WIP Amnesty: Downfall (1/3)
I'm really going to clear out my WIP folder now...
This is my unfinished plot!fic which, according to my computer, I started in 2008. Yup. I wrote three parts out of a planned seven. It is also the only thing I've ever written that needs warnings.
Title: Downfall
Disclaimer: Don’t own ‘em.
Rating: R - dark
Spoilers: through season 2.5
Warnings: none for this part, but eventual scenes of violence and sexual assault
Summary: What if Adama had gone through with the assassination plot? And the Pegasus Marines didn’t just shoot Kara dead? (I have logic, I swear)
The Colonial Fleet tears itself apart over Kara Thrace’s humanity.
Note: I wrote this so long ago that I hardly remember what's in it. Apparently I thought Fisk's first name should be Jebediah.
Part One: (Thanks to you, this will be the Cylons’ downfall, not ours)
I don’t know why, but I have a lot of faith in you.
Kara climbed out of her cockpit, passing her helmet off to some unknown deckhand. She did her post-flight as though in a trance, ignoring the deck chief hovering by her elbow.
You did good. You did real good.
She passed the clipboard to the CPO and caught his eye for a moment. She felt transfixed, frozen by his gaze. Abruptly, she shook her head and strode away from him, from the pilots and knuckledraggers milling about, from the Vipers and the euphoric chaos of a successful mission. She couldn’t bear their eyes, didn’t like what she’d seen reflected in the chief’s.
Sometimes terrible things have to be done.
She stalked through the unfamiliar halls of the Battlestar Pegasus, her heart beating against her ribcage, trying to break free. She wasn’t really to blame, was she? The orders came from on high, and she was just the grunt with the trigger-finger. A nobody, right?
I love you like a daughter.
Her fingers flexed against her gun holster, tense and ready. She would do this, wouldn’t she? She had to. It was her duty, more than that...
Some people get exactly what they deserve.
How could she not? The marines in front of CIC let her through when they saw her tags and rank insignia. That’s right, she was a Captain now. She didn’t deserve that, but maybe she deserved this. Maybe this was her destiny that crackpot Cylon had blathered on about.
Hey Starbuck, what do you hear?
She was Starbuck. Everyone thought she was out of her mind, and surprises were her specialty. She wondered who’d be surprised when she was dead.
Then Admiral Cain was looking at her, talking to her, praising her, and all she could hear was her mother’s voice telling her she was special, always had been and always would be. Then the phone was in her hands and through her mother’s bitter tones she heard another voice, a familiar voice, and she couldn’t stop the triple-beat of her heart or the sweat dripping everywhere or the sickness deep inside.
“Congratulations, Captain, and thank you. Thanks to you, this will be the Cylons’ downfall, not ours.”
She didn’t flinch.
She didn’t feel Admiral Cain’s blood splattering across her front. Didn’t hear the shouts, the thud of the body hitting the deck. She didn’t feel the marines knocking her to the ground, didn’t feel the press of the gun against the place where her head met her neck, didn’t feel the cold steel of the handcuffs binding her arms painfully behind her.
Her face was pressed into the hard deck and she was gasping to breathe with a great weight pressing her into the floor. She was caught in the moment when she dropped the phone and raised her gun, and all she saw was the first woman who was ever proud of her.
She didn’t flinch then and she won’t flinch now.
~~~
Colonel Jebediah Fisk watched Commander Adama’s face as he spoke into the phone and then slowly, almost-and this was the unsettling part-regretfully placed the device back in its cradle.
Fisk shifted his weight, eyed the marines stationed in and around CIC. His gaze strayed over the dozens of Galactica crewmembers, flushed with pride and victory but still working diligently. Loyal, every one, to their commander. He could see it in all of them, could feel it in the atmosphere of this room and this ship. Not fear. Loyalty, respect. He had never felt so disturbed in his life, and he’d seen some damn disturbing things.
His unease only grew as the minutes ticked by. After cutting off the comm link with Pegasus, Adama had stood at his post, arms braced against the console, looking worn down. He’d remained that way longer than Fisk thought proper; after all, a CO had to think of his crew. What kind of example was he setting? But the old man gathered himself, stood up straighter, and set about with the standard business in the aftermath of a battle.
No word from the Pegasus.
Fisk’s unease grew.
He’d never known Helena Cain to change her mind or waver on anything. Fisk didn’t get his answer until the petty officer working comms looked up at the Commander and then at him and said “Pegasus to Colonel Fisk.”
He took the headset she directed him to, and replied, “Go ahead, Pegasus.”
It took the colonel a few moments to register the agitated tone that was most definitely not Pegasus Actual, and when he realized it was Lt. Hoshi, it took him still longer to process the words that were actually being said.
“...in the head,” Hoshi was saying. “She’s d-dead, sir.”
“What did you say?” Colonel Fisk demanded.
“I said Captain Th-thrace, sir, she just, she shot the Admiral. In the head, sir.”
Hoshi kept talking, stammering out his sitrep: the Admiral was dead, the Captain subdued, the Admiral was dead, what were his orders, sir? What were his orders?
Colonel Jebediah Fisk was not listening. No, he was staring at the Commander’s stony face, which was staring right back at him. Fisk was looking at Commander Adama and remembering Captain Thrace, striding down the corridor in her flightsuit, head bent and hands on her holstered hips.
He put down the comm without even noticing.
“Do you mind telling me, Commander, why your pilot has just assassinated the Fleet Admiral?”
Adama looked down at his hands on the console. He pulled his glasses off and set them on the smooth surface. For a few dreadful seconds, he looked shrunken, diminished, and then he looked up, gazed at his crew around him before meeting Fisk’s eyes.
“We must meet with the President aboard Colonial One immediately.”
~~~
Laura Roslin had a headache.
Not long ago, she’d faced the two most high-ranking officers in the Colonial Fleet in the very same chairs they were sitting in now. Of course the situation was entirely different.
“Commander Adama,” she began, breaking the tense silence, “you will be promoted to the rank of Admiral of the Fleet, as you are now the superior officer. And your first act as Admiral will be to promote Colonel Fisk so that he may properly take command of the Pegasus. Does that sound alright to you?”
They both agreed.
“There’s still the matter of the killer,” Fisk said.
Laura saw Admiral Adama stiffen-just barely, but she knew him.
“The killer,” she said slowly, the word bitter in her mouth. She waited for Fisk to elaborate.
“My marines have taken Kara Thrace into custody.”
Admiral Adama’s eyes snapped up at that and she could read his sudden burst of hope-and relief?-in the crinkling around his eyes and the brief expansion of his chest.
Kara Thrace, the assassin. Why had she not realized? This whole situation suddenly seemed far more volatile than before. For one terrible second Laura wished that the Pegasus marines had just killed her-at least then the whole mess would be done with. But she saw the look in Bill’s eyes and she crushed that thought. It was far too late for wishing, anyway.
“We’ll use your Cylon Detector thing,” Fisk was saying, “and if she passes as human she’ll face charges for high treason and murder in the first degree.”
There was a brief pause after Fisk’s declaration, and then-
“I want her transferred to the brig on the Galactica.” Adama’s words were sharp, quick, brooking no argument.
But Fisk did argue. Captain Thrace had committed the crime on the Pegasus, to the Pegasus, and what’s more, she was officially a crew member of the Pegasus.
“I’ll release the other two, Agathon and Tyrol,” Fisk pseudo-acquiesced, “as there was some question about intentionality, and the objectivity of their trial. But I absolutely will not release a known assassin so that you can play whatever game.”
It didn’t take much longer for Laura to see that they were not going to come to an agreement on this matter, not now and maybe not ever, and soon she was watching the backs of the two highest ranking officers in the Colonial Fleet as they filed out of her office.
Kara Thrace. Gods, what a mess. How tragically fitting that the same pilot who had jumped back to a nuclear wasteland on the strength of Laura’s vision had now thrown her life away on the President’s word. But she didn’t regret it; she couldn’t. She’d done what was necessary.
Gods, her head hurt.
~~~
After ejecting from the Blackbird, Lee had thought there was nothing so cold as the vacuum of space. But when the marine guards let him in to see “the prisoner” his blood ran even colder.
He almost missed her at first. She was huddled in the corner, curled into an impossibly small ball, her head down on her knees.
“Kara?” he gasped. She raised her head then and he wanted to throw up at the sight. Her face was bruised, one eye blackened, and dried blood was caked beneath her nose and on her chin. But the sickening thing was the look in her eyes: dull, empty, something he’d never before seen in her.
He staggered across the floor and dropped to his knees in front of her, needing to touch her but afraid to. He said her name again.
“Hey Lee,” she said finally, her voice rasping slightly. “Are you okay?”
He stared at her. “Am I okay? I’m not the one who is-” he stopped, swallowed, but held her gaze. He began again gently. “I’m okay. I ejected and SAR picked me up. But gods Kara, I, I’m so sorry. I, I let you down. I wasn’t there.”
Her right hand lay limply on the ground beside her bare foot. He reached for it, needing the contact, and relishing the fact that she didn’t flinch from his touch.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said, “it wasn’t your fault. And you couldn’t have changed anything. You just would’ve been thrown in here too.”
“Kara, this is, this is insane! You were acting under orders from a superior officer.”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. And if I told them that . . . Just because I’m going down for this doesn’t mean anyone else has to. Would kind of defeat the point. Besides, the Old Man’s not my CO anymore. Fact is, I shot the Admiral of the fleet, point-blank, right between the eyes.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that.
She wasn’t surprised.
This is my unfinished plot!fic which, according to my computer, I started in 2008. Yup. I wrote three parts out of a planned seven. It is also the only thing I've ever written that needs warnings.
Title: Downfall
Disclaimer: Don’t own ‘em.
Rating: R - dark
Spoilers: through season 2.5
Warnings: none for this part, but eventual scenes of violence and sexual assault
Summary: What if Adama had gone through with the assassination plot? And the Pegasus Marines didn’t just shoot Kara dead? (I have logic, I swear)
The Colonial Fleet tears itself apart over Kara Thrace’s humanity.
Note: I wrote this so long ago that I hardly remember what's in it. Apparently I thought Fisk's first name should be Jebediah.
Part One: (Thanks to you, this will be the Cylons’ downfall, not ours)
I don’t know why, but I have a lot of faith in you.
Kara climbed out of her cockpit, passing her helmet off to some unknown deckhand. She did her post-flight as though in a trance, ignoring the deck chief hovering by her elbow.
You did good. You did real good.
She passed the clipboard to the CPO and caught his eye for a moment. She felt transfixed, frozen by his gaze. Abruptly, she shook her head and strode away from him, from the pilots and knuckledraggers milling about, from the Vipers and the euphoric chaos of a successful mission. She couldn’t bear their eyes, didn’t like what she’d seen reflected in the chief’s.
Sometimes terrible things have to be done.
She stalked through the unfamiliar halls of the Battlestar Pegasus, her heart beating against her ribcage, trying to break free. She wasn’t really to blame, was she? The orders came from on high, and she was just the grunt with the trigger-finger. A nobody, right?
I love you like a daughter.
Her fingers flexed against her gun holster, tense and ready. She would do this, wouldn’t she? She had to. It was her duty, more than that...
Some people get exactly what they deserve.
How could she not? The marines in front of CIC let her through when they saw her tags and rank insignia. That’s right, she was a Captain now. She didn’t deserve that, but maybe she deserved this. Maybe this was her destiny that crackpot Cylon had blathered on about.
Hey Starbuck, what do you hear?
She was Starbuck. Everyone thought she was out of her mind, and surprises were her specialty. She wondered who’d be surprised when she was dead.
Then Admiral Cain was looking at her, talking to her, praising her, and all she could hear was her mother’s voice telling her she was special, always had been and always would be. Then the phone was in her hands and through her mother’s bitter tones she heard another voice, a familiar voice, and she couldn’t stop the triple-beat of her heart or the sweat dripping everywhere or the sickness deep inside.
“Congratulations, Captain, and thank you. Thanks to you, this will be the Cylons’ downfall, not ours.”
She didn’t flinch.
She didn’t feel Admiral Cain’s blood splattering across her front. Didn’t hear the shouts, the thud of the body hitting the deck. She didn’t feel the marines knocking her to the ground, didn’t feel the press of the gun against the place where her head met her neck, didn’t feel the cold steel of the handcuffs binding her arms painfully behind her.
Her face was pressed into the hard deck and she was gasping to breathe with a great weight pressing her into the floor. She was caught in the moment when she dropped the phone and raised her gun, and all she saw was the first woman who was ever proud of her.
She didn’t flinch then and she won’t flinch now.
~~~
Colonel Jebediah Fisk watched Commander Adama’s face as he spoke into the phone and then slowly, almost-and this was the unsettling part-regretfully placed the device back in its cradle.
Fisk shifted his weight, eyed the marines stationed in and around CIC. His gaze strayed over the dozens of Galactica crewmembers, flushed with pride and victory but still working diligently. Loyal, every one, to their commander. He could see it in all of them, could feel it in the atmosphere of this room and this ship. Not fear. Loyalty, respect. He had never felt so disturbed in his life, and he’d seen some damn disturbing things.
His unease only grew as the minutes ticked by. After cutting off the comm link with Pegasus, Adama had stood at his post, arms braced against the console, looking worn down. He’d remained that way longer than Fisk thought proper; after all, a CO had to think of his crew. What kind of example was he setting? But the old man gathered himself, stood up straighter, and set about with the standard business in the aftermath of a battle.
No word from the Pegasus.
Fisk’s unease grew.
He’d never known Helena Cain to change her mind or waver on anything. Fisk didn’t get his answer until the petty officer working comms looked up at the Commander and then at him and said “Pegasus to Colonel Fisk.”
He took the headset she directed him to, and replied, “Go ahead, Pegasus.”
It took the colonel a few moments to register the agitated tone that was most definitely not Pegasus Actual, and when he realized it was Lt. Hoshi, it took him still longer to process the words that were actually being said.
“...in the head,” Hoshi was saying. “She’s d-dead, sir.”
“What did you say?” Colonel Fisk demanded.
“I said Captain Th-thrace, sir, she just, she shot the Admiral. In the head, sir.”
Hoshi kept talking, stammering out his sitrep: the Admiral was dead, the Captain subdued, the Admiral was dead, what were his orders, sir? What were his orders?
Colonel Jebediah Fisk was not listening. No, he was staring at the Commander’s stony face, which was staring right back at him. Fisk was looking at Commander Adama and remembering Captain Thrace, striding down the corridor in her flightsuit, head bent and hands on her holstered hips.
He put down the comm without even noticing.
“Do you mind telling me, Commander, why your pilot has just assassinated the Fleet Admiral?”
Adama looked down at his hands on the console. He pulled his glasses off and set them on the smooth surface. For a few dreadful seconds, he looked shrunken, diminished, and then he looked up, gazed at his crew around him before meeting Fisk’s eyes.
“We must meet with the President aboard Colonial One immediately.”
~~~
Laura Roslin had a headache.
Not long ago, she’d faced the two most high-ranking officers in the Colonial Fleet in the very same chairs they were sitting in now. Of course the situation was entirely different.
“Commander Adama,” she began, breaking the tense silence, “you will be promoted to the rank of Admiral of the Fleet, as you are now the superior officer. And your first act as Admiral will be to promote Colonel Fisk so that he may properly take command of the Pegasus. Does that sound alright to you?”
They both agreed.
“There’s still the matter of the killer,” Fisk said.
Laura saw Admiral Adama stiffen-just barely, but she knew him.
“The killer,” she said slowly, the word bitter in her mouth. She waited for Fisk to elaborate.
“My marines have taken Kara Thrace into custody.”
Admiral Adama’s eyes snapped up at that and she could read his sudden burst of hope-and relief?-in the crinkling around his eyes and the brief expansion of his chest.
Kara Thrace, the assassin. Why had she not realized? This whole situation suddenly seemed far more volatile than before. For one terrible second Laura wished that the Pegasus marines had just killed her-at least then the whole mess would be done with. But she saw the look in Bill’s eyes and she crushed that thought. It was far too late for wishing, anyway.
“We’ll use your Cylon Detector thing,” Fisk was saying, “and if she passes as human she’ll face charges for high treason and murder in the first degree.”
There was a brief pause after Fisk’s declaration, and then-
“I want her transferred to the brig on the Galactica.” Adama’s words were sharp, quick, brooking no argument.
But Fisk did argue. Captain Thrace had committed the crime on the Pegasus, to the Pegasus, and what’s more, she was officially a crew member of the Pegasus.
“I’ll release the other two, Agathon and Tyrol,” Fisk pseudo-acquiesced, “as there was some question about intentionality, and the objectivity of their trial. But I absolutely will not release a known assassin so that you can play whatever game.”
It didn’t take much longer for Laura to see that they were not going to come to an agreement on this matter, not now and maybe not ever, and soon she was watching the backs of the two highest ranking officers in the Colonial Fleet as they filed out of her office.
Kara Thrace. Gods, what a mess. How tragically fitting that the same pilot who had jumped back to a nuclear wasteland on the strength of Laura’s vision had now thrown her life away on the President’s word. But she didn’t regret it; she couldn’t. She’d done what was necessary.
Gods, her head hurt.
~~~
After ejecting from the Blackbird, Lee had thought there was nothing so cold as the vacuum of space. But when the marine guards let him in to see “the prisoner” his blood ran even colder.
He almost missed her at first. She was huddled in the corner, curled into an impossibly small ball, her head down on her knees.
“Kara?” he gasped. She raised her head then and he wanted to throw up at the sight. Her face was bruised, one eye blackened, and dried blood was caked beneath her nose and on her chin. But the sickening thing was the look in her eyes: dull, empty, something he’d never before seen in her.
He staggered across the floor and dropped to his knees in front of her, needing to touch her but afraid to. He said her name again.
“Hey Lee,” she said finally, her voice rasping slightly. “Are you okay?”
He stared at her. “Am I okay? I’m not the one who is-” he stopped, swallowed, but held her gaze. He began again gently. “I’m okay. I ejected and SAR picked me up. But gods Kara, I, I’m so sorry. I, I let you down. I wasn’t there.”
Her right hand lay limply on the ground beside her bare foot. He reached for it, needing the contact, and relishing the fact that she didn’t flinch from his touch.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said, “it wasn’t your fault. And you couldn’t have changed anything. You just would’ve been thrown in here too.”
“Kara, this is, this is insane! You were acting under orders from a superior officer.”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. And if I told them that . . . Just because I’m going down for this doesn’t mean anyone else has to. Would kind of defeat the point. Besides, the Old Man’s not my CO anymore. Fact is, I shot the Admiral of the fleet, point-blank, right between the eyes.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that.
She wasn’t surprised.