Borrowed Time (3/5)
Title: Borrowed Time
Author: Raina
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Spoilers: up to the end of “Home” Part 2
Summary: Every night Lee dies in his dreams…or are they much more than just dreams?
Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters; I just enjoy making them suffer
Notes: AU that takes place during “Home” Parts 1 and 2.
Thanks to Ysrith for providing beta duties.
Feedback makes me happy. ;)
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Part1
Part2
He’s been in the brig without human contact for what must have been around a week when the guards come and take him away. The halls are devoid of people, as President Roslin and Adama try to prevent anyone else in the fleet from finding out about his disgrace or even taking action against him like they did with Boomer. He shuffles down familiar halls in an unfamiliar state, not even knowing if he’s going to his death.
They finally reach their destination, an old and out of the way storage room. But now it’s used for storing people - Cylons - instead of supplies. The guards unlock his restraints and roughly push him into one of the cells. Then they securely lock him into what will be his new home for an indeterminate amount of time.
After the guards leave, he looks around at his surroundings. It is securely boxed in on all sides by sterile grey walls, bulletproof glass and wire mesh. A small bed sits against one wall, a sink and toilet against the other. He spots Sharon peering at him through the divide between their cells with an expression that looks almost like pity. But she doesn’t look the least bit surprised to see him here.
“How’s this for irony?” She looks slightly amused now.
“You knew.” He walks over to the glass and wire separating them, raising his voice slightly to be heard through the barrier.
“Yes I did,” she admits reluctantly.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Or anyone else?” He raises his voice to a shout, causing her to wince slightly as she replies.
“What would have been the point in that? No one would have believed me, and it would only have made things worse for me and my child,” she points out coldly, and he hates her because he knows it’s true.
“And,” she adds, expression softening, “you shouldn’t have to go through something like this.”
“Well it’s great to know that you care so much about me and all, but you still could have said something. Anything! You could have prevented me from betraying my own people!”
“Don’t worry, Apollo, you haven’t betrayed them. You haven’t had a chance to fulfill your purpose yet, and I was going to make sure that you never got that chance. I hadn’t figured out how, but I would have made sure that it didn’t happen.”
“And what the frak would my purpose happen to be?”
“To fulfill the prophecy.”
“Right,” he scoffs angrily. “And how am I supposed to do that?”
“The Delphic Scroll says that ‘The Archer will shoot the Arrow into the Tomb and point the way to the Promised Land.’ There’s also some other stuff in there about the identity of the Archer, and we figured out that it was you. It had to be you.”
“So some obscure and barely coherent scroll that even our greatest priests can’t figure out apparently says that I’m some chosen one, so that justifies killing an innocent man!”
“We didn’t kill the original Lee Adama,” she shoots back defensively.
“And why should I believe you? You’re a Cylon. You all lie.”
“Because it’s true and somewhere, deep down, you know it. Go ahead and think I’m out to get revenge on you for trying to kill me. But you know what? The truth is much bigger than me or you or your petty little grudge. It all works into God’s plan. All except the accidental death of the real Lee Adama.”
“He died in a flight accident, didn’t he?” he gasps, realization dawning.
“You shouldn’t remember that.” She frowns.
“I do. Remember some of it at least. Or at least I think I remember. What really happened?”
Her voice takes on a detached, distant quality as she continues, as if she’s recalling the information from somewhere deep within her mind. “The Cylons had figured out your role in the prophecy and had been watching your original for some time, trying to figure out how to get you to Kobol and insert the Arrow of Apollo into the Tomb of Athena. The Cylons want to find Earth because they want to see if the humans there also worship your false idols, or if they’ve embraced God’s love. Call it scientific curiosity, call it God’s plan, or call it whatever you want. Anyway, they were watching him - you - when you took a Viper out for a practice run.”
I glide through Picon’s cloudy atmosphere; rain splatters against the canopy and wind roars against the side of my Viper, the turbulence surrounding my ship mirroring the turbulence surrounding my soul.
“Something happened - some kind of freak mechanical malfunction.”
I hear an explosion and smoke fills the cockpit as something ignites the fuel. Suddenly I am in an uncontrolled plunge towards the rocky terrain below.
“You crashed badly, and your ship was on fire.”
The flames are all around me now and I can feel the intense heat through my flightsuit.
“They could see you struggling to get out, and they tried to reach you.”
I can’t panic: I must stay calm, free myself from my seat, and open the canopy.
But it hurts so much.
Zak wouldn’t want me to give up like this.
“But the flames all around your ship were too hot, even for them.”
I let that thought focus me as I fumble with the seatbelt. But it won’t budge and I can’t reach my pocketknife. It is with startling clarity that I realize I’m going to die in a flight accident, just like my brother. The irony would make me laugh if I weren’t in so much pain.
“They eventually did manage to get you out, but you were in pretty rough shape.”
I guess I’ll be seeing you soon, bro.
Those are my last thoughts as my world is enveloped by flame and darkness.
“They took you back to one of our facilities and tried to revive you, but the physical trauma was too much and you died there.”
He slumps to the cold floor, tears gathering in his eyes as everything comes rushing back to him in a torrent of painful memories.
Sharon pauses then, looking with something approaching sympathy at the man who had tried to kill her repeatedly in the previous week, but now sits battered and broken on the floor.
“Continue. I need to know everything,” he mutters, almost too softly for her to hear.
“They needed you alive to fulfill your role in the prophecy, so they tried to duplicate you. Duplication of a real human being had never been done before and, as far as I know, hasn’t been done since, but they tried it with you and it worked. Through some miracle of God, it worked.”
“Why haven’t I betrayed the humans, caused the destruction of the fleet and escaped in my Viper?” he inquires, voice raw with barely suppressed emotion.
“They could have programmed you that way, but in order to keep the conditions of the prophecy as accurate as possible, they wanted to make you as close a copy of the original as they could. They were afraid that if they’d programmed you to outright sabotage the humans and escape to the nearest Basestar, it would be too much of a contradiction to your original personality and therefore render your role in the prophecy void. So they went about it in a more indirect way: they’ve been guiding the fleet to Kobol by staging carefully planned attacks and using the Sharon that was on the Galactica.You would have ended up going on any mission to Kobol, and once there, the Centurions would have made sure that everyone except you were dead. Then they programmed in a compulsion to make you finish the mission even though your comrades were all dead, and to make you more… open… to revealing the information once captured and tortured. And after that, I’m not sure; that’s all I know.”
Sensing his need for privacy, she turns away from the wall dividing them.
Now that he knows the truth, he curls up on the floor, lost in a whirlpool of jumbled emotion.
So I died. In an stupid, senseless accident.
So I am a machine. A soulless machine.
Hermes, please guide the soul of Lee Adama - the real Lee Adama - to the Gates of Hades, and may Hades receive him.
I should have known that the dreams meant something. I should have realized that it shouldn’t have taken the search parties that long to find me in such a small area after I crashed. I should have known that something was wrong and done something. Anything.
Oh frak. My Dad and Kara. They’ve lost both me and Zak. I hope they’ll be ok. At least they have each other.
I’m dead, yet I’m also alive and breathing. What an odd dichotomy…
Oh Gods… Why??
Author: Raina
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Spoilers: up to the end of “Home” Part 2
Summary: Every night Lee dies in his dreams…or are they much more than just dreams?
Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters; I just enjoy making them suffer
Notes: AU that takes place during “Home” Parts 1 and 2.
Thanks to Ysrith for providing beta duties.
Feedback makes me happy. ;)
--------
Part1
Part2
He’s been in the brig without human contact for what must have been around a week when the guards come and take him away. The halls are devoid of people, as President Roslin and Adama try to prevent anyone else in the fleet from finding out about his disgrace or even taking action against him like they did with Boomer. He shuffles down familiar halls in an unfamiliar state, not even knowing if he’s going to his death.
They finally reach their destination, an old and out of the way storage room. But now it’s used for storing people - Cylons - instead of supplies. The guards unlock his restraints and roughly push him into one of the cells. Then they securely lock him into what will be his new home for an indeterminate amount of time.
After the guards leave, he looks around at his surroundings. It is securely boxed in on all sides by sterile grey walls, bulletproof glass and wire mesh. A small bed sits against one wall, a sink and toilet against the other. He spots Sharon peering at him through the divide between their cells with an expression that looks almost like pity. But she doesn’t look the least bit surprised to see him here.
“How’s this for irony?” She looks slightly amused now.
“You knew.” He walks over to the glass and wire separating them, raising his voice slightly to be heard through the barrier.
“Yes I did,” she admits reluctantly.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Or anyone else?” He raises his voice to a shout, causing her to wince slightly as she replies.
“What would have been the point in that? No one would have believed me, and it would only have made things worse for me and my child,” she points out coldly, and he hates her because he knows it’s true.
“And,” she adds, expression softening, “you shouldn’t have to go through something like this.”
“Well it’s great to know that you care so much about me and all, but you still could have said something. Anything! You could have prevented me from betraying my own people!”
“Don’t worry, Apollo, you haven’t betrayed them. You haven’t had a chance to fulfill your purpose yet, and I was going to make sure that you never got that chance. I hadn’t figured out how, but I would have made sure that it didn’t happen.”
“And what the frak would my purpose happen to be?”
“To fulfill the prophecy.”
“Right,” he scoffs angrily. “And how am I supposed to do that?”
“The Delphic Scroll says that ‘The Archer will shoot the Arrow into the Tomb and point the way to the Promised Land.’ There’s also some other stuff in there about the identity of the Archer, and we figured out that it was you. It had to be you.”
“So some obscure and barely coherent scroll that even our greatest priests can’t figure out apparently says that I’m some chosen one, so that justifies killing an innocent man!”
“We didn’t kill the original Lee Adama,” she shoots back defensively.
“And why should I believe you? You’re a Cylon. You all lie.”
“Because it’s true and somewhere, deep down, you know it. Go ahead and think I’m out to get revenge on you for trying to kill me. But you know what? The truth is much bigger than me or you or your petty little grudge. It all works into God’s plan. All except the accidental death of the real Lee Adama.”
“He died in a flight accident, didn’t he?” he gasps, realization dawning.
“You shouldn’t remember that.” She frowns.
“I do. Remember some of it at least. Or at least I think I remember. What really happened?”
Her voice takes on a detached, distant quality as she continues, as if she’s recalling the information from somewhere deep within her mind. “The Cylons had figured out your role in the prophecy and had been watching your original for some time, trying to figure out how to get you to Kobol and insert the Arrow of Apollo into the Tomb of Athena. The Cylons want to find Earth because they want to see if the humans there also worship your false idols, or if they’ve embraced God’s love. Call it scientific curiosity, call it God’s plan, or call it whatever you want. Anyway, they were watching him - you - when you took a Viper out for a practice run.”
I glide through Picon’s cloudy atmosphere; rain splatters against the canopy and wind roars against the side of my Viper, the turbulence surrounding my ship mirroring the turbulence surrounding my soul.
“Something happened - some kind of freak mechanical malfunction.”
I hear an explosion and smoke fills the cockpit as something ignites the fuel. Suddenly I am in an uncontrolled plunge towards the rocky terrain below.
“You crashed badly, and your ship was on fire.”
The flames are all around me now and I can feel the intense heat through my flightsuit.
“They could see you struggling to get out, and they tried to reach you.”
I can’t panic: I must stay calm, free myself from my seat, and open the canopy.
But it hurts so much.
Zak wouldn’t want me to give up like this.
“But the flames all around your ship were too hot, even for them.”
I let that thought focus me as I fumble with the seatbelt. But it won’t budge and I can’t reach my pocketknife. It is with startling clarity that I realize I’m going to die in a flight accident, just like my brother. The irony would make me laugh if I weren’t in so much pain.
“They eventually did manage to get you out, but you were in pretty rough shape.”
I guess I’ll be seeing you soon, bro.
Those are my last thoughts as my world is enveloped by flame and darkness.
“They took you back to one of our facilities and tried to revive you, but the physical trauma was too much and you died there.”
He slumps to the cold floor, tears gathering in his eyes as everything comes rushing back to him in a torrent of painful memories.
Sharon pauses then, looking with something approaching sympathy at the man who had tried to kill her repeatedly in the previous week, but now sits battered and broken on the floor.
“Continue. I need to know everything,” he mutters, almost too softly for her to hear.
“They needed you alive to fulfill your role in the prophecy, so they tried to duplicate you. Duplication of a real human being had never been done before and, as far as I know, hasn’t been done since, but they tried it with you and it worked. Through some miracle of God, it worked.”
“Why haven’t I betrayed the humans, caused the destruction of the fleet and escaped in my Viper?” he inquires, voice raw with barely suppressed emotion.
“They could have programmed you that way, but in order to keep the conditions of the prophecy as accurate as possible, they wanted to make you as close a copy of the original as they could. They were afraid that if they’d programmed you to outright sabotage the humans and escape to the nearest Basestar, it would be too much of a contradiction to your original personality and therefore render your role in the prophecy void. So they went about it in a more indirect way: they’ve been guiding the fleet to Kobol by staging carefully planned attacks and using the Sharon that was on the Galactica.You would have ended up going on any mission to Kobol, and once there, the Centurions would have made sure that everyone except you were dead. Then they programmed in a compulsion to make you finish the mission even though your comrades were all dead, and to make you more… open… to revealing the information once captured and tortured. And after that, I’m not sure; that’s all I know.”
Sensing his need for privacy, she turns away from the wall dividing them.
Now that he knows the truth, he curls up on the floor, lost in a whirlpool of jumbled emotion.
So I died. In an stupid, senseless accident.
So I am a machine. A soulless machine.
Hermes, please guide the soul of Lee Adama - the real Lee Adama - to the Gates of Hades, and may Hades receive him.
I should have known that the dreams meant something. I should have realized that it shouldn’t have taken the search parties that long to find me in such a small area after I crashed. I should have known that something was wrong and done something. Anything.
Oh frak. My Dad and Kara. They’ve lost both me and Zak. I hope they’ll be ok. At least they have each other.
I’m dead, yet I’m also alive and breathing. What an odd dichotomy…
Oh Gods… Why??