BSG fic: Battle Scars, PG
disclaimer: not mine
characters: Ishay, Kara, Sam, Skulls, Cottle
pairings: Kara/Sam, (Kara/Lee is referenced), Caprica/Tigh (referenced)
length: 4,000
rating: PG, some violence, some language
set: during Blood on the Scales and No Exit
notes: This has been sitting around unfinished for a while, because I couldn't decide where it was going. And then I wrote the end and it was depressing, and I got distracted.
summary: Layne Ishay deals with the mutiny and the Cylons in her own way.
Battle Scars
by ALC Punk!
Felix had been a friend of Ishay's. Not close. Not someone she routinely looked for, or sat down and chatted with. Just someone she knew enough to smile at in the corridor, or sit next to if they were in the cafeteria at the same time. She'd known a few more intimate details about his leg and certain other medical conditions. And she'd known that there was something in the air, something he was planning with secrets lurking in the back of his smile.
So it wasn't as though she was really expecting something. Not really. The days had been blending into a sameness for months after New Caprica, and the search for Earth had ended in a dead planet. Layne didn't care one way or the other about allying themselves with the Cylon, but she understood the cold hard facts and numbers that told her resources were dwindling. Even now, they only used painkillers when necessary. Common headaches were left untreated.
And yet she wasn't surprised when Racetrack and Connor arrived, dragging Skulls between them. She snapped a question at them, already trying to figure out resources this patient would require. There was blood on his flight suit. A bad sign.
"He's been shot," Racetrack said, her eyes wide and face pale. There was a ring around her lips of whiter skin as though she were repressing the urge to cry or worse.
There was blood on her hands. Ishay only noticed that after they'd moved the unconscious pilot onto a bed.
It took three of them to remove the flight suit--destroying one would bring the wrath of the Gods down upon them for the waste of resources, and Ishay liked knowing their pilots could still fly safely, though the bullet-hole would need extensive patching. Connor spent the time agitated, fidgeting and barely being any help until Racetrack smacked him.
"Get your head in the game."
"It's just--we should be out there--" his eyes darted around the room as though expecting to be shot, himself.
Racetrack's lips compressed further, then she darted a glance at Ishay before shrugging, "We're safe. There's a cordon of marines and personnel forming around us even now."
"A cordon?" Cottle's voice sounded a cross between rusty and angry.
"Sir." For a brief instant, Racetrack seemed to gather herself, then she glanced at Skulls, eyes on his face. "Lieutenant Gaeta has relieved the Admiral of command."
"Gods-dammit. As though we don't have enough problems already!" Cottle's hands and eyes assessed the bullet wound. "Ishay, get him hooked up to an IV. Looks like the bullet went through. He's still breathing, so it didn't hit a lung, but keep an eye on him."
And that was that. Connor melted away in the face of Cottle's irascibility.
Racetrack stayed for a time, Skulls' hand in hers, but then she left after she'd received a message from the CIC.
-
The pilot woke up not long after their third group of casualties had arrived. Cottle had Ishay working triage, sending the worst to exam areas first. Bullet holes, broken bones, and at least two concussions were the tally so far.
Ishay stopped to check on Skulls during a lull and found him trying to get out of bed.
"Don't." Her hand kept him flat on his back. "We're not sure the extent of the damage, but it's vital you don't injure yourself further."
He laughed, but stayed down. "There's a mutiny on, medic. You think I'm safe here?"
"We're all safe here." The cordon had already stopped one group from the side still supporting the Admiral. The screams had made Cottle flinch and stalk out there, yelling at them. He would help either side in this mutiny, he didn't care what their orders were. He wanted no part of the fighting, and made them swear to send anyone injured through to the infirmary.
Ishay was still uncertain how he hadn't gotten himself killed. But then again, he was the only reliable doctor they had aboard. She and Kravinsky and the rest couldn't manage on their own.
"Frakkin' toasters," Skulls muttered, head turned as he watched a marine bleed out under Cottle and Tomas' hands.
Commotion from the door pulled her back out into the entry-way. A bloody marine, leaning against the wall called weakly for her help, but she ignored him: he only had a concussion, it was just that the scalp wound was bleeding profusely. One of the orderlies would be along shortly to tend him.
-
It wasn't a steady stream. People came in ones and twos, usually bleeding, sometimes near-death.
When Starbuck arrived, her husband bloody in her arms, Ishay felt for a moment as if life were crystallizing around her. Cylon. And he was dying. For an instant, all she could do was stare at the lolling head of Sam Anders and think about the deaths he'd caused over the last four years--if not beyond.
Then her training snapped her into movement and she stepped forward, shouting for a gurney and helping arrange the lanky man on white sheets that stained quickly with red blood.
-
Refugees and injured crew streamed in once the mutiny was put down, they'd been in hiding, waiting to see which side would come out on top before venturing into the open. Ishay didn't hear about the finale, the guns held against them in CIC, nor about the march that went from the airlock to the control center of the battlestar. She just heard about how Adama put Zarek and Gaeta in the brig; then she tried not to think about what was going to happen after that.
There was only one punishment for mutiny, and Layne had no illusions about the mercy of William Adama toward men who'd betrayed him.
It would get in the way of doing her job, and she was a medic first (and a person later, she mocked herself in one fleeting moment of self-awareness).
So many fatalities and she got tired of seeing the heart-dark blood from too many bullet-wounds, or the bright red froth on the lips that was accompanied by soft pleas or nothing at all. The bodies were stacked in the morgue, piled high until Cottle broke and gave the order to start carting them out, using the aft hanger deck as a morgue.
They'd used it before, of course. Back when it all began, when the Cylon attack on the colonies had seemed nothing more than a senseless tragedy.
Ishay stayed in the infirmary, slapping bandages on what she could and holding hands during the times where she couldn't. She had no time to take a break, to rest her eyes. Food wasn't something she could even contemplate. Not yet. And sleep would be filled with things she'd rather never remember.
-
Ishay was checking on Anders' vitals, an exhausted Starbuck half-watching her when Apollo came to visit. She wasn't sure when the other woman had taken the time to clean herself up, but at least she no longer had blood caked everywhere. Too, she could understand how good that felt, though with gloves on, blood wasn't such a sticky problem.
The worry in the ex-Major's face as he looked between the Cylon and his wife made Ishay's teeth clench and she bent her head a little more, determined to ignore them as she finished her routine checks.
"Hey, Kara."
Her reply was a glance at him, then she went back to watching the unconscious man in front of her. Ishay could have told her that was pointless. A waste of time and manpower. If the Captain wanted to help, she could check the other patients, change dressings. She could do that much.
It wasn't Ishay's place to say, of course.
"Kara, I--" Apollo was silent for a moment, his hand on her shoulder as he looked down at her.
She finally looked up at him. "This is where I'm supposed to be."
"Yeah, I was figuring that out. Kara... Sam's a good man. Don't let him go this time."
More silence, and Ishay was almost out of things to check, though she was strangely fascinated--wait until she had a chance to tell Felix the latest gossip (her brain took almost too long to remind her that wouldn't be possible and she felt herself freeze just a little), then a bitter laugh erupted from Starbuck, "He's a Cylon, Lee."
"And if that made a difference, he'd be dead."
Starbuck was almost too quiet to hear when she replied, "I'm sorry."
Not having a clue what was going on, Ishay rolled her eyes. Until the last thirty hours, she hadn't realized how much of a frak-up the Captain was. Apologizing to her Cylon for getting him shot, once even apologizing to Cottle for the lousy transport job.
Cottle had just shaken his head and continued ordering the others to their tasks.
"It will always be Sam, won't it."
Less a question, more a quiet statement of fact. "Lee."
"It's all right, Kara. He needs you. He needs you a hell of a lot more than--"
"Don't."
Ishay glanced up at them, her annoyance as well-hidden as it could be, "Two minutes, Apollo." She slipped out of the area, heading next door, this time to check on Sergeant Hadrian, her arm in shreds from a grenade. The Sergeant would never see use of the arm again, though Cottle thought there might be options.
"I've got a government to put together," Apollo said, emotion in his voice. To Ishay, it read almost like resentment, but she'd been wrong before.
"Watch your six, Apollo."
Tuning their words out, she brushed her fingers over Hadrian's shoulder, wondering why no one came to sit at the human's bedside rather than the Cylon's.
-
With things mostly calmed down, Cottle ordered half the shift to sleep, but kept the rest to tend to those still in beds. Ishay took a round on the other side of the medical bay, as far away from Starbuck and her Cylon husband as she could get. There were a few marines, now, patrolling the area where they'd moved all of those who'd been on the wrong side in the mutiny.
Ishay was careful to make certain they would recognize her before stepping inside the curtains. Skulls was in the second bed, and she went there first, almost hoping he was awake. Though she wasn't sure what to say. The marines could hear, and it wasn't as though she could help him break out. It wasn't as though she even wanted to, but something had given during the long hours, something in her had changed. She didn't know which side she was on anymore.
"Did you hear about the baby?" Ishay asked, hands busy with their work. Pulling off the dressing and checking for infection. Her mind was on that, though part of it was focused elsewhere.
Skulls barely sounded bitter when he asked, "The freak?"
"Not that one," some part of her, somewhere, wanted to claw to the surface and be sick about the abomination. Human and cylon was bad enough. Cylon and cylon meant they could reproduce, they could continue as a species. "The skinjob the XO fraks. She's pregnant."
There weren't enough words to express the look on Hamish's face and Ishay pressed hard on the tape, re-sealing it against his skin. "We have to--" he gasped a little, maybe from the pain, maybe from the how the idea made him want to vomit.
"Not now," her words were clipped. "Felix--"
But Felix hadn't won, and Ishay moved away before she could continue her thought aloud. Mutiny in a time of war was punishable by death. She wondered if he'd even gotten a last meal.
-
The blonde cylon had been so thrilled at the idea that her race could continue to produce and evolve. Ishay remembered that as she helped prep Sam Anders for his first surgery. His wife was there, hovering and trying to talk to him. He couldn't hear.
But he could speak, and Ishay tried not to listen, finding it a little grating on the nerves. It wasn't what he was saying. There was simply something about the cadence that annoyed her. She should have taken Cottle's suggestion and gone off-shift by now. But there was no way she could sleep yet, not with that weight hanging on her, stifling her breath (but not enough for anyone to notice, not that anyone ever did).
Maybe it was simply the idea that this machine, this Cylon, was having the same sort of problems a human shot in the head would. Ishay's hands were calm and careful as she did her job. They didn't shake in the least. Not even when he talked about God.
-
Cottle tried to order her to rest when the half-shift came straggling back, most of them looking no better rested than before. She refused. He told her to watch herself and stomped back to check on Anders again.
"They're being executed. Firing squad," Sandy, the nurse who'd spent more time with Felix than anyone told Ishay as they worked together to re-stock the crash cart.
"Did you expect anything less?" Trying to make her words less tart failed, but Sandy didn't seem to notice. She was breathing again--she'd already dealt with the possibility, already put it behind her (leaning against the wall, shaking and stifling her breathing until the things that weren't sobs stopped).
"Frakkin' Cylons."
"Careful." Checking the leads on the shock pads, Ishay slewed a glance towards the marines. "Wouldn't want to get taken up as a late mutineer."
"Sir." Sandy was silent after that, her eyes occasionally darting towards the doorway, as though she were planning something.
Ishay took a moment to figure out how to throttle that, then assigned Sandy to the marines recovering from the mutiny. The younger woman was a good nurse, her heart sometimes simply got in the wrong place.
So did a lot of them, though in the end, blood was blood and it didn't matter who was bleeding it.
It shouldn't matter.
-
Felix had been a friend. Ishay remembered holding his hand those first few, terrible days. Holding it and trying to be a comfort in this world that was frakked-upside-down and sideways. He'd sung a song, and she'd tried not to cry for everything.
After all, she'd been dealing with the sickness of war for years now. This was no different.
And when the report came that the firing squad had done its job, she continued on with her work, fingers easily noting down temperature and heart-rate as Sam Anders lay, half-aware of the world around him, Kara Thrace and the others hovering, waiting for him to come back.
-
"Heard one of the toasters got hit," Skulls mumbled to Ishay the next time she checked on his bandage.
Her feet ached from the time spent on them--too many hours to count and too few people to see to those still left in the infirmary. Those that hadn't been carried out in bags, and the current death count for the quelled mutiny was in the fifties. Cottle hadn't slept, either. "Yes." Her reply was short and non-committal.
She couldn't care enough. Not right now.
"Gonna live?"
Ishay pressed down a little too hard as she swiped anti-biotic along the stitches, causing Skulls to gasp. "I don't know. Prognosis isn't in yet."
Half true. Half lie. Cottle was fairly certain Sam Anders would survive the day, if he didn't push himself and the bullet were removed safely.
"Frak that bullshit. Should die. I'd kill him myself if I could get up," Skulls mumbled, head dropping back and eyes starting to drift closed from the exhaustion of simply breathing and surviving.
"Don't try," she advised, taping him back up and turning away to wipe her hands clean.
They were shaking, just a little.
"You seen Maggie?" Skulls shifted a little, wincing and trying to grab Ishay's hand. His was hot and dry--too hot. She could see the fever covering his skin in a sheen of sweat.
She'd get him started on IV antibiotics. Pray to the Gods for the best. "Maggie?" She asked, gentling his hand back down onto the bed.
"Racetrack. Said she'd be back, visit me," he mumbled.
One of the conspirators. Racetrack was as locked up as the rest, but Ishay didn't know if he wanted to hear that. "I haven't heard anything," she offered. It wasn't precisely a lie. No official list of prisoners had circulated.
"Probably waitin' to bust me out." The hopeful look in his eyes was almost too much.
Ishay checked his pulse and made a notation on his chart, then tried to smile, "Perhaps she is. You get some rest, Lieutenant. Try not to worry, all right?"
"Maggie's a good'un," he said, his words almost lost in the shift and chatter of nearby patients and their guards. "Always there for me."
Watching him, feeling the hopelessness, she was seized with the urge to do something. With her hands clenched, Ishay could understand Felix's sudden shift into mutineer. Could understand Racetrack and SKulls, and the rest of them and their need for blood. She felt it, too. Only problem was, there was nothing she could do. Nothing she could do to contribute to the destruction of the Cylons. Not here and now.
Nothing that would bring back the hope of Earth or the shattered peace of the colonies.
-
Cottle brought her in to help prep Anders for his second surgery, telling her he trusted her and this one was more dangerous. There was a bullet to remove from his brain and an artery to repair. And yet, Anders was still babbling, still talking about colonies and redemption and dying. Things that, as a Cylon, he really didn't understand.
She wanted to feel nothing for him, an indifference that just slotted him in as another patient, but she couldn't. Not even with the way Kara Thrace watched him, her face drawn and eyes so dark Ishay wondered if she saw his death as clear as she saw the stars when in a viper.
Those were thoughts Ishay kept to herself as she checked the oxygen valves, made sure his pulse was steady and began the prep of the drugs which would knock him out.
-
"Ishay!" The call pulled her from her notes on the patients in the restricted wing and she looked up to find Hotdog coming towards her.
"Lieutenant?" she asked, not bothering to stand. Her feet didn't actually feel anything anymore, but spending time off of them would keep her legs from hurting. It felt as though months had passed since she'd rolled out of her rack, prepared for another day of boredom. Cottle had sent her off to nap earlier, and she'd woken with blood and death behind her eyes, Felix's bandaged leg floating mysteriously in the middle of it all. It hadn't been exactly restful.
She rather wished the boredom hadn't gone away.
"It's Nicky," he hunched his shoulders, looking like a confused kid rather than a man with a child. "I just. I can't seem to get him to sleep, and I'd ask Tyrol--the Chief--but--"
"He's busy." Ishay tried to feel sympathy for him, and felt a little surfacing for his child. He was a human baby, after all. "Have you tried singing to him? Sandy, the nurse who watched him off and on last week said singing worked really well to put him out."
"No. No, I hadn't. I kinda can't sing."
For the first time in hours, Ishay felt a smile cross her lips, "Try anyway."
"All right. All right, I can do that, I think," he added under his breath. Then he smiled, a little bashfully. "Thanks, Ishay."
"You're welcome. Now get the frak out of my infirmary so you don't contract something to infect your son with."
He took the reprimand with another smile and left.
Ishay sat there, staring after him and wondering about how something like that could remind her of hope and the future. Of the chance for something good to come tomorrow, if only she would wait for it. Then she looked back down at her report on Hadrian's arm, and she felt that hope slide away. There would be no rebirth for the human race. No Gods coming to save them.
No God, either.
There would be just surviving, as they had been for the last four years.
-
Skulls was gone when she went to check on him again. The marines were moving all of the mutineers out, getting them ready to ship over to the prison ship in raptors. She wanted to rail at them, to argue that her patients weren't ready for travel, that the medical care over there would be worse than nothing.
But she had no authority, and they weren't taking the worst off, just the minor wounded.
How Skulls was on that list, she didn't understand, but he wasn't going to die. His chart said the fever had broken and he'd been resting comfortably before they left with him.
Sitting back at Cottle's desk, making a last notation on another file, she thought about all that had happened.
-
Would it be justice?
Standing there, hooking up the EEG, her movements routine and so easy, Ishay wondered. She had to clean her hands after applying the sticky gel to Sam Anders' temples.
He smelled human, slightly stale and unwashed, like most patients did. But he was a Cylon. She'd watched him, earlier, with his eyes open wide, so blue she could have drowned in them once upon a time (he'd only tried once, back when his wife was dead and he was on too many painkillers to be coherent, making a pass that was as clumsy as his fall off a viper). But the things he'd said--even from her station, moving about the floor and checking the rest of the patients didn't keep her from hearing snatches and words.
Cylons. And they'd created the other skinjobs. They'd caused all of this to happen.
Cottle had let Starbuck back in--sometimes, it amused Ishay what a softie the man could be. Other times, like now, it just annoyed her. So the pilot who'd frakked them all with Earth was talking to her toaster husband. Great.
There'd been rumors, of course. About the Demetrius--back when that sort of shit seemed to matter to more than just the rabble. Rumors of mutiny. And Felix had--
Ishay didn't like to think about his halting, stumbling words when he'd been so full of fever and infection.
But now she knew about Sam Anders. Now she knew he was a Cylon. And maybe Felix hadn't been wrong, hadn't been telling a fiction of feverish dreams full of anger.
'I stood up for you on the Demetrius, Kara! You owe me!'
The words still sent a strange sense of foreboding down her spine.
It wasn't hard to switch the machine from the wave-patterns of a mostly-healthy brain to a test pattern. Her words were sharp when she said, "Don't bother." without looking back at the other woman.
"What?"
"There's no brain activity at all." The words tumbled out easily, and Ishay wondered a little if this was how it felt to take that first step. It wouldn't take much for the second to follow. A few air bubbles in his IV, or turning the oxygen too low. Just enough to ensure full brain-death. A vegetable would be considered a waste of resources sorely needed for other, more deserving patients.
She was a doctor. She'd taken an oath.
And Felix Gaeta had been a friend.
Ishay ignored the way her hands were shaking and switched off the monitor, face blank as she turned, "If you'll excuse me, I have other patients."
The pain in Starbuck's eyes seared Ishay down to her toes, but she had seen worse pain--Connor, crying after a bad drunk at Joe's (his son, dead in his arms when the Cylons destroyed a temple on New Caprica); the women who'd arrive in that damp tent on New Caprica, refusing to name the men who'd raped them, but flinching when 'cylons' were mentioned in their hearing; every man, woman and child who'd lost family on the colonies, who'd survived when they hadn't. And there were more.
Kara Thrace wasn't special. Kara Thrace might not even be human.
"Can I stay with him?"
The thread of dullness in Starbuck's voice was spreading to her eyes. She was internalizing everything, trying not to care. Ishay shrugged, "I'll let Cottle know you're still here."
Hopefully, Sam Anders would stay unconscious long enough for her to accomplish her task.
-f-
characters: Ishay, Kara, Sam, Skulls, Cottle
pairings: Kara/Sam, (Kara/Lee is referenced), Caprica/Tigh (referenced)
length: 4,000
rating: PG, some violence, some language
set: during Blood on the Scales and No Exit
notes: This has been sitting around unfinished for a while, because I couldn't decide where it was going. And then I wrote the end and it was depressing, and I got distracted.
summary: Layne Ishay deals with the mutiny and the Cylons in her own way.
Battle Scars
by ALC Punk!
Felix had been a friend of Ishay's. Not close. Not someone she routinely looked for, or sat down and chatted with. Just someone she knew enough to smile at in the corridor, or sit next to if they were in the cafeteria at the same time. She'd known a few more intimate details about his leg and certain other medical conditions. And she'd known that there was something in the air, something he was planning with secrets lurking in the back of his smile.
So it wasn't as though she was really expecting something. Not really. The days had been blending into a sameness for months after New Caprica, and the search for Earth had ended in a dead planet. Layne didn't care one way or the other about allying themselves with the Cylon, but she understood the cold hard facts and numbers that told her resources were dwindling. Even now, they only used painkillers when necessary. Common headaches were left untreated.
And yet she wasn't surprised when Racetrack and Connor arrived, dragging Skulls between them. She snapped a question at them, already trying to figure out resources this patient would require. There was blood on his flight suit. A bad sign.
"He's been shot," Racetrack said, her eyes wide and face pale. There was a ring around her lips of whiter skin as though she were repressing the urge to cry or worse.
There was blood on her hands. Ishay only noticed that after they'd moved the unconscious pilot onto a bed.
It took three of them to remove the flight suit--destroying one would bring the wrath of the Gods down upon them for the waste of resources, and Ishay liked knowing their pilots could still fly safely, though the bullet-hole would need extensive patching. Connor spent the time agitated, fidgeting and barely being any help until Racetrack smacked him.
"Get your head in the game."
"It's just--we should be out there--" his eyes darted around the room as though expecting to be shot, himself.
Racetrack's lips compressed further, then she darted a glance at Ishay before shrugging, "We're safe. There's a cordon of marines and personnel forming around us even now."
"A cordon?" Cottle's voice sounded a cross between rusty and angry.
"Sir." For a brief instant, Racetrack seemed to gather herself, then she glanced at Skulls, eyes on his face. "Lieutenant Gaeta has relieved the Admiral of command."
"Gods-dammit. As though we don't have enough problems already!" Cottle's hands and eyes assessed the bullet wound. "Ishay, get him hooked up to an IV. Looks like the bullet went through. He's still breathing, so it didn't hit a lung, but keep an eye on him."
And that was that. Connor melted away in the face of Cottle's irascibility.
Racetrack stayed for a time, Skulls' hand in hers, but then she left after she'd received a message from the CIC.
-
The pilot woke up not long after their third group of casualties had arrived. Cottle had Ishay working triage, sending the worst to exam areas first. Bullet holes, broken bones, and at least two concussions were the tally so far.
Ishay stopped to check on Skulls during a lull and found him trying to get out of bed.
"Don't." Her hand kept him flat on his back. "We're not sure the extent of the damage, but it's vital you don't injure yourself further."
He laughed, but stayed down. "There's a mutiny on, medic. You think I'm safe here?"
"We're all safe here." The cordon had already stopped one group from the side still supporting the Admiral. The screams had made Cottle flinch and stalk out there, yelling at them. He would help either side in this mutiny, he didn't care what their orders were. He wanted no part of the fighting, and made them swear to send anyone injured through to the infirmary.
Ishay was still uncertain how he hadn't gotten himself killed. But then again, he was the only reliable doctor they had aboard. She and Kravinsky and the rest couldn't manage on their own.
"Frakkin' toasters," Skulls muttered, head turned as he watched a marine bleed out under Cottle and Tomas' hands.
Commotion from the door pulled her back out into the entry-way. A bloody marine, leaning against the wall called weakly for her help, but she ignored him: he only had a concussion, it was just that the scalp wound was bleeding profusely. One of the orderlies would be along shortly to tend him.
-
It wasn't a steady stream. People came in ones and twos, usually bleeding, sometimes near-death.
When Starbuck arrived, her husband bloody in her arms, Ishay felt for a moment as if life were crystallizing around her. Cylon. And he was dying. For an instant, all she could do was stare at the lolling head of Sam Anders and think about the deaths he'd caused over the last four years--if not beyond.
Then her training snapped her into movement and she stepped forward, shouting for a gurney and helping arrange the lanky man on white sheets that stained quickly with red blood.
-
Refugees and injured crew streamed in once the mutiny was put down, they'd been in hiding, waiting to see which side would come out on top before venturing into the open. Ishay didn't hear about the finale, the guns held against them in CIC, nor about the march that went from the airlock to the control center of the battlestar. She just heard about how Adama put Zarek and Gaeta in the brig; then she tried not to think about what was going to happen after that.
There was only one punishment for mutiny, and Layne had no illusions about the mercy of William Adama toward men who'd betrayed him.
It would get in the way of doing her job, and she was a medic first (and a person later, she mocked herself in one fleeting moment of self-awareness).
So many fatalities and she got tired of seeing the heart-dark blood from too many bullet-wounds, or the bright red froth on the lips that was accompanied by soft pleas or nothing at all. The bodies were stacked in the morgue, piled high until Cottle broke and gave the order to start carting them out, using the aft hanger deck as a morgue.
They'd used it before, of course. Back when it all began, when the Cylon attack on the colonies had seemed nothing more than a senseless tragedy.
Ishay stayed in the infirmary, slapping bandages on what she could and holding hands during the times where she couldn't. She had no time to take a break, to rest her eyes. Food wasn't something she could even contemplate. Not yet. And sleep would be filled with things she'd rather never remember.
-
Ishay was checking on Anders' vitals, an exhausted Starbuck half-watching her when Apollo came to visit. She wasn't sure when the other woman had taken the time to clean herself up, but at least she no longer had blood caked everywhere. Too, she could understand how good that felt, though with gloves on, blood wasn't such a sticky problem.
The worry in the ex-Major's face as he looked between the Cylon and his wife made Ishay's teeth clench and she bent her head a little more, determined to ignore them as she finished her routine checks.
"Hey, Kara."
Her reply was a glance at him, then she went back to watching the unconscious man in front of her. Ishay could have told her that was pointless. A waste of time and manpower. If the Captain wanted to help, she could check the other patients, change dressings. She could do that much.
It wasn't Ishay's place to say, of course.
"Kara, I--" Apollo was silent for a moment, his hand on her shoulder as he looked down at her.
She finally looked up at him. "This is where I'm supposed to be."
"Yeah, I was figuring that out. Kara... Sam's a good man. Don't let him go this time."
More silence, and Ishay was almost out of things to check, though she was strangely fascinated--wait until she had a chance to tell Felix the latest gossip (her brain took almost too long to remind her that wouldn't be possible and she felt herself freeze just a little), then a bitter laugh erupted from Starbuck, "He's a Cylon, Lee."
"And if that made a difference, he'd be dead."
Starbuck was almost too quiet to hear when she replied, "I'm sorry."
Not having a clue what was going on, Ishay rolled her eyes. Until the last thirty hours, she hadn't realized how much of a frak-up the Captain was. Apologizing to her Cylon for getting him shot, once even apologizing to Cottle for the lousy transport job.
Cottle had just shaken his head and continued ordering the others to their tasks.
"It will always be Sam, won't it."
Less a question, more a quiet statement of fact. "Lee."
"It's all right, Kara. He needs you. He needs you a hell of a lot more than--"
"Don't."
Ishay glanced up at them, her annoyance as well-hidden as it could be, "Two minutes, Apollo." She slipped out of the area, heading next door, this time to check on Sergeant Hadrian, her arm in shreds from a grenade. The Sergeant would never see use of the arm again, though Cottle thought there might be options.
"I've got a government to put together," Apollo said, emotion in his voice. To Ishay, it read almost like resentment, but she'd been wrong before.
"Watch your six, Apollo."
Tuning their words out, she brushed her fingers over Hadrian's shoulder, wondering why no one came to sit at the human's bedside rather than the Cylon's.
-
With things mostly calmed down, Cottle ordered half the shift to sleep, but kept the rest to tend to those still in beds. Ishay took a round on the other side of the medical bay, as far away from Starbuck and her Cylon husband as she could get. There were a few marines, now, patrolling the area where they'd moved all of those who'd been on the wrong side in the mutiny.
Ishay was careful to make certain they would recognize her before stepping inside the curtains. Skulls was in the second bed, and she went there first, almost hoping he was awake. Though she wasn't sure what to say. The marines could hear, and it wasn't as though she could help him break out. It wasn't as though she even wanted to, but something had given during the long hours, something in her had changed. She didn't know which side she was on anymore.
"Did you hear about the baby?" Ishay asked, hands busy with their work. Pulling off the dressing and checking for infection. Her mind was on that, though part of it was focused elsewhere.
Skulls barely sounded bitter when he asked, "The freak?"
"Not that one," some part of her, somewhere, wanted to claw to the surface and be sick about the abomination. Human and cylon was bad enough. Cylon and cylon meant they could reproduce, they could continue as a species. "The skinjob the XO fraks. She's pregnant."
There weren't enough words to express the look on Hamish's face and Ishay pressed hard on the tape, re-sealing it against his skin. "We have to--" he gasped a little, maybe from the pain, maybe from the how the idea made him want to vomit.
"Not now," her words were clipped. "Felix--"
But Felix hadn't won, and Ishay moved away before she could continue her thought aloud. Mutiny in a time of war was punishable by death. She wondered if he'd even gotten a last meal.
-
The blonde cylon had been so thrilled at the idea that her race could continue to produce and evolve. Ishay remembered that as she helped prep Sam Anders for his first surgery. His wife was there, hovering and trying to talk to him. He couldn't hear.
But he could speak, and Ishay tried not to listen, finding it a little grating on the nerves. It wasn't what he was saying. There was simply something about the cadence that annoyed her. She should have taken Cottle's suggestion and gone off-shift by now. But there was no way she could sleep yet, not with that weight hanging on her, stifling her breath (but not enough for anyone to notice, not that anyone ever did).
Maybe it was simply the idea that this machine, this Cylon, was having the same sort of problems a human shot in the head would. Ishay's hands were calm and careful as she did her job. They didn't shake in the least. Not even when he talked about God.
-
Cottle tried to order her to rest when the half-shift came straggling back, most of them looking no better rested than before. She refused. He told her to watch herself and stomped back to check on Anders again.
"They're being executed. Firing squad," Sandy, the nurse who'd spent more time with Felix than anyone told Ishay as they worked together to re-stock the crash cart.
"Did you expect anything less?" Trying to make her words less tart failed, but Sandy didn't seem to notice. She was breathing again--she'd already dealt with the possibility, already put it behind her (leaning against the wall, shaking and stifling her breathing until the things that weren't sobs stopped).
"Frakkin' Cylons."
"Careful." Checking the leads on the shock pads, Ishay slewed a glance towards the marines. "Wouldn't want to get taken up as a late mutineer."
"Sir." Sandy was silent after that, her eyes occasionally darting towards the doorway, as though she were planning something.
Ishay took a moment to figure out how to throttle that, then assigned Sandy to the marines recovering from the mutiny. The younger woman was a good nurse, her heart sometimes simply got in the wrong place.
So did a lot of them, though in the end, blood was blood and it didn't matter who was bleeding it.
It shouldn't matter.
-
Felix had been a friend. Ishay remembered holding his hand those first few, terrible days. Holding it and trying to be a comfort in this world that was frakked-upside-down and sideways. He'd sung a song, and she'd tried not to cry for everything.
After all, she'd been dealing with the sickness of war for years now. This was no different.
And when the report came that the firing squad had done its job, she continued on with her work, fingers easily noting down temperature and heart-rate as Sam Anders lay, half-aware of the world around him, Kara Thrace and the others hovering, waiting for him to come back.
-
"Heard one of the toasters got hit," Skulls mumbled to Ishay the next time she checked on his bandage.
Her feet ached from the time spent on them--too many hours to count and too few people to see to those still left in the infirmary. Those that hadn't been carried out in bags, and the current death count for the quelled mutiny was in the fifties. Cottle hadn't slept, either. "Yes." Her reply was short and non-committal.
She couldn't care enough. Not right now.
"Gonna live?"
Ishay pressed down a little too hard as she swiped anti-biotic along the stitches, causing Skulls to gasp. "I don't know. Prognosis isn't in yet."
Half true. Half lie. Cottle was fairly certain Sam Anders would survive the day, if he didn't push himself and the bullet were removed safely.
"Frak that bullshit. Should die. I'd kill him myself if I could get up," Skulls mumbled, head dropping back and eyes starting to drift closed from the exhaustion of simply breathing and surviving.
"Don't try," she advised, taping him back up and turning away to wipe her hands clean.
They were shaking, just a little.
"You seen Maggie?" Skulls shifted a little, wincing and trying to grab Ishay's hand. His was hot and dry--too hot. She could see the fever covering his skin in a sheen of sweat.
She'd get him started on IV antibiotics. Pray to the Gods for the best. "Maggie?" She asked, gentling his hand back down onto the bed.
"Racetrack. Said she'd be back, visit me," he mumbled.
One of the conspirators. Racetrack was as locked up as the rest, but Ishay didn't know if he wanted to hear that. "I haven't heard anything," she offered. It wasn't precisely a lie. No official list of prisoners had circulated.
"Probably waitin' to bust me out." The hopeful look in his eyes was almost too much.
Ishay checked his pulse and made a notation on his chart, then tried to smile, "Perhaps she is. You get some rest, Lieutenant. Try not to worry, all right?"
"Maggie's a good'un," he said, his words almost lost in the shift and chatter of nearby patients and their guards. "Always there for me."
Watching him, feeling the hopelessness, she was seized with the urge to do something. With her hands clenched, Ishay could understand Felix's sudden shift into mutineer. Could understand Racetrack and SKulls, and the rest of them and their need for blood. She felt it, too. Only problem was, there was nothing she could do. Nothing she could do to contribute to the destruction of the Cylons. Not here and now.
Nothing that would bring back the hope of Earth or the shattered peace of the colonies.
-
Cottle brought her in to help prep Anders for his second surgery, telling her he trusted her and this one was more dangerous. There was a bullet to remove from his brain and an artery to repair. And yet, Anders was still babbling, still talking about colonies and redemption and dying. Things that, as a Cylon, he really didn't understand.
She wanted to feel nothing for him, an indifference that just slotted him in as another patient, but she couldn't. Not even with the way Kara Thrace watched him, her face drawn and eyes so dark Ishay wondered if she saw his death as clear as she saw the stars when in a viper.
Those were thoughts Ishay kept to herself as she checked the oxygen valves, made sure his pulse was steady and began the prep of the drugs which would knock him out.
-
"Ishay!" The call pulled her from her notes on the patients in the restricted wing and she looked up to find Hotdog coming towards her.
"Lieutenant?" she asked, not bothering to stand. Her feet didn't actually feel anything anymore, but spending time off of them would keep her legs from hurting. It felt as though months had passed since she'd rolled out of her rack, prepared for another day of boredom. Cottle had sent her off to nap earlier, and she'd woken with blood and death behind her eyes, Felix's bandaged leg floating mysteriously in the middle of it all. It hadn't been exactly restful.
She rather wished the boredom hadn't gone away.
"It's Nicky," he hunched his shoulders, looking like a confused kid rather than a man with a child. "I just. I can't seem to get him to sleep, and I'd ask Tyrol--the Chief--but--"
"He's busy." Ishay tried to feel sympathy for him, and felt a little surfacing for his child. He was a human baby, after all. "Have you tried singing to him? Sandy, the nurse who watched him off and on last week said singing worked really well to put him out."
"No. No, I hadn't. I kinda can't sing."
For the first time in hours, Ishay felt a smile cross her lips, "Try anyway."
"All right. All right, I can do that, I think," he added under his breath. Then he smiled, a little bashfully. "Thanks, Ishay."
"You're welcome. Now get the frak out of my infirmary so you don't contract something to infect your son with."
He took the reprimand with another smile and left.
Ishay sat there, staring after him and wondering about how something like that could remind her of hope and the future. Of the chance for something good to come tomorrow, if only she would wait for it. Then she looked back down at her report on Hadrian's arm, and she felt that hope slide away. There would be no rebirth for the human race. No Gods coming to save them.
No God, either.
There would be just surviving, as they had been for the last four years.
-
Skulls was gone when she went to check on him again. The marines were moving all of the mutineers out, getting them ready to ship over to the prison ship in raptors. She wanted to rail at them, to argue that her patients weren't ready for travel, that the medical care over there would be worse than nothing.
But she had no authority, and they weren't taking the worst off, just the minor wounded.
How Skulls was on that list, she didn't understand, but he wasn't going to die. His chart said the fever had broken and he'd been resting comfortably before they left with him.
Sitting back at Cottle's desk, making a last notation on another file, she thought about all that had happened.
-
Would it be justice?
Standing there, hooking up the EEG, her movements routine and so easy, Ishay wondered. She had to clean her hands after applying the sticky gel to Sam Anders' temples.
He smelled human, slightly stale and unwashed, like most patients did. But he was a Cylon. She'd watched him, earlier, with his eyes open wide, so blue she could have drowned in them once upon a time (he'd only tried once, back when his wife was dead and he was on too many painkillers to be coherent, making a pass that was as clumsy as his fall off a viper). But the things he'd said--even from her station, moving about the floor and checking the rest of the patients didn't keep her from hearing snatches and words.
Cylons. And they'd created the other skinjobs. They'd caused all of this to happen.
Cottle had let Starbuck back in--sometimes, it amused Ishay what a softie the man could be. Other times, like now, it just annoyed her. So the pilot who'd frakked them all with Earth was talking to her toaster husband. Great.
There'd been rumors, of course. About the Demetrius--back when that sort of shit seemed to matter to more than just the rabble. Rumors of mutiny. And Felix had--
Ishay didn't like to think about his halting, stumbling words when he'd been so full of fever and infection.
But now she knew about Sam Anders. Now she knew he was a Cylon. And maybe Felix hadn't been wrong, hadn't been telling a fiction of feverish dreams full of anger.
'I stood up for you on the Demetrius, Kara! You owe me!'
The words still sent a strange sense of foreboding down her spine.
It wasn't hard to switch the machine from the wave-patterns of a mostly-healthy brain to a test pattern. Her words were sharp when she said, "Don't bother." without looking back at the other woman.
"What?"
"There's no brain activity at all." The words tumbled out easily, and Ishay wondered a little if this was how it felt to take that first step. It wouldn't take much for the second to follow. A few air bubbles in his IV, or turning the oxygen too low. Just enough to ensure full brain-death. A vegetable would be considered a waste of resources sorely needed for other, more deserving patients.
She was a doctor. She'd taken an oath.
And Felix Gaeta had been a friend.
Ishay ignored the way her hands were shaking and switched off the monitor, face blank as she turned, "If you'll excuse me, I have other patients."
The pain in Starbuck's eyes seared Ishay down to her toes, but she had seen worse pain--Connor, crying after a bad drunk at Joe's (his son, dead in his arms when the Cylons destroyed a temple on New Caprica); the women who'd arrive in that damp tent on New Caprica, refusing to name the men who'd raped them, but flinching when 'cylons' were mentioned in their hearing; every man, woman and child who'd lost family on the colonies, who'd survived when they hadn't. And there were more.
Kara Thrace wasn't special. Kara Thrace might not even be human.
"Can I stay with him?"
The thread of dullness in Starbuck's voice was spreading to her eyes. She was internalizing everything, trying not to care. Ishay shrugged, "I'll let Cottle know you're still here."
Hopefully, Sam Anders would stay unconscious long enough for her to accomplish her task.
-f-