"Farewell Symphony" Movements I, II, and III
Title: “Farewell Symphony,” Movements I, II and III ( link to Movement IV and Finale)
Author: kappamaki33
Summary: Saying goodbye is never easy.
Characters: Dee, Gaeta, Helo, Tyrol, Hoshi, Romo, Hotdog
Rating: PG
Remix of “Recapitulation" by trovia,
Beta Thanks: Thank you so very, very much to my wonderful beta brennanspeaks!
Author Notes: Well, I ended up taking the concept of a “remix” somewhat literally. In music, a “recapitulation” is essentially a sub-division of a movement with a certain type of structure. Working from the musical theme of “recapitulation” and the word “remix” itself, I ended up writing the symphony in which trovia’s original fic fits, with a little mixing and tweaking to keep everything in tune.
Also, this is a songfic, of sorts. The structure is roughly based on Franz Josef Haydn’s “‘Farewell’ Symphony.” Apologies to Jules Verne and Flannery O'Connor for what Chuckles did.
Meta on the remixing experience here; companion fic called "Companion Pieces" will eventually be here (Dee), here (Gaeta), here (Helo), and here (Tyrol), and they can be read in any order. Link to original remix post here.
Farewell Symphony
I. Dee-Allegro Assai
Dee shook her head as she marched down the corridor to the bunkroom. Thank goodness Felix was still too drugged to register how eagerly she’d leapt up and nearly run out of the cubicle when Felix asked if someone would bring down some of his clothes. Ishay had been in the middle of saying she’d be happy to retrieve them since her shift was almost over, so Dee and Louis wouldn’t have to leave, but Dee had quickly cut her off with a muttered “it’s no problem, really” as she slid between Ishay and the heart monitor. Louis had looked even more confused, barely managing a strangled “thank you, Dee,” before she was out the infirmary door.
She simply wasn’t any good at sickrooms, Dee told herself. She needed to be doing something, to be active and useful. Usefulness was the best way to battle helplessness. And yet, there was that nagging voice in the back of her mind that reminded her she’d sat by Lee’s bedside after Cloud Nine. She’d clutched the Old Man’s hand when he was shot, prayed prayers she’d thought she’d forgotten years ago. Felix was different. She had known what to give Lee and the Admiral because they had been silent; all they needed were whispered pleas to the gods and warm fingers entwined with theirs. But Felix, he was flinging his own delirious message in the gods’ faces, a beautiful, horrible song that was half supplication, half curse.
But wish no more; my life you can take-
No, don’t think like that, don’t think like that, she ordered herself. You can’t think like that if you’re going to keep it together. Dee took a deep breath and put her thoughts in order. She had to think of what Felix needed: socks, underwear, tanks, sweats. He must have standard-issue sweats somewhere, even though he never wore them. She found them balled up in the back of the drawer under his bunk, not folded neatly like everything else. She pulled the pants out first and noticed the elastic around the ankles. She really should cut the right pant leg off for him, get it out of the way, Dee thought. As she reached for her father’s knife in her pocket, though, she realized she probably shouldn’t do it yet, since it might be a terrible waste, since Cottle had said Felix was by no means out of the woods yet, and if he didn’t-no, stop it, don’t cry, don’t cry, you promised yourself you wouldn’t cry.
She yanked the sweatshirt out much less carefully, mussing the tanks and boxers and civilian clothing resting in front of it. But when she unfurled the shirt to shake the wrinkles out, a single sheet of paper slid out of its folds and floated lightly to the floor.
She picked it up. Dee didn’t know anything about music, and she’d always assumed the same was true of Felix; in fact, she’d never even had reason to think about it. But here it was in her hands: tangible proof of the song she’d heard in the infirmary a few minutes ago, crumpled and torn around the edges as if it had been shoved away in the darkness and forgotten for a very long time. The words she recognized, though they began and ended abruptly in mid-sentence; clearly it wasn’t a first page. The rest was a mystery. A few characters looked like they were almost recognizable, like mathematical symbols, but that false familiarity made them all the more frustrating. Black notes tumbled over each other, catching on the straight parallel lines and gliding down marks that looked like lopsided parentheses or playground slides, chasing each other in some elaborate game to which she didn’t know the rules. The only thing she could tell about the notes was that there were far too many for just one voice.
When she and Louis had finally made it down to the infirmary, Cottle had been in examining Felix, so they’d had to wait outside his cubicle for a few minutes. While they stood there, Louis leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed, concentrating on breathing, Dee had overheard President Roslin speaking to one of the nurses on the other side of the room.
“So you didn’t know, either?” she’d said. “I don’t get it. I’ve always known the Galactica crew to be so close to one another. How can a voice like that stay a secret for five years?”
That had been a knife to the gut. Dee and Felix had served together for nearly seven years, and yet she’d never suspected. He never talked about music, never sang in the shower, only occasionally hummed in the CIC, usually the days after he’d gotten laid-so of course she’d always wheedled and teased him about his latest assignation, not where he’d learned to carry a tune so well. Nobody could have guessed, Dee told herself. Somehow, that justification wasn’t as comforting as it should have been.
Dee hurriedly pulled tanks and underwear out of the drawer and dumped them in a heap on top of the sweats. She crumpled the paper again, thrust it under a random stack of clothing, and shoved the drawer shut, hard. She rubbed her cheeks with the heels of her hands, even though she was fairly certain there weren’t any tears to wipe away, just in case.
Don’t think like that. Dee knew she was being silly, acting as if she were already in mourning for the man who taught her how to run the tactical station and also how to read everyone’s tells when they played Triad, who gave her away at her wedding and took her out for drinks the night she left her husband for good. And yet-and yet, the man in the infirmary had a voice she’d never heard before and hurled words at the heavens whose meaning she was afraid of understanding. They had been running from the Cylons for years, yet still, she had thought they had time. She hadn’t thought she’d known all there was to know about Felix Gaeta, but she had thought they had time.
Dee scooped the pile of clothing up in her arms and marched resolutely toward the hatchway, but she lost her purposeful rhythm half-way across the room. The music had been there with him all along; there was proof. She just hadn’t known it before. Maybe, then, there’s still time, still hope. Dee went back to Felix’s bunk and set the clothing down. She slid the drawer open, found the sheet again and smoothed it out. She folded it neatly and tucked it in her pocket, picked Felix’s clothes up again, and stood up straight: shoulders back, chin up, comforting smile firmly in place. Felix was waiting for her.
II. Gaeta-Adagio
“Felix! Gods, no!”
Felix slowly twisted toward the hatch and looked up, surprised to see Louis rushing at him, clearly panicking.
“Felix, are you all right?” He nodded, and Louis started breathing normally again, though Felix could still hear a slight hitch in his exhale. “Gods, for a moment, seeing you sitting sort of slumped on the floor like that, I thought you’d-” Louis glanced up at the side of the bunk, where a dull brown halo still stained the metal. “I thought you’d fallen,” Louis tried to cover, but it was too late.
“No,” Felix murmured, staring vacantly at his prosthetic leg propped up against a bunk on the other side of the room. “It’s just easier to do it down here.”
Louis nearly tripped over the open crate sitting in front of Felix. “What are you doing?”
“Can’t you tell?” Felix said, flicking his finger against the plastic container, making a hollow thunk reverberate through the empty bunkroom. “I had to stand up to get her stuff off the top shelf, of course, but for the bottom shelves…stooping doesn’t work that well for me.”
Louis looked up. Dee’s locker was open and nearly empty. He looked down at Felix again, then shook his head and scrubbed his hand down his face. “Felix, why the frak are you doing this?” he asked tiredly.
“Lee Adama,” Felix said in a tone he usually reserved for the name “Gaius Baltar.” He took a deep breath. “I was with her in the morgue when he came down to see her. He asked me to send her personal effects over to him on Colonial One on the next shuttle. I think he was trying to get rid of me. Also, I think he might be pissed he can’t give me orders anymore.”
“Like you said, he can’t give you orders anymore, so let him haul his self-righteous ass over here and take care of it himself.”
“No,” Felix mused quietly, fingering an odd little orange figurine before putting it in the box. “It’s not about Lee, not really.”
The truth was, Felix didn’t want to let go of Dee’s things yet. While her locker and the shelves in her rack were still full, he could half-way pretend she was on duty or in the mess-that she’d be walking through the hatch and climbing into the rack next to his any minute. Coming back to the bunkroom and finding all traces of her gone would be too much. At least this way, Felix felt like he had some measure of control and certainty.
Louis leaned back against the bunk and shook his head. But instead of chastising Felix, Louis slid down until he was seated on the floor next to him, resting his chin on his knees. He peered into the box.
“Oh, I remember this,” said Louis, pulling out a photo. “The party for Helo’s one-thousandth landing. Do you remember how Breckler dared you to do shots with him, and you got so drunk that Dee had to get a dolly from the hangar deck and load you onto it to get you back to your rack?”
“No, I don’t, really,” Felix said curtly. “Perhaps that was because I was nearly passed-out drunk. Were you even there?”
“Doesn’t matter. I know the story. It was one of Dee’s favorite Felix Stories.”
“‘Felix Stories’?” Felix snorted incredulously, but he knew what Louis was doing. Felix was sure it wasn’t going to help, but Louis meant well.
“You’re lucky she had a lot of other stories about you, too. I wouldn’t have gone on a date with a lush, no matter how cute you are.” Louis placed his hand over Felix’s hand clutching the lip of the box. He couldn’t say the contact was comforting or even pleasant, but it was warm and solid. “Actually, the way Dee talked about you when she and I were on the Pegasus…it sounds corny, but she made me feel like I knew you before we even really met.”
Louis rooted around in the box, and Felix bit his tongue. He’d worked very hard to put everything away in order, and Louis was messing the box all up. “Dee collected elephants?” Louis asked.
Felix must not have been hiding his crossness as well as he’d thought, he realized, because Louis’s smile faltered for a moment. But he apparently recovered quickly and turned toward the almost-empty locker.
“What’s this?” Louis asked, picking up a thick stack of bound papers at the very bottom of the locker. “Aw, it’s a gift: ‘To Dee, With Love, From Felix.’” Louis’s smile morphed into a crooked grimace as he read on. “‘The Raunchy Romps of Drill Sergeant Candy: Around the Fleet in Eighty Fraks, by Donald Perry.’”
Felix couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I bought that for her at Chuckles’s wake-auction. Chuckles was a pilot, died before your time. Surprisingly good writer. Very inventive. He had a whole series with Drill Sergeant Candy, and there was another series with Major Dik. I wonder who ended up with the copies of A Hard Man is Good to Find…”
“Back up a minute,” said Louis, brandishing the document. “I’m still trying to process you giving Dee this as a gift.”
Felix shrugged. “What’s there to explain?”
“You have to remember, she was my XO for a long time,” said Louis. “I know we were all friends, and it’s not like you giving Colonel Tigh porn or anything, but you have to admit-”
“Colonel Tigh?” Felix gagged. “Porn? Gods, Louis, are you trying to scar me for life?”
Felix was surprised to hear his own laughter mingling with Louis’s. Before, even a grin had somehow felt disrespectful, but now, he felt no guilt.
“Felix?” Louis asked when they quieted down again. “You and Dee. Were you ever… Never mind. It doesn’t matter,” Louis said, not in that mildly passive-aggressive way he had of deliberately bringing things up and then merely pretending not to care, though still fully expecting an answer. This time, his voice was firm but gentle, genuinely ending the inquiry. He reached into Dee’s locker and picked up a stray sheet of paper. “What’s this, more porn? No.”
Felix took the paper from Louis’s hands and stared at it a long time before what he was seeing clicked in his mind. Not that he didn’t recognize what it was instantly-it was that this thing couldn’t possibly be where it was.
"The first that she be spared the pain that comes from a dark and laughing rain..."
The song itself had never really left him, but Felix had forgotten about his aborted attempt to arrange it for a full choir and orchestra, until now. It was so strange, finding such an unexpected piece of himself here, his scribbled notes and breath marks amongst Dee’s hairbrushes and old photos. He had noticed the past few weeks that there had been something different about the way Dee talked to him sometimes, how she’d asked him odd questions about the music on the wireless, given him funny, sad smiles whenever she caught him humming. At the time, he’d barely thought about it, and if he wondered at all, he’d chalked it up to her being curious after hearing him sing in the infirmary but too kind to bring up that day again. But this-this was such an easy way to broach the subject, solid evidence of that missing piece of his life that she had of late shown so much interest in. It didn’t make any sense. Why didn’t anything make any sense anymore?
He held the page over the box for a long moment before he let it go. The paper landed gently on top of the stack of her elephant figurines. Why hadn’t she just asked him about the music straight out, the way she’d always done with him? He wished, not for the first time that day, that he could ask her that question now.
“Felix?” Louis said, leaning in close. Felix hadn’t even noticed Louis’s hand on his back until now.
“I know it sounds stupid,” Felix said slowly, “and I know Lee wouldn’t understand, but…Dee deserves an auction.”
“Yeah?”
Felix struggled to find words. “It’s part of the process, tradition…and she-she would want to be useful, or-for her things to be useful, for people who need her…I just-I don’t want her to be boxed up and forgotten in somebody’s closet like this.”
Felix expected Louis to say something about material things not mattering, something that was true but that wouldn’t be of any help. Instead, Louis sat in thought for a moment and then slid forward. He pulled the box to him. “What am I bid for bidder’s choice of one item from this collection? C’mon, Felix, raise your hand,” Louis said, trying to maintain a straight face, even though his eyes were bright.
Felix rolled his eyes and raised his hand, but he silently thanked the gods or fate or chance or whoever might be listening for the man sitting beside him.
“I have you, sir. Any more bids? Anyone? Going once, going twice-” Louis tapped on the box “-sold, to the incredibly handsome young officer in the front row.” He tipped the box toward Felix so he could see its contents better. “What will it be, sir? Or…” he reached back and picked up Chuckles’s book. “Or may I recommend this lovely reading material?”
Felix took the papers from Louis’s hands. “Nah.” He tossed the manuscript into the box with a satisfying thump. “Lee should have that. Make him wonder a little.”
Felix leaned forward and picked carefully through the box. Hairbrushes and makeup, a couple elephant figurines, her father's knife, a book, photos from home, photos from Galactica. At first, he fingered the sheet of music he’d written, but he let it go. It felt better to leave it there, to know that there had still been a part of him with her to the end.
The glint of a silver chain caught his eye. He gently tugged it free. It was the locket, the one Dee never wore but always kept hanging next to her mirror, the one that had been on the hook with her dog tags and wedding ring when they’d found her. Felix had never seen the picture inside before, so he opened it. There were places for two photos, but only one spot was filled. It was an older man with Dee’s eyes and chin. Even though he’d never met the man, Felix could tell instantly it was Dee’s father.
Felix didn’t have any photos of his parents anymore. He’d never been one to keep a lot of pictures around in the first place. He’d hung the only photo he had of his mother and father in the Memorial Hall not long after the attacks, but when he decided to leave Galactica for New Caprica, he’d taken it down with him to the planet. When the evacuation of New Caprica finally happened, there hadn’t been time to go back to his tent for any of the belongings he’d brought down with him.
Felix looked up at Louis. He could tell from Louis’s expression that he didn’t understand Felix’s choice, but Felix didn’t feel like giving an explanation, and Louis didn’t ask for one.
Felix tucked the necklace into his pocket and sighed. “Help me up?” he said to Louis. He forced a smile. “Last shuttle to Colonial One leaves in twenty minutes. It’s time we got moving.”
III. Helo-Menuet-Alegretto
Helo hadn’t walked down that corridor that day intending to round up the last of Kara’s missing personal effects. In fact, he never went anywhere with that express purpose. It was just a project that he always kept in the back of his mind, that he dealt with whenever it came up. He hadn’t even had to seek out most of Kara’s things, since everybody but Kara knew what Helo was up to and usually brought her stuff to him when they remembered where they’d gotten it from. But when Helo heard the piano music he’d listened to in Kara’s apartment on Caprica, now wafting out of a particular bunkroom, he suddenly remembered who’d bought the tape at Kara’s wake-auction and fervently wished it had been anyone else.
For a moment, Helo entertained the hope that the person in Felix’s rack wasn’t Felix at all. He could see the person’s right arm, so he could tell that the man in the rack was wearing a sweatshirt. Felix never wore sweats-he was most comfortable at temperatures most sane people would consider frakking cold. He’d been absolutely miserable on the Demetrius. One time, Seelix had taken the little fan Felix had somehow dragged along and she wouldn’t give it back when he came off duty. Felix had gotten so incensed that he’d threatened to go naked the rest of the mission and started stripping in the middle of the common room until Seelix gave it back. If Felix hadn’t been so deadly serious, it would have been funny. In fact, Helo thought, it really had been a little funny, even so.
Helo came around the bunk before risking calling out a name. The flash of panic on Felix’s face and the glint of the needle that Felix hurriedly thrust under his pillow as he shoved his sleeve down over his elbow explained the sweatshirt all too well.
“Hey Felix,” Helo said as casually as he could manage.
Felix nodded but didn’t add anything. Helo couldn’t think of anything more to say, either, or at least nothing appropriate. “Nice music. Where’d you get it?” was hardly subtle enough. “Remember Kara’s auction?” would probably get him kicked out of the room, and rightly so. “How are you doing?” was just cruel, especially since Helo had only asked Felix that particular question twice since the amputation: once during Felix’s first shift back in the CIC, and once in the infirmary, when Felix had still been too drugged to really answer. Doing this without completely pissing Felix off was going to take a delicacy and subtlety Helo wasn’t quite sure he could muster.
Helo prided himself on living his life the same way he boxed: straightforward, no tricks, and only dancing around the point when absolutely necessary. Ever since he had come back to Galactica with Sharon, though, it had felt like he’d done nothing but dance: constantly holding things together without stepping on anyone’s toes, covering in CIC for Tigh, now Adama, without taking over, backing Kara on the Demetrius even when he’d stopped believing in her, acting as the human advocate for the Cylons as a whole even though he only loved one, and loved her in part because she wasn’t like the rest of them. He should be good at this sort of thing by now, be intimately familiar with the steps, but it had never gotten any easier.
Surprisingly, it was Felix who broke the awkward silence. “Sorry I’m not much for company. Just, the funeral, it-gods, I feel like I want to sleep for a week, but I can’t even nod off for twenty minutes in one shot.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” said Helo, trying not to stare at the place where Felix’s leg should have been. “It’s a long walk to the...” Helo could see Felix’s jaw muscles twitch. He’d frakked that one up good. “A tough day for all of us, especially you,” Helo tried to cover. Felix relaxed a little at that-Helo was relieved he’d finally said something right-but he was still nowhere near cheerful. Helo groped in his mind for something more to say. “I don’t think I saw you at the service. Were you in back?”
Helo was surprised that Felix’s face could darken any further, but it did. “Oh, I went. In the back, yeah, because I needed a chair. And I left early.” He stared into space and shook his head slightly. “I just couldn’t do it, Karl.”
“Your leg still hurts that bad?”
Felix looked confused for a moment, but then it sank in. “Yes, it does still hurt that bad, but that’s not why I left.” Felix sighed. “Look, I’m not saying that Lee and the Old Man didn’t love her, because they did, and I’m not saying they don’t have a right to mourn, but my gods, the way they were at that funeral, weeping and fawning and giving speeches about how wonderful she was… If they’d acted like they cared half that much back when it would’ve actually made a difference- I’m sorry. I’m not blaming them. I’m not.”
“I know,” said Helo, realizing that he should have come here much sooner.
“Dee was always there to pick those two up when they hit rock bottom. Frak, she was always there to pick everybody up. But all those times where they left her disappointed and heartbroken, they just expected her to pick herself up.”
“But you were there,” Helo said simply. “She was lucky to have you.”
Felix grimaced from what Helo assumed was a stabbing pain from the phantom limb. “Yeah, I was there. Lot of good it did in the end.”
Frak, Helo thought. He hadn’t meant it that way, and he was pretty sure Felix knew it, too, but that didn’t make Helo feel any better about unintentionally reviving the memory of Felix crouching on the floor beside Dee’s body, desperately trying to pat her brains back into the hole the bullet blew in the side of her head.
“I saw her take off her dog tags. She never took her tags off, Karl. Never.” It was the first time that Felix actually met Helo’s eyes directly. That look made Helo want to turn away, but he didn’t allow himself to do so. “She wore them on a date with Lee even though she had on a low-cut dress, and then I saw her come back from the date and then take them off.”
“You did everything you could, Felix. You did everything anybody could,” Helo said. Felix turned away again, nowhere near crying, just hollow. “Nobody could’ve suspected. Frak, Athena and I were there that day, saw her when she came to watch Hera. I was there when she lost it in the Raptor on the way back up from the surface. There were probably a thousand little hints we could find in hindsight if we wanted to look hard enough, but it’s not going to do anybody any good.”
“I know you’re right,” said Felix in a tone that Helo knew meant Felix didn’t believe it at all.
Helo shifted his weight, and Felix stared straight ahead. The music that had brought him so much peace and serenity on Caprica certainly wasn’t restoring those feelings to Helo there in the bunkroom.
The familiar song ended, and another one Helo had never heard before began. He opened his mouth to strike up the conversation again-what he was going to say, he had no idea; he was just hoping something coherent would come out on its own-until he saw Felix’s expression soften. Even with what he’d learned from the six painful years of piano lessons his mother had subjected him to as a kid, Helo didn’t think the piano sounded all that different than it had during the previous song, but it was obvious that Felix heard something that he hadn’t in the other music.
But the next thing Helo heard made him freeze.
“Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man, with my three wishes clutched in her hand…”
A woman’s voice didn’t so much sing as swell out of the piano’s soft notes. Helo had heard Felix sing those same words when he’d taken Hera down to the infirmary for her ear infection, but it sounded so different when the woman sang it, not just because it was in a different octave, but because it felt like the words meant something different to her than what he’d heard in Felix’s voice.
Felix didn’t notice the look of confusion on Helo’s face because Felix’s eyes were closed. He was in his own world, at least for a few moments.
“That’s the song,” Helo finally managed, though still afraid of how Felix might react to him breaking the reverie. “This tape-is that where you got it from?”
Felix flashed an odd smile, then looked at Helo as if he were deciding between telling him a simple lie or a long, complex truth. “In a way,” he said slowly. He closed his eyes and grimaced. Truth it was, then, Helo thought to himself. “But not the way you think.” A pause. “I didn’t learn it from the recording. I learned it from the source of the recording.”
Felix waited as if to give Helo a chance to figure it out himself, but when the expression of utter incomprehension didn’t fade from Helo’s face, Felix rolled over and grabbed something off the shelf above his mattress. It was the tape’s case; Felix held it out and pointed at some text on the liner notes. “‘Kallikrates’s “Three Wishes” Lied, with soprano Danae Leukosia.’ Rather transparent stage name for a singer, but…I guess ‘Danae Gaeta’ just didn’t have the right ring to it for a performer’s name.”
Helo’s heart sank, but he tried not to let the feeling reach his face. “So this woman was your…”
“My mother.” Felix turned the tape case over in his hands idly. “She was something. Even pretty famous for awhile, at least to those who followed classical Aquarian musicians.”
Gods, I hate coincidences, Helo thought to himself. He was tempted to turn on his heel and leave the room right then-there was no way he was going to ask for the tape back now; Kara could fight Felix for it herself if she really wanted it-but that would have been the easy way out. He could do this dance a little while longer, and Lords knew Felix seemed like he needed somebody to talk to. Felix had probably needed that before now, too, Helo realized; he’d just been too afraid to look, for fear of frakking things up even more than they already were. Helo had told himself he had been waiting for some time when things had settled down a little more, but if he’d learned anything in the past five years, it was that things never really settled down.
“That must have been hard, growing up with your mom performing all the time, probably on tour a lot, right?”
“She gave it up before I was even born.” The look on Felix’s face wasn’t what Helo would call happy or even peaceful, but it was a change for the better, like a momentary escape from reality. “But still, a lot of musicians she knew in the old days would drop by for a visit every now and then. In fact, I think I even met this man, the one on the piano. He should’ve been more famous than he was, he was that good, but Mum said Dre had some alcohol issues that always held him back. Dre…Dreilide…Dreilide what-I know the name started with a ‘T’…” Felix flipped the case over again and squinted at the liner notes. Helo could tell the moment Felix read it; Felix winced and covered his face with his hand.
“I am an idiot,” Felix intoned. “Of course that’s where I got-gods, I’m an idiot.” He reached up and shut the tape player on the shelf above him off, killing the singer’s voice in the middle of a long, held note. The player clicked open, and he removed the tape and held it out, his gaze fixed on the tape rather than on Helo. All the warmth, even the warmth that had come from anger and frustration, drained from Felix’s voice. “Here. I’m sorry to have been a bother. I was mistaken. I thought you were here because Dee-I was mistaken.”
“Felix, that’s not why-it’s not a big deal. You can keep it. Or maybe we could even get a copy made of it.”
Helo barely managed to catch the tape when Felix tossed it at him. “No,” he said simply, rolling over on his side away from Helo. “You should find Louis, too. I bought him Kara’s alarm clock. Don’t worry, he doesn’t really need it now.”
Now, of course, there were a million things Helo wanted to say, but he knew none of them were the right words; none would do any good. Helo tucked the tape in his pocket and shuffled out of the room slowly, giving Felix the chance to call him back if he wanted to. He didn’t.
Helo looked back once more at Felix’s bunk. All he could see was the gray curve of Felix’s back, shivering.
People would say that it wasn’t Helo’s fault, that he’d done all he could do, and that if Gaeta couldn’t get over blaming Helo for his getting shot in the leg by a frakking Cylon, that was his problem. But Helo knew better. It wasn’t about the leg. The Karl Agathon that Felix knew never let anything slide. As much as that policy might frak things up, he never compromised when it came to doing the right thing, never let wrongs get swept under the rug.
But this time, Helo had done just that. He’d stood silently as the Old Man learned enough about what had happened that he had decided willful ignorance of the shooter’s identity and of the surrounding circumstances was the best course of action, even though the Admiral could read the whole story written on Sam’s face.
It wasn’t that Helo hadn’t wanted to speak up when Adama had hauled him, Kara, Sam, and Athena into his office for the grilling while Felix had still been in surgery. It was that damn dance again. If Helo had explained, had made the Admiral acknowledge what had happened, he would have had to make Adama acknowledge the mutiny, too. A mutiny against Kara, instigated in large part by Athena, the Cylon whom it seemed the Cylons themselves didn’t totally trust. There had been times later on that Helo had almost brought himself to march into the Admiral’s quarters and lay the whole mess out for the Old Man, but life kept presenting him with such solid reasons against taking that risk. Athena had shot the Cylon leader, the Six; he couldn’t risk getting her into even deeper trouble right then. Besides, with the way Adama had been acting since Earth’s discovery, there was no telling what he might do. Maneuvering through that minefield was so hard already.
This was not the way he’d wanted to end things with Felix, not at all, Helo thought as he finally left the bunkroom and wandered down the hall. But maybe it wasn’t an end, Helo comforted himself. Maybe when things really did settle down a bit, when both he and Felix had put enough time between themselves and the Demetrius to gain some perspective, when Felix had recovered more, maybe then Helo could set things right again. Felix needed more time, and some rest. Helo decided he’d talk to Colonel Tigh about arranging some R&R for Felix. That would help, at least a little. A lot of things had ended in the past few days, but this didn’t have to be one of them, Helo thought. There was still time.
On to Movement IV and Finale...
Author: kappamaki33
Summary: Saying goodbye is never easy.
Characters: Dee, Gaeta, Helo, Tyrol, Hoshi, Romo, Hotdog
Rating: PG
Remix of “Recapitulation" by trovia,
Beta Thanks: Thank you so very, very much to my wonderful beta brennanspeaks!
Author Notes: Well, I ended up taking the concept of a “remix” somewhat literally. In music, a “recapitulation” is essentially a sub-division of a movement with a certain type of structure. Working from the musical theme of “recapitulation” and the word “remix” itself, I ended up writing the symphony in which trovia’s original fic fits, with a little mixing and tweaking to keep everything in tune.
Also, this is a songfic, of sorts. The structure is roughly based on Franz Josef Haydn’s “‘Farewell’ Symphony.” Apologies to Jules Verne and Flannery O'Connor for what Chuckles did.
Meta on the remixing experience here; companion fic called "Companion Pieces" will eventually be here (Dee), here (Gaeta), here (Helo), and here (Tyrol), and they can be read in any order. Link to original remix post here.
Farewell Symphony
I. Dee-Allegro Assai
Dee shook her head as she marched down the corridor to the bunkroom. Thank goodness Felix was still too drugged to register how eagerly she’d leapt up and nearly run out of the cubicle when Felix asked if someone would bring down some of his clothes. Ishay had been in the middle of saying she’d be happy to retrieve them since her shift was almost over, so Dee and Louis wouldn’t have to leave, but Dee had quickly cut her off with a muttered “it’s no problem, really” as she slid between Ishay and the heart monitor. Louis had looked even more confused, barely managing a strangled “thank you, Dee,” before she was out the infirmary door.
She simply wasn’t any good at sickrooms, Dee told herself. She needed to be doing something, to be active and useful. Usefulness was the best way to battle helplessness. And yet, there was that nagging voice in the back of her mind that reminded her she’d sat by Lee’s bedside after Cloud Nine. She’d clutched the Old Man’s hand when he was shot, prayed prayers she’d thought she’d forgotten years ago. Felix was different. She had known what to give Lee and the Admiral because they had been silent; all they needed were whispered pleas to the gods and warm fingers entwined with theirs. But Felix, he was flinging his own delirious message in the gods’ faces, a beautiful, horrible song that was half supplication, half curse.
But wish no more; my life you can take-
No, don’t think like that, don’t think like that, she ordered herself. You can’t think like that if you’re going to keep it together. Dee took a deep breath and put her thoughts in order. She had to think of what Felix needed: socks, underwear, tanks, sweats. He must have standard-issue sweats somewhere, even though he never wore them. She found them balled up in the back of the drawer under his bunk, not folded neatly like everything else. She pulled the pants out first and noticed the elastic around the ankles. She really should cut the right pant leg off for him, get it out of the way, Dee thought. As she reached for her father’s knife in her pocket, though, she realized she probably shouldn’t do it yet, since it might be a terrible waste, since Cottle had said Felix was by no means out of the woods yet, and if he didn’t-no, stop it, don’t cry, don’t cry, you promised yourself you wouldn’t cry.
She yanked the sweatshirt out much less carefully, mussing the tanks and boxers and civilian clothing resting in front of it. But when she unfurled the shirt to shake the wrinkles out, a single sheet of paper slid out of its folds and floated lightly to the floor.
She picked it up. Dee didn’t know anything about music, and she’d always assumed the same was true of Felix; in fact, she’d never even had reason to think about it. But here it was in her hands: tangible proof of the song she’d heard in the infirmary a few minutes ago, crumpled and torn around the edges as if it had been shoved away in the darkness and forgotten for a very long time. The words she recognized, though they began and ended abruptly in mid-sentence; clearly it wasn’t a first page. The rest was a mystery. A few characters looked like they were almost recognizable, like mathematical symbols, but that false familiarity made them all the more frustrating. Black notes tumbled over each other, catching on the straight parallel lines and gliding down marks that looked like lopsided parentheses or playground slides, chasing each other in some elaborate game to which she didn’t know the rules. The only thing she could tell about the notes was that there were far too many for just one voice.
When she and Louis had finally made it down to the infirmary, Cottle had been in examining Felix, so they’d had to wait outside his cubicle for a few minutes. While they stood there, Louis leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed, concentrating on breathing, Dee had overheard President Roslin speaking to one of the nurses on the other side of the room.
“So you didn’t know, either?” she’d said. “I don’t get it. I’ve always known the Galactica crew to be so close to one another. How can a voice like that stay a secret for five years?”
That had been a knife to the gut. Dee and Felix had served together for nearly seven years, and yet she’d never suspected. He never talked about music, never sang in the shower, only occasionally hummed in the CIC, usually the days after he’d gotten laid-so of course she’d always wheedled and teased him about his latest assignation, not where he’d learned to carry a tune so well. Nobody could have guessed, Dee told herself. Somehow, that justification wasn’t as comforting as it should have been.
Dee hurriedly pulled tanks and underwear out of the drawer and dumped them in a heap on top of the sweats. She crumpled the paper again, thrust it under a random stack of clothing, and shoved the drawer shut, hard. She rubbed her cheeks with the heels of her hands, even though she was fairly certain there weren’t any tears to wipe away, just in case.
Don’t think like that. Dee knew she was being silly, acting as if she were already in mourning for the man who taught her how to run the tactical station and also how to read everyone’s tells when they played Triad, who gave her away at her wedding and took her out for drinks the night she left her husband for good. And yet-and yet, the man in the infirmary had a voice she’d never heard before and hurled words at the heavens whose meaning she was afraid of understanding. They had been running from the Cylons for years, yet still, she had thought they had time. She hadn’t thought she’d known all there was to know about Felix Gaeta, but she had thought they had time.
Dee scooped the pile of clothing up in her arms and marched resolutely toward the hatchway, but she lost her purposeful rhythm half-way across the room. The music had been there with him all along; there was proof. She just hadn’t known it before. Maybe, then, there’s still time, still hope. Dee went back to Felix’s bunk and set the clothing down. She slid the drawer open, found the sheet again and smoothed it out. She folded it neatly and tucked it in her pocket, picked Felix’s clothes up again, and stood up straight: shoulders back, chin up, comforting smile firmly in place. Felix was waiting for her.
II. Gaeta-Adagio
“Felix! Gods, no!”
Felix slowly twisted toward the hatch and looked up, surprised to see Louis rushing at him, clearly panicking.
“Felix, are you all right?” He nodded, and Louis started breathing normally again, though Felix could still hear a slight hitch in his exhale. “Gods, for a moment, seeing you sitting sort of slumped on the floor like that, I thought you’d-” Louis glanced up at the side of the bunk, where a dull brown halo still stained the metal. “I thought you’d fallen,” Louis tried to cover, but it was too late.
“No,” Felix murmured, staring vacantly at his prosthetic leg propped up against a bunk on the other side of the room. “It’s just easier to do it down here.”
Louis nearly tripped over the open crate sitting in front of Felix. “What are you doing?”
“Can’t you tell?” Felix said, flicking his finger against the plastic container, making a hollow thunk reverberate through the empty bunkroom. “I had to stand up to get her stuff off the top shelf, of course, but for the bottom shelves…stooping doesn’t work that well for me.”
Louis looked up. Dee’s locker was open and nearly empty. He looked down at Felix again, then shook his head and scrubbed his hand down his face. “Felix, why the frak are you doing this?” he asked tiredly.
“Lee Adama,” Felix said in a tone he usually reserved for the name “Gaius Baltar.” He took a deep breath. “I was with her in the morgue when he came down to see her. He asked me to send her personal effects over to him on Colonial One on the next shuttle. I think he was trying to get rid of me. Also, I think he might be pissed he can’t give me orders anymore.”
“Like you said, he can’t give you orders anymore, so let him haul his self-righteous ass over here and take care of it himself.”
“No,” Felix mused quietly, fingering an odd little orange figurine before putting it in the box. “It’s not about Lee, not really.”
The truth was, Felix didn’t want to let go of Dee’s things yet. While her locker and the shelves in her rack were still full, he could half-way pretend she was on duty or in the mess-that she’d be walking through the hatch and climbing into the rack next to his any minute. Coming back to the bunkroom and finding all traces of her gone would be too much. At least this way, Felix felt like he had some measure of control and certainty.
Louis leaned back against the bunk and shook his head. But instead of chastising Felix, Louis slid down until he was seated on the floor next to him, resting his chin on his knees. He peered into the box.
“Oh, I remember this,” said Louis, pulling out a photo. “The party for Helo’s one-thousandth landing. Do you remember how Breckler dared you to do shots with him, and you got so drunk that Dee had to get a dolly from the hangar deck and load you onto it to get you back to your rack?”
“No, I don’t, really,” Felix said curtly. “Perhaps that was because I was nearly passed-out drunk. Were you even there?”
“Doesn’t matter. I know the story. It was one of Dee’s favorite Felix Stories.”
“‘Felix Stories’?” Felix snorted incredulously, but he knew what Louis was doing. Felix was sure it wasn’t going to help, but Louis meant well.
“You’re lucky she had a lot of other stories about you, too. I wouldn’t have gone on a date with a lush, no matter how cute you are.” Louis placed his hand over Felix’s hand clutching the lip of the box. He couldn’t say the contact was comforting or even pleasant, but it was warm and solid. “Actually, the way Dee talked about you when she and I were on the Pegasus…it sounds corny, but she made me feel like I knew you before we even really met.”
Louis rooted around in the box, and Felix bit his tongue. He’d worked very hard to put everything away in order, and Louis was messing the box all up. “Dee collected elephants?” Louis asked.
Felix must not have been hiding his crossness as well as he’d thought, he realized, because Louis’s smile faltered for a moment. But he apparently recovered quickly and turned toward the almost-empty locker.
“What’s this?” Louis asked, picking up a thick stack of bound papers at the very bottom of the locker. “Aw, it’s a gift: ‘To Dee, With Love, From Felix.’” Louis’s smile morphed into a crooked grimace as he read on. “‘The Raunchy Romps of Drill Sergeant Candy: Around the Fleet in Eighty Fraks, by Donald Perry.’”
Felix couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I bought that for her at Chuckles’s wake-auction. Chuckles was a pilot, died before your time. Surprisingly good writer. Very inventive. He had a whole series with Drill Sergeant Candy, and there was another series with Major Dik. I wonder who ended up with the copies of A Hard Man is Good to Find…”
“Back up a minute,” said Louis, brandishing the document. “I’m still trying to process you giving Dee this as a gift.”
Felix shrugged. “What’s there to explain?”
“You have to remember, she was my XO for a long time,” said Louis. “I know we were all friends, and it’s not like you giving Colonel Tigh porn or anything, but you have to admit-”
“Colonel Tigh?” Felix gagged. “Porn? Gods, Louis, are you trying to scar me for life?”
Felix was surprised to hear his own laughter mingling with Louis’s. Before, even a grin had somehow felt disrespectful, but now, he felt no guilt.
“Felix?” Louis asked when they quieted down again. “You and Dee. Were you ever… Never mind. It doesn’t matter,” Louis said, not in that mildly passive-aggressive way he had of deliberately bringing things up and then merely pretending not to care, though still fully expecting an answer. This time, his voice was firm but gentle, genuinely ending the inquiry. He reached into Dee’s locker and picked up a stray sheet of paper. “What’s this, more porn? No.”
Felix took the paper from Louis’s hands and stared at it a long time before what he was seeing clicked in his mind. Not that he didn’t recognize what it was instantly-it was that this thing couldn’t possibly be where it was.
"The first that she be spared the pain that comes from a dark and laughing rain..."
The song itself had never really left him, but Felix had forgotten about his aborted attempt to arrange it for a full choir and orchestra, until now. It was so strange, finding such an unexpected piece of himself here, his scribbled notes and breath marks amongst Dee’s hairbrushes and old photos. He had noticed the past few weeks that there had been something different about the way Dee talked to him sometimes, how she’d asked him odd questions about the music on the wireless, given him funny, sad smiles whenever she caught him humming. At the time, he’d barely thought about it, and if he wondered at all, he’d chalked it up to her being curious after hearing him sing in the infirmary but too kind to bring up that day again. But this-this was such an easy way to broach the subject, solid evidence of that missing piece of his life that she had of late shown so much interest in. It didn’t make any sense. Why didn’t anything make any sense anymore?
He held the page over the box for a long moment before he let it go. The paper landed gently on top of the stack of her elephant figurines. Why hadn’t she just asked him about the music straight out, the way she’d always done with him? He wished, not for the first time that day, that he could ask her that question now.
“Felix?” Louis said, leaning in close. Felix hadn’t even noticed Louis’s hand on his back until now.
“I know it sounds stupid,” Felix said slowly, “and I know Lee wouldn’t understand, but…Dee deserves an auction.”
“Yeah?”
Felix struggled to find words. “It’s part of the process, tradition…and she-she would want to be useful, or-for her things to be useful, for people who need her…I just-I don’t want her to be boxed up and forgotten in somebody’s closet like this.”
Felix expected Louis to say something about material things not mattering, something that was true but that wouldn’t be of any help. Instead, Louis sat in thought for a moment and then slid forward. He pulled the box to him. “What am I bid for bidder’s choice of one item from this collection? C’mon, Felix, raise your hand,” Louis said, trying to maintain a straight face, even though his eyes were bright.
Felix rolled his eyes and raised his hand, but he silently thanked the gods or fate or chance or whoever might be listening for the man sitting beside him.
“I have you, sir. Any more bids? Anyone? Going once, going twice-” Louis tapped on the box “-sold, to the incredibly handsome young officer in the front row.” He tipped the box toward Felix so he could see its contents better. “What will it be, sir? Or…” he reached back and picked up Chuckles’s book. “Or may I recommend this lovely reading material?”
Felix took the papers from Louis’s hands. “Nah.” He tossed the manuscript into the box with a satisfying thump. “Lee should have that. Make him wonder a little.”
Felix leaned forward and picked carefully through the box. Hairbrushes and makeup, a couple elephant figurines, her father's knife, a book, photos from home, photos from Galactica. At first, he fingered the sheet of music he’d written, but he let it go. It felt better to leave it there, to know that there had still been a part of him with her to the end.
The glint of a silver chain caught his eye. He gently tugged it free. It was the locket, the one Dee never wore but always kept hanging next to her mirror, the one that had been on the hook with her dog tags and wedding ring when they’d found her. Felix had never seen the picture inside before, so he opened it. There were places for two photos, but only one spot was filled. It was an older man with Dee’s eyes and chin. Even though he’d never met the man, Felix could tell instantly it was Dee’s father.
Felix didn’t have any photos of his parents anymore. He’d never been one to keep a lot of pictures around in the first place. He’d hung the only photo he had of his mother and father in the Memorial Hall not long after the attacks, but when he decided to leave Galactica for New Caprica, he’d taken it down with him to the planet. When the evacuation of New Caprica finally happened, there hadn’t been time to go back to his tent for any of the belongings he’d brought down with him.
Felix looked up at Louis. He could tell from Louis’s expression that he didn’t understand Felix’s choice, but Felix didn’t feel like giving an explanation, and Louis didn’t ask for one.
Felix tucked the necklace into his pocket and sighed. “Help me up?” he said to Louis. He forced a smile. “Last shuttle to Colonial One leaves in twenty minutes. It’s time we got moving.”
III. Helo-Menuet-Alegretto
Helo hadn’t walked down that corridor that day intending to round up the last of Kara’s missing personal effects. In fact, he never went anywhere with that express purpose. It was just a project that he always kept in the back of his mind, that he dealt with whenever it came up. He hadn’t even had to seek out most of Kara’s things, since everybody but Kara knew what Helo was up to and usually brought her stuff to him when they remembered where they’d gotten it from. But when Helo heard the piano music he’d listened to in Kara’s apartment on Caprica, now wafting out of a particular bunkroom, he suddenly remembered who’d bought the tape at Kara’s wake-auction and fervently wished it had been anyone else.
For a moment, Helo entertained the hope that the person in Felix’s rack wasn’t Felix at all. He could see the person’s right arm, so he could tell that the man in the rack was wearing a sweatshirt. Felix never wore sweats-he was most comfortable at temperatures most sane people would consider frakking cold. He’d been absolutely miserable on the Demetrius. One time, Seelix had taken the little fan Felix had somehow dragged along and she wouldn’t give it back when he came off duty. Felix had gotten so incensed that he’d threatened to go naked the rest of the mission and started stripping in the middle of the common room until Seelix gave it back. If Felix hadn’t been so deadly serious, it would have been funny. In fact, Helo thought, it really had been a little funny, even so.
Helo came around the bunk before risking calling out a name. The flash of panic on Felix’s face and the glint of the needle that Felix hurriedly thrust under his pillow as he shoved his sleeve down over his elbow explained the sweatshirt all too well.
“Hey Felix,” Helo said as casually as he could manage.
Felix nodded but didn’t add anything. Helo couldn’t think of anything more to say, either, or at least nothing appropriate. “Nice music. Where’d you get it?” was hardly subtle enough. “Remember Kara’s auction?” would probably get him kicked out of the room, and rightly so. “How are you doing?” was just cruel, especially since Helo had only asked Felix that particular question twice since the amputation: once during Felix’s first shift back in the CIC, and once in the infirmary, when Felix had still been too drugged to really answer. Doing this without completely pissing Felix off was going to take a delicacy and subtlety Helo wasn’t quite sure he could muster.
Helo prided himself on living his life the same way he boxed: straightforward, no tricks, and only dancing around the point when absolutely necessary. Ever since he had come back to Galactica with Sharon, though, it had felt like he’d done nothing but dance: constantly holding things together without stepping on anyone’s toes, covering in CIC for Tigh, now Adama, without taking over, backing Kara on the Demetrius even when he’d stopped believing in her, acting as the human advocate for the Cylons as a whole even though he only loved one, and loved her in part because she wasn’t like the rest of them. He should be good at this sort of thing by now, be intimately familiar with the steps, but it had never gotten any easier.
Surprisingly, it was Felix who broke the awkward silence. “Sorry I’m not much for company. Just, the funeral, it-gods, I feel like I want to sleep for a week, but I can’t even nod off for twenty minutes in one shot.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” said Helo, trying not to stare at the place where Felix’s leg should have been. “It’s a long walk to the...” Helo could see Felix’s jaw muscles twitch. He’d frakked that one up good. “A tough day for all of us, especially you,” Helo tried to cover. Felix relaxed a little at that-Helo was relieved he’d finally said something right-but he was still nowhere near cheerful. Helo groped in his mind for something more to say. “I don’t think I saw you at the service. Were you in back?”
Helo was surprised that Felix’s face could darken any further, but it did. “Oh, I went. In the back, yeah, because I needed a chair. And I left early.” He stared into space and shook his head slightly. “I just couldn’t do it, Karl.”
“Your leg still hurts that bad?”
Felix looked confused for a moment, but then it sank in. “Yes, it does still hurt that bad, but that’s not why I left.” Felix sighed. “Look, I’m not saying that Lee and the Old Man didn’t love her, because they did, and I’m not saying they don’t have a right to mourn, but my gods, the way they were at that funeral, weeping and fawning and giving speeches about how wonderful she was… If they’d acted like they cared half that much back when it would’ve actually made a difference- I’m sorry. I’m not blaming them. I’m not.”
“I know,” said Helo, realizing that he should have come here much sooner.
“Dee was always there to pick those two up when they hit rock bottom. Frak, she was always there to pick everybody up. But all those times where they left her disappointed and heartbroken, they just expected her to pick herself up.”
“But you were there,” Helo said simply. “She was lucky to have you.”
Felix grimaced from what Helo assumed was a stabbing pain from the phantom limb. “Yeah, I was there. Lot of good it did in the end.”
Frak, Helo thought. He hadn’t meant it that way, and he was pretty sure Felix knew it, too, but that didn’t make Helo feel any better about unintentionally reviving the memory of Felix crouching on the floor beside Dee’s body, desperately trying to pat her brains back into the hole the bullet blew in the side of her head.
“I saw her take off her dog tags. She never took her tags off, Karl. Never.” It was the first time that Felix actually met Helo’s eyes directly. That look made Helo want to turn away, but he didn’t allow himself to do so. “She wore them on a date with Lee even though she had on a low-cut dress, and then I saw her come back from the date and then take them off.”
“You did everything you could, Felix. You did everything anybody could,” Helo said. Felix turned away again, nowhere near crying, just hollow. “Nobody could’ve suspected. Frak, Athena and I were there that day, saw her when she came to watch Hera. I was there when she lost it in the Raptor on the way back up from the surface. There were probably a thousand little hints we could find in hindsight if we wanted to look hard enough, but it’s not going to do anybody any good.”
“I know you’re right,” said Felix in a tone that Helo knew meant Felix didn’t believe it at all.
Helo shifted his weight, and Felix stared straight ahead. The music that had brought him so much peace and serenity on Caprica certainly wasn’t restoring those feelings to Helo there in the bunkroom.
The familiar song ended, and another one Helo had never heard before began. He opened his mouth to strike up the conversation again-what he was going to say, he had no idea; he was just hoping something coherent would come out on its own-until he saw Felix’s expression soften. Even with what he’d learned from the six painful years of piano lessons his mother had subjected him to as a kid, Helo didn’t think the piano sounded all that different than it had during the previous song, but it was obvious that Felix heard something that he hadn’t in the other music.
But the next thing Helo heard made him freeze.
“Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man, with my three wishes clutched in her hand…”
A woman’s voice didn’t so much sing as swell out of the piano’s soft notes. Helo had heard Felix sing those same words when he’d taken Hera down to the infirmary for her ear infection, but it sounded so different when the woman sang it, not just because it was in a different octave, but because it felt like the words meant something different to her than what he’d heard in Felix’s voice.
Felix didn’t notice the look of confusion on Helo’s face because Felix’s eyes were closed. He was in his own world, at least for a few moments.
“That’s the song,” Helo finally managed, though still afraid of how Felix might react to him breaking the reverie. “This tape-is that where you got it from?”
Felix flashed an odd smile, then looked at Helo as if he were deciding between telling him a simple lie or a long, complex truth. “In a way,” he said slowly. He closed his eyes and grimaced. Truth it was, then, Helo thought to himself. “But not the way you think.” A pause. “I didn’t learn it from the recording. I learned it from the source of the recording.”
Felix waited as if to give Helo a chance to figure it out himself, but when the expression of utter incomprehension didn’t fade from Helo’s face, Felix rolled over and grabbed something off the shelf above his mattress. It was the tape’s case; Felix held it out and pointed at some text on the liner notes. “‘Kallikrates’s “Three Wishes” Lied, with soprano Danae Leukosia.’ Rather transparent stage name for a singer, but…I guess ‘Danae Gaeta’ just didn’t have the right ring to it for a performer’s name.”
Helo’s heart sank, but he tried not to let the feeling reach his face. “So this woman was your…”
“My mother.” Felix turned the tape case over in his hands idly. “She was something. Even pretty famous for awhile, at least to those who followed classical Aquarian musicians.”
Gods, I hate coincidences, Helo thought to himself. He was tempted to turn on his heel and leave the room right then-there was no way he was going to ask for the tape back now; Kara could fight Felix for it herself if she really wanted it-but that would have been the easy way out. He could do this dance a little while longer, and Lords knew Felix seemed like he needed somebody to talk to. Felix had probably needed that before now, too, Helo realized; he’d just been too afraid to look, for fear of frakking things up even more than they already were. Helo had told himself he had been waiting for some time when things had settled down a little more, but if he’d learned anything in the past five years, it was that things never really settled down.
“That must have been hard, growing up with your mom performing all the time, probably on tour a lot, right?”
“She gave it up before I was even born.” The look on Felix’s face wasn’t what Helo would call happy or even peaceful, but it was a change for the better, like a momentary escape from reality. “But still, a lot of musicians she knew in the old days would drop by for a visit every now and then. In fact, I think I even met this man, the one on the piano. He should’ve been more famous than he was, he was that good, but Mum said Dre had some alcohol issues that always held him back. Dre…Dreilide…Dreilide what-I know the name started with a ‘T’…” Felix flipped the case over again and squinted at the liner notes. Helo could tell the moment Felix read it; Felix winced and covered his face with his hand.
“I am an idiot,” Felix intoned. “Of course that’s where I got-gods, I’m an idiot.” He reached up and shut the tape player on the shelf above him off, killing the singer’s voice in the middle of a long, held note. The player clicked open, and he removed the tape and held it out, his gaze fixed on the tape rather than on Helo. All the warmth, even the warmth that had come from anger and frustration, drained from Felix’s voice. “Here. I’m sorry to have been a bother. I was mistaken. I thought you were here because Dee-I was mistaken.”
“Felix, that’s not why-it’s not a big deal. You can keep it. Or maybe we could even get a copy made of it.”
Helo barely managed to catch the tape when Felix tossed it at him. “No,” he said simply, rolling over on his side away from Helo. “You should find Louis, too. I bought him Kara’s alarm clock. Don’t worry, he doesn’t really need it now.”
Now, of course, there were a million things Helo wanted to say, but he knew none of them were the right words; none would do any good. Helo tucked the tape in his pocket and shuffled out of the room slowly, giving Felix the chance to call him back if he wanted to. He didn’t.
Helo looked back once more at Felix’s bunk. All he could see was the gray curve of Felix’s back, shivering.
People would say that it wasn’t Helo’s fault, that he’d done all he could do, and that if Gaeta couldn’t get over blaming Helo for his getting shot in the leg by a frakking Cylon, that was his problem. But Helo knew better. It wasn’t about the leg. The Karl Agathon that Felix knew never let anything slide. As much as that policy might frak things up, he never compromised when it came to doing the right thing, never let wrongs get swept under the rug.
But this time, Helo had done just that. He’d stood silently as the Old Man learned enough about what had happened that he had decided willful ignorance of the shooter’s identity and of the surrounding circumstances was the best course of action, even though the Admiral could read the whole story written on Sam’s face.
It wasn’t that Helo hadn’t wanted to speak up when Adama had hauled him, Kara, Sam, and Athena into his office for the grilling while Felix had still been in surgery. It was that damn dance again. If Helo had explained, had made the Admiral acknowledge what had happened, he would have had to make Adama acknowledge the mutiny, too. A mutiny against Kara, instigated in large part by Athena, the Cylon whom it seemed the Cylons themselves didn’t totally trust. There had been times later on that Helo had almost brought himself to march into the Admiral’s quarters and lay the whole mess out for the Old Man, but life kept presenting him with such solid reasons against taking that risk. Athena had shot the Cylon leader, the Six; he couldn’t risk getting her into even deeper trouble right then. Besides, with the way Adama had been acting since Earth’s discovery, there was no telling what he might do. Maneuvering through that minefield was so hard already.
This was not the way he’d wanted to end things with Felix, not at all, Helo thought as he finally left the bunkroom and wandered down the hall. But maybe it wasn’t an end, Helo comforted himself. Maybe when things really did settle down a bit, when both he and Felix had put enough time between themselves and the Demetrius to gain some perspective, when Felix had recovered more, maybe then Helo could set things right again. Felix needed more time, and some rest. Helo decided he’d talk to Colonel Tigh about arranging some R&R for Felix. That would help, at least a little. A lot of things had ended in the past few days, but this didn’t have to be one of them, Helo thought. There was still time.
On to Movement IV and Finale...