Wash Your Cares Away (Part 2)
Title: Wash Your Cares Away
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Hoshi, Gaeta, Tigh, Tory, Sam, Tyrol, Dee, Athena, and a few others briefly drop in
Summary: Hearing that music was a nightmare, but being a Cylon gives Louis a means of escape, too.
Pairings: Gaeta/Hoshi
Notes: For puszysty's "Never Will I Ever" prompt, "cylon!Hoshi"
(Link to Part 1)
It never dawned on Louis how seldom Athena ate in the mess until he saw her alone at a table, picking at the oxymoron that was algae meatloaf. He sat down beside her.
“How are you doing?” Louis asked, wondering if it was too soon for that to be anything but a stupid question.
Athena bit her lip. “It’s hell, but we’re getting through it.”
“If you ever need anything-help with Hera, whatever, let me know.”
Athena smiled-just barely, but it was a smile. “Thanks. You know, I thank the gods for Hera-I don’t know if I could get through this without her-but sometimes it’s nice to just be able to sit and not worry about Jimmy Sullivan using her paints at daycare or making it to the potty in time or fighting to get her to eat the last three bites of her algae, you know?”
“Yeah,” Louis smiled to himself.
“Back on the Colonies...did you have kids?”
“Me? No,” Louis said. “Why do you ask?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, but there was a look in her eyes like she might have been lying.
“Where is she now-Hera, I mean?”
“Dee’s got her for a couple hours. Dee is her favorite of her many babysitters.”
“Hmm, I thought so,” Louis said between bites of algae. He tried to project the taste of actual meatloaf, but the slimy texture of the real food still cut through. “Dee showed me a picture of an elephant Hera drew for her. I was impressed; it was a damned good elephant.” That got a genuine smile out of Athena. “I was wondering, though: does she even know what an elephant is?”
“Actually, she does,” Athena said, just a hint of steel in her voice, not challenging, but just enough to preempt any potential opposition she thought Louis might consider making. “We love going to the zoo in projections.”
“So you can take her along in a projection with you?” Athena nodded. “Wow. Do you suppose it’s just because Hera’s part-Cylon, or do you think you could do it with humans, too?”
Athena set down her fork and smirked. “Hoshi, do you want to go to the zoo?”
Louis laughed, relieved that she wasn’t at all suspicious of him. “Well, I was thinking more along the lines of wouldn’t it be good for all the other little kids who are too young to remember life on the Colonies, but if that’s an invitation...”
Athena chuckled and shook her head. “Sorry, but it doesn’t work very well. I tried with Helo, and we never quite got the hang of it.” They both realized at the same time she’d spoken the name they’d been avoiding, but Athena beat Louis to changing the subject. “How’s Felix?”
“Good,” Louis answered quickly. “Well, relatively speaking. He’s back to working regular shifts, and-it’s gonna sound silly, but he did two laps between CIC and the infirmary yesterday and actually wasn’t an exhausted, crotchety bastard by the time he was done.”
“No, that’s not silly at all,” said Athena, taking a sip from her mug. “I counted yesterday a good day because I only had to change Hera’s clothes twice and she went to sleep without crying for her daddy.” She raised her mug. “To small victories.”
Louis clinked his mug with hers. “To small victories.”
~~**~~**~~
Louis wondered why he’d made it rain as he stood staring out the glass door to the deck, watching the wind tug and twist the white froth tipping the waves as driving rain beat down on the beach. He shivered and rubbed his arms. He also wondered why he hadn’t bothered to grab a sweatshirt when he’d gotten out of their warm bed, instead wandering around the house only in his pajama bottoms.
He felt a warm body pressed to his back as an arm slid around him. “What’re you doing up?” said Felix, kissing his neck lazily. He hadn’t bothered to put his prosthetic on and was only using his cane; that was why there was only one arm around him, Louis was certain. “You can’t go swimming today.”
“Yeah. I don’t know,” Louis mumbled.
“Then come back to bed.”
“Why?”
Felix smiled into Louis’s shoulder. “So I can have my wanton way with you, of course.”
Louis smiled, but he wasn’t breaking that rule again, no matter what was going on with this Felix in his head. “I guess I’m not in the mood,” he answered lamely.
“It’s okay,” he said, but Louis could hear the concern in Felix’s voice. Felix slid around in front of him and cupped Louis’s face with his free hand. “Bad dreams?”
“No.” Louis wondered for a moment what would happen if he brought reality into this house, if he’d confuse or scare this Felix. Then he realized it was just his projection anyway, so he decided not to worry. “Tigh’s a good leader, but it’s just not the same as it was.”
“Because we ran out of clues for the path to Earth.” Well, that resolved his question about reality, Louis thought. Felix stroked his hair. “I didn’t tell anyone this, but that last hint from Pythia about the third son of the house of the fallen being about a trinary star in that odd-shaped cluster? I completely pulled that one out of my ass.”
“Really?” Louis said. He always underestimated this Felix’s ability to surprise him. “It sounded good.”
“Yeah, well.”
Louis paused for a minute. “There’s something else. Something I need to tell you, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to yet.”
“Whenever you’re ready, I’m here,” Felix answered and kissed him lightly. Louis was grateful when Felix changed the subject. “Damn rain. Have I told you how hot you look when you’re out swimming?”
“What? You watch?”
“Of course,” Felix smirked.
“You could come join me sometime.”
“No.” Louis was surprised at how fast and resolute that answer was. “But...my favorite part...” Felix said between kisses as he worked from his cheek down his neck and to his shoulder, “...is how your being...in the sun so much...makes your freckles stand out.” Felix stopped and looked at him. “You’re still not in the mood, not really, are you?”
Louis shrugged. “Nope. Sorry.”
Felix looked slightly disappointed, but nothing more. “It’s okay. But I still think you should come back to bed.” He kissed Louis on the cheek and then started hopping back toward the bedroom. “It’s frakking freezing in this house, and you’re much nicer than a hot water bottle.”
Louis looked out the window. The rain was dying down, and it looked like the sun might even peek out from behind the clouds that day.
~~**~~**~~
Felix had woken him out of a dead sleep, so it didn’t quite register with Louis when he said, “I need you.”
Louis fumbled for the light switch near the bed. “What d’you need, baby? Need help getting to the head?”
He felt Felix’s hand close around his wrist and tug his arm down gently. “No. I need you, Louis,” he repeated, and though Louis would’ve understood it that time from the hoarse tone of his voice alone, what he did with his hands and the kiss that followed left no doubt.
Louis hadn’t realized just how hungry he’d been for this until it was happening-it had been so long-but they took things slow, made sure Felix was good and prepared first.
As Louis was getting into position over him, he felt Felix shiver. He wished he could turn on a light so he could gauge Felix’s expression, but Louis had a feeling that Felix had chosen to do this in the dead of night for a reason.
“Are you sure?” Louis asked. “It’s okay if you-”
“No. I’m sure. Please, Louis?”
“Okay.”
It was gentle and slow, but he was still afraid he was hurting Felix. But soon they found their rhythm, and Louis heard Felix almost chant below him, “Don’t stop, don’t stop-gods, Louis, don’t stop.” And then Louis couldn’t tell if the dull roar in his ears was his own blood pumping through him or the breakers pounding on the beach.
~~**~~**~~
“It might be a trap,” Louis said. He, Felix, Tigh, Dee, and President Adama were all huddled around the FTL station.
Felix shrugged. “At this point, what’ve we got to lose? I ran out of potential road signs to Earth a good two months ago.”
The President, apparently not noticing that he wasn’t the commanding officer, said, “All right. Let’s send a few Raptors to scout things out, and if they don’t see anything scary, we all go to the dot on this map that Kara’s Viper is pointing us towards.”
Tigh and Louis exchanged glances. To the others, it must have looked like two-risk averse officers worried about their men. In reality, it was because they knew Starbuck’s Viper was most definitely leading them to something. They’d both felt the tug, just as surely as Galen had, and had they not been on duty, they probably would have been down in the hangar deck with him.
Finally, Tigh cleared his throat. “You know your orders, Lieutenants. Calculate the jump, and call down to get two Raptors ready to go to Earth.”
~~**~~**~~
“Colonel, it’s so good to hear you,” D’Anna’s voice crackled over the speaker. Louis’s heart sank. Even when the Raptors had jumped back and said they’d found the missing rebel baseship orbiting above Earth, waiting for them, Louis had held out a sliver of hope that maybe they hadn’t completely succeeded in their mission at the Hub. Now, it was just a matter of time before it all fell apart.
And of course, because this was D’Anna they were dealing with, it turned out to be a very short amount of time.
“Do you have the Admiral and the President onboard with you?” rasped Tigh, just barely hanging on to his composure.
“Resting comfortably, as is Samuel Anders, who was very instrumental in helping us find this place, for what little it’s worth. But come now, Colonel, doesn’t a long-lost sister such as myself warrant a warmer reception from her fellow Cylon than that?”
Louis had only thought the CIC was silent before. There was absolutely no other sound but the static of the comm and his own heart pounding.
D’Anna continued, “Please give my regards to Specialist Tyrol, Lieutenant Hoshi, and Ms. Foster as well, Colonel. My brothers and sisters and I are anxious to see you.” The transmission died.
Louis looked across the CIC at Felix, and when he saw the look on his face, Louis wished he were dead.
~~**~~**~~
He had thought it was impossible, but somehow, Felix beat Louis back to their quarters. He was sitting in the chair, fingers dug into the armrests so hard that his knuckles were white, stare fixed resolutely on the far wall.
Louis was shaking. “Felix, I’m so sor-”
“Get out,” Felix said quietly through gritted teeth.
Look at me, please, just look at me, Louis silently pleaded. “Please-” His voice broke. “Please, if we could just talk for-”
“Get out!” Felix screamed like someone was ripping his body to pieces. He didn’t turn, didn’t even flick his gaze at him for one moment.
Louis managed to pull the hatch shut behind him and stumble down two corridors before he finally slumped against a wall. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t even breathe.
~~**~~**~~
Gray sand crunched beneath his boots, gray water lapped over them, and gray sky hung like a pall over the dead world.
“Should’ve guessed I’d find you here. You always did love the ocean,” Sam said from behind him.
~~**~~**~~
Louis slunk into Felix’s quarters when he thought Felix was on duty so he could get his things, so when he opened the hatch and saw Felix sitting on the bed, he muttered a quick apology and turned on his heel.
“Wait.”
Louis stopped, but he didn’t turn around.
“You didn’t tell me.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I’ve only regretted two things more in my life, and considering how long I’ve lived and how many horrible things I’ve done, that’s saying something.”
There was a long silence. Felix finally said, “Sit.”
Louis turned, and he saw Felix patting the bed beside him. He sank down on the proffered seat and held his head in his hands.
Just when Louis opened his mouth to try to form some kind of apology, Felix cut in, “I suspected.”
Louis’s head shot up. “What?”
“Yeah,” Felix continued. “After I came back from the Demetrius. At first, I just thought it was the meds, or that I was going crazy, but then when I started to feel better and it didn’t go away...”
“But, how...?”
“The projections, the ones you did at night, while we were sleeping.”
The pieces clicked together in Louis’s mind. “You were there? When you started doing things that I didn’t consciously think for you to do, I wondered...I think I even kind of hoped...”
“Yeah,” Felix said, glancing at Louis. “I couldn’t control the world like you could. But you obviously constructed it so the dream me had free will, so yeah, I was me. The rest of it was you, though. I never would’ve dreamed that world.” Felix looked up again and saw the hurt on Louis’s face. “No, I didn’t mean like that. When I was a kid, I nearly drowned. I hate the ocean. And...I would’ve dreamed that I hadn’t lost my leg, whereas you took reality but made sure I wasn’t in pain anymore.”
Louis’s head was spinning. “But projection-you’re human, aren’t you?”
“Humans can see Cylon projections, under certain circumstances,” Felix said. Louis could sense him tensing up. “I learned a little bit about it on New Caprica.”
Felix spoke in the tone of someone who wanted to close a discussion, so Louis didn’t press for details. Instead, he reached out tentatively and asked, “So projections, can you see them when we’re awake, too?”
“No!” Felix recoiled from Louis’s hand as if he’d been burnt. Louis drew back, more deeply hurt by that instinctive revulsion than anything else Felix could have done. Then Felix said, much more calmly, “You can, but it’s different, harder...it hurts.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay.” But the space between them on the bed felt so much wider than it had a few minutes ago.
Louis broke the ice this time. “I should’ve told you. I was going to, the night before you left for the Demetrius, but then I saw you and I couldn’t. And when you came back, I couldn’t do that to you...but then I just got comfortable in the lie, and I should’ve told you, even if I didn’t know it meant then.”
“Do you know what it means now?”
Louis nodded. “Walking around down there jogged some old memories. A few thousand years ago, I lived on that planet. Something went horribly wrong, everyone was wiped out, and the resurrection technology that we’d been working on managed to save the five of us.”
“I know you and Tigh are pretty close, but Tory? Anders?”
“It wasn’t just us,” Louis said, letting his eyes go out of focus and hoping that would keep him from projecting. “There were about twenty of us working on rediscovering resurrection. Sam and his wife were kind of spearheading it-she was a historiographer who’d run across some pretty interesting things about directing souls and building bodies, and she got Sam and the rest of us researchers to try to figure out how it could actually work. So maybe twenty of us, plus their families, went through the process of growing spare bodies and the rest. Turned out we just weren’t very good at it. It’s not like it was something we could test on humans before we needed it.”
“Gods,” Felix whispered. “So Kara...she was Anders’ wife then, too?”
Louis shook his head. “No, we didn’t have anything to do with Kara. She’s not ours. I guess we were re-discovering an ancient technology, so it’s always possible that someone out there never lost it... Anyway, no. It didn’t work for Celia. Only for us five.”
They sat in silence again for awhile, Louis waiting for Felix to ask the question he knew was coming. When it didn’t come, Louis finally blurted out, “I had kids.”
Before he even had time to think about what was happening, Felix had covered his hand with his. “Oh my gods, Louis.”
“A boy and a girl.” He swallowed hard. “Celia warned that all the texts said resurrection hadn’t worked on children who hadn’t reached puberty when they died-something about the hormones and all the growing being too complicated to make it work-but we thought we’d figured the trick out. We hadn’t.”
Louis could tell Felix didn’t know what to do. The right thing would have been to hold each other, but both of them knew they weren’t really back to that point yet. So, Felix just squeezed his fingers. “Were you...with anybody?” Felix asked tentatively.
“No. I was divorced, I think, or a widower...gods, I can’t remember what happened. So many things I can’t remember... I deserve it, I deserve all of it, for giving your Cylons resurrection the way we did, and for what they used it for to do to you.... Sam says we got cocky again, did something wrong with one named Daniel, and Cavil turned on us because of it-we really were trying to help, but-”
“The hell with it,” Felix muttered to himself, then pulled Louis into his arms. It didn’t fix anything, but it was something to hang on to as the world spun out of control.
When they finally let go of each other again, they didn’t move; they just sat together, side by side, on the bed.
“I don’t know how to even begin to handle all this,” Louis said, shaking his head.
“One day at a time,” Felix said simply. “Just like we always do.”
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Hoshi, Gaeta, Tigh, Tory, Sam, Tyrol, Dee, Athena, and a few others briefly drop in
Summary: Hearing that music was a nightmare, but being a Cylon gives Louis a means of escape, too.
Pairings: Gaeta/Hoshi
Notes: For puszysty's "Never Will I Ever" prompt, "cylon!Hoshi"
(Link to Part 1)
It never dawned on Louis how seldom Athena ate in the mess until he saw her alone at a table, picking at the oxymoron that was algae meatloaf. He sat down beside her.
“How are you doing?” Louis asked, wondering if it was too soon for that to be anything but a stupid question.
Athena bit her lip. “It’s hell, but we’re getting through it.”
“If you ever need anything-help with Hera, whatever, let me know.”
Athena smiled-just barely, but it was a smile. “Thanks. You know, I thank the gods for Hera-I don’t know if I could get through this without her-but sometimes it’s nice to just be able to sit and not worry about Jimmy Sullivan using her paints at daycare or making it to the potty in time or fighting to get her to eat the last three bites of her algae, you know?”
“Yeah,” Louis smiled to himself.
“Back on the Colonies...did you have kids?”
“Me? No,” Louis said. “Why do you ask?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, but there was a look in her eyes like she might have been lying.
“Where is she now-Hera, I mean?”
“Dee’s got her for a couple hours. Dee is her favorite of her many babysitters.”
“Hmm, I thought so,” Louis said between bites of algae. He tried to project the taste of actual meatloaf, but the slimy texture of the real food still cut through. “Dee showed me a picture of an elephant Hera drew for her. I was impressed; it was a damned good elephant.” That got a genuine smile out of Athena. “I was wondering, though: does she even know what an elephant is?”
“Actually, she does,” Athena said, just a hint of steel in her voice, not challenging, but just enough to preempt any potential opposition she thought Louis might consider making. “We love going to the zoo in projections.”
“So you can take her along in a projection with you?” Athena nodded. “Wow. Do you suppose it’s just because Hera’s part-Cylon, or do you think you could do it with humans, too?”
Athena set down her fork and smirked. “Hoshi, do you want to go to the zoo?”
Louis laughed, relieved that she wasn’t at all suspicious of him. “Well, I was thinking more along the lines of wouldn’t it be good for all the other little kids who are too young to remember life on the Colonies, but if that’s an invitation...”
Athena chuckled and shook her head. “Sorry, but it doesn’t work very well. I tried with Helo, and we never quite got the hang of it.” They both realized at the same time she’d spoken the name they’d been avoiding, but Athena beat Louis to changing the subject. “How’s Felix?”
“Good,” Louis answered quickly. “Well, relatively speaking. He’s back to working regular shifts, and-it’s gonna sound silly, but he did two laps between CIC and the infirmary yesterday and actually wasn’t an exhausted, crotchety bastard by the time he was done.”
“No, that’s not silly at all,” said Athena, taking a sip from her mug. “I counted yesterday a good day because I only had to change Hera’s clothes twice and she went to sleep without crying for her daddy.” She raised her mug. “To small victories.”
Louis clinked his mug with hers. “To small victories.”
~~**~~**~~
Louis wondered why he’d made it rain as he stood staring out the glass door to the deck, watching the wind tug and twist the white froth tipping the waves as driving rain beat down on the beach. He shivered and rubbed his arms. He also wondered why he hadn’t bothered to grab a sweatshirt when he’d gotten out of their warm bed, instead wandering around the house only in his pajama bottoms.
He felt a warm body pressed to his back as an arm slid around him. “What’re you doing up?” said Felix, kissing his neck lazily. He hadn’t bothered to put his prosthetic on and was only using his cane; that was why there was only one arm around him, Louis was certain. “You can’t go swimming today.”
“Yeah. I don’t know,” Louis mumbled.
“Then come back to bed.”
“Why?”
Felix smiled into Louis’s shoulder. “So I can have my wanton way with you, of course.”
Louis smiled, but he wasn’t breaking that rule again, no matter what was going on with this Felix in his head. “I guess I’m not in the mood,” he answered lamely.
“It’s okay,” he said, but Louis could hear the concern in Felix’s voice. Felix slid around in front of him and cupped Louis’s face with his free hand. “Bad dreams?”
“No.” Louis wondered for a moment what would happen if he brought reality into this house, if he’d confuse or scare this Felix. Then he realized it was just his projection anyway, so he decided not to worry. “Tigh’s a good leader, but it’s just not the same as it was.”
“Because we ran out of clues for the path to Earth.” Well, that resolved his question about reality, Louis thought. Felix stroked his hair. “I didn’t tell anyone this, but that last hint from Pythia about the third son of the house of the fallen being about a trinary star in that odd-shaped cluster? I completely pulled that one out of my ass.”
“Really?” Louis said. He always underestimated this Felix’s ability to surprise him. “It sounded good.”
“Yeah, well.”
Louis paused for a minute. “There’s something else. Something I need to tell you, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to yet.”
“Whenever you’re ready, I’m here,” Felix answered and kissed him lightly. Louis was grateful when Felix changed the subject. “Damn rain. Have I told you how hot you look when you’re out swimming?”
“What? You watch?”
“Of course,” Felix smirked.
“You could come join me sometime.”
“No.” Louis was surprised at how fast and resolute that answer was. “But...my favorite part...” Felix said between kisses as he worked from his cheek down his neck and to his shoulder, “...is how your being...in the sun so much...makes your freckles stand out.” Felix stopped and looked at him. “You’re still not in the mood, not really, are you?”
Louis shrugged. “Nope. Sorry.”
Felix looked slightly disappointed, but nothing more. “It’s okay. But I still think you should come back to bed.” He kissed Louis on the cheek and then started hopping back toward the bedroom. “It’s frakking freezing in this house, and you’re much nicer than a hot water bottle.”
Louis looked out the window. The rain was dying down, and it looked like the sun might even peek out from behind the clouds that day.
~~**~~**~~
Felix had woken him out of a dead sleep, so it didn’t quite register with Louis when he said, “I need you.”
Louis fumbled for the light switch near the bed. “What d’you need, baby? Need help getting to the head?”
He felt Felix’s hand close around his wrist and tug his arm down gently. “No. I need you, Louis,” he repeated, and though Louis would’ve understood it that time from the hoarse tone of his voice alone, what he did with his hands and the kiss that followed left no doubt.
Louis hadn’t realized just how hungry he’d been for this until it was happening-it had been so long-but they took things slow, made sure Felix was good and prepared first.
As Louis was getting into position over him, he felt Felix shiver. He wished he could turn on a light so he could gauge Felix’s expression, but Louis had a feeling that Felix had chosen to do this in the dead of night for a reason.
“Are you sure?” Louis asked. “It’s okay if you-”
“No. I’m sure. Please, Louis?”
“Okay.”
It was gentle and slow, but he was still afraid he was hurting Felix. But soon they found their rhythm, and Louis heard Felix almost chant below him, “Don’t stop, don’t stop-gods, Louis, don’t stop.” And then Louis couldn’t tell if the dull roar in his ears was his own blood pumping through him or the breakers pounding on the beach.
~~**~~**~~
“It might be a trap,” Louis said. He, Felix, Tigh, Dee, and President Adama were all huddled around the FTL station.
Felix shrugged. “At this point, what’ve we got to lose? I ran out of potential road signs to Earth a good two months ago.”
The President, apparently not noticing that he wasn’t the commanding officer, said, “All right. Let’s send a few Raptors to scout things out, and if they don’t see anything scary, we all go to the dot on this map that Kara’s Viper is pointing us towards.”
Tigh and Louis exchanged glances. To the others, it must have looked like two-risk averse officers worried about their men. In reality, it was because they knew Starbuck’s Viper was most definitely leading them to something. They’d both felt the tug, just as surely as Galen had, and had they not been on duty, they probably would have been down in the hangar deck with him.
Finally, Tigh cleared his throat. “You know your orders, Lieutenants. Calculate the jump, and call down to get two Raptors ready to go to Earth.”
~~**~~**~~
“Colonel, it’s so good to hear you,” D’Anna’s voice crackled over the speaker. Louis’s heart sank. Even when the Raptors had jumped back and said they’d found the missing rebel baseship orbiting above Earth, waiting for them, Louis had held out a sliver of hope that maybe they hadn’t completely succeeded in their mission at the Hub. Now, it was just a matter of time before it all fell apart.
And of course, because this was D’Anna they were dealing with, it turned out to be a very short amount of time.
“Do you have the Admiral and the President onboard with you?” rasped Tigh, just barely hanging on to his composure.
“Resting comfortably, as is Samuel Anders, who was very instrumental in helping us find this place, for what little it’s worth. But come now, Colonel, doesn’t a long-lost sister such as myself warrant a warmer reception from her fellow Cylon than that?”
Louis had only thought the CIC was silent before. There was absolutely no other sound but the static of the comm and his own heart pounding.
D’Anna continued, “Please give my regards to Specialist Tyrol, Lieutenant Hoshi, and Ms. Foster as well, Colonel. My brothers and sisters and I are anxious to see you.” The transmission died.
Louis looked across the CIC at Felix, and when he saw the look on his face, Louis wished he were dead.
~~**~~**~~
He had thought it was impossible, but somehow, Felix beat Louis back to their quarters. He was sitting in the chair, fingers dug into the armrests so hard that his knuckles were white, stare fixed resolutely on the far wall.
Louis was shaking. “Felix, I’m so sor-”
“Get out,” Felix said quietly through gritted teeth.
Look at me, please, just look at me, Louis silently pleaded. “Please-” His voice broke. “Please, if we could just talk for-”
“Get out!” Felix screamed like someone was ripping his body to pieces. He didn’t turn, didn’t even flick his gaze at him for one moment.
Louis managed to pull the hatch shut behind him and stumble down two corridors before he finally slumped against a wall. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t even breathe.
~~**~~**~~
Gray sand crunched beneath his boots, gray water lapped over them, and gray sky hung like a pall over the dead world.
“Should’ve guessed I’d find you here. You always did love the ocean,” Sam said from behind him.
~~**~~**~~
Louis slunk into Felix’s quarters when he thought Felix was on duty so he could get his things, so when he opened the hatch and saw Felix sitting on the bed, he muttered a quick apology and turned on his heel.
“Wait.”
Louis stopped, but he didn’t turn around.
“You didn’t tell me.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I’ve only regretted two things more in my life, and considering how long I’ve lived and how many horrible things I’ve done, that’s saying something.”
There was a long silence. Felix finally said, “Sit.”
Louis turned, and he saw Felix patting the bed beside him. He sank down on the proffered seat and held his head in his hands.
Just when Louis opened his mouth to try to form some kind of apology, Felix cut in, “I suspected.”
Louis’s head shot up. “What?”
“Yeah,” Felix continued. “After I came back from the Demetrius. At first, I just thought it was the meds, or that I was going crazy, but then when I started to feel better and it didn’t go away...”
“But, how...?”
“The projections, the ones you did at night, while we were sleeping.”
The pieces clicked together in Louis’s mind. “You were there? When you started doing things that I didn’t consciously think for you to do, I wondered...I think I even kind of hoped...”
“Yeah,” Felix said, glancing at Louis. “I couldn’t control the world like you could. But you obviously constructed it so the dream me had free will, so yeah, I was me. The rest of it was you, though. I never would’ve dreamed that world.” Felix looked up again and saw the hurt on Louis’s face. “No, I didn’t mean like that. When I was a kid, I nearly drowned. I hate the ocean. And...I would’ve dreamed that I hadn’t lost my leg, whereas you took reality but made sure I wasn’t in pain anymore.”
Louis’s head was spinning. “But projection-you’re human, aren’t you?”
“Humans can see Cylon projections, under certain circumstances,” Felix said. Louis could sense him tensing up. “I learned a little bit about it on New Caprica.”
Felix spoke in the tone of someone who wanted to close a discussion, so Louis didn’t press for details. Instead, he reached out tentatively and asked, “So projections, can you see them when we’re awake, too?”
“No!” Felix recoiled from Louis’s hand as if he’d been burnt. Louis drew back, more deeply hurt by that instinctive revulsion than anything else Felix could have done. Then Felix said, much more calmly, “You can, but it’s different, harder...it hurts.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay.” But the space between them on the bed felt so much wider than it had a few minutes ago.
Louis broke the ice this time. “I should’ve told you. I was going to, the night before you left for the Demetrius, but then I saw you and I couldn’t. And when you came back, I couldn’t do that to you...but then I just got comfortable in the lie, and I should’ve told you, even if I didn’t know it meant then.”
“Do you know what it means now?”
Louis nodded. “Walking around down there jogged some old memories. A few thousand years ago, I lived on that planet. Something went horribly wrong, everyone was wiped out, and the resurrection technology that we’d been working on managed to save the five of us.”
“I know you and Tigh are pretty close, but Tory? Anders?”
“It wasn’t just us,” Louis said, letting his eyes go out of focus and hoping that would keep him from projecting. “There were about twenty of us working on rediscovering resurrection. Sam and his wife were kind of spearheading it-she was a historiographer who’d run across some pretty interesting things about directing souls and building bodies, and she got Sam and the rest of us researchers to try to figure out how it could actually work. So maybe twenty of us, plus their families, went through the process of growing spare bodies and the rest. Turned out we just weren’t very good at it. It’s not like it was something we could test on humans before we needed it.”
“Gods,” Felix whispered. “So Kara...she was Anders’ wife then, too?”
Louis shook his head. “No, we didn’t have anything to do with Kara. She’s not ours. I guess we were re-discovering an ancient technology, so it’s always possible that someone out there never lost it... Anyway, no. It didn’t work for Celia. Only for us five.”
They sat in silence again for awhile, Louis waiting for Felix to ask the question he knew was coming. When it didn’t come, Louis finally blurted out, “I had kids.”
Before he even had time to think about what was happening, Felix had covered his hand with his. “Oh my gods, Louis.”
“A boy and a girl.” He swallowed hard. “Celia warned that all the texts said resurrection hadn’t worked on children who hadn’t reached puberty when they died-something about the hormones and all the growing being too complicated to make it work-but we thought we’d figured the trick out. We hadn’t.”
Louis could tell Felix didn’t know what to do. The right thing would have been to hold each other, but both of them knew they weren’t really back to that point yet. So, Felix just squeezed his fingers. “Were you...with anybody?” Felix asked tentatively.
“No. I was divorced, I think, or a widower...gods, I can’t remember what happened. So many things I can’t remember... I deserve it, I deserve all of it, for giving your Cylons resurrection the way we did, and for what they used it for to do to you.... Sam says we got cocky again, did something wrong with one named Daniel, and Cavil turned on us because of it-we really were trying to help, but-”
“The hell with it,” Felix muttered to himself, then pulled Louis into his arms. It didn’t fix anything, but it was something to hang on to as the world spun out of control.
When they finally let go of each other again, they didn’t move; they just sat together, side by side, on the bed.
“I don’t know how to even begin to handle all this,” Louis said, shaking his head.
“One day at a time,” Felix said simply. “Just like we always do.”