Even in Death

Chapter One

Explosions were been set off, and people were running, screaming below us, and as I sat in the Raptor that was to take off from Caprica, I realised with a smile that everything was going to be ok for me. I had been lucky; I was the first of the lottery tickets pulled to choose the final three to go into the Raptor. Though luck maybe has played a part in this, I actually believe that it was fate that led me to be saved from certain death. Luck just wasn't enough in my opinion, not enough to be the reason why I, of all those people, survived.

My shields were up around my mind, I didn't want anyone to see my emotions, and I didn't want to see into anyone.

I had been in the middle of lunch when the first bomb had hit Caprica City, and I had heard screaming, there was so much pain in the surrounding word that I didn't have enough time to put my shields up, I had mentally collapsed, clutching my head from the strong pains as the bombs went off.

But now, with so few people surrounding me, I was able to relax enough that it didn't hurt me to try and force a metaphoric open door - closed.

Gaius Baltar was in front of me, although he didn't seem to see anyone around him, least of all me. His visual-vision was in his brain, probably processing what was going on like the few adults in here were.

Some of the children were lucky, they were too young to understand, their innocence would remain untainted, though a few had their entire mind destroyed, it happened at the wrong moment in their life. They're brains aren't mature enough to deal the way adults were able to, nor are they young enough to just not understand what's going on, like the other kids were.

I pitied them.

In my head I remained - as others were doing - I was scared that the moment I actually realised what was going on; I'd break. But being in my head - where from a young age I had built a sanctuary of a sort – I was safe, I was away from what was happening and no one could hurt me.

I had lost everything, my house, my money, and my family though the last on that list was near nothing to me. I hadn't seen them in eight years. In fact the last time I had in reality seen them - not just talked to my mum or dad on the phone - actually physically seen them, had been eight years ago when I left. Leaving my dad shouting at me to get back in the house and mum in the kitchen pouring her-self another glass of ambrosia.

I never regretted leaving that house, but I did regret never telling them that I still loved them. As cliché as it was, it's the small things that make you realise how quickly things can disappear around you.

In my mind I was standing under the shade of a tree, light streaming through the green leaves and branches, onto the grass-filled ground. It was quiet. There was no pain, no lies, just this. At some point in my mind, where I had built the outside world of Caprica - probably now completely destroyed – I was awoken by a small tug on my dress. I turned to the disturbance to see a small child going out the door with wide, brown eyes.

"We're here." Someone told me, the voice was feminine, "and you've been out cold since we left." I wasn't surprised, when I slept my body shut down and I was able to process things clearly and efficiently.

"Where's here?" A simple question that may, or may not need a simple answer, though by the look on the person's face I assumed that they didn't know any more then I did.

"We landed on colonial 1 just moments ago, at least, they're calling themselves colonial 1." I exhaled out a deep breath before standing up. My shields around my mind were still up and intact, and as I smoothed my summer dress back into place I wondered what would happen next. "I'm Amelia by the way." She said climbing out of the raptor.

"Eve, my name's Eve." Someone helped me out and when I was on the flat ground of Colonial 1, I felt great, I felt sad, but I was very aware of the fact that I was alive. I followed the rest of us civilians to the main part of the ship to find that a lot of the seats were taken. I wanted to go back to sleep but something had me on nerves; there was something that wasn't been said by the people that were here and I was very curious as to know what.

Sitting in a spare seat, I curled up to myself and brought my shields down. I had to shift through a fair amount of voices, there was a lot of 'but what about my parents? My Family?' and 'Cylons destroyed our home…' to shift through but it didn't take to long too work out something through all their thoughts, once I had eliminated the people that were on the raptor.

A woman had been elected the president not too long before I had arrived, all I needed to do was find her consciousness and I could see what she had install for us, the civilians at the moment.

Ever since I was little, I've been able to shift through people's thoughts as I please, animals though, run on a different frequency and I can't get into their mind. One of many reasons my parents and I had fought so much was because I always knew what they were thinking. I hadn't learnt to build up my walls until later.

Found you. My mind had found President… Roslin was the name I pulled out of her thoughts. She was scared, but not a major amount of that fear was for humanity. She thought, no she knew, she was going to die of something… of cancer.

The president had terminal breast cancer? That was interesting.

I searched around a few other people but not much more digging was needed, nothing interesting was being said and soon enough I found myself replacing my walls back up into place, and resting my head against the window that looked out, into space.

I fell asleep again, my dream back in my sanctuary as I played with a small lap dog, only as I did play with the dog, I realised in the middle of my dream that I hadn't disconnected my link with someone and they were filtering into my head.

"So I'm, only in your head?"

"Exactly."

I opened my eyes and looked around, the connection snapping at my sudden movement. What had that been? Those were two thoughts on the same wavelength, and it wasn't a memory, memories weren't so vivid in the differences of voices. I tried to think of what could have caused this, I had never had a case like this, but maybe there were two mind readers speaking to each other? The sentence they spoke between them did make sense then.

"No." I jumped and turned to see Gaius Baltar, he was hesitant in his seat, but when I went to open my thoughts to him, all I got was a wall. Strange. Few people had walls in their minds, most did it to protect themselves from the truth, I wonder what Gaius had to hide, possibly nothing more then cheating on someone, but another possibility was that he had done or seen something and had remembered it just then causing the flash that resulted in him crying out that one word. No.

I gave another quick scan of the room, but when I did, I realised that the connection I had could have come from anywhere.

The connections I have to thoughts were hard to break when I was tired. The connections themselves were easy to put up once you know how to, its just simply a way of looking into someone's mind clearly, and sometimes I put them up without noticing it because it was a process of thought I did so much I barely realised when I have done it.

But taking them down was hard for a number of reasons. One, you have to actually get out of the mind and to be out of the mind when you've got your eyes closed and you're ready to sleep, is hard. Two, normally I have to actually check that I'm out, a lot of the time I've still got a single connection that might be connected to their current thoughts, sometimes, but rarely, I could be connected to their memories. And the last reason why it's hard to disconnect is because my sub-conscious mind, the part that actually makes the main connection happen, doesn't want to disconnect. Some part of me needs to be in someone else's mind, not just wants, but needs.

That's why I had lived by myself; it was also why I never told anyone about what was inside of me. I was scared that if the government found out they would want to use me to find terrorists, I couldn't do that, I couldn't be the reason the end someone's life no matter how terrible the person was.

A woman walked past me, she was holding a child, but she was too busy looking after and fussing over the child to realise that the child wasn't crying because it was hungry or that it was lonely or scared the child was tired. But I wouldn't tell her that, I wouldn't tell her because I couldn't. So I watched her walk into the bathroom to see if the baby needed changing while I tuck myself close together in the seat and fell back into my sanctuary, this time making sure I had cut all ties and connection that could be with anyone else.

-

"Hey," someone said nudging me. I opened my eyes and looked to see the woman who had talked to me earlier, Amelia. "They're offering some of us to go on Galactica, only like five of us and most opted to stay." I sat up and looked around, Galactica would have more people, but also more places that were secluded, so I nodded and followed Amelia to the Raptor that we had arrived in earlier.

"So we found Galactica?"

"You've been asleep for a while haven't you?" She asked, already knowing the answer as she continued, "there was an incident." I blinked, questioning for her to continue, "The Cylons came, and… ah, we had to get away quickly, but umm… some of the ships don't have an FTL drive so we… we left them and they were destroyed." Her eyes were blinking like mad to hold back the tears; "I'm not responsible for it but… why, why did so many have to die?" She grabbed me suddenly and was crying on my shoulder. I gasped as a thousand thoughts at once crashed my walls down.

Because of the physical contact, she had placed a connection straight into me, and I was seeing everything from both her and my own eyes. Thoughts were connecting in my head and I was having problems in what were my thoughts and what were hers.

But one stuck out, loud and clear, 'My husband was on there.' So I hugged her back, knowing that she was crying for all their souls, but for all those people she was only crying for the man she loved.

The Raptor took off with a child and four adults, myself, Amelia, the pilot of the raptor, and Gaius Baltar. Baltar didn't speak, and my mind was in overdrive as I tried to continuously filter out her memories and thoughts so that I wouldn't go insane. I didn't know the breaking point of my mind and I don't wish to find out.

Eventually, after a gruelling ten minutes, we landed again. Amelia let go of me and wiped her eyes, following Boomer, at least that's what the person on the other transmission had said, and Gaius out. I was the last to exit, and when I did, I saw many people who were checking over the Raptor.

I looked around for Amelia but she had already left. "Where do I go?" I asked someone, who in return, just shrugged at me. With a heavyhearted sigh, I decided to just wonder around Galactica and see if I could find someone who did know what I needed to do. Where I was suppose to go.

My steps were quiet. And as I walked, I listened. People were thinking the same things over and over again in their minds, and it was worrying.

I hope that after a while, we as the race of humanity will be ok. But I don't think we will be; I think we're slowly going to lose everything that we've held close to us. We've already lost a lot of people we loved, our homes and possessions that had meant the worlds to us. But now with things like this, there are going to a lot of cut downs, no more luxury, nothing.

Authors Note: Heh, yeah I haven't used one of these – that is to say Authors Notes – in a while. I'm having problems with uploading the next chapter in Eloquent Elysian Silhouettes, and while I was frustrated I wrote this, also because I was watching the miniseries online since I STILL don't own it –pout-anyway, I just wanted to say that Eve is a character I'm slowly creating, unlike Star (or Earth Star, what ever you want to call her) she is still heavily been created. One thing I know for sure is how I want her to turn out. And yes, she can read minds, and enter minds, but she's having problems with Gaius' mind.

Anyway, the next chapter will take place about a week later then this chapter, so 33 the episode though I would LOVE to write about, I don't know. It's one of those things where if I owned it I would be like "hell yeah" but I don't. My parents aren't big on BSG (not enough action they say well pfft to them) so yeah, we'll see. I kind of used most of my downloads on the miniseries… it was so worth it.