End of the Line (BSG oneshot)

[DrMckay]

Summary: A quick oneshot: Dee’s reflection on her life during “Sometimes a Great Notion.”

Author’s note: My salute to Anastasia Dualla, so ably portrayed by Actress Kandyse McClure. She was a good officer, the Conscience of the Adama Family, one of my favorite characters.

End of the Line


“In or Out. Shut the door.”

That was the first thing she said to Billy, when he had awkwardly blundered into the head before the decommissioning ceremony. When she saw him in the corridor after the attacks, it was as if a piece of home had survived the attacks.
She really wanted to go home. So she kissed him. But it didn’t work.
It was as if they were obligated to create a replica of a life before the attacks.
With the juggling of their careers as aides to the Fleets’ power brokers, had tried to be the sickeningly innocent Billy and Dee that everyone else saw. A reminder of the homes they had lost, and a reminder to everyone of what they were fighting for.
But she could only fool herself for so long, and while Billy was determined to fully recreate a ‘normal’ life, she tried to gain joy in the interludes from duty.
But while Billy reminded her of a way of life quickly fading into memory, Lee was there in the background, the principled soldier who desperately didn’t want to be one, and his father’s son, although he’d never admit it.

Lee was there, he was real, and all too aware of the situation. Things came to a head on Cloud Nine, where Billy, poor Billy, who had proposed with his debate club ring, had been killed trying to save her.

It should have wrapped things up nicely, from a mechanical standpoint if not an emotional one. Billy gone so she could date Lee.

It wasn’t that simple, and they both knew it. She loved him, he loved Kara, and Kara loved a dead man.

She tried anyway.

Then the rescue of the Caprica resistance, the settlement of New Caprica, and something changed in Lee.

She gave Lee support in his listlessness, and a kick in the rear when he needed it, She stood with Lee in the Battle of New Caprica, and helped ram a Mercury Class Battlestar down the toasters’ throats in the end.
She had brought Starbuck back to Apollo on the Algae planet, and given Lee all the support she could in Baltar’s trial, until she could give no more.

Her lips quirked as she remembered Lee telling her,

“Looks like you kept the house.”
As he stood on the hangar deck as a pilot for the last time.

Then Earth. The ruins, the mementos, and the grey skies.

Something broke.

They returned to the worn out ships in orbit, and Dee had gone dancing, with wine, and the look of love in Lee’s eyes, it was the perfect dinner, the perfect end to a young life lived long enough.
Because they weren’t going anywhere. None of them were. She realized that now. So rather succumb slowly to despair and starvation, like the rest of them, she decided to exert the tiny bit of control she had left.

Goodbye Felix, Goodbye Lee

Anastasia Dualla took one last look at the picture of the little girl she had once been, drew her sidearm and blew out her brains.