Don't Be Afraid, You're Already Dead, for rose_griffes
Title: Don't Be Afraid, You're Already Dead (Resurrection Remix)
Author: amathela
Summary: First thing they tell you is to assume you're already dead.
Characters: Racetrack
Rating: PG-13
Title, Author and URL of original story: Into The Underworld by rose_griffes
Notes: Spoilers up to episode 4:13 - The Oath.
She wanders the surface, charred remains like ash under her fingers, blackened dirt sticking to her boots. There's no salvation, here.
There's nothing but death.
"Is that why you came back from the dead?" she asks Starbuck. She wants to be angry, but her words sound tired, hollow. "To bring all of us to the underworld?"
The Cylon model - Leoben - stands next to her like a sentry; Charon, or maybe Cerberus. Maggie doesn't have a coin to pay him, but no matter. She's here already. He looks at Maggie, and then his gaze follows Starbuck's, staring across the bay.
After a minute, Starbuck turns to Maggie. "What was her name?"
"Whose name?" Maggie asks. Around her, a dead wind picks up for a second, and then falls silent.
"The queen of the underworld."
Maggie looks at Starbuck's lost expression. She wonders if she thought she'd be coming home. "It was Persephone."
"I was trying to remember," Starbuck says, half-raising a hand to the wasteland around them. "Earlier."
She looks back across the water, where Maggie can see the ruined outline of a temple. She wonders what gods were worshipped there, and decides it doesn't matter; whatever gods the people had prayed to, they had been wrong. Their gods hadn't saved them.
Maybe, she thinks, they were all wrong. Maybe Earth wasn't the thirteenth colony; maybe it really is the underworld, maybe they've jumped past Hades into Tartarus. Maybe they were simply foolish to expect their gods to follow them this far.
(Maybe their gods are dead.)
The wind starts up again, cold, tasting of salt and ash, and Maggie shivers.
-
Her mother takes it hard when Maggie joins the fleet, reading solemnly from the book of the scrolls while Maggie scuffs the line of salt poured across the floor.
"I'll be okay," she says. She believes it until the attack on the colonies, and her mother's words ring in her ears.
-
She doesn't fly with Boomer long. One mission, but it's enough that she thinks maybe this could work, the CIC erupting in applause while she stands there, trying her damnedest to look professional. Commander Adama reaches out to shake their hands, and everything goes to hell.
When Boomer comes back - not her, maybe, but it's not like Maggie can tell the difference - Maggie offers herself up as ECO. It's not like she's running to embrace the Cylons, but she's as capable of forgiveness as anyone else, and if Adama says she can be trusted, Maggie believes it. Mostly.
"You want me, I'm yours," she says, and thinks, maybe, this could work.
-
She has a photo of her family, already fading a little, the paper curling up at the corners. They all look a little awkward, posed and smiling like they've been doing this for too long already. (Except for Marcus, caught in motion, about to poke one of the twins. Their father had given him a half-hearted dressing down for that, afterwards, but Maggie's glad of the imperfection; she thinks it's the closest thing she's got to remembering how they really were.)
She's thought about putting it up on the memorial wall a dozen times since the attacks. The instincts that tell her to honour her dead war with the part of her that isn't ready to give this up, the last part of the life she left behind. In the end, she reasons it away by remembering she's in the photo, too; first thing they tell you is to assume you're already dead, but that seems a little too much like tempting fate, even for Maggie.
So she runs a hand along the paper, and tucks the photo back into the book of scripture her mother hid in her luggage, the one that still doesn't feel like hers. She's always believed in other things.
-
News starts coming out fast, and it's hard to tell what's true and what isn't. She remembers, years ago, when rumours started leaking that the Cylons looked like them.
Didn't just look like them. Were them. The president's aide; Maggie doesn't know the woman, but she's flown in Maggie's raptor before, shuttling back and forth between Colonial One and Galactica like she was anyone else.
Ensign Anders. Starbuck's husband, the toaster and the woman who came back from the dead, like some twisted kind of fairy tale. He'd been in nugget classes under Maggie's command.
Chief Tyrol, who's fixed her bird more times than she can count. Saul Tigh, the frakking XO. She wonders if alcoholism was written into his source code. Wonders if he was rebelling or just playing in some sick game when he led the resistance on New Caprica.
And Boomer. Athena. Maggie's flown with her more often than not, it seems, and she's proven herself. Maggie even mostly trusts her. She has no idea what she can trust, any more.
Everything around her feels like it's going to hell.
-
Nobody approaches her about it directly, but Maggie's always been sharp, and she can feel the buildup of tension in the air. It swarms around Gaeta, crystallises whenever the XO is around, or Starbuck, or Apollo. She thinks about it for the better part of a day before she decides she's sick of not knowing things.
(There's ash still sticking to her boots; she hasn't been able to get it off.)
There's a part of her that remembers her oath, remembers her first day in the fleet, the pride in her father's eyes. But she's made a different kind of oath, since, and the articles she once swore on don't seem to hold any meaning any more. Maybe there's no coming back from this, no resurrection of the things she once believed in, but Maggie thinks she owes it to herself to try.
-
Apollo shakes hands with the Cylon Maggie once met as reporter D'Anna Biers, and Maggie can still remember the things she'd believed, then. She wonders if any of it made a difference.
Adama seems to think they can be trusted, and Maggie isn't sure about that, but she thinks about her mother, and tries to have faith. She can believe in the gods, if she has to. She believes in the admiral.
Everyone's poised in the CIC, on the deck, and Maggie braces herself for the jump, for the feeling of being stretched between two distant points. Her father once said that you can know where you are or where you're going, but never both, and Maggie thinks about all the places she never thought she'd end up, wonders if anyone knows where they're going, now. She doubts any of them know where they are.
Maybe, she thinks, the admiral is right. Maybe Starbuck came back from the dead to lead them all to Elysium.
She thinks, maybe, this could work.
Author: amathela
Summary: First thing they tell you is to assume you're already dead.
Characters: Racetrack
Rating: PG-13
Title, Author and URL of original story: Into The Underworld by rose_griffes
Notes: Spoilers up to episode 4:13 - The Oath.
She wanders the surface, charred remains like ash under her fingers, blackened dirt sticking to her boots. There's no salvation, here.
There's nothing but death.
"Is that why you came back from the dead?" she asks Starbuck. She wants to be angry, but her words sound tired, hollow. "To bring all of us to the underworld?"
The Cylon model - Leoben - stands next to her like a sentry; Charon, or maybe Cerberus. Maggie doesn't have a coin to pay him, but no matter. She's here already. He looks at Maggie, and then his gaze follows Starbuck's, staring across the bay.
After a minute, Starbuck turns to Maggie. "What was her name?"
"Whose name?" Maggie asks. Around her, a dead wind picks up for a second, and then falls silent.
"The queen of the underworld."
Maggie looks at Starbuck's lost expression. She wonders if she thought she'd be coming home. "It was Persephone."
"I was trying to remember," Starbuck says, half-raising a hand to the wasteland around them. "Earlier."
She looks back across the water, where Maggie can see the ruined outline of a temple. She wonders what gods were worshipped there, and decides it doesn't matter; whatever gods the people had prayed to, they had been wrong. Their gods hadn't saved them.
Maybe, she thinks, they were all wrong. Maybe Earth wasn't the thirteenth colony; maybe it really is the underworld, maybe they've jumped past Hades into Tartarus. Maybe they were simply foolish to expect their gods to follow them this far.
(Maybe their gods are dead.)
The wind starts up again, cold, tasting of salt and ash, and Maggie shivers.
-
Her mother takes it hard when Maggie joins the fleet, reading solemnly from the book of the scrolls while Maggie scuffs the line of salt poured across the floor.
"I'll be okay," she says. She believes it until the attack on the colonies, and her mother's words ring in her ears.
-
She doesn't fly with Boomer long. One mission, but it's enough that she thinks maybe this could work, the CIC erupting in applause while she stands there, trying her damnedest to look professional. Commander Adama reaches out to shake their hands, and everything goes to hell.
When Boomer comes back - not her, maybe, but it's not like Maggie can tell the difference - Maggie offers herself up as ECO. It's not like she's running to embrace the Cylons, but she's as capable of forgiveness as anyone else, and if Adama says she can be trusted, Maggie believes it. Mostly.
"You want me, I'm yours," she says, and thinks, maybe, this could work.
-
She has a photo of her family, already fading a little, the paper curling up at the corners. They all look a little awkward, posed and smiling like they've been doing this for too long already. (Except for Marcus, caught in motion, about to poke one of the twins. Their father had given him a half-hearted dressing down for that, afterwards, but Maggie's glad of the imperfection; she thinks it's the closest thing she's got to remembering how they really were.)
She's thought about putting it up on the memorial wall a dozen times since the attacks. The instincts that tell her to honour her dead war with the part of her that isn't ready to give this up, the last part of the life she left behind. In the end, she reasons it away by remembering she's in the photo, too; first thing they tell you is to assume you're already dead, but that seems a little too much like tempting fate, even for Maggie.
So she runs a hand along the paper, and tucks the photo back into the book of scripture her mother hid in her luggage, the one that still doesn't feel like hers. She's always believed in other things.
-
News starts coming out fast, and it's hard to tell what's true and what isn't. She remembers, years ago, when rumours started leaking that the Cylons looked like them.
Didn't just look like them. Were them. The president's aide; Maggie doesn't know the woman, but she's flown in Maggie's raptor before, shuttling back and forth between Colonial One and Galactica like she was anyone else.
Ensign Anders. Starbuck's husband, the toaster and the woman who came back from the dead, like some twisted kind of fairy tale. He'd been in nugget classes under Maggie's command.
Chief Tyrol, who's fixed her bird more times than she can count. Saul Tigh, the frakking XO. She wonders if alcoholism was written into his source code. Wonders if he was rebelling or just playing in some sick game when he led the resistance on New Caprica.
And Boomer. Athena. Maggie's flown with her more often than not, it seems, and she's proven herself. Maggie even mostly trusts her. She has no idea what she can trust, any more.
Everything around her feels like it's going to hell.
-
Nobody approaches her about it directly, but Maggie's always been sharp, and she can feel the buildup of tension in the air. It swarms around Gaeta, crystallises whenever the XO is around, or Starbuck, or Apollo. She thinks about it for the better part of a day before she decides she's sick of not knowing things.
(There's ash still sticking to her boots; she hasn't been able to get it off.)
There's a part of her that remembers her oath, remembers her first day in the fleet, the pride in her father's eyes. But she's made a different kind of oath, since, and the articles she once swore on don't seem to hold any meaning any more. Maybe there's no coming back from this, no resurrection of the things she once believed in, but Maggie thinks she owes it to herself to try.
-
Apollo shakes hands with the Cylon Maggie once met as reporter D'Anna Biers, and Maggie can still remember the things she'd believed, then. She wonders if any of it made a difference.
Adama seems to think they can be trusted, and Maggie isn't sure about that, but she thinks about her mother, and tries to have faith. She can believe in the gods, if she has to. She believes in the admiral.
Everyone's poised in the CIC, on the deck, and Maggie braces herself for the jump, for the feeling of being stretched between two distant points. Her father once said that you can know where you are or where you're going, but never both, and Maggie thinks about all the places she never thought she'd end up, wonders if anyone knows where they're going, now. She doubts any of them know where they are.
Maybe, she thinks, the admiral is right. Maybe Starbuck came back from the dead to lead them all to Elysium.
She thinks, maybe, this could work.