Kara/Leoben 1sentence fic
Title: Always Only Rivers That I'll Steal
Author: lpmufinfiend
Rating: PG-R (I wrote sex, but I bet you can't find it.)
Summary: She thinks this may be the beginning of something very troublesome.
Spoilers: S1? Though it's set now, so I suppose for the fact that she's alive.
Warning: Character death
Word Count: 2,723, theme words, lyrics, and sentence fifty-one not counted
Disclaimer: None of the characters or places mentioned herein belong to me.
(A/N: This was supposed to be the warmup for my big Kara/Leoben story, but... Anyhow, I tried to include Amsie's request here, in case, so you might see influence of the song Beautiful Love by the Afters. Title and rhyming intro from the song What Can Never Be by Sinead Lohan.)
~~
"When in days I dream of you
Night time hardly holds the key
When I am still believing
In what can never be
What can never be..."
Air
She wakes up in a strange bed, next to a strange body, one that’s too warm and too clothed and too dry to be his, with a voice in her ear too unbroken to be his; and the air in here is stale, something she knows the air around him could never be.
Apples
She lays awake, and counts the things she’ll never have again like normal people count sheep-hot chocolate, perfume, apples, Leoben-and here she shuts her eyes, because if she can’t be asleep, at least she can imagine that he’s alive.
Beginning
She rises and scrambles into her clothes and out of the room and into the empty hallway, and as she meanders to the mess, she looks at the stars; thinks of him; thinks this may be the beginning of something very troublesome.
Bugs
She sits with one hand over her mug, warming, and the other poised to turn the page of the report about the Cylon bug that took out the ship’s computers, infiltrated and turned Galactica on herself; like Kara turned on herself, like Leoben made her.
Coffee
The coffee is bitter, but not like it should be; Kara wishes for home, for several very selfish reasons-the several bodies she left, none of which were his-and, of course, for the coffee.
Dark
It’s later, she’s on shift, and they have company; she thanks the Gods for the dark, because when she hears the rain, water starts to pool on the controls, and the only thread still holding her tough front is the absence of light.
Despair
Lost one, limping home, an engine dead and a trail of smoke; no fire; touchdown, a glimpse, his eye in hers and a double reflection-impossible.
Doors
She’s numb, lonely, lost in the sea of her own ship; she walks forward, in search of the one giving door.
Drink
Ambrosia for the fire, and she wishes it quelled like water, but the burn and the shame and the dizzy all build it up; she burns in her infernal madness, him.
Duty
She smothers the coals with her blues, fastens herself upright, wipes the fresh sleep from her face; she’s Lieutenant Thrace before anything, before hate, love, whatever this is.
Earth
It’s another in the endless string of meetings regarding the location of Earth, as that is the official goal of the Fleet-not of Kara Thrace, though, who dreams of playing housewife to the dead, undead, undying Cylon that has stolen her… heart, if that’s what it is that’s pulling into her stomach now, always, distracting and impairing her and dragging her forward through the mess that’s become of life.
End
In the end, nothing’s decided (as she knew nothing would be, as nothing ever is), and Adama and Roslin have dismissed their audience so they might argue in private; Kara ambles back to quarters, pondering a shower-anything to shake this-before she remembers, she doesn’t want to shake this.
Fall
He visits on her sabbath, her holy day, the one she marks every seven because she can’t sleep next to herself otherwise; and as she falls to her knees and prays, pleads for her soul and for other souls, prays to the wrong thing, he touches her face and her neck and the inch of skin her off-shift uniform exposes; he lets her lean into his hands that aren’t there, he lets her sigh, he lets her think she’s won favor-and it’s a lie, he knows, but it’s better for them both this way.
Fire
More days, ribbons of time that pool around her and char into nothing as they hit the ground, cold steel, hot iron, branding blisters into her feet as she walks-another mark of mortality she’ll have to hide, for she is God to some, self-proclaimed; it was a promise then, and not one she can break now.
Flexible
He sees through the panoramic eyes of a raider as the bow of Galactica stretches forward, and then as her solid body contracts into a line of white light, and then as the light fades, and then when there’s nothing; he smiles, he follows.
Flying
She’s standing beside a starboard window when space folds in on itself, and before Starbuck feels herself disappear, she sees a flash of red and the glint of two dagger-point wings-she frowns as they seem to tilt twice, a hello-but shakes her head; it couldn’t be.
Food
She wasn’t waiting; she was-he’s there when her hand strikes out, he catches it, feels the bones of her knuckles like blades in calloused sheathes, traces a lazy line to her shoulder and finds another graveyard there-she’s wasting away, it’s a waste; he can’t tell her to eat when he can’t, either.
Foot
The sun doesn’t rise but she can tell it’s morning, and she moves to whisper him awake and finds empty space where his body just was, unwrinkled sheet where he lay; she turns her face to muffle her sob in the pillow because a nugget is asleep not three feet away and she doesn’t want the world to hear her suffer.
Grave
Over coffee she ruminates- thinks of how, if she dies out there, she’ll never be buried; there will be no flowers or mourners at her grave, just a picture on a wall of pictures and a name on a wall of more names-and she tells herself, he’ll never even make that wall.
Green
Another dream, and she wonders why he gives her these; this time she’s on Aerilon, she can smell it in the air-the smell of rain, of the slate-colored storm circling over her head, and of the green grass below her, growing up between her toes; and he says something that she can’t hear because she’s being pulled awake by rough hands and a crackle of interference and then, loudly, “Action stations,” and she wonders how much more of this she can take.
Head
It’s over and she wants somebody to hold her head while she cries, but she can’t cry here or now or ever again where anyone can see her, and anyhow, there’s not a person alive who has felt this, who can comprehend, can hold her head up for her or make this go away-not a person alive, only men and machines left dead in her wake.
Hollow
She functions, but numbly-orders shouted fall useless and mumbled into pilots’ ears; they strain to hear the hero in them but find nothing, and that’s more than they wanted to know; their fearsome God has left them all for dreams of something better.
Honor
She hangs up her jacket and straightens the pins; this one for that mission and the next for another; she falls asleep standing with her hands on Honor and only wakes up when her fingers start to sting-she cut herself on the edge.
Hope
He comes in the dark, in her dream when she calls him, and when he shifts, her stomach jumps-she asks him if he’ll ever leave her, all quiet and needy with her arms around his neck pulling his mouth to her chest, and he nuzzles his reply into the bone between her breasts; she knows he won’t, knew before she asked, knew he wouldn’t if she begged him to-and Gods, she never will.
Light
She awakes and there’s a depression in the mattress; head, shoulders and legs in a line-she smiles and slides over, and though it’s cold now, it’s there and it’s his and it’s proof enough for her-maybe she’s not crazy after all.
Lost
Space has lost the engulfing quality that it had yesterday and every day before; it’s hope, must be, she can feel it growing in her-and it’s dangerous, she knows, to look up when things are as grim as they are, but the stars shine that little bit brighter and she knows it’s because they’re nearer; maybe he’s nearer, too.
Metal
He is nearer, yes-on the ship; Dee said so quietly to Adama, but she heard anyway and she’d have known even if she hadn’t caught his name, because even decks away he makes the air taste like metal and discomfort and she wants that; she runs to him.
New
Glass separates them, the door of Valerii’s old cell; his hollow eyes fill with her as they light upon her face, and as she takes him in with her own gaze she sees that he looks no newer than the him she’d let die-in fact the same exactly, except that this one looks even wearier and even more forgiving.
Old
An hour before she’d asked the Old Man for permission to stand guard his cell; tight-lipped, she may well have seemed to desire revenge, but no-this carnal thing she wanted had nothing to do with glory, and everything to do with the shedding of old shame.
Peace
She leans against the door now, eyes closed, but for the sake of appearances she holds the heavy machine gun of a marine guard at a high angle against her hip; Leoben comes to stand behind her and she can hear him whisper to her through the inches of soundproofed material-she thinks that this is what it is to be meant for something, when through impossible distances and barriers, she can still feel the murmur of her angel.
Poison
“I’ll die soon,” he tells her, and she shakes her head no; he persists and reminds her in a dripping-poison preacher voice that they’re all instruments of God, as she is, so is he, and he can hear his calling-home; she remembers her own, only moments before, and wonders if maybe she’ll be dying with him.
Pretty
A tear slides down her chin and lands on the floor with a wet pat, so much grief on her face and welling in her eyes that she can’t see-she slams them shut and over the roaring in her ears, she thinks she hears him say she’s pretty; she shakes her head with a violence that pales compared to the violence in her crying; she’s so thankful he can’t hear her.
Rain
Hushing noises and a sad smile stop the storm, but still she can’t meet his stare.
Regret
Her shift is over, and she leaves him with all her burdens shed beside his, and fresh guilt like a cape around her for giving him such hurt.
Roses
Space looks blacker, inky, and she knows it’s a trick, she only needs sleep; she surrenders to another dream, more realistic this time, not of planets, what was or what will be, but of silk roses stapled to a cardboard sunrise hung before the metal walls of a depressed cruise liner-but with him at her side to make it all convincing, warm hands and a blanket for the soft grass and bliss filling her through her feet and racing her thoughts for control of her head, which is floating in the fact that this doesn’t have to be real to be perfect.
Secret
The next day brings ache and a moment where she thinks it was all pretend, before she smells the tang that hangs like fog in the air; when she goes to see him she still can’t look at him but then she does and he’s blushing, and odd and pleasant thing; he mouths at her through the glass, silent and yet perfectly audible, do you remember? and she forgets to answer she’s remembering so much.
Snakes
She ducks her head and walks faster as guilt and pleasure writhe like two serpents twisting in her gut; she remembers his hand on her heart pledging and his eyes which spoke the words, and the greatest completion she’s ever felt flowing from the very worst source.
Snow
Her duty is on the flight deck this afternoon-the flight deck where veiled inquiries and darting glances fall around her in flurries and the hushed voices’ questions hit her back like a frigid wind; maybe she’s imagining it; maybe it’s painfully real.
Solid
Her hands on the side of her bird stroke as her voice coos nothings to lifeless metal; it’s comforting to talk to real machines, ones that won’t answer-she suddenly wonders where she’d be if her bird got sick of listening, and pulls away shaking with sunspots in her eyes.
Spring
The Commander’s made it clear to all, as has Lee-nobody questions when Kara wanders unsmiling to the brig, and the guards step clear when she swings the key she kept from her shift there; the prisoner musters a grateful face as the pilot sits down beside him, and as her head lowers to his shoulder, he paints her springtime with his voice.
Stable
Occasion becomes routine, which increases in frequency until the guards start bringing two trays of prison sludge to Leoben’s cell instead of one; he eats his own and half of hers as she reprimands him softly for getting so frail and bony, and between bites he tells her she’s looking skeletal, also-to which she replies that she can get food from the mess if she wants it, and that’s truth so he can’t argue.
Strange
Officers pass, coming in and out of hack for trivial things-they stop and look in on
paradise in a cage, and wonder to themselves why it seems so calm in there.
Summer
From the inside, he only wants out so she’ll follow; it means most to him that she gets what she can of what she’s got left, of card games and sparring and flying in formation, instead of lapping up his falsehood of seasons and sunshine and everything having its place; she has hers, he knows, and it’s not in here, but he needs her as much-more-than she does him, and it scares him worse to make her leave than it does to risk her staying forever.
Taboo
They say to take what you need, and she has; what she needed was a rock that couldn’t move if it wanted to and she’s found that in the defeated man-who-isn’t she knew before as danger-and if they talk (which they will, if not to her), then let them, because the difference between her and the rest is that she’s not afraid or alone, and nobody else can say that.
Ugly
He holds her wrist and lifts it so the fluorescent light pools down in bars from between her fingers-she stares and she sees calluses, scars, wrong angles and ugliness; he studies and traces and tells her that she is perfect, tells her about God in relation to her hands, and it doesn’t bother her anymore that he preaches lies because her idols aren’t truth, either.
War
She launches into a herd of half-green nuggets, commencing their pattern-their war game that suddenly becomes battle when ten Raiders arrive, appearing on her upper left-hand quadrant as a single pulsing mass, malignant.
Water
Her hands skitter across controls at hyper speed; her aim is deadly and her fingers stop short, she looks down and sees perfection there but doesn’t see the burning wing that flies toward her and impacts with a roar of post-mortem glory-she’s flung away as she takes in the last of her air like water, filling lungs that will never fully empty; she feels herself die before death comes upon her and it’s all just fine because still he’s here, she hears him as the black fades to white and she’s sure he was right and surrender seems only fair now.
Welcome
A tide draws her homeward and she feels now the truth of oblivion, a perfect pure and innocent state of not-knowing-the rest for the weary comes here, where there are no gates nor stairways nor rivers Styx to lead her anyplace else.
Winter
But her feet are cold, and she’s headed feet-first, she shouldn’t know, he promised she wouldn’t feel it when she went, but she’s sliding and it’s too late for accusing and at least she won’t go lonely-but he isn’t here, is he, no, he would be holding her now, now, as she’s going…
Wood
They find Lieutenant Thrace floating, deceased of suffocation; she is brought aboard and taken home and drained of blood and filled with something worse, then laid to rest in a wooden box, and someone lends a cubit for her passage-someone else adds another, they know how she was, but they don’t know that she died doubting.
Yellow
He remembers every turn, knows where he's going and why; as they force him past the yellow doors, he knows this is the last time-- and he doesn't want to die alone a liar, but it's done, she's gone, and there's nothing he can do but follow.
~~
Author: lpmufinfiend
Rating: PG-R (I wrote sex, but I bet you can't find it.)
Summary: She thinks this may be the beginning of something very troublesome.
Spoilers: S1? Though it's set now, so I suppose for the fact that she's alive.
Warning: Character death
Word Count: 2,723, theme words, lyrics, and sentence fifty-one not counted
Disclaimer: None of the characters or places mentioned herein belong to me.
(A/N: This was supposed to be the warmup for my big Kara/Leoben story, but... Anyhow, I tried to include Amsie's request here, in case, so you might see influence of the song Beautiful Love by the Afters. Title and rhyming intro from the song What Can Never Be by Sinead Lohan.)
~~
"When in days I dream of you
Night time hardly holds the key
When I am still believing
In what can never be
What can never be..."
Air
She wakes up in a strange bed, next to a strange body, one that’s too warm and too clothed and too dry to be his, with a voice in her ear too unbroken to be his; and the air in here is stale, something she knows the air around him could never be.
Apples
She lays awake, and counts the things she’ll never have again like normal people count sheep-hot chocolate, perfume, apples, Leoben-and here she shuts her eyes, because if she can’t be asleep, at least she can imagine that he’s alive.
Beginning
She rises and scrambles into her clothes and out of the room and into the empty hallway, and as she meanders to the mess, she looks at the stars; thinks of him; thinks this may be the beginning of something very troublesome.
Bugs
She sits with one hand over her mug, warming, and the other poised to turn the page of the report about the Cylon bug that took out the ship’s computers, infiltrated and turned Galactica on herself; like Kara turned on herself, like Leoben made her.
Coffee
The coffee is bitter, but not like it should be; Kara wishes for home, for several very selfish reasons-the several bodies she left, none of which were his-and, of course, for the coffee.
Dark
It’s later, she’s on shift, and they have company; she thanks the Gods for the dark, because when she hears the rain, water starts to pool on the controls, and the only thread still holding her tough front is the absence of light.
Despair
Lost one, limping home, an engine dead and a trail of smoke; no fire; touchdown, a glimpse, his eye in hers and a double reflection-impossible.
Doors
She’s numb, lonely, lost in the sea of her own ship; she walks forward, in search of the one giving door.
Drink
Ambrosia for the fire, and she wishes it quelled like water, but the burn and the shame and the dizzy all build it up; she burns in her infernal madness, him.
Duty
She smothers the coals with her blues, fastens herself upright, wipes the fresh sleep from her face; she’s Lieutenant Thrace before anything, before hate, love, whatever this is.
Earth
It’s another in the endless string of meetings regarding the location of Earth, as that is the official goal of the Fleet-not of Kara Thrace, though, who dreams of playing housewife to the dead, undead, undying Cylon that has stolen her… heart, if that’s what it is that’s pulling into her stomach now, always, distracting and impairing her and dragging her forward through the mess that’s become of life.
End
In the end, nothing’s decided (as she knew nothing would be, as nothing ever is), and Adama and Roslin have dismissed their audience so they might argue in private; Kara ambles back to quarters, pondering a shower-anything to shake this-before she remembers, she doesn’t want to shake this.
Fall
He visits on her sabbath, her holy day, the one she marks every seven because she can’t sleep next to herself otherwise; and as she falls to her knees and prays, pleads for her soul and for other souls, prays to the wrong thing, he touches her face and her neck and the inch of skin her off-shift uniform exposes; he lets her lean into his hands that aren’t there, he lets her sigh, he lets her think she’s won favor-and it’s a lie, he knows, but it’s better for them both this way.
Fire
More days, ribbons of time that pool around her and char into nothing as they hit the ground, cold steel, hot iron, branding blisters into her feet as she walks-another mark of mortality she’ll have to hide, for she is God to some, self-proclaimed; it was a promise then, and not one she can break now.
Flexible
He sees through the panoramic eyes of a raider as the bow of Galactica stretches forward, and then as her solid body contracts into a line of white light, and then as the light fades, and then when there’s nothing; he smiles, he follows.
Flying
She’s standing beside a starboard window when space folds in on itself, and before Starbuck feels herself disappear, she sees a flash of red and the glint of two dagger-point wings-she frowns as they seem to tilt twice, a hello-but shakes her head; it couldn’t be.
Food
She wasn’t waiting; she was-he’s there when her hand strikes out, he catches it, feels the bones of her knuckles like blades in calloused sheathes, traces a lazy line to her shoulder and finds another graveyard there-she’s wasting away, it’s a waste; he can’t tell her to eat when he can’t, either.
Foot
The sun doesn’t rise but she can tell it’s morning, and she moves to whisper him awake and finds empty space where his body just was, unwrinkled sheet where he lay; she turns her face to muffle her sob in the pillow because a nugget is asleep not three feet away and she doesn’t want the world to hear her suffer.
Grave
Over coffee she ruminates- thinks of how, if she dies out there, she’ll never be buried; there will be no flowers or mourners at her grave, just a picture on a wall of pictures and a name on a wall of more names-and she tells herself, he’ll never even make that wall.
Green
Another dream, and she wonders why he gives her these; this time she’s on Aerilon, she can smell it in the air-the smell of rain, of the slate-colored storm circling over her head, and of the green grass below her, growing up between her toes; and he says something that she can’t hear because she’s being pulled awake by rough hands and a crackle of interference and then, loudly, “Action stations,” and she wonders how much more of this she can take.
Head
It’s over and she wants somebody to hold her head while she cries, but she can’t cry here or now or ever again where anyone can see her, and anyhow, there’s not a person alive who has felt this, who can comprehend, can hold her head up for her or make this go away-not a person alive, only men and machines left dead in her wake.
Hollow
She functions, but numbly-orders shouted fall useless and mumbled into pilots’ ears; they strain to hear the hero in them but find nothing, and that’s more than they wanted to know; their fearsome God has left them all for dreams of something better.
Honor
She hangs up her jacket and straightens the pins; this one for that mission and the next for another; she falls asleep standing with her hands on Honor and only wakes up when her fingers start to sting-she cut herself on the edge.
Hope
He comes in the dark, in her dream when she calls him, and when he shifts, her stomach jumps-she asks him if he’ll ever leave her, all quiet and needy with her arms around his neck pulling his mouth to her chest, and he nuzzles his reply into the bone between her breasts; she knows he won’t, knew before she asked, knew he wouldn’t if she begged him to-and Gods, she never will.
Light
She awakes and there’s a depression in the mattress; head, shoulders and legs in a line-she smiles and slides over, and though it’s cold now, it’s there and it’s his and it’s proof enough for her-maybe she’s not crazy after all.
Lost
Space has lost the engulfing quality that it had yesterday and every day before; it’s hope, must be, she can feel it growing in her-and it’s dangerous, she knows, to look up when things are as grim as they are, but the stars shine that little bit brighter and she knows it’s because they’re nearer; maybe he’s nearer, too.
Metal
He is nearer, yes-on the ship; Dee said so quietly to Adama, but she heard anyway and she’d have known even if she hadn’t caught his name, because even decks away he makes the air taste like metal and discomfort and she wants that; she runs to him.
New
Glass separates them, the door of Valerii’s old cell; his hollow eyes fill with her as they light upon her face, and as she takes him in with her own gaze she sees that he looks no newer than the him she’d let die-in fact the same exactly, except that this one looks even wearier and even more forgiving.
Old
An hour before she’d asked the Old Man for permission to stand guard his cell; tight-lipped, she may well have seemed to desire revenge, but no-this carnal thing she wanted had nothing to do with glory, and everything to do with the shedding of old shame.
Peace
She leans against the door now, eyes closed, but for the sake of appearances she holds the heavy machine gun of a marine guard at a high angle against her hip; Leoben comes to stand behind her and she can hear him whisper to her through the inches of soundproofed material-she thinks that this is what it is to be meant for something, when through impossible distances and barriers, she can still feel the murmur of her angel.
Poison
“I’ll die soon,” he tells her, and she shakes her head no; he persists and reminds her in a dripping-poison preacher voice that they’re all instruments of God, as she is, so is he, and he can hear his calling-home; she remembers her own, only moments before, and wonders if maybe she’ll be dying with him.
Pretty
A tear slides down her chin and lands on the floor with a wet pat, so much grief on her face and welling in her eyes that she can’t see-she slams them shut and over the roaring in her ears, she thinks she hears him say she’s pretty; she shakes her head with a violence that pales compared to the violence in her crying; she’s so thankful he can’t hear her.
Rain
Hushing noises and a sad smile stop the storm, but still she can’t meet his stare.
Regret
Her shift is over, and she leaves him with all her burdens shed beside his, and fresh guilt like a cape around her for giving him such hurt.
Roses
Space looks blacker, inky, and she knows it’s a trick, she only needs sleep; she surrenders to another dream, more realistic this time, not of planets, what was or what will be, but of silk roses stapled to a cardboard sunrise hung before the metal walls of a depressed cruise liner-but with him at her side to make it all convincing, warm hands and a blanket for the soft grass and bliss filling her through her feet and racing her thoughts for control of her head, which is floating in the fact that this doesn’t have to be real to be perfect.
Secret
The next day brings ache and a moment where she thinks it was all pretend, before she smells the tang that hangs like fog in the air; when she goes to see him she still can’t look at him but then she does and he’s blushing, and odd and pleasant thing; he mouths at her through the glass, silent and yet perfectly audible, do you remember? and she forgets to answer she’s remembering so much.
Snakes
She ducks her head and walks faster as guilt and pleasure writhe like two serpents twisting in her gut; she remembers his hand on her heart pledging and his eyes which spoke the words, and the greatest completion she’s ever felt flowing from the very worst source.
Snow
Her duty is on the flight deck this afternoon-the flight deck where veiled inquiries and darting glances fall around her in flurries and the hushed voices’ questions hit her back like a frigid wind; maybe she’s imagining it; maybe it’s painfully real.
Solid
Her hands on the side of her bird stroke as her voice coos nothings to lifeless metal; it’s comforting to talk to real machines, ones that won’t answer-she suddenly wonders where she’d be if her bird got sick of listening, and pulls away shaking with sunspots in her eyes.
Spring
The Commander’s made it clear to all, as has Lee-nobody questions when Kara wanders unsmiling to the brig, and the guards step clear when she swings the key she kept from her shift there; the prisoner musters a grateful face as the pilot sits down beside him, and as her head lowers to his shoulder, he paints her springtime with his voice.
Stable
Occasion becomes routine, which increases in frequency until the guards start bringing two trays of prison sludge to Leoben’s cell instead of one; he eats his own and half of hers as she reprimands him softly for getting so frail and bony, and between bites he tells her she’s looking skeletal, also-to which she replies that she can get food from the mess if she wants it, and that’s truth so he can’t argue.
Strange
Officers pass, coming in and out of hack for trivial things-they stop and look in on
paradise in a cage, and wonder to themselves why it seems so calm in there.
Summer
From the inside, he only wants out so she’ll follow; it means most to him that she gets what she can of what she’s got left, of card games and sparring and flying in formation, instead of lapping up his falsehood of seasons and sunshine and everything having its place; she has hers, he knows, and it’s not in here, but he needs her as much-more-than she does him, and it scares him worse to make her leave than it does to risk her staying forever.
Taboo
They say to take what you need, and she has; what she needed was a rock that couldn’t move if it wanted to and she’s found that in the defeated man-who-isn’t she knew before as danger-and if they talk (which they will, if not to her), then let them, because the difference between her and the rest is that she’s not afraid or alone, and nobody else can say that.
Ugly
He holds her wrist and lifts it so the fluorescent light pools down in bars from between her fingers-she stares and she sees calluses, scars, wrong angles and ugliness; he studies and traces and tells her that she is perfect, tells her about God in relation to her hands, and it doesn’t bother her anymore that he preaches lies because her idols aren’t truth, either.
War
She launches into a herd of half-green nuggets, commencing their pattern-their war game that suddenly becomes battle when ten Raiders arrive, appearing on her upper left-hand quadrant as a single pulsing mass, malignant.
Water
Her hands skitter across controls at hyper speed; her aim is deadly and her fingers stop short, she looks down and sees perfection there but doesn’t see the burning wing that flies toward her and impacts with a roar of post-mortem glory-she’s flung away as she takes in the last of her air like water, filling lungs that will never fully empty; she feels herself die before death comes upon her and it’s all just fine because still he’s here, she hears him as the black fades to white and she’s sure he was right and surrender seems only fair now.
Welcome
A tide draws her homeward and she feels now the truth of oblivion, a perfect pure and innocent state of not-knowing-the rest for the weary comes here, where there are no gates nor stairways nor rivers Styx to lead her anyplace else.
Winter
But her feet are cold, and she’s headed feet-first, she shouldn’t know, he promised she wouldn’t feel it when she went, but she’s sliding and it’s too late for accusing and at least she won’t go lonely-but he isn’t here, is he, no, he would be holding her now, now, as she’s going…
Wood
They find Lieutenant Thrace floating, deceased of suffocation; she is brought aboard and taken home and drained of blood and filled with something worse, then laid to rest in a wooden box, and someone lends a cubit for her passage-someone else adds another, they know how she was, but they don’t know that she died doubting.
Yellow
He remembers every turn, knows where he's going and why; as they force him past the yellow doors, he knows this is the last time-- and he doesn't want to die alone a liar, but it's done, she's gone, and there's nothing he can do but follow.
~~