Written for the livejournal community bsg epics, inspiration day: deleted scenes. I chose Helo as a character and kleenexcow gave me Rapture as an episode.
I don't own anything.
Someone cleaned the blood of the wall; someone scrubbed it off the floors.
He couldn't tell you who, couldn't tell you who came by in those hours he sat waiting. The Admiral didn't arrest him nor did he send him to the brig, he didn't tell him to stay in his quarters either, though that might have been because he somehow knew Helo would not move. Helo thinks that even he didn't know what to do with this situation nor how to resolve it. All they could do was wait.
He hasn't moved since the President walked out, hasn't moved in all the hours that have passed.
(He could not tell you how long he sat there.)
He thinks the Colonel came in at some point, but he's not sure, and Gaeta might have been by, but then again he might have not been. He knows they're alive, his family, his little girl and his wife, somewhere on a cylon base ship, he knows that. And he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she will do everything in her power to come back. But what, he thinks suddenly, what if she can't? What if Boomer telling her the truth was a trap a way to get her on a base ship and imprisoner her?
If that happens, if she doesn't find a way back, he knows nobody will defend her.
Everybody will believe she left by choice, that she was always on their side, that he was tricked, duped, into believing she loved him. They might even pity him. He'll know that she's fighting to come back, but nobody else will and the president will tell him she was right. Though how she can still look at them is beyond him, she who caused this all, she who took away a baby from its parents.
But he can't think about that, because if he does he has the insane desire to do something violent (and he really can't.)
She will come back, they will come back, and they will be a family, and they will be happy.
He has to believe that.
And then, finally, the phone rings – minutes, hours, who knows, later – and Dee's voice is the best thing he's heard all day.
"Helo? She's back, Athena has just returned. With Hera."
And then he's running, past everything and everybody, faster than he's ever done before.
He knew she would come back, he knew she would do everything in her power, he never doubted her.
Just the situation.