BSG fic: Long Day (for girlsavesboy ficathon)
Title: Long Day
Rating: PG-13ish
Characters: Sharon Agathon and Sam Anders with mentions of other crew members
Summary: After this week, all she wants is a drink. (Set at the end of the The Son Also Rises, so there be spoilers for anything before that)
A/N: This was written for thegirlsavesboy ficathon. It's not at all what I intended to write so this was done last minute and has only been edited by me. Hopefully it does qualify though as girl saves boy.
Sharon knows it isn't really her they see. Most of them still see an it, a cylon who will eventually turn on them, or a ghost of someone they used to know. Someone who betrayed them even as they loved her. Tyrol can barely look at her whenever he checks out her raptor, and Cally always looks like she'd shoot her if she could, especially whenever the chief is within five feet of her. Neither of them completely understand she's not really the person they see when they look at her. She isn't sure if Karl is just oblivious to it, if he just pretends not to notice, or if he sees no other choice but to shrug it off.
He seems even less phased now that Starbuck's gone, while she's starting to realize how normal Kara made her feel - how she treated her like any other pilot, even if it was mostly for Karl's sake. He was in the CIC when it happened, but she was in their quarters playing with Hera, while her...friend...dove into a maelstrom, maybe on purpose or maybe not. He isn't sure, only knowing she could have pulled out of if she had given herself enough time. Lee can just barely entertain the idea she wanted it, welcomed death, and Sam seems barely functional at all. Karl twice now has pulled him out of Joe's bar just as he was on the brink of falling off his bar stool.
One evening she finds herself at Joe's. She usually tries to avoid it, knowing there's still plenty of people who wouldn't mind getting her alone in a room somewhere and what better place than one with no reliable witnesses. But after a particularly frakked week filled with bombs being planted on her raptor, snide comments from Cally while Karl just stood there saying nothing, shuttling Lee and Baltar's attorney to and fro, and then a lovely confrontation with Cally at daycare, she just wants a drink. Usually Hera is enough to calm her nerves and her daughter is the only drug she needs to function, but Karl's already home and she just isn't ready for his what's wrong because at this point it'll just cause her to pick a fight with him.
She gets her drink, a tumbler of scotch, which she only remembers liking from Boomer's memories, and then finds a small table towards the back, in a corner where she can see most of the room and have no one sneak up behind her. Her first taste of the amber liquid is like the memory - smooth, but harsh all at the same time. She keeps her fingers on the glass staring down into the liquid, forgetting her surroundings, getting as close to projecting as she has since she was trapped in a cell. She just wants to drown out the shuffling ruckus, the laughter, the metal clank from people shooting pyramid, and be left alone in the silence.
"Well, if it isn't the resident skinjob."
The voice is raspy, hovering above her like a challenge to prove how right he could be. She flashes her eyes up to the big body and steely, blue eyes, leaning on the chair across from her now. He's not as tall as Karl, but he's thicker, broader, and she isn't sure if she recognizes him or not. His jacket names him as Gage and she thinks he's a transplant from Pegasus. Pegasus. The word still makes her tense, muscles preparing for an attack, a violation, but no one notices except her. She clears her throat and takes a drink.
"I'm just trying to have a drink. Just like you."
"Oh, you're just like me, huh? Good man got thrown in the brig today and you're out here pretending to be just like me."
She heard about Kelley's arrest after she got off CAP and licks her bottom lip to keep from saying something like how the frakker nearly got her killed this week and he's exactly where he needs to be. "He made his choices," is all she says instead, meeting Gage's eyes. She can't help the challenge she puts in her's, even as she knows it'll just end badly for her, even as she wants to recoil from it immediately and be safely locked away in her home with her family.
"Yeah. The right one. Wish I could say the same--"
"Hey, Sharon," she hears Sam call and then sees him come up beside Gage. "Everything all right?"
He's already at least tipsy, with a drink in his hand and a slight sway to his step. He crowds Gage and looks down his nose at him, neck titled back in some strange ritual in machismo. Sharon rolls her eyes, knowing Sam is in no shape for a fight even if he wants one.
"Everything's fine, Sam--"
"The hell it is! The skinjob and I were having a conversation."
"Skinjob? She's put her ass on the line more times than I ever seen you do."
Sharon's out of her seat before Gage shoves Sam, but has no time to react before Sam shoves back, tossing his drink on Gage in the process. Next a fist is thrown and Sam goes down. Gage is on top of him, fist clutched to his shirt and throwing punch after punch faster than Sharon can get around the table. Once she does, she jabs her knee into Gage's ribs and throws down a right hook before he even realizes what is happening. He falls back, holding his bloody nose.
"You frakking bitch!"
He starts to go for her then, and it feels like her feet are stuck to the floor, heart hammering and screaming to move, but by then people have pooled around them. They're all figuring out what side their on and before Gage can make a move he has Hotdog and Sgt. Mathias on each arm.
"LT, you all right?" Mathias asks.
"Yeah. Thanks, Erin."
"We'll take care of him."
Sharon nods at Mathias, her muscles relaxing a fraction, but not ready to declare it safe yet. She then grips Sam's arm to pull him up and he leans into her as she leads him out of the bar. He's heavy and unbalanced, stumbling as he rubs at his jaw. His eye is already yellowing and purpling, and his cheek now has a little seam of sticky blood lining the bone. This is the last thing she wants to be doing right now. Suddenly all she wants is to be in her quarters with Hera and Karl and forget this day in the scent of her daughters hair, the circle of her husband's arms, but instead she's supporting her would-be savior to at least get him as far as sick bay.
"Visitor quarters are the other way," he mumbles.
"You should have Cottle check out your cheek, jaw...basically your face."
"Nah. I don't need that."
He pulls away, swivels, and stumbles into the wall. Sharon huffs, brushing her bangs off her forehead, but then goes to where he's leaning face first against the wall. She pulls his arm across her shoulders and then tightens her own around his back, righting him as much as she can.
"Come on, I'll take you to your rack."
The room is quiet and stays pretty empty since hardly any officers have any family to visit them anymore anyway. She dumps him onto his bed, lifting his legs up after his body and then stands straight, fingers curling around her hipbones. She just breathes for a second and then she turns to leave.
"You didn't deserve him hassling you like that."
"Thanks, Sam," she says, over her shoulder while taking another step back toward the hatch.
"The Admiral trusts you. Karl. Kara...Kara trusts you."
Sharon looks back at him, his arm hanging off the bunk, eyes staring blankly upward. Sometimes she wonders if Kara really did - knows if given a reason Kara would have put a bullet in her head without hesitation, despite the growing friendliness.
"Did she?"
"She does."
"You mean did."
"No."
"Sam, she's gone. She's not coming back."
"Yeah, well, you don't know my wife."
She should just go, leave him to his denial, his stupor, but she finds herself moving back to his bunk, and crouching down beside him. His eyes are glassy and set in a blank stare - a stare that welcomes numbness, that doesn't care what damage he might do to others or himself. Sharon knows that look - has worn it and lived with it coiling around every part of her body, squeezing out any option that didn't end with her dead too. Dead and maybe with her lost daughter. She closes her eyes, tries to breath out the memory of guilt and uncompromising rage.
"Okay. Say you're right? You really want her to come back and find you like this?" Sharon asks.
"Don't frak with me-"
"I'm not. I thought my daughter was dead, but she came back. And if I hadn't moved on, if I had stayed where I was when I thought she died, I wouldn't have been any good to her when we got her back."
"So, I'm just supposed to act like nothing happened, huh?"
"No. You're supposed to act so she'd be proud of you."
Sam laughs. It's a hallowed out sound like he's certain she's full of crap.
"Well, Gods, maybe I should just become a viper pilot."
Sharon huffs and stands. She looks down at him, waits till he looks back.
"Maybe you should. Need all the nuggets we can get. Plus can't you see the look on Starbuck's face when she finds out."
He smiles, and then, "Yeah." His grin fades quickly, jaw working, and turns his eyes away. Sharon crosses her arms over her stomach and shifts on her feet as she looks down at him, thinking she should say something. Instead she claps his shoulder and leaves.
Everything in her body feels drained, but twitchy at the same time, as she makes the walk to her quarters. She maneuvers around familiar and unfamiliar faces, new ones staring at her with squinting eyes as if silently wondering if they really just saw one of the cylons they saw so many times on New Caprica. Sharon avoids their gazes, thinks about Sam and finds herself wanting him to be okay. And kind of wants him to be right too - wants to walk down the hall and pass Kara's friendly, albeit crass, face and follow her to the briefing room again.
When she gets to her quarters, it's quiet and dim. One corner of her mouth swings upward at the sight of Karl sprawled on the little sofa asleep. One of Hera's books lays across his stomach and Hera herself sleeps against his side. Sharon relaxes, completely, for the first time all week and listens to the steady cadence of their breathing, just slightly out of tune, and sees the laxness of their jaws and necks. Hears the steady hum of the air ducts just behind it all. She looks at them and feels lucky. Favored. And she wonders, for a second, if there are any more miracles left.
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