Epitaph by Paris
Challenge: Mistakes (#2)
Rating: 15+
Character(s)/Pairing: Helo. Boomer. Starbuck.
Warnings/Advisories: Implied character death. Angst.
Spoilers: All of S1, Post KLG Pt. 2.
Summary: The story of his life: a series of little mistakes that added up to tragedy.
timeframe: Helo and Starbuck make it back to Galactica, after the season finale.
A/N: My first BSG fanfic. What a rush. ;) Feedback is love, but so is Constructive Crit. Feel free to dish out either, as suggestions for improvement are lusted after and longed for.
And we shall be changed.
She looked up at him with dull, dead eyes: dark, empty, a mirror of the abyss.
“Is this the one? The copy that was with you on Caprica?”
He was chained, shackled; they still used those on Galactica-the old, metal ones that chafed the skin to blood and bone. Five guards stood behind him (in his mind: you’re a dangerous criminal), and he couldn’t see their faces, but he knew their expressions: impassive, uncaring, his situation an uncommon event in an uncommon time.
“Is she?”
She had a bandage on her cheek, white and fresh and crisp. An accident, they’d told him-left the safety off, her mistake. Suicide, he knew, planned by her but without the will to go through with it. Boomer, he thought, had always lacked that driving spark of following through.
“Is she or is she not?”
Machines. Automatons. Things that looked human and felt human, but weren’t. Fake, replicated skin covering metal insides.
“Frakkin’ speak.”
Words said without heat. His head snapped back from a fist; blood poured out of his nose, freefalling to skin. When he looked, up, she was still staring at him. Her hands fidgeted on the coverlet of the bed, restricted in their movement with chains, like his own.
Her movements were Boomer. And her eyes looked real. The things inside, viscous gel forming brown irises. Expressions, flickers of concern that hid in the shadows. Everything about her looked like the Boomer he’d always known and, at the same time, everything about her looked foreign, a song without words. Without notes.
“Yes.” At last. His voice sounded rough, out of practice. “Yeah. That’s the model.”
Model, not human or girl. Not a part of his world.
Either of them. They were separate in his mind: the one on Caprica and the one lying in front of him here, chained to her bed in the sickbay. It was easier now, he supposed; one was dead, after all. The Caprica model, he guessed, if this one was Boomer.
And it’d been quick. One half-second of holding Starbuck against a wall and, then, out of control, gone. One shot. One trigger, one gun, one moment. In the end, he hadn’t been able to stop Starbuck.
“You’re a real killer,” he remembered telling her, watching the body fall. Inane words that meant nothing save to fill the void of aftermath. Blood, Sharon’s, suspended in the air; motionless fingers (once clever, when intimate), splayed everywhere.
“You can’t kill something that was never alive.” She’d licked the blood from her lips and started laughing; in his face, laughing and laughing until everything about her was hoarse, shattered.
Underneath it all, he’d heard the doubt in her voice, the sly undertones that rang with cries of murder! Murder!
He hadn’t been able to stop her then, either, that awful laughing. The story of his life: a series of little mistakes that added up to tragedy.
He hadn’t spoken to Starbuck since that day. They’d escaped in silence; had ridden home in silence; had spent an hour chained together in the brig in silence. The only thing she’d said to him, as they led her away, her eyes desperate over her shoulder and arms resisting the hold of the guards: She would have frakked us over, Helo. Eventually. She was one of them, in the end.
How could you know? Words of denial. Trapped between them, pinned under glass.
But, no. She was one of them, in the end. Circuitry and programming; mind conditioning and influencing…were any of them free of the subtle programming inside of them, either mechanical or chemical?
Excuses, excuses. Rationalized all to your liking.
He stared back at the girl lying on the bed and felt nothing. Perfect oblivion. No love, no hate, though it had to be in there-he’d felt it before, he’d feel it again. And he hoped for the hate. Love was pain and an old line of poetry leaped into his head, for love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” Then, louder: “Yes.”
He saw the man beside Boomer’s bed, dressed in a black uniform and eyes blank as empty windows, tighten a length of rope between his fingers. Stretched, stretched, and pulled tight.
He knew what it was for; Boomer, still the rook, wouldn’t.
When he saw the man advance, he thought of calling out a warning.
He didn’t.
They pushed him away, led him back to the brig. Back to white walls and unseeing guards and an endless, gray forever in which to analyze his mistakes. Silence left little room to hide; this was his only future.
He didn’t know if this was mourning or sadness or something else. And then, for what? Illusions? The small space of time where he’d believed in what she’d told him, in her version of the truth?
He heard her voice (scratchy, sick), as he went: “Was that…that wasn’t…Helo?”
If this was hell, he was in it. No future, no past, no water to wash away the blood borne of lies and mislaid trust and Cylons.
One mistake. Her mouth poised over his for a kiss, eyes like hymns of worship in the dark. Fingers creeping under his flight suit, taking him by surprise.
A scream, from the sickbay. Coated with fear.
“HELO?”
Blood and bone, Helo thought. Love and war.
Everything had its price.
Rating: 15+
Character(s)/Pairing: Helo. Boomer. Starbuck.
Warnings/Advisories: Implied character death. Angst.
Spoilers: All of S1, Post KLG Pt. 2.
Summary: The story of his life: a series of little mistakes that added up to tragedy.
timeframe: Helo and Starbuck make it back to Galactica, after the season finale.
A/N: My first BSG fanfic. What a rush. ;) Feedback is love, but so is Constructive Crit. Feel free to dish out either, as suggestions for improvement are lusted after and longed for.
And we shall be changed.
She looked up at him with dull, dead eyes: dark, empty, a mirror of the abyss.
“Is this the one? The copy that was with you on Caprica?”
He was chained, shackled; they still used those on Galactica-the old, metal ones that chafed the skin to blood and bone. Five guards stood behind him (in his mind: you’re a dangerous criminal), and he couldn’t see their faces, but he knew their expressions: impassive, uncaring, his situation an uncommon event in an uncommon time.
“Is she?”
She had a bandage on her cheek, white and fresh and crisp. An accident, they’d told him-left the safety off, her mistake. Suicide, he knew, planned by her but without the will to go through with it. Boomer, he thought, had always lacked that driving spark of following through.
“Is she or is she not?”
Machines. Automatons. Things that looked human and felt human, but weren’t. Fake, replicated skin covering metal insides.
“Frakkin’ speak.”
Words said without heat. His head snapped back from a fist; blood poured out of his nose, freefalling to skin. When he looked, up, she was still staring at him. Her hands fidgeted on the coverlet of the bed, restricted in their movement with chains, like his own.
Her movements were Boomer. And her eyes looked real. The things inside, viscous gel forming brown irises. Expressions, flickers of concern that hid in the shadows. Everything about her looked like the Boomer he’d always known and, at the same time, everything about her looked foreign, a song without words. Without notes.
“Yes.” At last. His voice sounded rough, out of practice. “Yeah. That’s the model.”
Model, not human or girl. Not a part of his world.
Either of them. They were separate in his mind: the one on Caprica and the one lying in front of him here, chained to her bed in the sickbay. It was easier now, he supposed; one was dead, after all. The Caprica model, he guessed, if this one was Boomer.
And it’d been quick. One half-second of holding Starbuck against a wall and, then, out of control, gone. One shot. One trigger, one gun, one moment. In the end, he hadn’t been able to stop Starbuck.
“You’re a real killer,” he remembered telling her, watching the body fall. Inane words that meant nothing save to fill the void of aftermath. Blood, Sharon’s, suspended in the air; motionless fingers (once clever, when intimate), splayed everywhere.
“You can’t kill something that was never alive.” She’d licked the blood from her lips and started laughing; in his face, laughing and laughing until everything about her was hoarse, shattered.
Underneath it all, he’d heard the doubt in her voice, the sly undertones that rang with cries of murder! Murder!
He hadn’t been able to stop her then, either, that awful laughing. The story of his life: a series of little mistakes that added up to tragedy.
He hadn’t spoken to Starbuck since that day. They’d escaped in silence; had ridden home in silence; had spent an hour chained together in the brig in silence. The only thing she’d said to him, as they led her away, her eyes desperate over her shoulder and arms resisting the hold of the guards: She would have frakked us over, Helo. Eventually. She was one of them, in the end.
How could you know? Words of denial. Trapped between them, pinned under glass.
But, no. She was one of them, in the end. Circuitry and programming; mind conditioning and influencing…were any of them free of the subtle programming inside of them, either mechanical or chemical?
Excuses, excuses. Rationalized all to your liking.
He stared back at the girl lying on the bed and felt nothing. Perfect oblivion. No love, no hate, though it had to be in there-he’d felt it before, he’d feel it again. And he hoped for the hate. Love was pain and an old line of poetry leaped into his head, for love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” Then, louder: “Yes.”
He saw the man beside Boomer’s bed, dressed in a black uniform and eyes blank as empty windows, tighten a length of rope between his fingers. Stretched, stretched, and pulled tight.
He knew what it was for; Boomer, still the rook, wouldn’t.
When he saw the man advance, he thought of calling out a warning.
He didn’t.
They pushed him away, led him back to the brig. Back to white walls and unseeing guards and an endless, gray forever in which to analyze his mistakes. Silence left little room to hide; this was his only future.
He didn’t know if this was mourning or sadness or something else. And then, for what? Illusions? The small space of time where he’d believed in what she’d told him, in her version of the truth?
He heard her voice (scratchy, sick), as he went: “Was that…that wasn’t…Helo?”
If this was hell, he was in it. No future, no past, no water to wash away the blood borne of lies and mislaid trust and Cylons.
One mistake. Her mouth poised over his for a kiss, eyes like hymns of worship in the dark. Fingers creeping under his flight suit, taking him by surprise.
A scream, from the sickbay. Coated with fear.
“HELO?”
Blood and bone, Helo thought. Love and war.
Everything had its price.