Fic: The Potluck Confederacy | BSG | Roslin/Tory | PG-13
Submitted to the first getyourtoaster ficathon, Roslin round, written for sheepfairy
****
“We should have had him killed,” she says. Despite the fact that Tory isn’t exactly sober, I know she is serious. Despite the fact that I am completely sober, I agree with her. “The logistics would have been a challenge,” she continues, “He was so paranoid. I mean, getting him alone in those last days…” Her voice trails away. She leans back against my small couch, wraps the throw tighter around her shoulders. Before the election, she does not say, before we tried to subvert the will of the weakened, exhausted, hopeful citizenry in the name of sound governance. I try not to dwell on that bit myself. Back to the happier topic of assassination.
“Challenging, yes, but not impossible,” I add. “There were people he trusted, or at least people he would have let get close.” Close enough to put a gun in his mouth and splatter his diseased genius across a pillow. Kara Thrace would have done it for me, I believe, had I explained my suspicions, my memories of Caprica and Gaius Baltar’s slim platinum beast - the Cylon who devoured his cock and brain and the entire Colonial security network in the most catastrophic episode of fellatio in human history. I do not doubt that Kara would have murdered better men than the Vice President to avert this wretched outcome. As it happened, her president couldn’t even look Bill Adama in the eye and tell a decent lie.
What is the offspring of honor and fear? Dignified misery. And so here we are, with our chins up, spines stiff, laboring under the velvet yoke of Cylon oppression. We are no more than exiled slaves; almost certainly, we have fared worse than even the prodigal thirteenth tribe. This desolate gray rock is no paradise, no place for the children of Kobol. Temperatures are harsh and there is no warmth on the horizon. Here, we have only a sliding scale of winter, a continuum of cold.
My tent is not warm, but it is warmer than Tory’s, warmer than most here. Galen Tyrol himself took time to lash it down securely, to insulate it as best he could with our meager materials. When I apologized that I had little to offer by way of payment, he waved me off and smiled. I remember that smile from the Blackbird’s naming ceremony. It marked him as a man whose pride is drawn from his work. Who would have predicted that the humble engineer would become a passionate leader of men, hefting the burdens of power and influence and all the accompanying misery and responsibility. People trust him, and that carries its own burden of expectation. Needless to say, the chief is usually in my prayers.
“Assassination is the most efficient instrument of political change,” Tory pronounces, in what only seems like a non-sequitur.
I smile, glad to be rescued from my dreary thoughts and tossed back into our recurring game of Who the Frak Said That? I have to think on it for a moment, but it comes to me. “Julian Kestrel, addressing the Picon assembly in Tethys after the Guild Collapse.”
“Gods, you are good!” She sighs and shakes her head. “I know Kestrel was a psychopath, but he had a point.”
“Crazy politicians have nothing but points… she said pointedly.” My muttered not-quite-jest charms a laugh from my companion, so I decide to exploit her goodwill. “Is there any soup left? I’d like to take something over to Maya and Isis.”
Tory hesitates, quirks her mouth, but does not question me. She worries about the risk of maintaining such close ties to the hybrid child, worries the Cylons will somehow sense the baby’s true nature and do something rash and horrible to us, the cabal who secreted away tangible proof of Cylon organic potential. The risk is real, but I can’t abandon them to the whims of fate. I will watch over that child and her adoptive mother as best I can, for as long as I must.
When I explained as much to Tory, I think I expected derision, maybe some pejorative reference to how I was no longer surrogate mother to the entire human race, how this attachment was an attempt to fill that void. Instead, she suggested that my motives were not entirely pure, that the Cylon child is perhaps the last bargaining chip in humanity’s cache. By keeping them close to me, I still sit at the table of power - shadowed, but armed and watchful. Billy would never have though so little of me… or so much.
Occasionally, I have trouble characterizing my motives, partly because Tory does not judge. She is not my conscience. She is my hammer, my wrench. Or she was, anyhow, back when I had machinery to maintain. Come to think of it, I don’t have a word for what she is now. I was never very good at qualifying intimacy. Fortunately, she doesn’t require me to be something I’m not. Whatever we are is fine, whatever we are not is irrelevant. Really, no one asks much of me these days, but we know that could change at any moment. Right now, we drift in a zone of respite, waiting.
“They can have whatever’s left,” Tory says. She rolls to her feet, takes two steps and arrives at a low table strewn with the remains of supper. “Take some bread, too.”
“Do you have enough to spare?”
“No,” she admits. “But I’ll get more tomorrow. Felix says the Basestar supply lines will be wide open by mid-day. He has my request list.”
I can’t disguise my disapproval. If Maya and Isis are sticking points for Tory, her black market friendship with Baltar’s Chief of Staff is an absolute hangnail for me. She notes my exaggerated frown and cocks her head, raises her arrow-like brows.
“I’m sorry,” she says, rather sharply, “I thought you liked food and heating fuel, clean water and soap.”
“We are not denied necessities,” I counter. “The items you acquire from Mr. Gaeta hardly qualify as such.”
She rolls her eyes while ladling soup into a travel therm. When she speaks, her voice is not angry, but mischievous. “Dearest pie, we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities. Take my wine, my verse, my song, and you ignobly condemn this tender soul to privation.”
The quote is familiar, but I can’t pin it down, and I’m not through being bitchy just yet. “I don’t like Felix Gaeta! He is one thin remove away from the priapic malignancy of Gaius Baltar, and that’s too close for comfort.”
“You say that like Baltar’s perversion is some contagious scourge, but I assure you, Felix is immune to those particular cooties.” She seals up the soup container, wraps the rest of her bread and brings it all to me. “He would never try anything… untoward with me.”
Her words and phrasing make me blink and draw back. I almost laugh at the use of cooties and untoward in such rapid succession. She’s instinctively soothing my irritation, gentling my concern. She’s handling me, as she would have handled a nuisance gadfly buzzing around her Federalist candidates. It’s almost working. “How can you be so sure?” I ask.
She presses the travel therm into my hands, then wraps her fingers around mine, creating a nest of warmth. “That last day on Colonial One, when I told you what an honor it had been to serve you - ”
“I exhorted you to treason and thereby rendered you disgraced and unemployed.”
“And it was the best frakkin’ job I’d ever had,” she insists. “Then I leaned in to kiss your cheek.”
“And you missed.”
“Not quite. Draedis indicated I had marked the wrong target, so I adjusted course.”
That was a lovely kiss, more so for being unexpected. I still don’t get what she’s driving at, yet I knit my brows and nod knowingly. “Draedis.”
She shrugs, as if this analogy makes sense. “You gave a strong reading, but Felix pings the scope in an entirely different way. Like a void instead of a solid mass.”
“Oh. Ohhhhhh.” Now, the insinuation comes clear. Felix Gaeta is a homosexual and, therefore, not likely to put the moves on Tory. Fine. I still don’t like the little twerp. “You know, for a political consultant, you are suspiciously familiar with Draedis operations.”
“What can I say?” Tory’s eyes twinkle as she smiles. “Dualla gave a great tour.”
I think I’m about to sneer and say something nasty, but Tory stops me. She rocks forward and caresses my cheek with bare, plump lips, and then, gratefully, she adjusts her course. The woman is a wonderful kisser. Even her tiny opening pecks are wet and lush, and they never last long enough for me. Rapid escalation is an irritating hallmark of the driven personality; however, I will never complain about being kissed too intently. I’d sooner curse a hot day for causing sweat, or rend up a patch of green grass for being too verdant. Blessings in this dead garden world are scarce and precious, and I am thankful for her passion.
Her corkscrew tongue pries open my mouth and she pours inside, feeds herself to me like the illicit wine and sweets she procures from shady allies. I could kiss her for hours, and if my luck holds for the evening, I might get my way. Right now, I have an errand of mercy to run. With moaned regret, I pull away. She looks serious, almost sad. I muster a smile and find my voice.
“Your last challenge? Benlam Tojiro. The Vestige of Regine. I think it was Chaldice speaking to the priestess right before his arrest.”
Her lovely dark eyes flare with delight. “You are so disgustingly brilliant. Though it took you long enough to spit that one out.”
I smile again, but I feel the blush in my cheeks. “In re: my brilliance, I was the Secretary of Education. Long time back.”
“Hence the delayed answer,” she snarks.
“Frak you.”
She snorts and turns away, retrieves something from her bag. “Here.” She presses a few foil-wrapped squares into my palm. “Chocolate with currants. For Maya and the baby.”
In an instant, I feel a vague, wet burning behind my eyes. For mother and child, the sweet is a simple kindness. For me, it’s a reminder that Tory respects me and backs my choices, even when she doesn’t agree. I blink away the stinging impulse of sentimentality and try to look scornful, suspicious. “What did this cost you?”
“You really shouldn’t ask,” she whispers. “Plausible deniability.”
“Ah. Still protecting my image.”
“It’s a tough job.”
“But not a thankless one,” I promise before slipping a hand into her sinful black hair and stealing a quick kiss. “I’ll be back shortly.”
She nods farewell and I slip out of the tent to find myself in freezing twilight. Within moments, my cheeks are slapped red by the biting wind that patrols the shameful dirt paths of New Caprica City with a Centurion’s vigilance. Though I realize it’s totally inappropriate, I am smiling.
In the grand, blindingly ironic scheme of things, I am (on some low, superficial level) happy. For the moment, my life is simple; I teach these wonderful children, I talk with friends, I play with Isis, and I spend time with Tory. She doesn’t stay every night, just a few times a week. One of us prepares dinner, we plan and predict based on her skillfully gathered scuttlebutt. Ever the pollster, the captain of humanity’s last precinct, she keeps her ear to the ground and interprets the tremors, reads the dust clouds that rise when the name Laura Roslin is spoken in a crowd.
The current climate of shock and surrender is changing, we believe, and will slowly evolve into resistance and open revolt. The day is coming… but it was not today, won’t be tonight or even tomorrow. I only know that the day is coming. On that indistinct future morning when the murmurs of insurrection become shouts, I will pray that the scales of rust fall from my voice; if I am not the prophesied leader of my people, at least let me join their chorus and cry freedom.
Until then, I am silent patience and bided time. Tonight promises plundered wine and sedition whispered over olive skin. Tomorrow, fresh supplies and another potluck meal filched from our overlords. In repose, I hunger for all of it, and I thank the Gods for both my satiety and my appetites.
END
****
“We should have had him killed,” she says. Despite the fact that Tory isn’t exactly sober, I know she is serious. Despite the fact that I am completely sober, I agree with her. “The logistics would have been a challenge,” she continues, “He was so paranoid. I mean, getting him alone in those last days…” Her voice trails away. She leans back against my small couch, wraps the throw tighter around her shoulders. Before the election, she does not say, before we tried to subvert the will of the weakened, exhausted, hopeful citizenry in the name of sound governance. I try not to dwell on that bit myself. Back to the happier topic of assassination.
“Challenging, yes, but not impossible,” I add. “There were people he trusted, or at least people he would have let get close.” Close enough to put a gun in his mouth and splatter his diseased genius across a pillow. Kara Thrace would have done it for me, I believe, had I explained my suspicions, my memories of Caprica and Gaius Baltar’s slim platinum beast - the Cylon who devoured his cock and brain and the entire Colonial security network in the most catastrophic episode of fellatio in human history. I do not doubt that Kara would have murdered better men than the Vice President to avert this wretched outcome. As it happened, her president couldn’t even look Bill Adama in the eye and tell a decent lie.
What is the offspring of honor and fear? Dignified misery. And so here we are, with our chins up, spines stiff, laboring under the velvet yoke of Cylon oppression. We are no more than exiled slaves; almost certainly, we have fared worse than even the prodigal thirteenth tribe. This desolate gray rock is no paradise, no place for the children of Kobol. Temperatures are harsh and there is no warmth on the horizon. Here, we have only a sliding scale of winter, a continuum of cold.
My tent is not warm, but it is warmer than Tory’s, warmer than most here. Galen Tyrol himself took time to lash it down securely, to insulate it as best he could with our meager materials. When I apologized that I had little to offer by way of payment, he waved me off and smiled. I remember that smile from the Blackbird’s naming ceremony. It marked him as a man whose pride is drawn from his work. Who would have predicted that the humble engineer would become a passionate leader of men, hefting the burdens of power and influence and all the accompanying misery and responsibility. People trust him, and that carries its own burden of expectation. Needless to say, the chief is usually in my prayers.
“Assassination is the most efficient instrument of political change,” Tory pronounces, in what only seems like a non-sequitur.
I smile, glad to be rescued from my dreary thoughts and tossed back into our recurring game of Who the Frak Said That? I have to think on it for a moment, but it comes to me. “Julian Kestrel, addressing the Picon assembly in Tethys after the Guild Collapse.”
“Gods, you are good!” She sighs and shakes her head. “I know Kestrel was a psychopath, but he had a point.”
“Crazy politicians have nothing but points… she said pointedly.” My muttered not-quite-jest charms a laugh from my companion, so I decide to exploit her goodwill. “Is there any soup left? I’d like to take something over to Maya and Isis.”
Tory hesitates, quirks her mouth, but does not question me. She worries about the risk of maintaining such close ties to the hybrid child, worries the Cylons will somehow sense the baby’s true nature and do something rash and horrible to us, the cabal who secreted away tangible proof of Cylon organic potential. The risk is real, but I can’t abandon them to the whims of fate. I will watch over that child and her adoptive mother as best I can, for as long as I must.
When I explained as much to Tory, I think I expected derision, maybe some pejorative reference to how I was no longer surrogate mother to the entire human race, how this attachment was an attempt to fill that void. Instead, she suggested that my motives were not entirely pure, that the Cylon child is perhaps the last bargaining chip in humanity’s cache. By keeping them close to me, I still sit at the table of power - shadowed, but armed and watchful. Billy would never have though so little of me… or so much.
Occasionally, I have trouble characterizing my motives, partly because Tory does not judge. She is not my conscience. She is my hammer, my wrench. Or she was, anyhow, back when I had machinery to maintain. Come to think of it, I don’t have a word for what she is now. I was never very good at qualifying intimacy. Fortunately, she doesn’t require me to be something I’m not. Whatever we are is fine, whatever we are not is irrelevant. Really, no one asks much of me these days, but we know that could change at any moment. Right now, we drift in a zone of respite, waiting.
“They can have whatever’s left,” Tory says. She rolls to her feet, takes two steps and arrives at a low table strewn with the remains of supper. “Take some bread, too.”
“Do you have enough to spare?”
“No,” she admits. “But I’ll get more tomorrow. Felix says the Basestar supply lines will be wide open by mid-day. He has my request list.”
I can’t disguise my disapproval. If Maya and Isis are sticking points for Tory, her black market friendship with Baltar’s Chief of Staff is an absolute hangnail for me. She notes my exaggerated frown and cocks her head, raises her arrow-like brows.
“I’m sorry,” she says, rather sharply, “I thought you liked food and heating fuel, clean water and soap.”
“We are not denied necessities,” I counter. “The items you acquire from Mr. Gaeta hardly qualify as such.”
She rolls her eyes while ladling soup into a travel therm. When she speaks, her voice is not angry, but mischievous. “Dearest pie, we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities. Take my wine, my verse, my song, and you ignobly condemn this tender soul to privation.”
The quote is familiar, but I can’t pin it down, and I’m not through being bitchy just yet. “I don’t like Felix Gaeta! He is one thin remove away from the priapic malignancy of Gaius Baltar, and that’s too close for comfort.”
“You say that like Baltar’s perversion is some contagious scourge, but I assure you, Felix is immune to those particular cooties.” She seals up the soup container, wraps the rest of her bread and brings it all to me. “He would never try anything… untoward with me.”
Her words and phrasing make me blink and draw back. I almost laugh at the use of cooties and untoward in such rapid succession. She’s instinctively soothing my irritation, gentling my concern. She’s handling me, as she would have handled a nuisance gadfly buzzing around her Federalist candidates. It’s almost working. “How can you be so sure?” I ask.
She presses the travel therm into my hands, then wraps her fingers around mine, creating a nest of warmth. “That last day on Colonial One, when I told you what an honor it had been to serve you - ”
“I exhorted you to treason and thereby rendered you disgraced and unemployed.”
“And it was the best frakkin’ job I’d ever had,” she insists. “Then I leaned in to kiss your cheek.”
“And you missed.”
“Not quite. Draedis indicated I had marked the wrong target, so I adjusted course.”
That was a lovely kiss, more so for being unexpected. I still don’t get what she’s driving at, yet I knit my brows and nod knowingly. “Draedis.”
She shrugs, as if this analogy makes sense. “You gave a strong reading, but Felix pings the scope in an entirely different way. Like a void instead of a solid mass.”
“Oh. Ohhhhhh.” Now, the insinuation comes clear. Felix Gaeta is a homosexual and, therefore, not likely to put the moves on Tory. Fine. I still don’t like the little twerp. “You know, for a political consultant, you are suspiciously familiar with Draedis operations.”
“What can I say?” Tory’s eyes twinkle as she smiles. “Dualla gave a great tour.”
I think I’m about to sneer and say something nasty, but Tory stops me. She rocks forward and caresses my cheek with bare, plump lips, and then, gratefully, she adjusts her course. The woman is a wonderful kisser. Even her tiny opening pecks are wet and lush, and they never last long enough for me. Rapid escalation is an irritating hallmark of the driven personality; however, I will never complain about being kissed too intently. I’d sooner curse a hot day for causing sweat, or rend up a patch of green grass for being too verdant. Blessings in this dead garden world are scarce and precious, and I am thankful for her passion.
Her corkscrew tongue pries open my mouth and she pours inside, feeds herself to me like the illicit wine and sweets she procures from shady allies. I could kiss her for hours, and if my luck holds for the evening, I might get my way. Right now, I have an errand of mercy to run. With moaned regret, I pull away. She looks serious, almost sad. I muster a smile and find my voice.
“Your last challenge? Benlam Tojiro. The Vestige of Regine. I think it was Chaldice speaking to the priestess right before his arrest.”
Her lovely dark eyes flare with delight. “You are so disgustingly brilliant. Though it took you long enough to spit that one out.”
I smile again, but I feel the blush in my cheeks. “In re: my brilliance, I was the Secretary of Education. Long time back.”
“Hence the delayed answer,” she snarks.
“Frak you.”
She snorts and turns away, retrieves something from her bag. “Here.” She presses a few foil-wrapped squares into my palm. “Chocolate with currants. For Maya and the baby.”
In an instant, I feel a vague, wet burning behind my eyes. For mother and child, the sweet is a simple kindness. For me, it’s a reminder that Tory respects me and backs my choices, even when she doesn’t agree. I blink away the stinging impulse of sentimentality and try to look scornful, suspicious. “What did this cost you?”
“You really shouldn’t ask,” she whispers. “Plausible deniability.”
“Ah. Still protecting my image.”
“It’s a tough job.”
“But not a thankless one,” I promise before slipping a hand into her sinful black hair and stealing a quick kiss. “I’ll be back shortly.”
She nods farewell and I slip out of the tent to find myself in freezing twilight. Within moments, my cheeks are slapped red by the biting wind that patrols the shameful dirt paths of New Caprica City with a Centurion’s vigilance. Though I realize it’s totally inappropriate, I am smiling.
In the grand, blindingly ironic scheme of things, I am (on some low, superficial level) happy. For the moment, my life is simple; I teach these wonderful children, I talk with friends, I play with Isis, and I spend time with Tory. She doesn’t stay every night, just a few times a week. One of us prepares dinner, we plan and predict based on her skillfully gathered scuttlebutt. Ever the pollster, the captain of humanity’s last precinct, she keeps her ear to the ground and interprets the tremors, reads the dust clouds that rise when the name Laura Roslin is spoken in a crowd.
The current climate of shock and surrender is changing, we believe, and will slowly evolve into resistance and open revolt. The day is coming… but it was not today, won’t be tonight or even tomorrow. I only know that the day is coming. On that indistinct future morning when the murmurs of insurrection become shouts, I will pray that the scales of rust fall from my voice; if I am not the prophesied leader of my people, at least let me join their chorus and cry freedom.
Until then, I am silent patience and bided time. Tonight promises plundered wine and sedition whispered over olive skin. Tomorrow, fresh supplies and another potluck meal filched from our overlords. In repose, I hunger for all of it, and I thank the Gods for both my satiety and my appetites.
END