We used to wait. (Chapter 24/?)
title: We used to wait. (Chapter 24/?)
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Through all seasons, though this takes place in an AU starting at the very end of season 2.
pairings: kara/lee, kara/sam
overall fic rating: R/NC-17
word count: 5,455
notes: See http://apodixis.livejournal.com/685.html for more information.
summary: If God isn't leading the fleet to Earth, can they ever find it?
Cottle held the stack of files before him as he looked over the familiar faces, most of which stood behind the metal bars of the jail cells on Galactica. He inhaled a breath from one of the cigarettes he’d still managed to procure, even years after they’d left all formal factories behind. “Well Baltar’s test still works,” he said gruffly, an eyebrow raised as he looked over to the scientist in his own cell, while the other five remained crammed into one. “I wish it didn’t,” he confessed. “But it’s a match for all of you. Not a hundred percent like it came out to on all the other cylons we’ve identified, but a definite match.” To him, he didn’t care what these people were either way. On New Caprica, he saved the lives of humans and cylons alike. To the people before him, though, it was different.
The four remaining members of the Final Five, as dictated by Samuel Anders, had been rounded up the night before under a few different ruses. The idea was that if they knew they were being accused of being a cylon, it could lead them to flee or perhaps even worse. They didn’t want any harm to befall the supposed cylons, nor for them to do any damage to anyone or anything else in their panic. The entire night, they’d sat there, sure it had all been a mistake, though Sam kept predictably mum on the topic, all of them knowing he was the one responsible for them ending up there.
As Cottle gave the results of the blood tests, however, the outrage had quieted down into absolute disbelief. Galen kept silent from where he sat in the corner of the cell, contemplating over just what it meant for himself, for his son, and especially for his wife. Cally had been the one responsible for Boomer’s death, he couldn’t imagine how she would react to such news, though he still didn’t want to believe it. He might not have wanted to see it for truth, but there was an eerie sense of calm and peace at hearing the news, like he knew all along and it was only obvious when someone told it to him. That was perhaps the most unsettling part of it.
Saul looked apologetically to Bill who stood outside the bars. It was as if he had made the choice at some time in his life to turn into a cylon and kept it a secret from that man. He owed the fact that he was alive to Bill Adama, though he supposed he would have just resurrected elsewhere had he not been serving on Galactica those years ago. No, he refused to think like a cylon. One of Baltar’s tests said he was one, but that didn’t mean anything else. He was Saul Tigh, Colonel in the Colonial Fleet, or at least he had been. He wasn’t exactly sure where he stood any longer. Beside him, Ellen tucked herself into her husband’s arms, tears welled up in her eyes.
Tory Foster was the closest to the bars of the cell, and therefore, the other occupants of the room, including Roslin. “I didn’t know,” she said to the President, trying to excuse herself. Like Galen, she felt an inner peace at the declaration of her true identity, like the final missing piece in her life had been fitted in and she was now complete.
“For your safety, we’re going to be keeping you here for now,” Bill started, though it was extremely hard to look at the caged people before him.
“Admiral,” the Chief looked up to him. “Cally-”
Despite how he felt about what Tyrol really was, he could not bring himself to deny the man anything regarding his wife. “She’ll be looked after Chief. We’ll have her brought in if you want to see her.”
Galen nodded, more thankful than he’d ever recently been.
Though there were many things to discuss with them, Adama and Roslin chose to leave the room with Cottle. Before anything else could be said, they would all need to come to terms with the recent revelations.
Alone, the silence persisted until Tory set her eyes on Sam. “You said you don’t remember anything, but how did you know who we were?” The attention of the others turned towards him as well, waiting for the answer.
He clammed up on the spot, a sick feeling settling into his stomach. “The Chief… I suspected him at the temple,” his eyes flickered over to Galen, head tilted down in a quiet apology. “But all of us, before Starbuck died, do you remember a night at Joe’s Bar when she was playing piano with Apollo?”
“That song…” Tory said, already beginning to hum it as if she’d heard it again only yesterday, though it had been months. Soon the rest of them joined in, fleshing out the notes in harmony together. All at once, they stopped, looks traded between them.
Though Sam had been sure of it all those months ago, hearing their voices echo back the tune of that song with him now confirmed it even more so. There was something to those notes, whether they outwardly understood it or not.
“So we’re cylons. And we have been the entire time,” the Chief said.
“What does it mean, though? Now that we know?” Tory asked, sitting down on the floor.
The question stumped them all, though it was Tigh that had the guts to speak up. “It means nothing. Three of us, we’re members of the Colonial Fleet. You’re the President’s aide. Why the frak should we let it change anything? Do you hate the cylons any less because you are one?”
“It means I’m something more than just-” the dark haired woman began.
“The frak it does,” Sam nearly shouted. “They still murdered billions of people back at the Twelve Colonies and thousands on New Caprica.”
“But we’re part of them, what if we made the decision?”
“I didn’t make that frakking decision,” said Sam, shaking his head to prove his point. “This is who I am. Samuel T. Anders, former pyramid player, Viper pilot in the Colonial Fleet. I didn’t make that decision to kill billions. You can do whatever you want, but I’m standing true to this.” Unlike the others, he’d had months to think about the fact that he believed himself to be a cylon, and now a few days since Roslin had agreed to some kind of peace between the humans and whatever he was.
For the immediate time following, the room stayed in silence, as they all individually began to consider their fate.
-
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Lee said from his side of Kara’s Viper, the metal shielding peeled off and leaving part of the ship’s insides exposed. After days of cutting her bird brutally apart, the search had so far yielded nothing. It became an exercise in futility for the two of them, frustration mounting as each day ticked by with nothing to show for it. “I don’t even know what’s missing to make room for the FTL.”
Kara listened, though preoccupied reading through the latest tests to come back regarding the fuel that remained in the tank of her Mark II. She would have killed to have the Chief beside her now, translating through some of the language she wasn’t so proficient with, despite her ability to fix up her Viper’s usual bumps and bruises.
“If it was cylon, we’d expect literal guts though… blood - right?” He asked her, though received no response. “Kara, are you even frakking listening to a word I’m saying?” Her continued silence brought him a few steps closer to her, tearing the papers from her hands.
She looked up, indignation read across her face. “What the frak, Apollo!” she shouted, reaching to pull the set of now grease stained printouts back from his hands.
“You’re not even paying attention. What if I’m missing something? You’re the one who said she went to Earth. I have no idea what I’m even looking for.”
Kara heard accusation in his tone, but she was sure most of it was her own guilt. Since she found him again back in that nebula, she’d made the promise to take the fleet to their new home. At the time, she’d felt sure and confident of it. She had been there, she had pictures. Surely it would be easy. As it turned out, it was nothing of the sort. The pictures, while showing a planet that at least seemed habitable and matched the constellations they saw in the tomb of Athena, did little else to provide any information on where they would need to go. The ship, so far, had been a dead end and with her complete lack of ability to even recall more than just a glimpse of the planet she believed to be Earth, they’d hit a complete wall.
“Just keep looking,” she insisted, pouring her eyes back over the numbers calculated on the eight sided sheets of paper.
Lee hovered over her, trying to read the information upside down. “What does that even say?”
“I think,” she started, tongue at the corner of her mouth in concentration. “What I think this says is that the fuel I brought back is more efficient.” Her brows pushed together, dipping her head in closer to the data as if that would make it clearer. “Burns hotter…or slower. Something it does different means you get more bang for your buck.” The science officer who had done the work would probably cringe at her crude manner of explaining the chemistry behind it. “I wonder if we can reverse engineer it, start refining our tyllium to make this instead.”
He felt something like a fool for getting angry with her over information that could potentially turn out to be important. While the fleet had enough tyllium for a few more years of coasting through space, any efforts at extending the life of what they had would still be welcomed information. The knowledge was useful, though he would argue not entirely on point to what he and Kara had been avoiding everything else to look for. They took breaks for meals on occasion and retired to their billet long after everyone had found sleep, taking the time to sleep in after years of missing out on that luxury. After they’d wake, the two would end up back on the hangar deck, bickering over both the little and big details of the changes in the ship she’d returned with. As a rule, they decided generally not to talk about where she would have gotten it from.
He moved away from her to return to where the FTL was located, undoing a few bolts and couplings until the heart of the jump drive pulled free. It was deceptively small, though he knew it needn’t be large for a ship of this size, but he suspected the non-Colonial technology also had something to do with its compact nature.
“You better hope you can put that back,” she said, startling him. Last he saw, she had been feet away, immersed in the fuel’s information.
“I wouldn’t count on it.” Lee set the device on a nearby table, returning to look now at the gaping hole from whence it came.
“Anything?” He questioned her, hoping that some sixth sense about it would come forward when they needed it most.
Kara solemnly shook her head, hands on her hips as she circled back around the Viper. “No.” It killed her to admit it.
“I don’t understand why the nav system was blank. I’d say malfunction, but everything else on this ship is in perfect condition. You’ve got an FTL, but no records of any jumps. It’s like someone was erasing everything right after you did it. You came out of nowhere, Kara. There wasn’t even anything around us, so you would have had to jump in.”
She sighed and climbed up the ladder until she was sitting inside the cockpit. “Yeah, unless I came off a basestar,” she said mostly to herself, but Lee, following her up the stairs, heard her.
“You didn’t.” His words were stern and Kara didn’t have the energy to challenge him. “Can you still start her up with the FTL out?”
Kara nodded to him and the Viper suddenly purred alive, the computer screens flickering on and illuminating the cockpit just barely. The trio of rings on the DRADIS screen bounced around, creating a sphere when moving together and indicating a lack of enemy ships nearby. She cycled through a few settings, the screen going from completely blank to populated with the readings of the friendly civilian ships. She set it back to the normal combat setting so it was once again blank and began the process of flipping switches a second time, this time in regards to a second screen. A needle jumped and for a second Kara’s heart leapt with it, at the prospect of what such an incoming signal could mean. It dissipated quickly enough though and Kara felt the extreme loss of hope.
“Interference,” Lee said, though it was an obvious answer.
She shut the Viper down and leaned back into her seat, eyes closing. “I don’t get it. I just don’t.”
He loudly sighed beside her, still kneeling somewhat on the stairs so he could look in to the small cockpit that was her own. “We’ve ripped this ship apart everyday now for weeks and we’re still getting nothing. Maybe the answers aren’t here.”
She violently smacked both her hands against the interior walls of her ship. “Then where the frak are they? Huh, Lee?” As the only available target other than herself, he was used to being her punching bag as of late. Kara usually gave her apologies later in the night without words.
“Don’t get mad at me, Kara. I volunteered for this and I’ll put this ship back together and take it apart again tomorrow if you think that’s what we need to do. But we’ve been neglecting the star charts and pictures you brought back. We saw those constellations in the tomb of Athena, there has to be something there we’re missing.” Lee climbed down the ladder with his words completed, heading back to pick the FTL drive off from where he’d placed it earlier. He returned to the side of the ship and pushed it back into place, refastening every wire and hose he’d taken off it earlier.
Kara descended back to the deck, her entire body tense. For awhile she felt on top of the world and now a deep sense of failure wound her up tight. She swore she could hear her mother in the back of her head, reminding her that she never tried enough, that she was special and squandering it. The up and down of her moods had long since tired her out, the back and forth of it getting old as all she longed for was some kind of stability. Those first few months on Galactica after the cylons attacked seemed like a dream to her. She had one job then, shooting down toasters. Now, she wasn’t even sure what she was doing. Hell, she hadn’t even flown in weeks and neither had Lee. They’d both abandoned their former jobs and given Helo the task of keeping together the air group.
“We’ll talk to Gaeta,” she declared to Lee as she handed him the piece of metal plating missing from the space of her plane he currently worked on. If only she could remember anything at all, she knew their problems would be solved. But try as she might, when she attempted to think back to those months she was missing, nothing ever came. The answer was there, she was sure of it. She just had to remember it.
-
Elsewhere, on Galactica, Doc Cottle made an emergency visit to the brig housing the cylons known as D’Anna and Leoben. Though both had been beyond delighted to hear the news of the Final Five, finally putting names to faces, the female cylon had quickly fallen ill, her condition deteriorating rapidly over the prior days. Leoben’s health seemed to be following soon behind, though he faired better than his sister.
In sickbay, the reason for their illness was identified as Lymphocytic Encephalitis, and while some had begun to panic, Cottle reassured them that humans had grown immune to the virus some thousands of years ago. Their cylon counterparts, on the other hand, lacked the necessary antibodies to begin fighting off the infection. Under Admiral’s orders, Cottle administered the serum created that would keep them alive with periodic injections while some of his staff began to look for the origination of the virus, starting with all those who had come in contact with the cylons and the very few places either of them had recently been.
-
“We were recently able to identify the five remaining cylon models that were unknown to us.” Roslin paused, trying to keep her voice steady as she read into the microphone. “These five cylons were found in our fleet.” She could imagine the outcry and horror felt through each civilian listening in to her broadcast. Though she hadn’t wanted to go through with such a thing, the rumors had spread like wildfire and forced her hand. “I want to assure everyone that they have not been in contact with the enemy cylon forces and they have each denounced their ties to the cylons.”
It wouldn’t be a popular decision, the wounds from New Caprica still fresh despite how much time had been put between their rescue and this revelation. Even Galactica’s crew had been on edge lately, or so Bill had told her, especially considering how close some of the crew were to those that had been given up for their true nature. “The welfare of our people is and has always been my utmost concern. If there was any question regarding these five people,” her words had been written wisely, hoping to humanize them as much as she could. “…Admiral Adama and I would not be standing in defense of them.”
“They are your people, your fellow citizens and Colonists, and as such have only ever longed to help bring us to safety. All of them were key players in our rescue from New Caprica, some even enduring torture at the hands of the other cylon models in order to protect us. Their sacrifices will not be ignored or forgotten. Their continued loyalties,” she paused again, sipping water to bolster herself with added strength and confidence. “…Are why I am granting them amnesty here.” She’d done a fair job of not looking out to the faces of the fleet’s remaining reporters in front of her, but the grumbling among them told her they weren’t pleased.
“Should any harm befall them or their loved ones, I will pursue anyone involved to the full extent of the law. I would like to remind everyone that prejudicial behavior is not tolerated here, just as it was not tolerated in the Colonies. The genocide that happened to our people is a horror we will never allow ourselves or future generations to forget, but without question, these five people were not involved in the decisions that led to what happened there and had been removed from the cylon forces for years.” Though there was no exact proof of it, she forced the white lie based on her gut feeling. For the good of the human race, she told herself.
“We need to remember that we cannot give in and allow what remains of our humanity to be stripped away from ourselves out of fear.” Laura thought back to the brutal torturing she’d allowed Kara Thrace to due to the very Leoben model that they’d been keeping captive for months now. She didn’t regret it, but part of herself had been lost that day. With her planned speech finished, she lifted her head to the reporters awaiting her. “No questions.”
-
The general mood on Galactica made the ship and its crew only a ghost of what the battlestar had once been. Though things had been somewhat somber after New Caprica, there had at least been a strong sense of camaraderie, even with the mixing of Pegasus and Galactica’s crews together. They were all in the same boat, all remaining members of the Colonial Fleet. They’d not been that way when Cain and her immediate successors were still in command, but things had begun a steady change under Commander Thrace. Now, however, friends and fellow officers found themselves torn apart again over those who agreed and disagreed with the decision regarding the cylons known as the Final Five.
None of the five had returned to actual work yet, if they ever would, but remained on Galactica despite the tension. If there was a safest place in the fleet for them to be, it would be under the watchful eye of the Admiral, who though still felt betrayed, also had a bond to each and every one of them to some degree. On the civilian ships, they all knew they’d be absolutely torn apart alive. Roslin had made her stance on their treatment well defined numerous times, but that meant nothing in the reality of the situation. Any of them could have stepped onto another ship and found themselves murdered, no witnesses coming forth to turn their fellow person in for the crimes committed. It would go unpunished, that much they all knew.
Without duties to fulfill and most of their friendships on the rocks, the five outed as cylons were left mostly to befriend one another in an attempt to not completely lose their minds from the isolation they felt. That, and drink. The usual bartender at Joe’s Bar was still friendly, or at least faking it well, and the alcohol eased the pain of the passing time of day. All five sat together at one of the tables towards the back of the room, keeping a low profile even in the mostly empty facilities. They shared a bottle between them, each of their cups at various states of fullness.
It had been nearly two weeks since they’d been put into that cell, and over a week since Roslin’s official address to the entire fleet, when everyone’s fears had been confirmed out loud. The time hadn’t been easy on any of them, least of all Galen Tyrol, who had seen neither his wife nor his child since even before his blood had been processed. He feared the worst for them, though received reassurances from those he talk to that they were in good hands. He knew Cally more than anyone else on that ship, and though their lives hadn’t been perfect, Tyrol desperately wanted her to survive through all of it. Sometimes, especially more so lately now that he knew the truth about himself, his thoughts strayed to Boomer and perhaps the life they could have had together. He wondered often if somehow she knew who he was all along, but couldn’t understand it. But Boomer wasn’t here any longer and as much as he had loved her, the crime she committed against the Admiral and the things she’d at least been aware of happening on New Caprica would be too much for him to ever stomach. He was a married man now with a son, a son that was half cylon and half human, a miracle in his own right. On that note, he finished his glass.
Tory stared at her own cup, still as full as it had ever been. Her finger traced along the rim of it idly, lost in deep thought. Under her breath, she hummed the tune that had been stuck in her head since the day they’d revisited the memory all together in their common jail cell. She’d been determined to immerse herself in it as much as possible and solve the mystery of it. So far, she had no luck.
“Can you stop humming that Gods damned song already,” Ellen spoke aggressively, well on her way to being drunk in the middle of the afternoon. Though she’d initially taken to the news of her heritage with fear, she’d turned that into a bitter kind of anger.
“I’m beginning to think it’s in the frakking ship,” Saul Tigh said with a laugh, trying to calm his wife down.
Tory stopped as requested, but a minute later began it again, slightly quieter than before.
“Why that song?” Sam mused aloud, slumped in the chair he occupied. “If we all know it, it’s got to be important, right?” No one responded.
“It’s just a song,” the former Deck Chief said, dejected and downtrodden.
Anders joined them all in silence and only because of it did he hear the sound of Kara’s voice increasing in volume as she entered the bar, Helo beside her.
“I’m going to kill him one day, Helo,” Kara said as they sat at the empty bar, waiting with some impatience for their drinks of choice. From across the room, Sam’s eyes followed her.
Helo smirked in doubt of her statement. “That’s what you say right now,” he began, “but you two were made for eachother.” Kara’s face contorted in distaste over his flowery choice of words. “You’d both annoy the frak out of anyone else you were with.” She shoved his arm and he nearly spilled the contents of his cup, laughing in response to her childish retaliation. “Besides, I’ve heard from your neighbors you keep half the hallway up at night.”
“Frak off, Karl,” she said with a deceptive smile and took a slow drink of her own beverage, a shock to even her that she’d chosen water over the alcohol stocked on board. “He’s just… always there. I almost wish he’d go back on duty or something.”
“Didn’t you want him to help you?” Helo questioned from beside her.
“I did,” she paused and corrected herself, “I do. But I feel like such a frak up because every day I’m disappointing him and everyone. I came back from Earth, I saw it, and now I have no clue about how to get back there. It’s in my hand, Helo, and I just can’t grab it. It’s bad enough that I’m letting down everyone else, but him?” She shook her head. “I’m wasting his time.”
“The guy doesn’t see it that way, Kara. I think Apollo’s just happy to be with you, even if you two aren’t as productive as you want to be. You know, when you were dead-gone, he used to come see Hera every time he was back on Galactica and they used to talk about you. I love Hera, but Gods, trying to talk to her sometimes drives me insane. She goes in circles. But he’d be there, listening to her go on and on about you, never making sense. He was just happy to have that, so imagine how grateful he is to actually get to be next to you again.” Karl finished his drink and pushed the empty cup away. When the bartender approached, he signaled to let the man know he wasn’t in need of a refill.
Kara considered his words with great thought. The idea of Lee sitting down to color or read or play with Hera warmed her in places she didn’t even know existed. Around her, the announcement of the shift change rang out and she saw Karl stand up from his stool.
“Maybe you guys should take a break. Sometimes you need fresh eyes. I’m splitting my time between CIC and being CAG, if you ever wanted to take over…” he trailed off, trying to tempt her.
“All that paperwork? Not a chance in hell, Agathon.” Truth be told, she missed the position. She was still a Major technically though she had no defined duties and being both CAG and Commander had given her routine and regularity in the past. While she still got up every day and worked through the day, it was at whatever pace she set for herself. The large goal was to find Earth, but there were no small steps in between that gave her a sense of a job well done. She was lost.
“Take the afternoon off. I’ll tell Apollo to do the same,” Helo said as his departing words.
At the bar by herself, Kara refrained from moving, contemplating a real drink and a dive back into her days as the woman with the liver of steel. She glanced over to the bartender, prepared to wave him down, when another body slid in beside her. Kara opened her mouth, ready to give another remark to Helo, but was surprised to see Sam there instead.
“Drinking in the middle of the day,” said Sam. “Feels like old times.”
She shared a smile with him, allowing herself to dream back to those first days when they’d both returned to the fleet after the rescue mission back to Caprica. Oh they’d drank away many of those early afternoons. “Water,” she admitted with a lift of her glass and the clear contents.
Anders nodded in understanding, though not surprised. The Kara he knew from Caprica was only left in her in casual glimpses from time to time. It was for the best though, he knew. Despite the problems she currently faced, she was a lot more whole than she’d been back then. “You busy?”
“Uh-uh,” she said. “Thinking of taking the afternoon off.” Though she wasn’t sold on it yet, maybe Karl was right. She turned on the seat of her stool, gazing back towards the direction he’d come from and the table of his companions. “Anyone remember anything yet?” What she really wanted to ask was how the Chief was doing and how Tigh was holding up, but she didn’t dare.
“No. Well, actually that’s why I came over.”
She knew where it was going before he even said it. “I can’t help you out.” Her words were clipped, already trying to close herself off and pull away from Sam and his inevitable request. Since she’d found out that their past and she were somehow connected, Kara had been dreading this confrontation.
“Do you think you could teach it to me?” asked Sam.
It felt like a betrayal in some ways to consider it. She had shared that song with Lee months ago and it had been theirs, as silly of a thought that was, but even she now had to admit that there was something bigger involving that tune. “You never said you played,” she spoke as she stood up and began to weave through the tables and chairs towards the piano.
“I don’t. You’ll have to really dumb it down for me.” Once she was seated at the bench, Sam sat beside her.
With great reluctance she finally let her fingers rise to the keys, discolored from both use and age. “Pretend the keys have numbers on them.” Her index finger lifted from the black key it hovered over, wiggling to attract his attention. “This is one.” It struck the C sharp key twice. “Two.” Her middle finger pressed down the D key. “Three.” The next white key to her right, an E note rang out. “Now you jump over to six.” Her hand shifted a few notes down until reaching A. As she had shown him with the first few notes, Kara finished the rest of the riff for him slowly, hoping to allow him to catch on. “One, one, two, three. Six, five, three. Six, five, three, two, one.”
“I’m lost,” Sam confessed, only able to bang out the first two different notes.
“You know, I used to be able to do this at three years old when my Dad taught it to me this way,” she teased him, fingers rolling quickly through the pattern. “I don’t know how you passed basic flight with worse hand eye coordination than a toddler, Sammy.”
He laughed as he withdrew his hands from the keys. “I think I was hoping playing it would answer something for me.”
“You and me both,” Kara said softly and stood up to leave. “I’ve got work to do.” It wasn’t the truth, but even less than she wanted to be stuck in a room with Apollo’s over eager can-do attitude was to be playing concert pianist with her ex-husband and the prying eyes of his newfound friends. “Don’t be a stranger.”
-
Later that night, Kara fell asleep beside Lee and dreamt of the day her father left.
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Through all seasons, though this takes place in an AU starting at the very end of season 2.
pairings: kara/lee, kara/sam
overall fic rating: R/NC-17
word count: 5,455
notes: See http://apodixis.livejournal.com/685.html for more information.
summary: If God isn't leading the fleet to Earth, can they ever find it?
Cottle held the stack of files before him as he looked over the familiar faces, most of which stood behind the metal bars of the jail cells on Galactica. He inhaled a breath from one of the cigarettes he’d still managed to procure, even years after they’d left all formal factories behind. “Well Baltar’s test still works,” he said gruffly, an eyebrow raised as he looked over to the scientist in his own cell, while the other five remained crammed into one. “I wish it didn’t,” he confessed. “But it’s a match for all of you. Not a hundred percent like it came out to on all the other cylons we’ve identified, but a definite match.” To him, he didn’t care what these people were either way. On New Caprica, he saved the lives of humans and cylons alike. To the people before him, though, it was different.
The four remaining members of the Final Five, as dictated by Samuel Anders, had been rounded up the night before under a few different ruses. The idea was that if they knew they were being accused of being a cylon, it could lead them to flee or perhaps even worse. They didn’t want any harm to befall the supposed cylons, nor for them to do any damage to anyone or anything else in their panic. The entire night, they’d sat there, sure it had all been a mistake, though Sam kept predictably mum on the topic, all of them knowing he was the one responsible for them ending up there.
As Cottle gave the results of the blood tests, however, the outrage had quieted down into absolute disbelief. Galen kept silent from where he sat in the corner of the cell, contemplating over just what it meant for himself, for his son, and especially for his wife. Cally had been the one responsible for Boomer’s death, he couldn’t imagine how she would react to such news, though he still didn’t want to believe it. He might not have wanted to see it for truth, but there was an eerie sense of calm and peace at hearing the news, like he knew all along and it was only obvious when someone told it to him. That was perhaps the most unsettling part of it.
Saul looked apologetically to Bill who stood outside the bars. It was as if he had made the choice at some time in his life to turn into a cylon and kept it a secret from that man. He owed the fact that he was alive to Bill Adama, though he supposed he would have just resurrected elsewhere had he not been serving on Galactica those years ago. No, he refused to think like a cylon. One of Baltar’s tests said he was one, but that didn’t mean anything else. He was Saul Tigh, Colonel in the Colonial Fleet, or at least he had been. He wasn’t exactly sure where he stood any longer. Beside him, Ellen tucked herself into her husband’s arms, tears welled up in her eyes.
Tory Foster was the closest to the bars of the cell, and therefore, the other occupants of the room, including Roslin. “I didn’t know,” she said to the President, trying to excuse herself. Like Galen, she felt an inner peace at the declaration of her true identity, like the final missing piece in her life had been fitted in and she was now complete.
“For your safety, we’re going to be keeping you here for now,” Bill started, though it was extremely hard to look at the caged people before him.
“Admiral,” the Chief looked up to him. “Cally-”
Despite how he felt about what Tyrol really was, he could not bring himself to deny the man anything regarding his wife. “She’ll be looked after Chief. We’ll have her brought in if you want to see her.”
Galen nodded, more thankful than he’d ever recently been.
Though there were many things to discuss with them, Adama and Roslin chose to leave the room with Cottle. Before anything else could be said, they would all need to come to terms with the recent revelations.
Alone, the silence persisted until Tory set her eyes on Sam. “You said you don’t remember anything, but how did you know who we were?” The attention of the others turned towards him as well, waiting for the answer.
He clammed up on the spot, a sick feeling settling into his stomach. “The Chief… I suspected him at the temple,” his eyes flickered over to Galen, head tilted down in a quiet apology. “But all of us, before Starbuck died, do you remember a night at Joe’s Bar when she was playing piano with Apollo?”
“That song…” Tory said, already beginning to hum it as if she’d heard it again only yesterday, though it had been months. Soon the rest of them joined in, fleshing out the notes in harmony together. All at once, they stopped, looks traded between them.
Though Sam had been sure of it all those months ago, hearing their voices echo back the tune of that song with him now confirmed it even more so. There was something to those notes, whether they outwardly understood it or not.
“So we’re cylons. And we have been the entire time,” the Chief said.
“What does it mean, though? Now that we know?” Tory asked, sitting down on the floor.
The question stumped them all, though it was Tigh that had the guts to speak up. “It means nothing. Three of us, we’re members of the Colonial Fleet. You’re the President’s aide. Why the frak should we let it change anything? Do you hate the cylons any less because you are one?”
“It means I’m something more than just-” the dark haired woman began.
“The frak it does,” Sam nearly shouted. “They still murdered billions of people back at the Twelve Colonies and thousands on New Caprica.”
“But we’re part of them, what if we made the decision?”
“I didn’t make that frakking decision,” said Sam, shaking his head to prove his point. “This is who I am. Samuel T. Anders, former pyramid player, Viper pilot in the Colonial Fleet. I didn’t make that decision to kill billions. You can do whatever you want, but I’m standing true to this.” Unlike the others, he’d had months to think about the fact that he believed himself to be a cylon, and now a few days since Roslin had agreed to some kind of peace between the humans and whatever he was.
For the immediate time following, the room stayed in silence, as they all individually began to consider their fate.
-
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Lee said from his side of Kara’s Viper, the metal shielding peeled off and leaving part of the ship’s insides exposed. After days of cutting her bird brutally apart, the search had so far yielded nothing. It became an exercise in futility for the two of them, frustration mounting as each day ticked by with nothing to show for it. “I don’t even know what’s missing to make room for the FTL.”
Kara listened, though preoccupied reading through the latest tests to come back regarding the fuel that remained in the tank of her Mark II. She would have killed to have the Chief beside her now, translating through some of the language she wasn’t so proficient with, despite her ability to fix up her Viper’s usual bumps and bruises.
“If it was cylon, we’d expect literal guts though… blood - right?” He asked her, though received no response. “Kara, are you even frakking listening to a word I’m saying?” Her continued silence brought him a few steps closer to her, tearing the papers from her hands.
She looked up, indignation read across her face. “What the frak, Apollo!” she shouted, reaching to pull the set of now grease stained printouts back from his hands.
“You’re not even paying attention. What if I’m missing something? You’re the one who said she went to Earth. I have no idea what I’m even looking for.”
Kara heard accusation in his tone, but she was sure most of it was her own guilt. Since she found him again back in that nebula, she’d made the promise to take the fleet to their new home. At the time, she’d felt sure and confident of it. She had been there, she had pictures. Surely it would be easy. As it turned out, it was nothing of the sort. The pictures, while showing a planet that at least seemed habitable and matched the constellations they saw in the tomb of Athena, did little else to provide any information on where they would need to go. The ship, so far, had been a dead end and with her complete lack of ability to even recall more than just a glimpse of the planet she believed to be Earth, they’d hit a complete wall.
“Just keep looking,” she insisted, pouring her eyes back over the numbers calculated on the eight sided sheets of paper.
Lee hovered over her, trying to read the information upside down. “What does that even say?”
“I think,” she started, tongue at the corner of her mouth in concentration. “What I think this says is that the fuel I brought back is more efficient.” Her brows pushed together, dipping her head in closer to the data as if that would make it clearer. “Burns hotter…or slower. Something it does different means you get more bang for your buck.” The science officer who had done the work would probably cringe at her crude manner of explaining the chemistry behind it. “I wonder if we can reverse engineer it, start refining our tyllium to make this instead.”
He felt something like a fool for getting angry with her over information that could potentially turn out to be important. While the fleet had enough tyllium for a few more years of coasting through space, any efforts at extending the life of what they had would still be welcomed information. The knowledge was useful, though he would argue not entirely on point to what he and Kara had been avoiding everything else to look for. They took breaks for meals on occasion and retired to their billet long after everyone had found sleep, taking the time to sleep in after years of missing out on that luxury. After they’d wake, the two would end up back on the hangar deck, bickering over both the little and big details of the changes in the ship she’d returned with. As a rule, they decided generally not to talk about where she would have gotten it from.
He moved away from her to return to where the FTL was located, undoing a few bolts and couplings until the heart of the jump drive pulled free. It was deceptively small, though he knew it needn’t be large for a ship of this size, but he suspected the non-Colonial technology also had something to do with its compact nature.
“You better hope you can put that back,” she said, startling him. Last he saw, she had been feet away, immersed in the fuel’s information.
“I wouldn’t count on it.” Lee set the device on a nearby table, returning to look now at the gaping hole from whence it came.
“Anything?” He questioned her, hoping that some sixth sense about it would come forward when they needed it most.
Kara solemnly shook her head, hands on her hips as she circled back around the Viper. “No.” It killed her to admit it.
“I don’t understand why the nav system was blank. I’d say malfunction, but everything else on this ship is in perfect condition. You’ve got an FTL, but no records of any jumps. It’s like someone was erasing everything right after you did it. You came out of nowhere, Kara. There wasn’t even anything around us, so you would have had to jump in.”
She sighed and climbed up the ladder until she was sitting inside the cockpit. “Yeah, unless I came off a basestar,” she said mostly to herself, but Lee, following her up the stairs, heard her.
“You didn’t.” His words were stern and Kara didn’t have the energy to challenge him. “Can you still start her up with the FTL out?”
Kara nodded to him and the Viper suddenly purred alive, the computer screens flickering on and illuminating the cockpit just barely. The trio of rings on the DRADIS screen bounced around, creating a sphere when moving together and indicating a lack of enemy ships nearby. She cycled through a few settings, the screen going from completely blank to populated with the readings of the friendly civilian ships. She set it back to the normal combat setting so it was once again blank and began the process of flipping switches a second time, this time in regards to a second screen. A needle jumped and for a second Kara’s heart leapt with it, at the prospect of what such an incoming signal could mean. It dissipated quickly enough though and Kara felt the extreme loss of hope.
“Interference,” Lee said, though it was an obvious answer.
She shut the Viper down and leaned back into her seat, eyes closing. “I don’t get it. I just don’t.”
He loudly sighed beside her, still kneeling somewhat on the stairs so he could look in to the small cockpit that was her own. “We’ve ripped this ship apart everyday now for weeks and we’re still getting nothing. Maybe the answers aren’t here.”
She violently smacked both her hands against the interior walls of her ship. “Then where the frak are they? Huh, Lee?” As the only available target other than herself, he was used to being her punching bag as of late. Kara usually gave her apologies later in the night without words.
“Don’t get mad at me, Kara. I volunteered for this and I’ll put this ship back together and take it apart again tomorrow if you think that’s what we need to do. But we’ve been neglecting the star charts and pictures you brought back. We saw those constellations in the tomb of Athena, there has to be something there we’re missing.” Lee climbed down the ladder with his words completed, heading back to pick the FTL drive off from where he’d placed it earlier. He returned to the side of the ship and pushed it back into place, refastening every wire and hose he’d taken off it earlier.
Kara descended back to the deck, her entire body tense. For awhile she felt on top of the world and now a deep sense of failure wound her up tight. She swore she could hear her mother in the back of her head, reminding her that she never tried enough, that she was special and squandering it. The up and down of her moods had long since tired her out, the back and forth of it getting old as all she longed for was some kind of stability. Those first few months on Galactica after the cylons attacked seemed like a dream to her. She had one job then, shooting down toasters. Now, she wasn’t even sure what she was doing. Hell, she hadn’t even flown in weeks and neither had Lee. They’d both abandoned their former jobs and given Helo the task of keeping together the air group.
“We’ll talk to Gaeta,” she declared to Lee as she handed him the piece of metal plating missing from the space of her plane he currently worked on. If only she could remember anything at all, she knew their problems would be solved. But try as she might, when she attempted to think back to those months she was missing, nothing ever came. The answer was there, she was sure of it. She just had to remember it.
-
Elsewhere, on Galactica, Doc Cottle made an emergency visit to the brig housing the cylons known as D’Anna and Leoben. Though both had been beyond delighted to hear the news of the Final Five, finally putting names to faces, the female cylon had quickly fallen ill, her condition deteriorating rapidly over the prior days. Leoben’s health seemed to be following soon behind, though he faired better than his sister.
In sickbay, the reason for their illness was identified as Lymphocytic Encephalitis, and while some had begun to panic, Cottle reassured them that humans had grown immune to the virus some thousands of years ago. Their cylon counterparts, on the other hand, lacked the necessary antibodies to begin fighting off the infection. Under Admiral’s orders, Cottle administered the serum created that would keep them alive with periodic injections while some of his staff began to look for the origination of the virus, starting with all those who had come in contact with the cylons and the very few places either of them had recently been.
-
“We were recently able to identify the five remaining cylon models that were unknown to us.” Roslin paused, trying to keep her voice steady as she read into the microphone. “These five cylons were found in our fleet.” She could imagine the outcry and horror felt through each civilian listening in to her broadcast. Though she hadn’t wanted to go through with such a thing, the rumors had spread like wildfire and forced her hand. “I want to assure everyone that they have not been in contact with the enemy cylon forces and they have each denounced their ties to the cylons.”
It wouldn’t be a popular decision, the wounds from New Caprica still fresh despite how much time had been put between their rescue and this revelation. Even Galactica’s crew had been on edge lately, or so Bill had told her, especially considering how close some of the crew were to those that had been given up for their true nature. “The welfare of our people is and has always been my utmost concern. If there was any question regarding these five people,” her words had been written wisely, hoping to humanize them as much as she could. “…Admiral Adama and I would not be standing in defense of them.”
“They are your people, your fellow citizens and Colonists, and as such have only ever longed to help bring us to safety. All of them were key players in our rescue from New Caprica, some even enduring torture at the hands of the other cylon models in order to protect us. Their sacrifices will not be ignored or forgotten. Their continued loyalties,” she paused again, sipping water to bolster herself with added strength and confidence. “…Are why I am granting them amnesty here.” She’d done a fair job of not looking out to the faces of the fleet’s remaining reporters in front of her, but the grumbling among them told her they weren’t pleased.
“Should any harm befall them or their loved ones, I will pursue anyone involved to the full extent of the law. I would like to remind everyone that prejudicial behavior is not tolerated here, just as it was not tolerated in the Colonies. The genocide that happened to our people is a horror we will never allow ourselves or future generations to forget, but without question, these five people were not involved in the decisions that led to what happened there and had been removed from the cylon forces for years.” Though there was no exact proof of it, she forced the white lie based on her gut feeling. For the good of the human race, she told herself.
“We need to remember that we cannot give in and allow what remains of our humanity to be stripped away from ourselves out of fear.” Laura thought back to the brutal torturing she’d allowed Kara Thrace to due to the very Leoben model that they’d been keeping captive for months now. She didn’t regret it, but part of herself had been lost that day. With her planned speech finished, she lifted her head to the reporters awaiting her. “No questions.”
-
The general mood on Galactica made the ship and its crew only a ghost of what the battlestar had once been. Though things had been somewhat somber after New Caprica, there had at least been a strong sense of camaraderie, even with the mixing of Pegasus and Galactica’s crews together. They were all in the same boat, all remaining members of the Colonial Fleet. They’d not been that way when Cain and her immediate successors were still in command, but things had begun a steady change under Commander Thrace. Now, however, friends and fellow officers found themselves torn apart again over those who agreed and disagreed with the decision regarding the cylons known as the Final Five.
None of the five had returned to actual work yet, if they ever would, but remained on Galactica despite the tension. If there was a safest place in the fleet for them to be, it would be under the watchful eye of the Admiral, who though still felt betrayed, also had a bond to each and every one of them to some degree. On the civilian ships, they all knew they’d be absolutely torn apart alive. Roslin had made her stance on their treatment well defined numerous times, but that meant nothing in the reality of the situation. Any of them could have stepped onto another ship and found themselves murdered, no witnesses coming forth to turn their fellow person in for the crimes committed. It would go unpunished, that much they all knew.
Without duties to fulfill and most of their friendships on the rocks, the five outed as cylons were left mostly to befriend one another in an attempt to not completely lose their minds from the isolation they felt. That, and drink. The usual bartender at Joe’s Bar was still friendly, or at least faking it well, and the alcohol eased the pain of the passing time of day. All five sat together at one of the tables towards the back of the room, keeping a low profile even in the mostly empty facilities. They shared a bottle between them, each of their cups at various states of fullness.
It had been nearly two weeks since they’d been put into that cell, and over a week since Roslin’s official address to the entire fleet, when everyone’s fears had been confirmed out loud. The time hadn’t been easy on any of them, least of all Galen Tyrol, who had seen neither his wife nor his child since even before his blood had been processed. He feared the worst for them, though received reassurances from those he talk to that they were in good hands. He knew Cally more than anyone else on that ship, and though their lives hadn’t been perfect, Tyrol desperately wanted her to survive through all of it. Sometimes, especially more so lately now that he knew the truth about himself, his thoughts strayed to Boomer and perhaps the life they could have had together. He wondered often if somehow she knew who he was all along, but couldn’t understand it. But Boomer wasn’t here any longer and as much as he had loved her, the crime she committed against the Admiral and the things she’d at least been aware of happening on New Caprica would be too much for him to ever stomach. He was a married man now with a son, a son that was half cylon and half human, a miracle in his own right. On that note, he finished his glass.
Tory stared at her own cup, still as full as it had ever been. Her finger traced along the rim of it idly, lost in deep thought. Under her breath, she hummed the tune that had been stuck in her head since the day they’d revisited the memory all together in their common jail cell. She’d been determined to immerse herself in it as much as possible and solve the mystery of it. So far, she had no luck.
“Can you stop humming that Gods damned song already,” Ellen spoke aggressively, well on her way to being drunk in the middle of the afternoon. Though she’d initially taken to the news of her heritage with fear, she’d turned that into a bitter kind of anger.
“I’m beginning to think it’s in the frakking ship,” Saul Tigh said with a laugh, trying to calm his wife down.
Tory stopped as requested, but a minute later began it again, slightly quieter than before.
“Why that song?” Sam mused aloud, slumped in the chair he occupied. “If we all know it, it’s got to be important, right?” No one responded.
“It’s just a song,” the former Deck Chief said, dejected and downtrodden.
Anders joined them all in silence and only because of it did he hear the sound of Kara’s voice increasing in volume as she entered the bar, Helo beside her.
“I’m going to kill him one day, Helo,” Kara said as they sat at the empty bar, waiting with some impatience for their drinks of choice. From across the room, Sam’s eyes followed her.
Helo smirked in doubt of her statement. “That’s what you say right now,” he began, “but you two were made for eachother.” Kara’s face contorted in distaste over his flowery choice of words. “You’d both annoy the frak out of anyone else you were with.” She shoved his arm and he nearly spilled the contents of his cup, laughing in response to her childish retaliation. “Besides, I’ve heard from your neighbors you keep half the hallway up at night.”
“Frak off, Karl,” she said with a deceptive smile and took a slow drink of her own beverage, a shock to even her that she’d chosen water over the alcohol stocked on board. “He’s just… always there. I almost wish he’d go back on duty or something.”
“Didn’t you want him to help you?” Helo questioned from beside her.
“I did,” she paused and corrected herself, “I do. But I feel like such a frak up because every day I’m disappointing him and everyone. I came back from Earth, I saw it, and now I have no clue about how to get back there. It’s in my hand, Helo, and I just can’t grab it. It’s bad enough that I’m letting down everyone else, but him?” She shook her head. “I’m wasting his time.”
“The guy doesn’t see it that way, Kara. I think Apollo’s just happy to be with you, even if you two aren’t as productive as you want to be. You know, when you were dead-gone, he used to come see Hera every time he was back on Galactica and they used to talk about you. I love Hera, but Gods, trying to talk to her sometimes drives me insane. She goes in circles. But he’d be there, listening to her go on and on about you, never making sense. He was just happy to have that, so imagine how grateful he is to actually get to be next to you again.” Karl finished his drink and pushed the empty cup away. When the bartender approached, he signaled to let the man know he wasn’t in need of a refill.
Kara considered his words with great thought. The idea of Lee sitting down to color or read or play with Hera warmed her in places she didn’t even know existed. Around her, the announcement of the shift change rang out and she saw Karl stand up from his stool.
“Maybe you guys should take a break. Sometimes you need fresh eyes. I’m splitting my time between CIC and being CAG, if you ever wanted to take over…” he trailed off, trying to tempt her.
“All that paperwork? Not a chance in hell, Agathon.” Truth be told, she missed the position. She was still a Major technically though she had no defined duties and being both CAG and Commander had given her routine and regularity in the past. While she still got up every day and worked through the day, it was at whatever pace she set for herself. The large goal was to find Earth, but there were no small steps in between that gave her a sense of a job well done. She was lost.
“Take the afternoon off. I’ll tell Apollo to do the same,” Helo said as his departing words.
At the bar by herself, Kara refrained from moving, contemplating a real drink and a dive back into her days as the woman with the liver of steel. She glanced over to the bartender, prepared to wave him down, when another body slid in beside her. Kara opened her mouth, ready to give another remark to Helo, but was surprised to see Sam there instead.
“Drinking in the middle of the day,” said Sam. “Feels like old times.”
She shared a smile with him, allowing herself to dream back to those first days when they’d both returned to the fleet after the rescue mission back to Caprica. Oh they’d drank away many of those early afternoons. “Water,” she admitted with a lift of her glass and the clear contents.
Anders nodded in understanding, though not surprised. The Kara he knew from Caprica was only left in her in casual glimpses from time to time. It was for the best though, he knew. Despite the problems she currently faced, she was a lot more whole than she’d been back then. “You busy?”
“Uh-uh,” she said. “Thinking of taking the afternoon off.” Though she wasn’t sold on it yet, maybe Karl was right. She turned on the seat of her stool, gazing back towards the direction he’d come from and the table of his companions. “Anyone remember anything yet?” What she really wanted to ask was how the Chief was doing and how Tigh was holding up, but she didn’t dare.
“No. Well, actually that’s why I came over.”
She knew where it was going before he even said it. “I can’t help you out.” Her words were clipped, already trying to close herself off and pull away from Sam and his inevitable request. Since she’d found out that their past and she were somehow connected, Kara had been dreading this confrontation.
“Do you think you could teach it to me?” asked Sam.
It felt like a betrayal in some ways to consider it. She had shared that song with Lee months ago and it had been theirs, as silly of a thought that was, but even she now had to admit that there was something bigger involving that tune. “You never said you played,” she spoke as she stood up and began to weave through the tables and chairs towards the piano.
“I don’t. You’ll have to really dumb it down for me.” Once she was seated at the bench, Sam sat beside her.
With great reluctance she finally let her fingers rise to the keys, discolored from both use and age. “Pretend the keys have numbers on them.” Her index finger lifted from the black key it hovered over, wiggling to attract his attention. “This is one.” It struck the C sharp key twice. “Two.” Her middle finger pressed down the D key. “Three.” The next white key to her right, an E note rang out. “Now you jump over to six.” Her hand shifted a few notes down until reaching A. As she had shown him with the first few notes, Kara finished the rest of the riff for him slowly, hoping to allow him to catch on. “One, one, two, three. Six, five, three. Six, five, three, two, one.”
“I’m lost,” Sam confessed, only able to bang out the first two different notes.
“You know, I used to be able to do this at three years old when my Dad taught it to me this way,” she teased him, fingers rolling quickly through the pattern. “I don’t know how you passed basic flight with worse hand eye coordination than a toddler, Sammy.”
He laughed as he withdrew his hands from the keys. “I think I was hoping playing it would answer something for me.”
“You and me both,” Kara said softly and stood up to leave. “I’ve got work to do.” It wasn’t the truth, but even less than she wanted to be stuck in a room with Apollo’s over eager can-do attitude was to be playing concert pianist with her ex-husband and the prying eyes of his newfound friends. “Don’t be a stranger.”
-
Later that night, Kara fell asleep beside Lee and dreamt of the day her father left.