Out of the Black- Chapter 5/9
Title: Out of the Black
Rating: PG
Chapter: 5/9
Characters in order of Appearance: Athena, Helo, Hera, Caprica, Tigh, and a few surprises.
Words this chapter: ~2600
The first thing Sharon heard as she woke up was the soft drumming of rain against the windows, and the not-too-distant crash of ocean waves. She loved the way it smelled; it smelled crisp and clean, like a new beginning; and then she smelled eggs. She opened her eyes to see Helo standing by her side of the bed with a tray. She sat upright, letting the linens fall away from her as she stretched. “I didn’t forget our anniversary, did I?” she asked through a yawn.
Her question was answered by a soft kiss. “No, there’s still three months.” He placed the tray over her lap. “The storm woke me up early. I thought I’d make breakfast for my two favorite girls.”
As if on cue, Hera came bounding into the room, still in her nightgown, a small stuffed animal clutched under her arm. She buried herself under the covers next to her mother. “Good morning, sweetie,” Sharon said with a smile, leaning down to kiss the black curls that stuck out from under the blanket.
Helo crossed to the windows and pulled the curtains open. The day was grey and rainy still, but a light filled the room nonetheless. New Melbourne was mostly made of water, that meant it tended to rain more often that it was sunny, but it was a beautiful planet even so, or at least it was to Karl’s thinking. “I love this weather.”
“Well I suppose any weather is more interesting than no weather at all,” Sharon said around a mouth full of toast. “Better than recycled air. What’s so great about the rain?”
“It was raining when we met,” he said, turning to smile at her.
She laughed. “There was also nuclear fallout and running for our lives… your life.” She paused and wrinkled her nose. “And not bathing.”
Helo took up a seat on the bed and proceeded to tickle the little lump of Hera under the covers. “Maybe, but we also got our beautiful little girl out of all of it.” Hera squealed and squirmed, nearly knocking the glass of juice off of the tray in the process.
Sharon caught the glass before it could spill, smiling as she finished her piece of toast. “Hera, sweetie, why don’t you get dressed for school?”
“Okay, mommy,” she said, hopping off the bed and scurrying from the room. Sharon watched with a smile until her daughter had left the room before the smile quickly faded from her face.
“What’s wrong?” Karl asked, scooting closer to her on the bed.
She sighed. “One year. I mean… it’s wonderful. We’ve made a wonderful life here, but… on New Caprica it took a year for the Cylons to find us. The Ones, Fours, and Fives are still out there somewhere.”
He leaned in, giving her a firm kiss on her forehead. “That’s one of the advantages of living under a totalitarian government that spans multiple star systems. I don’t think they’re really going to let a squadron of Cylons take over. Now,” he said, getting up. “I’m going to get Hera’s breakfast together.”
As he left the room, she set the tray aside, lifted herself from the bed and walked over to the closet to dig for something to wear to work. Pulling the door open, she sorted through the small forest of clothing that dangled from their hangers, pausing when she reached the far corner of the closet. Tucked away behind all the other shirts, untouched for the full year that she had been living in this house was the navy blue jacket with grey piping she’d worn as Athena.
Checking to make sure the bedroom door was closed, she slid the jacket off the hanger and slipped her arms through the sleeves, fingers working quickly to slide the buttons into their proper place. She looked down at herself, feeling the weight of the uniform against her shoulders, sliding her fingers over the thick fabric. Athena felt like a lifetime ago, and it was only when she stopped to think about it that Sharon remembered she’d only been Athena for a little while.
For the longest time she was just an Eight, one of many. Then she was still an Eight, but she was an Eight pretending to be Sharon Valerii. And then there was Helo, and there were those moments that he’d look into her eyes and see Sharon staring back, where she forgot that she wasn’t; and then she was.
She was Sharon- not exactly a person well favored in the fleet. To them she was a thing, a prisoner, locked away in a cell for over a year, even after taking the last name Agathon. Only after all that did she become Athena.
Then there was New Melbourne, and she was just Sharon Agathon, wife of Karl Agathon, mother of Hera Agathon, and Sharon Agathon had to get to work.
Sharon appeared in the kitchen about ten minutes later, carrying the tray and dirtied dishes over towards the sink. Hera was sitting at the table, perched up on a stack of books so that she could reach, hungrily shoveling cereal into her mouth.
“Almost ready, honey?” she asked. Hera nodded vigorously in response. Sharon crossed to where Karl was cleaning up the counters. “And you’ll pick her up on your way home from work?”
“Of course,” he replied, dampening a sponge.
As he cleaned, she glanced around the kitchen and caught a glimpse out the window. She could see the shoreline, but couldn’t quite see where the ocean ended and the sky began. You could never quite tell where the horizon was here, and it made her smile.
Turning her attention back to the kitchen, she took a visual sweep of her life, and Karl’s wallet on the counter caught her eye. She reached for it, and she stared at the forged ID. “I still can’t believe you have Helo listed as your middle name.” She laughed.
---
It rained all through the day. The preschool teachers were used to it, though the kids always seemed restless when they couldn’t go outside. Hera Agathon never seemed to mind. She was quite content to spend her time drawing during play hours. The teachers thought of her as a quiet child, perhaps not the most social butterfly. They wanted to blame the parents for not socializing her enough when she was an infant.
Ms. Asato was the teacher’s assistant in Hera’s class. It was her job, mostly, to go around and make sure that all the kids were playing nice, taking turns, not beating each other up. She was young, just out of university, and it was not her ideal job. However, she often felt that seeing what young Miss Agathon was working on was the highlight of her day.
She watched the girl scribbling furiously on the piece of paper before her and decided to investigate. “Hey, Hera,” she said softly, kneeling beside the girl. “What’re you drawing there?” She studied the picture for a moment before a jolt of joy jumped through her. “Would you look at that? It’s the Alliance flag! You’re so patriotic, Hera.” Ms. Asato smiled at the picture for a moment before she pointed to what appeared to be a scribble next to the flag. “What is that pointy thing there? It looks like a star.”
---
“Saul?” she called out softly as she entered the apartment. The front rooms were dark, except for the soft blue glow of the holoscreen. She shrugged off her mandarin collared jacket and hung it on a hook beside the door; setting her purse on a side table, she stepped into the living room. “Saul?”
She paused for a moment listening to the hushed apartment before she was certain she heard a soft humming. As she traced the source of the sound, the heels of her pumps clicked rhythmically against the floor, marking each step.
There was a quiet shushing from the second bedroom, just as she appeared in the doorway. “I just got him to sleep,” Tigh said from where stood beside the crib. Smiling softly, she slipped out of the shoes and crossed the room to stand beside him. “It took him forever to stop crying.”
“You’re a good father,” Caprica whispered as she leaned over the rail to look at her baby boy.
“Damn right, I am,” Tigh whispered, watching her.
She reached out her hand, gently stroking the few wisps of hair that grew on his head. He’d only been a part of the world for a few months, but already he was the light of her life. She loved everything about the baby- tiny nose, tiny fingers, tiny little breaths as he slept soundly.
Memories are a powerful force. So much so, that as that particular one flooded her she stumbled backwards away from the crib, clutching her right hand against her chest, which heaved with sharp, stunned breaths. Her head felt thick with fog as the entire scene replayed, the focused sight on her victim, the feel of soft flesh against her fingers; and a wave of nausea surged within her.
“What’s wrong?” Saul asked.
She shook her head, both to reassure him that she was fine and to shake away the sounds of the snapping neck that she would remember forever. With that, she turned sharply, left the nursery, and moved to collapse on the couch. After tucking baby Liam in, and double-checking to make sure he was completely covered by the blanket, Tigh joined her in the living room.
His first stop, of course, was the liquor cabinet. “How was work?” he asked over his shoulder as he pulled out a bottle of shimmerwine.
She curled her knees up beside her on the couch. “It was just fine,” she replied, her voice still quivering from the force of something painful that she just wouldn’t tell him. He made some kind of non-committal guttural noise in reply.
After all, their life together was more out of necessity than anything else; however, it didn’t mean they weren’t fond of each other. In the past few months, it became increasingly clear that there was some kind of bond between them, other than their miracle child. They had no name for this bond, they were not lovers, nor were they friends.
“I don’t like it.” When he didn’t know what to say to her, he would complain. She didn’t find it annoying, in fact on some level she found it something along the lines of endearing. Anyway, he had gotten her to smile. He took his glass of shimmerwine and sat down on the couch beside her.
“I’m not going to quit working,” she insisted.
“I didn’t say you should quit working; just find another job,” he said as he took a sip from the glass. “The Alliance is crawling all over any kind of scientific institution, don’t you think it’s a risk putting yourself out there so much?”
“I’m merely a research assistant.” Caprica grimaced; she was better than that, but it was a measure to prevent drawing too much attention to herself. Being close to power was an advantage, though she didn’t feel like lecturing Saul on the subject. It had served her well in past purposes, and she continued to hope it would serve her well now; it’s harder for the lion to catch the zebra when the zebra knows the lion’s coming. “They know nothing about our kind,” she said firmly.
“Gods help us when they finally find out,” he said, lifting himself from the couch. “I’m going to get ready for bed.” He continued to drain his glass as he disappeared into the bedroom.
Letting out an exhausted sigh, she let her hair down and made her way to the kitchen. She snatched a glass from the cabinet and turned on the faucet, filling it half way with water. Perhaps the morning would be better, she thought as she made her way to turn off the holoscreen in the living room.
For a moment, she thought she was so tired that she had made her way to the mirror. It was only a split second later that she realized that it was not her reflection, but rather an image, her image being bounced out to the entire 'verse over the Alliance’s signals.
Her feet were wet.
She’d lost her grip on the glass and it had shattered at her feet.
---
Human senses may be limited, but they still functioned and he could smell the blood through the metal walls of the Alliance Cruiser.
They had jumped and ended up on top of what looked to be a flying city. It had been enough even to impress Cavil, the sheer size of the ship made by such tiny and insignificant beings as humans. Moments later, a command had come over the communications line: dock and prepare to be boarded.
They had been prepared alright, with an army of Centurions waiting for the Alliance soldiers as they boarded the ship.
For the first time in many years, Cavil began to wonder if there was something to this God thing that so many of the other Cylons were all worked up about. He believed in the power he had and knew he was going to crush these pathetic soldiers.
Pride was his sin, and sitting in the dank cell, he certainly felt he was being punished for crossing something larger than him. On the other hand, it was probably the totalitarian government with enough technology to take out the Centurions with a virus.
Either way, there he sat, hands chained beneath an interrogation table.
Waiting.
He wasn’t quite sure how long he had been there before a man- one Commander Harken- appeared at the entry to the interrogation room. It seemed rather like Harken was following a script. Who are you? What kind of ship is that? Where is your registration? On and on interminably. Things didn’t get interesting until a man in a lab coat appeared at the doorway. Harken was only gone a minute before he returned, looking paler than he had before.
The examination from of the ship had become an autopsy.
“What kind of gorram freaks are you?” he hissed through clenched teeth.
Here came the pride again.
Machines. Humanoid machines. Smarter, stronger, faster than they could ever hope to be, clearly the superior race. He definitely had Harken’s attention now.
“I know who they are.” Cavil said, reclining in his seat. “And I know you want them.”
“Now, all I need to know is what you want in exchange for this information.”
He was practically salivating, Cavil thought. Surely, the man thought a discovery like this could make his entire career. “Two things,” he said. “First of which you can probably guess is freedom, for myself and the others from my ship.”
“And the second?”
“There’s a little girl,” he said. “The only one of her kind; half cylon, half human. I want her.”
It was a deal. Harken allowed himself out of the room, closing the door behind him, leaving Cavil to bask in his pride once again.
“Can you pull the information on the Cylons from the ship’s computer?” Harken asked to the nameless labcoat.
“Yes, sir.”
He smirked. “Lock them up where no one will find them again.”
Rating: PG
Chapter: 5/9
Characters in order of Appearance: Athena, Helo, Hera, Caprica, Tigh, and a few surprises.
Words this chapter: ~2600
The first thing Sharon heard as she woke up was the soft drumming of rain against the windows, and the not-too-distant crash of ocean waves. She loved the way it smelled; it smelled crisp and clean, like a new beginning; and then she smelled eggs. She opened her eyes to see Helo standing by her side of the bed with a tray. She sat upright, letting the linens fall away from her as she stretched. “I didn’t forget our anniversary, did I?” she asked through a yawn.
Her question was answered by a soft kiss. “No, there’s still three months.” He placed the tray over her lap. “The storm woke me up early. I thought I’d make breakfast for my two favorite girls.”
As if on cue, Hera came bounding into the room, still in her nightgown, a small stuffed animal clutched under her arm. She buried herself under the covers next to her mother. “Good morning, sweetie,” Sharon said with a smile, leaning down to kiss the black curls that stuck out from under the blanket.
Helo crossed to the windows and pulled the curtains open. The day was grey and rainy still, but a light filled the room nonetheless. New Melbourne was mostly made of water, that meant it tended to rain more often that it was sunny, but it was a beautiful planet even so, or at least it was to Karl’s thinking. “I love this weather.”
“Well I suppose any weather is more interesting than no weather at all,” Sharon said around a mouth full of toast. “Better than recycled air. What’s so great about the rain?”
“It was raining when we met,” he said, turning to smile at her.
She laughed. “There was also nuclear fallout and running for our lives… your life.” She paused and wrinkled her nose. “And not bathing.”
Helo took up a seat on the bed and proceeded to tickle the little lump of Hera under the covers. “Maybe, but we also got our beautiful little girl out of all of it.” Hera squealed and squirmed, nearly knocking the glass of juice off of the tray in the process.
Sharon caught the glass before it could spill, smiling as she finished her piece of toast. “Hera, sweetie, why don’t you get dressed for school?”
“Okay, mommy,” she said, hopping off the bed and scurrying from the room. Sharon watched with a smile until her daughter had left the room before the smile quickly faded from her face.
“What’s wrong?” Karl asked, scooting closer to her on the bed.
She sighed. “One year. I mean… it’s wonderful. We’ve made a wonderful life here, but… on New Caprica it took a year for the Cylons to find us. The Ones, Fours, and Fives are still out there somewhere.”
He leaned in, giving her a firm kiss on her forehead. “That’s one of the advantages of living under a totalitarian government that spans multiple star systems. I don’t think they’re really going to let a squadron of Cylons take over. Now,” he said, getting up. “I’m going to get Hera’s breakfast together.”
As he left the room, she set the tray aside, lifted herself from the bed and walked over to the closet to dig for something to wear to work. Pulling the door open, she sorted through the small forest of clothing that dangled from their hangers, pausing when she reached the far corner of the closet. Tucked away behind all the other shirts, untouched for the full year that she had been living in this house was the navy blue jacket with grey piping she’d worn as Athena.
Checking to make sure the bedroom door was closed, she slid the jacket off the hanger and slipped her arms through the sleeves, fingers working quickly to slide the buttons into their proper place. She looked down at herself, feeling the weight of the uniform against her shoulders, sliding her fingers over the thick fabric. Athena felt like a lifetime ago, and it was only when she stopped to think about it that Sharon remembered she’d only been Athena for a little while.
For the longest time she was just an Eight, one of many. Then she was still an Eight, but she was an Eight pretending to be Sharon Valerii. And then there was Helo, and there were those moments that he’d look into her eyes and see Sharon staring back, where she forgot that she wasn’t; and then she was.
She was Sharon- not exactly a person well favored in the fleet. To them she was a thing, a prisoner, locked away in a cell for over a year, even after taking the last name Agathon. Only after all that did she become Athena.
Then there was New Melbourne, and she was just Sharon Agathon, wife of Karl Agathon, mother of Hera Agathon, and Sharon Agathon had to get to work.
Sharon appeared in the kitchen about ten minutes later, carrying the tray and dirtied dishes over towards the sink. Hera was sitting at the table, perched up on a stack of books so that she could reach, hungrily shoveling cereal into her mouth.
“Almost ready, honey?” she asked. Hera nodded vigorously in response. Sharon crossed to where Karl was cleaning up the counters. “And you’ll pick her up on your way home from work?”
“Of course,” he replied, dampening a sponge.
As he cleaned, she glanced around the kitchen and caught a glimpse out the window. She could see the shoreline, but couldn’t quite see where the ocean ended and the sky began. You could never quite tell where the horizon was here, and it made her smile.
Turning her attention back to the kitchen, she took a visual sweep of her life, and Karl’s wallet on the counter caught her eye. She reached for it, and she stared at the forged ID. “I still can’t believe you have Helo listed as your middle name.” She laughed.
---
It rained all through the day. The preschool teachers were used to it, though the kids always seemed restless when they couldn’t go outside. Hera Agathon never seemed to mind. She was quite content to spend her time drawing during play hours. The teachers thought of her as a quiet child, perhaps not the most social butterfly. They wanted to blame the parents for not socializing her enough when she was an infant.
Ms. Asato was the teacher’s assistant in Hera’s class. It was her job, mostly, to go around and make sure that all the kids were playing nice, taking turns, not beating each other up. She was young, just out of university, and it was not her ideal job. However, she often felt that seeing what young Miss Agathon was working on was the highlight of her day.
She watched the girl scribbling furiously on the piece of paper before her and decided to investigate. “Hey, Hera,” she said softly, kneeling beside the girl. “What’re you drawing there?” She studied the picture for a moment before a jolt of joy jumped through her. “Would you look at that? It’s the Alliance flag! You’re so patriotic, Hera.” Ms. Asato smiled at the picture for a moment before she pointed to what appeared to be a scribble next to the flag. “What is that pointy thing there? It looks like a star.”
---
“Saul?” she called out softly as she entered the apartment. The front rooms were dark, except for the soft blue glow of the holoscreen. She shrugged off her mandarin collared jacket and hung it on a hook beside the door; setting her purse on a side table, she stepped into the living room. “Saul?”
She paused for a moment listening to the hushed apartment before she was certain she heard a soft humming. As she traced the source of the sound, the heels of her pumps clicked rhythmically against the floor, marking each step.
There was a quiet shushing from the second bedroom, just as she appeared in the doorway. “I just got him to sleep,” Tigh said from where stood beside the crib. Smiling softly, she slipped out of the shoes and crossed the room to stand beside him. “It took him forever to stop crying.”
“You’re a good father,” Caprica whispered as she leaned over the rail to look at her baby boy.
“Damn right, I am,” Tigh whispered, watching her.
She reached out her hand, gently stroking the few wisps of hair that grew on his head. He’d only been a part of the world for a few months, but already he was the light of her life. She loved everything about the baby- tiny nose, tiny fingers, tiny little breaths as he slept soundly.
Memories are a powerful force. So much so, that as that particular one flooded her she stumbled backwards away from the crib, clutching her right hand against her chest, which heaved with sharp, stunned breaths. Her head felt thick with fog as the entire scene replayed, the focused sight on her victim, the feel of soft flesh against her fingers; and a wave of nausea surged within her.
“What’s wrong?” Saul asked.
She shook her head, both to reassure him that she was fine and to shake away the sounds of the snapping neck that she would remember forever. With that, she turned sharply, left the nursery, and moved to collapse on the couch. After tucking baby Liam in, and double-checking to make sure he was completely covered by the blanket, Tigh joined her in the living room.
His first stop, of course, was the liquor cabinet. “How was work?” he asked over his shoulder as he pulled out a bottle of shimmerwine.
She curled her knees up beside her on the couch. “It was just fine,” she replied, her voice still quivering from the force of something painful that she just wouldn’t tell him. He made some kind of non-committal guttural noise in reply.
After all, their life together was more out of necessity than anything else; however, it didn’t mean they weren’t fond of each other. In the past few months, it became increasingly clear that there was some kind of bond between them, other than their miracle child. They had no name for this bond, they were not lovers, nor were they friends.
“I don’t like it.” When he didn’t know what to say to her, he would complain. She didn’t find it annoying, in fact on some level she found it something along the lines of endearing. Anyway, he had gotten her to smile. He took his glass of shimmerwine and sat down on the couch beside her.
“I’m not going to quit working,” she insisted.
“I didn’t say you should quit working; just find another job,” he said as he took a sip from the glass. “The Alliance is crawling all over any kind of scientific institution, don’t you think it’s a risk putting yourself out there so much?”
“I’m merely a research assistant.” Caprica grimaced; she was better than that, but it was a measure to prevent drawing too much attention to herself. Being close to power was an advantage, though she didn’t feel like lecturing Saul on the subject. It had served her well in past purposes, and she continued to hope it would serve her well now; it’s harder for the lion to catch the zebra when the zebra knows the lion’s coming. “They know nothing about our kind,” she said firmly.
“Gods help us when they finally find out,” he said, lifting himself from the couch. “I’m going to get ready for bed.” He continued to drain his glass as he disappeared into the bedroom.
Letting out an exhausted sigh, she let her hair down and made her way to the kitchen. She snatched a glass from the cabinet and turned on the faucet, filling it half way with water. Perhaps the morning would be better, she thought as she made her way to turn off the holoscreen in the living room.
For a moment, she thought she was so tired that she had made her way to the mirror. It was only a split second later that she realized that it was not her reflection, but rather an image, her image being bounced out to the entire 'verse over the Alliance’s signals.
Her feet were wet.
She’d lost her grip on the glass and it had shattered at her feet.
---
Human senses may be limited, but they still functioned and he could smell the blood through the metal walls of the Alliance Cruiser.
They had jumped and ended up on top of what looked to be a flying city. It had been enough even to impress Cavil, the sheer size of the ship made by such tiny and insignificant beings as humans. Moments later, a command had come over the communications line: dock and prepare to be boarded.
They had been prepared alright, with an army of Centurions waiting for the Alliance soldiers as they boarded the ship.
For the first time in many years, Cavil began to wonder if there was something to this God thing that so many of the other Cylons were all worked up about. He believed in the power he had and knew he was going to crush these pathetic soldiers.
Pride was his sin, and sitting in the dank cell, he certainly felt he was being punished for crossing something larger than him. On the other hand, it was probably the totalitarian government with enough technology to take out the Centurions with a virus.
Either way, there he sat, hands chained beneath an interrogation table.
Waiting.
He wasn’t quite sure how long he had been there before a man- one Commander Harken- appeared at the entry to the interrogation room. It seemed rather like Harken was following a script. Who are you? What kind of ship is that? Where is your registration? On and on interminably. Things didn’t get interesting until a man in a lab coat appeared at the doorway. Harken was only gone a minute before he returned, looking paler than he had before.
The examination from of the ship had become an autopsy.
“What kind of gorram freaks are you?” he hissed through clenched teeth.
Here came the pride again.
Machines. Humanoid machines. Smarter, stronger, faster than they could ever hope to be, clearly the superior race. He definitely had Harken’s attention now.
“I know who they are.” Cavil said, reclining in his seat. “And I know you want them.”
“Now, all I need to know is what you want in exchange for this information.”
He was practically salivating, Cavil thought. Surely, the man thought a discovery like this could make his entire career. “Two things,” he said. “First of which you can probably guess is freedom, for myself and the others from my ship.”
“And the second?”
“There’s a little girl,” he said. “The only one of her kind; half cylon, half human. I want her.”
It was a deal. Harken allowed himself out of the room, closing the door behind him, leaving Cavil to bask in his pride once again.
“Can you pull the information on the Cylons from the ship’s computer?” Harken asked to the nameless labcoat.
“Yes, sir.”
He smirked. “Lock them up where no one will find them again.”