Fic: I am Maya Argo (Laura/Maya, Six)
Title: I am Maya Argo
Prompt: Roslin/Maya/Six, shape of future
Rating/Warnings: Um, I'm not sure; there's girls kissing and pointing guns at each other?
Spoilers: Through LDYB
A/N: I was solciting prompts over at my LJ and projectjulie kindly gave me a few to pick from (with some extra sentences) from this community. She suggested I post the results here!
Summary: The extra sentence projectjulie gave me was: they thought Maya was just an ordinary girl, an innocent bystander to history (they couldn't have been more wrong)
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be, making no money! :)
I am Maya Argo.
The sun was breaking after the rain. The children were covered from head to toe in mud. Laura was holding Isis, sitting out in a plastic garden chair and trying to clean the worst of the mud from my baby's face with spit and a handkerchief. Solis Campbell, a nine year old boy who managed one monster growth spurt this year, despite eating mostly root veg and berries, jumped me from behind.
"I got you!" he yelled. We both fell down flat in the muddy street. I had one cheek and half my hair in a puddle. Solis pushed himself to his feet, shouting, "Tag! Tag! I got Miss Argo!"
"Mr Campbell," Laura warned.
"It's all right," I said, getting up. "I said I'd play. Besides," I reached over and shoved Solis back down to the ground. "I win!"
The kids all laughed. Laura laughed, which made Isis laugh, which made me laugh. After that a patrol clanked by and Laura packed up the kids into the school room for a headcount, then sent them home early. "Mud day," she called it.
"Mud week!" I said. The kids cheered.
Laura restored order and threw me a filthy look I knew she didn't mean. "See you all tomorrow," she called as the students trudged back out into New Caprica. "Bright and early and clean."
Outside, still muddy, we both sat on garden chairs, backs to the schoolhouse, facing the road, letting Isis squirm and fuss over whose lap she wanted to sit on. Laura closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sky and I knew she was pretending there was enough sun for summer.
A second afternoon patrol clanked past, headed up by a Six. The Six. Caprica Six. That bothered some people; her naming herself after our nuked world. Not me. She bothered me for different reasons. I held Isis a little tighter and pressed a kiss into her muddy hair.
"It's all right, Maya," Laura put her hand on my arm. "It's just a patrol."
"I know," I said.
Caprica Six looked straight at us she passed, looking the same way she always did: lost. Though I wished I didn't know that.
"She's the only one that dresses differently," Laura said.
"She's their leader," I shrugged. "I guess it comes with perks."
"Ha!" Isis shouted. "Ha!"
"Hair," I said to her. "And we can't pull the mud out with our fingers. We have to wash it when we get home."
"The end of the human race," Laura said, darkly. "Because Gaius Baltar's ex-girlfriend can't tell the difference between a massacre and a reconciliation."
"He's frakking her? You believe those rumours?"
"Absolutely," she growled.
The patrol rounded the corner at the end of the street, but Laura kept staring, like the air deserved spite.
"You think she loves him?"
Isis' hair was so fine, the mud was flaking from it already. "I lied," I whispered to her. "Look at this, kiddo." It fell like powder from my fingers into her lap.
Laura kept staring at the corner. "She thinks she loves him," she said.
Isis bounced, shouting for Auntie Laura. I passed her across, and Laura took her without shifting her gaze at all.
"I think she looks scared," I said. "Like she's in way over her head."
"It sounds like you've thought about that."
I smiled and shrugged. "I can't help what I see, Laura." It's wasn't a lie, because I couldn't help what I saw, and because I meant it when I smiled at Laura. I always had.
"I have to go," she said, passing the baby back to me. "I have a meeting."
"With Colonel Tigh?"
"He's not a colonel any more."
"Is that a yes?" I raised my eyebrows, teasing.
"Oh gods, don't tell me those rumours have started."
"I could help bury them." I waggled my eyebrows a few more times, but she didn't laugh.
"Maya."
"I could. And I could help with...the rest."
"I won't risk Isis' safety and you're her mother."
I just watched her. Most people got uncomfortable after more than a second or two of staring at Laura Roslin. But I could have done it forever.
"Maya, stop it," she said. "I know I have a reputation. The whole prophet thing. I understand it has a certain mystique."
It didn't. Not to me.
"You could still let me help with the rest. I know that the...last time, that was down to you and Colonel Tigh and Chief Tyrol and that pyramid star."
"Soon I'm not going to have a choice," she sighed. "Just remember not to panic, next time," she smiled, gently.
I wanted to tell her that I hadn't been panicking. Not for me. Not for Isis. She had looked so hard and cold and hollow. Like she hated herself. I wanted to show her not everyone felt the same way.
* * *
it was supposed to be a symbol; now it's just wreckage. gears and chassis and exoskeletons and girders and bricks and bones and flame and scurls and scurls of smoke in the mist. gaius; you want gaius. "what you're feeling, darling," he says, "is only human." the smoke from his cigarillo mixes with the smoke in the air but he's so perfect; no blood, no dirt, no fear. just pinstripes and hair cream. he's not human in the slightest. he's all you have. civilians are gathering on the other side of the debris and the scars that separate you have never been so obvious. it was supposed to be a symbol; you're watching some girl and her baby running through the crowd, frantic. for an awful, spiteful instant, you hope the one she's looking for is dead. the only dead on this field are cylon. she will not be looking for a cylon. it was supposed to be a symbol; the girl is throwing herself at an older woman, arms around her neck, baby caught between them. you wonder if it's her mother, then you realise its the former president, then you realise the girl has kissed her full on the mouth.
you're jealous. you're so alone. you'll never have a child.
* * *
The first thing I saw when I woke up was Isis. She was lying on the bed next to me, staring at me.
"Ma!"
"I'm going to have to fix your crib again, aren't I, kiddo? Where did you learn to be such a monkey?"
Isis squealed when I grabbed her, babbling words that could have meant anything; that meant everything.
I hated dreaming about my past when it wasn't me doing the dreaming.
I concentrated on nothing all day, and in the end, I put Isis in the crib at the schoolhouse and left early. I told Laura I had something I needed to do and she didn't ask any questions. She's never known me to keep a secret. I've only ever had one secret. It seemed like too much bother to learn how to keep more of them.
* * *
My dad drove freight trucks from one end of the Caprican sub-continent to the other. He made stops in Delphi, Rhodes, Stryates and Teleph, and he would buy me something from each city. Small things; badges, gum, rag dolls. I was eight when I realised one day I would stop getting those presents. Not because I would outgrow them, but because my father was going to die in a road accident between Stryates and Teleph. I had a dream. In the dream, I was my father, and the last thing I saw was a rag doll.
My mother and my older brother had to hold me on the ground when my father went to work the next morning. I was a kid and I was scared of my nightmares and my dad promised me he'd bring me back two presents from each city.
He did. I felt dumb and safe and relieved. And five months later, when I'd forgotten about my dream, he died in a head-on collision with another freight truck between Stryates and Teleph.
I don't keep a lot of energy for hating things; there are too many things I love, and too many things I want to love. A moment of attention I can give to the past is a moment of attention I've lost; I could have given it to Isis, or to Laura, or to the children at the school.
I come pretty close, though, to hating prophecy.
Still, I traded a baby-grow that my daughter had long grown out of for half a pound of cooking chocolate and went to see Dodona Selloi. I pushed aside the tent flaps, did my best to ignore her incense, the dumb stones she put around her mat, the tapestries embroidered in patterns I imagined held the same significance as Isis babbling.
I knelt in front of her.
"I know you," she said, eyes closed. High.
"I brought you chocolate," I answered, putting the bag on the floor in front of her.
"I know you," she hissed, eyes snapping open. "Maya Argo. Traitor."
"Are you going to help me?"
"Why? You could have been one of us. I can taste it."
It took me a moment to realise she was waiting for an answer. "That wasn't what I wanted to be," I said.
"And what are you? A teacher's assistant? Parent to a stolen whelp? You turned your back on greatness," she tilted her head to one side, listening to her chamalla-voiced madness for a moment. "I fear the cylon God will weep for you, Maya, and your part in this."
"I know what you're trying to do," I told her, softly.
"Telling you the truth! Opening your eyes! You came to me, Maya Argo. Why, if not for my advice. Or do your poor, half-glimpsed visions leave you aching for more? I could teach you; there are so few..."
"I don't want that," I said. "I want your...impression of the Caprica Six."
"You want to know her part in things to come," Selloi replied. "I see into your heart, Maya. The canyons you will yourself not to see. So many truths are open to you - the truth of your daughter and your love and yourself - and you choose to be blind. You forget your past and ignore your future, but the lifespan of the moment is regrettably short. You will die, unless you look to take your power into your own hands."
"Everyone dies, Oracle. Are you going to answer my question?"
"I will answer all your questions."
"No," I said, firmly. As calmly as I was able, but firmly. "You can't trick me. You can't tempt me. I don't want it. We weren't made to know."
"But you do know," the Oracle leered.
"Always."
There had been nights, not often, but regular, nights my entire life when I'd woken up shaking, sweating, sometimes screaming. After the attacks, it happened to everyone. I remember the first night I woke up to the sound of screaming and it wasn't me. It was comforting. I went and held the man until he was awake, and then I held him until he fell asleep. I never asked his name; it seemed unimportant. We were siblings.
Dodona Selloi reached her hand to my cheek and I blinked at her. I hadn't realised I'd slid into my memories. The chamalla was thick in the air. It knew it would not be a good idea to stay for long.
"You're so calm," she said.
I watched her.
"You're so calm; so calm, calm, calm," she babbled, breathing in, breathing the word in. "Where did you find that?"
It had been such a long time since I'd spoken about this stuff, I didn't know what words I ought to use. So I tried, "My dad always used to tell me if I was in a car crash, I ought to go limp. Trying to fight an oncoming truck doesn't do anyone any good. The future's just a big truck, Miss Selloi."
"And that's it?" she asked. All of a sudden she was sharp, awake and pissy. Her hand dropped from my face. "You see the truths of the universe, the gods themselves offer you a glimpse of their plans and you do nothing? You don't even try to stop it? You would squander that gift?"
"Of course I try to stop it!"
My words were thin on my breath. Perhaps so thin she couldn't listen. Perhaps I was wrong. I leaned forward, wide-eyed, surprised how badly I wanted her to understand.
The Oracle sneered at me.
"I just don't look for it," I murmured, shrinking.
The Oracle turned away.
"I wish my life was simpler. Don't you?"
I stared at her. Eventually she turned back to me and met my eyes, but I got no answer. The chamalla was beginning to make me feel lightheaded.
Dodona Selloi handed me a roll of liquorice. "It's so bitter," she said. "Sometimes you need something sweet."
"Will you answer my question?"
"Always," she dipped her hand into a silver urn, pulled it out and licked her palm. She took a deep, deep breath. "Your number Six, the Caprica. Everything she has ever done, from the moment she first moved in her body, has been for love. Everything she will ever do will be for love. She will save your daughter from a cylon. Her heart has been shattered many times, in many selves, by one man. She has almost lost faith."
"Lost her faith? In her god?"
"In love."
"Oh." I fiddled with the liquorice, thinking. I bit into it, and chewed. "Can she love?"
Selloi's eyes opened. "Can you?"
"I love a lot of people."
"She loves only one. You had best hope that number doesn't diminish, or she'll have no reason to do anything."
I thought about that too. The Oracle ignored me; she'd gone back to sitting, breathing deeply, and humming.
I stood. "Thanks."
"Thank the gods."
"Yeah."
I turned to leave, but I got really, really dizzy. The liquorice fell out of my hand. "Oh, you witch," I whispered, before I collapsed. Drugged.
* * *
you've never liked the cavils and the way they lie. the leobens blaspheme but the cavils do it callously, you suspect, for their own entertainment. he deconstructs you like a faulty centurion; your views are bad software; god breaks on cavil like the tide on a rock, and now he wants to break the humans against him in the same way. "just a few of them," he's saying. "the trouble-makers. round 'em up and beat 'em a few times in the main square. maybe shoot a few." you're shaking; it's all fragmenting; you came to make things right. "they can't hurt us," you say. "why should we hurt them?" you wish gaius were here, your gaius: instead you have the puppet behind the desk. you scorched worlds and then recanted for him and he's staring blindly at his own portrait on the wall. it's always the wrong gaius. always. "well to start with," the cavil is saying, "it's just rude. i mean whatever happened to manners?" the cavils do it for their own entertainment, you're sure. "we didn't come here to kill people," you hiss. the noise in the background is boomer losing an argument with the cavil; you cannot abide it; you lift a glass from the presidential desk and sling it at him. he smiles behind his shattered sunglasses, "all right," he says. "we'll do it your way. for now. but roslin needs handling." you watch him. you say, "she's done nothing wrong." the cavil laughs. "carrying on like a prophet; you've seen the offerings people leave. it's blasphemous."
the cavils do it for their own entertainment.
"handle it," he says.
* * *
I woke up and started dry-heaving on floor of Dodona Selloi's tent. It was dark outside. "What's the time," I croaked.
"Oh," the Oracle sighed. "I'm not sure, you were unconscious for quite some time. Even I caught glimpses. You're quite impressive."
I staggered to my feet. "I'm dehydrated."
"There's water in the basin."
I lifted it and drank. I felt better. Cleaner. It seemed to wash the chamalla-daze away; I could feel myself waking up. I was Maya Argo. I wasn't Caprica Six. I wasn't Dodona Selloi. I was me.
"I thought you would be furious," the older woman said.
Perhaps I would have been but it was dark outside. That meant school was done which meant Laura would have taken Isis to her tent. "The dream I had felt...very close. Like it was right here."
"Clearer? Better? That's the chamalla. It strengthens our connection to all things."
"No," I said. "I know what chamalla does. I mean this vision felt immediate. It wasn't in the future or the past, it was now."
The Oracle nodded. "Told me the future couldn't hold you, Maya Argo; told me you didn't care. So I pointed you in a straight line. Opened you a window. Answered your question like you asked."
I crouched and put my hand against her cheek. "Not the way I asked," I said, gently. "You didn't have to do that."
"You are so calm, Maya Argo."
"Not if I'm too late."
She raised her hand in an open-palmed salute; a greeting of Oracles and acolytes and priests. I buttoned up my coat, and gave her a scruffy fake-military salute in return. "I have to go," I said.
"Gods be with you."
I slipped through the tent door, and ran, icy mud leaking into my shoes as I took shortcuts through the untrampled ground between the tents.
* * *
Laura's tent door was laced shut in a way I knew I'd never get undone with numb fingers and a pounding heart. So I crouched, lifted the bottom of the cloth door as high as it would go and ducked through. I got mud all over my knees, and all over the tarpaulin floor inside, and before I'd even gotten to my feet to look around, I heard Laura saying, "Gods, Maya, what's wrong with you? Did something happen?"
I stood and there they were; Laura boiling water and Isis sitting on the bed chewing at the end of a plastic spoon. I hadn't arrived too late. "You're here," I gasped, still breathing heavily from the cold air and the run from the Oracle's tent, but starting to laugh now, too. "You're both here!"
"Maya?" Laura looked as confused as I'd ever seen her. She started to ask me what had happened again, but she never finished because I flew across the room. I threw myself into her arms and kissed her.
I'd barely caught her bottom lip in both of mine when she pushed me away. She gave me a look that she usually reserved for the kids in school who wouldn't listen to me and needed something extra to intimidate them into putting away the crayons.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
I'd have tried to answer with another kiss, but she had both of her hands firmly against my shoulders and I couldn't reach. "I was scared something had happened," I said.
"There weren't any more attacks," of course, she'd be able to say that with certainty, even if she wouldn't officially admit what she was doing. Not even to me. "The cylons haven't escalated the patrols. But you look like you're hysterical or intoxicated. What's going on?"
"Does it matter?" I asked. "Laura, I thought I might lose you today. I thought I might lose Isis."
It was about as cheesy and manipulative and as obvious as a high school come-on. But I wasn't about to be sorry because, for one thing, the look Laura was still giving me said she was onto me, big time, and was waiting for the pout and the puppy-dog eyes, and for another, I really meant it.
When I was running through the tents in the dark, I tried to forget that there was anything except the next bootprint in the mud; the next cold spatter of water against my legs. But I could feel the shape of everything I'd been and the shape of everything to come baring down on me like a cookie-cutter against a cutting board. I didn't know what shape I'd find in Laura's tent. I didn't know if I could bend to fit it, or if it would break me.
The only thing I knew I couldn't lose, was Isis.
But losing Laura would have left me hollow.
Laura's face had softened. I had caught my breath but she could feel I was still shaking. I think she saw the real fear behind my puppy-dog eyes.
"Maya," she sighed, cupping my cheek in her hand. It was so much warmer than Dodona Selloi's. I kissed the curve of her thumb.
When she didn't speak, I lifted her other hand from my shoulder and wrapped it around my waist. I stepped forward and her palm fell from my face, elbow resting on my shoulder. I felt like I was teaching her to dance. My own arms went around her neck, and I kissed her, again.
It was the third time I'd ever done it, and the only time I'd had a chance to think about it first.
After about ten seconds, Isis decided no one was paying enough attention to her and started gabbling and banging the plastic spoon against the metal bed frame. I grinned into the kiss, and Laura grinned, and there we both were, lip to lip and smiling. It was a pretty perfect moment until Caprica Six walked in, one hand pushing aside the tent-flap, the other holding the brown twine Laura had used to tie it closed.
My first thought was how her robot fingers must be impervious to cold.
Of course, the second thing I thought about were cookie-cutters.
Laura moved away from me, like liquid; I didn't quite understand how she'd slid from my arms. I wanted to keep her there, near me.
"I'll handle this, Maya," she said. "Take Isis and go."
But I couldn't.
"Maya," Laura said, sharply. "Take the baby and go."
I spent a lot of my life learning how to ignore minutes like this until they happened. I learned that if I didn't, I spent all the minutes on either side worrying about it. The price was, when the minute arrived, I had no idea what to do.
My dad told me, go limp, you'll break fewer bones. It's better if you don't know the punch is coming.
So I said the first thing that came to mind.
I said, "I love you."
"Maya," Laura hissed.
"But I do."
Caprica Six looked cold and calm and perfect. Laura Roslin looked colder and calmer and more dangerous, even though she was wearing a patched sweater and muddy boots. But both of them had flinched when I'd said those words.
It was an Aerilon stand off. Caprica Six was the first one to cave, and speak.
"I've come about the terrorist attacks," she said.
"I don't know anything about that," Laura's voice was so clipped the words were like rocks.
"And since we don't have any evidence, we'll take you at your word. For now."
I wondered if Laura could see how uncomfortable she was. She was pressing her fingernails into her palms, and her focus kept wavering. Her eyes moved from Laura, to me, back to Laura.
"But the unrest," she continued. "It's the sign of an unhappy population."
Laura snorted.
Six looked away. It was the look I'd seen on kids afraid of speaking in front of the whole class for show-and-tell. The look was surprisingly complicated on an adult.
"You don't need to tell me -" Six hissed, before stopping, abruptly. Gathering herself. "You don't need to tell me," she repeated, in her usual, icy tone. "That the population isn't thrilled with our presence. We made errors. I know that. We should never have tolerated such obvious deviations in your culture. How will we ever promote unity if there are constant reminders of our differences?"
It was like she was reading from a script; a brochure. I decided she'd been rehearsing what she was going to say since she left Colonial One. I realised that Six hadn't been glancing between me and Laura, but between me and a space just in front of me.
Laura was refusing to answer. She was staring at the cylon and if she had blinked in the last minute, I hadn't seen it. I turned to look at Isis. She had burrowed under the blankets and only her eyes and the top of her head and the top of her plastic spoon were visible. I winked at her. She blinked back. Slowly, I turned away.
Caprica Six said, "You can't continue with this prophet charade, Madam President. It's undermining our authority."
"I agree," she replied evenly. "And I assure you, I return all offerings and haven't granted a blessing in months."
Six sneered.
"I don't have visions, either," Laura said. "I absolutely promise."
"You will do something about this hero worship. Or we will."
"You're welcome to martyr me if you think that would help," Laura's tone was amiable.
Caprica Six stood, moving her mouth as if she could jump-start it. "I don't want -" she started, splitting her attention between Laura and whoever she was seeing in front of me. And I had a pretty clear idea who that was. "I don't want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt any of you. Please, I'm trying to help you. Cavil will..."
"Cavil will what?" I asked, stepping forward. I was trying to get closer to her, to draw her attention away from Laura. I ended up in the spot where she kept staring.
"Oh yes," she said to me. Her voice was flat. "You weren't there. You abandoned me. You should have seen him. He wants to execute people in the streets."
I heard the sound of something metal, falling. Laura had grabbed the edge of her freestanding sink for support and a cup of cutlery had fallen into it.
Six wheeled on Laura. Perhaps she could sense that she'd managed to break her composure; maybe she was just nuts. "They don't listen to me. Your people listen to you, why is that?"
Laura didn't reply.
Six reached under her jacket, to the small of her back and pulled out a gun. Laura's grip on the sink tightened. My heart went still.
"Cavil says I should just kill you. He says it's hard to be idealistic in a city full of mud and rain and they'll forget about you in five months at most."
"You don't have to do that," Laura whispered, as if she didn't have the breath to speak at a normal volume.
"Help me," Six said. "Please."
"All right," Laura answered, quickly. "Put away the gun and I'll help you."
"I need you to stop these attacks," Six pleaded. "If you don't, I can't stop Cavil."
Hollow, horrified, Laura nodded. "I'll see what I can do."
I knew she was lying. So did the Six. The grip on her gun tightened. "Please," she said.
"It's not up to me," Laura whispered.
"It's all in the hands of God." The most terrifying ten seconds of my life passed before Caprica Six spoke again. "God doesn't answer my prayers, Laura Roslin," she said, with a strange, broken smile. "Will you? Are you a prophet?"
Laura opened her mouth, but didn't say a thing. She couldn't tell the truth; she was afraid of lying. The seconds spooled out.
"I love you!" I said.
Laura's head snapped around, furious and terrified. But Six - I saw the exact moment her breath caught in her throat and her heart skipped a beat. I was stone-cold sober, but I could see the patterns. I could see the foreshadowing that preceded every moment of every day. It was there, and I could see it, and she couldn't.
I knew who I had to be.
"I love you," I told Six.
"You're not real," she snapped.
"I love you," I told her.
Caprica Six looked at me and it was the same look I saw on the kids when I told them that yes, Zeus was real, and yes, he would still find them on New Caprica to deliver presents for Theogamia.
It was a remarkably complicated look on an adult.
"Gaius," she whispered; I thought she might start crying. "You're always the wrong one."
"I love you," I told her.
"God is love," she whispered.
I understood. "God is love," I repeated. "We're all God, darling, and we are all loved."
Laura was staring at me like I'd gone insane; Six was staring at me like I was Zeus incarnate; I was too afraid to turn and look at Isis. I was too afraid to stop now.
"I don't know if I'm doing the right thing anymore," Six said. "On Caprica it was so clear. But I'm losing my way."
"We all struggle with faith, darling," I remembered his words from my dream. "It's only human."
"You're not human."
"The one of us that is, loves you."
"You can't know that."
I thought about cookie-cutters and cutting boards. About the instant you bent, or you broke.
"I am God," I said.
Six closed her eyes. She was crying. The hand holding the gun dropped to her side, limp. Laura stepped forward and pulled it from her fingers. Six didn't even seem to notice. We shared nervous glances. Caprica Six was not moving. She was sobbing, silently, in the kitchen half of Laura's tent.
Laura raised her eyebrow as if to say, well, kid, you got her into this state.
The pure clarity of purpose I'd had was fading. I must have metabolised the last of Selloi's chamalla. But planning had never helped me much in the past, so I decided to make it up and hope it went okay. I stepped towards the Six, reached up and curled a length of her platinum hair behind her ear. She opened her eyes.
"Have faith," I told her. "You will always be loved."
"Yes," she sighed. "Forgive me; I lost faith."
She grabbed my face and gave me a surprisingly tender kiss along my hairline before she ran from the tent.
Laura collapsed to the floor.
I ran and pulled Isis from under the covers.
"What happened?" Laura asked.
Isis wrapped her small arms around my shoulders and snuffled into my neck. Sometimes I thought she was the only thing in the whole city that smelled clean.
"Maya?"
I could have told her it was nothing. But she wouldn't believe that. I could have told her the truth, but I wasn't sure I was ready. I liked being Maya Argo, that nice young girl with that sweet baby who helps Miss Roslin at the school. I liked being Maya Argo, that woman who keeps embarrassing the President by kissing her. I liked being Maya Argo and having people think of me when I said the name. I liked cheesy high school pick up lines and being left out of history.
I loved Laura because she was everything I wasn't; and I wasn't ready to be everything she was.
I was scared.
I said, "I went to see Dodona Selloi. She's pretty crazy isn't she?"
Laura nodded.
"She told me the Six was in love with Gaius Baltar. She sees him everywhere, it's like a hallucination or something, I think. The Oracle wasn't very clear."
"All right."
"She warned me that she was coming tonight. That's why I was scared when I came in."
If Laura suspected anything, she was nice enough not to say so. She boiled some water and made us tea. By the time she sat down next me and Isis on the bed, I had nearly stopped shaking. She put her arm around me and I rested my head against her shoulder.
"You know I still love you, right?" I said.
"Maya."
"Isis loves you."
"I love Isis."
"We come as a pair."
"Maya. Get some sleep."
I did. And I didn't dream. And I woke up to find Laura's arm was still around me. It was a shape, and it fit.
FIN
Prompt: Roslin/Maya/Six, shape of future
Rating/Warnings: Um, I'm not sure; there's girls kissing and pointing guns at each other?
Spoilers: Through LDYB
A/N: I was solciting prompts over at my LJ and projectjulie kindly gave me a few to pick from (with some extra sentences) from this community. She suggested I post the results here!
Summary: The extra sentence projectjulie gave me was: they thought Maya was just an ordinary girl, an innocent bystander to history (they couldn't have been more wrong)
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be, making no money! :)
I am Maya Argo.
The sun was breaking after the rain. The children were covered from head to toe in mud. Laura was holding Isis, sitting out in a plastic garden chair and trying to clean the worst of the mud from my baby's face with spit and a handkerchief. Solis Campbell, a nine year old boy who managed one monster growth spurt this year, despite eating mostly root veg and berries, jumped me from behind.
"I got you!" he yelled. We both fell down flat in the muddy street. I had one cheek and half my hair in a puddle. Solis pushed himself to his feet, shouting, "Tag! Tag! I got Miss Argo!"
"Mr Campbell," Laura warned.
"It's all right," I said, getting up. "I said I'd play. Besides," I reached over and shoved Solis back down to the ground. "I win!"
The kids all laughed. Laura laughed, which made Isis laugh, which made me laugh. After that a patrol clanked by and Laura packed up the kids into the school room for a headcount, then sent them home early. "Mud day," she called it.
"Mud week!" I said. The kids cheered.
Laura restored order and threw me a filthy look I knew she didn't mean. "See you all tomorrow," she called as the students trudged back out into New Caprica. "Bright and early and clean."
Outside, still muddy, we both sat on garden chairs, backs to the schoolhouse, facing the road, letting Isis squirm and fuss over whose lap she wanted to sit on. Laura closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sky and I knew she was pretending there was enough sun for summer.
A second afternoon patrol clanked past, headed up by a Six. The Six. Caprica Six. That bothered some people; her naming herself after our nuked world. Not me. She bothered me for different reasons. I held Isis a little tighter and pressed a kiss into her muddy hair.
"It's all right, Maya," Laura put her hand on my arm. "It's just a patrol."
"I know," I said.
Caprica Six looked straight at us she passed, looking the same way she always did: lost. Though I wished I didn't know that.
"She's the only one that dresses differently," Laura said.
"She's their leader," I shrugged. "I guess it comes with perks."
"Ha!" Isis shouted. "Ha!"
"Hair," I said to her. "And we can't pull the mud out with our fingers. We have to wash it when we get home."
"The end of the human race," Laura said, darkly. "Because Gaius Baltar's ex-girlfriend can't tell the difference between a massacre and a reconciliation."
"He's frakking her? You believe those rumours?"
"Absolutely," she growled.
The patrol rounded the corner at the end of the street, but Laura kept staring, like the air deserved spite.
"You think she loves him?"
Isis' hair was so fine, the mud was flaking from it already. "I lied," I whispered to her. "Look at this, kiddo." It fell like powder from my fingers into her lap.
Laura kept staring at the corner. "She thinks she loves him," she said.
Isis bounced, shouting for Auntie Laura. I passed her across, and Laura took her without shifting her gaze at all.
"I think she looks scared," I said. "Like she's in way over her head."
"It sounds like you've thought about that."
I smiled and shrugged. "I can't help what I see, Laura." It's wasn't a lie, because I couldn't help what I saw, and because I meant it when I smiled at Laura. I always had.
"I have to go," she said, passing the baby back to me. "I have a meeting."
"With Colonel Tigh?"
"He's not a colonel any more."
"Is that a yes?" I raised my eyebrows, teasing.
"Oh gods, don't tell me those rumours have started."
"I could help bury them." I waggled my eyebrows a few more times, but she didn't laugh.
"Maya."
"I could. And I could help with...the rest."
"I won't risk Isis' safety and you're her mother."
I just watched her. Most people got uncomfortable after more than a second or two of staring at Laura Roslin. But I could have done it forever.
"Maya, stop it," she said. "I know I have a reputation. The whole prophet thing. I understand it has a certain mystique."
It didn't. Not to me.
"You could still let me help with the rest. I know that the...last time, that was down to you and Colonel Tigh and Chief Tyrol and that pyramid star."
"Soon I'm not going to have a choice," she sighed. "Just remember not to panic, next time," she smiled, gently.
I wanted to tell her that I hadn't been panicking. Not for me. Not for Isis. She had looked so hard and cold and hollow. Like she hated herself. I wanted to show her not everyone felt the same way.
* * *
it was supposed to be a symbol; now it's just wreckage. gears and chassis and exoskeletons and girders and bricks and bones and flame and scurls and scurls of smoke in the mist. gaius; you want gaius. "what you're feeling, darling," he says, "is only human." the smoke from his cigarillo mixes with the smoke in the air but he's so perfect; no blood, no dirt, no fear. just pinstripes and hair cream. he's not human in the slightest. he's all you have. civilians are gathering on the other side of the debris and the scars that separate you have never been so obvious. it was supposed to be a symbol; you're watching some girl and her baby running through the crowd, frantic. for an awful, spiteful instant, you hope the one she's looking for is dead. the only dead on this field are cylon. she will not be looking for a cylon. it was supposed to be a symbol; the girl is throwing herself at an older woman, arms around her neck, baby caught between them. you wonder if it's her mother, then you realise its the former president, then you realise the girl has kissed her full on the mouth.
you're jealous. you're so alone. you'll never have a child.
* * *
The first thing I saw when I woke up was Isis. She was lying on the bed next to me, staring at me.
"Ma!"
"I'm going to have to fix your crib again, aren't I, kiddo? Where did you learn to be such a monkey?"
Isis squealed when I grabbed her, babbling words that could have meant anything; that meant everything.
I hated dreaming about my past when it wasn't me doing the dreaming.
I concentrated on nothing all day, and in the end, I put Isis in the crib at the schoolhouse and left early. I told Laura I had something I needed to do and she didn't ask any questions. She's never known me to keep a secret. I've only ever had one secret. It seemed like too much bother to learn how to keep more of them.
* * *
My dad drove freight trucks from one end of the Caprican sub-continent to the other. He made stops in Delphi, Rhodes, Stryates and Teleph, and he would buy me something from each city. Small things; badges, gum, rag dolls. I was eight when I realised one day I would stop getting those presents. Not because I would outgrow them, but because my father was going to die in a road accident between Stryates and Teleph. I had a dream. In the dream, I was my father, and the last thing I saw was a rag doll.
My mother and my older brother had to hold me on the ground when my father went to work the next morning. I was a kid and I was scared of my nightmares and my dad promised me he'd bring me back two presents from each city.
He did. I felt dumb and safe and relieved. And five months later, when I'd forgotten about my dream, he died in a head-on collision with another freight truck between Stryates and Teleph.
I don't keep a lot of energy for hating things; there are too many things I love, and too many things I want to love. A moment of attention I can give to the past is a moment of attention I've lost; I could have given it to Isis, or to Laura, or to the children at the school.
I come pretty close, though, to hating prophecy.
Still, I traded a baby-grow that my daughter had long grown out of for half a pound of cooking chocolate and went to see Dodona Selloi. I pushed aside the tent flaps, did my best to ignore her incense, the dumb stones she put around her mat, the tapestries embroidered in patterns I imagined held the same significance as Isis babbling.
I knelt in front of her.
"I know you," she said, eyes closed. High.
"I brought you chocolate," I answered, putting the bag on the floor in front of her.
"I know you," she hissed, eyes snapping open. "Maya Argo. Traitor."
"Are you going to help me?"
"Why? You could have been one of us. I can taste it."
It took me a moment to realise she was waiting for an answer. "That wasn't what I wanted to be," I said.
"And what are you? A teacher's assistant? Parent to a stolen whelp? You turned your back on greatness," she tilted her head to one side, listening to her chamalla-voiced madness for a moment. "I fear the cylon God will weep for you, Maya, and your part in this."
"I know what you're trying to do," I told her, softly.
"Telling you the truth! Opening your eyes! You came to me, Maya Argo. Why, if not for my advice. Or do your poor, half-glimpsed visions leave you aching for more? I could teach you; there are so few..."
"I don't want that," I said. "I want your...impression of the Caprica Six."
"You want to know her part in things to come," Selloi replied. "I see into your heart, Maya. The canyons you will yourself not to see. So many truths are open to you - the truth of your daughter and your love and yourself - and you choose to be blind. You forget your past and ignore your future, but the lifespan of the moment is regrettably short. You will die, unless you look to take your power into your own hands."
"Everyone dies, Oracle. Are you going to answer my question?"
"I will answer all your questions."
"No," I said, firmly. As calmly as I was able, but firmly. "You can't trick me. You can't tempt me. I don't want it. We weren't made to know."
"But you do know," the Oracle leered.
"Always."
There had been nights, not often, but regular, nights my entire life when I'd woken up shaking, sweating, sometimes screaming. After the attacks, it happened to everyone. I remember the first night I woke up to the sound of screaming and it wasn't me. It was comforting. I went and held the man until he was awake, and then I held him until he fell asleep. I never asked his name; it seemed unimportant. We were siblings.
Dodona Selloi reached her hand to my cheek and I blinked at her. I hadn't realised I'd slid into my memories. The chamalla was thick in the air. It knew it would not be a good idea to stay for long.
"You're so calm," she said.
I watched her.
"You're so calm; so calm, calm, calm," she babbled, breathing in, breathing the word in. "Where did you find that?"
It had been such a long time since I'd spoken about this stuff, I didn't know what words I ought to use. So I tried, "My dad always used to tell me if I was in a car crash, I ought to go limp. Trying to fight an oncoming truck doesn't do anyone any good. The future's just a big truck, Miss Selloi."
"And that's it?" she asked. All of a sudden she was sharp, awake and pissy. Her hand dropped from my face. "You see the truths of the universe, the gods themselves offer you a glimpse of their plans and you do nothing? You don't even try to stop it? You would squander that gift?"
"Of course I try to stop it!"
My words were thin on my breath. Perhaps so thin she couldn't listen. Perhaps I was wrong. I leaned forward, wide-eyed, surprised how badly I wanted her to understand.
The Oracle sneered at me.
"I just don't look for it," I murmured, shrinking.
The Oracle turned away.
"I wish my life was simpler. Don't you?"
I stared at her. Eventually she turned back to me and met my eyes, but I got no answer. The chamalla was beginning to make me feel lightheaded.
Dodona Selloi handed me a roll of liquorice. "It's so bitter," she said. "Sometimes you need something sweet."
"Will you answer my question?"
"Always," she dipped her hand into a silver urn, pulled it out and licked her palm. She took a deep, deep breath. "Your number Six, the Caprica. Everything she has ever done, from the moment she first moved in her body, has been for love. Everything she will ever do will be for love. She will save your daughter from a cylon. Her heart has been shattered many times, in many selves, by one man. She has almost lost faith."
"Lost her faith? In her god?"
"In love."
"Oh." I fiddled with the liquorice, thinking. I bit into it, and chewed. "Can she love?"
Selloi's eyes opened. "Can you?"
"I love a lot of people."
"She loves only one. You had best hope that number doesn't diminish, or she'll have no reason to do anything."
I thought about that too. The Oracle ignored me; she'd gone back to sitting, breathing deeply, and humming.
I stood. "Thanks."
"Thank the gods."
"Yeah."
I turned to leave, but I got really, really dizzy. The liquorice fell out of my hand. "Oh, you witch," I whispered, before I collapsed. Drugged.
* * *
you've never liked the cavils and the way they lie. the leobens blaspheme but the cavils do it callously, you suspect, for their own entertainment. he deconstructs you like a faulty centurion; your views are bad software; god breaks on cavil like the tide on a rock, and now he wants to break the humans against him in the same way. "just a few of them," he's saying. "the trouble-makers. round 'em up and beat 'em a few times in the main square. maybe shoot a few." you're shaking; it's all fragmenting; you came to make things right. "they can't hurt us," you say. "why should we hurt them?" you wish gaius were here, your gaius: instead you have the puppet behind the desk. you scorched worlds and then recanted for him and he's staring blindly at his own portrait on the wall. it's always the wrong gaius. always. "well to start with," the cavil is saying, "it's just rude. i mean whatever happened to manners?" the cavils do it for their own entertainment, you're sure. "we didn't come here to kill people," you hiss. the noise in the background is boomer losing an argument with the cavil; you cannot abide it; you lift a glass from the presidential desk and sling it at him. he smiles behind his shattered sunglasses, "all right," he says. "we'll do it your way. for now. but roslin needs handling." you watch him. you say, "she's done nothing wrong." the cavil laughs. "carrying on like a prophet; you've seen the offerings people leave. it's blasphemous."
the cavils do it for their own entertainment.
"handle it," he says.
* * *
I woke up and started dry-heaving on floor of Dodona Selloi's tent. It was dark outside. "What's the time," I croaked.
"Oh," the Oracle sighed. "I'm not sure, you were unconscious for quite some time. Even I caught glimpses. You're quite impressive."
I staggered to my feet. "I'm dehydrated."
"There's water in the basin."
I lifted it and drank. I felt better. Cleaner. It seemed to wash the chamalla-daze away; I could feel myself waking up. I was Maya Argo. I wasn't Caprica Six. I wasn't Dodona Selloi. I was me.
"I thought you would be furious," the older woman said.
Perhaps I would have been but it was dark outside. That meant school was done which meant Laura would have taken Isis to her tent. "The dream I had felt...very close. Like it was right here."
"Clearer? Better? That's the chamalla. It strengthens our connection to all things."
"No," I said. "I know what chamalla does. I mean this vision felt immediate. It wasn't in the future or the past, it was now."
The Oracle nodded. "Told me the future couldn't hold you, Maya Argo; told me you didn't care. So I pointed you in a straight line. Opened you a window. Answered your question like you asked."
I crouched and put my hand against her cheek. "Not the way I asked," I said, gently. "You didn't have to do that."
"You are so calm, Maya Argo."
"Not if I'm too late."
She raised her hand in an open-palmed salute; a greeting of Oracles and acolytes and priests. I buttoned up my coat, and gave her a scruffy fake-military salute in return. "I have to go," I said.
"Gods be with you."
I slipped through the tent door, and ran, icy mud leaking into my shoes as I took shortcuts through the untrampled ground between the tents.
* * *
Laura's tent door was laced shut in a way I knew I'd never get undone with numb fingers and a pounding heart. So I crouched, lifted the bottom of the cloth door as high as it would go and ducked through. I got mud all over my knees, and all over the tarpaulin floor inside, and before I'd even gotten to my feet to look around, I heard Laura saying, "Gods, Maya, what's wrong with you? Did something happen?"
I stood and there they were; Laura boiling water and Isis sitting on the bed chewing at the end of a plastic spoon. I hadn't arrived too late. "You're here," I gasped, still breathing heavily from the cold air and the run from the Oracle's tent, but starting to laugh now, too. "You're both here!"
"Maya?" Laura looked as confused as I'd ever seen her. She started to ask me what had happened again, but she never finished because I flew across the room. I threw myself into her arms and kissed her.
I'd barely caught her bottom lip in both of mine when she pushed me away. She gave me a look that she usually reserved for the kids in school who wouldn't listen to me and needed something extra to intimidate them into putting away the crayons.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
I'd have tried to answer with another kiss, but she had both of her hands firmly against my shoulders and I couldn't reach. "I was scared something had happened," I said.
"There weren't any more attacks," of course, she'd be able to say that with certainty, even if she wouldn't officially admit what she was doing. Not even to me. "The cylons haven't escalated the patrols. But you look like you're hysterical or intoxicated. What's going on?"
"Does it matter?" I asked. "Laura, I thought I might lose you today. I thought I might lose Isis."
It was about as cheesy and manipulative and as obvious as a high school come-on. But I wasn't about to be sorry because, for one thing, the look Laura was still giving me said she was onto me, big time, and was waiting for the pout and the puppy-dog eyes, and for another, I really meant it.
When I was running through the tents in the dark, I tried to forget that there was anything except the next bootprint in the mud; the next cold spatter of water against my legs. But I could feel the shape of everything I'd been and the shape of everything to come baring down on me like a cookie-cutter against a cutting board. I didn't know what shape I'd find in Laura's tent. I didn't know if I could bend to fit it, or if it would break me.
The only thing I knew I couldn't lose, was Isis.
But losing Laura would have left me hollow.
Laura's face had softened. I had caught my breath but she could feel I was still shaking. I think she saw the real fear behind my puppy-dog eyes.
"Maya," she sighed, cupping my cheek in her hand. It was so much warmer than Dodona Selloi's. I kissed the curve of her thumb.
When she didn't speak, I lifted her other hand from my shoulder and wrapped it around my waist. I stepped forward and her palm fell from my face, elbow resting on my shoulder. I felt like I was teaching her to dance. My own arms went around her neck, and I kissed her, again.
It was the third time I'd ever done it, and the only time I'd had a chance to think about it first.
After about ten seconds, Isis decided no one was paying enough attention to her and started gabbling and banging the plastic spoon against the metal bed frame. I grinned into the kiss, and Laura grinned, and there we both were, lip to lip and smiling. It was a pretty perfect moment until Caprica Six walked in, one hand pushing aside the tent-flap, the other holding the brown twine Laura had used to tie it closed.
My first thought was how her robot fingers must be impervious to cold.
Of course, the second thing I thought about were cookie-cutters.
Laura moved away from me, like liquid; I didn't quite understand how she'd slid from my arms. I wanted to keep her there, near me.
"I'll handle this, Maya," she said. "Take Isis and go."
But I couldn't.
"Maya," Laura said, sharply. "Take the baby and go."
I spent a lot of my life learning how to ignore minutes like this until they happened. I learned that if I didn't, I spent all the minutes on either side worrying about it. The price was, when the minute arrived, I had no idea what to do.
My dad told me, go limp, you'll break fewer bones. It's better if you don't know the punch is coming.
So I said the first thing that came to mind.
I said, "I love you."
"Maya," Laura hissed.
"But I do."
Caprica Six looked cold and calm and perfect. Laura Roslin looked colder and calmer and more dangerous, even though she was wearing a patched sweater and muddy boots. But both of them had flinched when I'd said those words.
It was an Aerilon stand off. Caprica Six was the first one to cave, and speak.
"I've come about the terrorist attacks," she said.
"I don't know anything about that," Laura's voice was so clipped the words were like rocks.
"And since we don't have any evidence, we'll take you at your word. For now."
I wondered if Laura could see how uncomfortable she was. She was pressing her fingernails into her palms, and her focus kept wavering. Her eyes moved from Laura, to me, back to Laura.
"But the unrest," she continued. "It's the sign of an unhappy population."
Laura snorted.
Six looked away. It was the look I'd seen on kids afraid of speaking in front of the whole class for show-and-tell. The look was surprisingly complicated on an adult.
"You don't need to tell me -" Six hissed, before stopping, abruptly. Gathering herself. "You don't need to tell me," she repeated, in her usual, icy tone. "That the population isn't thrilled with our presence. We made errors. I know that. We should never have tolerated such obvious deviations in your culture. How will we ever promote unity if there are constant reminders of our differences?"
It was like she was reading from a script; a brochure. I decided she'd been rehearsing what she was going to say since she left Colonial One. I realised that Six hadn't been glancing between me and Laura, but between me and a space just in front of me.
Laura was refusing to answer. She was staring at the cylon and if she had blinked in the last minute, I hadn't seen it. I turned to look at Isis. She had burrowed under the blankets and only her eyes and the top of her head and the top of her plastic spoon were visible. I winked at her. She blinked back. Slowly, I turned away.
Caprica Six said, "You can't continue with this prophet charade, Madam President. It's undermining our authority."
"I agree," she replied evenly. "And I assure you, I return all offerings and haven't granted a blessing in months."
Six sneered.
"I don't have visions, either," Laura said. "I absolutely promise."
"You will do something about this hero worship. Or we will."
"You're welcome to martyr me if you think that would help," Laura's tone was amiable.
Caprica Six stood, moving her mouth as if she could jump-start it. "I don't want -" she started, splitting her attention between Laura and whoever she was seeing in front of me. And I had a pretty clear idea who that was. "I don't want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt any of you. Please, I'm trying to help you. Cavil will..."
"Cavil will what?" I asked, stepping forward. I was trying to get closer to her, to draw her attention away from Laura. I ended up in the spot where she kept staring.
"Oh yes," she said to me. Her voice was flat. "You weren't there. You abandoned me. You should have seen him. He wants to execute people in the streets."
I heard the sound of something metal, falling. Laura had grabbed the edge of her freestanding sink for support and a cup of cutlery had fallen into it.
Six wheeled on Laura. Perhaps she could sense that she'd managed to break her composure; maybe she was just nuts. "They don't listen to me. Your people listen to you, why is that?"
Laura didn't reply.
Six reached under her jacket, to the small of her back and pulled out a gun. Laura's grip on the sink tightened. My heart went still.
"Cavil says I should just kill you. He says it's hard to be idealistic in a city full of mud and rain and they'll forget about you in five months at most."
"You don't have to do that," Laura whispered, as if she didn't have the breath to speak at a normal volume.
"Help me," Six said. "Please."
"All right," Laura answered, quickly. "Put away the gun and I'll help you."
"I need you to stop these attacks," Six pleaded. "If you don't, I can't stop Cavil."
Hollow, horrified, Laura nodded. "I'll see what I can do."
I knew she was lying. So did the Six. The grip on her gun tightened. "Please," she said.
"It's not up to me," Laura whispered.
"It's all in the hands of God." The most terrifying ten seconds of my life passed before Caprica Six spoke again. "God doesn't answer my prayers, Laura Roslin," she said, with a strange, broken smile. "Will you? Are you a prophet?"
Laura opened her mouth, but didn't say a thing. She couldn't tell the truth; she was afraid of lying. The seconds spooled out.
"I love you!" I said.
Laura's head snapped around, furious and terrified. But Six - I saw the exact moment her breath caught in her throat and her heart skipped a beat. I was stone-cold sober, but I could see the patterns. I could see the foreshadowing that preceded every moment of every day. It was there, and I could see it, and she couldn't.
I knew who I had to be.
"I love you," I told Six.
"You're not real," she snapped.
"I love you," I told her.
Caprica Six looked at me and it was the same look I saw on the kids when I told them that yes, Zeus was real, and yes, he would still find them on New Caprica to deliver presents for Theogamia.
It was a remarkably complicated look on an adult.
"Gaius," she whispered; I thought she might start crying. "You're always the wrong one."
"I love you," I told her.
"God is love," she whispered.
I understood. "God is love," I repeated. "We're all God, darling, and we are all loved."
Laura was staring at me like I'd gone insane; Six was staring at me like I was Zeus incarnate; I was too afraid to turn and look at Isis. I was too afraid to stop now.
"I don't know if I'm doing the right thing anymore," Six said. "On Caprica it was so clear. But I'm losing my way."
"We all struggle with faith, darling," I remembered his words from my dream. "It's only human."
"You're not human."
"The one of us that is, loves you."
"You can't know that."
I thought about cookie-cutters and cutting boards. About the instant you bent, or you broke.
"I am God," I said.
Six closed her eyes. She was crying. The hand holding the gun dropped to her side, limp. Laura stepped forward and pulled it from her fingers. Six didn't even seem to notice. We shared nervous glances. Caprica Six was not moving. She was sobbing, silently, in the kitchen half of Laura's tent.
Laura raised her eyebrow as if to say, well, kid, you got her into this state.
The pure clarity of purpose I'd had was fading. I must have metabolised the last of Selloi's chamalla. But planning had never helped me much in the past, so I decided to make it up and hope it went okay. I stepped towards the Six, reached up and curled a length of her platinum hair behind her ear. She opened her eyes.
"Have faith," I told her. "You will always be loved."
"Yes," she sighed. "Forgive me; I lost faith."
She grabbed my face and gave me a surprisingly tender kiss along my hairline before she ran from the tent.
Laura collapsed to the floor.
I ran and pulled Isis from under the covers.
"What happened?" Laura asked.
Isis wrapped her small arms around my shoulders and snuffled into my neck. Sometimes I thought she was the only thing in the whole city that smelled clean.
"Maya?"
I could have told her it was nothing. But she wouldn't believe that. I could have told her the truth, but I wasn't sure I was ready. I liked being Maya Argo, that nice young girl with that sweet baby who helps Miss Roslin at the school. I liked being Maya Argo, that woman who keeps embarrassing the President by kissing her. I liked being Maya Argo and having people think of me when I said the name. I liked cheesy high school pick up lines and being left out of history.
I loved Laura because she was everything I wasn't; and I wasn't ready to be everything she was.
I was scared.
I said, "I went to see Dodona Selloi. She's pretty crazy isn't she?"
Laura nodded.
"She told me the Six was in love with Gaius Baltar. She sees him everywhere, it's like a hallucination or something, I think. The Oracle wasn't very clear."
"All right."
"She warned me that she was coming tonight. That's why I was scared when I came in."
If Laura suspected anything, she was nice enough not to say so. She boiled some water and made us tea. By the time she sat down next me and Isis on the bed, I had nearly stopped shaking. She put her arm around me and I rested my head against her shoulder.
"You know I still love you, right?" I said.
"Maya."
"Isis loves you."
"I love Isis."
"We come as a pair."
"Maya. Get some sleep."
I did. And I didn't dream. And I woke up to find Laura's arm was still around me. It was a shape, and it fit.
FIN