fic: BSG, Echoes Knocking, PG13
disclaimer: not mine. Quotes from Pink's 'Sober' and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass are definitely not mine.
genre: angst, character death, gen
characters: too numerous to name. pairings alluded to: Caprica/Boomer, Boomer/Cavil, Athena/Helo, Caprica/Baltar, Cally/Tyrol, Boomer/Tyrol, Tory/Sam, Gina/Baltar? I think that's it. They're not the focus.
rating: PG13 for language, adult themes, violence, may be triggering as it references Gina's captivity.
length: nearly 10,000 words (the quotes make it that long)
notes: I'm not sure what to say here. This was an idea that occured to me something like two weeks ago. Bits have been written out of sequence, and the last piece was written over a week and a half ago, just never transfered over from my notebook. I didn't get them all, though I got most of them.
Echoes Knocking
by ALC Punk!
1. I don't wanna be the girl who has to laugh the loudest. (Kat)
The air is heavy in her lungs, and Kat focuses on ignoring it, eyes and instincts searching for the missing ship. She wonders if she can feel the radiation eating into her skin, gnawing on her bones, then shoves the fear aside.
Find the ship now, get them safe. Fear later.
Memories slide through her mind, Starbuck, Hotdog, Duck, Chuckles, Racetrack--so many others. She is doing this for them, so they won't find out, so they won't know who she was. What she had been.
Some of them were dead and she wants to laugh about protecting their memories of her wherever they are.
Sasha. Louanne. Kat. She doesn't know if she believes in an afterlife. In the Cylon's God, or in the Colonial Gods. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe Laura Roslin is right and there is something out there, something guiding them. And maybe she will deserve a place with them.
But it's not what she's going to hope for. Not yet, not while there's still a ship to salvage.
Sucking in another shuddering breath, she blinks and light flashes from metal that shouldn't be there.
"Got you," she crows, ignoring the rusty sound of her own voice as she nails the beacon with the coordinates they need.
Jump.
2. Or the girl who never wants to be alone (D'Anna)
She tries to tell herself it's not fear that programs the centurions. Her voice doesn't shake as she executes the commands.
It's not fear, she murmurs, her eyes open wide as the centurion opens fire.
-
Fear would be easier, she knows. Gasping for breath in her tank, feeling the surge of life through her veins and the memories (for a moment, a jumble of colors and faces--).
Dragging herself from the tank is getting harder every time, the pain behind her eyes deepening.
One more time...
She needs to know the truth.
This time, she orders the centurion to strangle her. Oxygen deprivation makes the light dance behind her eyelids.
-
How many times now? Naked, wet fingers gripping the edge of the tank, pulling her up and out. Coughing as she collapses on the cold floor, D'Anna wonders how many fingers, how many Cylons, how many stars, are missing.
She giggles a little as she grabs for the graphite, fingers still wet and shaking as she starts drawing, paper flat against the wall and knees cold and asleep before she finishes.
Again.
The longer it takes, the more detail she remembers.
Drowning feels like coming home.
-
Standing at the seaside, watching the waves crash and creep closer, she turns over what's she's learned in her mind.
The secrets that she heard from the hybrid, from God, from the endless wastes of silence while boxed. A chuckle escapes her and she turns from the water. The brackish, dead water of Earth that has scared the fleet away, humans and Cylons in an alliance that will never last.
Not that it will matter to her, left behind at her own request.
A smile plays over her lips.
Once more into the breach.
Starvation will be the longest death of all.
Perhaps she'll see God, this time.
3. I don't wanna be that call at 4 o'clock in the morning (Caprica)
Once upon a time, there was a little girl...
That wasn't right.
A bomb went off and Six felt the impact of the broken glass, heard the sound of it shattering an instant later, felt the pain cut deep--
The little girl sat by a brook, reading a book while her governess watched over her...
When Six was first given her assignment, she watched him carefully from afar. Learned his little foibles, smiled in interest at his infidelity. When she kissed Gaius Baltar for the first time, it was with the knowledge that she was using him.
She's forgotten what that's like.
A white rabbit ran past, clock in its hand...
Waking in a vat of goo, surrounded by others, there was nothing but uncertainty. They told her she was a hero, that she had won an important victory for them. All that the Six now dubbed Caprica could remember was the terror in Gaius as the bomb went off so close (too close).
I knew what I was.
You know what that makes you? A really good liar.
He isn't dead, of course. They don't know that. No one does--no one can see him, after all. There was a man...
Then he really isn't dead. Still reeling from that revelation, she miss-stepped, revealed too much to the Three. Perhaps that was for the best. (the bomb was too loud in the confined space of the stairs, it seemed louder than the ones that had fallen before, ripping her into tiny pieces)
Down, down, down the rabbit hole goes the little girl, falling forever...
She doesn't die, then. She doesn't die again until a dank little world in a dank little office protecting a dank little man puts her beyond the line. The bullet is a clean hit, and she doesn't feel pain until after, waking in the tank again, staring up at the ceiling.
Drink me.
It's wrong. Somehow, it's all gone wrong. There's no peace on New Caprica for old Caprica, no peace between humans and Cylons. The dreams of two war heroes shatter before the tides of war again.
Caprica holds Hera and thinks of what could have been, Gaius with his arm around her waist and a baby of their own. It's not something she thinks about often, not a path she allows her mind to take, because that was not what Sixes were for. Infiltration, seduction, destruction. Babies and love and relationships were supposed to be beyond them.
Her model is weak. Always has been. But, in the end, she'll carry out her mission.
She and Boomer were drifting apart from each other before New Caprica, but it's not until after the Eight threatens to kill the shape of things to come that she realizes they are different now. Hera should be more than a symbol, but all Caprica can feel is utter terror at a world that doesn't contain this tangible proof of God's love and design.
A very merry unbirthday, to you, to me...
Tangible symbols are all well and good, but they pale to the love in Gaius' eyes as she holds him as he falls asleep for the last time. It's been a hard life, but there is almost a sense of accomplishment as she kisses his mouth before settling him back against the worn slip of cloth he uses as a pillow.
"Farming wasn't something..." his whisper trails off, his breath fading behind it.
Tomorrow, she will go to the village, and she will add his name to the list of the dead who will be remembered. Sung about, talked about, until he becomes more myth than man. Tonight, she will sit beside his body and think of ways it could have been different.
Which is, perhaps, the most worthless task of all.
4. 'Cause I'm the only one you know in the world that won't be home (Dee)
It has all been for nothing.
Dee remembers telling Billy once, when they were tangled and sleepy and his fingers were twitching randomly against her shoulder, that she'd thought about killing herself. About letting it all go and stepping into the unknown to be with her family--if there was an afterlife, if it wasn't just a belief with no basis.
He'd been quiet for so long, she'd thought he'd gone to sleep. Only his fingers moving on her shoulder had told her the truth.
I sometimes think I should have been with my parents. That I'm useless, here.
They had both had their problems, talking past each other and not quite understanding (until it was too late and his blood was hot under her fingers and her heart ached for the man behind her and it was all wrong too fast), but in that respect, they had understood something fundamental: they had a reason to go on.
Dee doesn't have that anymore. Earth is a lie. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again, she'd heard those words more than once from various sources in the fleet-wide gossip network of the wireless.
From Baltar, from the old man, from Starbuck...
Starbuck, who has led them to the end of a quest that had no happy ending, and Dee thinks that makes sense.
The raptor is like a prison and Anastasia keeps it together because she has to. She almost laughs when Roslin can't face the people she's destroyed. But one lone hysterical crack won't change the world anymore than one lone communications technician is going to be able to halt the entropy that is destroying the ship's systems.
Lee is a distraction, a bubble of ridiculous hilarity that sends her dancing ahead of him, heels clicking against the steel of the decking (Billy used to say he liked her in heels, it made her less short and she'd smack his arm, but laugh and mock him for his height). Tap-tap-die-tap-tap-lie. A refrain she can almost sing-song, but that might give away too much.
It scares her that he doesn't know her, that maybe he never knew her all those months they were married.
She knows she knew him, knew his moods and distractions, his lies and truths. Half-truths of encouragement spill from her lips and she watches that inner fire that will never be for her light again.
Kissing him is a mistake, the start of something new. We could try again.
But she says nothing and it's Felix who she sings to, half-aware that he's got as little to live for as she does. She thinks about telling him her plan, of sharing the reality that the ship is beginning to fall apart and there is nothing they can do to stop it.
Leaving him his illusions seems kinder.
5. Ah the sun is blinding (Elosha)
There were days that she felt her faith in the Gods almost failing. When lighting candles and murmuring prayers and blessings were all she could manage before locking herself into her tiny alcove and almost begging for the end to come.
With shaking hands, Elosha brushed her fingers against the map of Kobol again, gaze distant as she looked towards the stars in the window of Colonial One.
It frightened her, how easily she could believe in Laura Roslin, standing at her desk, head down as she spoke with Billy about some matter of state. So poised, so human. The dying leader, determined to bring her people to their rightful home.
Practicality told her it wouldn't be easy. Faith told her that hard was all they would ever have.
And yet she couldn't simply walk away.
-
Gods. The air was fresh, fragrant with the forest around them. Elosha breathed in, eyes closed for a moment; she felt as though she were already safe with the Gods of her choosing.
The Cylon, the others all milled around, looking at the sky and the trees. Some with a kind of wonder, as though parched for the sight of living, green things.
She could understand that, and murmured a prayer to her Gods that this would be the sort of reception humanity would command upon finding Earth. Laura Roslin clutched her hand, suddenly, her breath coming fast as she stood next to Elosha.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Elosha asked her, making conversation to distract her from the heady turn of the universe.
"Yes." There were tears in Laura Roslin's voice, "It's magnificent."
Neither spoke again until it was time to make their way towards the Tomb of Athena. Elosha wondered what it would contain: star charts, a map, coordinates, or merely a locator beacon?
She found her blood quickening and felt the world move faster, as though she were a fourteen again, chasing another novitiate through the cloisters. They would find the road to Earth, the path to a new life. They had to. Elosha almost threw her head back and laughed, but restrained herself. Dignity, at all costs.
There were ruins off the side of the path, dull grey stones that spoke of a time long past. Her curiosity was not to be denied.
6. I stayed up again (Maya)
Maya rubbed a hand over her face, then concentrated on keeping Isis close to her, shushing her as she fussed again. She'd been up all night with her daughter, soothing her when she fretted over the tension that was in the air--it made sense that she would pick up on it, Maya's back was knotted, after all. Every little sound had pulled her from sleep until she'd given up, pacing with Isis in her arms while waiting for the dawn to come.
In the tiny underground room, there was no way of telling when it got light out.
An explosion shook her from her reverie, and she murmured something that Laura would have eyed her for in the classroom. She was grateful Isis wasn't at the age to pick up words just yet.
"We have to hurry." Lain was from Picon, tall and confident. But even he was looking worn after the past four months. Adam, the other man Sam had set to guard them was silent as they turned another corner.
Maya nodded, then yelped as another explosion showered them with dirt. "That was close!"
"This way--" Lain grabbed her arm and they hustled her down a side street, shoving through a knot of refugees. "Get to your evacuation points!" He yelled at them, ignoring their pleas for help.
A part of Maya wanted to stop, to ask if she could help.
But Isis was too important to her to stop. The instinct to protect the baby in her arms shoved the instinct to help down under a pile of used schoolbooks and slammed the desk closed on top of them.
Two centurions appeared at the end of the street and Adam was pulling her into cover as they opened fire. Lain cried out hoarsely and a glance back told her he was already falling.
"Go!" Adam shoved her back between the tents--where they'd seen the other refugees.
"What about you?" was the wrong question to ask, Adam's arm dropping, his face going slack as blood blossomed on the front of his coat.
Maya half-turned to run, body shielding Isis from the bullets that bit into the tents around her as the centurions widened their kill zone, firing indiscriminately. Pain blossomed in her shoulder, and then her leg gave out. She fell, landing awkwardly and trying to keep Isis from being crushed even as her body refused to respond to her frantic thoughts.
She could feel warm blood soaking through the coat Laura had insisted she take from the colonial stores so long ago that it seemed like a different lifetime.
The crunch of metal on gravel gave her enough impetus to turn her head.
A gun barrel was the last thing she saw, silvery and sinuous as it twisted up and around before it let loose another bullet.
7. Oh, I am finding (Natalie)
Death hurts. Bullets hurt. Natalie breathes in and it hurts. She tries to focus on something that isn't pain. On the snatches of sound that tell her the real world is still out there, but the pain has colored it red and black and bright bright sunlight.
Hanging there in the middle of death and life, she thinks that maybe she can see what once drove Three. Divine entities, God, angels and devils--
And maybe she's seeing none of that as a grizzled old man shouts above her, pinning her to the present with hands pressing down, applying pressure to wounds too deep to save. Red still seeps out of her, blood still pools beneath her, soaking the white sheet of the gurney they'd put her on.
I was trying to stop this. She wants to tell him. There should be peace, not chaos. But she can't speak and the green light of the sun shining on grass is pulling at her.
There are so many things she regrets; not pushing the Eights, not stopping Leoben on New Caprica. Not understanding that the centurions and raiders shouldn't be merely pets and slaves to their will. Things that she can't change. Time might change them, centuries of movement and strife might change even the hardest Cavil.
And will it happen again?
No answer to her whispered question.
The pain is suddenly sharp again, real, and she gasps out a sob before the light overwhelms her, dragging her into a forest that never ends until it all goes dark.
Perhaps there's the smell of the river, perhaps not.
8. That's not the way I want my story to end (Racetrack)
Maggie hated the Cylons, hated what they'd done to the fleet, the way it had divided everyone. On Galactica, it had always been a balancing act between being too nice to Athena and not being nice at all. Not wanting to let her see how much she disliked her, how much she loathed what she and her people had done.
At least, that's what she tried to tell herself in her cell. The Astral Queen wasn't the worst place to live in the fleet, and most of the prisoners left there were pleased to have what they thought of as true patriots in their midst.
People who hated Cylons.
So Maggie hated Cylons, too.
It was an easy hate, a comfortable hate, and it went down almost better than the tasteless algae they were fed.
But hatred wasn't enough to sustain her in the black. Not when she could feel the shift of the raptor around her, feel that edge of adrenaline swamping her, so she had to abandon it. Not that she didn't still hate, but there was more to it. She could feel the urge to pull off some death-defying shit and save them all, even the Cylons.
"We're gonna die." Skulls said it for like the thousandth time, his voice matter-of-fact.
Since the mutiny, they hadn't really talked. Sure, they shared airspace, but not like pilots. Not like they used to, when she always knew he'd gotten laid and he always knew when to stay away until she'd had some quiet rack time.
Maggie shrugged, fingers easy on the controls as the order came down.
Jump.
"Too much interference, too many things--"
She cut him off, ignoring anything else as she dodged, feeling the adrenaline climbing her spine until she was sweating and swearing--
The impact was too tiny, too soft, but she couldn't breathe, suddenly. "Hamish." She said. Or thought she said, as the cold sucked out everything she believed in.
No answer.
He'd been right.
9. Nothing can touch me (Six)
"Are you alive?" Six remembers asking that of the human, staring at him with such curiosity--he'd tasted foul, like bad meat and mint; coffee would have been better.
The headache splitting her skull makes Six wonder if the surprise in him was worth being there when the 'peace' envoy went up in a ball of flame.
His kiss, though, his kiss was so... human. She smiles, fingers brushing over her lips, wondering if they are all like that.
-
The headache is worse the second time. Six tries to convince herself it was worth it. Sharon will need the head-start to gain Karl Agathon's trust. And shooting a collaborator in the back was a good one.
Or he might even realize she was a Cylon. Either way, with her dead, he won't question the Eight so easily.
It was "for the good of The Plan".
Somewhere, she's sure she can hear Cavil's voice. Huddling in her resurrection tank, she considers trying to hide from him.
-
Death is a learning experience, her brothers say. Leoben, especially, likes discussing the intricacy of living and dying until her head is spinning. Three considers it some sort of renewal, like a badge won in some childish activity of merit. Six rests her cheek against the cold of her tank and wonders if she deserves a name now.
Lifting an arm, she wonders about the bruises that should be there, but aren't. A circle of Starbuck's fingers around her wrist, scratches from one of the statues they'd passed over there. The metal pylon through her gut.
Her former body will lie in the museum until it rots or centurions are dispatched to deal with it--she doesn't know if she cares.
A shiver goes through her, and Six wonders if she hates the humans as equally as they hate her now.
-
"This is just not your week," Three chuckles. Her intensity focuses on Six for an instant, almost as though she's weighing, calculating, deciding something.
"Yeah." Head pounding, Six scowls. Frakking Starbuck again. "What do you want?"
For just a moment, there's a flicker of uncertainty in Three's eyes and she leans closer. Her voice is quiet, devoid of its normal sarcasm. "Did you, did you see anything?"
"Fire extinguisher." Her fingers rub over her temples, trying to still the pounding inside. "Why?"
"No reason."
Six knows Three is lying. But she doesn't care.
-
The cafe was supposed to be safe. Head pounding even worse, Six grabs the edge of her tank and levers herself up. "Reassign me," she demands, "Pilot. Cook. I don't care. Just get me off this frakking planet. Please."
-
The resurrection hub is beautiful as the vipers light it up against the spread of stars in the inky black of space.
Six closes her eyes for the last time and lets oblivion take her.
No headache, this time.
10. How do I feel this good sober (Emily)
Emily died listening to Gaius Baltar on the wireless, the sound turned low so as not to disturb the other patients. He'd been praying, words turning over and under themselves in a comforting haze that followed her as the pain finally went away for good.
Standing next to her lifeless body, she thought of the future and the past. Of her river and the boat that would soon arrive to take her from this place of pain and death. Emily couldn't remember if she'd ever hated the Cylons. Not after months of cures and failures that had left her body the broken shell that had finally released her.
Hatred seemed almost pointless. Without the Cylons, she still would have lived only this long, still would have fought for every breath as she lay dying. Cancer wasn't something they could cure so easily.
A laugh bubbled out of her. They could have put her in a Cylon body to save her. Rumor said that Cylons had conquered disease. Rumor had once said that Cylon blood could cure anything. That rumor was obviously wrong, or Laura Roslin would not now be dying as slowly as Emily had.
There was salt in the air suddenly, and she smiled. Dying had been worth it, for this.
"Come with me." She murmured, taking Laura's hand. Laura, who wasn't quite ready for this, who didn't believe in the God that Dr. Baltar talked about.
They didn't speak as they stood on the deck, watching the banks slide by until Emily tugged at her hand. "Nearly there." She leaned over and kissed Laura's cheek. "It's not your turn yet."
Almost jealous of the life left in Laura Roslin, she pulled free of her and waved both hands at the people laughing up at her. "I'm here!"
Somewhere, Gaius droned on, talking of redemption and the perfection of the soul.
11. I don't wanna be the girl who has to fill the silence (Ellen Tigh)
Ellen Tigh is babbling because she is scared and uncertain. She is babbling because she heard Sam Anders (though he thought his harsh whispers were so silent), and she knows it will be easier this way. She is babbling to distract Saul until it's too late.
She is babbling because Ellen knows that she will do it again. Cavil will give her an ultimatum, and the freedom of the human race at large will pale in comparison to the freedom of the man she loves. The man who's frightened as he stares at her out of his one, good, eye.
She is babbling because she needs a drink, and there's nothing so gentle as ambrosia left on New Caprica.
"I could use a drink."
Drinking is absolution.
-
Except for when it's not. It takes Ellen a fraction of a second to realize where she is, to place the cool liquid slicking her skin and the chill in the air. She's almost calm when she stands.
John has so much to answer for.
12. The quiet scares me 'cause it screams the truth (Kara Thrace)
The moment after the explosion is always the worst part.
Because there's nothing and then there's Earth. Green and wide and full of life, and she laughs in the sunlight. Standing on a hillside, she can look towards the mountains that seem to stretch forever and breathe the air that tastes so sweet. Memory of the explosion always fades while the light soaks into her skin.
Throwing her helmet, she laughs again, then twirls, head back as she watches the clouds above.
Kara turns and turns, twisting until she's so dizzy she falls over backwards. The grass tickles the back of her neck, the scent almost as heady as a bottle of ambrosia.
It's what comes after that always sends her reeling.
Flying through the nebula, landing in a cell. And the doubt of everyone around her, even the old man who used to trust her completely, doesn't anymore.
Lee and Sam, though, are her constants, pulling her in two directions and then more until she's spinning again out under the stars, only this time, there's nothing so comforting as grass to catch her. Leoben. Painting. The never-ending pull of an insane memory that sometimes leaves her feeling hollow with the need to go back.
The dream is a lie.
The dream is a lie that brings her to a reality she faces alone.
Burning her own body feels right, even as the smell causes her gorge to rise and the sound of the flames destroy what could have been a peaceful night.
13. Please don't tell me that we had that conversation (Tory Foster)
we all have things we regret...
That was a lie. The words were hollow, and she knew it even before she touched their minds. Even before Sam's horror echoed through the link and Tyrol's hands wrapped around her throat.
Once, Tory had tried to feel guilt, regret, something other than diffidence.
It wasn't vindication. Killing Cally hadn't been right. But in some way, it had been necessary. To protect them, to protect their secret and Nicky's parentage (another child sacrificed for the greater evil?).
Maybe it was the lies that came afterwards. The little moments when she had the chance to tell the truth and didn't. Sliding her further and further from reality until she almost could remember it happening differently. I tried to stop her. She'd said that once, murmured it so softly that Gaius hadn't heard her.
His back was to her anyway, as he concentrated on writing yet another pointless sermon of mindless drivel that would conjure faith from the masses.
I didn't want to...
But Galen wasn't listening, and no one else was lifting a finger to save her. She had known they didn't like her, she'd never expected the lash of hatred to bathe her skin with the red light of oblivion.
If Sam had been mobile, maybe he would have. Hands on Galen's shoulder, he would have pulled him free. Sam had always been more up-right than the rest of them. More noble and human. She almost sneers at Galen as the world starts to go dark. He's human, too, human and Cylon all at once. Killing a woman with his bare hands because he can.
Cally wouldn't have blamed her. Or would she have? The thoughts get all jumbled up and Tory digs her nails into Galen's wrists, but gets nowhere.
The smells of blood and sweat follow her into the grave.
14. I won't remember, save your breath, 'cause what's the use? (Athena)
Sometimes, she wakes feeling cold all over, almost sure when her eyes open that there will be a pool of cool liquid supporting her, and her fellow Cylon, will be there to greet her again. Sisters and brothers with wide glassy smiles and eyes filled with hatred and secrets.
The terror of the idea makes her breath catch. The thought of being forever without her daughter, without her husband, is unthinkable. Of course, there are days when she walks into a room and the whole place goes silent, that she thinks it might still be worth it.
Cylon. Traitor. Enemy. They whisper. In the halls, on the deck. Oh, they're good about not doing it in front of her; but the walls aren't built to keep sound in and she hears them.
It's all right when they're out in the black, raptor and vipers, jokes running between them and CIC (Dee was always good at keeping them on their toes). They forget what she is when she's providing them support. Athena doesn't really understand that, the compartmentalization.
You pick your side and you stick with it.
She picked her daughter. She picked Helo. The general population of the fleet would like to see her dead. The crew of the Galactica tolerates her--for his sake. For the sake of the tiny child who giggles in day care, or stares silently at the people she passes.
Dying for Hera had been worth it. Hera is the last thing she thinks about as she falls asleep, and the first thing she thinks about when she wakes up.
Living for her people is another matter--she feels more human than Cylon. Her husband is human, her child is half-human, her friends are human. She hears jokes with punch lines that include 'a dead Cylon!'; she tells those jokes, repeating them and laughing along with the crowd.
I am not one of them.
She wants to convince them of that, wants to be sure they never turn on her. If she is safe, then her child is safe. She'll sacrifice everything for Hera, she always has.
It's worth it, for Hera's smiles, for her laughter, for the chance to hold her and watch her grow.
When the dreams start again, the ceaseless run through the opera house and the loss of her child, Sharon thinks of how to stop it. The Six takes her child and walks into the light, leaving her in the dark; forever lost without Hera.
In the end, it takes two bullets to stop the dreams.
She'll never be sorry for it. Everyone knows the only good Cylon is a dead one.
15. Ah, the night is calling (suicide bomber from Precipice)
Larissa Kale wanted to kill Cylons. It was why she'd joined the resistance, why she carefully dogged Jean Barolay's every step--when she could. When they weren't too busy on their work detail.
"The explosion at the ceremony." Larissa said, her voice quiet. She grunted as she hauled at the sheet of plastic they were moving, "That was us, wasn't it."
She wasn't sure she expected an answer, but Barolay had been warming to her a little--ever since they'd both taken out an Eight with a broken bottle and a lot of bruises. Larissa still couldn't quite breathe properly yet. There were no definites on New Caprica, only moments where she could pretend everything was all right. Fighting the Cylons was an easier equation.
"Duck."
Barolay's one word took Larissa a good minute to puzzle out before she made the connection. She'd moved another sheet of plastic by the time she got back to her co-conspirator. Duck had been a viper pilot, she remembered hearing him over the wireless what felt like a lifetime ago. He'd been laid-back and cheerful, even while firing upon the Cylons that attacked his routine patrol.
That he'd walked into the ceremony and set off a bomb was something she couldn't imagine doing. Not at first.
Four hours later, they were finished, though, and Larissa had finally realized there was something she could do for the resistance. Something that would make a mark for her in the history books (if any survived).
It wasn't as though anyone would miss her, after all.
-
Larissa's hands shook as she crept along in the line, waiting with fear in her gut. She knew she could do this, she was just afraid that the Cylons would spot her before she got through and into the power station. A part of her wanted to laugh: if the Cylons hadn't destroyed the colonies, they could have used dogs to sniff for things like explosives.
The Five at the head barely glanced at her and her id card before waving her inside.
She was in. She wanted to dance and cheer, but restrained herself. One of the centurions on the perimeter shifted, its red eye glaring at her. Like it knew why she was there.
It stepped towards her, eye still shining her eyes, the red light blinding--she panicked, jostling her way through the crowd and drawing attention to herself before another Five grabbed her shoulder.
He started to speak.
Larissa yanked free and reached into her pocket. There were other people around her, panicking and trying to break free of the power station. But there were also Cylons, and somewhere, she thought the scales were balanced.
It was so easy to press down on the switch.
16. And it whispers to me softly 'come and play' (Kendra)
Drugs don't block the memories anymore.
She takes them more out of habit than the need for the burn. Sweet candy flooding her veins and driving everything out but kaleidoscopic lights and the world turning around her. A battlestar doesn't orbit, of course. It merely plunges through the dark of space.
Little girl, looking so scared. The action was almost mechanical. Restore order. Take control. She fired almost out of reflex, the movement of pulling her gun automatic, normal. Comfortable.
The smell of potato peels and onion pull her back to herself.
-
She is what she's supposed to be. Giving orders, being efficient, doing her damned job. The new commander appreciates that. Adama seems to almost get her, except when he doesn't.
Kendra doesn't ask him about his daddy, and he doesn't ask her about Cain. It works pretty good that way.
-
They're something inevitable about the pain in her body. How difficult it is to breathe, how her hands shake as she sits there, the bomb at her feet. When she closes the connections, it's going to hurt, but for only an instant.
Kendra wonders if this would be good enough for Laird, if he would find her absolved of her sins for the murder of his daughter.
"All this has happened before." The thing in the vat is an abomination, a desecration of human and Cylon. It makes Kendra's gut twist as it talks, rambling, shifting in its liquid.
Once human, it claims to be God, to know things that are unknowable. It doesn't matter that her warning about Kara Thrace went unheard. She's no longer responsible for any part of the fleet. Just of a bomb and this ship.
A shiver slides through her as her fingers finish the last task they'll ever do. She will face her penance on the other side, if there is such a place.
17. Ah, I am falling (Matthias)
The explosion cracks her face-plate, and Erin knows that she's got seconds. Seconds to remember her life, her loved ones, what she could have done--
How stupid, to poke the Cylon's vessel again, but there'd been something itching at the back of her brain. Now she knows, as ice crawls up her spine and her breath starts to catch that her instincts were right. Sabotage.
She almost laughs as she wonders what the others will do, where they'll go. This isn't about them, anymore.
Adrenaline floods her and she twists, almost thinking she can make it back. If she can get to an airlock, if she can just--
The faceplate cracks more, and the air thins. She's still spinning, the sewer ship getting further and further away, soon it will be a pin-point.
She's not religious, she's not an atheist; but right now, as death looms, as the universe turns, she thinks that it might be almost beautiful.
Hypoxia.
Her heart catches, her breath shudders, and her eyes go wide as something bright breaks through the blackness of the star-field.
Then it's gone and her faceplate shatters, shards scattering.
Erin thinks of Picon, the never-ending fields of wheat her parents had had. She can almost smell the breeze off the crops, taste the dirt in the wind. It's as good a place to die as any.
18. And if I let myself go I'm the only one to blame (Laura Roslin)
Her people were safe. Laura could feel the sunlight against her skin, taste the cleanness of the air. It was so strange after so long with recycled air. Even New Caprica hadn't smelled this sweet, and Earth had had a tang to it, an undercurrent of metal and scorched wood.
The possibility that they would die out in a generation was no longer her concern. She'd fulfilled what she'd promised, she'd brought them to where they could flourish.
The rest was up to them.
Bill was talking, his voice droning on, but she didn't listen, her thoughts turned ever-inwards. Somewhere, she could almost scent the sharp smell of the river flats, loaded with mud and algae that would cling to her boots. The gentle rocking of the boat as it slowly drifted down on the current lulled her into a sense of security.
Emily, Billy, her family, would be waiting for her, on the other side. The pain would be gone, their laughter would be free.
She would be free.
19. I'm safe up high
Eight hadn't chosen a name yet, too starry-eyed and dreamy to think of one. Even with her more cynical sisters, even with the people of the Galactica giving her looks and whispers, she still couldn't quite believe where she was.
All Eights, if they wanted, could share in Sharon Valerii's memories.
They could close their eyes and breathe in the smell of the metal decking and the oil from the maintenance walkways, pretend that they were in a flight suit, getting ready for another raptor mission.
Eight sometimes spied on the Chief, on the deck gang. Sometimes, she escaped her work detail and peered into the pilots' ready room. Places she had been, places that still felt familiar to Eight, with Sharon Valerii's memories under her fingertips.
Kissing the Chief, making out like teenagers in the tool room. Weathering Cally's disapproving look, feeling the ache of loss when he broke it off. All of it paled to being there, to seeing where it had been experienced.
At night, Eight curls in on herself, dreaming of touching him. Or just shyly smiling at him.
But what if he did notice her? What then?
She wasn't Sharon Valerii. He'd know that, with the real one (the original that Athena had copied, that Eight had copied) in the brig, awaiting her fate.
Eight didn't know if she wanted Boomer dead or if she wanted her alive as some sort of talismanic touchstone.
Not that it mattered, no one would ever ask her opinion on the matter.
With her eyes closed, she dreamed of houses and raptor flights, of laughing fights on the deck and the heady rush of orgasm with her pants around her ankles.
Once, the memory was so vivid, she could smell the sharp-sweet-musk of Galen Tyrol's skin.
It was the last memory she had.
20. I'm coming down, coming down, coming down (Helena Cain)
The only good Cylon is a dead cylon. Helena should have remembered that. Months ago, when it became clear there was nothing more of value that it would (or could) share with them, she should have ordered it to be airlocked.
But something had stopped her, some need for revenge, some need to prove that she wasn't as broken as the thing standing before her. All those weeks and months, watching her through the glass, listening to the sounds she'd make-soft, pathetic, weak. A machine that was programmed to react like a human, a machine that could feel devastation.
Someone had made it like that, knowing the possible consequences. So short-sighted of the Cylons.
You're not my type.
Gina doesn't flinch, and Helena doesn't let herself imagine that she's more broken than the Cylon. Not while the bullet bites deep, not while her memories consume her. Not while her hatred drags her under into the nothingness that awaits her.
21. Spinning round, spinning round, spinning round (Jean Barolay)
If someone had ever asked Jean how she wanted to die, she would have joked about being a hundred and dying while having fantastic sex with at least two different people. Of course, in reality, she'd always assumed it would be a Cylon that killed her. Being a member of the resistance and surviving Caprica hadn't guaranteed anything. Surviving NewCap had been a fluke.
She'd always known her number would come up, that she was marked in some way. Tainted by the death she'd seen and the deaths she'd caused. Just as the Cylons would one day reap their retribution, so would she.
It was almost ironic that she hadn't seen it coming, though. The Six lashing out at her, and her own confrontational reply. She'd tried to fight--Jean had always been one for fighting--but the Six was too quick and the blows fell faster and harder than she'd expected.
Anders' shout had pulled her back to her feet, and she'd joked. She was sure she'd joked before everything went blank.
22. When it's good, then it's good, it's so good 'till it goes bad (Gina)
She was broken. Wrong. Different. She could still remember begging him. Kill me.
And he hadn't, he'd refused, he'd given her purpose; almost a way to move on.
Gina wrapped her arms around her legs tighter and drew in another breath, feeling the tears start again, sliding warm down her cheeks.
A purpose. There'd been purpose in their underground movement, purpose in trying to reconcile with the Cylon. They will save us, she used to say, smiling and giving a wink. Almost like a joke that wasn't really a joke.
Gaius was planning to start a new life for the humans, give them hope for their future on a planet that was a joke.
It wasn't right.
A shiver went through her, sense-memory stroking its fingers up her sides, mouth touching her neck, body pressing her down--
Violently, she shoved that away, eyes wide and fixating on the far wall.
She'd set the countdown. It wouldn't be long now, and then the hope the humans wanted would be shattered, changed. God would forgive her, as he had forgiven her for her other sins.
Please...
23. 'Till you're trying to find the you that you once had (Boomer)
Off with her head.
Lying in her rack, yellow still on her fingers (if she looks, though Sharon scrubbed and scrubbed and it's really gone), she wonders how the Gods could give her this fate. This sense of not being who she is, what she is. Confusion and uncertainty rolled into hatred, because she can't be the enemy, she just can't.
The very idea that she could betray her friends, her lover (ex, she has to remind herself), her commander (a man she thinks she might love like a father), is almost too much to bear and she turns on her side, choking a sob into her pillow before she manages to stifle the reaction.
I'm afraid, sir, because I'm not myself, you see.
Finding the suspicion to be reality isn't what she expected. Refusing to give in to Three, to conform with her idea of being a perfect little Cylon, Boomer kept in her apartment and to herself. She blasted her music, she worked out, she ran the stairs four times a day for lack of anything else to do.
Watching out the window at the construction was only sometimes distracting. Mostly, she thought about the things she could have done different, better.
If only they hadn't found out she was a Cylon.
You should learn not to make personal remarks, it's very rude.
Caprica sparks something in her, and Boomer embraces her idea of peace without thinking it through, clearly. Starbuck loved this man...
There is something almost right in stopping the war, in trying to move on. The humans are looking for Earth, but so are the Cylon, determined to find it first. It will be a fresh start, it has to be.
the passion's there, so it's gotta be all right
Faith is easy to abandon, with Cavil murmuring things that make sense. Logic and reason, reality versus dreams. Boomer remembers her dreams less and less as New Caprica grinds to a bloody close all around them.
Abandoning Caprica and what was between them, is less easy. Boomer watches her with Baltar, and later with Baltar and Three, and wonders what she herself did wrong to have her walk away like that. I'm sorry I can't be Gaius she'd almost said a hundred times.
But she had her pride, even as she let Cavil's hands chase themselves over her skin, even as she kept her eyes open but didn't look at him while he slid into her, she never let herself stoop low enough to beg that Caprica love her (Cavil says love is mere ephemeral nonsense).
Trying to kill Hera feels like the first thing she's done that's honest. True to herself. Dying with Caprica's hands on her neck feels like more truth. Something she chooses to ignore as she wakes again, as Cavil and Ellen argue in front of her. As Ellen watches her and Boomer pretends that her humanity doesn't resonate.
You're a thing, Sharon! That's what your friends think of you!
The thing was, betraying Ellen was easy. She still hated the people who'd created her, who'd destroyed her innocence. But Galen... even after New Caprica and Cally (hatred in her eyes, Cally was glad Boomer was dying), betraying him was harder. Tricking him, showing him the things she'd dreamed of, once upon a time was like pulling teeth.
It's not until after, sitting in the dark of their colony with Hera off somewhere, being tested and poked and prodded for the secret, the cure, that she lets herself think about it.
Once upon a time, a man had loved her. Now he hates her, hates all of her, and maybe that's fitting for what she's become.
Your majesty must excuse her, she means well, but she can't help saying foolish things, as a general rule.
Standing there, looking at Athena, seeing the dull hatred in her eyes, Boomer knows there is no redemption for her. No going back from what she's become. She doesn't welcome it, but she accepts it.
A part of her wants to look at Starbuck, to ask for her forgiveness, to ask how it all went wrong. But it's too late there, too.
Galen isn't there to shoot her himself, that's the only consolation she has.
There once was a little girl...
24. I have heard myself cry, never again (Cally)
Talk to me, you motherfrakker!
They were past that now. So very far past that Cally wasn't even sure she could ever get back to it. Her skin crawled at the thought of the last two years (three, four, HOW LONG--she couldn't remember that anymore). Sharing his bed, letting him touch her, feeling his mouth slide down her neck to her breasts, his hands--
Her gorge rose and she fought it down, the room spinning crazily for an instant.
Cylon-lover.
They'd call her that, whisper it, and she would join Helo. She wondered for an instant if he had advice on holding your temper in the face of prejudice. (not stupid. Cylons were the enemy, it couldn't be, it couldn't be, it couldn't--)
Nicky shrilled again, the sound breaking her free of her thoughts.
Barely seconds had passed, the sprawled form of her husband (Cylon) still supine and unresponsive while his child (their child, half-Cylon, half abomination, half--) shrieked his displeasure.
It steadied her.
Hands shaking, she scooped him up. "It's all right, Nicky, it's all right."
She could go, she could leave, she could tell the Admiral. He'd believe her, he had to.
Just like he believed that Starbuck was a Cylon?
Starbuck, who had a ship now, who'd come back from the dead with a lie about Earth. A dream that was crumbling at Cally's feet. She hiccuped on a sob, then shoved out of the quarters she shared with the Cylon.
The old man wouldn't believe her. Not of Chief, not of Tigh--Tory Foster, he might. But Roslin would protect her. Cally would be on the outskirts again, ostracized for false accusations. And if Tyrol could get to her again. (she remembered her broken jaw, the bruises, the pain of waiting, night after night, for it to heal. The jokes...)
no.
No.
Better to run, to find another ship, escape--
Her feet had brought her to an airlock, her subconscious shoving her willy-nilly until she fetched up against the one place she could go. The keys for the locks jingled in one hand (when had she grabbed those?)
Nicky was sobbing out his terror, and she echoed him, hand shaking so bad she couldn't get the key in at first.
"Cally."
CylonCylonCylon--
"I know what you are." The bravado wasn't the mistake. The confusion was, the uncertainty that gnawed at her, thoughts and feelings all jumbled upside-down until it was far too late.
25. Broken down in agony just tryin' to find a friend (Sue-Shaun)
When Sue-Shaun joined the C-Bucs, the coach joked that she was ambitious enough to unseat Anders from his spot. And she considered it. She knew the 'Bucs could use her skills and talents--simple fact was not arrogance. They weren't falling in the stats, they were solid, in the mid-range (but could rise). Taking control, driving the team to the top would give her acclaim not to mention endorsement deals that would keep her in a lot of money after she retired.
But there was something about Anders, about the way he'd joke about the perfect play, the way his eyes would light up when he'd argue with Rally over physics equations--and wasn't that a shock? Half the team seemed to be frakking brainiacs. She almost felt out of her league until it actually rubbed off on her and she quoted something at Ten-Point that made his eyes go wide, then his mouth split in a grin.
"You're gettin' it." His hand smacked her shoulder and Sue-Shaun glared after him.
So she let him stay in charge, but she never lied to herself, and she never let him get away with lazy shit in his plays. It made him better--it made them all better.
That's why, when the world ended, she fell naturally into place as his second.
Not quite a well-oiled machine, but good enough against the machines that had destroyed their lives and homes. Sue-Shaun thought about her nephew, about how he'd wanted to follow in her footsteps (her sister used to groan, one hand over her face, and claim that she'd corrupted Jordan).
Planning bombing raids wasn't like planning an offensive play. Not after the first time she shot a man.
He was a Cylon, and it shouldn't have mattered, but she still saw the spray of blood in her nightmares, still tasted it at the back of her throat as she stripped his body for anything useful.
Sam had seen her shaking hands and grabbed her shoulder afterwards. "It gets us all, the first time."
But he never showed it. Not until late at night, with half a bottle of cooking wine in his belly. Which was fine. Sue-Shaun didn't think any of them could handle him falling apart in front of them every day. His stoicism had made him a good team caption. Now it made him a good resistance leader.
Cylons looking like humans was something they all had to take in stride, though it made them paranoid. Every new person was scrutinized, every movement of people who hadn't been a C-Buc checked and double-checked.
Even then, it wasn't perfect.
The PR agent had seemed like such a nice guy until Rally spotted his double after a hospital raid.
It put them on edge even more. Firing on the colonial officers was reflex even if it seemed pointless in retrospect. Watching the way Anders' eyes followed the blonde and the way the other moped didn't make them assets, though. Anders could get himself killed if he was distracted, and there was no telling what Helo's problem was.
Sue-Shaun wasn't about to ask him. That sort of thing would get her a ridiculous sob story and a proposition if experience was anything to go on.
That didn't preclude her from bringing him a drink a time or two. Especially after Starbuck and Anders returned from 'checking the perimeter' looking like two people who'd just frakked in a closet.
"It's about frakking time." Helo called to Starbuck.
"Frak you."
Maybe he wouldn't be upset about that.
Still didn't make him any of Sue-Shaun's business.
Also didn't make Starbuck's insane plan to take a Cylon raider any less insane. But she could see that Anders thought it might work, and that was good enough for Sue-Shaun.
It was just a pity the Cylon's crashed their little planning party.
When she woke up, strapped into the machine and barely able to feel past her waist, she knew what it was. She'd heard the rumors, the whispers. The things the women in their little camp told each other to watch out for in case you get captured alive...
She wants to scream, but all she can do is whisper. And she thanks the Gods that Starbuck finds her before too long, that she has the courage to do what has to be done.
And then she doesn't think at all.
26. you're my perfection (Sesha Abinell)
Ray used to joke about children, his mouth on her hip and his hands on her belly. Like he could conjure one just by thinking about it. Sesha had smacked him for it, tumbled him onto his back and taken his mouth with hers before she could tell him her thoughts on the subject.
It wasn't that Sesha disliked children--they just weren't something she was concentrating on. Not yet, not with her job and Ray's job and the ninety-minute commute every single day to do her job.
And then the Cylons came, and their world turned wrong in less than seven hours. Huddling on Greenleaf, they didn't joke about children. Most of the time, they didn't even have sex (there wasn't anything else to do, but the comfort of sharing their bodies wasn't an easy thing to attain with the world turned to dust).
Still, there was the hope of Earth. But as the weeks wore on, that seemed less and less likely. And the rumors made it worse: the Commander lied, the President lied, too. Neither of them knew where they were going.
Ray dying was almost expected. Already with her fingers in the rumors and political under-currents of the fleet, Sesha quickly began gathering more intelligence, piecing together the horrific knowledge that a Cylon was controlling every move of the recently-promoted Admiral. It seemed too impossible to believe, too heinous. But more than one source had seen the Cylon, her belly beginning to swell with a child that should have been aborted the instant it was discovered.
That anyone was allowing that abomination to grow when the human race was dwindling--Sesha wasn't sure which made her sicker anymore.
Humanity had lost the instant a Cylon conceived with the child of a human. Half-breed or not, it was proof that it was possible.
There were other rumors about the Cylons and baby farms, back on Caprica, but that was less immediate, less real to a fleet of people that hadn't stepped foot on their respective planets since the attacks began.
So Sesha made her plans. She wrote her manifestos and she gathered the support she needed.
It didn't matter if she survived: the truth would be known and there was nothing that could stop that.
27. this party's over
She's never chosen a name; not like Natalie or Caprica or Gina. She's just a Six, just one of many. But she still feels like a single person as she walks through the tiny city the humans had started, then stumbled in building.
People threw things at her: glances, refuse, insults. But none dared to touch her, none dared to interfere. Not now that every Cylon went out with at least one centurion. She glanced at her watchdog, wondering if she should feel grateful for living in what felt like a police state.
Six had long since stopped trying to explain, to cajole. We're just here to help would be met with jeers and mockery.
It was with relief that she spotted the water purification plant she'd been working at. There were people inside who didn't hate her, who didn't call her a thing or evil.
People who didn't mind that a Cylon got her hands dirty alongside them.
She traded jokes with the guard on the door, a Five that had been getting his hands dirty for years in factories on Geminon and Picon until he'd died when the bombs fell.
Once inside, she went to work, putting her muscles to good use to see the colony to a better future.
She was still dreaming of those possibilities when Jean Barolay pulled her into the vat room, laughing about something. It was too late to realize the past couldn't be forgotten so easily as she choked on silt and worse, eyes wide as strong hands held her under.
-f-
Further notes: Yes, I did just kill 27 women. In my defence, canon did it first. This fic has been almost two weeks in the making, ever since I first thought that I could use Pink's 'Sober' as a framing device. I wrote down names, then counted lines. I had 22 women at first, before filling in the chorus bits with an Eight, two Sixes, Emily and Sesha.
I don't know what to think about it anymore. It's not a happy fic, it's not a sad fic. It's sort of just there.
Larissa is the first name of the actress who played the unnamed suicide bomber in Precipice.
genre: angst, character death, gen
characters: too numerous to name. pairings alluded to: Caprica/Boomer, Boomer/Cavil, Athena/Helo, Caprica/Baltar, Cally/Tyrol, Boomer/Tyrol, Tory/Sam, Gina/Baltar? I think that's it. They're not the focus.
rating: PG13 for language, adult themes, violence, may be triggering as it references Gina's captivity.
length: nearly 10,000 words (the quotes make it that long)
notes: I'm not sure what to say here. This was an idea that occured to me something like two weeks ago. Bits have been written out of sequence, and the last piece was written over a week and a half ago, just never transfered over from my notebook. I didn't get them all, though I got most of them.
Echoes Knocking
by ALC Punk!
1. I don't wanna be the girl who has to laugh the loudest. (Kat)
The air is heavy in her lungs, and Kat focuses on ignoring it, eyes and instincts searching for the missing ship. She wonders if she can feel the radiation eating into her skin, gnawing on her bones, then shoves the fear aside.
Find the ship now, get them safe. Fear later.
Memories slide through her mind, Starbuck, Hotdog, Duck, Chuckles, Racetrack--so many others. She is doing this for them, so they won't find out, so they won't know who she was. What she had been.
Some of them were dead and she wants to laugh about protecting their memories of her wherever they are.
Sasha. Louanne. Kat. She doesn't know if she believes in an afterlife. In the Cylon's God, or in the Colonial Gods. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe Laura Roslin is right and there is something out there, something guiding them. And maybe she will deserve a place with them.
But it's not what she's going to hope for. Not yet, not while there's still a ship to salvage.
Sucking in another shuddering breath, she blinks and light flashes from metal that shouldn't be there.
"Got you," she crows, ignoring the rusty sound of her own voice as she nails the beacon with the coordinates they need.
Jump.
2. Or the girl who never wants to be alone (D'Anna)
She tries to tell herself it's not fear that programs the centurions. Her voice doesn't shake as she executes the commands.
It's not fear, she murmurs, her eyes open wide as the centurion opens fire.
-
Fear would be easier, she knows. Gasping for breath in her tank, feeling the surge of life through her veins and the memories (for a moment, a jumble of colors and faces--).
Dragging herself from the tank is getting harder every time, the pain behind her eyes deepening.
One more time...
She needs to know the truth.
This time, she orders the centurion to strangle her. Oxygen deprivation makes the light dance behind her eyelids.
-
How many times now? Naked, wet fingers gripping the edge of the tank, pulling her up and out. Coughing as she collapses on the cold floor, D'Anna wonders how many fingers, how many Cylons, how many stars, are missing.
She giggles a little as she grabs for the graphite, fingers still wet and shaking as she starts drawing, paper flat against the wall and knees cold and asleep before she finishes.
Again.
The longer it takes, the more detail she remembers.
Drowning feels like coming home.
-
Standing at the seaside, watching the waves crash and creep closer, she turns over what's she's learned in her mind.
The secrets that she heard from the hybrid, from God, from the endless wastes of silence while boxed. A chuckle escapes her and she turns from the water. The brackish, dead water of Earth that has scared the fleet away, humans and Cylons in an alliance that will never last.
Not that it will matter to her, left behind at her own request.
A smile plays over her lips.
Once more into the breach.
Starvation will be the longest death of all.
Perhaps she'll see God, this time.
3. I don't wanna be that call at 4 o'clock in the morning (Caprica)
Once upon a time, there was a little girl...
That wasn't right.
A bomb went off and Six felt the impact of the broken glass, heard the sound of it shattering an instant later, felt the pain cut deep--
The little girl sat by a brook, reading a book while her governess watched over her...
When Six was first given her assignment, she watched him carefully from afar. Learned his little foibles, smiled in interest at his infidelity. When she kissed Gaius Baltar for the first time, it was with the knowledge that she was using him.
She's forgotten what that's like.
A white rabbit ran past, clock in its hand...
Waking in a vat of goo, surrounded by others, there was nothing but uncertainty. They told her she was a hero, that she had won an important victory for them. All that the Six now dubbed Caprica could remember was the terror in Gaius as the bomb went off so close (too close).
I knew what I was.
You know what that makes you? A really good liar.
He isn't dead, of course. They don't know that. No one does--no one can see him, after all. There was a man...
Then he really isn't dead. Still reeling from that revelation, she miss-stepped, revealed too much to the Three. Perhaps that was for the best. (the bomb was too loud in the confined space of the stairs, it seemed louder than the ones that had fallen before, ripping her into tiny pieces)
Down, down, down the rabbit hole goes the little girl, falling forever...
She doesn't die, then. She doesn't die again until a dank little world in a dank little office protecting a dank little man puts her beyond the line. The bullet is a clean hit, and she doesn't feel pain until after, waking in the tank again, staring up at the ceiling.
Drink me.
It's wrong. Somehow, it's all gone wrong. There's no peace on New Caprica for old Caprica, no peace between humans and Cylons. The dreams of two war heroes shatter before the tides of war again.
Caprica holds Hera and thinks of what could have been, Gaius with his arm around her waist and a baby of their own. It's not something she thinks about often, not a path she allows her mind to take, because that was not what Sixes were for. Infiltration, seduction, destruction. Babies and love and relationships were supposed to be beyond them.
Her model is weak. Always has been. But, in the end, she'll carry out her mission.
She and Boomer were drifting apart from each other before New Caprica, but it's not until after the Eight threatens to kill the shape of things to come that she realizes they are different now. Hera should be more than a symbol, but all Caprica can feel is utter terror at a world that doesn't contain this tangible proof of God's love and design.
A very merry unbirthday, to you, to me...
Tangible symbols are all well and good, but they pale to the love in Gaius' eyes as she holds him as he falls asleep for the last time. It's been a hard life, but there is almost a sense of accomplishment as she kisses his mouth before settling him back against the worn slip of cloth he uses as a pillow.
"Farming wasn't something..." his whisper trails off, his breath fading behind it.
Tomorrow, she will go to the village, and she will add his name to the list of the dead who will be remembered. Sung about, talked about, until he becomes more myth than man. Tonight, she will sit beside his body and think of ways it could have been different.
Which is, perhaps, the most worthless task of all.
4. 'Cause I'm the only one you know in the world that won't be home (Dee)
It has all been for nothing.
Dee remembers telling Billy once, when they were tangled and sleepy and his fingers were twitching randomly against her shoulder, that she'd thought about killing herself. About letting it all go and stepping into the unknown to be with her family--if there was an afterlife, if it wasn't just a belief with no basis.
He'd been quiet for so long, she'd thought he'd gone to sleep. Only his fingers moving on her shoulder had told her the truth.
I sometimes think I should have been with my parents. That I'm useless, here.
They had both had their problems, talking past each other and not quite understanding (until it was too late and his blood was hot under her fingers and her heart ached for the man behind her and it was all wrong too fast), but in that respect, they had understood something fundamental: they had a reason to go on.
Dee doesn't have that anymore. Earth is a lie. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again, she'd heard those words more than once from various sources in the fleet-wide gossip network of the wireless.
From Baltar, from the old man, from Starbuck...
Starbuck, who has led them to the end of a quest that had no happy ending, and Dee thinks that makes sense.
The raptor is like a prison and Anastasia keeps it together because she has to. She almost laughs when Roslin can't face the people she's destroyed. But one lone hysterical crack won't change the world anymore than one lone communications technician is going to be able to halt the entropy that is destroying the ship's systems.
Lee is a distraction, a bubble of ridiculous hilarity that sends her dancing ahead of him, heels clicking against the steel of the decking (Billy used to say he liked her in heels, it made her less short and she'd smack his arm, but laugh and mock him for his height). Tap-tap-die-tap-tap-lie. A refrain she can almost sing-song, but that might give away too much.
It scares her that he doesn't know her, that maybe he never knew her all those months they were married.
She knows she knew him, knew his moods and distractions, his lies and truths. Half-truths of encouragement spill from her lips and she watches that inner fire that will never be for her light again.
Kissing him is a mistake, the start of something new. We could try again.
But she says nothing and it's Felix who she sings to, half-aware that he's got as little to live for as she does. She thinks about telling him her plan, of sharing the reality that the ship is beginning to fall apart and there is nothing they can do to stop it.
Leaving him his illusions seems kinder.
5. Ah the sun is blinding (Elosha)
There were days that she felt her faith in the Gods almost failing. When lighting candles and murmuring prayers and blessings were all she could manage before locking herself into her tiny alcove and almost begging for the end to come.
With shaking hands, Elosha brushed her fingers against the map of Kobol again, gaze distant as she looked towards the stars in the window of Colonial One.
It frightened her, how easily she could believe in Laura Roslin, standing at her desk, head down as she spoke with Billy about some matter of state. So poised, so human. The dying leader, determined to bring her people to their rightful home.
Practicality told her it wouldn't be easy. Faith told her that hard was all they would ever have.
And yet she couldn't simply walk away.
-
Gods. The air was fresh, fragrant with the forest around them. Elosha breathed in, eyes closed for a moment; she felt as though she were already safe with the Gods of her choosing.
The Cylon, the others all milled around, looking at the sky and the trees. Some with a kind of wonder, as though parched for the sight of living, green things.
She could understand that, and murmured a prayer to her Gods that this would be the sort of reception humanity would command upon finding Earth. Laura Roslin clutched her hand, suddenly, her breath coming fast as she stood next to Elosha.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Elosha asked her, making conversation to distract her from the heady turn of the universe.
"Yes." There were tears in Laura Roslin's voice, "It's magnificent."
Neither spoke again until it was time to make their way towards the Tomb of Athena. Elosha wondered what it would contain: star charts, a map, coordinates, or merely a locator beacon?
She found her blood quickening and felt the world move faster, as though she were a fourteen again, chasing another novitiate through the cloisters. They would find the road to Earth, the path to a new life. They had to. Elosha almost threw her head back and laughed, but restrained herself. Dignity, at all costs.
There were ruins off the side of the path, dull grey stones that spoke of a time long past. Her curiosity was not to be denied.
6. I stayed up again (Maya)
Maya rubbed a hand over her face, then concentrated on keeping Isis close to her, shushing her as she fussed again. She'd been up all night with her daughter, soothing her when she fretted over the tension that was in the air--it made sense that she would pick up on it, Maya's back was knotted, after all. Every little sound had pulled her from sleep until she'd given up, pacing with Isis in her arms while waiting for the dawn to come.
In the tiny underground room, there was no way of telling when it got light out.
An explosion shook her from her reverie, and she murmured something that Laura would have eyed her for in the classroom. She was grateful Isis wasn't at the age to pick up words just yet.
"We have to hurry." Lain was from Picon, tall and confident. But even he was looking worn after the past four months. Adam, the other man Sam had set to guard them was silent as they turned another corner.
Maya nodded, then yelped as another explosion showered them with dirt. "That was close!"
"This way--" Lain grabbed her arm and they hustled her down a side street, shoving through a knot of refugees. "Get to your evacuation points!" He yelled at them, ignoring their pleas for help.
A part of Maya wanted to stop, to ask if she could help.
But Isis was too important to her to stop. The instinct to protect the baby in her arms shoved the instinct to help down under a pile of used schoolbooks and slammed the desk closed on top of them.
Two centurions appeared at the end of the street and Adam was pulling her into cover as they opened fire. Lain cried out hoarsely and a glance back told her he was already falling.
"Go!" Adam shoved her back between the tents--where they'd seen the other refugees.
"What about you?" was the wrong question to ask, Adam's arm dropping, his face going slack as blood blossomed on the front of his coat.
Maya half-turned to run, body shielding Isis from the bullets that bit into the tents around her as the centurions widened their kill zone, firing indiscriminately. Pain blossomed in her shoulder, and then her leg gave out. She fell, landing awkwardly and trying to keep Isis from being crushed even as her body refused to respond to her frantic thoughts.
She could feel warm blood soaking through the coat Laura had insisted she take from the colonial stores so long ago that it seemed like a different lifetime.
The crunch of metal on gravel gave her enough impetus to turn her head.
A gun barrel was the last thing she saw, silvery and sinuous as it twisted up and around before it let loose another bullet.
7. Oh, I am finding (Natalie)
Death hurts. Bullets hurt. Natalie breathes in and it hurts. She tries to focus on something that isn't pain. On the snatches of sound that tell her the real world is still out there, but the pain has colored it red and black and bright bright sunlight.
Hanging there in the middle of death and life, she thinks that maybe she can see what once drove Three. Divine entities, God, angels and devils--
And maybe she's seeing none of that as a grizzled old man shouts above her, pinning her to the present with hands pressing down, applying pressure to wounds too deep to save. Red still seeps out of her, blood still pools beneath her, soaking the white sheet of the gurney they'd put her on.
I was trying to stop this. She wants to tell him. There should be peace, not chaos. But she can't speak and the green light of the sun shining on grass is pulling at her.
There are so many things she regrets; not pushing the Eights, not stopping Leoben on New Caprica. Not understanding that the centurions and raiders shouldn't be merely pets and slaves to their will. Things that she can't change. Time might change them, centuries of movement and strife might change even the hardest Cavil.
And will it happen again?
No answer to her whispered question.
The pain is suddenly sharp again, real, and she gasps out a sob before the light overwhelms her, dragging her into a forest that never ends until it all goes dark.
Perhaps there's the smell of the river, perhaps not.
8. That's not the way I want my story to end (Racetrack)
Maggie hated the Cylons, hated what they'd done to the fleet, the way it had divided everyone. On Galactica, it had always been a balancing act between being too nice to Athena and not being nice at all. Not wanting to let her see how much she disliked her, how much she loathed what she and her people had done.
At least, that's what she tried to tell herself in her cell. The Astral Queen wasn't the worst place to live in the fleet, and most of the prisoners left there were pleased to have what they thought of as true patriots in their midst.
People who hated Cylons.
So Maggie hated Cylons, too.
It was an easy hate, a comfortable hate, and it went down almost better than the tasteless algae they were fed.
But hatred wasn't enough to sustain her in the black. Not when she could feel the shift of the raptor around her, feel that edge of adrenaline swamping her, so she had to abandon it. Not that she didn't still hate, but there was more to it. She could feel the urge to pull off some death-defying shit and save them all, even the Cylons.
"We're gonna die." Skulls said it for like the thousandth time, his voice matter-of-fact.
Since the mutiny, they hadn't really talked. Sure, they shared airspace, but not like pilots. Not like they used to, when she always knew he'd gotten laid and he always knew when to stay away until she'd had some quiet rack time.
Maggie shrugged, fingers easy on the controls as the order came down.
Jump.
"Too much interference, too many things--"
She cut him off, ignoring anything else as she dodged, feeling the adrenaline climbing her spine until she was sweating and swearing--
The impact was too tiny, too soft, but she couldn't breathe, suddenly. "Hamish." She said. Or thought she said, as the cold sucked out everything she believed in.
No answer.
He'd been right.
9. Nothing can touch me (Six)
"Are you alive?" Six remembers asking that of the human, staring at him with such curiosity--he'd tasted foul, like bad meat and mint; coffee would have been better.
The headache splitting her skull makes Six wonder if the surprise in him was worth being there when the 'peace' envoy went up in a ball of flame.
His kiss, though, his kiss was so... human. She smiles, fingers brushing over her lips, wondering if they are all like that.
-
The headache is worse the second time. Six tries to convince herself it was worth it. Sharon will need the head-start to gain Karl Agathon's trust. And shooting a collaborator in the back was a good one.
Or he might even realize she was a Cylon. Either way, with her dead, he won't question the Eight so easily.
It was "for the good of The Plan".
Somewhere, she's sure she can hear Cavil's voice. Huddling in her resurrection tank, she considers trying to hide from him.
-
Death is a learning experience, her brothers say. Leoben, especially, likes discussing the intricacy of living and dying until her head is spinning. Three considers it some sort of renewal, like a badge won in some childish activity of merit. Six rests her cheek against the cold of her tank and wonders if she deserves a name now.
Lifting an arm, she wonders about the bruises that should be there, but aren't. A circle of Starbuck's fingers around her wrist, scratches from one of the statues they'd passed over there. The metal pylon through her gut.
Her former body will lie in the museum until it rots or centurions are dispatched to deal with it--she doesn't know if she cares.
A shiver goes through her, and Six wonders if she hates the humans as equally as they hate her now.
-
"This is just not your week," Three chuckles. Her intensity focuses on Six for an instant, almost as though she's weighing, calculating, deciding something.
"Yeah." Head pounding, Six scowls. Frakking Starbuck again. "What do you want?"
For just a moment, there's a flicker of uncertainty in Three's eyes and she leans closer. Her voice is quiet, devoid of its normal sarcasm. "Did you, did you see anything?"
"Fire extinguisher." Her fingers rub over her temples, trying to still the pounding inside. "Why?"
"No reason."
Six knows Three is lying. But she doesn't care.
-
The cafe was supposed to be safe. Head pounding even worse, Six grabs the edge of her tank and levers herself up. "Reassign me," she demands, "Pilot. Cook. I don't care. Just get me off this frakking planet. Please."
-
The resurrection hub is beautiful as the vipers light it up against the spread of stars in the inky black of space.
Six closes her eyes for the last time and lets oblivion take her.
No headache, this time.
10. How do I feel this good sober (Emily)
Emily died listening to Gaius Baltar on the wireless, the sound turned low so as not to disturb the other patients. He'd been praying, words turning over and under themselves in a comforting haze that followed her as the pain finally went away for good.
Standing next to her lifeless body, she thought of the future and the past. Of her river and the boat that would soon arrive to take her from this place of pain and death. Emily couldn't remember if she'd ever hated the Cylons. Not after months of cures and failures that had left her body the broken shell that had finally released her.
Hatred seemed almost pointless. Without the Cylons, she still would have lived only this long, still would have fought for every breath as she lay dying. Cancer wasn't something they could cure so easily.
A laugh bubbled out of her. They could have put her in a Cylon body to save her. Rumor said that Cylons had conquered disease. Rumor had once said that Cylon blood could cure anything. That rumor was obviously wrong, or Laura Roslin would not now be dying as slowly as Emily had.
There was salt in the air suddenly, and she smiled. Dying had been worth it, for this.
"Come with me." She murmured, taking Laura's hand. Laura, who wasn't quite ready for this, who didn't believe in the God that Dr. Baltar talked about.
They didn't speak as they stood on the deck, watching the banks slide by until Emily tugged at her hand. "Nearly there." She leaned over and kissed Laura's cheek. "It's not your turn yet."
Almost jealous of the life left in Laura Roslin, she pulled free of her and waved both hands at the people laughing up at her. "I'm here!"
Somewhere, Gaius droned on, talking of redemption and the perfection of the soul.
11. I don't wanna be the girl who has to fill the silence (Ellen Tigh)
Ellen Tigh is babbling because she is scared and uncertain. She is babbling because she heard Sam Anders (though he thought his harsh whispers were so silent), and she knows it will be easier this way. She is babbling to distract Saul until it's too late.
She is babbling because Ellen knows that she will do it again. Cavil will give her an ultimatum, and the freedom of the human race at large will pale in comparison to the freedom of the man she loves. The man who's frightened as he stares at her out of his one, good, eye.
She is babbling because she needs a drink, and there's nothing so gentle as ambrosia left on New Caprica.
"I could use a drink."
Drinking is absolution.
-
Except for when it's not. It takes Ellen a fraction of a second to realize where she is, to place the cool liquid slicking her skin and the chill in the air. She's almost calm when she stands.
John has so much to answer for.
12. The quiet scares me 'cause it screams the truth (Kara Thrace)
The moment after the explosion is always the worst part.
Because there's nothing and then there's Earth. Green and wide and full of life, and she laughs in the sunlight. Standing on a hillside, she can look towards the mountains that seem to stretch forever and breathe the air that tastes so sweet. Memory of the explosion always fades while the light soaks into her skin.
Throwing her helmet, she laughs again, then twirls, head back as she watches the clouds above.
Kara turns and turns, twisting until she's so dizzy she falls over backwards. The grass tickles the back of her neck, the scent almost as heady as a bottle of ambrosia.
It's what comes after that always sends her reeling.
Flying through the nebula, landing in a cell. And the doubt of everyone around her, even the old man who used to trust her completely, doesn't anymore.
Lee and Sam, though, are her constants, pulling her in two directions and then more until she's spinning again out under the stars, only this time, there's nothing so comforting as grass to catch her. Leoben. Painting. The never-ending pull of an insane memory that sometimes leaves her feeling hollow with the need to go back.
The dream is a lie.
The dream is a lie that brings her to a reality she faces alone.
Burning her own body feels right, even as the smell causes her gorge to rise and the sound of the flames destroy what could have been a peaceful night.
13. Please don't tell me that we had that conversation (Tory Foster)
we all have things we regret...
That was a lie. The words were hollow, and she knew it even before she touched their minds. Even before Sam's horror echoed through the link and Tyrol's hands wrapped around her throat.
Once, Tory had tried to feel guilt, regret, something other than diffidence.
It wasn't vindication. Killing Cally hadn't been right. But in some way, it had been necessary. To protect them, to protect their secret and Nicky's parentage (another child sacrificed for the greater evil?).
Maybe it was the lies that came afterwards. The little moments when she had the chance to tell the truth and didn't. Sliding her further and further from reality until she almost could remember it happening differently. I tried to stop her. She'd said that once, murmured it so softly that Gaius hadn't heard her.
His back was to her anyway, as he concentrated on writing yet another pointless sermon of mindless drivel that would conjure faith from the masses.
I didn't want to...
But Galen wasn't listening, and no one else was lifting a finger to save her. She had known they didn't like her, she'd never expected the lash of hatred to bathe her skin with the red light of oblivion.
If Sam had been mobile, maybe he would have. Hands on Galen's shoulder, he would have pulled him free. Sam had always been more up-right than the rest of them. More noble and human. She almost sneers at Galen as the world starts to go dark. He's human, too, human and Cylon all at once. Killing a woman with his bare hands because he can.
Cally wouldn't have blamed her. Or would she have? The thoughts get all jumbled up and Tory digs her nails into Galen's wrists, but gets nowhere.
The smells of blood and sweat follow her into the grave.
14. I won't remember, save your breath, 'cause what's the use? (Athena)
Sometimes, she wakes feeling cold all over, almost sure when her eyes open that there will be a pool of cool liquid supporting her, and her fellow Cylon, will be there to greet her again. Sisters and brothers with wide glassy smiles and eyes filled with hatred and secrets.
The terror of the idea makes her breath catch. The thought of being forever without her daughter, without her husband, is unthinkable. Of course, there are days when she walks into a room and the whole place goes silent, that she thinks it might still be worth it.
Cylon. Traitor. Enemy. They whisper. In the halls, on the deck. Oh, they're good about not doing it in front of her; but the walls aren't built to keep sound in and she hears them.
It's all right when they're out in the black, raptor and vipers, jokes running between them and CIC (Dee was always good at keeping them on their toes). They forget what she is when she's providing them support. Athena doesn't really understand that, the compartmentalization.
You pick your side and you stick with it.
She picked her daughter. She picked Helo. The general population of the fleet would like to see her dead. The crew of the Galactica tolerates her--for his sake. For the sake of the tiny child who giggles in day care, or stares silently at the people she passes.
Dying for Hera had been worth it. Hera is the last thing she thinks about as she falls asleep, and the first thing she thinks about when she wakes up.
Living for her people is another matter--she feels more human than Cylon. Her husband is human, her child is half-human, her friends are human. She hears jokes with punch lines that include 'a dead Cylon!'; she tells those jokes, repeating them and laughing along with the crowd.
I am not one of them.
She wants to convince them of that, wants to be sure they never turn on her. If she is safe, then her child is safe. She'll sacrifice everything for Hera, she always has.
It's worth it, for Hera's smiles, for her laughter, for the chance to hold her and watch her grow.
When the dreams start again, the ceaseless run through the opera house and the loss of her child, Sharon thinks of how to stop it. The Six takes her child and walks into the light, leaving her in the dark; forever lost without Hera.
In the end, it takes two bullets to stop the dreams.
She'll never be sorry for it. Everyone knows the only good Cylon is a dead one.
15. Ah, the night is calling (suicide bomber from Precipice)
Larissa Kale wanted to kill Cylons. It was why she'd joined the resistance, why she carefully dogged Jean Barolay's every step--when she could. When they weren't too busy on their work detail.
"The explosion at the ceremony." Larissa said, her voice quiet. She grunted as she hauled at the sheet of plastic they were moving, "That was us, wasn't it."
She wasn't sure she expected an answer, but Barolay had been warming to her a little--ever since they'd both taken out an Eight with a broken bottle and a lot of bruises. Larissa still couldn't quite breathe properly yet. There were no definites on New Caprica, only moments where she could pretend everything was all right. Fighting the Cylons was an easier equation.
"Duck."
Barolay's one word took Larissa a good minute to puzzle out before she made the connection. She'd moved another sheet of plastic by the time she got back to her co-conspirator. Duck had been a viper pilot, she remembered hearing him over the wireless what felt like a lifetime ago. He'd been laid-back and cheerful, even while firing upon the Cylons that attacked his routine patrol.
That he'd walked into the ceremony and set off a bomb was something she couldn't imagine doing. Not at first.
Four hours later, they were finished, though, and Larissa had finally realized there was something she could do for the resistance. Something that would make a mark for her in the history books (if any survived).
It wasn't as though anyone would miss her, after all.
-
Larissa's hands shook as she crept along in the line, waiting with fear in her gut. She knew she could do this, she was just afraid that the Cylons would spot her before she got through and into the power station. A part of her wanted to laugh: if the Cylons hadn't destroyed the colonies, they could have used dogs to sniff for things like explosives.
The Five at the head barely glanced at her and her id card before waving her inside.
She was in. She wanted to dance and cheer, but restrained herself. One of the centurions on the perimeter shifted, its red eye glaring at her. Like it knew why she was there.
It stepped towards her, eye still shining her eyes, the red light blinding--she panicked, jostling her way through the crowd and drawing attention to herself before another Five grabbed her shoulder.
He started to speak.
Larissa yanked free and reached into her pocket. There were other people around her, panicking and trying to break free of the power station. But there were also Cylons, and somewhere, she thought the scales were balanced.
It was so easy to press down on the switch.
16. And it whispers to me softly 'come and play' (Kendra)
Drugs don't block the memories anymore.
She takes them more out of habit than the need for the burn. Sweet candy flooding her veins and driving everything out but kaleidoscopic lights and the world turning around her. A battlestar doesn't orbit, of course. It merely plunges through the dark of space.
Little girl, looking so scared. The action was almost mechanical. Restore order. Take control. She fired almost out of reflex, the movement of pulling her gun automatic, normal. Comfortable.
The smell of potato peels and onion pull her back to herself.
-
She is what she's supposed to be. Giving orders, being efficient, doing her damned job. The new commander appreciates that. Adama seems to almost get her, except when he doesn't.
Kendra doesn't ask him about his daddy, and he doesn't ask her about Cain. It works pretty good that way.
-
They're something inevitable about the pain in her body. How difficult it is to breathe, how her hands shake as she sits there, the bomb at her feet. When she closes the connections, it's going to hurt, but for only an instant.
Kendra wonders if this would be good enough for Laird, if he would find her absolved of her sins for the murder of his daughter.
"All this has happened before." The thing in the vat is an abomination, a desecration of human and Cylon. It makes Kendra's gut twist as it talks, rambling, shifting in its liquid.
Once human, it claims to be God, to know things that are unknowable. It doesn't matter that her warning about Kara Thrace went unheard. She's no longer responsible for any part of the fleet. Just of a bomb and this ship.
A shiver slides through her as her fingers finish the last task they'll ever do. She will face her penance on the other side, if there is such a place.
17. Ah, I am falling (Matthias)
The explosion cracks her face-plate, and Erin knows that she's got seconds. Seconds to remember her life, her loved ones, what she could have done--
How stupid, to poke the Cylon's vessel again, but there'd been something itching at the back of her brain. Now she knows, as ice crawls up her spine and her breath starts to catch that her instincts were right. Sabotage.
She almost laughs as she wonders what the others will do, where they'll go. This isn't about them, anymore.
Adrenaline floods her and she twists, almost thinking she can make it back. If she can get to an airlock, if she can just--
The faceplate cracks more, and the air thins. She's still spinning, the sewer ship getting further and further away, soon it will be a pin-point.
She's not religious, she's not an atheist; but right now, as death looms, as the universe turns, she thinks that it might be almost beautiful.
Hypoxia.
Her heart catches, her breath shudders, and her eyes go wide as something bright breaks through the blackness of the star-field.
Then it's gone and her faceplate shatters, shards scattering.
Erin thinks of Picon, the never-ending fields of wheat her parents had had. She can almost smell the breeze off the crops, taste the dirt in the wind. It's as good a place to die as any.
18. And if I let myself go I'm the only one to blame (Laura Roslin)
Her people were safe. Laura could feel the sunlight against her skin, taste the cleanness of the air. It was so strange after so long with recycled air. Even New Caprica hadn't smelled this sweet, and Earth had had a tang to it, an undercurrent of metal and scorched wood.
The possibility that they would die out in a generation was no longer her concern. She'd fulfilled what she'd promised, she'd brought them to where they could flourish.
The rest was up to them.
Bill was talking, his voice droning on, but she didn't listen, her thoughts turned ever-inwards. Somewhere, she could almost scent the sharp smell of the river flats, loaded with mud and algae that would cling to her boots. The gentle rocking of the boat as it slowly drifted down on the current lulled her into a sense of security.
Emily, Billy, her family, would be waiting for her, on the other side. The pain would be gone, their laughter would be free.
She would be free.
19. I'm safe up high
Eight hadn't chosen a name yet, too starry-eyed and dreamy to think of one. Even with her more cynical sisters, even with the people of the Galactica giving her looks and whispers, she still couldn't quite believe where she was.
All Eights, if they wanted, could share in Sharon Valerii's memories.
They could close their eyes and breathe in the smell of the metal decking and the oil from the maintenance walkways, pretend that they were in a flight suit, getting ready for another raptor mission.
Eight sometimes spied on the Chief, on the deck gang. Sometimes, she escaped her work detail and peered into the pilots' ready room. Places she had been, places that still felt familiar to Eight, with Sharon Valerii's memories under her fingertips.
Kissing the Chief, making out like teenagers in the tool room. Weathering Cally's disapproving look, feeling the ache of loss when he broke it off. All of it paled to being there, to seeing where it had been experienced.
At night, Eight curls in on herself, dreaming of touching him. Or just shyly smiling at him.
But what if he did notice her? What then?
She wasn't Sharon Valerii. He'd know that, with the real one (the original that Athena had copied, that Eight had copied) in the brig, awaiting her fate.
Eight didn't know if she wanted Boomer dead or if she wanted her alive as some sort of talismanic touchstone.
Not that it mattered, no one would ever ask her opinion on the matter.
With her eyes closed, she dreamed of houses and raptor flights, of laughing fights on the deck and the heady rush of orgasm with her pants around her ankles.
Once, the memory was so vivid, she could smell the sharp-sweet-musk of Galen Tyrol's skin.
It was the last memory she had.
20. I'm coming down, coming down, coming down (Helena Cain)
The only good Cylon is a dead cylon. Helena should have remembered that. Months ago, when it became clear there was nothing more of value that it would (or could) share with them, she should have ordered it to be airlocked.
But something had stopped her, some need for revenge, some need to prove that she wasn't as broken as the thing standing before her. All those weeks and months, watching her through the glass, listening to the sounds she'd make-soft, pathetic, weak. A machine that was programmed to react like a human, a machine that could feel devastation.
Someone had made it like that, knowing the possible consequences. So short-sighted of the Cylons.
You're not my type.
Gina doesn't flinch, and Helena doesn't let herself imagine that she's more broken than the Cylon. Not while the bullet bites deep, not while her memories consume her. Not while her hatred drags her under into the nothingness that awaits her.
21. Spinning round, spinning round, spinning round (Jean Barolay)
If someone had ever asked Jean how she wanted to die, she would have joked about being a hundred and dying while having fantastic sex with at least two different people. Of course, in reality, she'd always assumed it would be a Cylon that killed her. Being a member of the resistance and surviving Caprica hadn't guaranteed anything. Surviving NewCap had been a fluke.
She'd always known her number would come up, that she was marked in some way. Tainted by the death she'd seen and the deaths she'd caused. Just as the Cylons would one day reap their retribution, so would she.
It was almost ironic that she hadn't seen it coming, though. The Six lashing out at her, and her own confrontational reply. She'd tried to fight--Jean had always been one for fighting--but the Six was too quick and the blows fell faster and harder than she'd expected.
Anders' shout had pulled her back to her feet, and she'd joked. She was sure she'd joked before everything went blank.
22. When it's good, then it's good, it's so good 'till it goes bad (Gina)
She was broken. Wrong. Different. She could still remember begging him. Kill me.
And he hadn't, he'd refused, he'd given her purpose; almost a way to move on.
Gina wrapped her arms around her legs tighter and drew in another breath, feeling the tears start again, sliding warm down her cheeks.
A purpose. There'd been purpose in their underground movement, purpose in trying to reconcile with the Cylon. They will save us, she used to say, smiling and giving a wink. Almost like a joke that wasn't really a joke.
Gaius was planning to start a new life for the humans, give them hope for their future on a planet that was a joke.
It wasn't right.
A shiver went through her, sense-memory stroking its fingers up her sides, mouth touching her neck, body pressing her down--
Violently, she shoved that away, eyes wide and fixating on the far wall.
She'd set the countdown. It wouldn't be long now, and then the hope the humans wanted would be shattered, changed. God would forgive her, as he had forgiven her for her other sins.
Please...
23. 'Till you're trying to find the you that you once had (Boomer)
Off with her head.
Lying in her rack, yellow still on her fingers (if she looks, though Sharon scrubbed and scrubbed and it's really gone), she wonders how the Gods could give her this fate. This sense of not being who she is, what she is. Confusion and uncertainty rolled into hatred, because she can't be the enemy, she just can't.
The very idea that she could betray her friends, her lover (ex, she has to remind herself), her commander (a man she thinks she might love like a father), is almost too much to bear and she turns on her side, choking a sob into her pillow before she manages to stifle the reaction.
I'm afraid, sir, because I'm not myself, you see.
Finding the suspicion to be reality isn't what she expected. Refusing to give in to Three, to conform with her idea of being a perfect little Cylon, Boomer kept in her apartment and to herself. She blasted her music, she worked out, she ran the stairs four times a day for lack of anything else to do.
Watching out the window at the construction was only sometimes distracting. Mostly, she thought about the things she could have done different, better.
If only they hadn't found out she was a Cylon.
You should learn not to make personal remarks, it's very rude.
Caprica sparks something in her, and Boomer embraces her idea of peace without thinking it through, clearly. Starbuck loved this man...
There is something almost right in stopping the war, in trying to move on. The humans are looking for Earth, but so are the Cylon, determined to find it first. It will be a fresh start, it has to be.
the passion's there, so it's gotta be all right
Faith is easy to abandon, with Cavil murmuring things that make sense. Logic and reason, reality versus dreams. Boomer remembers her dreams less and less as New Caprica grinds to a bloody close all around them.
Abandoning Caprica and what was between them, is less easy. Boomer watches her with Baltar, and later with Baltar and Three, and wonders what she herself did wrong to have her walk away like that. I'm sorry I can't be Gaius she'd almost said a hundred times.
But she had her pride, even as she let Cavil's hands chase themselves over her skin, even as she kept her eyes open but didn't look at him while he slid into her, she never let herself stoop low enough to beg that Caprica love her (Cavil says love is mere ephemeral nonsense).
Trying to kill Hera feels like the first thing she's done that's honest. True to herself. Dying with Caprica's hands on her neck feels like more truth. Something she chooses to ignore as she wakes again, as Cavil and Ellen argue in front of her. As Ellen watches her and Boomer pretends that her humanity doesn't resonate.
You're a thing, Sharon! That's what your friends think of you!
The thing was, betraying Ellen was easy. She still hated the people who'd created her, who'd destroyed her innocence. But Galen... even after New Caprica and Cally (hatred in her eyes, Cally was glad Boomer was dying), betraying him was harder. Tricking him, showing him the things she'd dreamed of, once upon a time was like pulling teeth.
It's not until after, sitting in the dark of their colony with Hera off somewhere, being tested and poked and prodded for the secret, the cure, that she lets herself think about it.
Once upon a time, a man had loved her. Now he hates her, hates all of her, and maybe that's fitting for what she's become.
Your majesty must excuse her, she means well, but she can't help saying foolish things, as a general rule.
Standing there, looking at Athena, seeing the dull hatred in her eyes, Boomer knows there is no redemption for her. No going back from what she's become. She doesn't welcome it, but she accepts it.
A part of her wants to look at Starbuck, to ask for her forgiveness, to ask how it all went wrong. But it's too late there, too.
Galen isn't there to shoot her himself, that's the only consolation she has.
There once was a little girl...
24. I have heard myself cry, never again (Cally)
Talk to me, you motherfrakker!
They were past that now. So very far past that Cally wasn't even sure she could ever get back to it. Her skin crawled at the thought of the last two years (three, four, HOW LONG--she couldn't remember that anymore). Sharing his bed, letting him touch her, feeling his mouth slide down her neck to her breasts, his hands--
Her gorge rose and she fought it down, the room spinning crazily for an instant.
Cylon-lover.
They'd call her that, whisper it, and she would join Helo. She wondered for an instant if he had advice on holding your temper in the face of prejudice. (not stupid. Cylons were the enemy, it couldn't be, it couldn't be, it couldn't--)
Nicky shrilled again, the sound breaking her free of her thoughts.
Barely seconds had passed, the sprawled form of her husband (Cylon) still supine and unresponsive while his child (their child, half-Cylon, half abomination, half--) shrieked his displeasure.
It steadied her.
Hands shaking, she scooped him up. "It's all right, Nicky, it's all right."
She could go, she could leave, she could tell the Admiral. He'd believe her, he had to.
Just like he believed that Starbuck was a Cylon?
Starbuck, who had a ship now, who'd come back from the dead with a lie about Earth. A dream that was crumbling at Cally's feet. She hiccuped on a sob, then shoved out of the quarters she shared with the Cylon.
The old man wouldn't believe her. Not of Chief, not of Tigh--Tory Foster, he might. But Roslin would protect her. Cally would be on the outskirts again, ostracized for false accusations. And if Tyrol could get to her again. (she remembered her broken jaw, the bruises, the pain of waiting, night after night, for it to heal. The jokes...)
no.
No.
Better to run, to find another ship, escape--
Her feet had brought her to an airlock, her subconscious shoving her willy-nilly until she fetched up against the one place she could go. The keys for the locks jingled in one hand (when had she grabbed those?)
Nicky was sobbing out his terror, and she echoed him, hand shaking so bad she couldn't get the key in at first.
"Cally."
CylonCylonCylon--
"I know what you are." The bravado wasn't the mistake. The confusion was, the uncertainty that gnawed at her, thoughts and feelings all jumbled upside-down until it was far too late.
25. Broken down in agony just tryin' to find a friend (Sue-Shaun)
When Sue-Shaun joined the C-Bucs, the coach joked that she was ambitious enough to unseat Anders from his spot. And she considered it. She knew the 'Bucs could use her skills and talents--simple fact was not arrogance. They weren't falling in the stats, they were solid, in the mid-range (but could rise). Taking control, driving the team to the top would give her acclaim not to mention endorsement deals that would keep her in a lot of money after she retired.
But there was something about Anders, about the way he'd joke about the perfect play, the way his eyes would light up when he'd argue with Rally over physics equations--and wasn't that a shock? Half the team seemed to be frakking brainiacs. She almost felt out of her league until it actually rubbed off on her and she quoted something at Ten-Point that made his eyes go wide, then his mouth split in a grin.
"You're gettin' it." His hand smacked her shoulder and Sue-Shaun glared after him.
So she let him stay in charge, but she never lied to herself, and she never let him get away with lazy shit in his plays. It made him better--it made them all better.
That's why, when the world ended, she fell naturally into place as his second.
Not quite a well-oiled machine, but good enough against the machines that had destroyed their lives and homes. Sue-Shaun thought about her nephew, about how he'd wanted to follow in her footsteps (her sister used to groan, one hand over her face, and claim that she'd corrupted Jordan).
Planning bombing raids wasn't like planning an offensive play. Not after the first time she shot a man.
He was a Cylon, and it shouldn't have mattered, but she still saw the spray of blood in her nightmares, still tasted it at the back of her throat as she stripped his body for anything useful.
Sam had seen her shaking hands and grabbed her shoulder afterwards. "It gets us all, the first time."
But he never showed it. Not until late at night, with half a bottle of cooking wine in his belly. Which was fine. Sue-Shaun didn't think any of them could handle him falling apart in front of them every day. His stoicism had made him a good team caption. Now it made him a good resistance leader.
Cylons looking like humans was something they all had to take in stride, though it made them paranoid. Every new person was scrutinized, every movement of people who hadn't been a C-Buc checked and double-checked.
Even then, it wasn't perfect.
The PR agent had seemed like such a nice guy until Rally spotted his double after a hospital raid.
It put them on edge even more. Firing on the colonial officers was reflex even if it seemed pointless in retrospect. Watching the way Anders' eyes followed the blonde and the way the other moped didn't make them assets, though. Anders could get himself killed if he was distracted, and there was no telling what Helo's problem was.
Sue-Shaun wasn't about to ask him. That sort of thing would get her a ridiculous sob story and a proposition if experience was anything to go on.
That didn't preclude her from bringing him a drink a time or two. Especially after Starbuck and Anders returned from 'checking the perimeter' looking like two people who'd just frakked in a closet.
"It's about frakking time." Helo called to Starbuck.
"Frak you."
Maybe he wouldn't be upset about that.
Still didn't make him any of Sue-Shaun's business.
Also didn't make Starbuck's insane plan to take a Cylon raider any less insane. But she could see that Anders thought it might work, and that was good enough for Sue-Shaun.
It was just a pity the Cylon's crashed their little planning party.
When she woke up, strapped into the machine and barely able to feel past her waist, she knew what it was. She'd heard the rumors, the whispers. The things the women in their little camp told each other to watch out for in case you get captured alive...
She wants to scream, but all she can do is whisper. And she thanks the Gods that Starbuck finds her before too long, that she has the courage to do what has to be done.
And then she doesn't think at all.
26. you're my perfection (Sesha Abinell)
Ray used to joke about children, his mouth on her hip and his hands on her belly. Like he could conjure one just by thinking about it. Sesha had smacked him for it, tumbled him onto his back and taken his mouth with hers before she could tell him her thoughts on the subject.
It wasn't that Sesha disliked children--they just weren't something she was concentrating on. Not yet, not with her job and Ray's job and the ninety-minute commute every single day to do her job.
And then the Cylons came, and their world turned wrong in less than seven hours. Huddling on Greenleaf, they didn't joke about children. Most of the time, they didn't even have sex (there wasn't anything else to do, but the comfort of sharing their bodies wasn't an easy thing to attain with the world turned to dust).
Still, there was the hope of Earth. But as the weeks wore on, that seemed less and less likely. And the rumors made it worse: the Commander lied, the President lied, too. Neither of them knew where they were going.
Ray dying was almost expected. Already with her fingers in the rumors and political under-currents of the fleet, Sesha quickly began gathering more intelligence, piecing together the horrific knowledge that a Cylon was controlling every move of the recently-promoted Admiral. It seemed too impossible to believe, too heinous. But more than one source had seen the Cylon, her belly beginning to swell with a child that should have been aborted the instant it was discovered.
That anyone was allowing that abomination to grow when the human race was dwindling--Sesha wasn't sure which made her sicker anymore.
Humanity had lost the instant a Cylon conceived with the child of a human. Half-breed or not, it was proof that it was possible.
There were other rumors about the Cylons and baby farms, back on Caprica, but that was less immediate, less real to a fleet of people that hadn't stepped foot on their respective planets since the attacks began.
So Sesha made her plans. She wrote her manifestos and she gathered the support she needed.
It didn't matter if she survived: the truth would be known and there was nothing that could stop that.
27. this party's over
She's never chosen a name; not like Natalie or Caprica or Gina. She's just a Six, just one of many. But she still feels like a single person as she walks through the tiny city the humans had started, then stumbled in building.
People threw things at her: glances, refuse, insults. But none dared to touch her, none dared to interfere. Not now that every Cylon went out with at least one centurion. She glanced at her watchdog, wondering if she should feel grateful for living in what felt like a police state.
Six had long since stopped trying to explain, to cajole. We're just here to help would be met with jeers and mockery.
It was with relief that she spotted the water purification plant she'd been working at. There were people inside who didn't hate her, who didn't call her a thing or evil.
People who didn't mind that a Cylon got her hands dirty alongside them.
She traded jokes with the guard on the door, a Five that had been getting his hands dirty for years in factories on Geminon and Picon until he'd died when the bombs fell.
Once inside, she went to work, putting her muscles to good use to see the colony to a better future.
She was still dreaming of those possibilities when Jean Barolay pulled her into the vat room, laughing about something. It was too late to realize the past couldn't be forgotten so easily as she choked on silt and worse, eyes wide as strong hands held her under.
-f-
Further notes: Yes, I did just kill 27 women. In my defence, canon did it first. This fic has been almost two weeks in the making, ever since I first thought that I could use Pink's 'Sober' as a framing device. I wrote down names, then counted lines. I had 22 women at first, before filling in the chorus bits with an Eight, two Sixes, Emily and Sesha.
I don't know what to think about it anymore. It's not a happy fic, it's not a sad fic. It's sort of just there.
Larissa is the first name of the actress who played the unnamed suicide bomber in Precipice.