Fic: Mathematics: Getting Lucky (4/10) second half
Here's the second half of "Getting Lucky." Whew, another segment too long for LJ! The next segment will be much shorter, a bit lighter, and hopefully out on Monday.
If you haven't read the first half yet, it's over here.
~~*~~*~~
Felix had to brace himself against his desk to keep himself from collapsing once he finally made it home that evening. He spent a long time merely willing himself to breathe slowly. As he stood there, he looked down at himself, and it dawned on him that he was still covered in the little boy’s blood. His shirt was soaked through; Felix hadn’t thought someone so small could have that much blood in him. He pulled the shirt off and stood with it balled in his hand, contemplating his burn-barrel stove. There was so little of everything left that wastefulness had become one of the worst sins imaginable-he might be able to get the stain out, at least well enough-it was a good, warm shirt-
“Frak it,” Felix muttered, tossing the shirt into the barrel and flicking a lit match in after it.
The boy’s right arm hadn’t been wounded like Felix had thought. Something had caught him in the side, deeply. He’d bled out in Felix’s arms.
Felix washed himself off the best he could and slipped on one of his few remaining clean shirts.
Tonight had been the first time he’d felt at all conflicted about leaving the smuggled information at the garbage dump. He had known all along that this day would come, and he had to admit, attacking the checkpoint was a good plan. It was probably the easiest place to target Cylons and collaborators, and it was a place that the Cylons couldn’t do much more to safeguard. It would spread fear among their ranks as effectively as anything could scare beings that didn’t die permanently. If he’d been in on planning sessions with the Resistance, Felix couldn’t say he would have done things much differently. But that didn’t change the fact that there was collateral damage, that there were people going in and out of Colonial One like the boy and his mother, like Mrs. Penbroke, who were likely doing nothing more than begging people like him for help. Felix knew nobody would risk coming to him for help on Colonial One after today.
Eight burst into the tent without any pretense of a code word or even asking if she could enter. “Did you hear about the bombing?” Then she gasped. “Felix, you’re bleeding!”
Eight touched her hand to the right side of her neck, and Felix mirrored her. He could feel a sticky line of blood running from just below his ear down to his collarbone. He looked at his fingers, now red again. “Huh. Something must’ve grazed me,” he said, feeling a little lightheaded.
“Where’s your med kit?” Eight asked. Felix pointed toward a box in the corner. Eight retrieved it and sat Felix down on his cot.
“You were there?” Felix nodded and looked away, hoping Eight would understand that he didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t press him for details, but she kept talking herself. “Thirteen humans dead, I don’t know how many injured, and the queue for the resurrection tank is going to be backed up for days,” Eight said as she dabbed at Felix’s neck with something that made him wince. She pressed a scrap of cotton to the wound as she hunted for a bandage. Her voice wavered. “I don’t under-I…”
Felix couldn’t form the question any better than she could. He didn’t want to, didn’t want to voice it, make it real. He just wanted to focus on the warmth and life in Eight’s fingers as she pressed the bandage down against his pulse.
He could feel her hands trembling as she held his wrist with one and wiped his fingertips clean with a cloth in the other. She couldn’t look at him as she said it. “Did we do that, Felix?”
Felix took a deep breath. “No,” he said with a certainty he didn’t quite feel. “Even if somebody we let out had something to do with it, no, we didn’t do that. We’re freeing wrongfully imprisoned people, and there’s nothing evil about that. They decide what they do when they get out.” Felix found himself sifting through his memories, trying to figure out if he’d ever left any information about the checkpoint in his dead-drops. He shook his head to clear that thought away. “We both knew going in that this wasn’t going to be pretty or polite, if I recall your words right. But it’s going to turn out okay.”
Eight finally looked up at him. “Right. Right, okay,” she said. It was strange to see her this rattled. It was understandable, but it was still startling to see someone normally so composed and self-assured nearly falling apart.
Felix tried to change the conversation to a happier subject. “So the list. This afternoon you sounded like it went well.”
Eight’s expression didn’t immediately brighten as Felix had hoped it would. She bit her lip, then closed the med kit and put it away on the other side of the tent. She pulled the list out from beneath her jacket and approached Felix a little apprehensively, then handed him the list.
“This one, Jeremiah, he died in detention. He-he got sick. And um, she…she killed herself.” For the first time, Felix realized that Eight had probably had a very rough day, too-the detention center was hardly a cheerful place to be. Eight’s voice started to crack. “But, um, these two, I got them out-but nobody-nobody knows what happened to the child.”
As he shook his head, wondering what in the heavens the Cylons could possibly want with Julia Brynn’s little girl, Felix heard a sharp intake of breath. He looked up from the list to find Eight with tears in her eyes, trying to hold back sobs by covering her mouth. It shocked him to see her so broken, especially over something that wasn’t her fault. “I tried so hard, tried so hard…”
He grabbed her hand instinctively, almost as if he was pulling her away from teetering on the edge of a cliff. In a way, she was, Felix realized. Thirteen humans released today, but thirteen dead, too. It was enough to give anyone doubts. “No, you did great. You did great. You saved so many of them. Okay?” He knew firsthand how hard it was to feel like you were fighting a war all by yourself, without anyone to even assure you that you were shooting in the right direction.
Eight calmed down a little and knelt down beside him, still clinging to his hand. “Sorry. You can think of more names, and we can write more lists,” she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth in desperation.
“Of course we can. Of course we can, we will, okay?” Something changed in her expression, something that Felix couldn’t explain as an alteration in the curve of her mouth or the color of her cheeks or even the look in her eyes, but it was still there all the same. He knew that look all too well. It scared him, but he knew exactly what she needed from him. He put his hand to her cheek and told her what he’d always wanted to hear, and meant it. “Thank you.”
That look didn’t go away; it deepened. He’d lived that look: so full of hope and trust and-was it love? He’d never been able to figure that last part out himself, but whatever it was, he knew how badly it hurt. He felt her lean her head forward under his hand, just barely. He found himself moving toward her, too.
The kiss was nice, but it was just that-nice. It wasn’t at all like his last first kiss, which had made his blood burn and his heart pound in his ears so hard he thought it would leave him deaf. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing for a change, though, to have someone who was nothing more than nice, Felix thought: someone who didn’t set him on fire, so he didn’t have to live in fear of being burned. The kiss didn’t build to anything. They simply leaned apart and took a good, long look at each other, doing their best to appreciate the significance of the line they’d just crossed.
He liked the warmth of her as she pulled herself up from the dirt floor and crawled into his lap. His body responded to it far more readily than he had expected. Everything about this was soft and quiet and slow; for some reason, the image that came to his mind as Eight curled her arms around him and breathed against his neck was a clinging, sweet-smelling clematis vine like the ones that grew below his bedroom window when he was a boy. Weren’t there stories his mother had told him about the gods saving people by turning them into trees and vines and flowers, binding them up in bark so nothing could touch them, covering their eyes and mouths with leaves? It would be like sleeping, he thought, like sinking into something black and thick, but sweet-smelling instead of sulfur…
As she braced her hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him to lie back on the cot, it crossed his mind to wonder if he was whoring himself out for the lists. The same thought had vaguely occurred to him the night Eight had first proposed the lists, when she had given him that look that suggested she chose him for reasons besides his willingness to make an ass of himself in front of Doral and his idealistic architectural scribblings. He tried to shove the stray thought aside as he pushed Eight’s jacket from her shoulders and as they continued to help each other undress with the gentleness and reverence of a religious rite. Then she looked down at him with such adoration, and more than anything, Felix feared he was using her. Was he using her? Had he known all along that this had meant more to her than hope for a better life on New Caprica in the abstract, and he had just let her go on dreaming?
But then she was moving, and all he could think of was that Eight was the only person he could touch anymore. Everyone else-Resistance, NCP, innocent bystander-anyone else would be too guilty or too innocent. On either side, they would spurn him as a turncoat if they knew too little or too much, and anyone would become a target just by association with him. All but Eight; Eight had chosen to be as much a traitor as he was.
If they had to live in this world with their eyes open, they’d die without touch: skin to skin, feeling the blood thrumming with life just beneath.
If you haven't read the first half yet, it's over here.
~~*~~*~~
Felix had to brace himself against his desk to keep himself from collapsing once he finally made it home that evening. He spent a long time merely willing himself to breathe slowly. As he stood there, he looked down at himself, and it dawned on him that he was still covered in the little boy’s blood. His shirt was soaked through; Felix hadn’t thought someone so small could have that much blood in him. He pulled the shirt off and stood with it balled in his hand, contemplating his burn-barrel stove. There was so little of everything left that wastefulness had become one of the worst sins imaginable-he might be able to get the stain out, at least well enough-it was a good, warm shirt-
“Frak it,” Felix muttered, tossing the shirt into the barrel and flicking a lit match in after it.
The boy’s right arm hadn’t been wounded like Felix had thought. Something had caught him in the side, deeply. He’d bled out in Felix’s arms.
Felix washed himself off the best he could and slipped on one of his few remaining clean shirts.
Tonight had been the first time he’d felt at all conflicted about leaving the smuggled information at the garbage dump. He had known all along that this day would come, and he had to admit, attacking the checkpoint was a good plan. It was probably the easiest place to target Cylons and collaborators, and it was a place that the Cylons couldn’t do much more to safeguard. It would spread fear among their ranks as effectively as anything could scare beings that didn’t die permanently. If he’d been in on planning sessions with the Resistance, Felix couldn’t say he would have done things much differently. But that didn’t change the fact that there was collateral damage, that there were people going in and out of Colonial One like the boy and his mother, like Mrs. Penbroke, who were likely doing nothing more than begging people like him for help. Felix knew nobody would risk coming to him for help on Colonial One after today.
Eight burst into the tent without any pretense of a code word or even asking if she could enter. “Did you hear about the bombing?” Then she gasped. “Felix, you’re bleeding!”
Eight touched her hand to the right side of her neck, and Felix mirrored her. He could feel a sticky line of blood running from just below his ear down to his collarbone. He looked at his fingers, now red again. “Huh. Something must’ve grazed me,” he said, feeling a little lightheaded.
“Where’s your med kit?” Eight asked. Felix pointed toward a box in the corner. Eight retrieved it and sat Felix down on his cot.
“You were there?” Felix nodded and looked away, hoping Eight would understand that he didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t press him for details, but she kept talking herself. “Thirteen humans dead, I don’t know how many injured, and the queue for the resurrection tank is going to be backed up for days,” Eight said as she dabbed at Felix’s neck with something that made him wince. She pressed a scrap of cotton to the wound as she hunted for a bandage. Her voice wavered. “I don’t under-I…”
Felix couldn’t form the question any better than she could. He didn’t want to, didn’t want to voice it, make it real. He just wanted to focus on the warmth and life in Eight’s fingers as she pressed the bandage down against his pulse.
He could feel her hands trembling as she held his wrist with one and wiped his fingertips clean with a cloth in the other. She couldn’t look at him as she said it. “Did we do that, Felix?”
Felix took a deep breath. “No,” he said with a certainty he didn’t quite feel. “Even if somebody we let out had something to do with it, no, we didn’t do that. We’re freeing wrongfully imprisoned people, and there’s nothing evil about that. They decide what they do when they get out.” Felix found himself sifting through his memories, trying to figure out if he’d ever left any information about the checkpoint in his dead-drops. He shook his head to clear that thought away. “We both knew going in that this wasn’t going to be pretty or polite, if I recall your words right. But it’s going to turn out okay.”
Eight finally looked up at him. “Right. Right, okay,” she said. It was strange to see her this rattled. It was understandable, but it was still startling to see someone normally so composed and self-assured nearly falling apart.
Felix tried to change the conversation to a happier subject. “So the list. This afternoon you sounded like it went well.”
Eight’s expression didn’t immediately brighten as Felix had hoped it would. She bit her lip, then closed the med kit and put it away on the other side of the tent. She pulled the list out from beneath her jacket and approached Felix a little apprehensively, then handed him the list.
“This one, Jeremiah, he died in detention. He-he got sick. And um, she…she killed herself.” For the first time, Felix realized that Eight had probably had a very rough day, too-the detention center was hardly a cheerful place to be. Eight’s voice started to crack. “But, um, these two, I got them out-but nobody-nobody knows what happened to the child.”
As he shook his head, wondering what in the heavens the Cylons could possibly want with Julia Brynn’s little girl, Felix heard a sharp intake of breath. He looked up from the list to find Eight with tears in her eyes, trying to hold back sobs by covering her mouth. It shocked him to see her so broken, especially over something that wasn’t her fault. “I tried so hard, tried so hard…”
He grabbed her hand instinctively, almost as if he was pulling her away from teetering on the edge of a cliff. In a way, she was, Felix realized. Thirteen humans released today, but thirteen dead, too. It was enough to give anyone doubts. “No, you did great. You did great. You saved so many of them. Okay?” He knew firsthand how hard it was to feel like you were fighting a war all by yourself, without anyone to even assure you that you were shooting in the right direction.
Eight calmed down a little and knelt down beside him, still clinging to his hand. “Sorry. You can think of more names, and we can write more lists,” she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth in desperation.
“Of course we can. Of course we can, we will, okay?” Something changed in her expression, something that Felix couldn’t explain as an alteration in the curve of her mouth or the color of her cheeks or even the look in her eyes, but it was still there all the same. He knew that look all too well. It scared him, but he knew exactly what she needed from him. He put his hand to her cheek and told her what he’d always wanted to hear, and meant it. “Thank you.”
That look didn’t go away; it deepened. He’d lived that look: so full of hope and trust and-was it love? He’d never been able to figure that last part out himself, but whatever it was, he knew how badly it hurt. He felt her lean her head forward under his hand, just barely. He found himself moving toward her, too.
The kiss was nice, but it was just that-nice. It wasn’t at all like his last first kiss, which had made his blood burn and his heart pound in his ears so hard he thought it would leave him deaf. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing for a change, though, to have someone who was nothing more than nice, Felix thought: someone who didn’t set him on fire, so he didn’t have to live in fear of being burned. The kiss didn’t build to anything. They simply leaned apart and took a good, long look at each other, doing their best to appreciate the significance of the line they’d just crossed.
He liked the warmth of her as she pulled herself up from the dirt floor and crawled into his lap. His body responded to it far more readily than he had expected. Everything about this was soft and quiet and slow; for some reason, the image that came to his mind as Eight curled her arms around him and breathed against his neck was a clinging, sweet-smelling clematis vine like the ones that grew below his bedroom window when he was a boy. Weren’t there stories his mother had told him about the gods saving people by turning them into trees and vines and flowers, binding them up in bark so nothing could touch them, covering their eyes and mouths with leaves? It would be like sleeping, he thought, like sinking into something black and thick, but sweet-smelling instead of sulfur…
As she braced her hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him to lie back on the cot, it crossed his mind to wonder if he was whoring himself out for the lists. The same thought had vaguely occurred to him the night Eight had first proposed the lists, when she had given him that look that suggested she chose him for reasons besides his willingness to make an ass of himself in front of Doral and his idealistic architectural scribblings. He tried to shove the stray thought aside as he pushed Eight’s jacket from her shoulders and as they continued to help each other undress with the gentleness and reverence of a religious rite. Then she looked down at him with such adoration, and more than anything, Felix feared he was using her. Was he using her? Had he known all along that this had meant more to her than hope for a better life on New Caprica in the abstract, and he had just let her go on dreaming?
But then she was moving, and all he could think of was that Eight was the only person he could touch anymore. Everyone else-Resistance, NCP, innocent bystander-anyone else would be too guilty or too innocent. On either side, they would spurn him as a turncoat if they knew too little or too much, and anyone would become a target just by association with him. All but Eight; Eight had chosen to be as much a traitor as he was.
If they had to live in this world with their eyes open, they’d die without touch: skin to skin, feeling the blood thrumming with life just beneath.