Fade Away, for rebelliousrose
Title: Fade Away
Author: trovia
Summary: "She can’t even curl up into herself on her rack. The guards would think she’s malfunctioning. She doesn’t know if they’d be wrong."
Characters: Sharon, Gaeta, Helo
Pairings: Sharon/Helo
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Hera's supposed death, so please beware possible miscarriage triggers
Title, Author and URL of original story: Limn by rebelliousrose
Author Notes: Dear rebelliousrose, I have a feeling that this isn't the story you hoped or thought would be remixed. Still, it was the one to make me most curious, and if you really think this isn't a good story (you said that much in a comment), you're plain wrong. I hope you'll enjoy my take on it and I hope you don’t mind that I stole all the good lines. :-)
Fade Away
1.
Somebody has brought her a chair and a table. Sharon stares at it in spite, not knowing why it was brought to her, and not caring. It might be a token, a way of acknowledging the things she did for Adama on Kobol, to show she isn’t outright useless to them… Just like her imprisonment shows that they still think of her as an enemy, that they want her to pay for Boomer’s sins. Or maybe, the table is just meant to help her work, do more slave labor for them. They have so much work for her to do, work for the toaster to process all day. Looking through code, looking through photographs, thinking up a thousand different ways of killing Cylons.
Sharon is seething, anger coiling up and down her spine, flaring, edgy and hot. She’d do it in a heartbeat. She’d betray the Cylons again, and again, to hurt them just as much as they hurt her. It’s their plan that forced her to come here, to seek protection by those who hate and fear her. It’s their plan that made her love Helo, and it made her love Hera long before Hera was even...
No. Even thinking of her daughter makes her want to topple over in pain right where she’s standing, dying within. She wants to scream, she wants to punch something... knock over that frakking table, use her Cylon strength to break the frakking chair. She wants to hug herself some more, and sob. But she can’t. She can’t even curl up into herself on her rack. The guards would think she’s malfunctioning. She doesn’t know if they’d be wrong.
People come and go, interrogating, asking her questions she can’t answer. None of them understand that she doesn’t know about the resurrection ship, and she can’t learn more without endangering the Fleet. She’d betray her location if she tried, and the location of the Fleet along with it. Not that it would change anything for her. She won’t be saved. She’s a liability. She’s a renegade, a reject who left the flock behind, betraying her own. Her programming is flawed and if she returned, she’d be boxed. She’s boxed now, just in a different way.
Sharon can’t help the anger. It’s part of her, along with the wrenching emptiness where Hera should be, and the everlasting silence that has replaced her link to the Eights. She can still hardly talk to Helo. He comes by sometimes, and his loyalty infuriates her. She hates him, too. She hates herself more.
People come by, questioning her about basestar procedures and Cylon command codes and plans. She refuses to listen, refuses to sit down on her frakking new chair at her frakking new table, folding her arms in front of her chest and waiting it out without turning to look at her visitor until she hears freshly polished boots moving away and the door being shut.
2.
People don’t knock when they come to visit her. Sharon doesn’t think about that most of the time because it’s not the way of a soldier to care and it’s not the way of a Cylon to notice. Those two perceptions mix within her, all the time: Boomer’s human ways, ways that shouldn’t apply because they aren’t hers and yet, they’re all she has left; Cylon ways that feel like hers, familiar like bone and limbs, and those shouldn’t apply either, yet she can’t let go of them anymore than she could shake off an arm. She isn’t an Eight anymore. She’s Sharon. She can’t be Sharon, there already is a Sharon. When Helo comes to visit- knocking at the window to get her attention- he often doesn’t bother with words anymore. He watches... he’s always watching. And she doesn’t know what or who he sees when he looks at her. He saw the mother of his child once, and it made him decide not to kill her. Now he sees... she doesn’t know what he sees.
Lt. Gaeta knocks, too, although the guard has opened the door for him already. He waits in the doorway, tilting his head with inquisitive eyes when she glares at him instead of telling him hello. Sharon presses her lips together, acknowledging him with a nod although she’d rather not, and he steps into the box to carefully place a stash of files on the table.
“You know I can’t help you with these,” she says, relishing the way her voice burns, the way it makes him flinch. He’s soft, Lt. Gaeta is. He always has been, like he belongs on a battlestar even less than a machine does. It’s easy to hurt Gaeta, possibly the only one left of her keepers she can hurt. Her only weapon, Cavil, has been used up already.
“I know you can’t, Sharon,” Gaeta says, soft and quiet and gentle. “But I still have to ask you to look them over, look for anything you might know that we don’t. I’ll just leave them here, and you can look at them when you’re ready.” Gaeta smiles, hesitant. “I appreciate your help… I know it must be difficult.”
Sharon doesn’t answer. She can’t say anything not fueled by anger and spite. And by that flaring pain that is trying to die down, except she can’t let it, too afraid of the pattern the scar tissue might form.
“He’s fine,” Gaeta says after a moment, before he turns to leave. “Helo. He’s fine. I’m training him for Tactical right now. He’s good at it. He’s good with math. He’s going to be fine.”
Sharon turns away.
A moment later, the door clicks shut, and the sound of ever polished boots fades out.
3.
A marine has delivered a lantern for the table. Sharon keeps glaring at it, wondering if it’s meant to be yet another tool to help occupy her with useless files. Cylon source code gained months ago, sure to have been upgraded by now. Security detail so old that it has gathered dust. Sharon doesn’t need a lantern to read in the dim light of the brig, of course. All Eights have perfect eye sight, more than perfect actually- their purpose to be officers and pilots, their physique created specifically to pass performance tests.
But the humans don’t know that. If she were one of them, her eyes would have been strained by now.
Lt. Gaeta is waiting for her to respond to his knock in the doorway. He’s holding more files, undoubtedly a revised edition of what she has handed him back. Files full of useless notes, all out of date. No contact with the Cylons since the election, anyway- since the Fleet has found New Caprica. How these people still come up with new intel, Sharon doesn’t know.
“Is the lantern helping?” Gaeta asks her, holding out the chair so she can sit. Sharon hesitates, but complies. She suddenly wonders when he started doing this, extending courtesies like this one; when he decided he could dare because there was a chance she wouldn’t turn him down.
It’s a luxury to her, she thinks, though automatic to Gaeta. It doesn’t mean he considers her human, but almost human maybe, almost a person. But Lt. Gaeta would give anybody the benefit of a doubt, her, Boomer’s memory supplies acidly. His kindness has nothing to do with her.
Sharon looks at the files on the table resentfully, the way she remembers looking at her mother’s cooking when she was three and wouldn’t eat, except she’s never been three, and she’s never had a mother. Still, she answers, the words dead on her tongue, “The lantern is helpful. Tell the Admiral thank you.” In the corner of her eye, a strange look flashes across Gaeta’s face. Sharon looks up. “Is the lantern from you?”
“Well, I thought you’d want...” Gaeta pauses, smiles, and whatever was there on his face, it’s gone. “Never mind. I have another couple of questions about the virus.” Sharon tilts her head while he speaks, actually looking at him, and it occurs to her that Galactica’s watch officer looks sad. Lost. She hasn’t bothered with noticing Gaeta’s appearance before, although now it occurs to her that he’s the one to visit her most.
“Why is Helo taking your post?” she asks, realizing that she doesn’t know. She’s boxed in her cell, not a part of the world, and while Helo and Kara, and even Gaeta himself bring her news, it’s little bits of a whole. She hasn’t cared to ask before. She’s too angry to ask about anything, most days, angry that she has to ask when a human would have the right to know.
Everything about this box of hers excludes her from the world- in every way that matters and in some ways that don’t matter at all.
Gaeta gives her a glance. “I’m mustering out,” he says. “I’m going to be working for President Baltar. I’ll leave when the decommissioning is through.” His hands are on the table, too calm. He straightens one of his sleeves, fingers lingering on the cloth of the uniform a second too long.
“But you love your job,” Sharon says. She- Boomer- knows this about Gaeta. She- the other one- has even seen the documentary where Gaeta said that, when she was in sickbay the night she first thought she’d miscarried Hera. The memory makes her pause, abruptly, and she has to look away because her eyes are burning. She thought she’d lost Hera then, but she’d been wrong. She’d only lost her after starting to hope and to love.
Remembering it now, Sharon thinks Gaeta looked lonely in that interview.
“Of course I love my job.” It’s Gaeta’s turn to look away. “But it wasn’t like I thought it would be,” he mutters, and she snorts because, no kidding. He blushes like he was a little boy instead of a lieutenant. “Now, about that virus,” he says, and Sharon’s resentment flares back to life with force. He’s such a child, Felix Gaeta. He doesn’t know anything. He’s never lost a child.
Does that mean he’s less human than her?
That night after the cell lights are dimmed, Sharon stares at the tylium lantern that Gaeta, not Adama, has granted her. Her sleep patterns are forced upon her by the humans, too, but she doesn’t have to obey them anymore. She can lie on her rack and stare at her own light instead. It’s battery powered, that lantern. Ever efficient Gaeta remembered that there are no power outlets in the brig.
Sharon doesn’t use the lantern to work, much. She stares at it though, lying awake, watching the light of it flicker and twist, like a campfire did a long time ago in a forest when Helo first told her he loved her.
4.
Sharon is still angry. It’s still simmering within her, day and night, filling the void with rage and hurt. She’s flawed, not quite right for both humans and Cylons; she’s started thinking that they’ve both got that one right at least. It hurts to know that she wouldn’t care, she would consider herself perfect if Hera was alive- if her flaw had made her able to give life to Hera. It felt so natural to fall in love with Helo, she remembers. It felt so natural when she started hating the Cylons, too. The one thing to catch her off guard was how much both of these hurt.
Gaeta flinches as his files slam to the floor in an explosion of paper, when she executes that kick she’s been longing for ever since she got that frakking table and that frakking chair. It’s hers now, this cell, the only thing she owns. She resents that people don’t knock.
“Gods. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you with that table,” Gaeta says after a moment, chagrined. “I just thought it’s the least we should do. I thought it would help. I’m sorry that it didn’t come across like that.” It’s a rush of words by man who feels most comfortable when he isn’t noticed.
Sharon stares at him. Knocking over the table hasn’t made the hurt go away after all, but that doesn’t surprise her either, suddenly. She longs so hard to be angry at Gaeta but she can’t. He’s kind. Whatever she does, he’s just... kind. A frakking wall of kindness. She remembers when Adama and Tigh dressed her... no, Boomer down for a bad landing and Gaeta whispered in her ear that every rook had that one coming, not to worry. He’s always been kind.
Sharon resolves, abruptly, that she’ll fly a perfect landing, should she ever get to leave the brig.
“Thank you,” she says, the words sounding too loud to her.
Gaeta smiles, relaxing visibly. “You’re very welcome, Sharon.”
Sharon has been talking to Helo- he was talking, that is, but she was listening, knowing he’s been waiting for her to be ready for it. She knows things now. She knows that Helo will start working at Tactical in three days time, which means that Gaeta will be gone. It’s strange, and not strange at all, to think she’ll miss Gaeta. Gaeta is part of her world now, he’s part of Sharon’s box, an ever-same bright spot in the ever-same black. Gaeta doesn’t endure like Helo and he doesn’t flee the room like all the others.
She wonders why he likes it better in here than outside.
“Why are you leaving Galactica, Felix?” she asks. She’s asked him this before but she thinks maybe, she wasn’t ready for the answer. Maybe, Gaeta was the one who wasn’t ready for the answer. Maybe, it’s not that different for Cylons and humans.
“Didn’t Helo tell you?” Gaeta asks back, giving her a wary glance. She shakes her head. Helo wouldn’t have known that she cares because she hasn’t asked when she should have. “There was... there was a misunderstanding at the election,” he says, looking every word over with care. “Since Dr. Baltar became President... things have changed. I was... it was pointed out to me that it would be a good opportunity for me to go planetside. And the President has offered me a job.” And the Admiral hasn’t, he doesn’t need to say.
He’s on the run, she thinks, nonplussed. He’s running away to New Caprica and he’s running away to the brig.
My box is his sanctuary.
It must have been a long time overall that anybody has been nice to Mr. Gaeta, if the Cylon in the brig is the best he can get.
She’s grateful that he chose her.
“It’ll be empty in here when you’re gone,” she says because she isn’t one to say thank you more than once and she isn’t one to say I’ll miss you. Sharon isn’t kind, and she can’t afford to be gentle. She doesn’t like the world enough to try. She’s missing Helo, too. She should tell him.
But Gaeta’s face softens, and in the flickering light of the lantern, he looks very young- like the man who danced with Boomer on Colonial day. That’s a good memory, full of colors, one she might keep. It’s nice to see him relax. “You should come visit,” he says. “As soon as the Admiral lets you go, you should visit us down there.”
She smiles, watching him leave, her eyes on the door even after it has closed, when his footsteps have faded away one last time. It’s a strained smile, one of grief- not for Gaeta but maybe for herself, for the Sharon that she never was. She isn’t kind. But she wishes she was.
Still, it’s a smile.
5.
Helo is lounging against the window frame, hand tracing over the glass, just like her own is doing on the other side. Sharon has been wishing she could touch him for days, longing to be held. Now she thinks, maybe it’s good that she can’t. Maybe, she should heal all on her own before she does. For now, it’s enough to be close.
“The call came in this morning,” Helo says, shaking his head, smiling with wonder. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the President would care. He talked to me when he was done with the Admiral, to tell me he’s sorry that it didn’t work out. He said it was a debt from when I saved him on Caprica but... I’m surprised he even remembers that was me. I never knew he did. I know that wasn’t why he helped us with Hera.” His lips twitch a little, the slightest hint of hurt, but they can say it now. They can both think of Hera, and say the name aloud and not cry, most days.
Baltar’s attempt to get her out has proven fruitless, of course, because Sharon is still in here and Helo is still out there. If the order had been given by Roslin- as if she ever would- Adama wouldn’t have hesitated to let Sharon go. But for Baltar, Adama refused to, telling him Sharon is a military problem. Although sometimes these days, Sharon thinks that Bill Adama sees Sharon when he looks at her, not Boomer, not a security risk. He’s been coming by for tea. It had been so ridiculous to see him enter with a teapot that it had made her laugh.
Sharon has a couch now. This time around, it really was Adama who sent it. She asked to make sure.
“I’m not surprised at all,” she says. “Baltar wouldn’t have remembered. Gaeta would.”
Gaeta, she thinks, probably just wrote it down on Baltar’s schedule, making Baltar work like he made the Galactica work. Like he made Sharon work, a little bit, making her a part of the world again by becoming a part of hers. She’ll never forget that.
Sharon hopes that the lieutenant, who isn’t a lieutenant anymore, has found on that planet what he missed on Galactica. She hopes that he doesn’t need to run away to prison anymore.
Sharon hopes for a lot these days. Like that there’ll be a wedding, as Helo keeps promising her, and she hopes Felix won’t be the only guest she’ll be able to invite. Like that there’ll be a day soon when she’ll wake up without aching for Hera first thing. Like that Helo will come by every day and tell her stories about work at Tactical, and that Adama will trust her a little bit more come next week. It still fills her with wonder, all the things suddenly worthy of hope.
Author: trovia
Summary: "She can’t even curl up into herself on her rack. The guards would think she’s malfunctioning. She doesn’t know if they’d be wrong."
Characters: Sharon, Gaeta, Helo
Pairings: Sharon/Helo
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Hera's supposed death, so please beware possible miscarriage triggers
Title, Author and URL of original story: Limn by rebelliousrose
Author Notes: Dear rebelliousrose, I have a feeling that this isn't the story you hoped or thought would be remixed. Still, it was the one to make me most curious, and if you really think this isn't a good story (you said that much in a comment), you're plain wrong. I hope you'll enjoy my take on it and I hope you don’t mind that I stole all the good lines. :-)
Fade Away
1.
Somebody has brought her a chair and a table. Sharon stares at it in spite, not knowing why it was brought to her, and not caring. It might be a token, a way of acknowledging the things she did for Adama on Kobol, to show she isn’t outright useless to them… Just like her imprisonment shows that they still think of her as an enemy, that they want her to pay for Boomer’s sins. Or maybe, the table is just meant to help her work, do more slave labor for them. They have so much work for her to do, work for the toaster to process all day. Looking through code, looking through photographs, thinking up a thousand different ways of killing Cylons.
Sharon is seething, anger coiling up and down her spine, flaring, edgy and hot. She’d do it in a heartbeat. She’d betray the Cylons again, and again, to hurt them just as much as they hurt her. It’s their plan that forced her to come here, to seek protection by those who hate and fear her. It’s their plan that made her love Helo, and it made her love Hera long before Hera was even...
No. Even thinking of her daughter makes her want to topple over in pain right where she’s standing, dying within. She wants to scream, she wants to punch something... knock over that frakking table, use her Cylon strength to break the frakking chair. She wants to hug herself some more, and sob. But she can’t. She can’t even curl up into herself on her rack. The guards would think she’s malfunctioning. She doesn’t know if they’d be wrong.
People come and go, interrogating, asking her questions she can’t answer. None of them understand that she doesn’t know about the resurrection ship, and she can’t learn more without endangering the Fleet. She’d betray her location if she tried, and the location of the Fleet along with it. Not that it would change anything for her. She won’t be saved. She’s a liability. She’s a renegade, a reject who left the flock behind, betraying her own. Her programming is flawed and if she returned, she’d be boxed. She’s boxed now, just in a different way.
Sharon can’t help the anger. It’s part of her, along with the wrenching emptiness where Hera should be, and the everlasting silence that has replaced her link to the Eights. She can still hardly talk to Helo. He comes by sometimes, and his loyalty infuriates her. She hates him, too. She hates herself more.
People come by, questioning her about basestar procedures and Cylon command codes and plans. She refuses to listen, refuses to sit down on her frakking new chair at her frakking new table, folding her arms in front of her chest and waiting it out without turning to look at her visitor until she hears freshly polished boots moving away and the door being shut.
2.
People don’t knock when they come to visit her. Sharon doesn’t think about that most of the time because it’s not the way of a soldier to care and it’s not the way of a Cylon to notice. Those two perceptions mix within her, all the time: Boomer’s human ways, ways that shouldn’t apply because they aren’t hers and yet, they’re all she has left; Cylon ways that feel like hers, familiar like bone and limbs, and those shouldn’t apply either, yet she can’t let go of them anymore than she could shake off an arm. She isn’t an Eight anymore. She’s Sharon. She can’t be Sharon, there already is a Sharon. When Helo comes to visit- knocking at the window to get her attention- he often doesn’t bother with words anymore. He watches... he’s always watching. And she doesn’t know what or who he sees when he looks at her. He saw the mother of his child once, and it made him decide not to kill her. Now he sees... she doesn’t know what he sees.
Lt. Gaeta knocks, too, although the guard has opened the door for him already. He waits in the doorway, tilting his head with inquisitive eyes when she glares at him instead of telling him hello. Sharon presses her lips together, acknowledging him with a nod although she’d rather not, and he steps into the box to carefully place a stash of files on the table.
“You know I can’t help you with these,” she says, relishing the way her voice burns, the way it makes him flinch. He’s soft, Lt. Gaeta is. He always has been, like he belongs on a battlestar even less than a machine does. It’s easy to hurt Gaeta, possibly the only one left of her keepers she can hurt. Her only weapon, Cavil, has been used up already.
“I know you can’t, Sharon,” Gaeta says, soft and quiet and gentle. “But I still have to ask you to look them over, look for anything you might know that we don’t. I’ll just leave them here, and you can look at them when you’re ready.” Gaeta smiles, hesitant. “I appreciate your help… I know it must be difficult.”
Sharon doesn’t answer. She can’t say anything not fueled by anger and spite. And by that flaring pain that is trying to die down, except she can’t let it, too afraid of the pattern the scar tissue might form.
“He’s fine,” Gaeta says after a moment, before he turns to leave. “Helo. He’s fine. I’m training him for Tactical right now. He’s good at it. He’s good with math. He’s going to be fine.”
Sharon turns away.
A moment later, the door clicks shut, and the sound of ever polished boots fades out.
3.
A marine has delivered a lantern for the table. Sharon keeps glaring at it, wondering if it’s meant to be yet another tool to help occupy her with useless files. Cylon source code gained months ago, sure to have been upgraded by now. Security detail so old that it has gathered dust. Sharon doesn’t need a lantern to read in the dim light of the brig, of course. All Eights have perfect eye sight, more than perfect actually- their purpose to be officers and pilots, their physique created specifically to pass performance tests.
But the humans don’t know that. If she were one of them, her eyes would have been strained by now.
Lt. Gaeta is waiting for her to respond to his knock in the doorway. He’s holding more files, undoubtedly a revised edition of what she has handed him back. Files full of useless notes, all out of date. No contact with the Cylons since the election, anyway- since the Fleet has found New Caprica. How these people still come up with new intel, Sharon doesn’t know.
“Is the lantern helping?” Gaeta asks her, holding out the chair so she can sit. Sharon hesitates, but complies. She suddenly wonders when he started doing this, extending courtesies like this one; when he decided he could dare because there was a chance she wouldn’t turn him down.
It’s a luxury to her, she thinks, though automatic to Gaeta. It doesn’t mean he considers her human, but almost human maybe, almost a person. But Lt. Gaeta would give anybody the benefit of a doubt, her, Boomer’s memory supplies acidly. His kindness has nothing to do with her.
Sharon looks at the files on the table resentfully, the way she remembers looking at her mother’s cooking when she was three and wouldn’t eat, except she’s never been three, and she’s never had a mother. Still, she answers, the words dead on her tongue, “The lantern is helpful. Tell the Admiral thank you.” In the corner of her eye, a strange look flashes across Gaeta’s face. Sharon looks up. “Is the lantern from you?”
“Well, I thought you’d want...” Gaeta pauses, smiles, and whatever was there on his face, it’s gone. “Never mind. I have another couple of questions about the virus.” Sharon tilts her head while he speaks, actually looking at him, and it occurs to her that Galactica’s watch officer looks sad. Lost. She hasn’t bothered with noticing Gaeta’s appearance before, although now it occurs to her that he’s the one to visit her most.
“Why is Helo taking your post?” she asks, realizing that she doesn’t know. She’s boxed in her cell, not a part of the world, and while Helo and Kara, and even Gaeta himself bring her news, it’s little bits of a whole. She hasn’t cared to ask before. She’s too angry to ask about anything, most days, angry that she has to ask when a human would have the right to know.
Everything about this box of hers excludes her from the world- in every way that matters and in some ways that don’t matter at all.
Gaeta gives her a glance. “I’m mustering out,” he says. “I’m going to be working for President Baltar. I’ll leave when the decommissioning is through.” His hands are on the table, too calm. He straightens one of his sleeves, fingers lingering on the cloth of the uniform a second too long.
“But you love your job,” Sharon says. She- Boomer- knows this about Gaeta. She- the other one- has even seen the documentary where Gaeta said that, when she was in sickbay the night she first thought she’d miscarried Hera. The memory makes her pause, abruptly, and she has to look away because her eyes are burning. She thought she’d lost Hera then, but she’d been wrong. She’d only lost her after starting to hope and to love.
Remembering it now, Sharon thinks Gaeta looked lonely in that interview.
“Of course I love my job.” It’s Gaeta’s turn to look away. “But it wasn’t like I thought it would be,” he mutters, and she snorts because, no kidding. He blushes like he was a little boy instead of a lieutenant. “Now, about that virus,” he says, and Sharon’s resentment flares back to life with force. He’s such a child, Felix Gaeta. He doesn’t know anything. He’s never lost a child.
Does that mean he’s less human than her?
That night after the cell lights are dimmed, Sharon stares at the tylium lantern that Gaeta, not Adama, has granted her. Her sleep patterns are forced upon her by the humans, too, but she doesn’t have to obey them anymore. She can lie on her rack and stare at her own light instead. It’s battery powered, that lantern. Ever efficient Gaeta remembered that there are no power outlets in the brig.
Sharon doesn’t use the lantern to work, much. She stares at it though, lying awake, watching the light of it flicker and twist, like a campfire did a long time ago in a forest when Helo first told her he loved her.
4.
Sharon is still angry. It’s still simmering within her, day and night, filling the void with rage and hurt. She’s flawed, not quite right for both humans and Cylons; she’s started thinking that they’ve both got that one right at least. It hurts to know that she wouldn’t care, she would consider herself perfect if Hera was alive- if her flaw had made her able to give life to Hera. It felt so natural to fall in love with Helo, she remembers. It felt so natural when she started hating the Cylons, too. The one thing to catch her off guard was how much both of these hurt.
Gaeta flinches as his files slam to the floor in an explosion of paper, when she executes that kick she’s been longing for ever since she got that frakking table and that frakking chair. It’s hers now, this cell, the only thing she owns. She resents that people don’t knock.
“Gods. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you with that table,” Gaeta says after a moment, chagrined. “I just thought it’s the least we should do. I thought it would help. I’m sorry that it didn’t come across like that.” It’s a rush of words by man who feels most comfortable when he isn’t noticed.
Sharon stares at him. Knocking over the table hasn’t made the hurt go away after all, but that doesn’t surprise her either, suddenly. She longs so hard to be angry at Gaeta but she can’t. He’s kind. Whatever she does, he’s just... kind. A frakking wall of kindness. She remembers when Adama and Tigh dressed her... no, Boomer down for a bad landing and Gaeta whispered in her ear that every rook had that one coming, not to worry. He’s always been kind.
Sharon resolves, abruptly, that she’ll fly a perfect landing, should she ever get to leave the brig.
“Thank you,” she says, the words sounding too loud to her.
Gaeta smiles, relaxing visibly. “You’re very welcome, Sharon.”
Sharon has been talking to Helo- he was talking, that is, but she was listening, knowing he’s been waiting for her to be ready for it. She knows things now. She knows that Helo will start working at Tactical in three days time, which means that Gaeta will be gone. It’s strange, and not strange at all, to think she’ll miss Gaeta. Gaeta is part of her world now, he’s part of Sharon’s box, an ever-same bright spot in the ever-same black. Gaeta doesn’t endure like Helo and he doesn’t flee the room like all the others.
She wonders why he likes it better in here than outside.
“Why are you leaving Galactica, Felix?” she asks. She’s asked him this before but she thinks maybe, she wasn’t ready for the answer. Maybe, Gaeta was the one who wasn’t ready for the answer. Maybe, it’s not that different for Cylons and humans.
“Didn’t Helo tell you?” Gaeta asks back, giving her a wary glance. She shakes her head. Helo wouldn’t have known that she cares because she hasn’t asked when she should have. “There was... there was a misunderstanding at the election,” he says, looking every word over with care. “Since Dr. Baltar became President... things have changed. I was... it was pointed out to me that it would be a good opportunity for me to go planetside. And the President has offered me a job.” And the Admiral hasn’t, he doesn’t need to say.
He’s on the run, she thinks, nonplussed. He’s running away to New Caprica and he’s running away to the brig.
My box is his sanctuary.
It must have been a long time overall that anybody has been nice to Mr. Gaeta, if the Cylon in the brig is the best he can get.
She’s grateful that he chose her.
“It’ll be empty in here when you’re gone,” she says because she isn’t one to say thank you more than once and she isn’t one to say I’ll miss you. Sharon isn’t kind, and she can’t afford to be gentle. She doesn’t like the world enough to try. She’s missing Helo, too. She should tell him.
But Gaeta’s face softens, and in the flickering light of the lantern, he looks very young- like the man who danced with Boomer on Colonial day. That’s a good memory, full of colors, one she might keep. It’s nice to see him relax. “You should come visit,” he says. “As soon as the Admiral lets you go, you should visit us down there.”
She smiles, watching him leave, her eyes on the door even after it has closed, when his footsteps have faded away one last time. It’s a strained smile, one of grief- not for Gaeta but maybe for herself, for the Sharon that she never was. She isn’t kind. But she wishes she was.
Still, it’s a smile.
5.
Helo is lounging against the window frame, hand tracing over the glass, just like her own is doing on the other side. Sharon has been wishing she could touch him for days, longing to be held. Now she thinks, maybe it’s good that she can’t. Maybe, she should heal all on her own before she does. For now, it’s enough to be close.
“The call came in this morning,” Helo says, shaking his head, smiling with wonder. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the President would care. He talked to me when he was done with the Admiral, to tell me he’s sorry that it didn’t work out. He said it was a debt from when I saved him on Caprica but... I’m surprised he even remembers that was me. I never knew he did. I know that wasn’t why he helped us with Hera.” His lips twitch a little, the slightest hint of hurt, but they can say it now. They can both think of Hera, and say the name aloud and not cry, most days.
Baltar’s attempt to get her out has proven fruitless, of course, because Sharon is still in here and Helo is still out there. If the order had been given by Roslin- as if she ever would- Adama wouldn’t have hesitated to let Sharon go. But for Baltar, Adama refused to, telling him Sharon is a military problem. Although sometimes these days, Sharon thinks that Bill Adama sees Sharon when he looks at her, not Boomer, not a security risk. He’s been coming by for tea. It had been so ridiculous to see him enter with a teapot that it had made her laugh.
Sharon has a couch now. This time around, it really was Adama who sent it. She asked to make sure.
“I’m not surprised at all,” she says. “Baltar wouldn’t have remembered. Gaeta would.”
Gaeta, she thinks, probably just wrote it down on Baltar’s schedule, making Baltar work like he made the Galactica work. Like he made Sharon work, a little bit, making her a part of the world again by becoming a part of hers. She’ll never forget that.
Sharon hopes that the lieutenant, who isn’t a lieutenant anymore, has found on that planet what he missed on Galactica. She hopes that he doesn’t need to run away to prison anymore.
Sharon hopes for a lot these days. Like that there’ll be a wedding, as Helo keeps promising her, and she hopes Felix won’t be the only guest she’ll be able to invite. Like that there’ll be a day soon when she’ll wake up without aching for Hera first thing. Like that Helo will come by every day and tell her stories about work at Tactical, and that Adama will trust her a little bit more come next week. It still fills her with wonder, all the things suddenly worthy of hope.