle; in fact, this was the first time she’d concertedly tried to drink away a problem since she was nineteen.
Dee was sitting next to the aisle, so instead of sliding past her, Felix hopped over the chair back beside her from the aisle behind. The gesture was meant to look casual, Dee knew, but Felix’s clumsiness completely destroyed the effect, instead making it look like an awkward attempt to break etiquette by someone for whom propriety and protocol were second nature. On any other day, that would have made Dee laugh. Today, it was the first thing all day that had even made her half-smile.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” Dee asked. “It’s even closed for repairs.”
“Because I know you,” he said, taking a swig out of the bottle of liquor he’d brought with him, then handing it to Dee. She considered pouring half into her bottle and handing the other back to Felix, but her hands weren’t steady enough.
“I remembered that you’d said this was where you’d taken Billy on your first date,” Felix said, then paused. Dee gave no reaction either way. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she wanted even less to show how raw the pain was by saying she didn’t want to talk about it. Felix took the hint. “Also, I’d checked everywhere else you might reasonably be hiding, and I knew that you knew the observation deck was closed because of broken railings and not anything life-threatening.”
They sat in silence for a long time. Dee liked it and was almost angry when Felix broke it with a question. “How’s Lee doing? I haven’t been to sickbay to see him yet.”
“He’s going to be okay,” Dee answered, straining to keep her voice emotionless, dispassionate, factual. Not knowing how long she could keep that up, she changed the subject. She thrust the bottle back at Felix and asked, “How was the wake?”
“No thanks, I’m already drunk. But it was good-hence why I’m already drunk. I honestly didn’t know that that many people on Galactica knew Billy. Doc Cottle even dropped in for a minute.” Dee finally felt composed enough to venture a look at Felix. His uniform jacket was unbuttoned and he was slouched in his chair, one knee pressed up against the seatback in front of him. He didn’t notice her staring because he was looking out the observatory window at the stars. “Cottle even told a story about one time when the President sent-”
“It’s kind of stupid, having a wake after a funeral, isn’t it?” Dee wanted to say, for frak’s sake, Felix, if I’d wanted a wake, I would’ve gone to it, but for some reason, she couldn’t force herself to be as straightforward as she wanted to be, as if she were afraid a direct blow to someone else might shatter what little self-possession she still had left.
“Seems weird to me, too, but that’s how they do it on Caprica.”
“Billy wasn’t from Caprica. His parents sent him to school there, but he was originally Libran.” There was far more bite and bitterness in Dee’s voice than she’d intended.
“Oh. From the way he talked, the stories he told about living there, I just assumed…” Felix looked down and fiddled absently with a button on his uniform. Dee instantly regretted what she’d said, realizing that she’d cut Felix more deeply than she’d intended. After a few moments of silence, Felix added, “I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it to the funeral. I’m sure the Old Man would’ve given me time off if that flu bug going around hadn’t left CIC so short-staffed right now.”
“I know you would’ve, Felix. Don’t worry about it.” In truth, Dee would have given anything to have had a friendly face like Felix or Helo at the funeral the day before. As it was, she and Admiral Adama had been the only two Galactica people in attendance. The Old Man had meant well, giving Dee his arm and leading her up to the front to where the family would sit, where only Laura Roslin was sitting. Dee had no choice but to accept this seat of honor and deepest mourning, but she could feel the chill between her and the President. Dee didn’t know how much about the engagement rejection and break-up Billy had told Roslin, but Dee could tell that the President knew or at least intuited that something had happened between her and Billy. How much was impossible to tell, because everything had happened so fast.
Everything had happened so fast. That impulsive first kiss that had more to do with living than love had only been eight months ago. There were the two months of wondering if Billy even thought there was something between them, since she rarely ever saw him, followed by a brief period of something happy and playful that might’ve had the potential to be something more. Then the Pegasus arrived, and President Roslin nearly died and came back to life, and the two of them had fallen into that old pattern again, so busy holding the ship and the government together that they drifted apart themselves. Then the proposal Dee had assumed was going to be a “let’s just be friends,” until she saw his face. And then the end-a grab for a gun, a shot, a moment of bemusement crossing his face as he fell back, then nothing. Everything had happened so fast. Dee wasn’t even really sure how large the rift between her and Billy had been in the end.
Dee jumped when she felt Felix’s hand squeezing her fingers. “Dee, will you marry me?”
Dee choked. Of course, Felix didn’t know about Billy’s proposal. There’d been no time to tell him. Now, there probably was no need to. “That’s not funny, no matter how drunk you are.”
“No, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” Felix shook his head as if to shake his booze-addled brains back into line. “I meant to say that we should make a pact, that if neither of us should happen to have anybody by the time we’re old and gray, we’d marry each other. People do that, right?”
Dee let out a noise that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Felix, have you ever even been with a woman?”
Felix feigned indignation. “Two, I’ll have you know.”
Dee snorted into her bottle. “That’s only something to brag about if you were with them both at once.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll be too old to be that interested in sex at that point anyway.”
Felix was a frustrating drunk, Dee thought. Chief’s moonshine made him strange, but it rarely overcame his innate need to make everything logical. Worse yet, he never failed to remember everything the next morning. Weird as it was, it was better than talking about the wake, though, so Dee played along.
“Speak for yourself,” Dee said, good-naturedly elbowing Felix in the arm. “What’s the point of living that long? Besides, I’ll never get another date again, if the guy knows I have a stud like you just waiting in the wings.”
Felix smiled and shook his head. “Somehow, I don’t think your next date’s going to feel threatened by me. Or by anyone, for that matter.”
Frak. Felix was indeed drunk, or he never would have taken such a strange and roundabout route, but that’s where he’d been going all along. He was digging for dirt on her and Lee-no, Dee corrected herself, that wasn’t a fair characterization, even if she did need someone alive and healthy to direct some anger at far more than a shoulder to cry on. Actually, Felix had been trying to give her a way to bring up Lee without broaching the topic cold, offering her ample opportunities to open everything up with a simple “I have someone.”
But she couldn’t have said it, even if she’d figured out what Felix was up to earlier. The truth was, she didn’t know if she did have someone else, or when she’d really lost Billy, or what was between her and Billy or her and Lee to lose or gain in the first place.
Dee sat silent for a long time, and Felix let the air remain empty. Dee was grateful for that. Though her hand was shaking, Dee did the only thing she could think of to keep Felix from trying again.
“To Billy,” Dee said, lifting her bottle.
“To Billy,” Felix answered, clinking bottles and catching enough of the truth in Dee’s eyes to just sit quietly beside her until their bottles were empty.
~~**~~**~~
As she pulled the hatch shut behind her, Dee smiled so deeply she could feel it in her chest. There was no better feeling than being proud of Lee; it was even better than loving him. She felt warm and sleepy. It didn’t even matter that the heels she so rarely wore made her feet ache. Usually, she’d be worrying about how much they’d hurt when she’d have to stand for nine hours straight through her next shift in CIC.
She turned, and the first thing that caught her eye was Felix’s stump poking out from his bunk as he pulled a sock over his knee. That was inconvenient, almost frustrating, Dee mused. Maybe if she just didn’t look… She set her gaze on the far side of the bunkroom and sauntered past him, humming, focusing on the warmth inside of her, imagining it as a calm fire in the pit of her stomach. It worked when she felt his eyes on her as she passed by, as she opened her locker, but not when she looked in the mirror and saw him almost glaring at her in disbelief.
Dee had hoped she wouldn’t have to see Felix. As much as she loved him, he had no place in her perfect day, for all the reasons that she could see in his reflection. He was too pale, too broken, and most of all, too real.
“What?”
“You’re glowing,” Felix groused.
“Am I?” she almost sang.
Felix groaned as he stood up. “All I can think of is that waste of a planet.”
Dee smiled harder. “Felix, please. I just want to hang onto this feeling for as long as I can.”
Then Felix did one of the things she loved him for so much. He simply said, “Okay,” and let her have whatever peace she’d found, even if he didn’t understand it.
Dee could hear him hopping and struggling with his canes as she slipped her dogtags over her head. She fingered the ball chain and swayed gently to the music in her mind. She was a little surprised at how happy she felt when Felix didn’t leave the room like she’d thought he would but instead bent over her shoulder.
“Hm. Look at that. Little Ana’s got her smile back,” he said, looking up at the picture of a little girl on the shiny red bicycle she’d gotten for her birthday.
Nobody since her father had called her “Ana.” Both Lee and Felix knew Dee’s old nickname, and she’d told Billy, too, but none of them had ever used it. Time felt so strange now; in some ways, it felt like the last five years had been her only real life, and everything before, including Ana, had been a dream. Dee wondered for a moment if that’s how Boomer’s memories had felt to her…no. Dee quickly cut off that line of reflection. There was no place for that kind of a thought today.
“Sometimes I don’t even remember that’s me. So long ago. She has no frakking idea what’s ahead of her.”
The little hope that had been in Felix’s voice died away. “Yeah, none of us do.”
Dee had to bite her tongue as Felix shuffled away. She did. She knew. The warmth of that certainty was the only thing keeping her standing.
She hung up her dogtags. She had nothing to take off and put away like that for Felix, so she did the next best thing. Even after all the times she’d heard it in sickbay, she couldn’t sing his song. Instead, she hummed the song that had been with her all day, dredged up from the dream-world of little Ana Dualla by some other child’s abandoned jacks.
Her fingers left the ball chain and ran down the more fragile chain of her locket. The clasp opened more easily than Dee expected, given how long she’d kept it closed. She looked into her father’s eyes. Then she heard the hatch swinging shut, so she looked up and caught a glimpse of Felix’s face, even though he wasn’t looking at her.
In the end, she was glad Felix had been there. If she could face him without wavering, she knew she was right. People like Helo and Athena, who could walk through ruined streets and along a beach the color of ashes yet still carry on because it was not the worst day they’d ever had, they would hold the Fleet together now that the Old Man couldn’t. Lee was more himself than he had ever been, and probably a little smug that he was right and she was wrong, that he’d found himself by not being like his father. She could let him have that little victory, because she knew that really, she was right. He was back to being Apollo, bringer of light.
Felix had been her only real concern. That was another reason why she’d avoided him. But now, she was assured that, though he would still take it hard, eventually, he would understand. Louis would take care of him until then.
She slipped the ring off her finger and hung it reverently on the hook with the dogtags and the locket. She stopped humming in the middle of a phrase. It was odd to hear herself end the song somewhere other than at the end-what had Felix called it when she’d asked him, a cadence? It didn’t matter.
She looked in the mirror one last time. There was no Lieutenant Dualla staring back at her, no Dee, no Anastasia, no Ana, just a tired girl with eyes that had seen too much. Felix had to be half-way to CIC by now. She was ready. The girl in the mirror confronted the end the same way she’d met everything up to that point: with clear, calm eyes, never glancing away from the truth.