Once More, with Feeling

He's dying. Deep down, through all the pain, through all the anguish, he's known it from the start. All in all, it was a waste of time to even regain consciousness.

At the back of his mind, or what's left of it as the colonel fulfils his last request, he wonders what his family and friends will be told, on a small, insignificant, yet wonderful world on the other side of the universe. That he died on a mission? Well, that would be true in any other circumstance, but for months on end, he hasn't been on a mission. Rather, he and every other soldier and scientist on Destiny have simply been fighting to survive. What kind of mission is that if there's no objective?

Riley supposes he'll never find out.

It's getting harder to think now, as his life is choked out of him. He can barely hear, he can barely see, his lack of feeling in the lower part of his body is extending upwards...Yet in all of this, there's no pain. No fear. Just...regret. Regret that it came to this. Regret as to what he's put everyone, especially Young through over the past few hours. Regret at being so...so useless. Knocked unconscious by the eruption of a coolant leak, he let the whole crew down. And now he feels like he's let them down again. Well, "feels" might be the wrong word. Right now, it's hard to feel anything.

Once, long ago, someone had commented that the world would end, not with a bang, but with a whimper. And while that eruption might have let him go out in style, instead fate has ordained that he go out in the latter method. How...poetic, he thinks to himself, glancing up at the colonel one last time.

After that, Hunter Riley thinks of nothing.