Chapter XII
We would both like to thank forensic_angel for reading this over for us. We needed an outsider on this occassion and she agreed to help out.
Chapter: XII
Characters: Adama and Roslin (pairing) and various others
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up to 'Revelations' We know of no other spoilers.
Disclaimer: We do not own these characters and are making no profit from this.
Warnings: None.
Chapter XII: To all the lives we’ve lived before
Bill's whole body jolted in his sleep; subconsciously he could feel his muscles spasm as he drifted.
The haze started to clear and slowly colours started to seep through, the brownish red colour of the soil beneath his feet, the flash of metal as the sunlight caught it...Centurions. Smells and sounds assaulted his senses, war cries, the blood curdling screams of women and children and then nothing. A heavy silence fell all around him.
The stench of death and the dying made his stomach heave. Everywhere he looked were human bodies, fires burnt amongst the destruction. War. The workers they had created had rebelled. Bill held out his hands in front of him, catching the glint of his cuff buttons. The colour of his uniform was different, a dark shade of green with a band of white running up the sleeve of his right arm to his shoulder before encircling an emblem: a snake eating it's own tail. It had writing around which he could not depict. As he stared at the emblem the colours started to fade, the haze that had lifted once again fell.
“Frak me…” Bill sighed wearily as he awoke from his slumber. He moved his hand to his forehead and rubbed it absently.
***
Jack studied Laura carefully; she was sitting forward in his chair, her arms resting heavily on her thighs, her head bowed and her shoulders slumped. He waited patiently, dragging on his cigarette, giving her the time she needed to pull herself together and form her questions.
After a moment she sniffed and looked up, quickly wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. She took a shaky breath and re-crossed her legs, “I don’t know where to start…”
“I don’t even know where to begin!”
“I don’t know what to say…”
“You’re lying.”
“I need more time.”
“Give me a second here.”
“I don’t know where to start Jack.”
“What the frak are you saying?!”
“I…”
“I can’t do this… not now.”
“Give me something to believe in.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“Where to begin?”
“No, I don’t believe you.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“Tell me everything you know.”
Her words from so many lifetimes ago flittered through his mind as her changing image did. Sometimes her hair was redder, blonder, darker, longer, shorter, curlier. Sometimes she wore rich dresses, fine suits; sometimes she came to him with a smile or with an angry, teary eyed glare. Sometimes she screamed and sometimes she laughed.
This Laura - this was his favourite.
Of course, he said that every time.
No matter how she changed subtly each time, she was always the same vibrant, unique individual he had grown to love.
“Ask a question,” he gently encouraged.
He already knew the list she was about to come out with - the only thing that changed every time was the order and how she asked them.
“Time is repeating,” she stated.
“Not exactly,” Jack drawled, “Not time, otherwise everything would be identical.”
He took a deep breath, “From what I can gather… from my extensive experience,” he smirked, “is that everything is reset.” He grabbed his stop watch off the desk and pressed the ‘start’ button, letting the seconds mount up. “Life progresses so far, and each time it’s slightly different because people make different choices and live different lives. The problem is though, each time, no matter how different things are, the cylons are still created, there is still a war and bam,” he pressed the stop button at second 42, “we have the same problem. And there we all are, at war, trying to knock chunks out of each other and eventually one succeeds.”
“Genocide.”
“Yep, the complete annihilation of one race. And that’s when everything resets,” he pressed the reset button bringing the reading back to 00.00.
“So,” Laura drawled slowly, “it hasn’t reset this time because…”
“Because, so far neither of you has succeeding in killing the other. Well done,” he added sarcastically.
Jack could almost see the cogs in Laura’s mind working at full pelt as she worked furiously to process the information, “If the cylons had destroyed the human race five years ago time would have reset already?”
“That’s right. Same thing would have happened if you had got happy with that biochemical weapon.”
She smiled slowly, a light returning to her eyes, “Then, problem solved, we are living together, both races - alive.”
Jack frowned, “Yeah, don’t think you’re out of those proverbial woods yet. It’s not often we get to this stage, but I’ve seen us well beyond it and still it goes wrong.”
“What goes wrong?”
“Breakdown of the civilisation, you are all very good at playing happily families but it doesn’t tend to last too long.”
“How is it reset, does everything just go black?”
Jack smiled thinly, “The bringer of death - as you call it, tends to polish us off.”
“Kara.”
“When things move beyond salvation, when it’s the start of the end, Kara Thrace ends up doing something that just restarts the clock. They call her the bringer of death but actually she’s the only salvation you will know until you get it right.”
“She falls from the sky.”
Jack scoffed, “Well that’s what she did last time. But, you know what Laura? You need to take those crappy religious depictions with a pinch of salt. Thrace didn’t fall from the sky like some goddamn fallen angel, what she did do was shoot the place to hell, take out the last of the survivors and then launched herself into the Temple of Aurora.”
Laura gasped, her skin draining of colour, “Why?!”
“Out of love,” he smiled, “to reset it all, to give you all another chance.”
“So the last life ended with Kara crashing into the Temple?”
“Yes.”
Laura considered the state of the planet and mentally tried to calculate, “That must have been a long time ago.”
Jack nodded, “It takes roughly a couple of thousand years to get us all back to this stage.”
***
Kara's hands trembled as they gripped the joystick; her breathing was shallow and rapid.
“Don't do this...Kara! come back!”
She flicked the switch on her comm. to off and held her course.
Her eyes fixed on her target, a soft swell off cloud. Her breathing slowed and a sad smile spread across her face. “I am not afraid anymore,” she whispered into the cockpit.
As she met the cloud the black vastness of space gave way to blinding sunshine. She held steadfast to the joystick and tilted it forward more. Kara could see the temple clearly now. She braced herself for the impact. As she made contact with the building her engine started to shatter, the bright red burst of the explosion reflected in her eyes.
Everything folded into darkness.
***
Laura’s eyes widened in shock and Jack could see her fingers tremble against the material of the armrest. She sighed deeply and slumped back in her chair, looking slightly dazed, “That’s a lot to take in, in five minutes.”
He offered her a cigarette and this time she took one, letting him light it. She let the smoke soothe her for a moment before letting the cigarette dangle limply from her fingers, over the side of the chair. “To enter the Promised Land we need to break the cycle. The Promised Land therefore is obviously not a planet but a joint future… more of an ideal?”
“Right.”
Laura nodded thoughtfully, her mind carefully filing away the answers and forming new questions. She idly picked at the fraying material of the cushion she sat on, her nails nimbly unpicking the seams, “The dying leader is supposed to guide the people to the promised land…”
“…Suffer a wasting disease and never live to enter the promised land,” Jack finished.
“So,” Laura said softly, “Who is the dying leader?”
“That wack-job up at the church.”
Laura pushed up from her chair and slowly stalked around the office, unsure whether to be relieved or angry, “The only place that man has led us to is destruction, he gave the cylons access to the defence mainframe. He started the damn war!”
“Yeah, little sod did that the last few hundred lifetimes as well.”
Laura paused mid step and nearly swayed, “You knew it was him? Why didn’t you stop him?!”
“Ahhh,” Jack smiled, “The problem is I don’t get switched on until the first nuke hits. The second that happens my memories return and I can’t do a damn thing about it. How’s that for irony?”
“Peachy.”
“Hmmm.”
Laura leant against the wall and spoke cautiously, “Why him? After everything he did?”
Jack frowned at her, “That’s obvious.”
She gave him a withering look that made it clear she didn’t see the connection, “Humour me.”
Jack sighed and reached for another cigarette, “We all made mistakes, the humans and cylons need to unite to make up for the wars they caused. It’s about restoration. Baltar is the dying leader because he is the human most instrumental in the recent divide. He provided the means for the second war. He needs to mend that rift. Whether he intended to start a war or not isn’t the point.”
Laura quirked her lips, “But, obviously it never works. He never unites the people.”
Jack wavered slightly, “Well, strictly speaking, he does his job. He’s doing it right now… in his own wacky way.”
“The church, this one God preaching...”
“It’s all about unity. One God, the God of the cylons and the God of the humans: just the one. Before long Baltar will start to demand “One nation under God” and will demand there are no distinctions between human and cylon.”
“So what does he do to frak it up?”
“Well he leads the people to this understanding; he creates the idea for this world and encourages people to follow it. He dies for it. The rest is up to you all.”
Nodding thoughtfully, Laura closed her eyes and gently tilted her head backwards to rest against the wall.
“His wasting disease is…”
“… Loopy as a fruit bat. Loses his marbles every time. You can set your watch by his mental breakdowns. It’s right around the time he becomes ‘minister’ that I know we are going to land on a planet. I start to pack, it’s quite handy.”
Laura laughed, a soft chuckle that accompanied the bemused shaking of her head.
“Why is it that you remember everything?”
Jack rolled and unlit cigarette between his fingers, just sampling the texture, “I have no idea, maybe it’s what I was built to do, maybe it’s a glitch…”
“Do I ever remember?” Part of her was desperate to remember, to have her history flood back into her mind. She knew that what Jack was saying was correct, it made profound sense… deep within her she felt the truth of it. More than that, she wanted to remember, she wanted to know the person she was before. She wanted to remember the life she had before. She wanted the answers.
“You start to remember snippets of things, nothing big, and nothing monumental. Just little bits and pieces. You once described it like having flashes of a dream - fleeting images you couldn’t do anything with.”
Laura smiled slightly, “And Bill? Does he remember?”
“If he does, he rarely lets on. I think he tends to remember you most.”
Laura’s heart clenched in a wild and unexpected joy, “And… we’re always together?”
Jack snorted, “Yeah, no matter how badly it all starts - and there have been some major fallouts and power trips - you both end up falling ass over kettle for each other. It was kinda sweet the first few times, now it’s pretty boring and irritating. Been to more of your weddings than I care to admit to. You could at least change the damn vows.”
The tiny smile Laura wore, grew into a barely restrained grin as Jack spoke. Jack eyed her smile with good natured disgruntlement, “Stop that, fraks sake, this isn’t the Adama/Roslin story you know, the survival of two races is at stake here.”
Laura chuckled briefly and then smothered her smile, “Ok, next question.”
Jack nodded his head and waved his hand in a ‘bring it on’ gesture, “Shoot.”
“Do you know anything about your creator? Anything about the origin of the 12 models?”
“Nope,” Jack said casually, reaching into his desk drawer for a canteen, “I know as much about my creator as you do Laura - not a thing, only guesses that the religious call ‘faith.’”
Jack took a swig of the liquid, feeling the pleasant alcoholic tingle burn its way down his throat, “I grew up - like the other 4 - I age and grow like anyone else. By the time I get my memories back the planets are nuked, the woman who raised me is dead and there is no-one to ask how exactly I came to be here.”
Laura smiled sadly. After a long silence she pushed away from the wall and stood hesitantly in the middle of the room, “What now?”
Jack lit his cigarette and threw the lighter on the table, “We wait, and hope this time no-one fraks up the status quo.”
“Have you ever tried telling this story to the people…”
Jack laughed hard, making Laura step back instantly in shock - he never laughed, and not like that, “What?”
“Yeah, that was the idea a while back, you paraded me into the centre of the colony the entire story was repeated. The big plan was that if everyone knew the score they would know what’s at stake and would get along - right?”
Laura narrowed her eyes and nodded slightly, “Right.”
“What actually happened was a fight broke out right in the middle of the square, the cylons and humans blaming each other for starting everything, some claiming they didn’t believe and they got into fights with the believers and soon a mob set off determined to kill the dying leader in the hopes that would break the circle. You won’t remember this Laura, but we agreed never to try that again.”
Laura folded her arms and sighed.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time young lady, you can’t force them, you need to hope they do the right thing. Guide them the best you can and hope this time they learn. If it’s any consolation - each time we are getting a bit closer.”
***
Laura walked from Cottle's surgery with her hands clasped behind her back. Finally she had answers and that gave her clarity. A slight smile spread across her lips as she remembered Cottle's words. No matter how badly her and Bill started off they were always meant to be.
She reflected on their meeting 5 years ago. The infuriatingly stubborn Commander of the Battlestar Galactica, who she had gone head to head with on more than one occasion would become her most trusted friend, her lover, her husband.
It all changed when he came for her on Kobol, he was different from the man who had thrown her in the brig. Now she couldn't imagine her life without him in it.
Laura walked up the path to their house. Dusk was beginning to fall. She looked up and saw the soft glow of the living room light through the window. Opening the front door she stepped in and removed her jacket. She brushed her hand down the sleeve of Bills overcoat as she hung hers next to it and smiled.
“Hey”
She turned around to see Bill slumped on the couch; his hand clasping a glass of Ambrosia and the book he had been reading was resting on his thigh.
“Hey,” she answered him smiling.
“You spoke to Cottle?” Bill asked quietly.
“He told me everything,” she replied walking towards her husband and sitting down next to him on the couch with a sigh.
Bill quietly shut the book and placed it on the table, “What did he say?”
“You want to know?” she asked gently, reaching out to hold his hand.
“I think it’s time.”
Two hours later
When Laura finished talking Bill set his drink on the coffee table and turned to her, taking her hands in his. Smiling slightly, he gazed searchingly into her eyes.
Their current surroundings began to drift away. The room spun slightly and he was now standing in front of her. It took a while for his eyes to adjust enough to be able to focus on her.
The living room gave way to a wheat field, and the sun beat down upon them both. Everything was so familiar, the sounds of the birds singing in the nearby trees and the shrill of children’s laughter carried on the wind. Laura smiled at him, her hands still clasped in his. Her fiery red hair bounced in the gentle breeze.
“Bill? Are you ok?” Laura asked bringing him back to the reality of their living room.
“I remember,” he began. “You were wearing a pale green dress. With a belt, loose around your waist. It had that symbol....the snake.....”
The same image flashed in Laura’s mind, so quick that it vanished as quickly as it came, “On the buckle,” Laura finished with a soft gasp.
He grinned at the shared memory, taking comfort in it - no longer afraid and suspicious.
She smiled faintly, chasing the memory, “My hair was much longer then.”
Bill nodded and cupped her cheek with his hand, “And still as beautiful.”
***
Once again thankyou all for your comments last week. We really do appreciate it and are happy you are all still enjoying this. :-)