Fic - "Dead Man Walking part 21"
Sorry - I realized I had cmpleted this chapter and sorta sat on it.
“What the hell are you doing, Starbuck?”
Tigh said it quietly, which surprised her. She had assumed that Tigh was backing Adama to the death. But the older man was keeping his voice low, as to not wake the guards or the others. She looked up from the vent she was working on. “I’m getting the hell out of here. If you want to die like a rat in a trap, I’m not going to stop you, but I’m not waiting around for the firing squad.”
The older man looked at her carefully. “Kara,” he said quietly, “have you thought at all about what happens when you break out of here? If you can break out of here?”
“I can.” She held up her id tags. “They didn’t take them away.” She was using the tags as makeshift screwdrivers, slowly undoing the air vent grate. She could fit in. It meant abandoning Sam since he was in a different cell, and Tyrol, since there was no way the man would fit in the air vent. Tigh, and Tory, in different cells, were in the same position. “I can get through the air vent, get out into one of the damage control corridors.”
“And then what?” Tigh asked. He leaned close until he was almost up against the bars. “Then what do you, Kara? Do you kill someone to escape? Because as soon as you do that, the Admiral stops having a choice about what to do with you.”
“What do you think he’s going to do, anyway?” she shot back. “We’re all dead, Colonel.”
“He’s trying to save us.” Tigh glared at her. “I won’t stop you, and I’ll say I was asleep. But there’s no where to go, Kara. If you make it down to the flight deck, then what? You steal a Raptor and five or six days later you’re dead because there’s no where to go and the oxygen ran out.”
“At least I’ll have done something other than wait to die,” she said.
“Don’t kill anyone,” Tigh said. He nodded to the others. “I know you don’t give a damn about the rest of us, but stop and think how long your husband will live if you escape and start killing people?”
It was a fair point. On the other hand, she didn’t see how killing people was going to help the situation at all, and she honestly hadn’t been planning to kill anyone unless it was necessary. All she really wanted was to get out of the trap. “If people don’t get in my way, they won’t get dead. I promise you that. Tell Sam… Tell Sam I love him, and I’m coming back for all of you.” She hesitated. “I mean that, Colonel.”
Tigh looked away. “I know you do. That’s why I’m not stopping you.”
~*~
“Wake up, dammit!” Felix refused to open his eyes. He was in trouble, in terrible trouble and it just felt easier to keep his eyes closed and pretend to sleep. That way he could drift off.
“Quit faking!”
He was poked with something hard. Then a sharp blow made him jerk and roll off the bed. He jumped to his feet. “What the hell?”
Then he stopped. He was looking at himself. His other self, older, missing a leg, a uniform stained with blood, brandishing a crutch. The OtherFelix rolled his eyes. “It figures… hitting you always works. Why is that, Felix?”
“What’s…. what’s going on?” He looked around, and felt a sudden intense wave of relief. “I’m hallucinating.” Because he was standing up, at the edge of his hospital bed, looking at himself, as he had looked in the Cylon projection, while a third version, the real version, was lying unconscious on a hospital bed while Dee sat at his bed side, holding his hand. Further confirming his theory, Dee didn’t appear to notice two extra Felixs’s in the room.
“I’d call it more of an out of body experience,” The OtherFelix said, his tone annoyed. He smacked Felix with the crutch again. “Do you have any idea what a miserable frak you are?”
“You’re not real,” Felix said, rubbing his arm where the crutch had struck him. “You’re just in my imagination. I wasn’t shot, I didn’t lose my leg.”
“And you weren’t a traitor whoring yourself to some crazy Eight, either.” OtherFelix smirked at him. “She wasn’t that good, by the way. But that’s not why we’re having this chat.” He pointed to the body on the bed. “You’re lying on the bed. You could die. We could die. You’re the one in control of that, Felix. I’m just the last vestiges of your survival instinct trying to knock some frakking sense into you.” He deftly struck Felix again with the crutch. “You know this isn’t your fault, and you’ve done nothing wrong, right? You didn’t make anybody a Cylon, and whatever the Admiral decides, that’s for Admiral Adama to live with. He wanted the answer.”
“He’ll blame me. I’ll pay for telling him his friends are Cylons.” He knew it was true. He looked at the other Felix and gestured to the bloodstains. “Don’t tell me you don’t understand how the Admiral gets. It doesn’t matter how right I am….”
“And of course you’re never wrong,” OtherFelix said, smirking. “After all, the Admiral forced you to take that drug, and now that you’ve told him what he didn’t want to hear, he’s getting ready to kill you.” OtherFelix stopped. “Only that’s not what happened at all, is it? He decided not to force the point, and you talked him into it. And now he’s got you in a hospital bed, not a jail cell. That’s hardly a prelude to being shot. Believe me, I know. You’re being an idiot. Not only that, you’re being paranoid, and refusing to see that things aren’t what you think. Look at me.”
Felix did. He remembered seeing that face in the mirror. “What is your point?”
OtherFelix hit him again with the crutches, almost knocking him off his feet. “Do you like being in pain? Is that it? Because *I’m* tired of you hurting me. I’m tired of being in pain. Especially when there’s no reason for it. You aren’t the bad guy, you never were. And this…” He gestured to the bloody bullet wounds and his missing leg. “This isn’t your future. It never really was… You have a choice, Felix, and it’s not the choice you think.”
“I have to make sure this doesn’t happen,” Felix said, after a moment. “It’s not just about me. Everyone will die if I don’t.”
“If you don’t what?” OtherFelix hit him again. “If you don’t suffer? If you don’t die?” He seemed to take a moment to think. “Look… look at what’s happening right now.”
Felix looked. Dee was holding his hand, and beyond the plastic privacy barriers that weren’t very private at all. Beyond it, was the Admiral and Lee Adama were talking. Or rather they seemed to be arguing intently.
“I know you’ve basically plugged your ears to anything that disagrees with your views that everyone hates you and wants you dead,” OtherFelix said, “but they’re arguing over you. Lee is using the opportunity to tell the old man off. He’s quite pissed the old man used you to get confirmation of the Cylons. The old man is defending himself… He’s pointing out your insane insistence on taking the drug that you know kills people.”
“I didn’t know that….” But he did, he realized. On the Valkyrie, Ben Loomis the senior watch officer had told him all about the secret interrogations, and what happened to the people who had been interrogated. He blinked. Loomis had… had gotten drunk and taken a handful of stim pills and he’d been laughing and crying as he described it and Felix… He had needed to grab the gun from Loomis’s hand and wrestle him to the ground before the man had hurt himself. He blinked again.
“Yeah,” OtherFelix said. “You knew what the drug does. Just like you knew the Admiral was frakking Laura Roslin, and that Cally Tyrol was cheating on her husband… and just like you knew that the Cavils let it slip that they’ve had some sort of frakked up Cylon breeding plan. I normally let you pretend you don’t know these things because frankly it’s just easier and cuts down on the nightmares, but this is one time where you have to see things exactly as they are.”
“What does that mean?” Felix asked. He watched as Lee left the Admiral and went to Dee’s side, obviously intending to relieve her. The Admiral seemed to sigh and walked away, looking beaten down.
“For starters, you’re not a prophet and this,” OtherFelix gestured to the bullet holes in his chest, “is not your future. But if you really think it was a vision of the future then you have to admit, logically you have already irrevocably altered the future. The Admiral knows who the final five Cylons are almost a year ahead of schedule. And… he’s worried about you. He thinks he’s killed you. And in case you missed it, it bothers him, the idea that you’re probably going to die over this.” OtherFelix crossed his arms and cocked his head. “Now, correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t recall anyone giving a damn when you imagined my leg being shot and cut off over an excruciating twenty four hours. I didn’t even get a visitor. Consider that before you start arguing that things aren’t different. I mean really, Lee Adama is guarding you. So when this little hallucinatory interlude ends, I really hope you stop and think about how you’re actually the hero here.” OtherFelix shrugged. “And if you do decide to commit suicide, pick something a little less unpleasant than suicide by mutiny and firing squad. Trust me. It’ll hurt less.” He gestured to himself again. “This is only your future if *you* want it to be. You can open your eyes and see what’s really going on around you, or you can use this opportunity to let go. You’ve got plenty of reason to let go… but you have plenty of reason to stay. Don’t make the decision based on what you *fear*.”
“The decision?” Felix asked, feeling suddenly slowwitted.
His double shrugged. “This is the crossroads, Felix, the point between life and death. You could live or die at this point. I just want you to make the decision based on what’s real… The Admiral isn’t going to kill you. If anything, even if he’s mad, he’s going to be very careful not to show it since you’re the fleet good luck charm. If you’re ready to die and move on, that’s fine. But make that decision based on what’s real, and not what your paranoid and self destructive imagination thinks. So think about it. But not too long… The longer you wait to choose, the less of a choice you have. Which is a choice in itself.”
Felix nodded. He didn’t know what to do.
“What the hell are you doing, Starbuck?”
Tigh said it quietly, which surprised her. She had assumed that Tigh was backing Adama to the death. But the older man was keeping his voice low, as to not wake the guards or the others. She looked up from the vent she was working on. “I’m getting the hell out of here. If you want to die like a rat in a trap, I’m not going to stop you, but I’m not waiting around for the firing squad.”
The older man looked at her carefully. “Kara,” he said quietly, “have you thought at all about what happens when you break out of here? If you can break out of here?”
“I can.” She held up her id tags. “They didn’t take them away.” She was using the tags as makeshift screwdrivers, slowly undoing the air vent grate. She could fit in. It meant abandoning Sam since he was in a different cell, and Tyrol, since there was no way the man would fit in the air vent. Tigh, and Tory, in different cells, were in the same position. “I can get through the air vent, get out into one of the damage control corridors.”
“And then what?” Tigh asked. He leaned close until he was almost up against the bars. “Then what do you, Kara? Do you kill someone to escape? Because as soon as you do that, the Admiral stops having a choice about what to do with you.”
“What do you think he’s going to do, anyway?” she shot back. “We’re all dead, Colonel.”
“He’s trying to save us.” Tigh glared at her. “I won’t stop you, and I’ll say I was asleep. But there’s no where to go, Kara. If you make it down to the flight deck, then what? You steal a Raptor and five or six days later you’re dead because there’s no where to go and the oxygen ran out.”
“At least I’ll have done something other than wait to die,” she said.
“Don’t kill anyone,” Tigh said. He nodded to the others. “I know you don’t give a damn about the rest of us, but stop and think how long your husband will live if you escape and start killing people?”
It was a fair point. On the other hand, she didn’t see how killing people was going to help the situation at all, and she honestly hadn’t been planning to kill anyone unless it was necessary. All she really wanted was to get out of the trap. “If people don’t get in my way, they won’t get dead. I promise you that. Tell Sam… Tell Sam I love him, and I’m coming back for all of you.” She hesitated. “I mean that, Colonel.”
Tigh looked away. “I know you do. That’s why I’m not stopping you.”
~*~
“Wake up, dammit!” Felix refused to open his eyes. He was in trouble, in terrible trouble and it just felt easier to keep his eyes closed and pretend to sleep. That way he could drift off.
“Quit faking!”
He was poked with something hard. Then a sharp blow made him jerk and roll off the bed. He jumped to his feet. “What the hell?”
Then he stopped. He was looking at himself. His other self, older, missing a leg, a uniform stained with blood, brandishing a crutch. The OtherFelix rolled his eyes. “It figures… hitting you always works. Why is that, Felix?”
“What’s…. what’s going on?” He looked around, and felt a sudden intense wave of relief. “I’m hallucinating.” Because he was standing up, at the edge of his hospital bed, looking at himself, as he had looked in the Cylon projection, while a third version, the real version, was lying unconscious on a hospital bed while Dee sat at his bed side, holding his hand. Further confirming his theory, Dee didn’t appear to notice two extra Felixs’s in the room.
“I’d call it more of an out of body experience,” The OtherFelix said, his tone annoyed. He smacked Felix with the crutch again. “Do you have any idea what a miserable frak you are?”
“You’re not real,” Felix said, rubbing his arm where the crutch had struck him. “You’re just in my imagination. I wasn’t shot, I didn’t lose my leg.”
“And you weren’t a traitor whoring yourself to some crazy Eight, either.” OtherFelix smirked at him. “She wasn’t that good, by the way. But that’s not why we’re having this chat.” He pointed to the body on the bed. “You’re lying on the bed. You could die. We could die. You’re the one in control of that, Felix. I’m just the last vestiges of your survival instinct trying to knock some frakking sense into you.” He deftly struck Felix again with the crutch. “You know this isn’t your fault, and you’ve done nothing wrong, right? You didn’t make anybody a Cylon, and whatever the Admiral decides, that’s for Admiral Adama to live with. He wanted the answer.”
“He’ll blame me. I’ll pay for telling him his friends are Cylons.” He knew it was true. He looked at the other Felix and gestured to the bloodstains. “Don’t tell me you don’t understand how the Admiral gets. It doesn’t matter how right I am….”
“And of course you’re never wrong,” OtherFelix said, smirking. “After all, the Admiral forced you to take that drug, and now that you’ve told him what he didn’t want to hear, he’s getting ready to kill you.” OtherFelix stopped. “Only that’s not what happened at all, is it? He decided not to force the point, and you talked him into it. And now he’s got you in a hospital bed, not a jail cell. That’s hardly a prelude to being shot. Believe me, I know. You’re being an idiot. Not only that, you’re being paranoid, and refusing to see that things aren’t what you think. Look at me.”
Felix did. He remembered seeing that face in the mirror. “What is your point?”
OtherFelix hit him again with the crutches, almost knocking him off his feet. “Do you like being in pain? Is that it? Because *I’m* tired of you hurting me. I’m tired of being in pain. Especially when there’s no reason for it. You aren’t the bad guy, you never were. And this…” He gestured to the bloody bullet wounds and his missing leg. “This isn’t your future. It never really was… You have a choice, Felix, and it’s not the choice you think.”
“I have to make sure this doesn’t happen,” Felix said, after a moment. “It’s not just about me. Everyone will die if I don’t.”
“If you don’t what?” OtherFelix hit him again. “If you don’t suffer? If you don’t die?” He seemed to take a moment to think. “Look… look at what’s happening right now.”
Felix looked. Dee was holding his hand, and beyond the plastic privacy barriers that weren’t very private at all. Beyond it, was the Admiral and Lee Adama were talking. Or rather they seemed to be arguing intently.
“I know you’ve basically plugged your ears to anything that disagrees with your views that everyone hates you and wants you dead,” OtherFelix said, “but they’re arguing over you. Lee is using the opportunity to tell the old man off. He’s quite pissed the old man used you to get confirmation of the Cylons. The old man is defending himself… He’s pointing out your insane insistence on taking the drug that you know kills people.”
“I didn’t know that….” But he did, he realized. On the Valkyrie, Ben Loomis the senior watch officer had told him all about the secret interrogations, and what happened to the people who had been interrogated. He blinked. Loomis had… had gotten drunk and taken a handful of stim pills and he’d been laughing and crying as he described it and Felix… He had needed to grab the gun from Loomis’s hand and wrestle him to the ground before the man had hurt himself. He blinked again.
“Yeah,” OtherFelix said. “You knew what the drug does. Just like you knew the Admiral was frakking Laura Roslin, and that Cally Tyrol was cheating on her husband… and just like you knew that the Cavils let it slip that they’ve had some sort of frakked up Cylon breeding plan. I normally let you pretend you don’t know these things because frankly it’s just easier and cuts down on the nightmares, but this is one time where you have to see things exactly as they are.”
“What does that mean?” Felix asked. He watched as Lee left the Admiral and went to Dee’s side, obviously intending to relieve her. The Admiral seemed to sigh and walked away, looking beaten down.
“For starters, you’re not a prophet and this,” OtherFelix gestured to the bullet holes in his chest, “is not your future. But if you really think it was a vision of the future then you have to admit, logically you have already irrevocably altered the future. The Admiral knows who the final five Cylons are almost a year ahead of schedule. And… he’s worried about you. He thinks he’s killed you. And in case you missed it, it bothers him, the idea that you’re probably going to die over this.” OtherFelix crossed his arms and cocked his head. “Now, correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t recall anyone giving a damn when you imagined my leg being shot and cut off over an excruciating twenty four hours. I didn’t even get a visitor. Consider that before you start arguing that things aren’t different. I mean really, Lee Adama is guarding you. So when this little hallucinatory interlude ends, I really hope you stop and think about how you’re actually the hero here.” OtherFelix shrugged. “And if you do decide to commit suicide, pick something a little less unpleasant than suicide by mutiny and firing squad. Trust me. It’ll hurt less.” He gestured to himself again. “This is only your future if *you* want it to be. You can open your eyes and see what’s really going on around you, or you can use this opportunity to let go. You’ve got plenty of reason to let go… but you have plenty of reason to stay. Don’t make the decision based on what you *fear*.”
“The decision?” Felix asked, feeling suddenly slowwitted.
His double shrugged. “This is the crossroads, Felix, the point between life and death. You could live or die at this point. I just want you to make the decision based on what’s real… The Admiral isn’t going to kill you. If anything, even if he’s mad, he’s going to be very careful not to show it since you’re the fleet good luck charm. If you’re ready to die and move on, that’s fine. But make that decision based on what’s real, and not what your paranoid and self destructive imagination thinks. So think about it. But not too long… The longer you wait to choose, the less of a choice you have. Which is a choice in itself.”
Felix nodded. He didn’t know what to do.