Clothed In Ashes And Air, for the Kindreds Summer Ficathon
Written for Kindreds Summer Ficathon.
Clothed in Ashes and Air
Roslin, Tigh, Gaeta, Chief, Helo, D'Anna/Three, Hot Dog, Lee Adama.
One
What do you wear to the first day of the rest of your life? Laura Roslin is looking into her closet- Bill’s closet, really, but since her quarters and his have become the same so many times, her things have mingled with his. Married people’s things do that. Couples’ things. Separate things, becoming intertwined, part of a whole. Hers, his, ours. Her clothes on Galactica are different from the clothes on Colonial One, somehow- they’ve hung in Adama’s closet, next to his uniforms, and they smell like him, and like her. And like Galactica.
Should she be Madam President? Should she be the teacher? Secretary of Education? Dying leader? Should she be Bill’s Laura, for as long as she can? Nothing in the wardrobe is suitable for all those women, and Laura reaches for the practical, sturdy garments that Tom Zarek found years ago for her to wear to the surface of Kobol. The temperature, the temperature of Earth, is cool, and she’s lost so much flesh to the cancer that she gets cold too easily.
Something is missing, and she knows what it is- William Adama embraced his son thankfully in the CIC, to the dancing and singing of a people gone maenad with relief, and Laura’s arms are empty. Her son is gone, and the price was too high. He should be here, and Laura’s throat closes and her eyes are wet with angry tears. Her boy, the one that loved her, and looked at her with wise eyes and trust, is lost to her and lost forever. If he were a Cylon, he would have downloaded, returned. Billy hasn’t come back. Billy isn’t coming back. He’ll never set foot on Earth.
In the closet is a suitcase and Laura Roslin reaches into it and takes out the bit of Billy that she keeps, the bit she refuses to let go. The first time she ever saw him, his tie looked like an afterthought, hanging limply on his unfinished frame. Sometimes she takes it out and tangles it through her fingers. It’s worn now, and there’s a stain in the middle of it; some sort of food that found its way to the silk. Back when they had food, before the endless algae. Laura won’t wear it, but she’ll take it with her, next to her heart, and she’ll stand next to the reason she keeps struggling and surviving, and her two Bills will be with her for the rest of her life.
It doesn’t matter what she wears, she realizes. The outside always changes and the inside is always with you no matter where you are.
Two
The Six called Caprica keeps asking if he loves her, and Saul Tigh, whoever he is, has no idea. The two people he’s loved in his life are Bill Adama and Ellen, and what he feels for the Six is so different from how he felt before- before the Cylons blew up the world, before the woman he loved drank from a poisoned cup he poured her, before he told the one person who knew him best in the world he didn’t know him at all.
Sometimes the Six wears Ellen’s face. She does it when she touches him, and she touches him often. He didn’t let her out of the cell. He was too busy showing his unharmed face to the D’Anna model in the hangar bay while Apollo convinced everyone to get along. Athena had relieved the Marines of duty and released the Six, allowing and accompanying her first free steps on Galactica. He still wasn’t sure if the Six had been freed before or after Apollo’s deal. Better not to know, since he was still the XO.
He’s given thought to giving the Six Ellen’s clothes- no one else is getting any use out of them, and they stopped smelling like her and more like sweat and booze a while ago, but the textures and the colors still speak to him. Gods love her, Ellen had managed to come back from the dead with a full wardrobe and add to it constantly. Probably gifts from men, but he didn’t care anymore. He hadn’t cared much at the time, either. Ellen wanted to be pretty for him, and she found ways to be.
Ellen Tigh was grasping, ambitious, conniving, amoral, and faithless. And she was the most loving woman he had ever known.
Three
Other people had lost more than he had. Colonel Tigh had lost an eye, ripped from his skull by the clawed hand of the skinjob frakking his wife. He’d lost his depth perception forever, although when it came right down to it, Colonel Tigh had only ever perceived surfaces anyway. He still had his friends, his shipmates who had become his family. He had Dualla, and Helo, and the Admiral. He had a job that he could do, and do well. He hadn’t lost any part of what made him himself- any more than he had already lost. Integrity, idealism, honor- those had all gone a while ago, burned out in the blaze of Gaius Baltar’s narcissism and weakness. His uniform still fit, as long as he regained the weight he’d lost, which since Dualla and Hoshi kept forcing algae bars on him, was likely to happen soon.
It was stupid to miss something that hadn’t been a big part of his life, not even a hobby, just an occasional pleasure, but the memories that accompanied the thoughts of dancing were some of the happiest he had since the war began. Swinging Boomer Valerii around on the first Colonial Day after the attack, her arms around his neck and her borrowed red dress swishing against his legs. Dualla, eyes shining in lieutenant’s uniform, catching his hands and whirling, whirling with buttons gleaming like the stars on a fearless New Caprica night.
Doing the right thing had cost him, but he was still luckier than most. He could still find the memories, and as long as he had those, he could still dance.
Four
There are no gods. Or if there are, they have some sick senses of humor or they’re some seriously unforgiving sonsofbitches. He’s been laughing to himself for a long time now, since no one else seems to get the joke at all. All this effort, all the struggle, all the people- his people, and the Cylons. All of this, and for what? To stand on an irradiated planet full of ruins and mourn. And for that they’d left Caprica? Tauron? Picon? They could have stayed on the irradiated ruins they had, without all the trials and all the losses.
Cally. Prosna. Socinus. Tarn. Laird’s family. Boomer. Boxey. Ellen Tigh. All people somebody had loved, dead because of the Cylons. Because of him. Eighty-five people he was responsible for, dead in the first attack on Galactica; Laura Roslin had her whiteboard and he had his in his head. And the Gods, those callous bastards, watching the same mistakes over and over and not changing anything. Who made them gods, anyway?
People. People who desperately needed to believe in something, anything, except their own culpability, their own guilt. People who believed that they would be redeemed, gathered to the bosom of an all-knowing, all-loving, all-forgiving deity who would make it all better.
And that’s why he’s laughing. Because the Gods are false, and the guilt is real, and no matter how many times he’s forgiven, the blood still stains his hands. No matter how many ships he fixes, how many lives he saves, it’s the ones lost that matter more. Maybe if he’d believed, given the idols their pound of flesh and worship, maybe it would have been different somehow. But he doubts it. The universe loves irony, and no amount of pain will change that.
Five
He can barely hold it back, this anger. It’s seething and boiling and so near the surface he suspects that his jaw is quivering with rage. He’s never felt anything like this; his skin wants to burn off with the force of it, and all he can do is look at the people who brought them to this. People he trusted, people he loved, people he followed.
People he, his wife, and his child will die with, on a barren world that was supposed to be the salvation of everything. The end of the road, the Olympus that the priests promised. It would be better if they’d just lied, but they’d all believed. Adama, Roslin, Kara Thrace. They’d told the truth. And the truth had turned out to be the biggest lie of all.
He should have died so many times already; on Pegasus at the hands of an insane zealot, on Caprica, over New Caprica’s skies. Fate had intervened so many times to save him, and for what? For this? To watch his daughter take her first steps on a land that still crackled with the same bitterness that had poisoned Caprica? To breathe air that was contaminated with old misery?
Hasn’t he had enough of this poison? More than anyone else in the Fleet who is still living. Hera’s a miracle as it is, and he doubts there will be another. Finally he’s found something that no matter what he does, he can’t make right, no matter how hard he tries. No Pegasus with guns blazing into the middle of the Apocalypse, no Sharon miraculously back to slip her shoulder under his and carry him on, no Adama to go to war.
The war is over, and they missed it, and they lost. He wants to plant his fist into the Admiral’s face, to put his hands around Laura Roslin’s neck and choke the rest of the life out of her. He betrayed so many things he believed in. Felix Gaeta lost his leg, and his hope. Athena lost her baby and her life. Kara lost her mind, not once, but multiple times, and he committed murder and lost a part of himself he’d never get back.
And for what? To stand shivering beneath a gray sun, on a dead soil, next to poisoned waters. Promised Elysium, and given Hades. Lied to by the Gods, their leaders, their own Scriptures. Athena said once that the Cylons knew the Colonies’ religion better than the Colonials. If the Cylons knew about this…..
No matter how angry he is, that’s a thought he can’t bring himself to think. Because if he does, then he has nothing left at all.
Six
Cylons weren’t supposed to be alone. The Cylon were never alone. They had others with them; their own selves and models and other selves and different models and none truly knew where they ended and the others began. And now Three was the last Three in the universe and even the company of humans she feared and hated and held in contempt was better than being alone. The Five had brought them to this, and this was bleak victory. The Cylon had brought themselves to this. And Three was alone.
Seven
Earth was supposed to be the solution to everything- Gods embrace us and the Thirteenth Tribe kills a fatted calf for feasting. They definitely got that part right. The calf is surely dead. The land of nectar and grain is frakked, and Hot Dog can’t help but think that he’d been really wanting there to be a feast. The calf, roasting over wood coals, meat charring on the outside and caramelizing on the heat, juices dripping in a baptism in fire and the manna on his tongue. Honeyed wine flowing, cakes and sweet, fresh butter and milk. Vegetables with colors besides green and textures that taste.
The last food he can remember truly enjoying came from Kat’s hands, “Here, baby, eat this,” and crumbs being swept across the table. He was so grateful for those crumbs. They’ve been existing on crumbs for longer than he can remember whole loaves. He takes an algae bar out of his flightsuit and plants it in the earth of Earth. Now Kat’s here and it’s still crumbs. But she’s made it here, a little, and he’ll raise a glass to her even if she can’t see it.
Eight
Lee Adama’s a good boy. Well-scrubbed, reliable, dutiful, the person you’d want by your side or on his back no matter what. So why is he alone for the end of everything? His father has Roslin, side by side in their despair, their plans, their lies, their belief in Earth and each other. Even if it’s all for nothing, they stand together. Helo looks like he’s about to climb out of his skin with rage, and he’s welded to his Cylon’s side as if he leaves her alone, she’ll vanish into a swirl of chill winds and ash. Tory Foster’s approached Sam Anders and been rejected, but at least she had someone to approach. Tigh and the Six stand together, tall and spare and deeply silent. The Six has her hand on her belly. Someone’s with her all the time now.
Dualla and Kara are standing by themselves, like Lee is, Kara dazed and curious, Dualla impassive. He wonders what she’s seeing, this woman who was his wife, who shared his bed, his meals, his duty, his life, and his love for his father. Dualla is how he thinks of her now. Gentle Dee with the big, trusting eyes is gone, and Persephone stands in her place, He’s brought her to the underworld and the pomegranate seeds are eternity. Kara ignores him, looking about her in confusion, big mouth trembling. She’s fought so hard to bring them to this. Even the Leoben model can’t look at her. She’s alone too, but Lee can’t do it, can’t cross the space between them and believe in her anymore.
He can’t believe in himself anymore. He’s no one, and he’s drying up and shredding away on the wind.
Clothed in Ashes and Air
Roslin, Tigh, Gaeta, Chief, Helo, D'Anna/Three, Hot Dog, Lee Adama.
One
What do you wear to the first day of the rest of your life? Laura Roslin is looking into her closet- Bill’s closet, really, but since her quarters and his have become the same so many times, her things have mingled with his. Married people’s things do that. Couples’ things. Separate things, becoming intertwined, part of a whole. Hers, his, ours. Her clothes on Galactica are different from the clothes on Colonial One, somehow- they’ve hung in Adama’s closet, next to his uniforms, and they smell like him, and like her. And like Galactica.
Should she be Madam President? Should she be the teacher? Secretary of Education? Dying leader? Should she be Bill’s Laura, for as long as she can? Nothing in the wardrobe is suitable for all those women, and Laura reaches for the practical, sturdy garments that Tom Zarek found years ago for her to wear to the surface of Kobol. The temperature, the temperature of Earth, is cool, and she’s lost so much flesh to the cancer that she gets cold too easily.
Something is missing, and she knows what it is- William Adama embraced his son thankfully in the CIC, to the dancing and singing of a people gone maenad with relief, and Laura’s arms are empty. Her son is gone, and the price was too high. He should be here, and Laura’s throat closes and her eyes are wet with angry tears. Her boy, the one that loved her, and looked at her with wise eyes and trust, is lost to her and lost forever. If he were a Cylon, he would have downloaded, returned. Billy hasn’t come back. Billy isn’t coming back. He’ll never set foot on Earth.
In the closet is a suitcase and Laura Roslin reaches into it and takes out the bit of Billy that she keeps, the bit she refuses to let go. The first time she ever saw him, his tie looked like an afterthought, hanging limply on his unfinished frame. Sometimes she takes it out and tangles it through her fingers. It’s worn now, and there’s a stain in the middle of it; some sort of food that found its way to the silk. Back when they had food, before the endless algae. Laura won’t wear it, but she’ll take it with her, next to her heart, and she’ll stand next to the reason she keeps struggling and surviving, and her two Bills will be with her for the rest of her life.
It doesn’t matter what she wears, she realizes. The outside always changes and the inside is always with you no matter where you are.
Two
The Six called Caprica keeps asking if he loves her, and Saul Tigh, whoever he is, has no idea. The two people he’s loved in his life are Bill Adama and Ellen, and what he feels for the Six is so different from how he felt before- before the Cylons blew up the world, before the woman he loved drank from a poisoned cup he poured her, before he told the one person who knew him best in the world he didn’t know him at all.
Sometimes the Six wears Ellen’s face. She does it when she touches him, and she touches him often. He didn’t let her out of the cell. He was too busy showing his unharmed face to the D’Anna model in the hangar bay while Apollo convinced everyone to get along. Athena had relieved the Marines of duty and released the Six, allowing and accompanying her first free steps on Galactica. He still wasn’t sure if the Six had been freed before or after Apollo’s deal. Better not to know, since he was still the XO.
He’s given thought to giving the Six Ellen’s clothes- no one else is getting any use out of them, and they stopped smelling like her and more like sweat and booze a while ago, but the textures and the colors still speak to him. Gods love her, Ellen had managed to come back from the dead with a full wardrobe and add to it constantly. Probably gifts from men, but he didn’t care anymore. He hadn’t cared much at the time, either. Ellen wanted to be pretty for him, and she found ways to be.
Ellen Tigh was grasping, ambitious, conniving, amoral, and faithless. And she was the most loving woman he had ever known.
Three
Other people had lost more than he had. Colonel Tigh had lost an eye, ripped from his skull by the clawed hand of the skinjob frakking his wife. He’d lost his depth perception forever, although when it came right down to it, Colonel Tigh had only ever perceived surfaces anyway. He still had his friends, his shipmates who had become his family. He had Dualla, and Helo, and the Admiral. He had a job that he could do, and do well. He hadn’t lost any part of what made him himself- any more than he had already lost. Integrity, idealism, honor- those had all gone a while ago, burned out in the blaze of Gaius Baltar’s narcissism and weakness. His uniform still fit, as long as he regained the weight he’d lost, which since Dualla and Hoshi kept forcing algae bars on him, was likely to happen soon.
It was stupid to miss something that hadn’t been a big part of his life, not even a hobby, just an occasional pleasure, but the memories that accompanied the thoughts of dancing were some of the happiest he had since the war began. Swinging Boomer Valerii around on the first Colonial Day after the attack, her arms around his neck and her borrowed red dress swishing against his legs. Dualla, eyes shining in lieutenant’s uniform, catching his hands and whirling, whirling with buttons gleaming like the stars on a fearless New Caprica night.
Doing the right thing had cost him, but he was still luckier than most. He could still find the memories, and as long as he had those, he could still dance.
Four
There are no gods. Or if there are, they have some sick senses of humor or they’re some seriously unforgiving sonsofbitches. He’s been laughing to himself for a long time now, since no one else seems to get the joke at all. All this effort, all the struggle, all the people- his people, and the Cylons. All of this, and for what? To stand on an irradiated planet full of ruins and mourn. And for that they’d left Caprica? Tauron? Picon? They could have stayed on the irradiated ruins they had, without all the trials and all the losses.
Cally. Prosna. Socinus. Tarn. Laird’s family. Boomer. Boxey. Ellen Tigh. All people somebody had loved, dead because of the Cylons. Because of him. Eighty-five people he was responsible for, dead in the first attack on Galactica; Laura Roslin had her whiteboard and he had his in his head. And the Gods, those callous bastards, watching the same mistakes over and over and not changing anything. Who made them gods, anyway?
People. People who desperately needed to believe in something, anything, except their own culpability, their own guilt. People who believed that they would be redeemed, gathered to the bosom of an all-knowing, all-loving, all-forgiving deity who would make it all better.
And that’s why he’s laughing. Because the Gods are false, and the guilt is real, and no matter how many times he’s forgiven, the blood still stains his hands. No matter how many ships he fixes, how many lives he saves, it’s the ones lost that matter more. Maybe if he’d believed, given the idols their pound of flesh and worship, maybe it would have been different somehow. But he doubts it. The universe loves irony, and no amount of pain will change that.
Five
He can barely hold it back, this anger. It’s seething and boiling and so near the surface he suspects that his jaw is quivering with rage. He’s never felt anything like this; his skin wants to burn off with the force of it, and all he can do is look at the people who brought them to this. People he trusted, people he loved, people he followed.
People he, his wife, and his child will die with, on a barren world that was supposed to be the salvation of everything. The end of the road, the Olympus that the priests promised. It would be better if they’d just lied, but they’d all believed. Adama, Roslin, Kara Thrace. They’d told the truth. And the truth had turned out to be the biggest lie of all.
He should have died so many times already; on Pegasus at the hands of an insane zealot, on Caprica, over New Caprica’s skies. Fate had intervened so many times to save him, and for what? For this? To watch his daughter take her first steps on a land that still crackled with the same bitterness that had poisoned Caprica? To breathe air that was contaminated with old misery?
Hasn’t he had enough of this poison? More than anyone else in the Fleet who is still living. Hera’s a miracle as it is, and he doubts there will be another. Finally he’s found something that no matter what he does, he can’t make right, no matter how hard he tries. No Pegasus with guns blazing into the middle of the Apocalypse, no Sharon miraculously back to slip her shoulder under his and carry him on, no Adama to go to war.
The war is over, and they missed it, and they lost. He wants to plant his fist into the Admiral’s face, to put his hands around Laura Roslin’s neck and choke the rest of the life out of her. He betrayed so many things he believed in. Felix Gaeta lost his leg, and his hope. Athena lost her baby and her life. Kara lost her mind, not once, but multiple times, and he committed murder and lost a part of himself he’d never get back.
And for what? To stand shivering beneath a gray sun, on a dead soil, next to poisoned waters. Promised Elysium, and given Hades. Lied to by the Gods, their leaders, their own Scriptures. Athena said once that the Cylons knew the Colonies’ religion better than the Colonials. If the Cylons knew about this…..
No matter how angry he is, that’s a thought he can’t bring himself to think. Because if he does, then he has nothing left at all.
Six
Cylons weren’t supposed to be alone. The Cylon were never alone. They had others with them; their own selves and models and other selves and different models and none truly knew where they ended and the others began. And now Three was the last Three in the universe and even the company of humans she feared and hated and held in contempt was better than being alone. The Five had brought them to this, and this was bleak victory. The Cylon had brought themselves to this. And Three was alone.
Seven
Earth was supposed to be the solution to everything- Gods embrace us and the Thirteenth Tribe kills a fatted calf for feasting. They definitely got that part right. The calf is surely dead. The land of nectar and grain is frakked, and Hot Dog can’t help but think that he’d been really wanting there to be a feast. The calf, roasting over wood coals, meat charring on the outside and caramelizing on the heat, juices dripping in a baptism in fire and the manna on his tongue. Honeyed wine flowing, cakes and sweet, fresh butter and milk. Vegetables with colors besides green and textures that taste.
The last food he can remember truly enjoying came from Kat’s hands, “Here, baby, eat this,” and crumbs being swept across the table. He was so grateful for those crumbs. They’ve been existing on crumbs for longer than he can remember whole loaves. He takes an algae bar out of his flightsuit and plants it in the earth of Earth. Now Kat’s here and it’s still crumbs. But she’s made it here, a little, and he’ll raise a glass to her even if she can’t see it.
Eight
Lee Adama’s a good boy. Well-scrubbed, reliable, dutiful, the person you’d want by your side or on his back no matter what. So why is he alone for the end of everything? His father has Roslin, side by side in their despair, their plans, their lies, their belief in Earth and each other. Even if it’s all for nothing, they stand together. Helo looks like he’s about to climb out of his skin with rage, and he’s welded to his Cylon’s side as if he leaves her alone, she’ll vanish into a swirl of chill winds and ash. Tory Foster’s approached Sam Anders and been rejected, but at least she had someone to approach. Tigh and the Six stand together, tall and spare and deeply silent. The Six has her hand on her belly. Someone’s with her all the time now.
Dualla and Kara are standing by themselves, like Lee is, Kara dazed and curious, Dualla impassive. He wonders what she’s seeing, this woman who was his wife, who shared his bed, his meals, his duty, his life, and his love for his father. Dualla is how he thinks of her now. Gentle Dee with the big, trusting eyes is gone, and Persephone stands in her place, He’s brought her to the underworld and the pomegranate seeds are eternity. Kara ignores him, looking about her in confusion, big mouth trembling. She’s fought so hard to bring them to this. Even the Leoben model can’t look at her. She’s alone too, but Lee can’t do it, can’t cross the space between them and believe in her anymore.
He can’t believe in himself anymore. He’s no one, and he’s drying up and shredding away on the wind.