(Untitled)

[agatho_helo]

Two days had passed since Kara had had her baby. Oh, but that wasn't all that had happened two days ago. Two days ago Sharon had frakking abandoned Helo, leaving him to be the one to spill the beans to Lee about the father of Kara's baby. The situation with Kara had been heated and tense as it was, but adding telling Lee how Leoben, a cylon, was

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[tardistraveller]

Contrary to what many men on Earth might have thought about Sarah Jane, she did not have an icy heart, so when she saw a small girl and what appeared to be her father, she managed a warm smile, watching curiously for a long moment. "She's beautiful," she remarked to the man. "Yours?"

[agatho_helo]

Tucking a book called The Pokey Little Puppy under his arm (the shelf was apparently keen on giving him books to read to his daughter), Helo glanced over in the direction of the voice. While the woman looked vaguely familiar, Helo couldn't ever recall speaking to her before.

"Thanks." Smiling the slightest bit, he nodded, watching as Hera attempted to stack blocks on top of each other. "She's mine. Her name's Hera; she just turned one last month."

[tardistraveller]

Sarah Jane simply wandered closer, easing into a crouch to greet the child pleasantly. "Hello, there," she greeted, as though speaking to an adult before she raised her glance to the man. "Well, she's certainly very smart already," she praised.

[agatho_helo]

"She mostly gets that from her mother," Helo said automatically. While he wasn't dumb by any stretch of the imagination, the fact was that Sharon was a cylon and had a much broader intellect by default. Thinking about Sharon made him frown, though he caught himself rather quickly and forced the smile back. He wasn't going to take out his irritation toward Sharon on a complete stranger.

[just_a_cag]

The truth of it was, that ever since that whole thing with Kara and the closet and Leoben, Lee had been keeping to himself, trying to do everything he could to not think about it all. Not that Starbuck was frakking a cylon, not that they'd all kept it from him for a month...

But it was a pretty small island with a lot of people on it, so it was really only a matter of time before he ran into someone. Lee'd gone to the rec room in hopes that the bookshelf would give him something besides law books, and found Helo and Hera instead.

"Hey." He greeted.

[At work. Sloooow tags, most likely.]

[agatho_helo]

"Hey."

Helo was a little surprised to see Lee, actually, but he hoped he hadn't given that away.

After learning that Kara was with a cylon and having his kid? If Helo weren't, well, in his own situation, he could kind of imagine how shocking the whole thing had to be for Lee. Kind of.

There was that, and the fact that Kara and he hadn't come right out and told Lee what was going on.

Only Helo didn't think now was the time to discuss the whole frakking ordeal in detail -- unless Lee brought it up first.

"So," he said after a moment's hesitation. "This place is pretty weird, huh?"

[just_a_cag]

"Yeah, you're telling me," Lee responded, keeping himself from asking Helo if Kara was okay. He hadn't been by to check on her, and hadn't planned on going. If she wanted to be with a cylon? Fine. She could start a whole frakking family of little toaster babies.

He moved over to the bookshelf to see whether or not it had had a change of heart since last time. "Anything worth reading?" He asked, gesturing towards it.

[agatho_helo]

Cocking his head to the side, Helo regarded Lee for a moment in silence. Helo didn't think he looked too good. Maybe he wasn't sleeping, but frak if Helo was going to ask Lee about it.

"Well, I'm not sure. Any of these interest you?" Grinning a little, Helo pulled a small stack of books he'd had under his arm: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, No, David!, and The Magic Schoolbus Lost in the Solar System.

[helenhooverb]

Helen crossed the room, buried in the newspaper in her hand. She was walking with her usual speed and almost tripped over the baby that had been placed on the floor.

Noting the odd change in texture that she was walking on, Helen Hoover Boyle stopped and peered out from behind her newspaper.

"You really shouldn't leave children right in the middle of the room." She said simply, without any sting in her voice. "It's a hazard to everyone around."

[agatho_helo]

It wasn't the fact that someone was talking to him that made Helo's teeth grind. It was what the woman had said. While her tone was matter-of-fact, the words themselves made Helo feel as though she was accusing him of not being a responsible parent.

Setting the book he'd just gotten from the shelf (The Three Javelinas) down, Helo turned toward the woman. Gesturing to Hera and her blanket, he said calmly, "She isn't in the middle of the room. Maybe if you waited to sit down to read your paper, there wouldn't be a problem."

[helenhooverb]

Helen saw the twinge of anger in the man's eyes and decided she would fuck with him a bit.

Jutting out her hip, and fluffing her cloud of pink hair she cocked her head.

"Well, that's quite debatable, actually..." She looked around the room. "If we took into account square feet, this could very well be the middle of the room."

Helen Hoover Boyle smiled and patted the man on his chest with quick pats one and two. "I'm a real estate agent. I know these things."

[agatho_helo]

"But it isn't," Helo said shortly. "She's in between the back of the couch and the wall."

Helo hadn't liked it very much when the woman used a particularly condescending tone with him. He liked it even less that she had patted him on the chest.

"Ma'am," he said, polite-but-firm, "please don't invade my personal space again."

Whatever a real estate agent was, Helo didn't think it mattered. Hera was no where near the center of the room, and had the woman not been reading her paper she would have seen the toddler.

[mr_vera]

Jayne didn't stop by the rec room much, 'cos he wasn't much of a reader and that jukebox got on his gorram nerves. But he'd heard sometimes you could watch shows and movies and such there, and he figured it would be something to do, anyway.

There was a big fella standing by the bookshelf - looked like he kept himself fit - and a little girl a bit younger than Sunny having a good ol' time with some toys on the floor. "Nĭ hăo," Jayne said. "That your rug rat?"

[agatho_helo]

Helo wasn't sure what language the guy had spoken to him first, though the meaning was pretty clear.

"Hey," he greeted, shoving Green Eggs and Ham back on the shelf. Nodding over at Hera, who was currently amusing herself by clanging two of her blocks together, he continued, "She sure is. Just a little over a year." The clanging got even louder, if that were possible. Helo grimaced a little. "I give my ears maybe two more years before they go."

[mr_vera]

"Seems like a lot o' folks are settlin' down here, startin' families and such." Jayne looked a bit skeptical about the whole thing. He didn't want a wife and kids nohow, but even so, settling down seemed like accepting that you couldn't leave, and he didn't like the sound of that.

"You from Earth-That-Was?" he asked over the kid's racket. "Seems like most folks here are."

[agatho_helo]

"I've heard of Earth," Helo offered, not sure what 'Earth-That-Was', well, was. "I'm from one of the Twelve Colonies. They were destroyed in the Cylon Attack. I'm an officer on a battlestar; we're just trying to survive." Not that he was there to help out. "Well, I hope we are."

[blessed_by_god]

Sharon was getting more than a little irritated by Karl's continuing lack of communication. At first she hadn't thought much of it, Karl was pissy, everyone got pissy at times. And had he really expected her to want to be around when Lee found out about her brother? Apparently he had, or, well, she didn't know because he wouldn't talk to her. To be fair her reaction to his silent treatment was to ignore him right back, but now it was just out of hand. After she had fed Hera she took a shower and then the both of them were gone without a word. And fine, Helo was allowed as much freedom as he frakking well wanted, but not when her daughter was involved.

The rec room was one of the first places she checked, and he was just lucky she hadn't had to go all the way out to the Pyramid field he'd made, because then her anger would have had a real chance to build.

"Thanks for telling me where you were taking Hera," Sharon said, sarcastic and annoyed, moving across the room to check on her daughter.

[agatho_helo]

Helo's shoulders stiffed considerably at his wife's tone. Teeth grinding together, he pulled his nose out of the play he'd been reading (R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots) to stare over at her.

Frak, but she looked angry, which was fine by Helo. He was mad, too. And at least he had a right to be!

"She's my daughter too, Sharon," he said not very patiently. "You were in the shower and Hera was ready, so we left. End of story. Is that all right with you?"

[blessed_by_god]

God, he was frakking insufferable like this.

Sharon picked Hera up. "If that's how it is, we'll just leave you alone now and wander off to points unknown. Maybe see you for dinner," she finished, moving past Helo with Hera in her arms.

[agatho_helo]

"I don't think so," Helo said automatically. Dropping the book on the shelf, he strode over to Sharon quickly, blocking her way. If she wanted to move, she was going to have to get around him.

"Hera's perfectly fine in here with me, okay? If you wanna wander off to points unknown, so be it. But she's staying right here."

Scowling, Helo reached his hands out to Hera. "You want to stay here with Daddy?"