Fic - "Secret Hope part 1"

Jul 04, 2010 16:28

Ok so this is a cross between Highlander and BSG. Cottle,Ishay, Gaeta, and later Dee, Baltar and Hoshi are the players. Set in the Demetrious arc... started for the prompt war we had in gaeta-squee and I am expanding it......



“Wait.” Layne said it as she closed the door to the medical supply room.

“There’s no time, dammit.” He grabbed the surgical kit, the one he hated, but when he turned, she was blocking the hatch. “Layne, there’s no hope. The infection is already in the bone marrow. I might have had a chance at cleaning it and reconstructing the bone if they hadn’t waited. I have to amputate, and I have to do it soon or else he dies.” Layne was his most gifted assistant and more besides, but he didn’t understand why she was arguing about reconstruction. Felix Gaeta was her friend, he knew that, and he also knew that she knew that a leg looked like half rotted hamburger, there wasn’t any reason to hope. “This is hard enough on him without dangling false hope.”

“Jack,” she said softly, stepping forward and drawing him into an embrace. “Did you think there was any hope the day we met?”

The day they met, he thought as he embraced her, understanding instantly what she meant. He had been rock climbing on Picon, just graduated from medical school and he had seen her on one of the cliffs, and had marveled at the pretty woman with the long dark hair, when her line had snapped. He had rappelled down, despite the risk, despite knowing that no one could survive such a fall… Until he found her lying dead on the rocks one moment and then slowly pulling herself upright despite the broken bones he had assessed only seconds earlier. “You said you were the only one left…” He didn’t doubt her, they had been together far too long for him to think she had lied. An omission, she would call it later. She had done it before when Immortals had come calling.

“Felix Gaeta has never died. When he does…” She pulled back. “I should have told you, and I am sorry but he’s the only one in the fleet and I had no intention of killing him. Better to let the pre-born stay that way.”

Jack nodded. She had said it more than once during their life together. If someone lived their life and died of natural causes, the immortality gene or whatever it really was didn’t activate. “Fine, he’s one of you. Odds are if he dies on the operating table, he’ll come back. What else?”

“If he dies with a badly injured leg, he comes back with his injuries healed.” Layne’s voice grew harsh. “If you amputate his leg, he lives and then the way things are going he gets killed and then he’s a crippled immortal.” She smiled slightly. “I know you like to keep me safe but really, that’s just not sporting. His leg could heal now… If you cut it off, it won’t grow back and then he’s frakked. And then I have to deal with it. And think of the short term, Jack. Can we really afford to have the one guy who knows how to steer the frakking ship coping with a leg amputation that doesn‘t have to happen? He‘ll be useless for weeks and I know you agree that if anyone deserves a little luck, it‘s Felix.”

“I do,” Jack said heavily, understanding both what Layne was saying and what she wasn’t. If Felix was immortal like Layne, there was no reason to amputate his leg. And Layne was going to be alive long after he was dead, and she would need someone. He didn’t like thinking about it but he was closer to seventy than he liked to admit. Layne didn’t talk about what would happen after he was gone, but it worried him. Felix Gaeta was her friend. He wanted her to have a friend after he was gone…. And crippling the man before the immortality kicked in was needlessly cruel. At some point in the future, Layne would have to explain to Gaeta that they could have prevented the amputation. By killing him, but Jack doubted such a trivial thing would matter to an immortal, particularly if it kept him on two feet.

“I don’t know how you think we can hide killing him, and then having him resurrect like a Cylon,” he said after a long moment. “People are going to notice him *not* losing his leg to a massive infection. Unless….”

“I know you’ll think of something, Jack,” Layne said. “Now lets move. Your patient needs surgery.”

“Reconstructive surgery,” he added thoughtfully, already having an idea.

~*~
It burned and he could barely breathe from the pain. Still, he shook his head at Helo’s words. “If… its so not bad… let Cottle cut your leg off….”

Helo winced. “Felix,” he said softly, putting his hand on Felix’s shoulder, “Be reasonable.”

He jerked away. “Be reasonable. Be a *cripple*,” he hissed. “I’m going to be a cripple and you’re telling me to like it. If it’s so frakking great… join me. Join me, Helo. Be reasonable and cut your leg off to show me how frakking awesome it is.”

“Felix.” Helo looked stricken. He didn’t care.

“But that isn’t going to happen, is it? You’re all supportive now, and soon as Cottle takes me to cripple me, you’ll be off to tell your bitch friend Kara how you told me to be reasonable. And then you’ll laugh and she’ll laugh, and everyone gets a goods laugh in on how frakking funny it is and how gods damn lucky I am.”

“No one will laugh,” Helo said after a moment.

“Frak you. You won’t give a gods damn three weeks from now when Kara Frakking Thrace is calling me Pegleg and congratulating her bastard husband. You’ll be with your wife and since arguing with Kara Frakking Thrace might put Sharon in a bad place, you won’t say a gods damned word.” It felt good to hurt the big man, but the angry energy was already leaving. “I don’t want to live if I have to lose my leg and be the ship cripple. Things are bad enough. So don’t worry, Karl… you won’t have to feel guilty for very long…..”

He meant it. Things were already hellish and had been since New Caprica. Listening to the snickers as he hauled himself on crutches, it wasn’t going to happen. He spotted Cottle and Ishay coming over to the gurney. “If you’re here to cut off my leg, go away. I’ll kill myself if you amputate it.”

Cottle frowned. “Calm down,” he said harshly. “Lucky for you, Ishay had an idea, and we have the supplies to try it There’s no guarantee it will work, but if you’re willing to fight, I am willing to try a reconstruction.”

“No amputation?” He wasn’t sure he believed that. His toes already seemed darker and discolored.

“Not yet,” Cottle said as he began to push the gurney.

“Dr. Cottle….” Helo said, rising to his feet. “Isn’t that… unlikely?”

“Are you a frakking doctor?” Cottle shot back. “Then shut up.”

Felix closed his eyes as the pain washed over him when the orderlies lifted him from the gurney to the operating table. “Thank you,” he muttered, still not quite daring to hope that it was real.

“You can go,” Cottle said to the orderlies and the extra nurse. “This will take a couple of hours and Layne will assist. Hit the rounds.” The others left. Then Cottle nodded to Ishay. “Make sure the hatch is secure. We can’t have any interruption.”

It was possible that it was the morpha or the pain, but Felix was suddenly seized with the notion that he was being tricked. “No drugs,” he said suddenly. “Don’t knock me out…. Just use a pain block….” It had occurred to him that Cottle could knock him out and he’d wake up without a leg and get a story on how the surgery failed.

Much to his surprise, Cottle laughed. “You’re paranoid, Felix. But not without cause. Layne, do you want me to do this?”

Ishay came to his side and deftly pinned his right hand to the table in a restraint. Dimly he realized that Cottle was doing the same thing to his left side. “Stop it…. Don’t… don’t cut off my leg…” A trick, his mind screamed.

“I’ll do it,” Ishay tiredly. “I shouldn’t have involved you, Jack.”

“After forty three years, it’s a little late for that,” Cottle said, his voice taking on a tone of soft affection that Felix had never heard. He’s in love with her, Felix realized, and she was with him but… forty three years didn’t make any sense.

That thought left him as Ishay stood over him. “I’m sorry you’re going to find out like this, Felix, but it beats the alternative.” She put her hand over his mouth and used her other hand to pinch his nose shut. “We’ll talk in your next life.”

He bucked against her surprisingly strong hands and the restraints but the pain and lack of air caused his vision to dim to black. Why is she doing this, was his last thought. We were friends….
~*~
She hated involving Jack. Looking down at the man she had just suffocated to death, she had to admit, she hated involving Felix Gaeta as well. The alternatives were worse. They lived in a violent world, he was going to die by violence eventually. And at some point, she would have to explain that she allowed an unnecessary amputation to him, and he was smart enough to understand how she had thoroughly frakked him in making that decision. Felix was a nice man, a good, decent man, but no one was that decent, and then she’d have to kill him. And she would, because there was no way a one legged immortal could get the drop on her.

The problem was that even if Felix accepted what she was about to tell him, she doubted that he would adapt well. She had known exactly what he was the first day they had met, and every time she had considered making him aware of his immortality, she had decided against it. There were practical reasons not to, of course, but the bigger reason was that she just didn’t think he would handle it well. He was a good man, too trusting and nice to last long, and possibly too much a thinker as well. Successful immortals didn’t dwell on the past. She had befriended Felix out of curiosity and because Jack liked the man, and she liked him for many of the same reasons Jack did, and once the initial shock was past and he understood the implications, she doubted he would handle it well.

And that was a thought for later, she realized, because there was no going back. “Is it healing?” She was certain it would.

“Yes…” Jack said softly. “Gods, I wish I could take pictures…”

“Very bad idea considering the situation.” She glanced at him. “It won’t be long. Do you want to start?” It was a damn clever plan. She didn’t like it, she didn’t envy Felix Gaeta one bit, but one of the reasons that they were taking such pains was that Gaeta was genuinely excellent at his job of tactician and navigator. It was easy to simply kill Gaeta and shuffle him off with a new identity to one of the other ships, but that was a waste of his talent and ability and would likely damn the remaining people to death. Gaeta had to stay in his current identity and that meant he couldn’t just get up and walk out of the operating room.

“No.” Jack said. “I can’t do this without asking. I know you and I know how your body works. This is going to hurt like hell. I can’t do this without his permission.”

It was exactly what she loved about Jack, but it made things more difficult. “Then leave the restraints on.” It made it easier all around. Then she felt it, the odd sensation that signaled one of her kind. It had been almost six years since she had last felt another immortal. Felix Gaeta opened his eyes and took a breath. Then he recoiled in shock and pulled against the restraints. “You tried to frakking kill me!”

“She did frakking kill you,” Jack said. He put his hands on Gaeta’s blood covered but healed leg.

“And then you came back to life,” Layne added. “Because you’re like me. You’re immortal. Welcome to the club.” She wasn’t surprised that he paled or that he seemed to shake as he looked at his healed leg.

He flexed his right foot, and looked at Jack. “This is impossible. What did you do to me? Am I a Cylon? Is this a base star?”

“Yes, it is, and I’m the Cylon God, Felix.” Jack tickled his foot, making Gaeta thrash against the restraints.

It was funny as anything but she made sure to not smile. “Stop teasing him, Jack.” She grabbed Gaeta by the shoulders and held him down. “I told you what you are. You’re an immortal. You’re not a damn Cylon, Gaeta, and if you’d frakking think, you’d realize you’re exactly where you were when I covered your nose and mouth and cut off your air until you died.”

He looked at her and then at the operating table that was still coated with the blood that had been oozing from his now healed leg. There were still smears of blood on his leg and on Jack’s hands. Good, Layne thought, he’s starting to think. “This is still the Galactica,” he said after a long moment. “This is the operating room… But… “ He looked down at his foot. “How is this happening?”

At least he was listening, she thought. It was good that they had tied him down. “Sometime in the next few days, you and I will have a very long talk about the details. Right now you need to shut up and listen. For all practical purposes you are immortal. You had to die violently in order to activate the immortality. That death, and your immortality completely healed your leg. You can be shot by a Cylon, stabbed, drink poison like it’s a cocktail, it’s not going to kill you. I’m the same way. Now listen very carefully. Neither of us would die if we are tossed out an airlock. Stop and imagine for a moment just how awful you felt waking up and think about having to do that every ten minutes or so, until your floating body enters a planetary system where you burn on descent and continue living and dying and living over and over for all eternity. Do you want that?”

She certainly didn’t.

After a long moment he shuddered. “No… but….If… If I’m immortal… if I am healed… people will think I am a Cylon. There’s no way anyone will believe this.”

He *was* listening, Layne thought with relief. And he understood the problem, at least on the surface. “Jack and I are going to help you.”

“It’s going to hurt,” Jack said after a moment. “But not as bad as the wound you had and always remember that the alternative was that you end up with one leg. I’m going to screw as many pins as I can into your leg and make a nice stabilizing cage. You’ll heal as soon as I remove them. That will be in about seven to ten days. That doesn’t mean you’ll be walking around free as a bird in two weeks…. that’s just when I take the pins out, and you heal, and then I slap a cast on your leg that will have the pins sticking out through the plaster. That will be another six weeks. I’d do the cast now except that my nurses and interns are too smart to think that I’d cover the infected mess that was your leg so soon. You’ll get pain killers but it will hurt.”

“Why are you doing this?” Gaeta asked. “I mean… what’s in it for you? You’re going to a lot of trouble to help me….”

She nodded to Jack and he smiled slightly. “If I expose you,” he said softly, “I expose Layne and I will be damned if she’s put in danger. That means if you’re not ok with this plan, you have two options. The first is that we pretend you died and sneak you off the ship and you become someone else in the fleet. I don’t recommend that.”

“The fleet needs your skills,” Layne added. “That’s why we’re trying to save you intact.”

“And the other option?” Gaeta asked after a moment.

“We tell Adama you healed and you’re a Cylon,” Layne said. “He might lock you up. Hell, he might give you a hug the way he did Thrace. But my best guess is that he throws you out the airlock after he shoots you a few times to prove you’re different.” And she would already be on the Prometheous when it happened. “If you do things our way, you stay as Felix Gaeta, the fleet navigator and tactical officer,” for a while at least, “ and you don’t spend eternity being tortured in dead space.”

After a long moment, Gaeta sighed. “You’re not telling me enough to make a real decision,” he said, “ and that means I take the first choice. But….” and he flexed his leg. “No one is going to believe you, Dr. Cottle. My toes were turning black. I… I was burning up. You’re good… but you’re not that good.”

“No one but Layne or I will be allowed to look under the bandages,” Jack said. “I plan to use make up to have your toes slowly pink up over the next few days. And before you leave the operating room, you’re getting a strong dose of romaxilon, so you’re going to be burning up for the next few days.”

“Romaxilon? But… that can kill people…” Gaeta’s sudden fear was actually amusing. Layne struggled not to laugh.

“Felix,” she said with amusement, “Don’t you understand? You don’t have to worry about adverse affects any more.”

Yes... yes that icon is stolen!

secrethopefic

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