This will be a series of stand-alone stories which deal with the choices that the characters on Battlestar Galactica have made throughout the first half of the second season (I'll be posting in as much of the order of the season as I can). I want to explore what would have happened/changed if things had gone differently. Some of the stories will be angst, some will be shippy, some will be funny. There will be different pairings throughout. Don't feel like you have to check out each one to understand the others. All I ask is that if it intrigues you, then give it a try. Hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed writing them!
There are pivotal moments in one's life where if you take the wrong path everything may change. Those changes may be for the good or for the bad. The possibilities are endless.
"I don't understand what you want to know."
"We just want to have an idea how something like this could have happened."
"It was a war-torn planet filled with Cylons."
"But how were you the only one to survive?"
"I had a hell of a guardian angel watching over me."
"You need to be more specific."
"Please. I don't know what you want me to say. I've told you everything."
"There are pieces missing. We just want to understand the whole story."
"It's not necessary."
"Lieutenant Agathon, please start at the beginning and go from there."
Helo shut his eyes for a second before taking a look at the panel in front of him. All the major players were here: President Roslin, Commander Adama, Vice President Baltar, Colonel Tigh, Captain Adama. He wished the Old Man and his son weren't present to listen to his story. The pieces he had left out before would hurt them too much.
The room stayed silent as everyone waited for him to begin. He felt like he was on fraking trial.
"I gave up my seat on the Raptor for Dr. Baltar." Helo's eyes connected with the small man sitting to the right of the President. Gaius Baltar had yet to thank him for his sacrifice. "After that, I made for the forest and tried to keep two steps ahead of the Cylons."
"Excuse me, Lieutenant," Baltar interrupted. "There was a large number of survivors who didn't make it onto that Raptor. Why did you abandon them to run from the Cylons?"
"I never said I abandoned them."
Baltar looked down at the papers in front of him. "But it says right here that when you encountered the Cylon model you've designated number Six, you were alone."
"I tried my best to help those civilians. Even with the wounded leg I had from the original attack on my Raptor and the squad of Vipers, I knew more about the terrain and how to stay hidden. The civilians didn't make it past the first hour." Helo rubbed his eyes roughly before continuing, "I lasted six days before the Cylons caught up to me. I would have died if Sharon hadn't shown up."
"And you didn't know she was one of them?" President Roslin questioned.
"Like all typical war situations, time went so fast, and things developed quickly. For six weeks, I thought I was fighting alongside the woman I had been partnered with on Galactica. It was too short of a time to pick up on anything."
"It was long enough for you to do something fraking stupid, though," Lee muttered as he slumped down in his chair.
"Is there something you'd like to say to me, Captain?" Helo said, narrowing his eyes.
Captain Adama had been there when Helo landed the Heavy Raider in Galactica. Helo had watched Apollo's face fall as Lee realized that the Raptor pilot had returned alone from Caprica. That was part of the reason Helo had left out a huge chuck of the story, and that was part of the reason he wished neither Adama were here.
Since that moment, every word he had exchanged with Apollo had almost ended with punches being thrown. The CAG resented him because he hadn't brought her back. Somehow, Lee had been the one to figure out what Helo was leaving out of each briefing without him having to spell it out.
Lee shifted in his chair. "You kept the Cylon around even after you knew her true nature. Didn't you find that dangerous?"
"She was pregnant with my child. I couldn't leave her," Helo explained, trying to keep his temper in check. He knew where the anger in Apollo came from, and frankly, he thought the CAG had a justified reason to resent him. After all, it had been Helo with her in the end and not him.
"You loved a machine."
"I loved Sharon."
Lee narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. "So where is the toaster you love now, Helo?"
"She left me when we found the ship."
"You're lying," Lee yelled, slamming his hands down onto the table. "And I want you to tell this people why."
"Captain Adama, you need to control yourself," Colonel Tigh reprimanded.
"Please go on, Lieutenant," President Roslin said, turning her attention back to the man seated in front of them.
"We found the Heavy Raider, and Sharon told me that she couldn't come back to Galactica with me. She said it wasn't safe for our child."
"And you just left her?" Baltar asked.
Helo didn't respond as he realized there was no right answer to that question. He had dug himself into a hole.
"How did you know where the Fleet was?" Commander Adama asked. "The last you knew, Galactica was in the air above Caprica. You didn't even know we survived the holocaust."
Helo again found himself unable to answer without letting them know he was lying. This was getting harder by the minute, but he couldn't put that much pain in their hearts, not when there was still a chance to avoid it. Even if the Commander threw him in the brig for the rest of his life, he could live on, knowing he hadn't hurt those Kara loved.
"You need to tell them," Lee said, bringing his eyes up to meet Helo's.
"Tell us what?" Roslin asked, shifting her eyes from the CAG to Helo and back to Lee again.
"Kara's dead, isn't she?" Lee whispered, challenging Helo to deny it outright.
"Yes." Helo watched their reactions, each different from the others.
The President's hand came up over her mouth as a soft gasp escaped her lips. From what Kara had told him, Laura Roslin was the reason she had come back to Caprica. The guilt would slowly eat away at her in the next few weeks.
Colonel Tigh surprised him. Helo had never seen him treat Starbuck with anything but disdain. Hearing the news of her death shouldn't affect him, and yet the aging XO looked floored by the news. Maybe no one on Galactica was immune from respecting this insane pilot.
Dr. Baltar looked guilty as if he was the reason Kara was dead. Helo couldn't get a read on the new Vice President, and he got the feeling that he probably never would.
Commander Adama didn't move. His face showed no emotion. Helo hadn't expected him to react. For years, Kara was the closet thing to family that the Old Man had on Galactica. Helo was one of the few people who knew she was supposed to be Adama's daughter-in-law, and that was the main reason she had taken an assignment on this particular Battlestar. The Old Man had given her a reason to live when there was nothing else. Now, Adama was the one needing a reason to go on.
That reason sat in the chair behind him, biting his lip to keep the tears inside. Lee had known that Kara was dead the second Helo had stepped off the Raider by himself, but there had still been a small part of him wanting to deny it. Now all hope was gone.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you out right. I just thought that I should try to spare you the pain if I could."
The President took a deep breath and resumed her regal posture. "What happened?"
"Sharon and I ran into her at the Delphi Museum when she went there to get the Arrow. She had one foot in the grave, but she still found the strength to push that Cylon through a hole leading two stories down. She didn't stop fighting until the Cylon was dead."
"That's my girl," Adama growled.
"Kara threatened Sharon's life when she realized she was actually a Cylon. That was why Sharon took the Raider and left us."
"So Lieutenant Thrace was the one to tell you where the Fleet was positioned?"
"She told me there was only a small chance that the Fleet wouldn't have moved, but it was all we had. We both knew we couldn't stay alive on Caprica for long. The Cylons were starting to figure out our movement patterns."
"And because of Lieutenant Valerii, you didn't have a ship," Tight pointed out.
"Kara and I found some old blueprints in her apartment of a nearby military base in the heart of Delphi. We were heading that way when we ran into the Resistance."
"The Resistance?"
"There was a group of survivors who were in the mountains when the Cylons attacked. They hid out for the first few weeks and then began fighting back. Samuel Anders was their leader."
"The captain of the Caprica Buccaneers?" Baltar exclaimed.
"The whole team was there. They had been doing high altitude training when the nuclear bombs hit Caprica. They set up shop in the abandoned Delphi Union High School and spent their time taking out Cylon weapon storage while searching for food and anti-radiation meds. We stayed with them mostly because Anders reminded Kara of home." Helo watched Lee lean his head down into his hands. He knew his words would hurt the man who so obviously cared for Kara, but there were things Lee didn't know about what happened with Anders. Maybe if Helo was lucky, there would be time to tell him someday. "Kara and I stayed there about a week before we went back to searching for a ship to take us off the planet."
"You obviously succeeded," Tigh pointed out.
"If they had, don't you think Lieutenant Thrace would be sitting there beside him right now?" Roslin corrected. She turned to smile at Helo in reassurance, and he suddenly understood why everyone found it so easy to follow this woman. "Please continue."
"The Resistance helped us, but we still didn't make it that far. We were ambushed in the woods outside the facility. The Cylons just opened fire on us. Anders called for a retreat, and everyone started falling back." The sounds of the gunfire and screams of people being hit echoed through his head as he remembered that day. "I was halfway to the woods when I realized Kara was not with us. I tried to let Anders know, but it was pure chaos. I don't think he even noticed me breaking away from the group."
"You went back for her?" Baltar asked, stunned that Helo would do something as suicidal as run back into open gunfire.
"Starbuck never once judged me for falling in love with a Cylon."
"I find that hard to believe," Tigh laughed.
"She may have made digs at me, but never once did I think she held it against me. Kara always understood human nature and how it was inherently flawed." Helo cleared his throat, realizing he might be getting a little too heavy. These people had just found out Kara was dead. They didn't have time to internalize the loss and start reflecting on the woman herself and what she stood for. "When I got back to the line of transports, I found her collapsed by the front tires. She had been shot in the abdomen. My only instinct was to get the two of us away from the area."
"She died from the gunshot wound?" President Roslin asked.
"Starbuck would never die from something simple as a gunshot wound," Adama insisted.
Helo shook his head. "It didn't kill her out right, sir, but it was the gunshot wound that got the best of her in the end. We weren't stationed in a place with easy access to medical supplies and personnel. There was no one to treat the wound. I did my best, but the wound was too much. For two days, she tried to push the pain back as we tried to find the Resistance again."
"You couldn't find them?" Roslin asked.
"We couldn't move very fast with Kara's wound and my still sore leg.
"Maybe they abandoned you," Tigh suggested. "It's not like you were critical to them."
"Anders would not have abandoned her… us," Helo corrected.
"But he never found you?" Roslin questioned.
"No. We had almost made it back into Delphi when Kara collapsed. The pain had gotten too much. I carried her for half a day before she refused to let me go another step." Helo cleared his throat and looked first at Adama and then President Roslin. "I don't want to go into the specifics if you wouldn't mind."
"Understood, Lieutenant." Roslin gave him another reassuring smile. "Tell us how you got off the planet."
"Starbuck gave me the coordinates of the Fleet's last known position and made me promise to get the Arrow back to you. I followed our original plan and snuck into the military base at Delphi. There was a Heavy Raider I managed to figure out after about an hour, and I flew away."
"Sounds a little too easy," Tigh scrutinized.
"I think Sharon was helping keep the rest of the Cylons away."
"You believed she was there, and yet you left her behind," Roslin observed. "Why?"
"I made Kara a promise."
Helo's words hung over all of them as silence filled the room.
"I think that's enough for now," Adama said, standing up. "Make sure you get me an updated report of the events on Caprica by the end of the day, Helo."
Helo nodded. He had figured the Old Man wouldn't be angry at his deliberate withholding of information. It was all for Kara, anyway. She had asked him to say as little as he could about her, not wanting to put the people she loved through the pain of what had happened to her. That's why he left out the fact that Kara had cried in desolation when she realized she was going to die. He had never seen the normally strong Starbuck act so vulnerable as in that moment when she crept to a halt in the forests outside Delphi. That moment would stay with him forever.
Bringing himself back to the present, Helo realized that everyone had left the briefing room except Apollo. The CAG was still sitting behind the table with his head in his hands. From what Kara had told him before she died, he had gotten the hint that there was something more than meets the eye when it came to Lee Adama and her.
Helo walked over to the table, figuring this would be the only chance he had to do what Kara had asked of him. "Captain Adama, sir?"
"You were dismissed, Helo," Lee said, not moving.
"Sir, there's more I have to say."
Lee's hands fell to his side as he narrowed his eyes at the Raptor pilot. "Maybe you should have done that while the briefing was still happening."
"The others didn't need to know what I have to say."
"But I do?"
"Well, she meant for you to be the one I said it to, Apollo."
Lee's eyes flared with emotion as he finally grasped what Helo was trying to do. "She?" he whispered.
"Kara wanted me to say goodbye to you from her."
The chair was flung back as Lee stood up abruptly. "No. I don't want to hear whatever she had to say about me."
Helo moved to block the way to the hatch. "She had nothing to say about you or anything you did. She only had something to say to you. Please. This was the last thing she asked me to do for her."
Lee stared at Helo as he thought it over. He weighed the possibility that Kara might still have been angry at him. That fear quickly faded away as he realized it didn't matter if she had hated him. She had thought of him during her final moments on earth, and that said it all. Lee nodded and said, "All right. I don't understand what she could have had to say to me that was so private, but go ahead."
"You don't have to pretend with me, Lee," Helo stated. "I spent plenty of time with Kara to know what you two had with each other."
"I don't understand."
Helo took a seat on the table and started in with what would probably be one of the hardest moments of his life. He was about to rip the heart out of the man in front of him. "She spoke of you constantly when we were on Caprica. There was a lot of time to talk while we made our way through the city. It was amazing. I had only been on Galactica a few hours before the attack sent us out, but I had seen the two of you together. It looked like you hated one another."
"I could never hate Kara," Lee informed him.
"And I think she felt the same. I realized that as she talked about what you had done for the Fleet."
"You mean the tylium?"
"Yeah, she spoke of that. Kara said she was proud of how you got the job done when she couldn't." Helo saw Lee's face light up in surprise. "She mostly spoke of how as the CAG you pulled the pilots together and gave them a reason to keep going. It seemed to me that she really respected you. If that was all I knew of you, it would be enough. She doesn't give her trust or loyalty easily."
"It took me years to earn it."
Helo shook his head and laughed. It sounded about right that it would have taken this stubborn man years to get it right with Starbuck. After a moment of silence hung over them, he continued on, "Kara felt at home with the Resistance and Anders because of the trust she had for you."
"That makes no sense."
"During our week there, Kara confided in me that Anders reminded her of you. She said he was stubborn and wouldn't know a smart plan if it hit him upside the head, but he had a sort of gods-give talent to him that couldn't be denied. He was a natural born leader, and she was attracted to that."
"She fraked him, didn't she?" Lee asked through gritted teeth.
Helo contemplated lying but figured it wouldn't help anything. "Yes. That's why it took us a week to move on with our plan. She had established this little bubble of normalcy amidst all the chaos as her wounds from fighting that Cylon healed. I didn't want to be the one to destroy that."
"Is that all you have to tell me, Helo?" Lee said, obviously not pleased with what he was being told.
"No. That's just the easy part. From here on out, it starts to hurt." Helo took a deep breath. "She was at peace when she finally died. The pain had gotten so great that it numbed her. She told me to tell the President that she was sorry she couldn't bring her the Arrow herself and to apologize to Commander Adama for losing faith."
"I'm sure you could convey those requests without my help."
Helo ignored Lee. "Those comments were brief. She didn't have to tell me to let the Old Man know how much she loved him or tell the pilots that she expected them to fight hard in her name. Those were all things I already knew she wanted to be done. Instead, in her last moments, she spoke of you."
"Me?"
"Kara told me about how you two parted and how much she regretted not getting you to forgive her. She told me that you meant more to her than any other person in her life. She called you her rock."
Lee turned his back to Helo. "I don't understand."
"I didn't expect you to, Apollo. It seemed like there was a lot of things that you two never got around to talking about."
"She meant a lot to me, Helo," Lee whispered.
Helo could tell the CAG was doing his best to hide his emotions from a pilot who was now under his watch. It reminded Helo of Kara. She never let her emotions show until it was too late. "She gave me one last trademark smile, whispered to tell you she loved you, and then she was gone."
Lee's shoulders began to shake. The last of Helo's words had finally gotten to be too much.
Helo stood up and walked to the hatch without another word. He had done what Kara asked. The Fleet had the Arrow of Apollo, and Lee finally knew all the things she had never had the courage to say. His promises to her were fulfilled.
Now he only had to find a Raptor and an empty flight tube in order to make his way back to Caprica. Galactica was no longer his home and hadn't been from the second Sharon saved him from the Cylons. His child was out there somewhere, and he intended to find the woman carrying it. Where he would go from there, he had no clue.