Companion Pieces, Gazing Skyward (Helo)
Series Title: Companion Pieces
Segment Title: Gazing Skyward (Helo)
Author: kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Helo, Boomer, Athena, Hera
Pairings: Helo/Athena
Series Summary: A series of mirror-images. Likely to be some angst.
Segment Summary: Helo says good-bye to two Raptors at opposite ends of his journey.
Spoilers: Miniseries through Series Finale
Author's Note: This is really more a cycle of fanfics than a series. Each one stands on its own as a story, and they can be read in any order. However, the storytelling structure is the same in each, so they do share some commonalities.
The title "Companion Pieces" actually has a double meaning. Each fic in the cycle is actually two stories with a common theme; for Helo, it's saying goodbye to two Raptors in two very different though eerily similar situations. The cycle as a whole itself is also a companion piece to "Farewell Symphony,", the remix I wrote of trovia 's excellent " Recapitulation." These are stories that I cut from "'Farewell' Symphony" when I decided to streamline the structure, but I liked them a lot, so I figured they deserved to be posted as freestanding stories themselves. So, these stories are essentially a part of the same 'verse as "Farewell Symphony," though both stand alone in and of themselves and can be read independently.
Links to the rest of the "Companion Pieces" Cycle:
After the Good-Night Kiss, Dee
Dreams for a New World, Gaeta (coming soon)
Love and Bullets, Tyrol
Gazing Skyward
Helo knew that for the rest of his life, he’d never be able to forget the look on Boomer’s face as she pressed her hand to the windscreen of the Raptor, then turned away quickly to check an instrument but really so she wouldn’t have to see his face as she left him on Caprica. The worst thing-even worse than the very real possibility that ‘the rest of his life’ would be measured in days-was that he knew that image would be forever mingled in his mind with the smell of the smoke that rose from the muzzle of his sidearm and of the blood that spilled from the dying, desperate body crumpled beside him.
Helo and the crowd watched the skies until Boomer’s bird was no more than a black dot in a field of blue, then nothing at all. When he finally lowered his gaze, he was surprised to find that no one in the crowd had stepped forward to help the man who’d hastened his death by trying to cling to the Raptor wing. Helo kept his gun in his hand, though not raised, and that seemed to be enough to keep the mob at bay for now. They all stood in frozen, wordless shock in a semi-circle around him, looking for him to tell them what would happen next. Helo had nothing to offer them, so he just stood his ground.
“It’s not fair!” a woman screamed, breaking the silence and throwing a rock uselessly at the spot where the Raptor had been.
She was wrong. Why else would they have gone to the trouble of drawing lots? It was fair, as fair as could be. It was just that at times like this, even fair felt so very wrong.
Or at least, it had been fair until Helo had given up his seat to Gaius Baltar. But really, it hadn’t been fair that he had automatically gotten a seat, just because he’d shown up with the ride, Helo had reasoned. Sharon needed to pilot, but Helo’s seat could be filled by anyone; it might as well go to one of the smartest men alive. Helo had made the switch as fast as he could, so Sharon and the crowd wouldn’t have time to process how he’d broken his own rule.
What little order and restraint the crowd had maintained when there had been hope of getting off Caprica collapsed a few minutes after the Raptor faded from sight. One woman spat on him. A college-aged kid grabbed him by the arm and begged Helo to tell him that someone would send more transports, now that they knew there were survivors here. After Helo brushed him off with some platitude so wishy-washy that he felt a little ashamed for even having said it, the crowd stopped looking to him for answers and using him as a target for blame. Some people gathered into nervous little clumps, discussing whether they should stay there or look for help elsewhere, but most just gave in, screaming at nothing or slumping to the ground in tears.
Helo knew he had to get going. He only had enough radiation meds to last him for a few days, and only a few protein bars-not enough to share of either. His only decent chance (and maybe even for him it wasn’t that decent of a chance, he thought, looking down at the bloodstained cloth knotted around the wound in his leg) was to get to somewhere with transport-a spaceport, a military base, something-and pray there was a small craft with a jump drive left behind. And then-he wasn’t sure. Meet up with a battlestar, if he could find one. If not, Libron was pretty far away from Caprica this time of year; if Caprica was the center of the attack, that made Libron the most likely planet to not have been hit, the one the Fleet would’ve had the best chance of falling back to and protecting. That settled it. He’d make a run for Libron.
The familiar sound of a fist cracking against a jaw snapped Helo’s attention back to the crowd. A fight had broken out-Gods only knew over what-and it was growing; a half-dozen people were actually throwing punches, and the others pressed in closer and closer to watch. Helo saw his chance. He knew if he ran or even strode with purpose he’d draw attention, so he just wandered away, pretending to examine his sidearm as he walked in an ever-widening circle around the landing site. Eventually, he found himself far away enough that the arc of his path could flatten into a straight line. The other survivors were nothing more than brightly colored dots marring the rolling hills, snatches of their screams catching up with him when the wind flicked momentarily in the right direction.
Helo had walked for a good three hours before he realized he was being followed. He cursed to himself. He hadn’t noticed because he hadn’t been paying attention, not because his pursuers were even trying to hide from him. He stopped in the shade of a tree and took his field glasses out of his flightsuit pocket to get a better look at the black dot that was slowly but surely trailing him across the plain.
They were far enough away that the field glasses didn’t resolve anything identifiable about them-no discernable clothing or hair, no faces-but he could tell there were three figures moving together. The one in the middle moved awkwardly. He watched for a minute before he figured out the middle one was injured, and the other two were helping him or her hobble along. That’s why they were so far away. They’d probably started out not too far behind him, then had slowly fallen back as the day dragged on. They wouldn’t catch him today, but they would overtake him when Helo finally stopped to sleep.
He thought about the protein bars tucked into his flight suit, and the small case of radiation meds resting against his thigh, inside his pants pocket. He scanned the horizon and saw the edge of the thick forest of Attica Colonial Park. It would take him a long way out of the way of his route to Delphi, and Gods only knew what else he might run into hiding in there, but it had to be done.
Five hours later, Helo was perched in an old oak tree, leaning his head back against its trunk and staring out through the leaves as he sank the needle of his first dose of radiation meds into his neck. It stung like hell. He put the empty syringe back in the tin.
There was nothing to see this deep in the forest but more trees, more leaves. If they hadn’t found him by now, they weren’t going to find him, Helo knew. He wondered at what point he had lost them, whether they were still looking for him on the plains, or if they’d followed him into the park and gotten lost, or if they’d given up and struck off in another direction entirely. He knew it would end the same for them any of those ways, but for some reason, the answer still mattered to him.
If it had been only one person, I would’ve waited for them, Helo tried to reason with himself. Maybe if they had all been uninjured, but the one in the middle would have slowed us down.... Maybe if-
He’d watched his fellow pilots die, helpless, in a barrage from the Cylons. He’d heard the panicked reports of fire and carnage on the wireless as he’d spun the dial, searching for help, when Sharon made the emergency landing. He’d seen the mushroom clouds over Caprica City, Antioch, Miletus, felt in his gut that Leonis and his family and his friends and almost everyone he’d ever known had fared no better. Under the weight of all of that, he’d still been able to struggle to his feet, school his expression, and keep walking. But a nameless, faceless black dot alone on a vast green plain reduced him to hunching in on himself as uncontrollable sobs wracked his body.
~~**~~**~~
“Look! She’s waving at you, Hera. Say ‘bye-bye’ to Marcia. Bye-bye!”
Hera copied her mother and waved at Showboat as the Raptor’s engine thrummed to life. Helo shaded his eyes with one hand and waved with the other, too. Showboat gave a smile and a quick salute before turning her attention to the flight controls and lifting off. Helo, Athena, and Hera watched the Raptor fly away and continued staring in that direction long after it faded from view.
Hera bent her head back as far as it would go and gazed straight up at the sky. They’d never told her not to stare into the sun. There had never been any call for such a warning before. It was the sort of thing Athena would usually think of first, but her eyes were still on where the Raptor had disappeared from sight. “Our last flight,” she murmured thoughtfully.
Helo was a bit taken aback. His wife wasn’t normally a sentimental person, but at a time like this, nobody could help but be a little nostalgic.
“Yeah,” Helo breathed, “but it was a good way to go out, you and me being a team again.”
Athena smiled back at him. Showboat had let Athena pilot the Raptor that brought them here while Helo took one last turn in the ECO’s chair. Helo knew what he said wasn’t completely accurate, since it had been Boomer he’d flown with for two years, and by the time Athena earned her wings, Helo had been a senior Raptor pilot in his own right. The sentiment was still fitting.
“Viper! Viper! Viper! Viper!” Hera held out her arms straight, like wings, and bounced up and down in front of her father.
“You wanna fly, huh, Hera?” asked Helo. Hera nodded and continued bouncing. “Okay!”
Helo set down his walking stick and scooped his daughter up into his arms. Athena made buzzing sounds while Helo spun Hera around in a circle, her arms still outstretched.
“Faster!” Hera squealed.
“’Fraid that’s as fast as Daddy can go right now, sweetie. He’s got a busted thruster,” Athena said, taking Hera from Helo’s arms when she saw the pained expression on his face.
“She’s got flying in her blood,” Helo said, ruffling Hera’s curls. And that was the moment all the implications of this new world finally sank in.
As much as he loved the Old Man, Helo wasn’t like him. He didn’t expect his children to follow in his or Athena’s footsteps. If Hera had wanted to become a pilot someday, he would’ve been proud, but he would’ve been proud no matter what his daughter chose to do with her life. It was just now dawning on Helo that his daughter wasn’t going to have the chance to grow up to become anything besides older.
Some of the others had visions of hanging on to civilization, of maintaining specialized skills and division of labor, but Helo knew better. Even if they managed to cling to the old ways for a little while, if Hera at least got the choice of becoming a hunter or a farmer or a builder, even those divisions would fade away as life got harder and the people who remembered life on the Colonies died off. If they’d been fighting to keep the Twelve Colonies of Kobol alive, they’d lost.
Hera’s laugh interrupted Helo’s reverie. Athena and Hera sat cross-legged on the ground. Athena was trying to show Hera how to make a mud pie, but the dirt was too dry, and Hera was more delighted with how digging made her fingers turn brown than anything.
Maybe it was enough that they had a future at all, Helo thought. After all, there had been plenty of days he hadn’t believed they’d even get to have that much.
Segment Title: Gazing Skyward (Helo)
Author: kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Helo, Boomer, Athena, Hera
Pairings: Helo/Athena
Series Summary: A series of mirror-images. Likely to be some angst.
Segment Summary: Helo says good-bye to two Raptors at opposite ends of his journey.
Spoilers: Miniseries through Series Finale
Author's Note: This is really more a cycle of fanfics than a series. Each one stands on its own as a story, and they can be read in any order. However, the storytelling structure is the same in each, so they do share some commonalities.
The title "Companion Pieces" actually has a double meaning. Each fic in the cycle is actually two stories with a common theme; for Helo, it's saying goodbye to two Raptors in two very different though eerily similar situations. The cycle as a whole itself is also a companion piece to "Farewell Symphony,", the remix I wrote of trovia 's excellent " Recapitulation." These are stories that I cut from "'Farewell' Symphony" when I decided to streamline the structure, but I liked them a lot, so I figured they deserved to be posted as freestanding stories themselves. So, these stories are essentially a part of the same 'verse as "Farewell Symphony," though both stand alone in and of themselves and can be read independently.
Links to the rest of the "Companion Pieces" Cycle:
After the Good-Night Kiss, Dee
Dreams for a New World, Gaeta (coming soon)
Love and Bullets, Tyrol
Gazing Skyward
Helo knew that for the rest of his life, he’d never be able to forget the look on Boomer’s face as she pressed her hand to the windscreen of the Raptor, then turned away quickly to check an instrument but really so she wouldn’t have to see his face as she left him on Caprica. The worst thing-even worse than the very real possibility that ‘the rest of his life’ would be measured in days-was that he knew that image would be forever mingled in his mind with the smell of the smoke that rose from the muzzle of his sidearm and of the blood that spilled from the dying, desperate body crumpled beside him.
Helo and the crowd watched the skies until Boomer’s bird was no more than a black dot in a field of blue, then nothing at all. When he finally lowered his gaze, he was surprised to find that no one in the crowd had stepped forward to help the man who’d hastened his death by trying to cling to the Raptor wing. Helo kept his gun in his hand, though not raised, and that seemed to be enough to keep the mob at bay for now. They all stood in frozen, wordless shock in a semi-circle around him, looking for him to tell them what would happen next. Helo had nothing to offer them, so he just stood his ground.
“It’s not fair!” a woman screamed, breaking the silence and throwing a rock uselessly at the spot where the Raptor had been.
She was wrong. Why else would they have gone to the trouble of drawing lots? It was fair, as fair as could be. It was just that at times like this, even fair felt so very wrong.
Or at least, it had been fair until Helo had given up his seat to Gaius Baltar. But really, it hadn’t been fair that he had automatically gotten a seat, just because he’d shown up with the ride, Helo had reasoned. Sharon needed to pilot, but Helo’s seat could be filled by anyone; it might as well go to one of the smartest men alive. Helo had made the switch as fast as he could, so Sharon and the crowd wouldn’t have time to process how he’d broken his own rule.
What little order and restraint the crowd had maintained when there had been hope of getting off Caprica collapsed a few minutes after the Raptor faded from sight. One woman spat on him. A college-aged kid grabbed him by the arm and begged Helo to tell him that someone would send more transports, now that they knew there were survivors here. After Helo brushed him off with some platitude so wishy-washy that he felt a little ashamed for even having said it, the crowd stopped looking to him for answers and using him as a target for blame. Some people gathered into nervous little clumps, discussing whether they should stay there or look for help elsewhere, but most just gave in, screaming at nothing or slumping to the ground in tears.
Helo knew he had to get going. He only had enough radiation meds to last him for a few days, and only a few protein bars-not enough to share of either. His only decent chance (and maybe even for him it wasn’t that decent of a chance, he thought, looking down at the bloodstained cloth knotted around the wound in his leg) was to get to somewhere with transport-a spaceport, a military base, something-and pray there was a small craft with a jump drive left behind. And then-he wasn’t sure. Meet up with a battlestar, if he could find one. If not, Libron was pretty far away from Caprica this time of year; if Caprica was the center of the attack, that made Libron the most likely planet to not have been hit, the one the Fleet would’ve had the best chance of falling back to and protecting. That settled it. He’d make a run for Libron.
The familiar sound of a fist cracking against a jaw snapped Helo’s attention back to the crowd. A fight had broken out-Gods only knew over what-and it was growing; a half-dozen people were actually throwing punches, and the others pressed in closer and closer to watch. Helo saw his chance. He knew if he ran or even strode with purpose he’d draw attention, so he just wandered away, pretending to examine his sidearm as he walked in an ever-widening circle around the landing site. Eventually, he found himself far away enough that the arc of his path could flatten into a straight line. The other survivors were nothing more than brightly colored dots marring the rolling hills, snatches of their screams catching up with him when the wind flicked momentarily in the right direction.
Helo had walked for a good three hours before he realized he was being followed. He cursed to himself. He hadn’t noticed because he hadn’t been paying attention, not because his pursuers were even trying to hide from him. He stopped in the shade of a tree and took his field glasses out of his flightsuit pocket to get a better look at the black dot that was slowly but surely trailing him across the plain.
They were far enough away that the field glasses didn’t resolve anything identifiable about them-no discernable clothing or hair, no faces-but he could tell there were three figures moving together. The one in the middle moved awkwardly. He watched for a minute before he figured out the middle one was injured, and the other two were helping him or her hobble along. That’s why they were so far away. They’d probably started out not too far behind him, then had slowly fallen back as the day dragged on. They wouldn’t catch him today, but they would overtake him when Helo finally stopped to sleep.
He thought about the protein bars tucked into his flight suit, and the small case of radiation meds resting against his thigh, inside his pants pocket. He scanned the horizon and saw the edge of the thick forest of Attica Colonial Park. It would take him a long way out of the way of his route to Delphi, and Gods only knew what else he might run into hiding in there, but it had to be done.
Five hours later, Helo was perched in an old oak tree, leaning his head back against its trunk and staring out through the leaves as he sank the needle of his first dose of radiation meds into his neck. It stung like hell. He put the empty syringe back in the tin.
There was nothing to see this deep in the forest but more trees, more leaves. If they hadn’t found him by now, they weren’t going to find him, Helo knew. He wondered at what point he had lost them, whether they were still looking for him on the plains, or if they’d followed him into the park and gotten lost, or if they’d given up and struck off in another direction entirely. He knew it would end the same for them any of those ways, but for some reason, the answer still mattered to him.
If it had been only one person, I would’ve waited for them, Helo tried to reason with himself. Maybe if they had all been uninjured, but the one in the middle would have slowed us down.... Maybe if-
He’d watched his fellow pilots die, helpless, in a barrage from the Cylons. He’d heard the panicked reports of fire and carnage on the wireless as he’d spun the dial, searching for help, when Sharon made the emergency landing. He’d seen the mushroom clouds over Caprica City, Antioch, Miletus, felt in his gut that Leonis and his family and his friends and almost everyone he’d ever known had fared no better. Under the weight of all of that, he’d still been able to struggle to his feet, school his expression, and keep walking. But a nameless, faceless black dot alone on a vast green plain reduced him to hunching in on himself as uncontrollable sobs wracked his body.
~~**~~**~~
“Look! She’s waving at you, Hera. Say ‘bye-bye’ to Marcia. Bye-bye!”
Hera copied her mother and waved at Showboat as the Raptor’s engine thrummed to life. Helo shaded his eyes with one hand and waved with the other, too. Showboat gave a smile and a quick salute before turning her attention to the flight controls and lifting off. Helo, Athena, and Hera watched the Raptor fly away and continued staring in that direction long after it faded from view.
Hera bent her head back as far as it would go and gazed straight up at the sky. They’d never told her not to stare into the sun. There had never been any call for such a warning before. It was the sort of thing Athena would usually think of first, but her eyes were still on where the Raptor had disappeared from sight. “Our last flight,” she murmured thoughtfully.
Helo was a bit taken aback. His wife wasn’t normally a sentimental person, but at a time like this, nobody could help but be a little nostalgic.
“Yeah,” Helo breathed, “but it was a good way to go out, you and me being a team again.”
Athena smiled back at him. Showboat had let Athena pilot the Raptor that brought them here while Helo took one last turn in the ECO’s chair. Helo knew what he said wasn’t completely accurate, since it had been Boomer he’d flown with for two years, and by the time Athena earned her wings, Helo had been a senior Raptor pilot in his own right. The sentiment was still fitting.
“Viper! Viper! Viper! Viper!” Hera held out her arms straight, like wings, and bounced up and down in front of her father.
“You wanna fly, huh, Hera?” asked Helo. Hera nodded and continued bouncing. “Okay!”
Helo set down his walking stick and scooped his daughter up into his arms. Athena made buzzing sounds while Helo spun Hera around in a circle, her arms still outstretched.
“Faster!” Hera squealed.
“’Fraid that’s as fast as Daddy can go right now, sweetie. He’s got a busted thruster,” Athena said, taking Hera from Helo’s arms when she saw the pained expression on his face.
“She’s got flying in her blood,” Helo said, ruffling Hera’s curls. And that was the moment all the implications of this new world finally sank in.
As much as he loved the Old Man, Helo wasn’t like him. He didn’t expect his children to follow in his or Athena’s footsteps. If Hera had wanted to become a pilot someday, he would’ve been proud, but he would’ve been proud no matter what his daughter chose to do with her life. It was just now dawning on Helo that his daughter wasn’t going to have the chance to grow up to become anything besides older.
Some of the others had visions of hanging on to civilization, of maintaining specialized skills and division of labor, but Helo knew better. Even if they managed to cling to the old ways for a little while, if Hera at least got the choice of becoming a hunter or a farmer or a builder, even those divisions would fade away as life got harder and the people who remembered life on the Colonies died off. If they’d been fighting to keep the Twelve Colonies of Kobol alive, they’d lost.
Hera’s laugh interrupted Helo’s reverie. Athena and Hera sat cross-legged on the ground. Athena was trying to show Hera how to make a mud pie, but the dirt was too dry, and Hera was more delighted with how digging made her fingers turn brown than anything.
Maybe it was enough that they had a future at all, Helo thought. After all, there had been plenty of days he hadn’t believed they’d even get to have that much.