Duet of Silence - Chapter 19
Title: Duet of Silence
Chapter 19
Word Count: 1,950
Rating: T - M (for violence, but not much more than on TV)
Pairing: Adama/Roslin ... plus all the other dysfunctional relationships on the good ship Galactica.
Disclaimer: All belongs to the Lords of Kobol ... the only thing that's mine is my craziness and a couple of original characters.
Spoilers: To "Eye of Jupiter" ... everything from there is definitely AU.
Author's Note: Being rather a little nuts lately; you'll notice some poetry in Chapters 12 & 13 that will seem familiar to the astute reader. Most of it is by the incomparable Emily Dickinson, while the rest are my poor efforts. I hope as you read it, I've made it clear which parts are my scraelings. Enjoy.
Edit: January 31, 2007
Author's Note 2: This is what I get for posting when I'm exhausted and trying to make a deadline for work. On re-reading, I realised that I'd posted the wrong versions of Chapters 19 and 20. At first I was just going to leave them, but decided to make the edits in order to stay true to the story. Anyway, my apologies for being so long to update, but real life is a bitch sometimes.
Duet of Silence - Chapter 19
Tony rubbed his forehead tiredly as he stared at Laura.
"Oh boy ... Look Ms Roslin, I'm used to weird directions with those two--" The harried man pointed to the clearly amused twins. "I captain a living ship--something straight out of our science fiction--I've been kidnapped by aliens, frozen for thousands of years, been a slave on an alien world ... so I bloody well know weird! But what the hell am I supposed to do with "the Iron Queen's lair at the heart of the pomegranate"?"
Laura had to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing. "I'm sorry," she said, swallowing her urge to giggle in a hiccough, which made her side spasm in acute pain. "My sort of um ... talent doesn't exactly run to stellar navigation. I just try to interpret what I see in my visions as best as I can, and right now I know that they're waiting among the seeds of the pomegranate. If it's any consolation, I know you'll find it."
The twins had no compunction against laughing at their frustrated commander. Elisabeth patted his arm. "Don't worry Tony, we'll help her suss it out," she said giggling.
"That's right," Alexandra continued. "Mother senses that they're fairly close by and we have a rough direction; it's just a matter of narrowing it down. It might take a bit of time, but we'll do it."
A sudden thought banished Laura's giggles, sobering her right up. "We should get to work immediately though," she said. "I told the Admiral to only wait in the pomegranate for six days and then leave. The Cylons are still hunting the fleet and they can't afford to stay in one place for long."
Dead silence greeted her words. "Oh my sainted aunt," Tony said at last. "Ms Roslin, you've already been here nearly five days already--"
"And you were on the basestar for three and a half days," Boomer interjected and Laura's face paled.
"And Mother definitely needs to feed for at least another day and then it takes time to get ready--how long are your days?" he asked hope suddenly flaring in his eyes.
"Twenty-four standard Caprican hours," she said hoarsely. "On Caprica a day is approximately twenty-four hours and fifteen minutes, but that's compensated for at the summer and winter solstice to keep our clocks in time with our planet's rotation and orbit."
"Our day is also twenty-four hours," Tony said in obvious disappointment. "And I'm going to assume we both mean the same thing when we say an hour--sixty minutes."
Laura nodded. "That's right," she said hollowly. "Which means even if we do locate the pomegranate, Bill's already gone."
"Not necessarily," Boomer said and Laura's eyes flew to her face. "He kept looking for Starbuck that time she was shot down, even long after he knew her oxygen should have run out. I think that you're at least as important to him as Kara is--probably more so. And he was willing to wait for her even after Cylon raiders found the fleet; I'm betting that he'll wait for you."
Tony's voice broke the short silence. "All right, it's all we have to work with right now," he said briskly. "Beth, Alex--break out your maps and work with her to narrow down those co-ordinates as quickly as possible. And let's hope your admiral interprets your six days with the widest possible margin, Ms Roslin."
With a nod to her, he turned on his heel and left.
"All right," Jessica said. "Let's get started."
Elisabeth moved her chair closer to Laura's bed. Manipulating some controls on her chair; it projected a large transparent globe--about half a metre in diameter--which appeared to float above the bed, showing in three dimensions hard, brilliant stars like diamond dust against velvet black space. "These are the star formations for fifty light years in the direction Mother says your ship is located."
Laura stared at the star map with a sinking heart. Boomer hopped off her bed and came to stand next to Jessica. She leaned against the foot of Laura's bed as she, too, studied the map.
"None of this looks familiar, girls," Laura said in dismay. "It all looks wrong."
The twins looked at each other and Alexandra took a deep breath. "All right, wrong how?" she asked.
"In my visions, I see shapes, colours," Laura replied. "I see an actual pomegranate, red and ripe and full, cupped in the palm of a hand. But the skin is translucent and I can see through it to the seeds inside, and I also know there is a hardness at its heart--the Iron Queen. However, I can see Galactica floating there among the seeds."
"Ok, you two--add some colour," Jessica said, folding her arms across her chest. "Make the stars look the way they'd be to the human eye and highlight any sort of nebulosities, dust clouds or spatial phenomena--as if seen through a telescope or in an artist's rendition."
Slowly the sphere began to fill with swirling colours and gained depth; it reminded Laura of the night sky when she was a little girl and would sit with her father on the hill behind their house while he pointed out all the stars and constellations.
"We're here," Beth said, highlighting an area on the perimeter and rotating the sphere so that Laura could look into it from that perspective.
Laura studied the star formations again; a small, wispy sphere caught her attention. Without thinking, she reached into the illusion and cupped the sphere in her palm. "Here," she said hoarsely, watching with a sense of unreality as her vision came to pass. "This is the pomegranate."
Withdrawing her hand, she watched as the "pomegranate" swelled to fill the entire globe. At the heart was a white, diamond-hard star next to a small cluster of red stars. A few other stars sparkled in the background. Laura reached in again, unerringly, for a pair of blood-red stars that were very close together.
"They're here," she said.
#
Samuel Anders walked down the corridor towards life station lost in thought. Kara was unusually subdued since her rescue. Unlike the last time she’d been captured by the Cylons--her imprisonment on New Caprica had left her bitter and self-destructive for weeks--this time there didn’t seem to be any of that. And it worried him deeply.
Kara in pain got angry and lashed out; this Kara in pain was quiet ... too quiet. It was like there was an essential part of her missing. That fire and energy that had radiated from her, and attracted him like a moth to a flame, was gone from her eyes--from her soul. Gone was his cocksure Starbuck and while Starbuck was at the root of a lot of Kara’s problem, Sam recognised that she was also a source of strength for his wife and he didn’t want her to lose such an essential part of her.
Sam thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and prayed that it was only a passing shock, and the anger and fire was just beneath the surface waiting to lash out. Kara angry--that he knew how to handle. At least, he thought ruefully, Lee seemed intent on keeping his word and keeping his distance. That the other young man had made the first overture towards him with an apology for trying to come between him and Kara had surprised the hell out of Sam. And he was still suspicious of the younger Adama’s motives for this gesture and whether or not it was genuine, but he’d decided he would accept it at face value for now and focus on his marriage. Truth be told, he’d known within five minutes of meeting Lee Adama that Kara had a lot of complicated feelings for him and vice-versa. Normally, Sam didn’t do complicated--all his relationships had always been uncomplicated and straightforward with both he and his partner knowing exactly what was being offered. But Kara had drawn him in against his better judgement and he loved her. It was as simple as that.
A flash of red hair in front of him triggered a smile for that uncomplicated period of his life. Jean. He and Jean Barolay had been lovers after her divorce five years ago, and even after they’d stopped frakking, he’d still managed to keep her as a good friend. She was such a good friend that she had become one of Kara’s regular visitors and he was grateful for that. Not many women would go out of their way to stay friends with an ex-lover--muchless become friends with his wife.
Sam’s smile melted; he was about to call out to her when, instead of heading to the section of life station Kara occupied, Jean turned sharply to the left and down the aisle towards another section. Something in her posture immediately set the hair on the back of his neck on end and caused him to race after her.
She was just ducking into an isolation tent when he caught sight of her again; immediately he knew who ... what the small figure on the bed was.
“Jean!”
She froze; eloquent back to him, screaming. Unlike Kara, Jean’s way of dealing with pain was silence.
“Leave Sam,” she replied; her voice was flat ... dead. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“If it concerns you, it concerns me, Jean,” he said quietly as he walked towards her. “We Bucks have to stick together.”
She turned to face him. There was a gun in her hand. He stopped; it wasn’t pointed at him, but this was Jean, and she had cobra-like reflexes he'd come to depend on ... on and off the pyramid court.
Her face was cold, lifeless. “Not this time, Sam. Not this time.”
It had taken three months after the bombs fell on Caprica City for that expression to leave her face the last time, and even then, there was a gaping crater left behind that she filled with anger and vengeance and the need to kill every toaster she could.
“It won’t bring them back.”
“No.”
“Don’t do this,” he pleaded. “You’re not an assassin, Jean. You’re not a murderer.”
“Why not?” she flared; she brought the gun up to aim right between his eyes. “What's the frakking difference? We’ve killed hundreds of them! Thousands! What the frak is one more?”
“Because there’s someone who loves her.” He saw Cottle and a marine out of the corner of his eye and prayed that they would allow him to talk her down. “Because there are three people who risked everything to save her--the President may have given her life to save this child, Jean.” A shadow ghosted across her face and the gun lowered ever so slightly. “If there is one Cylon you can say is truly innocent, Hera is that one. Are you willing to kill an innocent? Could you live with yourself if you did?”
“I’m not living now!” she cried. “I’ve been dead for three and a half years, Sam.”
“I know,” he whispered remembering the laughter and joy he’d shared with her and her boys; teaching her seven-year-old, Toby, to play pyramid ... carrying four-year-old Jonas on his shoulders so he could put the ball in the goal. He walked over to her and folded her into his embrace. Sam felt the gun press into his back as she laid her head against his chest. He stroked her hair as her hot tears soaked through his shirt.
“But killing this child won’t bring them back, Jean. Nothing will bring them back.”
#
Chapter 20
Chapter 19
Word Count: 1,950
Rating: T - M (for violence, but not much more than on TV)
Pairing: Adama/Roslin ... plus all the other dysfunctional relationships on the good ship Galactica.
Disclaimer: All belongs to the Lords of Kobol ... the only thing that's mine is my craziness and a couple of original characters.
Spoilers: To "Eye of Jupiter" ... everything from there is definitely AU.
Author's Note: Being rather a little nuts lately; you'll notice some poetry in Chapters 12 & 13 that will seem familiar to the astute reader. Most of it is by the incomparable Emily Dickinson, while the rest are my poor efforts. I hope as you read it, I've made it clear which parts are my scraelings. Enjoy.
Edit: January 31, 2007
Author's Note 2: This is what I get for posting when I'm exhausted and trying to make a deadline for work. On re-reading, I realised that I'd posted the wrong versions of Chapters 19 and 20. At first I was just going to leave them, but decided to make the edits in order to stay true to the story. Anyway, my apologies for being so long to update, but real life is a bitch sometimes.
Duet of Silence - Chapter 19
Tony rubbed his forehead tiredly as he stared at Laura.
"Oh boy ... Look Ms Roslin, I'm used to weird directions with those two--" The harried man pointed to the clearly amused twins. "I captain a living ship--something straight out of our science fiction--I've been kidnapped by aliens, frozen for thousands of years, been a slave on an alien world ... so I bloody well know weird! But what the hell am I supposed to do with "the Iron Queen's lair at the heart of the pomegranate"?"
Laura had to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing. "I'm sorry," she said, swallowing her urge to giggle in a hiccough, which made her side spasm in acute pain. "My sort of um ... talent doesn't exactly run to stellar navigation. I just try to interpret what I see in my visions as best as I can, and right now I know that they're waiting among the seeds of the pomegranate. If it's any consolation, I know you'll find it."
The twins had no compunction against laughing at their frustrated commander. Elisabeth patted his arm. "Don't worry Tony, we'll help her suss it out," she said giggling.
"That's right," Alexandra continued. "Mother senses that they're fairly close by and we have a rough direction; it's just a matter of narrowing it down. It might take a bit of time, but we'll do it."
A sudden thought banished Laura's giggles, sobering her right up. "We should get to work immediately though," she said. "I told the Admiral to only wait in the pomegranate for six days and then leave. The Cylons are still hunting the fleet and they can't afford to stay in one place for long."
Dead silence greeted her words. "Oh my sainted aunt," Tony said at last. "Ms Roslin, you've already been here nearly five days already--"
"And you were on the basestar for three and a half days," Boomer interjected and Laura's face paled.
"And Mother definitely needs to feed for at least another day and then it takes time to get ready--how long are your days?" he asked hope suddenly flaring in his eyes.
"Twenty-four standard Caprican hours," she said hoarsely. "On Caprica a day is approximately twenty-four hours and fifteen minutes, but that's compensated for at the summer and winter solstice to keep our clocks in time with our planet's rotation and orbit."
"Our day is also twenty-four hours," Tony said in obvious disappointment. "And I'm going to assume we both mean the same thing when we say an hour--sixty minutes."
Laura nodded. "That's right," she said hollowly. "Which means even if we do locate the pomegranate, Bill's already gone."
"Not necessarily," Boomer said and Laura's eyes flew to her face. "He kept looking for Starbuck that time she was shot down, even long after he knew her oxygen should have run out. I think that you're at least as important to him as Kara is--probably more so. And he was willing to wait for her even after Cylon raiders found the fleet; I'm betting that he'll wait for you."
Tony's voice broke the short silence. "All right, it's all we have to work with right now," he said briskly. "Beth, Alex--break out your maps and work with her to narrow down those co-ordinates as quickly as possible. And let's hope your admiral interprets your six days with the widest possible margin, Ms Roslin."
With a nod to her, he turned on his heel and left.
"All right," Jessica said. "Let's get started."
Elisabeth moved her chair closer to Laura's bed. Manipulating some controls on her chair; it projected a large transparent globe--about half a metre in diameter--which appeared to float above the bed, showing in three dimensions hard, brilliant stars like diamond dust against velvet black space. "These are the star formations for fifty light years in the direction Mother says your ship is located."
Laura stared at the star map with a sinking heart. Boomer hopped off her bed and came to stand next to Jessica. She leaned against the foot of Laura's bed as she, too, studied the map.
"None of this looks familiar, girls," Laura said in dismay. "It all looks wrong."
The twins looked at each other and Alexandra took a deep breath. "All right, wrong how?" she asked.
"In my visions, I see shapes, colours," Laura replied. "I see an actual pomegranate, red and ripe and full, cupped in the palm of a hand. But the skin is translucent and I can see through it to the seeds inside, and I also know there is a hardness at its heart--the Iron Queen. However, I can see Galactica floating there among the seeds."
"Ok, you two--add some colour," Jessica said, folding her arms across her chest. "Make the stars look the way they'd be to the human eye and highlight any sort of nebulosities, dust clouds or spatial phenomena--as if seen through a telescope or in an artist's rendition."
Slowly the sphere began to fill with swirling colours and gained depth; it reminded Laura of the night sky when she was a little girl and would sit with her father on the hill behind their house while he pointed out all the stars and constellations.
"We're here," Beth said, highlighting an area on the perimeter and rotating the sphere so that Laura could look into it from that perspective.
Laura studied the star formations again; a small, wispy sphere caught her attention. Without thinking, she reached into the illusion and cupped the sphere in her palm. "Here," she said hoarsely, watching with a sense of unreality as her vision came to pass. "This is the pomegranate."
Withdrawing her hand, she watched as the "pomegranate" swelled to fill the entire globe. At the heart was a white, diamond-hard star next to a small cluster of red stars. A few other stars sparkled in the background. Laura reached in again, unerringly, for a pair of blood-red stars that were very close together.
"They're here," she said.
#
Samuel Anders walked down the corridor towards life station lost in thought. Kara was unusually subdued since her rescue. Unlike the last time she’d been captured by the Cylons--her imprisonment on New Caprica had left her bitter and self-destructive for weeks--this time there didn’t seem to be any of that. And it worried him deeply.
Kara in pain got angry and lashed out; this Kara in pain was quiet ... too quiet. It was like there was an essential part of her missing. That fire and energy that had radiated from her, and attracted him like a moth to a flame, was gone from her eyes--from her soul. Gone was his cocksure Starbuck and while Starbuck was at the root of a lot of Kara’s problem, Sam recognised that she was also a source of strength for his wife and he didn’t want her to lose such an essential part of her.
Sam thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and prayed that it was only a passing shock, and the anger and fire was just beneath the surface waiting to lash out. Kara angry--that he knew how to handle. At least, he thought ruefully, Lee seemed intent on keeping his word and keeping his distance. That the other young man had made the first overture towards him with an apology for trying to come between him and Kara had surprised the hell out of Sam. And he was still suspicious of the younger Adama’s motives for this gesture and whether or not it was genuine, but he’d decided he would accept it at face value for now and focus on his marriage. Truth be told, he’d known within five minutes of meeting Lee Adama that Kara had a lot of complicated feelings for him and vice-versa. Normally, Sam didn’t do complicated--all his relationships had always been uncomplicated and straightforward with both he and his partner knowing exactly what was being offered. But Kara had drawn him in against his better judgement and he loved her. It was as simple as that.
A flash of red hair in front of him triggered a smile for that uncomplicated period of his life. Jean. He and Jean Barolay had been lovers after her divorce five years ago, and even after they’d stopped frakking, he’d still managed to keep her as a good friend. She was such a good friend that she had become one of Kara’s regular visitors and he was grateful for that. Not many women would go out of their way to stay friends with an ex-lover--muchless become friends with his wife.
Sam’s smile melted; he was about to call out to her when, instead of heading to the section of life station Kara occupied, Jean turned sharply to the left and down the aisle towards another section. Something in her posture immediately set the hair on the back of his neck on end and caused him to race after her.
She was just ducking into an isolation tent when he caught sight of her again; immediately he knew who ... what the small figure on the bed was.
“Jean!”
She froze; eloquent back to him, screaming. Unlike Kara, Jean’s way of dealing with pain was silence.
“Leave Sam,” she replied; her voice was flat ... dead. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“If it concerns you, it concerns me, Jean,” he said quietly as he walked towards her. “We Bucks have to stick together.”
She turned to face him. There was a gun in her hand. He stopped; it wasn’t pointed at him, but this was Jean, and she had cobra-like reflexes he'd come to depend on ... on and off the pyramid court.
Her face was cold, lifeless. “Not this time, Sam. Not this time.”
It had taken three months after the bombs fell on Caprica City for that expression to leave her face the last time, and even then, there was a gaping crater left behind that she filled with anger and vengeance and the need to kill every toaster she could.
“It won’t bring them back.”
“No.”
“Don’t do this,” he pleaded. “You’re not an assassin, Jean. You’re not a murderer.”
“Why not?” she flared; she brought the gun up to aim right between his eyes. “What's the frakking difference? We’ve killed hundreds of them! Thousands! What the frak is one more?”
“Because there’s someone who loves her.” He saw Cottle and a marine out of the corner of his eye and prayed that they would allow him to talk her down. “Because there are three people who risked everything to save her--the President may have given her life to save this child, Jean.” A shadow ghosted across her face and the gun lowered ever so slightly. “If there is one Cylon you can say is truly innocent, Hera is that one. Are you willing to kill an innocent? Could you live with yourself if you did?”
“I’m not living now!” she cried. “I’ve been dead for three and a half years, Sam.”
“I know,” he whispered remembering the laughter and joy he’d shared with her and her boys; teaching her seven-year-old, Toby, to play pyramid ... carrying four-year-old Jonas on his shoulders so he could put the ball in the goal. He walked over to her and folded her into his embrace. Sam felt the gun press into his back as she laid her head against his chest. He stroked her hair as her hot tears soaked through his shirt.
“But killing this child won’t bring them back, Jean. Nothing will bring them back.”
#
Chapter 20