Fic - Home: Chapter 13
Home
Author: JPBryant
Characters: Sharon/Helo
Rating: Mature, for descriptions of violence, language and sexual situations.
Spoilers: Through 'A Measure of Salvation", everything after that is AU.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: After fleeing back to Caprica, the life Helo and Sharon have made for their family is threatened when the fleet returns. The final installment of the story. Parts one and two can be found here and here.
A/N: The thirteenth of twenty-two chapters, I'm not sure how well the story stands up without knowledge of the prior chapters. For that matter, I'm not sure how well the story will hold up for anyone but me. :) More notes at the end of the story.
Chapter 13
“Why?”
The lantern sitting at the edge of the kitchen table was low on power and provided little light, illuminating the food that sat on their plates but little else in the dark room. Pushing his meal around with his fork, his eyes moved back to the empty chair across from him.
“Because,” he replied.
“Because why?” she pressed.
He looked over at her and saw her mimicking him, playing with her food instead of eating it. In the artificial light, he couldn’t deny that the meal lacked visual appeal. Glancing back at the empty table setting, he wished Sharon was there to handle this debate; he preferred playing the good guy.
“Because we don’t waste food,” he said.
She paused, taking a moment to contemplate his answer. Placing her fork on the table, she looked at him and shook her head.
“You can’t waste food,” she stated, matter-of-factly.
Lifting a fork-full of his meal to his mouth, he hoped to convince her to eat through his own example. When she didn’t follow his lead, he resigned himself to following hers.
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” she answered, nodding her head definitively.
He smiled despite himself, knowing that the small grin would only yield more ground to her. “Why? Because I eat whatever you leave?”
“No,” she said, drawing the single syllable out. “Because if you don’t eat it, something else will. Like trees. Or insects maybe.”
The argument was more profound than he had expected in regard to the topic, but he had ceased to be surprised by anything she said long ago. He wanted to laugh at her ponderous excuse for not eating her meal, but he dared not encourage her further.
“Eat your dinner, Hera,” he insisted.
“It’s too dark,” she protested, changing her tack. “I can’t see it.”
As if on cue, the ceiling light above them flickered to life, and in the background he heard the generator power back up with a low hum. He pointed his fork at her food.
“Eat,” he commanded.
Dropping her elbows to the table, she stared dejectedly at her plate and gave up. “I hate corn.”
“It’s good for you,” he replied as the side door opened and Sharon stepped in.
A gust of cold air followed her inside, and she shut the door quickly to try and keep the warm air in. Without saying a word, she took off her jacket and set it on the back of her chair before stepping behind him.
“Corn doesn’t taste good,” Hera replied, still staring at her food.
“You’re gonna hurt you dad’s feelings,” Sharon said, reaching around from behind him to place her freezing hands on each side of his face. “He grew that himself.”
He tried to pull away from the shocking touch of her icy fingers, his reaction bringing a laugh from Sharon. Keeping her hands pressed firmly against his cheeks, she leaned over, kissing him on the temple. When the initial frigid shock had passed, he smiled up at her, and took her hands in his.
“It’s not dad’s fault that corn tastes bad,” Hera continued.
Sharon smiled back as he pulled her hands from his cheeks and slowly craned up to kiss her.
“You fixed it,” he whispered, proud of her.
“Yeah,” she replied, stealing another kiss. “I told you I would.”
“I could have done it, you know.”
“I’m sure you could have,” she said, her smile growing. “But I wanted our power back before the spring.”
Shaking his head, he laughed quietly. He couldn’t deny that she had more of a gift when it came to working with machines, but it hardly seemed like a fair comparison.
“How come dad doesn’t grow oranges?” Hera asked, oblivious to the intimacy between her parents. “I like oranges.”
He looked back over at their daughter, her brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, the long curls straightening slightly under their own weight. It took him a moment to remember if she were five or six now; the missing time after her birth always played with his math. Counting the winters in his mind, and adding another, he was sure that she was six.
“It’s too cold to grow oranges, Hera,” Sharon said, resting her cheek on the top of his head as she looked over at Hera.
Their daughter shrugged her shoulders. “I like oranges.”
Sharon sighed half-heartedly, and he could hear the smile on her lips.
“You need to wash your hands,” Sharon said to him, gently pulling out of his grasp. Taking her index finger, she ran it lightly across his cheek. “And your face.”
He looked down at his hands and saw they were smudged with grease he hadn’t seen on Sharon’s hands. Reaching up to his cheek, he stopped short as he realized his face was now equally in need of washing. Shaking his head, he followed his wife to the sink.
“We’ll get you some canned oranges next time we go down into town,” he said to Hera as Sharon turned on the faucet. It took only a few moments for the heated water to make its way through the pipes before spilling over their hands.
“And more books,” Hera added.
“And more books,” he acknowledged, grabbing the soap from Sharon and scrubbing the grease off his fingers.
Finished cleaning her own hands, she lifted a wash cloth up to his face and began to wipe away the mark she had left there.
“We’re gonna need a library soon,” he said.
“You said it was okay if she got my brains,” Sharon teased, turning his face to the side to reach a spot of grease she had left behind his ear. “Do you regret that she did?”
“No, I don’t,” he replied. “I only regret letting you win that argument. As if that somehow proves you’re smarter than me.”
She smiled once more, the smile that had always been his and his alone. It had never left her, even as she mourned the death of their unborn daughter, Hestia. Somehow she had found a way to keep it for him, just as he had found a way to cry for her. They were small things, but they had both needed them desperately.
“I’m bored,” Hera announced, dropping her fork to the table.
“You’re what?” he asked, turning to look over his shoulder at her.
“I’m bored,” she said again.
“What?” he asked, cupping a hand to his ear.
“I’m bored,” she repeated, stretching the word out for emphasis. “Bored, bored, bored.”
“Oh,” he said, mimicking his daughter by drawing out the single syllable.
It was a familiar refrain, one he had heard too many times to count since she had learned the word and its meaning. There weren’t enough books to be read or stories to be shared to sate her, though he and Sharon did all they could to try.
“Alright kiddo,” he said. “Cleanup and get your coat on, lets climb to the top.”
“Yay!” Hera exclaimed, pushing her plate of food towards the center of the table as she hopped off her chair and ran to where they stood by the sink.
“It’s too cold, Helo,” Sharon chided, shaking her head as she lifted Hera off the ground to let the girl get her hands under the running water.
“And it’s just going to get colder,” he replied, grabbing a towel and drying his hands. “It’s not gonna be long before the snow gets here. This might be the last chance to go before then.”
“Soap, Hera,” Sharon reminded her daughter, watching as the small girl tried to rush through the task.
Replacing the towel, Helo headed out of the kitchen. “I’m gonna go make sure all the systems reset, babe.”
Stepping out into the hallway, Helo turned into the small office at the front of the house. On the wooden desk inside, a motley assortment of monitors illuminated the room with varying degrees of light, each waiting for attention. Along the floor and wall bundles of black, white and silver cables ran in every direction. Somewhere in the midst of all the electronics, a lone beep sounded every ten seconds. Leaning on the desk, he studied the monitors for the source of the distress.
Glancing at the first two monitors, he saw that everything from the solar power array checked out okay. Like everything else, the arrays had been scrounged and salvaged together over the course of the past five years. Set up on the hill behind their home, the four dozen panels provided all the power the Agathon’s needed.
“What’s broken…” Helo whispered to himself, his eyes wandering to the next set of screens.
The wide angle infrared cameras positioned along the trail leading up to the house displayed little more than the stars in the sky, but that’s all they ever showed outside of a stray squirrel or dear in the summer.
Loud footsteps echoed in the hallway, as Hera rushed to the door wearing her thick red coat and her brown boots. “Let’s go dad!”
“One sec, kiddo,” he replied, still searching for the source of the beeping. “Here, we go…”
Stepping around the corner, Sharon walked in and peered over his shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Here,” he said, pointing to one of the monitors as he tried to make sense of the information it displayed. “A motion detector on the second picket is out. Just one though, the rest of the chain looks okay. I’ll bet it’s the same one that went out the last time we lost power.”
Sharon nodded. “I’ll go out and check it while you’re up top.”
“Nah,” he said, searching for an excuse to keep her from going alone. “It’s pretty cold out, Sharon. I mean, you’ve been out in it awhile. Stay inside and get warm.”
He knew how transparent his words were, and the gentle smile that crept onto Sharon’s face made it clear that she saw right through them. But it was that same smile that told him she understood. Because even after five years without seeing the slightest trace of another living being, she understood that it was impossible for him to ever let his guard down completely; he had done it once before, and he would never do it again.
“We’ll go in the morning,” she offered, leaning over to kiss his cheek and slapping him gently on the rear. “You two get going before it starts to freeze out there.”
“You heard the LT,” Helo said, squeezing Sharon’s shoulder and stepping past her to pick up Hera. “Let’s move out.”
“Yes sir,” Hera replied, throwing up a comically sharp salute.
Grabbing one of the military grade radios that had served them so well the past few years, he opened the front door and carried his daughter out onto the porch. He had considered walking to the top of the mountain, but the night air that greeted him was even colder than he expected; it certainly wouldn’t be long now till the snows filled the valley, just as they had each year before. Heading over to the truck parked at the side of the house, he opened the passenger side door and placed Hera inside.
“Strap in, Hera,” he said, helping her when her tiny hands struggled to click the buckle closed. “Let’s go see the stars.”
----
Helo cupped his hand around his mouth, letting the heat from the air in his lungs warm his fingers. The moisture from his breath was visible in the cold moonlight, sneaking through the cracks between his fingers and fading into the night. Standing next to him, Hera seemed oblivious to the chill, fall air.
“Tauron, Picon, Geminon,” she said, naming the colonies as she picked them out of the night sky. “And that’s Aerelon, where mom was born. Except not really.”
Helo thought about it for a moment. He had given up trying to wrap his mind around the deeper meaning of Cylon birth and resurrection long ago. In the grand scheme of things, he had decided that he didn’t really need to understand. But now that reasoning had left him ill-prepared for a six-year old whose curiosity about the universe around her knew no boundaries.
“Yeah, I guess…” Helo shrugged, and then looked down at his daughter. “I guess you could say she was born here on Caprica. In a way.”
Somehow Sharon always seemed more eloquent with her answers than he did; he wondered if it was a ‘guy thing’ or a ‘Cylon thing’ that explained why.
“And I was born there,” his daughter continued, pointing up into the sky. “In between.”
“That’s right,” he agreed, shifting his gaze to the non-descript patch of stars she pointed at. “You were born aboard Galactica.”
“Tell me about Galactica.”
Helo smiled to himself as he continued to stare in the night sky. “I’ve told you about Galactica a hundred times, kiddo.”
“Tell me again,” she insisted. His grin widened as she tugged his sleeve.
There were some topics Hera grew bored of after less than thirty-seconds, yet there were others he knew she would never tire of. And when it came to Galactica there was nothing new he could tell her about the old Battlestar, so he started with the basics.
“It’s big,” he said. “Bigger than anything you’ve ever seen. Like hundreds of houses put together, flying through space. And it’s such a big ship, that it carries lots of little ships. Your mom and I used to fly those smaller ships. The ships we flew were called-”
“Tell me about the people,” Hera interjected.
“Well…” he started. “There were lots of them. Which one do you want me to tell you about?”
Hera gave no indication she heard his question, her gaze remaining fixed on the stars above them.
“I want to meet them,” she said after a few moments.
Nodding silently, he kneeled down beside her. Staring down at the ground, he dug a small rock out of the cold dirt with his finger.
“One day,” he said, hoping it wasn’t a lie.
“When?”
Letting out a long sigh, he reached over and picked up his daughter. “That’s complicated, Hera.”
“That’s okay. I understand complicated things.”
“I know you do,” he laughed softly, pressing his cold nose to Hera’s cheek. “It’s your dad that sometimes doesn’t.”
---
Hera’s eyes fluttered open for a moment as Helo laid her down on her bed, but she didn’t wake from her sleep. In the darkened room he slipped her boots and coat off, and then tucked her gently under the covers. Above the small bed, moonlight poured through the window, painting her blankets in shades of blue and grey. Across the room, Sharon watched from their bed as he kissed Hera goodnight.
“When did she fall asleep?” Sharon asked quietly as he made his way over to her. Lying in her usual spot on the inside edge of the bed, she had pulled the silk comforter tightly around herself.
“The minute we got back in the truck,” he answered. Taking a seat on the bed, he shrugged his jacket off his shoulders and began to undress. “I checked the heating elements in the water pumps. I think we might actually get through a winter without losing them for once.”
Pushing his slacks off his legs, he left them in a pile with the rest of his clothes. Behind him, Sharon lifted a corner of the blanket to invite him under.
“That’ll be nice,” she said as he slid next to her. His hands and skin felt ice cold against the warmth of her body, but she didn’t shy away from his touch. Reaching an arm across his body, she pressed against him, pulling the blanket tight around both of them. “But we’ll make do either way.”
“Yeah.”
Sharon’s cheek came to rest on his shoulder, and the smell of soap on her skin reminded him that he could use a good shower himself. But Sharon didn’t seem to care that he needed one, and the warmth and comfort of the moment kept him from caring too much either.
Closing his eyes, he stretched his legs to work out the kinks from another long day. The days would get easier as the winter came, and soon he’d have a good four months to recuperate in time for the spring. With the routine of the past few winters in place, he knew the biggest challenge would be keeping Hera busy.
The thought brought his eyes back to the other bed, where his daughter slept quietly. Her words from earlier in the evening were still fresh in his mind, as were the similar conversations they had shared over the past few months.
“What is it?” Sharon asked, sensing something in his silence.
Looking back to Sharon, he tried to find the words to explain the feeling that had been creeping up on him slowly but surely.
“She knows,” he said. “She’s starting to realize what she’s missing. She knows there’s more than…” He paused and looked up at the ceiling that sheltered everything he loved. “More than this…”
Beside him, Sharon said nothing. The silence matched his own, and he knew this was why they had never spoken of it before; what was there to say?
“Karl,” Sharon finally said softly, pulling herself closer to comfort him. “We came here because there was nowhere else for us to go.”
He nodded his head in agreement.
“Yeah,” he said, still staring up into the dark. “It’s just…”
He let the sentence trail off, unsure how to express himself. Turning to look at Sharon, he could see the understanding in her eyes, and knew he didn’t need to. Leaning in close, he kissed her softly.
“It’s just that I want to her know what we know,” he said quietly. “One day. One day I want her to feel about someone the way I feel about you. I want her to…I want her to know…”
Stopping himself, he let out a small sigh and looked back to the ceiling; there was no point in wishing for things that could never be.
“Karl,” Sharon whispered. “Karl, look at me.”
He did as she asked, turning to see the moonlight reflected in her dark eyes. She studied him for a moment, reaching out to cradle his cheek in her hand.
“Do you believe that our daughter is special?” she asked.
The answer was, and always had been, undeniable.
“Yes,” he replied.
A small smile appeared at the corner of Sharon’s lips, before fading slowly. Leaning up, she returned his kiss, and let the room fall into silence.
---
“Dad.”
Vaguely he became aware of a small hand shaking his arm, trying to wrest him from his sleep. In the back of his mind he slowly became conscious of the fact that the sound hadn’t come from his dreams, and that the hand tugging on him was real. Forcing his eyes open in the darkness, it was Sharon who spoke next.
“What is it, Hera?” she asked groggily, rising to an elbow beside him.
As Helo’s mind finally began to form cohesive thought, and before their daughter could answer, a flash of lightning painted the edges of the far window. Another flash followed, orange in light and brighter than before, filling the room for a fraction of a second. The rolling thunder that echoed down the valley rattled the windows and timbers, but even after the sound had passed, it remained in Helo’s mind.
Throwing the covers off, he headed across the cold wood floor. Smaller flashes continued to splash silently through the window. Leaning over his daughter’s bed, he peered though the glass.
Something high in the atmosphere exploded into shower of fire, the drops of yellow and orange fire making their inexorable fall towards the planet. As the bits of molten slag fell, they illuminated dozens of contrails the stretched across the night sky.
“My God,” Sharon whispered from beside him.
Thunder once more echoed along the mountain ridge, though Helo knew there was no storm.
“Wait here,” he said, moving quickly towards the door without looking back. Hurriedly he made his way down the darkened stairs, hitting the landing with speed. The blast of cold air that hit him as he opened the front door was ignored, his mouth agape at the scene in the sky above him.
A dozen Raiders flew in formation at supersonic speeds low over the house and into the distance, the wave of air in front of them rocking the house to its foundation. Across the night sky, small flashes of light told the story of a battle occurring kilometers above him.
Stepping further out onto the porch, Helo turned just in time to see another set of Raiders approaching out of the east, their silhouettes visible in the dim first light of dawn. He watched in awe as the ships grew closer, bearing down on his tiny home before roaring past and disappearing into the dark.
Raptors.
His mind barely had time to process the sight before a series of explosions appeared where the mixed squad of human and Cylon ships had once been.
Staring up into the sky, he watched as the war that had never ended drowned out the beauty of the stars above his home.
--- End Chapter 13 ---
Go to Chapter 14...
Author: JPBryant
Characters: Sharon/Helo
Rating: Mature, for descriptions of violence, language and sexual situations.
Spoilers: Through 'A Measure of Salvation", everything after that is AU.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: After fleeing back to Caprica, the life Helo and Sharon have made for their family is threatened when the fleet returns. The final installment of the story. Parts one and two can be found here and here.
A/N: The thirteenth of twenty-two chapters, I'm not sure how well the story stands up without knowledge of the prior chapters. For that matter, I'm not sure how well the story will hold up for anyone but me. :) More notes at the end of the story.
Chapter 13
“Why?”
The lantern sitting at the edge of the kitchen table was low on power and provided little light, illuminating the food that sat on their plates but little else in the dark room. Pushing his meal around with his fork, his eyes moved back to the empty chair across from him.
“Because,” he replied.
“Because why?” she pressed.
He looked over at her and saw her mimicking him, playing with her food instead of eating it. In the artificial light, he couldn’t deny that the meal lacked visual appeal. Glancing back at the empty table setting, he wished Sharon was there to handle this debate; he preferred playing the good guy.
“Because we don’t waste food,” he said.
She paused, taking a moment to contemplate his answer. Placing her fork on the table, she looked at him and shook her head.
“You can’t waste food,” she stated, matter-of-factly.
Lifting a fork-full of his meal to his mouth, he hoped to convince her to eat through his own example. When she didn’t follow his lead, he resigned himself to following hers.
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” she answered, nodding her head definitively.
He smiled despite himself, knowing that the small grin would only yield more ground to her. “Why? Because I eat whatever you leave?”
“No,” she said, drawing the single syllable out. “Because if you don’t eat it, something else will. Like trees. Or insects maybe.”
The argument was more profound than he had expected in regard to the topic, but he had ceased to be surprised by anything she said long ago. He wanted to laugh at her ponderous excuse for not eating her meal, but he dared not encourage her further.
“Eat your dinner, Hera,” he insisted.
“It’s too dark,” she protested, changing her tack. “I can’t see it.”
As if on cue, the ceiling light above them flickered to life, and in the background he heard the generator power back up with a low hum. He pointed his fork at her food.
“Eat,” he commanded.
Dropping her elbows to the table, she stared dejectedly at her plate and gave up. “I hate corn.”
“It’s good for you,” he replied as the side door opened and Sharon stepped in.
A gust of cold air followed her inside, and she shut the door quickly to try and keep the warm air in. Without saying a word, she took off her jacket and set it on the back of her chair before stepping behind him.
“Corn doesn’t taste good,” Hera replied, still staring at her food.
“You’re gonna hurt you dad’s feelings,” Sharon said, reaching around from behind him to place her freezing hands on each side of his face. “He grew that himself.”
He tried to pull away from the shocking touch of her icy fingers, his reaction bringing a laugh from Sharon. Keeping her hands pressed firmly against his cheeks, she leaned over, kissing him on the temple. When the initial frigid shock had passed, he smiled up at her, and took her hands in his.
“It’s not dad’s fault that corn tastes bad,” Hera continued.
Sharon smiled back as he pulled her hands from his cheeks and slowly craned up to kiss her.
“You fixed it,” he whispered, proud of her.
“Yeah,” she replied, stealing another kiss. “I told you I would.”
“I could have done it, you know.”
“I’m sure you could have,” she said, her smile growing. “But I wanted our power back before the spring.”
Shaking his head, he laughed quietly. He couldn’t deny that she had more of a gift when it came to working with machines, but it hardly seemed like a fair comparison.
“How come dad doesn’t grow oranges?” Hera asked, oblivious to the intimacy between her parents. “I like oranges.”
He looked back over at their daughter, her brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, the long curls straightening slightly under their own weight. It took him a moment to remember if she were five or six now; the missing time after her birth always played with his math. Counting the winters in his mind, and adding another, he was sure that she was six.
“It’s too cold to grow oranges, Hera,” Sharon said, resting her cheek on the top of his head as she looked over at Hera.
Their daughter shrugged her shoulders. “I like oranges.”
Sharon sighed half-heartedly, and he could hear the smile on her lips.
“You need to wash your hands,” Sharon said to him, gently pulling out of his grasp. Taking her index finger, she ran it lightly across his cheek. “And your face.”
He looked down at his hands and saw they were smudged with grease he hadn’t seen on Sharon’s hands. Reaching up to his cheek, he stopped short as he realized his face was now equally in need of washing. Shaking his head, he followed his wife to the sink.
“We’ll get you some canned oranges next time we go down into town,” he said to Hera as Sharon turned on the faucet. It took only a few moments for the heated water to make its way through the pipes before spilling over their hands.
“And more books,” Hera added.
“And more books,” he acknowledged, grabbing the soap from Sharon and scrubbing the grease off his fingers.
Finished cleaning her own hands, she lifted a wash cloth up to his face and began to wipe away the mark she had left there.
“We’re gonna need a library soon,” he said.
“You said it was okay if she got my brains,” Sharon teased, turning his face to the side to reach a spot of grease she had left behind his ear. “Do you regret that she did?”
“No, I don’t,” he replied. “I only regret letting you win that argument. As if that somehow proves you’re smarter than me.”
She smiled once more, the smile that had always been his and his alone. It had never left her, even as she mourned the death of their unborn daughter, Hestia. Somehow she had found a way to keep it for him, just as he had found a way to cry for her. They were small things, but they had both needed them desperately.
“I’m bored,” Hera announced, dropping her fork to the table.
“You’re what?” he asked, turning to look over his shoulder at her.
“I’m bored,” she said again.
“What?” he asked, cupping a hand to his ear.
“I’m bored,” she repeated, stretching the word out for emphasis. “Bored, bored, bored.”
“Oh,” he said, mimicking his daughter by drawing out the single syllable.
It was a familiar refrain, one he had heard too many times to count since she had learned the word and its meaning. There weren’t enough books to be read or stories to be shared to sate her, though he and Sharon did all they could to try.
“Alright kiddo,” he said. “Cleanup and get your coat on, lets climb to the top.”
“Yay!” Hera exclaimed, pushing her plate of food towards the center of the table as she hopped off her chair and ran to where they stood by the sink.
“It’s too cold, Helo,” Sharon chided, shaking her head as she lifted Hera off the ground to let the girl get her hands under the running water.
“And it’s just going to get colder,” he replied, grabbing a towel and drying his hands. “It’s not gonna be long before the snow gets here. This might be the last chance to go before then.”
“Soap, Hera,” Sharon reminded her daughter, watching as the small girl tried to rush through the task.
Replacing the towel, Helo headed out of the kitchen. “I’m gonna go make sure all the systems reset, babe.”
Stepping out into the hallway, Helo turned into the small office at the front of the house. On the wooden desk inside, a motley assortment of monitors illuminated the room with varying degrees of light, each waiting for attention. Along the floor and wall bundles of black, white and silver cables ran in every direction. Somewhere in the midst of all the electronics, a lone beep sounded every ten seconds. Leaning on the desk, he studied the monitors for the source of the distress.
Glancing at the first two monitors, he saw that everything from the solar power array checked out okay. Like everything else, the arrays had been scrounged and salvaged together over the course of the past five years. Set up on the hill behind their home, the four dozen panels provided all the power the Agathon’s needed.
“What’s broken…” Helo whispered to himself, his eyes wandering to the next set of screens.
The wide angle infrared cameras positioned along the trail leading up to the house displayed little more than the stars in the sky, but that’s all they ever showed outside of a stray squirrel or dear in the summer.
Loud footsteps echoed in the hallway, as Hera rushed to the door wearing her thick red coat and her brown boots. “Let’s go dad!”
“One sec, kiddo,” he replied, still searching for the source of the beeping. “Here, we go…”
Stepping around the corner, Sharon walked in and peered over his shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Here,” he said, pointing to one of the monitors as he tried to make sense of the information it displayed. “A motion detector on the second picket is out. Just one though, the rest of the chain looks okay. I’ll bet it’s the same one that went out the last time we lost power.”
Sharon nodded. “I’ll go out and check it while you’re up top.”
“Nah,” he said, searching for an excuse to keep her from going alone. “It’s pretty cold out, Sharon. I mean, you’ve been out in it awhile. Stay inside and get warm.”
He knew how transparent his words were, and the gentle smile that crept onto Sharon’s face made it clear that she saw right through them. But it was that same smile that told him she understood. Because even after five years without seeing the slightest trace of another living being, she understood that it was impossible for him to ever let his guard down completely; he had done it once before, and he would never do it again.
“We’ll go in the morning,” she offered, leaning over to kiss his cheek and slapping him gently on the rear. “You two get going before it starts to freeze out there.”
“You heard the LT,” Helo said, squeezing Sharon’s shoulder and stepping past her to pick up Hera. “Let’s move out.”
“Yes sir,” Hera replied, throwing up a comically sharp salute.
Grabbing one of the military grade radios that had served them so well the past few years, he opened the front door and carried his daughter out onto the porch. He had considered walking to the top of the mountain, but the night air that greeted him was even colder than he expected; it certainly wouldn’t be long now till the snows filled the valley, just as they had each year before. Heading over to the truck parked at the side of the house, he opened the passenger side door and placed Hera inside.
“Strap in, Hera,” he said, helping her when her tiny hands struggled to click the buckle closed. “Let’s go see the stars.”
----
Helo cupped his hand around his mouth, letting the heat from the air in his lungs warm his fingers. The moisture from his breath was visible in the cold moonlight, sneaking through the cracks between his fingers and fading into the night. Standing next to him, Hera seemed oblivious to the chill, fall air.
“Tauron, Picon, Geminon,” she said, naming the colonies as she picked them out of the night sky. “And that’s Aerelon, where mom was born. Except not really.”
Helo thought about it for a moment. He had given up trying to wrap his mind around the deeper meaning of Cylon birth and resurrection long ago. In the grand scheme of things, he had decided that he didn’t really need to understand. But now that reasoning had left him ill-prepared for a six-year old whose curiosity about the universe around her knew no boundaries.
“Yeah, I guess…” Helo shrugged, and then looked down at his daughter. “I guess you could say she was born here on Caprica. In a way.”
Somehow Sharon always seemed more eloquent with her answers than he did; he wondered if it was a ‘guy thing’ or a ‘Cylon thing’ that explained why.
“And I was born there,” his daughter continued, pointing up into the sky. “In between.”
“That’s right,” he agreed, shifting his gaze to the non-descript patch of stars she pointed at. “You were born aboard Galactica.”
“Tell me about Galactica.”
Helo smiled to himself as he continued to stare in the night sky. “I’ve told you about Galactica a hundred times, kiddo.”
“Tell me again,” she insisted. His grin widened as she tugged his sleeve.
There were some topics Hera grew bored of after less than thirty-seconds, yet there were others he knew she would never tire of. And when it came to Galactica there was nothing new he could tell her about the old Battlestar, so he started with the basics.
“It’s big,” he said. “Bigger than anything you’ve ever seen. Like hundreds of houses put together, flying through space. And it’s such a big ship, that it carries lots of little ships. Your mom and I used to fly those smaller ships. The ships we flew were called-”
“Tell me about the people,” Hera interjected.
“Well…” he started. “There were lots of them. Which one do you want me to tell you about?”
Hera gave no indication she heard his question, her gaze remaining fixed on the stars above them.
“I want to meet them,” she said after a few moments.
Nodding silently, he kneeled down beside her. Staring down at the ground, he dug a small rock out of the cold dirt with his finger.
“One day,” he said, hoping it wasn’t a lie.
“When?”
Letting out a long sigh, he reached over and picked up his daughter. “That’s complicated, Hera.”
“That’s okay. I understand complicated things.”
“I know you do,” he laughed softly, pressing his cold nose to Hera’s cheek. “It’s your dad that sometimes doesn’t.”
---
Hera’s eyes fluttered open for a moment as Helo laid her down on her bed, but she didn’t wake from her sleep. In the darkened room he slipped her boots and coat off, and then tucked her gently under the covers. Above the small bed, moonlight poured through the window, painting her blankets in shades of blue and grey. Across the room, Sharon watched from their bed as he kissed Hera goodnight.
“When did she fall asleep?” Sharon asked quietly as he made his way over to her. Lying in her usual spot on the inside edge of the bed, she had pulled the silk comforter tightly around herself.
“The minute we got back in the truck,” he answered. Taking a seat on the bed, he shrugged his jacket off his shoulders and began to undress. “I checked the heating elements in the water pumps. I think we might actually get through a winter without losing them for once.”
Pushing his slacks off his legs, he left them in a pile with the rest of his clothes. Behind him, Sharon lifted a corner of the blanket to invite him under.
“That’ll be nice,” she said as he slid next to her. His hands and skin felt ice cold against the warmth of her body, but she didn’t shy away from his touch. Reaching an arm across his body, she pressed against him, pulling the blanket tight around both of them. “But we’ll make do either way.”
“Yeah.”
Sharon’s cheek came to rest on his shoulder, and the smell of soap on her skin reminded him that he could use a good shower himself. But Sharon didn’t seem to care that he needed one, and the warmth and comfort of the moment kept him from caring too much either.
Closing his eyes, he stretched his legs to work out the kinks from another long day. The days would get easier as the winter came, and soon he’d have a good four months to recuperate in time for the spring. With the routine of the past few winters in place, he knew the biggest challenge would be keeping Hera busy.
The thought brought his eyes back to the other bed, where his daughter slept quietly. Her words from earlier in the evening were still fresh in his mind, as were the similar conversations they had shared over the past few months.
“What is it?” Sharon asked, sensing something in his silence.
Looking back to Sharon, he tried to find the words to explain the feeling that had been creeping up on him slowly but surely.
“She knows,” he said. “She’s starting to realize what she’s missing. She knows there’s more than…” He paused and looked up at the ceiling that sheltered everything he loved. “More than this…”
Beside him, Sharon said nothing. The silence matched his own, and he knew this was why they had never spoken of it before; what was there to say?
“Karl,” Sharon finally said softly, pulling herself closer to comfort him. “We came here because there was nowhere else for us to go.”
He nodded his head in agreement.
“Yeah,” he said, still staring up into the dark. “It’s just…”
He let the sentence trail off, unsure how to express himself. Turning to look at Sharon, he could see the understanding in her eyes, and knew he didn’t need to. Leaning in close, he kissed her softly.
“It’s just that I want to her know what we know,” he said quietly. “One day. One day I want her to feel about someone the way I feel about you. I want her to…I want her to know…”
Stopping himself, he let out a small sigh and looked back to the ceiling; there was no point in wishing for things that could never be.
“Karl,” Sharon whispered. “Karl, look at me.”
He did as she asked, turning to see the moonlight reflected in her dark eyes. She studied him for a moment, reaching out to cradle his cheek in her hand.
“Do you believe that our daughter is special?” she asked.
The answer was, and always had been, undeniable.
“Yes,” he replied.
A small smile appeared at the corner of Sharon’s lips, before fading slowly. Leaning up, she returned his kiss, and let the room fall into silence.
---
“Dad.”
Vaguely he became aware of a small hand shaking his arm, trying to wrest him from his sleep. In the back of his mind he slowly became conscious of the fact that the sound hadn’t come from his dreams, and that the hand tugging on him was real. Forcing his eyes open in the darkness, it was Sharon who spoke next.
“What is it, Hera?” she asked groggily, rising to an elbow beside him.
As Helo’s mind finally began to form cohesive thought, and before their daughter could answer, a flash of lightning painted the edges of the far window. Another flash followed, orange in light and brighter than before, filling the room for a fraction of a second. The rolling thunder that echoed down the valley rattled the windows and timbers, but even after the sound had passed, it remained in Helo’s mind.
Throwing the covers off, he headed across the cold wood floor. Smaller flashes continued to splash silently through the window. Leaning over his daughter’s bed, he peered though the glass.
Something high in the atmosphere exploded into shower of fire, the drops of yellow and orange fire making their inexorable fall towards the planet. As the bits of molten slag fell, they illuminated dozens of contrails the stretched across the night sky.
“My God,” Sharon whispered from beside him.
Thunder once more echoed along the mountain ridge, though Helo knew there was no storm.
“Wait here,” he said, moving quickly towards the door without looking back. Hurriedly he made his way down the darkened stairs, hitting the landing with speed. The blast of cold air that hit him as he opened the front door was ignored, his mouth agape at the scene in the sky above him.
A dozen Raiders flew in formation at supersonic speeds low over the house and into the distance, the wave of air in front of them rocking the house to its foundation. Across the night sky, small flashes of light told the story of a battle occurring kilometers above him.
Stepping further out onto the porch, Helo turned just in time to see another set of Raiders approaching out of the east, their silhouettes visible in the dim first light of dawn. He watched in awe as the ships grew closer, bearing down on his tiny home before roaring past and disappearing into the dark.
Raptors.
His mind barely had time to process the sight before a series of explosions appeared where the mixed squad of human and Cylon ships had once been.
Staring up into the sky, he watched as the war that had never ended drowned out the beauty of the stars above his home.
--- End Chapter 13 ---
Go to Chapter 14...