Round-up of Old Challenge Drabbles from BSG_100
I'm doing a bit of cleaning and organizing in prep for hopefully joining this year's remix, and then I realized I've had fics posted elsewhere for comms that I never properly transplanted back here, so this is that post for bsg_100 from a few years back after the finale. The drabbles are organized by challenges and organized under cuts. All drabbles should be 100 words... or thereabout. :D (Original posts found HERE.)
Challenge 1: Firsts
Title: A-scribe. Two Syllables.
Author: o_a101
Character: Laura Roslin
Rating: G
Spoilers: Miniseries/33
Disclaimer: I do not own anything.
AN: Slightly AU, but something I'm interested in... I guess.
The first time she writes the numbers, her hand trembles. The black marker streaks uncontrollably away.
Not enough. Too small a fraction.
Erase. Try again.
Steeling her spine, she cuts across the white expanse with a black scar.
She’s taught math. Fifty-thousand out of more than forty-billion… That’s less than one-eight-hundred-thousandth…
Each stroke etched into her heart. Her mind. Her soul.
They’ve staked their claim on all she is willing to offer.
Everything.
Hanging the whiteboard back onto the wall, she wonders how many more times, she’ll have to erase and write. How many scars she’ll etch before it’s over.
Title: Memories
Author: o_a101
Character: Saul Tigh
Rating: PG-13 (?)
Spoilers: Pre-miniseries/Miniseries.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Saul Tigh doesn’t remember when he first began looking at his marriage as a past existence.
Maybe it was the first time he found his things out on the lawn, a drunken Ellen yelling at him to drag his “frakkin’ ungrateful ass” somewhere else.
Maybe it was the first time he walked into his house hearing her yell another’s name.
He doesn’t even remember the banging of the door closing behind him as he stalked back to the bar.
All he really remembers now is her face in a burning picture. The last time he might ever see it again.
Title: Forgotten [Guilt]
Author: o_a101
Character: Lee Adama
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Pre-miniseries/Miniseries.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
The first time Lee remembers to think about his mother, after the destruction of the Colonies, he’s in mid-step, about to enter the showers. Forgotten among - Cylons, his father, death... surviving.
It’s an inane little thought of how the boys at school used to tease him because he smelled like a girl, because his mother liked to add her special scents to his shampoo.
“Mommy’s little boy.”
Before she started smelling like the empty bottles littering the hallway.
And he feels guilty, not for having forgotten, but for having all those excuses on hand as to why he didn’t remember.
Title: Grasping
Author: o_a101
Character: Gaius Baltar
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Pre-miniseries/Miniseries.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Gaius Baltar had been told many times that his instinct for self-preservation was remarkable: by friends and family, by enemies, by the angel that haunts his mind.
He sees no fault in the desire to live however.
His mother was the first to tell him this the day he closely escaped being mangled by a piece of runaway farm equipment by climbing up a tree. He had dropped the baby squirrel he had found and taken from its parents’ nest out of curiosity.
He still recalls the body disappearing beneath metal teeth. He hopes the death was quick and painless.
Challenge 2: Changes
Title: Tempora
Author: o_a101
Rating: G
Spoilers: None really, as long as you know the basic gist of the show. (^_^)
Disclaimer: I do not own.
All this has happened before and will happen again.
The butterfly effect… caught in a cyclone.
Its wings flutter helplessly against the winds that have caught it but they flutter nonetheless. Struggle. Push and pull.
These little sparks of civilization - chrysalis.
So fragile.
So fallible.
They struggle.
They fail.
They fake brave faces. Wear their hearts on sleeves and knives. Stitch their strength into their souls.
Watch them all limping on their way.
The wings are torn, but they do not stop.
Never tossed in a smooth path.
Cannot help but hope that one day (time, eternity) they’ll sweep free.
Title: Circuitry
Author: o_a101
Character(s): Six, Baltar
Rating: T (sort of?)
Spoilers: None really, as long as you know the basic gist of the show. (^_^)
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Her index finger glides down the expanse of exposed back, runs along the curved spine wantonly.
It would be all too easy to break his back, his neck. To snap the vertebrae out to an angle where the spinal cord could do nothing but disconnect. To numb him and kill him, a greater mercy than disintegration, mind clouded by fear and confusion.
She could have killed him so easily, but plans change. She has changed. Something in her circuitry has re-wired itself, synapses in unknown regions sparking alive.
She loves him.
But he doesn’t love her.
She will change that.
Title: Always
Author: o_a101
Character(s): Helo, [Athena]
Rating: PG (?)
Spoilers: Mini-series/Season 1
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Helo was certain he should have killed her.
He was certain that he should no longer have any feelings of warmth for that - that thing.
She is not… she is NOT Sharon.
Would never be the same Sharon he piloted a raptor with; Sharon who joked and played cards, who would stare longingly at photos of an old destroyed settlement on Troy.
She wasn’t here stuck on this frakked up planet with him, the guy who had frakked a frakked-up cylon version of her.
He shouldn’t feel this way.
But his mind had never been able to out-stubborn his heart.
Title: Mirror You, Mirror Me
Author: o_a101
Character: Laura Roslin, Bill Adama
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Vaguely... everything.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
They had slowly changed each other. Changed with each other.
Stubborn people who stood and resisted.
They have been opposition in the most relevant of ways.
He mirrors her, and she, him. Face each other. Toe to toe.
They equalize and reflect and complete and find that studying a mirror too closely can reveal flaws and weaknesses, a strength.
She turns left while waking, and he turns right, keeping pace. She smiles, and his eyes soften.
It is all science. It is all artifice.
She stumbles. He steadies.
He breaks. She bandages.
She falls. He supports.
He cries. She understands.
Challenge 3: Box
Title: Cost
Author: o_a101
Character: Laura Roslin
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Vaguely... Everything.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Three black boxes - identically carved.
Laura learned at a young age that everything in life came at a cost - though not always as expected and not always fair.
The price paid for one man’s need to forget and lose control - her family.
The price paid for the foolish ventures of a generation before - destruction.
The price paid for life - a slow death.
The price of some long-sought freedom - despair.
She dreams at night sometimes of the drunk driver who lived, of fingers gliding numbly along bandages and IV tubes, of walking away…
He wouldn’t have been worth the price paid.
Title: Representative
Author: o_a101
Rating: G
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I do not own.
The maintenance worker wasn’t sure what to do with the little guy. The Quorum representatives would be arriving soon to Cloud Nine, and he had been ordered to make sure nothing was out of place.
He had trimmed the bushes and trees.
The flowers that had begun wilting had been watered (sunshine would have been even better).
He had raked the lawns and removed unsightly patches from the walkways.
But what should he do with this box turtle? Scratching his head, he hides the creature in a small garden out back. It was probably the last representative of its kind.
Challenge 4: Heat
Title: Cold
Author: o_a101
Character(s): Karl Agathon [Helo]
Rating: K
Spoilers: Up through season 4
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Helo could remember (almost) every touch he has shared with his wife (and okay, maybe that was an exaggeration). He certainly remembers her warmth, her life… The light in her gaze and the heat in her voice. He remembers her loyalty and dedication and determination. (This eight, who speaks with such fire about loyalty and fighting, he has to remind himself is not, not his wife.)
And now, he wonders about those bodies, those many copies of his wife’s form, lying not alive but not quite dead either (can something which was never alive be dead?). Do they feel warmth?
Title: Filing Away
Author: o_a101
Character(s): Felix Gaeta
Rating: K+ (?)
Spoilers: Up through season 4
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Friction. The energy - the heat - produced when two surfaces contact one another.
Gaeta had been one of the best at the University. Bright, young, and enthusiastic…
He scratches at it, but it’s useless (like this stump)… the leather covering rubbing the skin raw. It chafes. Somewhat like the Eight’s words on his soul.
Felix was praised by his professors for his brilliance and creativeness, even as his parents shared embarrassing stories of his young escapades in design and invention at scholarship lunches, all wryly proud tones.
He sees them. The bodies. He can’t run anymore, worn down by the friction.
Title: Shared in Absence
Author: o_a101
Character(s): Laura Roslin
Rating: K
Spoilers: Up to early Season 3
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
They cling to each other in search of the heat necessary to stay alive.
She walks through the frozen black mud-land that was New Caprica in its wet, cold winter.
Cottle is not going to be in the best of moods, not that it was especially good and cheerful to begin with.
Her heart reaches but stops short, watches a bit separated as mutual suffering brought the people together. Together.
She turns right into the tent and smiles at the kids that greeted her. She feels warmer already, the distance and invisible wall lowered, even if just for a moment.
Challeng 6: Guns
Title: Con(text)ualize
Author: o_a101
Character: Kendraw Shaw
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Parts of Season 2 and Razor
Disclaimer: I do not own.
She remembers the feel of the gun in her hand, the weight, the texture of the grip. She doesn’t quite remember what she was thinking though.
It is cold, unlike the heat released by the weapon in her hand.
She’s not disconnected from the moment (not entirely, she’s only too aware of what she’s doing) but the moment is disconnected into fragments. The weight, the texture… There’s the bullet as it penetrates the head, the spurt of liquid red, the horrified eyes that stare back at her. The screams.
Bang. The gun goes off. She wakes and trembles for needles.
Challenge 7: Empty
Title: Dearth
Author: o_a101
Character: Elosha
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Miniseries (and maybe Season 1 and 2)
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Doubt was natural.
Doubt was part of being human.
Doubt did not befit a priestess.
The gods weren’t natural. Nothing divine ever wanted to be ordinary or “natural”.
At least, that’s how the old assumptions go.
Elosha bows her head in prayer that would not come. Her faith. Where had it gone? The space leaves her hollowed with nothing to spare the people seeking her guidance.
A priestess lost without her faith. The irony.
And now, they are all lost, and she prays empty prayers for her death.
“Mother, t-the… Secretary of Education has requested your presence.”
“Yes, of course.”
Challenge 13: Luck
Title: Fight
Author: o_a101
Character: General
Rating: PG
Spoilers: All the way to the finale.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
AN: Wow, it's been a while...
Kneeling - staring.
The picture has become worn over the course of the last four years and countless battles, smudged with the thousands of touches by hundreds of pilots - soldiers.
One flat corner has fallen with the peeled tape. The bottom was creased by the occasional beating; the right side was singed by the cigar of a drunken lieutenant after the discovery of “earth”, before a pilot knocked him away and put it out.
Now it remains in the emptied and broken battlestar, accompanying it to its final resting place.
True to its purpose.
Defiant.
We make our own luck.
Challenge 1: Firsts
Title: A-scribe. Two Syllables.
Author: o_a101
Character: Laura Roslin
Rating: G
Spoilers: Miniseries/33
Disclaimer: I do not own anything.
AN: Slightly AU, but something I'm interested in... I guess.
The first time she writes the numbers, her hand trembles. The black marker streaks uncontrollably away.
Not enough. Too small a fraction.
Erase. Try again.
Steeling her spine, she cuts across the white expanse with a black scar.
She’s taught math. Fifty-thousand out of more than forty-billion… That’s less than one-eight-hundred-thousandth…
Each stroke etched into her heart. Her mind. Her soul.
They’ve staked their claim on all she is willing to offer.
Everything.
Hanging the whiteboard back onto the wall, she wonders how many more times, she’ll have to erase and write. How many scars she’ll etch before it’s over.
Title: Memories
Author: o_a101
Character: Saul Tigh
Rating: PG-13 (?)
Spoilers: Pre-miniseries/Miniseries.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Saul Tigh doesn’t remember when he first began looking at his marriage as a past existence.
Maybe it was the first time he found his things out on the lawn, a drunken Ellen yelling at him to drag his “frakkin’ ungrateful ass” somewhere else.
Maybe it was the first time he walked into his house hearing her yell another’s name.
He doesn’t even remember the banging of the door closing behind him as he stalked back to the bar.
All he really remembers now is her face in a burning picture. The last time he might ever see it again.
Title: Forgotten [Guilt]
Author: o_a101
Character: Lee Adama
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Pre-miniseries/Miniseries.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
The first time Lee remembers to think about his mother, after the destruction of the Colonies, he’s in mid-step, about to enter the showers. Forgotten among - Cylons, his father, death... surviving.
It’s an inane little thought of how the boys at school used to tease him because he smelled like a girl, because his mother liked to add her special scents to his shampoo.
“Mommy’s little boy.”
Before she started smelling like the empty bottles littering the hallway.
And he feels guilty, not for having forgotten, but for having all those excuses on hand as to why he didn’t remember.
Title: Grasping
Author: o_a101
Character: Gaius Baltar
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Pre-miniseries/Miniseries.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Gaius Baltar had been told many times that his instinct for self-preservation was remarkable: by friends and family, by enemies, by the angel that haunts his mind.
He sees no fault in the desire to live however.
His mother was the first to tell him this the day he closely escaped being mangled by a piece of runaway farm equipment by climbing up a tree. He had dropped the baby squirrel he had found and taken from its parents’ nest out of curiosity.
He still recalls the body disappearing beneath metal teeth. He hopes the death was quick and painless.
Challenge 2: Changes
Title: Tempora
Author: o_a101
Rating: G
Spoilers: None really, as long as you know the basic gist of the show. (^_^)
Disclaimer: I do not own.
All this has happened before and will happen again.
The butterfly effect… caught in a cyclone.
Its wings flutter helplessly against the winds that have caught it but they flutter nonetheless. Struggle. Push and pull.
These little sparks of civilization - chrysalis.
So fragile.
So fallible.
They struggle.
They fail.
They fake brave faces. Wear their hearts on sleeves and knives. Stitch their strength into their souls.
Watch them all limping on their way.
The wings are torn, but they do not stop.
Never tossed in a smooth path.
Cannot help but hope that one day (time, eternity) they’ll sweep free.
Title: Circuitry
Author: o_a101
Character(s): Six, Baltar
Rating: T (sort of?)
Spoilers: None really, as long as you know the basic gist of the show. (^_^)
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Her index finger glides down the expanse of exposed back, runs along the curved spine wantonly.
It would be all too easy to break his back, his neck. To snap the vertebrae out to an angle where the spinal cord could do nothing but disconnect. To numb him and kill him, a greater mercy than disintegration, mind clouded by fear and confusion.
She could have killed him so easily, but plans change. She has changed. Something in her circuitry has re-wired itself, synapses in unknown regions sparking alive.
She loves him.
But he doesn’t love her.
She will change that.
Title: Always
Author: o_a101
Character(s): Helo, [Athena]
Rating: PG (?)
Spoilers: Mini-series/Season 1
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Helo was certain he should have killed her.
He was certain that he should no longer have any feelings of warmth for that - that thing.
She is not… she is NOT Sharon.
Would never be the same Sharon he piloted a raptor with; Sharon who joked and played cards, who would stare longingly at photos of an old destroyed settlement on Troy.
She wasn’t here stuck on this frakked up planet with him, the guy who had frakked a frakked-up cylon version of her.
He shouldn’t feel this way.
But his mind had never been able to out-stubborn his heart.
Title: Mirror You, Mirror Me
Author: o_a101
Character: Laura Roslin, Bill Adama
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Vaguely... everything.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
They had slowly changed each other. Changed with each other.
Stubborn people who stood and resisted.
They have been opposition in the most relevant of ways.
He mirrors her, and she, him. Face each other. Toe to toe.
They equalize and reflect and complete and find that studying a mirror too closely can reveal flaws and weaknesses, a strength.
She turns left while waking, and he turns right, keeping pace. She smiles, and his eyes soften.
It is all science. It is all artifice.
She stumbles. He steadies.
He breaks. She bandages.
She falls. He supports.
He cries. She understands.
Challenge 3: Box
Title: Cost
Author: o_a101
Character: Laura Roslin
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Vaguely... Everything.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Three black boxes - identically carved.
Laura learned at a young age that everything in life came at a cost - though not always as expected and not always fair.
The price paid for one man’s need to forget and lose control - her family.
The price paid for the foolish ventures of a generation before - destruction.
The price paid for life - a slow death.
The price of some long-sought freedom - despair.
She dreams at night sometimes of the drunk driver who lived, of fingers gliding numbly along bandages and IV tubes, of walking away…
He wouldn’t have been worth the price paid.
Title: Representative
Author: o_a101
Rating: G
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: I do not own.
The maintenance worker wasn’t sure what to do with the little guy. The Quorum representatives would be arriving soon to Cloud Nine, and he had been ordered to make sure nothing was out of place.
He had trimmed the bushes and trees.
The flowers that had begun wilting had been watered (sunshine would have been even better).
He had raked the lawns and removed unsightly patches from the walkways.
But what should he do with this box turtle? Scratching his head, he hides the creature in a small garden out back. It was probably the last representative of its kind.
Challenge 4: Heat
Title: Cold
Author: o_a101
Character(s): Karl Agathon [Helo]
Rating: K
Spoilers: Up through season 4
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Helo could remember (almost) every touch he has shared with his wife (and okay, maybe that was an exaggeration). He certainly remembers her warmth, her life… The light in her gaze and the heat in her voice. He remembers her loyalty and dedication and determination. (This eight, who speaks with such fire about loyalty and fighting, he has to remind himself is not, not his wife.)
And now, he wonders about those bodies, those many copies of his wife’s form, lying not alive but not quite dead either (can something which was never alive be dead?). Do they feel warmth?
Title: Filing Away
Author: o_a101
Character(s): Felix Gaeta
Rating: K+ (?)
Spoilers: Up through season 4
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Friction. The energy - the heat - produced when two surfaces contact one another.
Gaeta had been one of the best at the University. Bright, young, and enthusiastic…
He scratches at it, but it’s useless (like this stump)… the leather covering rubbing the skin raw. It chafes. Somewhat like the Eight’s words on his soul.
Felix was praised by his professors for his brilliance and creativeness, even as his parents shared embarrassing stories of his young escapades in design and invention at scholarship lunches, all wryly proud tones.
He sees them. The bodies. He can’t run anymore, worn down by the friction.
Title: Shared in Absence
Author: o_a101
Character(s): Laura Roslin
Rating: K
Spoilers: Up to early Season 3
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
They cling to each other in search of the heat necessary to stay alive.
She walks through the frozen black mud-land that was New Caprica in its wet, cold winter.
Cottle is not going to be in the best of moods, not that it was especially good and cheerful to begin with.
Her heart reaches but stops short, watches a bit separated as mutual suffering brought the people together. Together.
She turns right into the tent and smiles at the kids that greeted her. She feels warmer already, the distance and invisible wall lowered, even if just for a moment.
Challeng 6: Guns
Title: Con(text)ualize
Author: o_a101
Character: Kendraw Shaw
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Parts of Season 2 and Razor
Disclaimer: I do not own.
She remembers the feel of the gun in her hand, the weight, the texture of the grip. She doesn’t quite remember what she was thinking though.
It is cold, unlike the heat released by the weapon in her hand.
She’s not disconnected from the moment (not entirely, she’s only too aware of what she’s doing) but the moment is disconnected into fragments. The weight, the texture… There’s the bullet as it penetrates the head, the spurt of liquid red, the horrified eyes that stare back at her. The screams.
Bang. The gun goes off. She wakes and trembles for needles.
Challenge 7: Empty
Title: Dearth
Author: o_a101
Character: Elosha
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Miniseries (and maybe Season 1 and 2)
Disclaimer: I do not own.
Doubt was natural.
Doubt was part of being human.
Doubt did not befit a priestess.
The gods weren’t natural. Nothing divine ever wanted to be ordinary or “natural”.
At least, that’s how the old assumptions go.
Elosha bows her head in prayer that would not come. Her faith. Where had it gone? The space leaves her hollowed with nothing to spare the people seeking her guidance.
A priestess lost without her faith. The irony.
And now, they are all lost, and she prays empty prayers for her death.
“Mother, t-the… Secretary of Education has requested your presence.”
“Yes, of course.”
Challenge 13: Luck
Title: Fight
Author: o_a101
Character: General
Rating: PG
Spoilers: All the way to the finale.
Disclaimer: I do not own.
AN: Wow, it's been a while...
Kneeling - staring.
The picture has become worn over the course of the last four years and countless battles, smudged with the thousands of touches by hundreds of pilots - soldiers.
One flat corner has fallen with the peeled tape. The bottom was creased by the occasional beating; the right side was singed by the cigar of a drunken lieutenant after the discovery of “earth”, before a pilot knocked him away and put it out.
Now it remains in the emptied and broken battlestar, accompanying it to its final resting place.
True to its purpose.
Defiant.
We make our own luck.