Title: "Dining on Ashes"

Spoilers: Up to 'Collaborators"

Summary: An extension of the last scene where Tyrol and Gaeta sit together while eating.

Author's Notes: I personally loved this episode and really felt bad for Gaeta as he was being 'tried' by the Circle. I wanted to extend the scene where Tyrol sat with Gaeta in the mess hall and talk a little. One thing I'd noticed since this episode was that no one actually thanked Felix for what he did.

Chief Tyrol nibbled a little of the food on his tray. While the fare from the mess was infinitely better than what he'd eaten back on New Caprica, he found he didn't have much of an appetite. Gaeta, who sat next to him, ate his own meal with slow deliberation. Not a single word had passed between them after Tyrol had joined him at his table. The mess around them bustled with crewmembers talking and laughing.

Surreptitiously, Galen looked around and could occasionally see more than one sharp glance in his direction. He sighed. Word was slowly spreading about Felix's invaluable – if covert – help to the resistance. Unfortunately, there was still a lot of lingering distrust. Too many people saw Felix Gaeta as the front man, the brains, behind Gaius Baltar's administration. Even with President Roslin's pardon, there would still be a lot of mistrust and anger to get over.

The Chief hoped his symbolic gesture of sitting with Gaeta could bring some trust back. It was, of course, the least he could do, considering what had nearly happened to Felix.

A shiver ran down Galen's back at how close he and the rest of the Circle had come to spacing the one man responsible for their freedom from the occupation. Without the information on the Cylon jamming frequencies, they never would have been able to contact Galactica and coordinate the extraction. Without the information on the death lists, they wouldn't have been able to save all those people: Laura Roslin…Tom Zarek…Cally.

"Too frakkin' ironic," Tyrol muttered with a shake of his head.

Gaeta paused in mid-sip of his coffee. Still staring straight ahead, he raised a questioning eyebrow.

Lowering his voice so that only Gaeta could hear, Tyrol said, "All those times we passed by each other in the city and all I could think of was why you weren't doing something to help the insurgency. I kept thinking you weren't the same guy I knew back before we landed on that godsforsaken planet. I hated the idea that you were working the toasters. And when Cally was taken…I just completely took it out on you."

Still Gaeta said nothing, his focus on his meal, although his expression did soften somewhat. Galen didn't blame him. Hell, he was surprised Felix hadn't told him to frak off and leave him alone.

Still staring at the remains of his meal, Gaeta quietly asked, "How many?"

Tyrol looked over in mild confusion. "How many what?"

"How many people did you…judge?" And kill.

Galen had to look away, chewing on his lip. Although the Circle had been broken and exposed by Roslin's proclamation, the exact number of people executed was never released to the general public.

"Thirteen," he said just under his breath.

"Thirteen," Gaeta repeated tonelessly. "So that would have made me fourteen." He shook his head. "You know what the really sad thing about all this is? I really believed in the system, I believed in the idea of New Caprica. Okay, it wasn't perfect but it was all we had." He played with his food a little. "I even looked up to Pres – " he grimaced " – Gaius Baltar. He had problems, sure, but what politician doesn't? And then when I was in that launch tube and told that President Zarek authorized all these 'trials'? How do you put trust in any government that holds secret trials and executions?"

"I don't know," Tyrol said with a tired sigh. "I guess there was just so much anger over what happened, so much trust broken, people wanted some measure of justice…or revenge."

A flash of anger went through Tyrol as he remembered venting to Jammer on how they'd get even with all those who had collaborated with the Cylons on New Caprica. The feeling of justification he'd felt when Jammer had been tried as a collaborator had been short lived when the former New Caprican Police officer had desperately pleaded with the Circle, saying that he'd been the one to help save Cally from the death squad at the last minute. Tyrol had wavered slightly at hearing this. Could one life saved, especially a loved one, tip the balance against others that had died at one's hands? There was no simple answer, but the others in the Circle had felt it hadn't been enough. In the end, Galen had felt nothing but emptiness as a terror-stricken Jammer was vented out into space.

"Maybe I should've just kept quiet about those ballots," Felix muttered.

Galen frowned and blinked. "Kept quiet about what?"

But Gaeta only shook his head. He couldn't say out loud what he was thinking. How could he explain to Galen that at the end of last year's elections between Roslin and Baltar, he'd been the one to find discrepancies in the ballots favoring Roslin? He'd been the one to tell Colonel Tigh of the error – and had been curtly told that it would be handled. He'd been the one to suspect that the Colonel might have been trying to rig the election so Roslin would win. As much as Felix had hated doing it, he'd then done something he never thought he'd ever do: he went over Colonel Tigh's authority and informed Commander Adama of his findings. Hours later, it had been announced that there had been a 'tabulation error' in the vote and that the clear winner had been Gaius Baltar.

New Caprica was to have been a new start and hope for humanity. That was the ideal that Gaeta wanted to be a part of, but President Baltar's administration had been corrupt from the start. Only a year had passed and already a major strike had almost begun by Tyrol and the Worker's Union. He'd been there when Baltar had surrendered without a shot to the Cylons. From then on, he'd done what he could to help the burgeoning insurgency. He'd even helped pass information about the graduation of the New Caprican Police force so that the insurgents could take a shot at Baltar. Although horrified at the use of the suicide bomb, Gaeta had been even more dismayed when Baltar had decided not to attend the ceremony at the last second.

During the exodus, when it had looked like Baltar would actually try and escape, Gaeta had tried to stop him at gunpoint. In the end, he'd let him go so that Gaius could redeem himself by disarming a nuclear device that would have destroyed New Caprica. That was something Felix could never share with anyone on Galactica: assisting the insurgency was one thing, but holding Gaius Baltar at gunpoint and then letting him go was something else.

No bomb had gone off during the evacuation, so whatever Gaius had done to stop D'anna, it must have worked. Still, the Cylons would not have let that go unpunished. Gaeta took some comfort in knowing that Gaius Baltar had to be dead at the hands of the toasters. He had to be.

"You know what Baltar once said to me?" Gaeta asked suddenly, sidestepping Galen's original question. When the Chief shook his head, Felix continued, "He called me an idealist and said that there was no sin in that."

"It's not," said Galen. "Or at least it shouldn't be." He glanced around and spotted a chronometer on a far wall. Only a few minutes remained before his shift started. Tyrol glanced back at Gaeta. "Look…I can't imagine what it must've taken for you to go against all those 'ideals' you believe in. If you hadn't, the resistance would probably have died out and we'd all still be on New Caprica." The Chief licked his lips. "Saying 'I'm sorry' just doesn't feel like enough, but I hope it's a start. And…for what it's worth, I wanted to say thank you."

Gaeta slowly looked up and stared at the Chief.

"Thank you," Tyrol repeated. "For helping…for getting us off that planet…for – " he swallowed " – Cally. If you hadn't given me the coordinates where the execution was going to take place..." His voice trailed off.

Gaeta didn't say a word, but blinked a few times. It was the first time anyone had expressed a little gratitude. It also helped to slightly lessen the weight of guilt off his shoulders.

"Maybe…" Felix started. "Maybe one day we can put all of this behind us – " He abruptly stopped and his face hardened as his gaze went past the Chief's shoulder.

Tyrol frowned and followed Gaeta's gaze. Several feet away, with tray in hand, stood Kara Thrace. Tyrol looked around and noticed all the other tables were occupied. He looked back at the other man. Gaeta's lips pressed together as Thrace looked over and saw the two of them. She blinked and looked a little nonplussed as she saw Gaeta.

Galen hadn't like being a member of the Circle, but even he had been taken aback at the feral rage Thrace had displayed as she viciously kicked a bound Gaeta, all the while screaming:

"Beg…beg…BEG!!"

Felix shuddered ever so slightly and Tyrol had no doubt that the other man was thinking the same thing.

"Maybe someday," Gaeta again said to him. Still staring steadily at Thrace he said, "But not today."

With that, Gaeta stood and left the mess without even looking back.

-FIN-