BSG fic: Home, Pt. 2
Title: Home
Characters: Gaeta, Starbuck, Apollo, Boomer, Athena, Narcho, Cavil, a bunch of Cylons.
Wordcount: ~ 6000 for this part
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rating: Teen.
Spoilers: S3
Summary: Felix Gaeta wakes up on a street of a foreign planet. He has a vague recollection of who he is, no idea how he got there, and there’s a woman following him around who he is pretty sure has tried to kill him once.
Beta: millari did help me out a lot, as always. Thank you very much. :)
Author’s Note: Note that the character ensemble has changed, since I had to modify my outline a little. I’m pleased to announce that Lee and Cavil have joined us for minor appearances. ;)
Part 1
A cold shudder ran down Felix’ spine when he spotted the blonde woman again in the park beneath his window. It wasn’t panic, exactly - it wasn’t even quite fear. It just felt like his whole body went on alert from one second to the next, adrenaline pumping through his veins to prepare him to act, or to hide, or to open fire... And for the first time since waking up in front of that mansion, he had a good idea what it really must have meant to be at war, to be on duty at all times.
There were some trees and a meadow down there, a nod at the patients’ need to recreate in quiet, covering up the view on what seemed to be a really busy street. At the edge of his sight on his right, there was a parking lot with automobiles lined up neatly and looking almost like Piconian cars, except not quite. That was where she’d shown up, turning a corner and checking out the terrain with sharp twists of her head. He wouldn’t have recognized her if it wasn’t for the purpose in her steps; it gave him an immediate pang of familiarity. Her every step was determined and yet graceful like a cat’s. She wasn’t covered in blood anymore, having changed into blue jeans and a sweater that made her fade into the background for everybody but him. Felix almost expected her to look up at the window to give him one of those piercing looks again, but she didn’t, of course. She didn’t know she’d been spotted. Instead, she was aiming straight for what he knew to be the hospital’s back entrance.
Felix swallowed hard. His mouth felt dry. There was no déjà vu beyond this, nothing to tell him what she wanted from him or at least who she was. But she was here for him - of course she was, she had to be here for him... It would be one hell of a coincidence if she wasn’t. She was dangerous. She had a gun. She was able to kill without any regret.
All of his mind was screaming at him to run, so he did. He knew there were people out there who wanted him dead.
The clothes he’d worn at his arrival had been cleaned, neatly stashed away in a drawer. It only took him seconds to find them, put them on - and who in the world had taught him to dress that fast? And he was gone.
Nurses shouted after him when he hurried down the corridor but Felix didn’t turn to look. He paid just enough attention to make sure he didn’t bump into anybody walking with a crutch. His mind was working overtime. She’d taken the Northern entrance, so he’d take the other one.
There were more shouts behind him now, staff pointing him out to other staff, and he knew security was after him. He didn’t think they’d keep him here against his will but who knew what conclusions they’d draw about his state of mind. They might try to protect him from himself. He didn’t plan on finding out.
Then he pushed open the door at the end of the hallway, hit by a surge of bitter cold and the harsh wind of a fourth floor. Taking a deep, startled breath of the fresh air he barely remembered, he checked out the catwalk he was standing on, emergency stairways leading all the way down to the park.
When his feet met the soft grass covering the ground, voices had started ringing from more than one direction. But, ignoring his pounding heart, Felix had already vanished between cars and trees before anybody could catch up. It was evening, a stiff spring breeze rustling his hair, and the sun had already started going down. It wasn’t hard to find cover between the shadows. The lanterns didn’t illuminate everything.
It was pitch black already when he entered the outskirts of another park, a real one this time, stumbling through a patch of high trees. He’d run along a street, he didn’t know for how long - it was a huge street, two times three lanes, automobiles racing past him with a speed more reminiscent of vipers than of cars as he thought to know them. The engine noise in his ears had left him dizzy and disoriented, and he’d thought he was going to be forever trapped on this side of the road when he’d finally encountered an overpass.
Nobody had followed him here, least of all the woman, he was reasonably sure of that; for now, he was safe. He was in a large city, the buildings he’d passed too massive and too narrow, and the streets too huge to belong to a small town on any planet. It was easy to get lost. He wanted to get lost. He was surprised how good it felt to just vanish, like fulfilling a longing he’d harbored before, if at a different place and for different reasons.
He wasn’t alone in the park. Following a narrow promenade weaving through the area, he could make out shadows lurking in the dark, stray people meeting and talking in low voices, a snoring lump sleeping on a bench. A group of young men looked up when he passed them by, suspicious pairs of eyes following him until he was out of sight again. It made him shudder, setting him on edge, but he didn’t feel in danger. He felt too numb to be afraid. He just felt like he’d entered a place inhabited by others who didn’t belong.
His heart and breath were calming down. The danger seemed to have passed for now and there was time to think. He’d been safe in the hospital, as safe as he could be, there had been food and people who cared about his health and a bed. Of course, that hadn’t lasted for long. The blonde had found him right away.
Who was she? Why was she armed when he wasn’t? Could he even be sure she’d come to harm him? Would it have been better to try and talk to her? There was no doubt in his mind that he’d understand every word of what she said. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to hear anything to come out of her mouth.
But the answer was, he didn’t know for sure. She might not even have come for him, might not even have known he was there. But he did remember the hate in her voice when she prepared to kill him, and if he focused and reached out, he could point to where her boot had connected with his chest when he’d been down, tied up and down, the oily taste of a gag still in his mouth. Knowing that a person was capable of that, and knowing she was carrying a sidearm this time around didn’t make you idly sit back when you suspected she might want to finish the job.
Not having made out any walls between the trees for a while, Felix thought he’d entered the heart of the park. Even in the dark, he could make out that it was a rich and green place, offering seclusion in a world just as busy as his. Through a chasm left by the scattered plants in front of him, he could see a slender, solitary tower hovering above the city. It could as well have belonged to the solar system he was from. It could have been a wireless mast at home, and yet he didn’t remember...
Narrowing his eyes ever so slightly, Felix came to a halt. His hands buried deep in his pockets, he looked around - just trees, and singular buildings hiding behind them that he hadn’t bothered checking out, probably just shacks. Then, he craned his neck to look up.
It was always hard to make out stars in a city, just too many lights brightening the sky. Yet he was lucky and for whatever reason, he could see enough. Pale asterisks were littered all across the black.
Felix felt his legs moving of their own accord, directing him some stumbling steps forward until he reached a clearing that allowed him to see more. But his eyes remained glued to the skies.
Whole new parts of his brain had jumped into action, parts he hadn’t even been aware could be utilized if needed. He was a navigator, he suddenly knew without the slightest doubt - no matter he usually looked at them on paper, he worked with stars. Stars. Stars and routes and math. He’d looked at a thousand different constellations a thousand times and when his eyes grew more used to the dark, with more stars coming into view, he found he expected them to be there before he actually saw them. He knew these constellations. Not because they’d been what had greeted him at night as a child but because he had worked with them, a matter of military...
“I don’t know, Sir. It isn’t easy to make sense of Dr. Baltar’s notes without...”
He’d had an image of those constellations hanging on the wall in his - his battlestar’s - lab.
“It won't be easy. It will be a long and probably arduous journey to get there. But I promise you one thing - we will make it and Earth will be our new home.“
Felix blinked.
Earth.
He was on...
“She’s probably a Cylon, anyway.”
“She’s not a Cylon, Felix. She’s never been dead.” It had to be the lasting shock of the news that made Helo’s voice sound so sharp and impatient, nothing like the calm and kind guy Felix knew. “She’s not dead after all. She never died because she jumped away. She was on Earth...”
Somebody... somebody had died and come back and not been dead after all, because she’d jumped away in time, and by sheer dumb luck, she’d found herself... she’d found herself...
“...providing entries here, here and here.” Lee Adama - back in uniform for now - pointed at the improvised map as he spoke. “It’s a whole facility, large as a ship. Looks like most of the main grid is buried under water, they have no idea about it. They don’t have any technology that picks up on ours. We wouldn’t have stood a chance of discovering it, either, if Kara’s viper hadn’t caught the signal.” He hardened his face. “It’s a whole defense system and it’s still operational after thousands of years, and nobody on Earth remembers it’s there.”
And...
Felix looked away.
“I can’t, Louis,” he said. “I can’t refuse to go down.”
He felt like his hand would forever feel warm and wet, Baltar’s blood spilling over the pen and his knuckles and soaking his sleeve forever. It hadn’t done any good, anyway. Baltar wasn’t dead. Felix hadn’t done enough on New Caprica and he hadn’t done enough now, and if he never redeemed himself, it would be his own frakking fault.
If he could go down to Earth and help them win this war, he would.
Felix found himself kneeling on the cold, wet ground, breathing hard. He still didn’t understand... there were too many things he still couldn’t recall, bits and pieces of facts, but not enough to really understand. Louis hadn’t wanted him to go here. Somebody who’d been thought dead was alive. He was on Earth, their destination. He was at the place they thought would save them all. Somewhere deep under his feet, nukes were sleeping and waiting for their wrath to be called upon the enemy.
But all the people he’d met on this planet remembered even less about that enemy than him.
He felt a bubble of hysterical laughter boiling up. It was too frakking ironic.
He calmed down eventually, and he spent more time looking up at the stars to trace familiar shapes, trying to make out more fixed points that he knew were there even if he couldn’t see them tonight. He thought about how Earth would have to be angled towards its sun to allow him to see those constellations but not others. However, no more memories came back to him, and he had to give up on waiting for them eventually, knowing the night was too cold for him to just sit here without falling ill. At least, he should walk.
He’d come down to this planet on a mission. His skill as a navigator and a science officer had made him a logical choice.
If there’d been a mission, it meant there’d been a team.
Other people like him had to be down here. Maybe they weren’t looking for him - maybe they’d given up on him when he’d been lost. The enemy had shown up, the Cylons... the Cylons had to have shown up. One of them had already found him. The woman had to be a Cylon, of course she had to be. They had to be a terrible enemy. He’d blacked out in the middle of a street... the blonde had been covered in blood... There’d been a fight. And he’d been lost. And they’d given up on him, sacrificing him when the mission was at stake, as Louis had feared all along.
Yet if he wanted to see Louis again, he had to find his team.
Felix idly wondered if there was a chance for him to find a mirror. If he wanted to enter the public places of this city without trouble, he had to make sure he didn’t look like he had come to mug the inhabitants of Earth.
The kiosk clerk had the same hair as Felix. Maybe that was why he remained patient, pausing in arranging the newspaper stands for this morning’s customers until he’d figured out what exactly the foreigner was asking him for. Considering all the languages Felix had encountered at the hospital, he figured maybe it wasn’t uncommon at this place to meet somebody who spoke a tongue you didn’t recognize.
Eventually though, he had the piece of paper he’d been asking for and the pen, and none of the sleepy early pedestrians seemed to take notice of him when he sat down on a stairway to carefully prepare his drawing.
He felt utterly ridiculous walking around and showing random people pictures of a giant lizard next to a mansion, but it worked. Every now and then, somebody would pause, and understand and laugh, and point him down another street.
It was late morning when he finally turned a corner to see the familiar shape of the mansion in front of him, the lizard’s large statue still looming on the lawn.
It was a museum. He was pretty sure it was a museum. Lurking at a distance and watching people walking up to the main entrance, approaching a counter with a clerk, his eyes burning from the lack of sleep, he was sure it was a museum. It didn’t make a lot of sense - there were posters of what appeared to be fish, and bones and more lizards - but he recognized the signs of an exhibit when he saw one. It was a lizard museum. The realization had almost made him laugh. It was just too bizarre.
Exhaustion catching up on him, making cold shudders sweep through his bones, he buried his hands deep in the pockets of his unfamiliar jacket to set out for a walk around the building. Scout the area. Find something - anything - that gave him a hint of whatever. Walking along the ugly backside of the mansion, the city noises dimmed and out of sight, he watched out for the signs of the fight that had to have taken place somewhere here. It made him feel self-conscious to wade through the brushwood of a grove, and not just because he had a feeling he was looking ridiculous watching out for tracks.
Mostly though, he got an acute sense that he was being watched. He couldn't make out anybody familiar or suspicious when throwing looks over his shoulders - he couldn't make out anybody, period -, but suddenly, he started worrying. If he had known to come back here, other people might have, too... and not just the good kind of people.
He jumped when something swished across the ground but when he turned around, he just saw a bushy tail vanishing behind a trunk.
But, he'd been here. He was sure; his heart started pounding faster at the realization. There had been a fight, right here behind the mansion, and there was...
...no chance they'd get anywhere near the museum's entrance now.
“Run!” Apollo barked, and Felix stumbled, breathing hard, trying to figure out...
The memory made him start and he hissed when a branch graced his arm, nicking his skin.
He'd lost his gun. No use for it, anyway, he doubted he'd hit anything when not even Narcho was able to get a clear aim. The pilot was spitting out one curse word after the other next to him, crouching low and...
A Cavil had died right where he was standing, his old man's frame defeating the incredible Cylon speed he'd first kept up when attacking. A bullet from Apollo's gun had hit him square in the chest. Felix stared at the spot, but in the mansion's shadows, it was impossible to tell if that was dried blood covering the asphalt or just branches and soil. Having seen the grandfatherly Cylon fight, he had to wonder, anyway, if this specific model could even bleed because they were nothing like the Cylons Felix knew, had spoken to, had worked with...
The click of a gun's safety switch made him freeze.
“If you move, you're dead.”
“Sharon?” he croaked.
This was the first opportunity for his brain to catch up, and despite the threat the woman had uttered, he turned around to face her, disbelieving but not afraid in the slightest. The woman had spoken in his mother tongue, there had been no doubt in his mind that she could be the blonde out to execute him. There had been nothing but a sense of comradeship and even intimacy to recognizing her voice; and her name had been there just like that, ready to use.
Now he stared at the woman who'd sneaked up on him through the grove with inhuman stealth, both her hands gripping the gun she was pointing at him. She was tiny, he noticed with a blink, sharing almond eyes with him that were so absent in this city that it had made him nervous, although nobody seemed to have minded.
The woman was afraid, her face pale from determination and fear. She was trembling. She hadn't fired the gun.
His hands were frozen in a position on their way to the belt that didn't hold a gun.
“Don't move,” she repeated, her voice harsh.
“Sharon,” he said.
“How the frak do you know my name?”
“You don't reme...”
“Answer the frakking question.”
She didn't remember. Felix didn't need to be a psychologist to know that; it was all over her face. She didn't remember, and - oh Gods - that meant so many things. He couldn’t have just been hit on the head in that fight, it wasn't possible. What were the odds? Here was Sharon, who had fought at his side, who had given him a look of constrained gratitude when he'd called her by name the first time - why? -, who had paused in the hallway to introduce her child to him the very first day Hera had been back from... from where? And why had she been gone? He couldn't remember. But he could remember that Sharon was a friend and that he could trust her, because if there was anybody he could trust...
“If there's anybody you can trust to hate the Cylons, it's Sharon,” Helo said.
Felix took a deep breath. He was scared - a panicking woman was pointing a gun at his head, of course he was scared -, but his mind latched on to one notion. She didn't want to hurt him. She wouldn't want to hurt him anymore if she just remembered, and she looked like a scared animal more than a human right now...
Her pants were darkened from dirt and torn, dried blood sprinkling her shirt. She'd been out here since she'd been lost, it was obvious. No one had been looking for either of them, and Felix suddenly felt guilty for his clean clothes, his freshly washed hair that had allowed him to walk around amongst the inhabitants of Earth like he was one of them.
He hadn’t been the only one his team had given up on, and his surprise about that scared the hell out of him.
Swallowing hard, he tried to keep his tone from trembling. “Sharon. I know your name is Sharon. Because we're on the same team. We were... we went to the Academy together.” He wasn't entirely sure about that part, the vague recollection of laughter in young faces too hard to decipher. “We serve together on a...”
“Basestar,” she breathed, clutching the gun hard, and he shook his head.
“Battlestar,” he implored. “On the Battlestar Galactica. I'm a command officer. You're a...” He didn't remember what she was. “You're a friend.”
Sharon was still breathing hard. She was white as a ghost, apart from few red flecks on her cheeks. What had scared her like that? Felix didn't know. He thought that maybe, he didn't want to know. He shuddered, the memory of those grey skies and the metallic sound of robot steps assaulting him again. Once upon a time, he'd known all about the bad things that could happen to you. Even now he remembered that there were things that you were better off not knowing.
The woman was visibly trying to keep her composure, to take in the unexpected new information, but she was shaking. “I was in the brig,” she managed. “I remember I was in the brig.”
“They let you go,” Felix assured her, encouraged, knowing it was true as soon as he said it.
“Somebody shot me.”
Her hands were shaking so hard that Felix started to worry she would shoot him by accident. She'd spat the words at him like an accusation.
“It was an accident,” he said, knowing no such thing. He was reaching for straws. Although it felt like the memories had just been waiting to be accessed, the things that were coming back to him were all in shambles. “You're an officer, like me. We're officers of the Colonial Fleet. We were sent down here with a mission. Don't you recall... card games... the mess... the fights... your, your family, Helo...”
“Helo?” She was wetting her lips, unsure and nervous now.
“Helo. Remember Helo? You're married. You have a daughter. Her name is Hera.”
“There was a child... She cried when I held her...”
His chuckle sounded strained even to himself. “Yeah, I hear children do that.”
There was pain in her eyes now, and longing, and despite of the lingering suspicion in her face, she was lowering her gun. It was clear she wasn't convinced yet, but Felix had an idea that Sharon was the kind of person to stick to her decisions once she made them... and this one she wanted to make, maybe not because she was convinced, but just because she wanted it to be true. If nothing else, they had that in common, for now.
“We have to get out of here,” Sharon said abruptly. For a moment, her eyes lingered on the spot Felix had stared at before too - the place where the Cylon Cavil had died -, but then she reached out for his shoulder and led him away. It was easy to see how she was trying hard to refocus her fear and anxiety on the problem at hand, rather than the problem she'd just decided was solved. “The place is swarming with Cylons. I've seen at least three of them around. When I first saw you here, I thought you were one of them.”
“Did you kill any of them?” She was leading him around the museum, her gun vanishing under her shirt just before they reached a clearing, finding themselves in front of one of those huge streets again. Cars were swishing past them left and right.
“I didn't want to let them know I was there.” She had to raise her voice against the noise of the engines. “I think they come back when you kill them, anyway.”
Felix shuddered. He didn't think she was talking about CPR.
Nervously, Felix allowed Sharon to lead him around the building. The woman was presenting a picture of determination mixed with anxiety, one he found strangely appealing, and he suddenly wondered if there had ever been more than friendship between them.
They encountered only a few early-morning pedestrians, all of whom gave Sharon's bedraggled appearance looks of offense and all of whom Sharon ignored. There were more important things to worry about than the opinions of strangers, Felix agreed.
They'd entered what looked like the driveway to the mansion's delivery entrance. Although this should be the place with most activity in a museum at this time of day, they got lucky. Sharon paused to rub her arms, and it suddenly occurred to Felix that she had to be freezing out here in the cold.
“This is what I remember,” she said. “We were on a mission. This museum has a device on display that we need. The people on that planet think it’s an ancient stone or something, but it’s not. It’s full of inscriptions. The Cylons want it, too. I don't know if we got it before them. There was a fight, right where we met. We were intercepted. I woke up on that lawn, I didn't remember a thing except for the fight. Some of it has started coming back.” She shuddered, deeply, then looked away. “Some of it hasn't.”
“Do you know what that device does?”
She paused. “I think it controls something. I'm not sure what. There's some kind of system, somewhere underground...”
“A defense system,” Felix supplied. “We could blow the Cylons out of the skies with it if we could just access it. But nobody remembers it’s there. It’s in a...” Narrowing his eyes, he tried to recollect the image of a map. “It’s under an ocean. We’ve found the entrances, but we can’t boot it up.” His face cleared. “It’s a remote control. Ancient tech. It has to be. We’re here to get it.” And again, he frowned. “Do you know if we know how it works?”
Sharon’s face hardened. “The others will know.” She was rubbing her arms again, scanning the perimeter without turning her back on him - an instinct, he thought, not a precaution. Like he dressed very fast. It looked like they’d all gotten damaged.
“A blonde woman has been following me around,” he said.
Sharon gave him a sharp look. “I’ve seen a blonde coming here every day. I hid.”
“I think she wants to kill me.”
She snorted. “Safe bet.” And it seemed like knowing that there was such a threat for him out there had propelled her into action, because she stiffened, feeling for her gun. “Alright,” she said. “Now that there’s two of us, you know what’s the fastest way to an answer?”
“What?” He’d already surpassed all his expectations today - he didn’t dare hope.
She grimaced. “We should just capture one of those Cylons and ask them some questions,” she said. “What would you bet they’ve got a way to cause amnesia?”
It went spectacularly wrong.
When Sharon had said that Cylons were swarming the place, she hadn’t lied. No telling how many of them there had to be around, or maybe they just didn’t need to sleep because Sharon swore she’d only recognized three different ones overall. Anyway, they were guarding the extended perimeter and it took less than an hour to spot one of them, walking down a street right behind the museum. It was a tall bald man with black skin, brushing non-existent dust of his fancy suit and smiling before he vanished in the small back alley where they’d set up their trap.
“One more step and you’re dead,” Sharon said, stepping out from behind a stash of boxes. At the man’s back, Felix did the same, holding a long knife that Sharon had found at the scene of the fight and that he didn’t know how to use at all. He already knew it’d be useless, and his whole body felt tense.
The man twisted from one of them to the other. When he realized he’d been surrounded, he smiled.
“What a pleasant surprise... Sharon, is it?” he said. “Well, finally. I’ve been telling John we should just leave, but he insisted you’d remember eventually.”
Felix narrowed his eyes. It didn’t escape him that Sharon swallowed hard.
“Of course she remembered,” a voice said behind him.
He twisted around so fast he almost lost his balance.
A new person had entered the alley, strolling towards them without hurry, and Felix grew cold from the surge of adrenaline the sight caused in him. It was an old one - Cavil. Again, he remembered where that man - no, a Cavil had died in the fight, superhuman speed and strength killing one Marines after the other before he finally ran out of energy, and somebody took him out.
There he was, alive and well, and smiling quite as serenely as his accomplice.
“It was a trap,” Felix whispered. “It...” He turned to look at Sharon, but the shock in her eyes, gun trained on both men in return, told him she’d been taken by surprise just as much as him. They’d known Sharon would come. They’d been waiting for her to approach them. Why? Frak.
Cavil had taken his time to draw a gun, gesticulating with it to tell Felix he should drop the knife and retreat to the wall confining the alley. Felix did as he was told. The weapon wouldn’t do him any good, and he knew better than make a fool of himself. Cavil smirked, coming to a halt when he’d reached them. Then he seemed to forget Felix - a task taken on by his henchman - and focused on Sharon.
Sharon’s hands holding the gun were trembling again, slightly, and her face was pale.
“I don’t remember you,” she said with an edge to her voice, like it was an incantation.
Cavil smiled. “Yes, you do,” he said.
Felix was paling himself. This couldn’t mean what it sounded like. It couldn’t. He remembered what Helo had said about Sharon, he remembered trusting Helo - he remembered trusting Sharon. He even remembered... oh... he even remembered a cold tent and hot skin... Oh.
“You’re not him,” Sharon said.
Cavil chuckled. “Oh, we’re all him.”
It didn’t make any sense.
“There was a woman,” Sharon whispered. “A short one. She shot me. I...” She swallowed hard. “I died.”
“Oh, but you got better,” Cavil said dismissively. “It was a long time ago. Don’t worry about it. You can find and kill that woman later, if you think it matters.”
“Sharon...” Felix managed. He tried to step forward, but the bald Cylon immediately raised his gun.
“I’m not a Cylon,” Sharon said loudly, eyes piercing into Cavil.
“Very dramatic, but wrong,” Cavil said. “Lower your gun, my dear. You’ll see it’ll all start coming back to you fast once you’re back home, like it did for us.” He sounded startlingly gentle for a moment.
Sharon tore her eyes away from him to stare at Felix, silently begging him for help. He shook his head at her, willing her to understand.
“You’re on our side, Sharon,” he said.
Her breath hitched. “I think that’s where you didn’t want me.”
Felix tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He wanted to open his mouth and tell her that she was wrong - she was misremembering - their commanders would always allow her to come back to Galactica - even if she was right and his memories were wrong, it was never too late to change sides. She belonged on his team - he was so sure of that.
But he couldn’t. Not with those memories in his head about corridors that were supposed to be home, yet he was afraid of being attacked when he walked through them. Not with the memory of grey skies and no help in sight, and coming back into a Fleet he’d risked his life for, he’d almost killed somebody for and yet nobody cared to have him. He couldn’t tell her she’d be welcome because he hadn’t been, and he couldn’t lie to her.
He didn’t even know what side he was on anymore.
“I want you on my side, Sharon,” he said instead and that, at least, he meant. “I trust you.” He knew it wasn’t enough when he said it.
“So cute,” Cavil remarked.
“I don’t want to be on your side anymore,” Sharon said, speaking to Felix, but looking at Cavil. “I’m sorry.”
Then she lowered her gun.
And then three shots exploded in the alley, quick and eerily steady succession, one, two, three, and Felix barely even noticed how Cavil first and then the black Cylon went down like dead meat. All he could stare at was Sharon, who swayed, and her eyes widened, and she tried to look down and touch the red spot growing on her shirt with dizzying speed, but then a fourth shot followed the last, throwing her off her feet. Lightweight she was, her body barely made a sound when hitting the pavement.
Cold from shock, Felix turned in what felt like slow motion, but it couldn’t be because the blonde woman was still marching towards them down the alley, and she hadn’t even lowered her gun. Now she did, sparing the dead a disgusting glance just long enough to be sure they were dead, then looking at Felix with faintly less dislike.
“Godsdammit Gaeta, you’re hard to find,” she said.
She wasn’t moving to shoot him. Why wasn’t she moving to shoot him? She’d...
“You shot Sharon,” he said, still frozen, his brain unable to catch up.
Kara Thrace grimaced. “That’s not Sharon,” she said. “But you better explain to me what you remembered about this one, because none of the others did at all. Come on.”
She turned to leave without looking at the dead bodies again. A siren was starting to howl in the distance.
Characters: Gaeta, Starbuck, Apollo, Boomer, Athena, Narcho, Cavil, a bunch of Cylons.
Wordcount: ~ 6000 for this part
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rating: Teen.
Spoilers: S3
Summary: Felix Gaeta wakes up on a street of a foreign planet. He has a vague recollection of who he is, no idea how he got there, and there’s a woman following him around who he is pretty sure has tried to kill him once.
Beta: millari did help me out a lot, as always. Thank you very much. :)
Author’s Note: Note that the character ensemble has changed, since I had to modify my outline a little. I’m pleased to announce that Lee and Cavil have joined us for minor appearances. ;)
Part 1
A cold shudder ran down Felix’ spine when he spotted the blonde woman again in the park beneath his window. It wasn’t panic, exactly - it wasn’t even quite fear. It just felt like his whole body went on alert from one second to the next, adrenaline pumping through his veins to prepare him to act, or to hide, or to open fire... And for the first time since waking up in front of that mansion, he had a good idea what it really must have meant to be at war, to be on duty at all times.
There were some trees and a meadow down there, a nod at the patients’ need to recreate in quiet, covering up the view on what seemed to be a really busy street. At the edge of his sight on his right, there was a parking lot with automobiles lined up neatly and looking almost like Piconian cars, except not quite. That was where she’d shown up, turning a corner and checking out the terrain with sharp twists of her head. He wouldn’t have recognized her if it wasn’t for the purpose in her steps; it gave him an immediate pang of familiarity. Her every step was determined and yet graceful like a cat’s. She wasn’t covered in blood anymore, having changed into blue jeans and a sweater that made her fade into the background for everybody but him. Felix almost expected her to look up at the window to give him one of those piercing looks again, but she didn’t, of course. She didn’t know she’d been spotted. Instead, she was aiming straight for what he knew to be the hospital’s back entrance.
Felix swallowed hard. His mouth felt dry. There was no déjà vu beyond this, nothing to tell him what she wanted from him or at least who she was. But she was here for him - of course she was, she had to be here for him... It would be one hell of a coincidence if she wasn’t. She was dangerous. She had a gun. She was able to kill without any regret.
All of his mind was screaming at him to run, so he did. He knew there were people out there who wanted him dead.
The clothes he’d worn at his arrival had been cleaned, neatly stashed away in a drawer. It only took him seconds to find them, put them on - and who in the world had taught him to dress that fast? And he was gone.
Nurses shouted after him when he hurried down the corridor but Felix didn’t turn to look. He paid just enough attention to make sure he didn’t bump into anybody walking with a crutch. His mind was working overtime. She’d taken the Northern entrance, so he’d take the other one.
There were more shouts behind him now, staff pointing him out to other staff, and he knew security was after him. He didn’t think they’d keep him here against his will but who knew what conclusions they’d draw about his state of mind. They might try to protect him from himself. He didn’t plan on finding out.
Then he pushed open the door at the end of the hallway, hit by a surge of bitter cold and the harsh wind of a fourth floor. Taking a deep, startled breath of the fresh air he barely remembered, he checked out the catwalk he was standing on, emergency stairways leading all the way down to the park.
When his feet met the soft grass covering the ground, voices had started ringing from more than one direction. But, ignoring his pounding heart, Felix had already vanished between cars and trees before anybody could catch up. It was evening, a stiff spring breeze rustling his hair, and the sun had already started going down. It wasn’t hard to find cover between the shadows. The lanterns didn’t illuminate everything.
It was pitch black already when he entered the outskirts of another park, a real one this time, stumbling through a patch of high trees. He’d run along a street, he didn’t know for how long - it was a huge street, two times three lanes, automobiles racing past him with a speed more reminiscent of vipers than of cars as he thought to know them. The engine noise in his ears had left him dizzy and disoriented, and he’d thought he was going to be forever trapped on this side of the road when he’d finally encountered an overpass.
Nobody had followed him here, least of all the woman, he was reasonably sure of that; for now, he was safe. He was in a large city, the buildings he’d passed too massive and too narrow, and the streets too huge to belong to a small town on any planet. It was easy to get lost. He wanted to get lost. He was surprised how good it felt to just vanish, like fulfilling a longing he’d harbored before, if at a different place and for different reasons.
He wasn’t alone in the park. Following a narrow promenade weaving through the area, he could make out shadows lurking in the dark, stray people meeting and talking in low voices, a snoring lump sleeping on a bench. A group of young men looked up when he passed them by, suspicious pairs of eyes following him until he was out of sight again. It made him shudder, setting him on edge, but he didn’t feel in danger. He felt too numb to be afraid. He just felt like he’d entered a place inhabited by others who didn’t belong.
His heart and breath were calming down. The danger seemed to have passed for now and there was time to think. He’d been safe in the hospital, as safe as he could be, there had been food and people who cared about his health and a bed. Of course, that hadn’t lasted for long. The blonde had found him right away.
Who was she? Why was she armed when he wasn’t? Could he even be sure she’d come to harm him? Would it have been better to try and talk to her? There was no doubt in his mind that he’d understand every word of what she said. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to hear anything to come out of her mouth.
But the answer was, he didn’t know for sure. She might not even have come for him, might not even have known he was there. But he did remember the hate in her voice when she prepared to kill him, and if he focused and reached out, he could point to where her boot had connected with his chest when he’d been down, tied up and down, the oily taste of a gag still in his mouth. Knowing that a person was capable of that, and knowing she was carrying a sidearm this time around didn’t make you idly sit back when you suspected she might want to finish the job.
Not having made out any walls between the trees for a while, Felix thought he’d entered the heart of the park. Even in the dark, he could make out that it was a rich and green place, offering seclusion in a world just as busy as his. Through a chasm left by the scattered plants in front of him, he could see a slender, solitary tower hovering above the city. It could as well have belonged to the solar system he was from. It could have been a wireless mast at home, and yet he didn’t remember...
Narrowing his eyes ever so slightly, Felix came to a halt. His hands buried deep in his pockets, he looked around - just trees, and singular buildings hiding behind them that he hadn’t bothered checking out, probably just shacks. Then, he craned his neck to look up.
It was always hard to make out stars in a city, just too many lights brightening the sky. Yet he was lucky and for whatever reason, he could see enough. Pale asterisks were littered all across the black.
Felix felt his legs moving of their own accord, directing him some stumbling steps forward until he reached a clearing that allowed him to see more. But his eyes remained glued to the skies.
Whole new parts of his brain had jumped into action, parts he hadn’t even been aware could be utilized if needed. He was a navigator, he suddenly knew without the slightest doubt - no matter he usually looked at them on paper, he worked with stars. Stars. Stars and routes and math. He’d looked at a thousand different constellations a thousand times and when his eyes grew more used to the dark, with more stars coming into view, he found he expected them to be there before he actually saw them. He knew these constellations. Not because they’d been what had greeted him at night as a child but because he had worked with them, a matter of military...
“I don’t know, Sir. It isn’t easy to make sense of Dr. Baltar’s notes without...”
He’d had an image of those constellations hanging on the wall in his - his battlestar’s - lab.
“It won't be easy. It will be a long and probably arduous journey to get there. But I promise you one thing - we will make it and Earth will be our new home.“
Felix blinked.
Earth.
He was on...
“She’s probably a Cylon, anyway.”
“She’s not a Cylon, Felix. She’s never been dead.” It had to be the lasting shock of the news that made Helo’s voice sound so sharp and impatient, nothing like the calm and kind guy Felix knew. “She’s not dead after all. She never died because she jumped away. She was on Earth...”
Somebody... somebody had died and come back and not been dead after all, because she’d jumped away in time, and by sheer dumb luck, she’d found herself... she’d found herself...
“...providing entries here, here and here.” Lee Adama - back in uniform for now - pointed at the improvised map as he spoke. “It’s a whole facility, large as a ship. Looks like most of the main grid is buried under water, they have no idea about it. They don’t have any technology that picks up on ours. We wouldn’t have stood a chance of discovering it, either, if Kara’s viper hadn’t caught the signal.” He hardened his face. “It’s a whole defense system and it’s still operational after thousands of years, and nobody on Earth remembers it’s there.”
And...
Felix looked away.
“I can’t, Louis,” he said. “I can’t refuse to go down.”
He felt like his hand would forever feel warm and wet, Baltar’s blood spilling over the pen and his knuckles and soaking his sleeve forever. It hadn’t done any good, anyway. Baltar wasn’t dead. Felix hadn’t done enough on New Caprica and he hadn’t done enough now, and if he never redeemed himself, it would be his own frakking fault.
If he could go down to Earth and help them win this war, he would.
Felix found himself kneeling on the cold, wet ground, breathing hard. He still didn’t understand... there were too many things he still couldn’t recall, bits and pieces of facts, but not enough to really understand. Louis hadn’t wanted him to go here. Somebody who’d been thought dead was alive. He was on Earth, their destination. He was at the place they thought would save them all. Somewhere deep under his feet, nukes were sleeping and waiting for their wrath to be called upon the enemy.
But all the people he’d met on this planet remembered even less about that enemy than him.
He felt a bubble of hysterical laughter boiling up. It was too frakking ironic.
He calmed down eventually, and he spent more time looking up at the stars to trace familiar shapes, trying to make out more fixed points that he knew were there even if he couldn’t see them tonight. He thought about how Earth would have to be angled towards its sun to allow him to see those constellations but not others. However, no more memories came back to him, and he had to give up on waiting for them eventually, knowing the night was too cold for him to just sit here without falling ill. At least, he should walk.
He’d come down to this planet on a mission. His skill as a navigator and a science officer had made him a logical choice.
If there’d been a mission, it meant there’d been a team.
Other people like him had to be down here. Maybe they weren’t looking for him - maybe they’d given up on him when he’d been lost. The enemy had shown up, the Cylons... the Cylons had to have shown up. One of them had already found him. The woman had to be a Cylon, of course she had to be. They had to be a terrible enemy. He’d blacked out in the middle of a street... the blonde had been covered in blood... There’d been a fight. And he’d been lost. And they’d given up on him, sacrificing him when the mission was at stake, as Louis had feared all along.
Yet if he wanted to see Louis again, he had to find his team.
Felix idly wondered if there was a chance for him to find a mirror. If he wanted to enter the public places of this city without trouble, he had to make sure he didn’t look like he had come to mug the inhabitants of Earth.
The kiosk clerk had the same hair as Felix. Maybe that was why he remained patient, pausing in arranging the newspaper stands for this morning’s customers until he’d figured out what exactly the foreigner was asking him for. Considering all the languages Felix had encountered at the hospital, he figured maybe it wasn’t uncommon at this place to meet somebody who spoke a tongue you didn’t recognize.
Eventually though, he had the piece of paper he’d been asking for and the pen, and none of the sleepy early pedestrians seemed to take notice of him when he sat down on a stairway to carefully prepare his drawing.
He felt utterly ridiculous walking around and showing random people pictures of a giant lizard next to a mansion, but it worked. Every now and then, somebody would pause, and understand and laugh, and point him down another street.
It was late morning when he finally turned a corner to see the familiar shape of the mansion in front of him, the lizard’s large statue still looming on the lawn.
It was a museum. He was pretty sure it was a museum. Lurking at a distance and watching people walking up to the main entrance, approaching a counter with a clerk, his eyes burning from the lack of sleep, he was sure it was a museum. It didn’t make a lot of sense - there were posters of what appeared to be fish, and bones and more lizards - but he recognized the signs of an exhibit when he saw one. It was a lizard museum. The realization had almost made him laugh. It was just too bizarre.
Exhaustion catching up on him, making cold shudders sweep through his bones, he buried his hands deep in the pockets of his unfamiliar jacket to set out for a walk around the building. Scout the area. Find something - anything - that gave him a hint of whatever. Walking along the ugly backside of the mansion, the city noises dimmed and out of sight, he watched out for the signs of the fight that had to have taken place somewhere here. It made him feel self-conscious to wade through the brushwood of a grove, and not just because he had a feeling he was looking ridiculous watching out for tracks.
Mostly though, he got an acute sense that he was being watched. He couldn't make out anybody familiar or suspicious when throwing looks over his shoulders - he couldn't make out anybody, period -, but suddenly, he started worrying. If he had known to come back here, other people might have, too... and not just the good kind of people.
He jumped when something swished across the ground but when he turned around, he just saw a bushy tail vanishing behind a trunk.
But, he'd been here. He was sure; his heart started pounding faster at the realization. There had been a fight, right here behind the mansion, and there was...
...no chance they'd get anywhere near the museum's entrance now.
“Run!” Apollo barked, and Felix stumbled, breathing hard, trying to figure out...
The memory made him start and he hissed when a branch graced his arm, nicking his skin.
He'd lost his gun. No use for it, anyway, he doubted he'd hit anything when not even Narcho was able to get a clear aim. The pilot was spitting out one curse word after the other next to him, crouching low and...
A Cavil had died right where he was standing, his old man's frame defeating the incredible Cylon speed he'd first kept up when attacking. A bullet from Apollo's gun had hit him square in the chest. Felix stared at the spot, but in the mansion's shadows, it was impossible to tell if that was dried blood covering the asphalt or just branches and soil. Having seen the grandfatherly Cylon fight, he had to wonder, anyway, if this specific model could even bleed because they were nothing like the Cylons Felix knew, had spoken to, had worked with...
The click of a gun's safety switch made him freeze.
“If you move, you're dead.”
“Sharon?” he croaked.
This was the first opportunity for his brain to catch up, and despite the threat the woman had uttered, he turned around to face her, disbelieving but not afraid in the slightest. The woman had spoken in his mother tongue, there had been no doubt in his mind that she could be the blonde out to execute him. There had been nothing but a sense of comradeship and even intimacy to recognizing her voice; and her name had been there just like that, ready to use.
Now he stared at the woman who'd sneaked up on him through the grove with inhuman stealth, both her hands gripping the gun she was pointing at him. She was tiny, he noticed with a blink, sharing almond eyes with him that were so absent in this city that it had made him nervous, although nobody seemed to have minded.
The woman was afraid, her face pale from determination and fear. She was trembling. She hadn't fired the gun.
His hands were frozen in a position on their way to the belt that didn't hold a gun.
“Don't move,” she repeated, her voice harsh.
“Sharon,” he said.
“How the frak do you know my name?”
“You don't reme...”
“Answer the frakking question.”
She didn't remember. Felix didn't need to be a psychologist to know that; it was all over her face. She didn't remember, and - oh Gods - that meant so many things. He couldn’t have just been hit on the head in that fight, it wasn't possible. What were the odds? Here was Sharon, who had fought at his side, who had given him a look of constrained gratitude when he'd called her by name the first time - why? -, who had paused in the hallway to introduce her child to him the very first day Hera had been back from... from where? And why had she been gone? He couldn't remember. But he could remember that Sharon was a friend and that he could trust her, because if there was anybody he could trust...
“If there's anybody you can trust to hate the Cylons, it's Sharon,” Helo said.
Felix took a deep breath. He was scared - a panicking woman was pointing a gun at his head, of course he was scared -, but his mind latched on to one notion. She didn't want to hurt him. She wouldn't want to hurt him anymore if she just remembered, and she looked like a scared animal more than a human right now...
Her pants were darkened from dirt and torn, dried blood sprinkling her shirt. She'd been out here since she'd been lost, it was obvious. No one had been looking for either of them, and Felix suddenly felt guilty for his clean clothes, his freshly washed hair that had allowed him to walk around amongst the inhabitants of Earth like he was one of them.
He hadn’t been the only one his team had given up on, and his surprise about that scared the hell out of him.
Swallowing hard, he tried to keep his tone from trembling. “Sharon. I know your name is Sharon. Because we're on the same team. We were... we went to the Academy together.” He wasn't entirely sure about that part, the vague recollection of laughter in young faces too hard to decipher. “We serve together on a...”
“Basestar,” she breathed, clutching the gun hard, and he shook his head.
“Battlestar,” he implored. “On the Battlestar Galactica. I'm a command officer. You're a...” He didn't remember what she was. “You're a friend.”
Sharon was still breathing hard. She was white as a ghost, apart from few red flecks on her cheeks. What had scared her like that? Felix didn't know. He thought that maybe, he didn't want to know. He shuddered, the memory of those grey skies and the metallic sound of robot steps assaulting him again. Once upon a time, he'd known all about the bad things that could happen to you. Even now he remembered that there were things that you were better off not knowing.
The woman was visibly trying to keep her composure, to take in the unexpected new information, but she was shaking. “I was in the brig,” she managed. “I remember I was in the brig.”
“They let you go,” Felix assured her, encouraged, knowing it was true as soon as he said it.
“Somebody shot me.”
Her hands were shaking so hard that Felix started to worry she would shoot him by accident. She'd spat the words at him like an accusation.
“It was an accident,” he said, knowing no such thing. He was reaching for straws. Although it felt like the memories had just been waiting to be accessed, the things that were coming back to him were all in shambles. “You're an officer, like me. We're officers of the Colonial Fleet. We were sent down here with a mission. Don't you recall... card games... the mess... the fights... your, your family, Helo...”
“Helo?” She was wetting her lips, unsure and nervous now.
“Helo. Remember Helo? You're married. You have a daughter. Her name is Hera.”
“There was a child... She cried when I held her...”
His chuckle sounded strained even to himself. “Yeah, I hear children do that.”
There was pain in her eyes now, and longing, and despite of the lingering suspicion in her face, she was lowering her gun. It was clear she wasn't convinced yet, but Felix had an idea that Sharon was the kind of person to stick to her decisions once she made them... and this one she wanted to make, maybe not because she was convinced, but just because she wanted it to be true. If nothing else, they had that in common, for now.
“We have to get out of here,” Sharon said abruptly. For a moment, her eyes lingered on the spot Felix had stared at before too - the place where the Cylon Cavil had died -, but then she reached out for his shoulder and led him away. It was easy to see how she was trying hard to refocus her fear and anxiety on the problem at hand, rather than the problem she'd just decided was solved. “The place is swarming with Cylons. I've seen at least three of them around. When I first saw you here, I thought you were one of them.”
“Did you kill any of them?” She was leading him around the museum, her gun vanishing under her shirt just before they reached a clearing, finding themselves in front of one of those huge streets again. Cars were swishing past them left and right.
“I didn't want to let them know I was there.” She had to raise her voice against the noise of the engines. “I think they come back when you kill them, anyway.”
Felix shuddered. He didn't think she was talking about CPR.
Nervously, Felix allowed Sharon to lead him around the building. The woman was presenting a picture of determination mixed with anxiety, one he found strangely appealing, and he suddenly wondered if there had ever been more than friendship between them.
They encountered only a few early-morning pedestrians, all of whom gave Sharon's bedraggled appearance looks of offense and all of whom Sharon ignored. There were more important things to worry about than the opinions of strangers, Felix agreed.
They'd entered what looked like the driveway to the mansion's delivery entrance. Although this should be the place with most activity in a museum at this time of day, they got lucky. Sharon paused to rub her arms, and it suddenly occurred to Felix that she had to be freezing out here in the cold.
“This is what I remember,” she said. “We were on a mission. This museum has a device on display that we need. The people on that planet think it’s an ancient stone or something, but it’s not. It’s full of inscriptions. The Cylons want it, too. I don't know if we got it before them. There was a fight, right where we met. We were intercepted. I woke up on that lawn, I didn't remember a thing except for the fight. Some of it has started coming back.” She shuddered, deeply, then looked away. “Some of it hasn't.”
“Do you know what that device does?”
She paused. “I think it controls something. I'm not sure what. There's some kind of system, somewhere underground...”
“A defense system,” Felix supplied. “We could blow the Cylons out of the skies with it if we could just access it. But nobody remembers it’s there. It’s in a...” Narrowing his eyes, he tried to recollect the image of a map. “It’s under an ocean. We’ve found the entrances, but we can’t boot it up.” His face cleared. “It’s a remote control. Ancient tech. It has to be. We’re here to get it.” And again, he frowned. “Do you know if we know how it works?”
Sharon’s face hardened. “The others will know.” She was rubbing her arms again, scanning the perimeter without turning her back on him - an instinct, he thought, not a precaution. Like he dressed very fast. It looked like they’d all gotten damaged.
“A blonde woman has been following me around,” he said.
Sharon gave him a sharp look. “I’ve seen a blonde coming here every day. I hid.”
“I think she wants to kill me.”
She snorted. “Safe bet.” And it seemed like knowing that there was such a threat for him out there had propelled her into action, because she stiffened, feeling for her gun. “Alright,” she said. “Now that there’s two of us, you know what’s the fastest way to an answer?”
“What?” He’d already surpassed all his expectations today - he didn’t dare hope.
She grimaced. “We should just capture one of those Cylons and ask them some questions,” she said. “What would you bet they’ve got a way to cause amnesia?”
It went spectacularly wrong.
When Sharon had said that Cylons were swarming the place, she hadn’t lied. No telling how many of them there had to be around, or maybe they just didn’t need to sleep because Sharon swore she’d only recognized three different ones overall. Anyway, they were guarding the extended perimeter and it took less than an hour to spot one of them, walking down a street right behind the museum. It was a tall bald man with black skin, brushing non-existent dust of his fancy suit and smiling before he vanished in the small back alley where they’d set up their trap.
“One more step and you’re dead,” Sharon said, stepping out from behind a stash of boxes. At the man’s back, Felix did the same, holding a long knife that Sharon had found at the scene of the fight and that he didn’t know how to use at all. He already knew it’d be useless, and his whole body felt tense.
The man twisted from one of them to the other. When he realized he’d been surrounded, he smiled.
“What a pleasant surprise... Sharon, is it?” he said. “Well, finally. I’ve been telling John we should just leave, but he insisted you’d remember eventually.”
Felix narrowed his eyes. It didn’t escape him that Sharon swallowed hard.
“Of course she remembered,” a voice said behind him.
He twisted around so fast he almost lost his balance.
A new person had entered the alley, strolling towards them without hurry, and Felix grew cold from the surge of adrenaline the sight caused in him. It was an old one - Cavil. Again, he remembered where that man - no, a Cavil had died in the fight, superhuman speed and strength killing one Marines after the other before he finally ran out of energy, and somebody took him out.
There he was, alive and well, and smiling quite as serenely as his accomplice.
“It was a trap,” Felix whispered. “It...” He turned to look at Sharon, but the shock in her eyes, gun trained on both men in return, told him she’d been taken by surprise just as much as him. They’d known Sharon would come. They’d been waiting for her to approach them. Why? Frak.
Cavil had taken his time to draw a gun, gesticulating with it to tell Felix he should drop the knife and retreat to the wall confining the alley. Felix did as he was told. The weapon wouldn’t do him any good, and he knew better than make a fool of himself. Cavil smirked, coming to a halt when he’d reached them. Then he seemed to forget Felix - a task taken on by his henchman - and focused on Sharon.
Sharon’s hands holding the gun were trembling again, slightly, and her face was pale.
“I don’t remember you,” she said with an edge to her voice, like it was an incantation.
Cavil smiled. “Yes, you do,” he said.
Felix was paling himself. This couldn’t mean what it sounded like. It couldn’t. He remembered what Helo had said about Sharon, he remembered trusting Helo - he remembered trusting Sharon. He even remembered... oh... he even remembered a cold tent and hot skin... Oh.
“You’re not him,” Sharon said.
Cavil chuckled. “Oh, we’re all him.”
It didn’t make any sense.
“There was a woman,” Sharon whispered. “A short one. She shot me. I...” She swallowed hard. “I died.”
“Oh, but you got better,” Cavil said dismissively. “It was a long time ago. Don’t worry about it. You can find and kill that woman later, if you think it matters.”
“Sharon...” Felix managed. He tried to step forward, but the bald Cylon immediately raised his gun.
“I’m not a Cylon,” Sharon said loudly, eyes piercing into Cavil.
“Very dramatic, but wrong,” Cavil said. “Lower your gun, my dear. You’ll see it’ll all start coming back to you fast once you’re back home, like it did for us.” He sounded startlingly gentle for a moment.
Sharon tore her eyes away from him to stare at Felix, silently begging him for help. He shook his head at her, willing her to understand.
“You’re on our side, Sharon,” he said.
Her breath hitched. “I think that’s where you didn’t want me.”
Felix tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He wanted to open his mouth and tell her that she was wrong - she was misremembering - their commanders would always allow her to come back to Galactica - even if she was right and his memories were wrong, it was never too late to change sides. She belonged on his team - he was so sure of that.
But he couldn’t. Not with those memories in his head about corridors that were supposed to be home, yet he was afraid of being attacked when he walked through them. Not with the memory of grey skies and no help in sight, and coming back into a Fleet he’d risked his life for, he’d almost killed somebody for and yet nobody cared to have him. He couldn’t tell her she’d be welcome because he hadn’t been, and he couldn’t lie to her.
He didn’t even know what side he was on anymore.
“I want you on my side, Sharon,” he said instead and that, at least, he meant. “I trust you.” He knew it wasn’t enough when he said it.
“So cute,” Cavil remarked.
“I don’t want to be on your side anymore,” Sharon said, speaking to Felix, but looking at Cavil. “I’m sorry.”
Then she lowered her gun.
And then three shots exploded in the alley, quick and eerily steady succession, one, two, three, and Felix barely even noticed how Cavil first and then the black Cylon went down like dead meat. All he could stare at was Sharon, who swayed, and her eyes widened, and she tried to look down and touch the red spot growing on her shirt with dizzying speed, but then a fourth shot followed the last, throwing her off her feet. Lightweight she was, her body barely made a sound when hitting the pavement.
Cold from shock, Felix turned in what felt like slow motion, but it couldn’t be because the blonde woman was still marching towards them down the alley, and she hadn’t even lowered her gun. Now she did, sparing the dead a disgusting glance just long enough to be sure they were dead, then looking at Felix with faintly less dislike.
“Godsdammit Gaeta, you’re hard to find,” she said.
She wasn’t moving to shoot him. Why wasn’t she moving to shoot him? She’d...
“You shot Sharon,” he said, still frozen, his brain unable to catch up.
Kara Thrace grimaced. “That’s not Sharon,” she said. “But you better explain to me what you remembered about this one, because none of the others did at all. Come on.”
She turned to leave without looking at the dead bodies again. A siren was starting to howl in the distance.