A/N: I wrote this FanFic over 2 years ago after watching the episode "The Captain's Hand" and started speculating on how the future might play out based on President Roslin's Executive Order. (or a different variation of it.) Kara and Helo aren't mine, but I love them so I try not to hurt them.
"NEED"
Kara slammed her fist into her locker door as Helo looked on, nursing a purple lollipop in his mouth and laying on his bunk. "This is so frakin' ridiculous!" she exclaimed.
Helo grinned around his sucker. "What's got up your ass this time?" he asked.
Kara spun on her heel and turned to look at him, a fire burning behind her eyes. "You haven't heard the latest announcement from our dear president Roslin?" she asked.
Helo shook his head. "I've been out all day doing training runs in a Raptor," he replied. "Trying to get my space legs back."
"This is a total step backwards. What happened to women's rights?" Kara sat down on the bunk beside Helo and held her head in her hands, her long blonde hair falling over her lap.
Sitting up, Helo turned and looked at her. "What is it?" he asked concerned, taking the lollipop out of his mouth.
"You know how the President issued the Executive Order last month that abortions would be illegal?" Kara explained.
"It's about staying alive," said Helo. "It's about survival of the species. We can't go around killing babies when we're worrying about human survival."
Kara glared at Helo. "Well, now she's just issued another Executive Order that birth control would be illegal too!" Kara exclaimed. "How can she do that? It's basically an order that now all sexual encounters are for purposes of procreation only!"
Helo popped the sucker back into his mouth and began working on it again with his tongue. "You have to see it from her point of view," he said, talking around the lollipop. "We're eventually going to have to repopulate a civilization."
"To what end though?" asked Kara. "Roslin spent years fighting for women's rights and the right to choose and the right to have control over our bodies. And now… now she's taken all that away."
"Kara, this is an emergency situation. Desperate times call for desperate measures," Helo explained. "Can't you see that?"
"Easy for you to say. It wouldn't be your body that would be stuck carrying a child for 9 months if you slipped up during a moment of passion," said Kara.
Helo took the sucker out of his mouth again; his mouth and jaw set in a stony line and looked at Kara. "Is that what this is about?" he asked. "Are you worried that one of your little one night stands is going to result in a pregnancy now?"
Kara looked away and didn't answer.
"Thanks to Lee, we've still got the black market… you can access that for illegal contraceptives," explained Helo.
"It's more than that," said Kara, her eyes starting to tear up. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."
"Try me," he said.
"I've thought this through already," she said, "This is the frakin' slippery slope. I know what will be coming next and it will be coming soon. An Executive Erder that all child bearing men and women will have to start having babies in order to repopulate the fleet."
Helo didn't answer and Kara continued.
"I'm a Viper pilot. I've given my life and my career to the military. I don't want to be grounded in order to give birth to a child," she exclaimed. "That's not what I want in my life."
"They might make exceptions for enlisted personnel. After all, they can't expect to take all women off the front lines in order to have children. We're short pilots already," said Helo.
Kara shook her head. "I've already talked to Dr. Baltar. It was late one night over a game of Triad, we were both drunk and he had a case of loose lips. He's run the figures and worked out the timeline. They need all childbearing women, no matter who they are, to start having babies. They're working, right now, this very instance, on a plan to keep the gene pool pure. To create "families" or "pods" as they call it that will breed with each other, rather than random procreation since we're such a small number of people right now.
"They'll be training more able-bodied men to take over duties in shifts for the women in the military while they're pregnant. We wouldn't be expected to raise the children; we could go back to our duties for a period of time, until we'd be expected to bear another child. Older men and women and people who are infertile would be responsible for raising the children. We'd just basically be breeding machines." Kara began to break down, crying as she finished talking.
Her mind was taking her back to Cylon-occupied Caprica, where she spent weeks on a Cylon breeding farm, being subjected to test after test, having her eggs harvested, and seeing friends of hers become incubators for Cylon babies. She felt mankind was going to fall victim to the same plan.
Helo popped the lollipop back in his mouth and wrapped his arm around Kara's shoulders. "Holy shit!" he exclaimed. He was totally speechless.
"I don't think anyone thought of what it would mean to try to propagate the human species again," Kara continued, sniffing and rubbing her red, bleary eyes. "But this is what it's coming too. Gaius said the government would be deciding what men and women would be matched up for breeding purposes in order to cross-match the best genes possible."
Kara shook her head. "Freedom of choice and the democratic right to choose is being ripped from us Helo!"
"But…" he stammered. "What can we do?"
Kara turned and stared into his hazel eyes. "This is so frakin' unfair! So ridiculous... how the frak do they think they can get away with this!" Kara felt the anger welling up inside of her, her voice raising, taking it out on Helo. Just because… he was there. She wailed on him, against him, her fists pounding on his chest.
Helo reached out and grabbed her hands and pulled her closer to him, trying to subdue her. "Kara! Kara!" he called out to her. "It's alright. Calm down." Kara had always opened up to him in the many years they had known each other and been friends, but he had never seen her this vulnerable before.
"Calm down!" she exclaimed. "It's not so bad for you is it?" she asked. "You'll get to run around sticking your dick into whatever woman they tell you to and then you can go back to flying your Raptor and fighting the Cylons while I'll be cooped up every year for 9 months getting fat and having babies."
"Kara!" Helo yelled, getting right in her face. "Get it together!" he exclaimed, grasping her wrists tighter.
Kara wrenched her arms free from his grasp and rubbed her wrists with her hands.
Helo pulled the sucker out of his mouth. "You think I'm going to enjoy this?" he asked. "Is that what you really think of me? That I'll like being forced to copulate with some strange women that I don't even know?" Helo shook his head. "We've been friends for a long time Kara, you know me better than that."
The two of them sat on the bunk in stony silence for a few minutes. Kara swallowed hard and wiped the tears from her face and then looked over at Helo. "I'm sorry," she said softly, faintly, barely audible.
Helo didn't reply, his gaze set on the floor, his jaw working hard on the lollipop.
One week later….
Kara was laying on her back in her bunk reading a book when Helo came into the room. "Hey," he said.
Kara laid her book down flat across her chest and looked up. Her gaze met Helo's eyes as he approached her bunk. The two of them had both been busy with training and working, so they hadn't had a chance to talk since their last conversation, about Roslin's new Executive Order, had ended in such stony silence.
"Hi," Kara said softly.
Helo stood over her, his hands on his hips. "I've been thinking," he said, "I think I know how to solve your problem."
Kara sat up in her bunk and looked inquisitively at Helo. "How's that?" she asked.
"You and I will have a baby." Helo said matter-of-factly.
Kara's eyes grew wide and she quickly looked away from Helo, feeling her face flush with the heat of embarrassment.
Helo sat down on the bunk next to her. "Think about it," he said. "If the Government is going to force the Fleet's population to start reproducing and also tell us who we have to breed with, you're not going to have a choice."
Kara listened to his explanation, but her mind half-wandered off during the conversation. She had visions of she and Helo rolling around in bed, their naked, sweaty bodies pressing together in a moment of heady-passion. She felt her cheeks flare up again and slowly took a deep breath.
"…. And so if you were already pregnant they couldn't force you to breed with some stranger," explained Helo.
Kara came back to earth in the middle of his sentence. She shook her head and looked at him. "What?" she asked, not understanding, her mind still caught up in the slightest possibility of being intimate with this man… Helo… her friend.
"Are you not listening Kara?" asked Helo. "I said that if they're going to cross-match the population into breeding "pods", they can't possibly match you to anyone if you're already pregnant. Plus, if they want to keep the gene-pool pure they would likely want women to keep breeding with the same men…." Helo's voice trailed off as he realized all of a sudden what he was saying. As if he hadn't quite thought through it all to the point where his mind had just jumped.
Kara swallowed hard. "Do you mean to say that if you and I were to have a child, the Government would want to keep us having children together and I wouldn't have to have some strangers' child?"
Helo looked cautiously at Kara, "Ummm… I think that's what I'm saying."
Kara picked nervously at a hangnail on her thumb. "What about Sharon?" she asked softly, knowing that Helo's feelings still lay with his Cylon lover and their unborn child.
Helo thought for a minute and chose his words carefully before he spoke. "I still love her," he said, "I always will. She's going to be the mother of my child. But…." He paused and sighed. "I've come to terms with the fact that I don't think I'm ever going to have a future with her or our daughter. As soon as the baby is born, the military and Government will be all over her for testing and experiments. She'll be half Cylon - half human. She'll have no rights as a human being.
"And I know they'll never let Sharon and I lead a normal life and settle down as a family. As much as that breaks my heart, I've thought it through and I don't think there's any chance for her and I. I care so much for her, but…." His voice began to crack and tears formed at the corners of his eyes. Kara reached over and rubbed his back. "… I think I finally have to let go."
3 months later
Kara and Helo were in the recreation room on the Galactica playing a game of Triad with some other crew members. VP/Dr. Gaius Baltar was also at their table playing. The ambrosia was flowing, the talk was loose and everyone was having a good time. Kara had just lit up a cigar, while Helo was sucking on his signature lollipop.
"So tell me dear Mr. VP," asked Viper Pilot "Kat", "What's new in the world of fleet politics and our continuing battle with the Cylons?"
Gaius looked up from his hand of cards, across the table to Kat, and carefully took a sip of ambrosia from his class. "Well… uh… er..," he stammered. His visionary Number Six stood beside him, visible only to him and no one else, wearing a form-fitting, sexy red dress, with cutouts around the sides and back. She seductively leaned over and placed a hand on his shoulder and ran her other perfectly manicured fingers through his long, dark, messy hair. "What's the matter Gaius?" she purred in her low, seductive voice. "Not feeling up to a political speech at the moment?"
"No um…" he stuttered, laying down his cards and plucking his glasses from his face. Rubbing his eyes with his fingers he proceeded to answer Kat. "Actually, we're about to take the next step in our plan to propagate the population of the fleet. I'm sure President Roslin will be making the official announcement shortly."
Number Six turned and looked at Gaius inquiringly. "Why Gaius!" she said, "I'm shocked that you didn't share this information with me."
Gaius ignored Six and continued speaking. "Our plan is already in place to begin cross-matching the DNA of all healthy, child-bearing age men and women of the fleet in order to create breeding "pods". Which are essentially "families" that will pro-create on a rotating schedule in order to ensure a pure gene pool and a calculated generational birth rate."
Kara's eyes grew wide and she looked over her cards at Helo who was sitting across the table from her.
"Are you serious?" asked Kat. "They're making us all have babies?"
"I'm sure exceptions will be made for military personnel on duty," chimed in Hotdog, another Viper pilot.
"Actually, every individual of child-bearing age will be forced to participate. There will be a rotating "breeding" schedule so not every female on active duty will be out of... ummm… work at the same time" Gaius explained.
"And people who can't have children?" asked Kat.
"Well, older men and women will become the adoptive parents of anyone who doesn't want to raise their own children. But all other women who can't conceive will have their eggs harvested so that we can perform detailed genetic testing and artificial insemination so that other women will be surrogate mothers," explained Gaius. " If we wait for just child-bearing women to have babies every year, the human race will not grow at a rate fast enough to catch up to our death rate"
"Soooo... how long will that "cross-matching" take anyway?" asked Kat. "I'm sure that process will take a long time… like… years right?"
"Um no actually," said Gaius. "We've already collected blood samples from every single member of the fleet last year when we did our Cylon detection test, so it won't take very long at all… 2 months max."
Helo exchanged Kara's glance and he smiled at her behind his lollipop. The two of them hadn't spoken about the subject since three months ago when Helo had broken down in tears over his acceptance of his inevitable loss of Sharon and his child. But that didn't mean that both of them hadn't thought about it.
Helo realized that he was going to lose his unborn daughter and would likely never get to be a part of her life. He wanted to do Kara a favor so she wouldn't be forced together with some stranger, but he also wondered if he was just maybe looking for a substitute for the family that he was being forced to leave behind. He also knew it had been too damn long and he needed a hot body and a warm bed for some comfort.
Helo had known Kara for many years during their time in the military together and the thought had crossed his mind before about what she would be like in bed. She was a hot ticket that Kara Thrace, and Helo, at one point, had even worked up enough courage to ask her out; to cross that line between friendship and relationship. but his timing had been awful, as the day he had been determined to finally talk to Kara about it, she had started seriously dating Zak Adama. Helo's plans had been shattered and he had never again thought twice about pursuing a romance with Kara. So now he feared what this might do to their friendship.
Kara was of the mindset that she was a career military pilot. Children were never supposed to be a part of her future. Babies just fraked everything up. She knew… she had been pregnant twice before. Once when she was a teenager back on Picon she had been date raped and become pregnant. She had been anxious to start a career as a Pyramid player and knew having a baby was out of the question. Without telling her family, she scrounged up enough money and had a back-alley abortion. It took her a long time to heal from that experience.
Years later after her dream of a sports career was shattered due to a knee injury, she joined the military and met Zak Adama. They were in a relationship and were engaged to be married, but she had discovered she was pregnant. Zak was excited about the baby and happy to start a family with her, but Kara now feared having to give up her military career. Fortunately or not, she didn't have to dwell on it long, because she ended up miscarrying the child in her 3rd month of the pregnancy. The Dr. who treated her said that there was much scar-tissue from the shoddy abortion she had had when she was younger, and that had contributed to the miscarriage. It was likely she would never be able to conceive a child again and that was fine by her.
But now the greatest worry on Kara's mind was that she wouldn't be able to conceive a child with Helo and that she would be subjected to a harvest of her eggs. This took her back once again to her memories of the Cylon "farm". It was bad enough that the Cylon's stole eggs from her, but now she would have to go through the same thing with humans. By the gods, they were as bad as the Cylons!
"Frak!!" Kara yelled out, stubbing her cigar out in an ashtray and slamming her cards down on the table. She felt like she was between a rock and a hard place. The cards fell from her hands, a perfect reverse triad lined up, and she stormed out of the room.
"But Starbuck, wait," Kat called after her. "You have a reverse triad… you won!"
Helo watched Kara leave the room. He waited one beat before he swiped the pile of cubits off the table into his pocket, grabbed a bottle of ambrosia and left the room following after Kara.
Gaius put his glasses back on his face and took a long, deep swallow of his glass of ambrosia. "My gods," he exclaimed. "I know it's shocking, but it's hardly a surprise that this was coming."
"Kara!" Helo called out to her, as he watched Kara's long legs carry her running off down the hallway of the Galactica, her blonde ponytail bobbing as she jogged around a corner.
Kara didn't stop. Her eyes were blurry with tears and her nose dripped. She swiped at her face and nose with the back of her hand as she ran down the corridor, past the CIC, and almost decked Gaeta who was just coming off shift. She slammed straight into him and Gaeta stumbled off his feet to his knees, a confused look on his face. But she kept on running. Gaeta watched Kara's back as she ran off in the other direction.
Helo ran up to Gaeta and took his hand, helping him to his feet. He took his sucker out of his mouth, "Are you okay?" he asked. Gaeta dusted off his uniform. "I'm fine. What's with her?" he gestured in the direction Kara had run.
Helo shook his head and popped the lollipop back between his lips and started running after Kara again. He knew her well enough that he knew where he would find her.
A few moments later Helo ducked into the gym and Kara was already there, her boxing gloves laced up, wailing away on a punching bag like there was no tomorrow.
"Kara," Helo said. But when Kara stopped punching and looked up at Helo, he saw the emotion and sadness in her eyes, the utter realization behind her stare that she had lost all control of her life. He didn't say another word more.
He overturned his pocket and the silver and gold cubits fell to the floor with a clink of metal on concrete. Kara slowly undid her gloves and pulled them off her hands and dropped them to the floor with a soft thud, while Helo unscrewed the bottle of ambrosia and held it out to her.
Kara took the bottle from his hand and leaned her head back while she took a long slug of the fiery-green liquid. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and reached out and took the lollipop out of Helo's mouth and dropped it to the floor. Stepping closer to him she stood up on her tiptoes and kissed his lips, her tongue probing into his mouth, tasting the yummy sweet flavor of strawberry candy. Helo closed his eyes and pulled Kara closer to him, his hand on her lower back. He let out a soft moan and returned her kiss, her own lips tasting of tangy ambrosia with a hint of oaky cigar smoke.
Quickly their clothes left their bodies and dropped onto the floor joining the pile of cubits, Kara's boxing gloves and Helo's strawberry lollipop. There were no words. They didn't need to talk about it anymore. They had both thought long and hard about their situations, about their futures, about their needs and what needed to be done. And no matter what the consequences, career, personal or otherwise, this time both of them just needed a warm body to hold and someone to wake up next to in the morning.
In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort there
"Angel" – Sarah McLachlan