Fic: "more than much more is or" (Battlestar Galactica)
Title: more than much more is or
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: R-ish
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Billy, Leoben, cylons
Pairings: Billy/Leoben
Genre: dark
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: about 1900
Status: one-shot, finished
Author's Note: (some housekeeping. I wrote this and forgot to make it public.) written for pumahmistress, because I love her. two sonnets are used that are not mine. the first is by ee cummings, and the second is by shakespeare. (title is a fragmented bit from the same ee cummings sonnet, too) and betaed by the super fantastic woolly_socks
Summary: Instead of being dead, like he had expected, Billy Keikeya found himself awake on a Basestar.
-
Billy destroyed 4 different bodies before he began to eat. He let them wither from starvation, skin pulled too tight and a gnawing ache in his stomach. The pain was not enough, he knew, did not match the burn of his bullet wounds.
He was held in a white room, plain white, but with red lights around the edges. And there was a bed, which he did not use. There was nothing in his room that he could use to harm himself.
And each day, five minutes after the lights had dimmed, Leoben came into his room with a tray full of food. For days, Billy would not eat the food, nor drink the water, nor do anything but sleep.
After killing his third body, the Leoben had sighed disappointedly, "What are you hoping to accomplish with this?" (The first words he'd spoken.)
"Maybe," Billy sighed, "When I wake up one day, I will be dead. Or, at least, not a cylon."
-
Billy thought of Colonial One often, probably too often. He wanted to go back. He wanted to go home.
The Basestar was supposed to be his home, but it wasn't.
And he wasn't likely to run out of bodies any time soon. Billy looked at the Leoben that was meditating in his room, probably the same Leoben that had been his only visitor since he had been locked inside. Billy continued to stare at his favorite wall, "Why are you in my room?"
"You need supervision," said the Leoben, too evenly.
"That wasn't my question," Billy said, matching the monotone.
The Leoben laughed.
-
Billy learned projection quickly, deftly, and he used it like President Roslin used her charm. (poisonously, efficiently.) It was like second nature, except easier than that. Like getting onto a bike with all the knowledge he needed beforehand.
Like sewing with a needle that made its thread.
First, he projected home on Colonial One, how it looked in the hour after the dimmers turned on, staff out of the main cabin but still working. President Roslin, curled up in a chair with a blanket and a pile of papers. She'd kick off her shoes, sometimes hum. And the whirring of the ship beneath them, Galactica outside the port windows, and the light over the conference table that would not stop flickering.
Second, he projected Kobol, the full leafy greenery and the endless rain. Rain, cold under his collar, and the blisters inside of his boots. Green, so bright that it was invaded his closed eyes, and the brightness of the real sun. Then, the stench of the land mines, full of pieces of charred flesh, and blood running thick down the side of the mountain, exaggerating a little. Ammunition shells buried under old rocks, and the crunch of an old pistol underfoot, filling in the small memory gaps. And the screams of the mutilated, wind howling and carrying them everywhere, rain pounding. And the wailing.
A Leoben looked over to him, shocked.
That was better.
-
The Cavils wanted to kill him, box him, strangle Billy until he ran out of bodies. The Cavils were not alone, but only the vocal model. Billy projected Kobol to them, violently. And never the part where he met up with the President, or the inside of the tomb. He especially enjoyed showing the maimed carcass of the priestess they'd found.
The D'annas, (and he hated that arrogant, egotistical model) were of the mindset that Billy's entire memory bank should be pillaged for information. Whenever Billy passed one in the halls, he projected the endless cycle of FTL jumps. The pounding, dreadful certainty that the cylons would kill them, the grit in his eyes and the bile struck in his throat. Five days worth of missed sleep, and the death toll, and the look on President Roslin's face when they took another population hit. Dee's voice, panicked and tinny through the comm system, and the prayer meetings all around the ship. The wall of remembrance. The weariness so deep that the numbers bled together and knees buckled and ached, and the way his heart rate just could not slow.
The Dorals were the angriest, yet fought violently for Billy to keep his independance, and he did not know why.
Billy was practically waiting for his live autopsy.
The Leobens were the kindest.
-
"God loves you," the Leoben whispered, too close to Billy's ear. "God loves you," his voice was certain.
When President Roslin was dying, it was like watching the color bleed out of over-dyed laundry, except that it was her skin. Every day, her footsteps were weaker, and her coughs were deeper, and it took longer to calm her. Her hair became almost unmanageable, and to touch her head would leave her gasping in pain. She sat upright, when she could, with a stack full of papers, swaddled in every blanket they could find. She couldn't control the shaking in her hands.
"God loves her too," Leoben murmured.
"The Gods bless President Roslin," Billy asserted. (President Roslin deserved more than one deity.)
"God gives the strength to weather all trials, even those of agnosticism," Leoben said. "Your effort will not move me farther from God."
"But they will hurt you," Billy smiled, "And for now, that's enough."
(And he hadn't gotten around to Starbuck yet.)
-
The hybrid was babbling and half-awake, and Billy wished that she had a name, so that he might use it to comfort her.
Her eyes were dilated with panic, and she was twisting violently in her tank.
"immeasurable happenless unnow shuts more than open could that every tree or than all life more death begins to grow," she said. "end's ending then these dolls of joy and grief these recent memories of future dream".
And Billy realized, probably too late, that she was speaking in sonnet form. "these perhaps who have lost their shadows if which did not do the losing spectres mime until out of merely not nothing comes only one snowflake(and we speak our names" She took a gasping, shuddering breath. "end of line."
He hadn't heard the beginning. And then she began to speak of the heating ducts on the fifteenth level.
Billy found himself, for a few short moments, regretting that there was no Leoben around to record her speech. (But that was ridiculous.)
-
Cylons could dream, because Billy dreamed.
He dreamed that he was walking out of the birthing room, alone, again. Dressed only in his white robe, dripping with the stifling little bits of goo. And every cylon he saw in the hallway bowed down to him, knees touching the floor and hands clasped in prayer to God. They did not recognize him.
And he was carrying the dead body that used to belong to President Roslin.
There was a metaphor in this.
-
Walking past a flock of somber Boomers, Billy was projecting Commander Adama's comatose body laying prone in the sickbay, overhead lights flickering, his broad chest covered in blood and tubes.
But a Leoben interrupted him. It was easy to find his Leoben, as the crowds parted for him. He was the Leoben that had been in the Fleet, under Starbuck. The first use of President Roslin's airlock. He had an unsettling gait.
"Billy," he said, entirely too calmly, "Please join us in prayer or leave us to pray."
So Billy nodded, and projected his long run through Galactica's halls during the President's imprisonment. The darkness, the echoes of gunshots, the whirring bits of the Centurians, Dee. Dee, limping and shivering and so scared. And the bullets, endlessly echoing.
A Simon glared at him from across the hall, unexpectedly ballsy. "God gives the strength to weather all trials," Billy chirped. And the two marines beside him were silently crying.
-
Leoben pushed him against the wall, hard, "Why won't you accept God's love?"
"God cannot love me," Billy said.
"God loves all things," Leoben replied.
"If God loved me," Billy chuckled, "I would be dead."
Leoben looked downward, maybe trying to hide a smug little smile. "Love is pain," he chided.
So Billy twisted, pushed Leoben against the wall roughly, by the shoulders. Leoben wasn't expecting the kiss, violent and bruising and with too much teeth. Love is pain, indeed.
-
Billy spent two full days by the side of the hybrid. Leoben said that she was calmer when he was near, and he didn't have anything else in particular to do. Still hadn't gotten over the boredom, and the loss of the ever-building mountain of paperwork.
She spent 37 straight minutes talking about the repairwork that needed to be done on the fifteenth level, and she said it backwards.
Perhaps she wasn't mad, just frightfully bored.
"When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;" she sighed, "When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls, all silver'd o'er with white;"
Billy recognized the poem, old and famous, from back in school on Caprica. Her cadence was wrong. "When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;" Her voice contorted with regret. "FTL diagnostic check, fifty-seven percent complete, cross-check level nine."
Her eyes looked tired, so Billy grasped one cool hand in his. He pulled her gaze to his, began to whisper, "Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake, And die as fast as they see others grow;"
A smile broke upon her face, more joyful than anything he'd seen. She said, "And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence" Her eyes were full of clarity, slowly trailing off, slowly burning out.
Billy finished, "Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence." He wasn't crying, even if he wanted to.
-
Leoben pulled him to the bed, using too much force. Maybe Billy's wrists were breaking, or his shoulders were fracturing at least.
Or, he didn't care and Leoben's tongue was in his mouth, doing something too skillfully and where had his pants gone? Something with how his hands were gripping Billy's ass, and squeezing, and then there were clothes being ripped and fingernails drawing blood.
And they were rubbing up against each other, unable to slow down. And he had better not think about stopping, God.
(It had just been so long since Billy had been touched.)
-
Billy lay in bed, afterwards, unsure of what to do.
Leoben was praying.
"Stop," Billy said, not fretting.
Leoben turned to face him, bare-chested and covered in bruises. "God is love, Billy," he consoled.
"God is pain," he replied, burying his face in Leoben's shoulder.
And Billy wanted to go home, but he wasn't sure where it was. "Project me the airlock," he pleaded.
That was better.
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: R-ish
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Billy, Leoben, cylons
Pairings: Billy/Leoben
Genre: dark
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: about 1900
Status: one-shot, finished
Author's Note: (some housekeeping. I wrote this and forgot to make it public.) written for pumahmistress, because I love her. two sonnets are used that are not mine. the first is by ee cummings, and the second is by shakespeare. (title is a fragmented bit from the same ee cummings sonnet, too) and betaed by the super fantastic woolly_socks
Summary: Instead of being dead, like he had expected, Billy Keikeya found himself awake on a Basestar.
-
Billy destroyed 4 different bodies before he began to eat. He let them wither from starvation, skin pulled too tight and a gnawing ache in his stomach. The pain was not enough, he knew, did not match the burn of his bullet wounds.
He was held in a white room, plain white, but with red lights around the edges. And there was a bed, which he did not use. There was nothing in his room that he could use to harm himself.
And each day, five minutes after the lights had dimmed, Leoben came into his room with a tray full of food. For days, Billy would not eat the food, nor drink the water, nor do anything but sleep.
After killing his third body, the Leoben had sighed disappointedly, "What are you hoping to accomplish with this?" (The first words he'd spoken.)
"Maybe," Billy sighed, "When I wake up one day, I will be dead. Or, at least, not a cylon."
-
Billy thought of Colonial One often, probably too often. He wanted to go back. He wanted to go home.
The Basestar was supposed to be his home, but it wasn't.
And he wasn't likely to run out of bodies any time soon. Billy looked at the Leoben that was meditating in his room, probably the same Leoben that had been his only visitor since he had been locked inside. Billy continued to stare at his favorite wall, "Why are you in my room?"
"You need supervision," said the Leoben, too evenly.
"That wasn't my question," Billy said, matching the monotone.
The Leoben laughed.
-
Billy learned projection quickly, deftly, and he used it like President Roslin used her charm. (poisonously, efficiently.) It was like second nature, except easier than that. Like getting onto a bike with all the knowledge he needed beforehand.
Like sewing with a needle that made its thread.
First, he projected home on Colonial One, how it looked in the hour after the dimmers turned on, staff out of the main cabin but still working. President Roslin, curled up in a chair with a blanket and a pile of papers. She'd kick off her shoes, sometimes hum. And the whirring of the ship beneath them, Galactica outside the port windows, and the light over the conference table that would not stop flickering.
Second, he projected Kobol, the full leafy greenery and the endless rain. Rain, cold under his collar, and the blisters inside of his boots. Green, so bright that it was invaded his closed eyes, and the brightness of the real sun. Then, the stench of the land mines, full of pieces of charred flesh, and blood running thick down the side of the mountain, exaggerating a little. Ammunition shells buried under old rocks, and the crunch of an old pistol underfoot, filling in the small memory gaps. And the screams of the mutilated, wind howling and carrying them everywhere, rain pounding. And the wailing.
A Leoben looked over to him, shocked.
That was better.
-
The Cavils wanted to kill him, box him, strangle Billy until he ran out of bodies. The Cavils were not alone, but only the vocal model. Billy projected Kobol to them, violently. And never the part where he met up with the President, or the inside of the tomb. He especially enjoyed showing the maimed carcass of the priestess they'd found.
The D'annas, (and he hated that arrogant, egotistical model) were of the mindset that Billy's entire memory bank should be pillaged for information. Whenever Billy passed one in the halls, he projected the endless cycle of FTL jumps. The pounding, dreadful certainty that the cylons would kill them, the grit in his eyes and the bile struck in his throat. Five days worth of missed sleep, and the death toll, and the look on President Roslin's face when they took another population hit. Dee's voice, panicked and tinny through the comm system, and the prayer meetings all around the ship. The wall of remembrance. The weariness so deep that the numbers bled together and knees buckled and ached, and the way his heart rate just could not slow.
The Dorals were the angriest, yet fought violently for Billy to keep his independance, and he did not know why.
Billy was practically waiting for his live autopsy.
The Leobens were the kindest.
-
"God loves you," the Leoben whispered, too close to Billy's ear. "God loves you," his voice was certain.
When President Roslin was dying, it was like watching the color bleed out of over-dyed laundry, except that it was her skin. Every day, her footsteps were weaker, and her coughs were deeper, and it took longer to calm her. Her hair became almost unmanageable, and to touch her head would leave her gasping in pain. She sat upright, when she could, with a stack full of papers, swaddled in every blanket they could find. She couldn't control the shaking in her hands.
"God loves her too," Leoben murmured.
"The Gods bless President Roslin," Billy asserted. (President Roslin deserved more than one deity.)
"God gives the strength to weather all trials, even those of agnosticism," Leoben said. "Your effort will not move me farther from God."
"But they will hurt you," Billy smiled, "And for now, that's enough."
(And he hadn't gotten around to Starbuck yet.)
-
The hybrid was babbling and half-awake, and Billy wished that she had a name, so that he might use it to comfort her.
Her eyes were dilated with panic, and she was twisting violently in her tank.
"immeasurable happenless unnow shuts more than open could that every tree or than all life more death begins to grow," she said. "end's ending then these dolls of joy and grief these recent memories of future dream".
And Billy realized, probably too late, that she was speaking in sonnet form. "these perhaps who have lost their shadows if which did not do the losing spectres mime until out of merely not nothing comes only one snowflake(and we speak our names" She took a gasping, shuddering breath. "end of line."
He hadn't heard the beginning. And then she began to speak of the heating ducts on the fifteenth level.
Billy found himself, for a few short moments, regretting that there was no Leoben around to record her speech. (But that was ridiculous.)
-
Cylons could dream, because Billy dreamed.
He dreamed that he was walking out of the birthing room, alone, again. Dressed only in his white robe, dripping with the stifling little bits of goo. And every cylon he saw in the hallway bowed down to him, knees touching the floor and hands clasped in prayer to God. They did not recognize him.
And he was carrying the dead body that used to belong to President Roslin.
There was a metaphor in this.
-
Walking past a flock of somber Boomers, Billy was projecting Commander Adama's comatose body laying prone in the sickbay, overhead lights flickering, his broad chest covered in blood and tubes.
But a Leoben interrupted him. It was easy to find his Leoben, as the crowds parted for him. He was the Leoben that had been in the Fleet, under Starbuck. The first use of President Roslin's airlock. He had an unsettling gait.
"Billy," he said, entirely too calmly, "Please join us in prayer or leave us to pray."
So Billy nodded, and projected his long run through Galactica's halls during the President's imprisonment. The darkness, the echoes of gunshots, the whirring bits of the Centurians, Dee. Dee, limping and shivering and so scared. And the bullets, endlessly echoing.
A Simon glared at him from across the hall, unexpectedly ballsy. "God gives the strength to weather all trials," Billy chirped. And the two marines beside him were silently crying.
-
Leoben pushed him against the wall, hard, "Why won't you accept God's love?"
"God cannot love me," Billy said.
"God loves all things," Leoben replied.
"If God loved me," Billy chuckled, "I would be dead."
Leoben looked downward, maybe trying to hide a smug little smile. "Love is pain," he chided.
So Billy twisted, pushed Leoben against the wall roughly, by the shoulders. Leoben wasn't expecting the kiss, violent and bruising and with too much teeth. Love is pain, indeed.
-
Billy spent two full days by the side of the hybrid. Leoben said that she was calmer when he was near, and he didn't have anything else in particular to do. Still hadn't gotten over the boredom, and the loss of the ever-building mountain of paperwork.
She spent 37 straight minutes talking about the repairwork that needed to be done on the fifteenth level, and she said it backwards.
Perhaps she wasn't mad, just frightfully bored.
"When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;" she sighed, "When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls, all silver'd o'er with white;"
Billy recognized the poem, old and famous, from back in school on Caprica. Her cadence was wrong. "When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;" Her voice contorted with regret. "FTL diagnostic check, fifty-seven percent complete, cross-check level nine."
Her eyes looked tired, so Billy grasped one cool hand in his. He pulled her gaze to his, began to whisper, "Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake, And die as fast as they see others grow;"
A smile broke upon her face, more joyful than anything he'd seen. She said, "And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence" Her eyes were full of clarity, slowly trailing off, slowly burning out.
Billy finished, "Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence." He wasn't crying, even if he wanted to.
-
Leoben pulled him to the bed, using too much force. Maybe Billy's wrists were breaking, or his shoulders were fracturing at least.
Or, he didn't care and Leoben's tongue was in his mouth, doing something too skillfully and where had his pants gone? Something with how his hands were gripping Billy's ass, and squeezing, and then there were clothes being ripped and fingernails drawing blood.
And they were rubbing up against each other, unable to slow down. And he had better not think about stopping, God.
(It had just been so long since Billy had been touched.)
-
Billy lay in bed, afterwards, unsure of what to do.
Leoben was praying.
"Stop," Billy said, not fretting.
Leoben turned to face him, bare-chested and covered in bruises. "God is love, Billy," he consoled.
"God is pain," he replied, burying his face in Leoben's shoulder.
And Billy wanted to go home, but he wasn't sure where it was. "Project me the airlock," he pleaded.
That was better.