Written for bsg-remix:
Original Story: Guns not Butter by pocochina Laura/Maya, Maya figures it out about Hera
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It never did add up, not really. She's done the math and this is something she knows. She doesn't know much about military tactics or Colonial Fleet protocol but a pregnant body, what it's like to carry and nurture (and put up with, she thinks with a pang of disloyalty)…that she remembers. Maya's quite sure that no Pegasus officer hid her belly for months, hid the hourly waddle to the head in the last weeks, hid the sleepless squirming nights while kicked and punched from the inside out.
She wouldn't call President—the former President Roslin out as a liar. Not to her face, or anyone else's ears. And it feels wonderful, most of the time, to be needed by a tiny, cuddly body again. She's grateful Laura asked her to do this.
Except for the times she hates her for it.
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The tent roof is sagging again, and she eyes it while she walks colicky Isis up and down the space between cots and the rest of their gear. She'll need to tell Laura to get someone in to brace it again. She looks at the space between the cots. Maybe she should put hers further back, or closer to the makeshift crib. But the soft breathing in the night, the whispered conversations about the future, the past...the comforting warmth of someone who seems to care for her all matter too much to deny. They belong together, here in this barren place.
"Mommy Maya doesn't care what anybody thinks about her and Auntie Laura, does she, Isis? No, she doesn't, even if Auntie Laura is a VIP and Mommy Maya is just—" her soft croon, uttered more for the rhythm that anything else, breaks off.
She wonders if anyone remembers Demetra. That before she was Mommy Maya to this little one, she was a mother to a sturdy blue-eyed daughter who had her father's jet-black, arrow-straight hair.
Demetra, "Earth Mother," she'd named her, after the Commander's impassioned speech about finding Earth. She spent those anxious last months thinking about her baby growing into adulthood on a verdant, safe planet, beyond the reach of the Cylons. And when they told her it was a girl, she envisioned her daughter as a woman grown, heavy with her own child, birthing an Earth baby for the new world.
When they told her the last news about Demetra, she stopped envisioning anything at all.
A Cylon attack, a weak bulkhead, something about fire and smoke…it all ran together while she wrapped the tiny body for the last time and carried her to the morgue. The ceremony afterwards was short and sparse; just her, Dr. Cottle, and the priest, reading from the scrolls and painting a picture of Demetra's father waiting for her on the Shore.
She'd walked back to her cabin alone. She did everything alone, until she was called to Colonial One.
There are times when she wonders if she just heard the story wrong. She'd been focused on the sleeping baby Dr. Cottle had put into her arms seconds after she walked through the hatch. The feel of a baby again had opened up a well of feelings she thought she'd capped weeks ago. What if something happens to her? I can't go through this again. Don't ask me to love another helpless, fragile baby when disaster comes so easily now.
Then Isis looked right at her, all bright eyes under little quirked eyebrows, and Maya had been lost. She must have said all the right things. She'd walked out of the president's quarters with a beautiful baby girl.
She apologized to Demetra that night in her prayers, after petitioning the gods for strength and wisdom for herself, and safety for little Isis. I'm not replacing you, my angel, but this one needs me so much, and she's here…
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Isis wiggles deeper against Maya's shoulder and the crying ebbs, baby snuffles interrupted by an occasional cough. She finally sits down on the edge of her cot, then swings her feet up and gets comfortable against the pillow. Nap whenever the baby naps the experienced mothers on her ship had told her, when she was gathering as much parenting advice as she could. She'd not had the chance to take many naps with Demetra, but now, with the settlement falling into patterns of work and quiet, it's possible to just live again, her and Isis.
Laura being here helps. She hopes Laura finds some comfort in her as well. She never voices her doubts about Baltar or the elections now, just as Maya never voices her doubt about Isis's birth. They have so little these days, scraps, really, compared to life before the attacks. To say she wishes she had more, that she wishes she had her daughter back, is to invite a cacophony of voices inside her head, all chattering their own wishes, their own losses, the words overlapping.
She works on telling herself it's enough that they're breathing fresh air again, that they can walk on dirt or grass or the crudely built boardwalk. It's enough that she can settle Isis into a sturdy fabric sling and walk a longer space than ship corridors ever allowed. It's enough that she can help teach, sometimes getting blissfully lost in the process of guiding the youngsters in their math and spelling.
It's enough, she tells herself, that Laura holds her and doesn't ask questions when Maya wakes up from a dream about her family, hair around her face soaked with tears and sweat, shoulders shaking.
They haven't talked about Laura's life much, just a few sentences here and there about child care and teaching, mention of a family camping trip long ago, nothing very personal. Maya knows she's never had children of her own. When she watches Laura rock Isis to sleep, or rub her back until she gets a satisfactory burp, the former president looks happy, a serene auntie enjoying her beloved niece.
Maya mentions this once, and only once. "Aunt" and "niece" are words that hit Laura in an unsettling way, and Maya notes she can't look directly at Isis for a few minutes. For that short time, the tent feels crowded with ghosts. Laura rubs at her eyes and takes several deep breaths. Her bright official smile comes back and they're family again.
Laura comes back from requisitioning more school supplies and drops the pile of goods on the table as Isis goes into a longer coughing spell. She studies the baby in Maya's lap like she's trying to see through her skin.
"How long has she been coughing?" Her question is abrupt, and it reminds Maya of broadcasts in the worst of times. Maya tries to explain—she wasn't a mother very long but she's been around countless sick children in her family and knows this isn't serious—but Laura isn't hearing any reassurances. There's something very Presidential about her when she holds out her arms to take Isis. For a split second Maya wants to hold on to the little girl, wants to tell Laura no, this is my baby. The second passes and she listens to Laura talk about Dr. Cottle and precautions. She's right, of course. There are so few babies in the universe now.
Some of the settlers are adding to the numbers, though. Callie Tyrol is getting bigger by the week. Maya wonders if Laura will be as taken with her baby, as protective as she is with Isis.
Laura leaves with Isis and Maya starts preparing for supper, clearing off the table first. There's a storybook that's been left out, one she'd bartered for the week before Demetra was born. She and Laura take turns reading it to Isis when they put her down for the night. Sometimes she imagines Laura coming to visit them before, during a lull in the crises, maybe letting Demetra hold her finger in a tiny fist. Laura would have loved her daughter if she'd had the chance to meet her. Maya busies herself with straightening up and putting things away. This is what she would be doing if Demetra had lived, and that thought comforts her as she works.
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She doesn't say "I told you it was nothing" when Laura holds out the bottle of what used to be over-the-counter cough syrup before the worlds ended. Laura is sheepish and throws out an explanation that rings tinny in Maya's ears. She's coming to love Laura, just as she's come to love Isis, but she knows the pitch and timbre of a liar's voice and Laura Roslin is lying through her teeth about something.
Later (much later) Maya wonders if she should have just let the lie float on past. If she'd had any idea…but she hadn't. And she'd poked and prodded, taking tight hold on the loose strings of Laura's words and gently, relentlessly pulling them out.
Everything unraveled then, faster than Maya could have possibly expected until there's nothing left but the truth.
Laura looks panicky for the first time in Maya's memory, and she wants to go to her, hug her and Isis and tell her everything will be okay, nothing has changed, we'll get through this. Instead, she stands, hands clenched as Laura lays the baby down in her crib.
Lays the half-Cylon baby down in its crib.
She can't quite tell what's different, now that she knows. Maybe it's all in her head. Or her heart. Is there really a part of this child that came from silicon chips and software? Is it correct to even call this being "child?"
Laura quietly explains a few details about this...being; there's more, Maya can tell, and she's glad Laura's keeping some things to herself. She's stretched to her emotional limit as it is. To hear some horror about how this thing was created…she can't deal with that now. Security risk, safety issues, she nods her head as the phrases spill over her. All she hears is old shipboard talk about toasters and "it's not a human, it's a thing."
It's all she can do to leave the half-human, half-cylon creature sleeping in its crib. She loved this thing like her own daughter, she'd giggled when its baby fingers patted her cheeks and grabbed for her nose. Unfamiliar anger starts to build in her breast.
Anger, and fear.
Collaborator. Isn't that what they call people who love the enemy? Offer them aid and comfort? That's what she's been since this woman put this thing in her arms.
"Is it dangerous?" Her speech is wooden as she turns to her former president. She doesn't know why she bothers to ask. She's seen Cylon wreckage. She's committed a tiny body to the gods because of Cylons.
Laura makes a quip about the baby and her harmlessness that grates on Maya's ears. She means to be reassuring, she knows. Diffuse the situation with a touch of humor…she's seen her do it on the news videos.
It's anything but reassuring; it's one more sentence that jars her senses and feels out of place. Maya spins and grabs her jacket. All she can think of is getting somewhere she can cry in peace, where she can howl at the cruel irony of it all with no one hearing.
Nobody can know this secret. Her boots pound the dirt until she's clear of the tents, way past the bar, the tent town center. Finally, she sinks down to the mossy ground cover under an old growth tree. My baby, she cries.
My babies.
The tears take a long time to stop. At the end, she's not sure who she's crying for. Maybe all of them.
She imagines the two, Demetra and Isis, their faces nose to nose in her mind, their little arms thrown over each other in a baby embrace. She wraps her arms around her knees and lays her head down, imagining the weight and warmth of two babies.
Two daughters.
Isis. "Mortal woman." She wonders why that name came to her. Was it wishful thinking on some unconscious level? Had she sensed something was different about this child?
She looked like an "Isis," Maya thinks, and it's the first time she's smiled in hours. Isis's deep brown eyes, her chubby cheeks and the dimple by the corner of her mouth when she grins… The hunger to see her again is stronger than her grief, her anger. She wipes her eyes on the hem of her jacket and heads back.
By the time she walks back past the bar, she's thinking "her" again instead of "it."
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Laura's taken over Maya's seat on the cot, rocking and cooing to the fascinated baby in her arms. She gives Maya a cautious smile, but pulls Isis closer to her breast. Maya can't blame her for being careful. Tension from before still crackles in the small space. Finally she sits beside Laura, resting her hand against the stiff back. She catches Laura's eye and nods towards Isis. She makes a gentle wisecrack about chrome tails and babies and they're back on the same wavelength again.
Laura relaxes against her, relief shining in her eyes. She strokes the baby's cheek, the delicate eyelids.
"Maybe she'll get the laser eyes. She'd never need glasses." Laura adjusts her own glasses and smiles. They share a few thoughts about nature and nurture while they cuddle Isis and each other.
One day, Maya thinks, she'll explain how her feelings for her first daughter tangled with her feelings for her second. And maybe Laura will explain why "auntie" makes her breath catch in her throat.
Isis begins to make the precursory whimpers that signal a full-blown crying jag is imminent. Laura's panicky look is comical this time, and reaching out for the scrunch-faced infant is natural as breathing. Laura's not much of a cook, but she gamely goes to finish chopping the vegetables anyway.
"I'll finish dinner while you take care of her, okay?" Laura cocks her head to one side and studies mother and still-fussy child. "Do you ever sing to her? I always thought-" She stops and looks past Maya a second before she continues. "I always loved the idea of singing a baby to sleep. So peaceful." She lights the flame on the small gas stove.
Maya nods in agreement. "Peaceful" is a nice thought. Brushing back the silky curls with her fingers, she starts humming a Caprican lullaby.