The Space Between Us- Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13: This Is Not Our Fate
Back to Chapter 12
Louis didn't want to see anyone, not now. But when Jesse tapped on the window of the cell and motioned for him to pick up the phone, he couldn't stop himself from complying.
"Hey, Jess," he said quietly.
Jesse looked tired. His face was pale, his eyes were puffy and red with dark circles underneath, and he hadn't shaved or trimmed his goatee in a day or two. But his uniform was still neat, and when he looked at Louis, he smiled.
"You holding up okay?"
Louis opened his mouth to lie, but nothing came out. He couldn't tell Jesse of all people he was fine, and yet, after what he'd allowed Boomer to do, he didn't feel like he could complain, either. Instead, he leaned his forehead against the barrier, one hand resting on the glass, the other still clutching the phone.
He felt that electrical impulse again, and the world around him changed. The sky was blue, the stream burbled by him, the trees rustled their leaves in the wind. "Don't," he whispered into the phone.
"I have to," Jesse said back, his voice clear and calm. "You tried to save her, Louis."
"I didn't. I tried to save Felix."
"You wouldn't have risked it for her," Jesse agreed, "but you wouldn't have left her stranded on the Colony if you'd gotten there, either."
"No," Louis said.
"You tried to save her," Jesse repeated, "and that's more than anyone else has done. I will never forget it."
"Yeah, well, I'm afraid you won't be the only one." Louis said. He looked around the creek once more. "Don't do this again, Jess. Please. I can't… I don't…."
The creek faded, and the loss of it was a pain that was almost physical. "I'm sorry," Jesse said. He looked at his watch. "I can't stay," he said. "But I wanted… I just wanted to see you."
"I'm glad you did," Louis ground out. He didn't deserve it… but then he hadn't deserved to lose Felix like this, and he hadn't deserved what Gage had done, either. He put his hand to the glass again. Jesse understood, and put his own against it, although this time he didn't project. "Thank you."
"I'll come back. And this time, when we lose them again, we'll do it together."
***
There were only three people who would have any clear idea of where Boomer might have gone. Helo decided to ask the harder two, first.
He went down to the brig during his lunch break. Tyrol was sitting on his bed, stirring his algae with a fork, but Hoshi was sitting on the floor, sheets of paper spread out before him and a pen in his hand, his lips moving silently as he worked through calculations. The bruise on his cheek had blossomed into spectacular purples and greens. Both men were wearing tanks, with no signs of their ranks.
Helo rapped, and Tyrol looked up. For a long moment, he just stared. Then he heaved himself to his feet resignedly, and came over to the phone.
Hoshi didn't even glance at them.
"All right," Tyrol said, his voice slightly distorted by the phone. "Go ahead and yell at me. Frak knows I deserve it."
"I didn't come down here to yell at you," Helo said.
"Yeah, well, you should. We should have known that Hera was what she was really after. Never occurred to either one of us. Hoshi was so focused on getting Gaeta home, and me…"
"Yes?" Helo prompted.
Tyrol shook his head. "They're all the same," he said. "The Ones. The Twos. The Eights. They're all the same, and that's how I ended up in here."
"No, they're not. They're different. That's how I ended up here." Tyrol shook his head, and Helo plunged on. "How you felt about Boomer, that was different. That's why you did what you did."
Tyrol's laugh was hollow. "No, I did what I did because I was a frakking idiot. A two thousand-year-old idiot who cannot learn the simplest lesson: Machines are not people, they're just machines."
Helo shook his head. "If Cylons are nothing, if their feelings mean nothing, then Thorne died for nothing and you are nothing. If Cylons mean nothing, then you didn't hurt anyone but yourself. My wife. Athena? Is a person."
"She's a blowup doll. Athena, Sharon, Boomer, Sarah... Call them what you will, they're all the same. They're all the same because we made them the same." Every word hurt, not just for Sharon's honor but for Tyrol's. The pain and disgust were clear in his eyes. "Don't blame yourself, but you can't trust them. You can't trust any of them."
"I need to trust this one, Galen," he said, leaning in. "Where did Boomer go?"
"The Colony, I assume," Tyrol said with a shrug. He glanced back over his shoulder at Hoshi. "That's where we thought she was going. Hoshi was going to go with her." He shrugged again.
"Where's the Colony?"
"I don't know. Frak, I wish I did, because I'd tell you and you'd just get the frak out of here, but I don't know. She was the only one that knew."
"Did she tell Hoshi?"
Galen looked back at the man still sitting on the floor. "No. Doesn't matter anyway. The man's gonna lose his mind if Adama keeps him in here much longer."
"What do you mean? He's doing jump calculations, isn't he?"
"And coming apart at the seams when he's not."
A shiver ran down Helo's spine, not just at the truth of the statement, but at the dead, unflinching look in Tyrol's eyes as he said it. It was conversation, not something he cared about. Hoshi wasn't the only one close to losing his mind, or his soul. And as he watched, Tyrol retreated further into his misery. "Any chance I can talk to Hoshi himself?"
"If he'd known the coordinates, believe me, he would have told. Don't torture him just for what you already have."
"But I-" Helo wanted to finish, but there was nothing more to say. It was there in Tyrol's face, in his eyes. He didn't know if the man he'd known was dead, but he was certainly buried.
He turned and left them in the cell.
***
"What do you think, Sam?" Kara asked.
Even Sam was tired. Tired and frustrated, because while he'd managed to pull up a handful of memories, none of them really managed to satisfy him and tell him anything real about his life. "I'm ready to pack it in for the day," he conceded.
Kara smiled. "Did it work?"
"Well enough," he said with a shrug. "But something tells me the Admiral isn't going to sanction a week long pyramid tournament."
"Yeah," Kara sighed, drinking a swallow of water. "Especially with Hera going missing."
"What?"
"You didn't hear?" Kara asked, surprised. "You must have really been concentrating. It sounds like Boomer took her."
Sam shook his head. "Good gods," he said. "What else could go wrong?"
***
The dream was the same as it ever was. Hera running through the Opera House, Laura chasing her, calling to her. Athena doing the same. Both of them too far away to catch her, even as they knew there was danger. A Six picking Hera up, turning away, Gaius Baltar at her side. And nothing she could do, no way she could stop it even as Hera was carried into the light….
But this time, the dream started when she was awake, and ended with Laura crumpled on the floor, the water glass broken and the liquid soaking the papers she'd been carrying.
***
Saul flung the hatch open as hard as he could. "What the frak are you thinking?"
Bill barely looked up. "You'd better have a damn good reason for that kind of entrance, Saul."
"I just talked to Helo."
"I've been over this with him already." Bill took a drink from his flask. "We don't have the resources for a suicide mission."
"That's not what I'm talking about, but we'll get to that in a few minutes. Why the hell did you stick Hoshi in the Cylon brig?"
"He let that thing out of its cell, and it's because of him that Helo was even in your office begging for a Raptor in the first place."
"But the Cylon brig?"
"He cast his lot in with the Cylons," Bill said glumly, "he can be punished like one." He lifted the flask to take another drink, but Saul swung and knocked it out of his hand.
"You bastard," Saul growled. "There are other cells, and trust me, Hoshi's not going to rip the bars off any of them. But the place where those frakkers dumped us all after they took us hostage? For God's sake, Bill, if you hate the man so much, why don't you just lock him in the causeway where they raped him in the first place?"
"I didn't hate him. I don't hate him."
"Then move him!"
"The other cells are full, and I'm not sending him over to the Astral Queen. Gage is there."
"So give Zarek a roommate. Let them stay up all night having slumber parties and doing each other's nails."
Bill glared. "I'm not putting one of my officers into a position to be influenced by Zarek again."
"Because Hoshi's singing your praises right now."
The phone rang, harsh and shrill. Bill glared at Saul. "This isn't over," he said, and he strode over and picked up the phone. "Adama," he said. The color drained from his face. "What? When?"
"Bill?" Bill held up a hand.
"I'll be right down."
"Bill-" Saul tried to catch him, but as Bill turned to face him and he saw the stricken look on his face, Saul knew the words before Bill even had to say them.
"It's Laura. She collapsed. Cottle says it's almost time."
***
"Well?" Bill faced Cottle, prepared to battle the man to the death if possible to save Laura.
"I'm sorry, Bill, but it's too late to do anything," Cottle said, looking back at the bed where Laura was lying.
"Can you restart her on the diloxin?" Bill asked anxiously.
"Won't do any good, even if she'd let me. We're past that, now."
"But-"
"Bill, it's not that this is what she wants. It's that this is what's going to happen. It's a miracle that she's held on as long as she has."
Bill relented. "Can I see her?"
"Would anything I said stop you?"
"No."
Cottle grunted. "Then why bother to ask? You're the Admiral, after all. Go ahead."
As he walked into the cubicle, Bill realized that Cottle hadn't been smoking a cigarette. And that, even more than Laura lying in the bed or the IV hooked to her arm, made this real.
He expected her to look small and withered in the bed, but when he walked in, she didn't. She opened her eyes, and when she saw him, she smiled.
"I figured you'd be down," she said, her voice low and soft.
He sat down beside her and took her hand. "Of course. Where else would I be?"
To his surprise, the look Laura gave him was stern. "Running the ship."
"Tigh can handle it for now."
"Mmm." Laura opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted with a fit of coughing.
"It's more important I'm here," Bill said as the spasm eased. "You know that."
"And I'm grateful," Laura answered. She reached out and twined her fingers with his. "But Bill, there's something I want you to do for me."
"Anything."
Laura smiled. "I'll hold you to that, because you won't like what I'm going to ask."
"What is it?"
"Go after Hera, Bill. Go after Gaeta and Sarah and Brooks. Maybe you'll fail, but at least you'll be able to live with knowing you tried."
"Laura-"
"I know why you haven't. It's easier to have the people we failed far away from us, isn't it? To never look at them again?" Laura's fingers tightened around his. "It's easier. But it's not who you are. Go after them, Bill. Promise me."
He had to swallow three times before he said it. "I promise."
***
If he focused, if he only thought the calculations, he could pretend he forgot where he was. He couldn't, of course, but he could pretend. Just focus on the numbers. Just focus on the stars. Angles and integrals, degrees and radians, functions and-
"Hoshi!" Tyrol's voice broke into his monologue, and Louis looked up from his seat on the floor, the pen clutched tightly in his hand. Tyrol gestured at the door. "The Colonel," he said.
"Oh. Right. Sorry, sir," Louis said, pulling himself to standing. It was still cold in here, and gooseflesh was standing out on his bare arms. He rubbed them, shivering. "Sorry, sir," he repeated.
"Lieutenant," Tigh said, and gestured. "Come with me."
Louis glanced at Tyrol, but he just shrugged. "Good luck," he said as Louis followed Tigh and several Marines out of the cell.
Tigh turned around. "Are you going to give me trouble, Lieutenant, or can we skip cuffing you?"
"It's not Lieutenant anymore, is it?" Louis asked. "I'm not sure what my rank is anymore, but it's not Lieutenant."
Tigh looked at the lead Marine. "We don't need to cuff him," he told her, and she nodded. "Come on," he ordered Louis curtly.
"Yes, sir." As they left the cell, Louis felt his hands shaking again, but this time in relief. Relief and dread, because whenever he was done doing whatever Tigh wanted him to do, he would have to go back down there. His stomach roiled at the thought.
But Tigh didn't take them towards the CIC, like Louis expected.
"Sir?" he ventured the courage to ask, "where are we going?"
Tigh stopped, and turned around. His face was stern and angry, but there was something else lingering there, some sort of odd compassion. "You'll know when we get there," he told Louis, and then resumed the walk. Louis wondered if they were headed for the airlock, but he couldn't sum up more than a sliver of fear at the idea.
It wasn't an airlock. Tigh opened the hatch, and when he did, Tom Zarek looked up from behind the bars of the brig. "What's going on?" Zarek said, standing up and leaning indolently against the bars.
"Move," Tigh ordered him.
Zarek deliberately paused for a moment, and then took a few steps back, and the Marines opened the cell. Tigh turned to Louis.
"You deserved punishment, Lieutenant," Tigh said, "and there's no getting around that. Not for what you did. But you didn't deserve what the Admiral did to you, putting you down there. I don't like to go down there, and I don't want to imagine what that was like for you." He nodded, and the Marine slid the door shut. "I'll send down the star charts."
"Yes, sir."
Tigh gave him one last, long look, and then turn around and marched out of the brig. The hatch slammed shut, echoing in the small room.
Zarek cringed.
The cell was small to begin with, and now it had two cots shoved into it. Louis sat down on the one, knees drawn up to his chest, taking deep breaths. He was still in the brig, but he felt like he'd come up for air after being underwater far too long. And it was much warmer in here.
"So what was that all about?" Zarek asked, arms crossed as he looked out the bars.
"Excuse me?"
"That's the biggest apology I've ever heard anyone get out of Saul Tigh. And I certainly never expected someone in the brig to get one." Zarek's smile twisted bitterly.
"It was nothing," Louis said. He leaned back against the bars and closed his eyes.
"You don't get shoved in the brig for 'nothing'," Zarek said. "I do, but you don't. Haven't you always been in the Admiral's pocket?"
Louis sighed heavily. "I suppose you'd see it that way," he shot back, and as he did, he straightened his legs out. "But when your superior officer gives you an order, you follow it. It's one of the first things they teach you in the military."
"And when the President becomes indisposed or incompetent or dies, the Vice President becomes the President," Zarek riposted. "It's one of the first things they teach you in school. You were ignoring the order of the acting President of the Colonies. You should have connected me with Adama."
Louis sighed and told Zarek the same thing he'd told Felix months ago. "What's the point? He would have just hung up on you anyway."
Zarek opened his mouth to argue, and then cocked his head and changed his mind. "You've changed," he said. "I would have gotten a full lecture on not insulting the Admiral, back when Felix was alive."
The words hit like lightning coursing through him, and Louis snapped his head up. "Felix is alive. Cavil's holding him prisoner."
It was at that point that Louis Hoshi had a rare privilege that very few people, living or dead, had ever had. He saw Tom Zarek struck speechless.
It couldn't last long, however. Zarek leaned forward. "How the frak do you know this?" he demanded. "And what's being done?"
"Sit down," Louis sighed. "And I'll tell you." At least it would pass some time.
***
"How is she?" Ellen asked as Saul slid into his seat.
"Doesn't look good," Saul said. Sam pushed a full glass over to him, and he knocked it back, and then looked around. "Where's Kara?"
Sam nodded over to the piano, where Kara was sitting, fiddling with the keys. She was playing too softly to tell if the notes made music or were just a random collection of sounds. Saul grunted and turned back to the table.
"How's Bill holding up?" Ellen asked, and there was a note of caution in her voice, like it was a question she only asked because it was expected.
"How do you think?" Saul returned. "It's not going to be easy on him."
"At least he's not killing her himself," Ellen muttered.
"Ellen-"
"Look, I'm just saying," Ellen said innocently, spreading her hands. "It could be worse."
"That's not what you were saying," Saul muttered, but he did it under his breath. He looked over at Kara again. He wondered if he'd ever felt like he was caught between a rock and a hard place, living with these two women on Earth. He wondered if there was any other possible feeling. With a glare at Ellen, he pushed his chair away and went over to where Kara was playing the piano.
As he got closer, he could hear that she really was playing music. It was melancholy and soft, with a wistful air to it. He sat down in a chair nearby and listened, watching her.
When she finished, she didn't look at him. She just sat, perched with her hands still on the keys. "Does it trigger any memories?"
"Can't say that it does," Saul answered. "But I wish it did."
"My father… well, the father Cavil invented for me. He was a piano player." Kara smiled at a distant memory that didn't belong to her. "He used to teach me. Funny how I remember that so clearly, isn't it? He used to sit by the piano and teach me."
She began to pick out a simple tune, a melody taught to children.
"But the thing is, I must have known how to play, back on Earth. Or can they program something like piano playing into us?"
"Don't know," Saul admitted. "Can't see why Cavil would go out of his way to give you something like that, though."
Kara raised her eyebrows. "No. Doesn't make sense." She cocked her head, still staring at the keys. "Do you play?"
Saul snorted. "Can't imagine that I do."
"Can't imagine you as a scientist inventing resurrection, either," Kara pointed out.
"Fair enough." She was still picking out the tune. He came over and sat down beside her on the piano bench. "Show me," he said.
Kara looked at him like he was insane, but then played a note. Saul found the same key two octaves lower- octaves?- and played the same one.
She picked out the tune, slowly, and he followed. If he thought about it too hard, he fumbled, but if he didn't, the smoothness of the keys beneath his fingers seemed old and familiar, and his hand moved nimbly. They accelerated, and the sounds changed from individual notes to melody. Kara smiled at Saul, and suddenly he was sure they'd sat like this before, many, many times.
He brought his other hand to the keys, and they were playing together, some song that he'd never heard before but that they must have played over and over. His fingers moved of their own accord, and he was no longer following Kara, but playing the principal melody while she played the descant. (Descant?)
They came around the bridge, and the melody morphed, and he knew that song, the one he'd been hearing since the Ionian Nebula. Kara's eyes widened as well, but they played it to a thundering conclusion. When they finished, they stared at each other, only vaguely aware that the few people sitting in Joe's were applauding.
"It's good to hear you two play the piano together again," Ellen sighed. She was standing at his elbow, a wistful look on her face. "I always loved listening to it."
"I didn't know…" was all he managed to say. He turned to face Sam, who was standing over Kara. "On Earth… you said that you wrote that. You played it for a woman you loved."
"I guess." Sam looked helpless. "I still don't remember a thing about music."
Saul looked at Kara again, but instead of seeing her in Joe's, in tanks and wearing dogtags, he saw her sitting beside him, Ellen's rose garden visible in the window behind her. There were pictures on the mantle and Kara looked like she'd been crying, and her clothing was tight and short and leather, like he'd always hated. He couldn't remember why she was crying, or when this was, or what they'd been fighting about… only the peace that came after they'd played together, and for some reason, he'd hugged her and she'd cried again.
"This is so frakked up," Kara said, and she was back in Joe's, and she was nearly crying now.
"It is." Saul stood up and left the piano. "I'm going to go see how Bill's doing. Then I'd better get to the CIC."
***
Bill didn't leave Laura's side. Instead, he opened Searider Falcon and read, not even hearing the words. Laura's eyes were closed, a small smile playing on the edges of her lips as she listened. Her wig was off and she was fiddling with the ring that Bill had silently slipped on her finger as he was reading. He didn't comment, and neither did she, but it was enough.
Then she stopped fidgeting with it, and her hands lay still at her sides, and he knew the end was coming.
Bill was vaguely aware that a vigil was being kept outside Laura's cubicle as well. He heard the regular passing of the doctors and nurses, muted voices that he recognized as Saul, as Kara, as Lee. But none of it mattered.
The heart monitor accelerated a little.
Bill leaned forward, uncertain of what was happening. The curtain opened and Cottle came in, his brows furrowed. "Did anything happen?" he asked.
"No. What's going on?"
Cottle studied the machines, and then shook his head. "It could be any number of things, Bill. I-" Laura's eyes flared open, and he broke off.
"I see it," Laura whispered, and there was a look of rapture on her face. "It's beautiful."
"What's beautiful, Laura?" Bill asked, even though he had a feeling he didn't want the answer. The heart monitor was slowing now… too slow.
Laura turned her head towards his voice, but her eyes still looked sightless, shining with unshed tears. "The Opera House," she answered, her voice breaking. "I see it now. I see what it means… I see the truth…." She fumbled for Bill's hand, and suddenly, he knew she was seeing him again.
"I love you," he told her, before she could fade away.
Her smile was weak. "I love you, too. And Bill… where there's love, there's hope. Bring them all home."
She closed her eyes. The heart monitor flat-lined into a solitary note, until Cottle shut it off. And then there was only silence.
***
It felt like Galactica herself was mourning, even though very few people knew. It didn't matter; it would spread like wildfire.
"It's always at three in the morning," Saul muttered.
"It's a wonder that Cottle ever sleeps," Bill agreed.
They walked into the Hall of Remberence, where all of the faces looked back at them. They were layered on so thickly now that Saul wondered if anyone could even see the people who had been lost originally, when the Colonies had been attacked. He shuddered. "Where are you putting her?" he asked.
There were a lot of places that Laura Roslin belonged, and a lot of people that would probably be honored to have the President's picture by theirs. Saul looked at the faces of New Caprica, of former students, of former Quorum members and Billy Keikeya. For a moment, he thought that Bill would put her there, next to the young man that had been like a son to her. But he moved on.
He hung her right above to Dee. It seemed like an odd choice, until Saul noticed the other pictures around it. Next to Dee was the picture of Gaeta and Hoshi, still hanging. Across the hall, Jesse and Sarah smiled. And right above where Laura now hung, Sharon was kissing Hera.
"Bill?" Saul said.
"We're going," Bill said slowly.
"What?"
"We're going. We're getting our people back. Laura was right, Saul. We should have gone a long time ago." He reached up, and unpinned the picture of Hera and Sharon, then the one of Gaeta and Hoshi, and then Sarah and Jesse. He scanned the hall, searching, and then finally located the picture of Brooks, smiling from a high corner.
"We're getting our people back, or we'll die trying. We might go down, but we'll do it in style."
Saul couldn't help the smile that broke out over his face. "Yes, sir."
***
On to Chapter 14