BSG does not belong to me etcetera etcetera. Although I wish I owned Gaius. He's so amoral and dreamy *sigh*
Author's Note: Updates should be every two days up until the end of this episode (all Eps will be 6 parts long). From then I'll try to update twice a week, depending on RL demands. This is going to be a looong bout of writing for me… A 24 episode season, each Ep consisting of 6 chapters of ~4000wds means around half a million words once I've finished the season.
Gah.
Please excuse typos and formatting frak-ups – I'm on my mobile, which makes posting a bit of a mission. (Hah. Chapter reloaded due to the aforementioned issues)
Enjoy :D
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In the Air"I'll have another, Joe." Starbuck slid her glass across the rough wooden plank bar and caught the bartender's eye with a flick of her fingers. He refilled the glass, a little slopping over the rim as he poured, his eyes elsewhere. Starbuck turned and craned her neck to see where he was looking. Louis Hoshi, sitting in the corner of the room alone, uniform jacket unbuttoned, head lolling down as he stared into his half-empty glass. Huh. She hadn't seen him around in a while.
"Thanks." She drawled absentmindedly as she took a sip of the moonshine. She gasped and hissed, shook her head as it burnt its way down her throat. Frak it was a strong brew, whatever Joe was making it from. You could strip paint with it. Not that Starbuck gave a frak. Drink was about getting utterly frakked up beyond belief, not about appreciating the fine woody undertones or any of that crap. As long as she could stand and talk without slurring she'd be fine for the meeting Romo wanted her at. Gods knew why. But then, he'd been bringing her into more things lately, depending on her more. She was even becoming friendly with the eccentric man.
She stared into her cup, maudlin, like Hoshi over in his corner. Lee was going to be mad at her. Her mouth twisted, fingers rapped on the bar idly. He hated it when she didn't' back him up. Even after all this time he was so used to being Major Adama, and having Starbuck under him. Well, she might still be under him, but not like that anymore. She snorted to herself and gulped down some more drink, eyes watering. By now she knew the routine. She'd go back to the cabin at nightfall and Lee'd be earnest and disapproving, try and give her a frakking lecture on the importance of his pet cause.
She didn't know who was right and who was wrong, what would break the cycle. Personally she thought the simple fact that they were living together and not killing each other meant the cycle was broken – as long as they never forgot. And if they destroyed their ships and returned to the land, lived like the natives did, like Lee wanted to, would they remember? In Starbuck's opinion it needed to be written down in big bold letters, everywhere. Maybe carved into a gigantic rock somewhere – "Do not build Robots. They will frakking kill you." But what did she know. She was just an ex-pilot who didn't even know if she was human.
Her skin crawled and she hunched over her drink. Starbuck had never thought about Anders being unplugged and put down if Lee's faction won out. She didn't want that. She wouldn't be able to stand it, watching Anders die, for real this time. Done and buried. Godsdamnit, Romo frakking Lampkin was a sneaky bastard. She hated the insidious idea he'd planted in her head but she couldn't uproot it, because he was right. Starbuck wanted to be on Lee's side. Wanted to back him up, support him; stand by his side instead of that Paulla bitch. She wanted to love him, like she had that night on New Caprica, with no doubts, no hesitation. But then look at what she'd done the next day - run straight off and married Anders. And she was glad she had – Anders had been…everything for a while. And he was still something. But Lee…he deserved more than this, more than her. Starbuck felt torn, and so she did the only thing she could; put it out of her mind and focused on her drinking.
The heat in the bar was sweltering and she scraped her hair back into a ponytail, fanning her neck with a hand. At this time of day most folks were out working the farmland or hunting, and the bar was sparsely populated. A few skinjobs – not that she should call them that anymore – a couple of haggard and dusty civilians, and Hoshi.
"Not on patrol today, Starbuck?"
"No. Got the afternoon off."
"Thought you'd pass your time drinking all my booze, then?"
"Guess so." It was nothing against Joe; Starbuck just wasn't in the mood to talk. She rarely was these days. Joe took the hint and wandered off down the other end of the bar, chatting idly to a civilian. Huh, they were all civilians now. With Admiral Adama gone to gods knew where the military/civilian divide had disappeared. It was still the pilots and the marines who did most of the patrols, but under Romo Lampkin and the Council's command. They were frakking police now. It was depressing.
Starbuck drained the glass of the potent alcohol in one long draught and slammed the glass down on the bar. When Joe came over to refill she beckoned with her fingers,
"Just give me the bottle, Joe. Be easier." He gave her a look but slid a bottle over to her, a warning implicit in his eyes. Joe didn't want any trouble. Well, Starbuck wouldn't give him any. She wasn't looking for a fight; she just wanted to relax. Have a little time before the grind started again. She got to her feet and gathered the glass and bottle into her fingers, meandering over to Hoshi.
"Lieutenant Hoshi. It's been a while." Starbuck straddled a chair at his table and plunked down the booze, filling up her glass and holding it out to Hoshi. He looked up at her, eyes hollow and rimmed red and drained his cup, nodding for a refill. She slopped the amber liquid in and raised her cup.
"Cheers."
"Huh." He grunted, gulped down half the glassful, swaying in his chair.
"It's not Lieutenant anymore."
"You're wearing the uniform." She pointed out, waving her glass at his jacket, which up close she could see was stained with liquor spills and dirt.
"It's all I've got to wear. Besides, what's it to you?"
"Gods, Hoshi, what's your deal?" Starbuck leant back, spreading her arms out in a placating gesture,
"I just came over for a friendly drink. Reconnect with the old shipmate. Buddy, buddy." Her tone was mocking despite herself, his bitterness infecting her, worsening her already unsettled mood.
"We were never 'buddies', Starbuck." Hoshi finished off his glass and whipped the bottle off the table, pouring out another unsteady measure. Starbuck whistled softly and raised her eyebrows.
"Hitting the booze pretty hard, aren't ya, Hoshi?"
"I could say the same for you." He scowled at her, face red with sunburn and alcohol, hair longer and ragged. Starbuck wondered what in the hell was wrong with him. She would've thought that being down on the planet, starting a new life, would appeal to Hoshi as it did to most people. Oh sure it was a difficult business, survival, but most of the colonists, including the Cylons, preferred a hard life planet-side than a hard one on the ships.
"I can handle my alcohol. Seems like you can't." It was an observation, not a dig, but it only deepened his scowl.
"What's your problem, Hoshi? I come over here and you don't tell me to frak off, you drink my booze, but your attitude…" Starbuck shrugged, sipped her drink and looked into Hoshi's eyes.
"What's your deal?"
He was silent for a very long moment, fingers playing with his glass. Then he finally said,
"Felix." His eyes were lifted to Starbuck's pleadingly.
"Why'd he do it?" A frakking ocean of pain was contained in those four words and Starbuck hissed, out of her depth.
She knew that Hoshi and Gaeta had been involved, but she didn't realise they had been that serious. The memory of the mutiny turned Starbuck's blood to ice in her veins. She remembered Anders' in her arms, his ashen skin, and the slackness of his muscles, the blood. Feeling like a monster because he was going to die and she hadn't told how much she still loved him, and thinking she would never get the chance. She felt sick suddenly, back in the present in the humid bar, desperately forcing back tears and anger.
"Huh? Why'd he frakking do it?" Hoshi demanded of her, slamming his glass down on the table, liquid sloshing over the top and down over his knuckles. Starbuck clenched her jaw and bit back a flippantly nasty response. Hoshi made a funny hitching noise and with a shock Starbuck realised the man was crying.
"Why'd they have to kill him? He didn't mean it…. He was only trying to make things…better. Do the right thing." He glared at Starbuck furiously,
"He was doing what he thought was right!"
"I'm not the one you want to be talking to about this, Hoshi." Starbuck's mouth folded up and she forced her emotions down, fingers twisted in the material of her pants and gripping hard.
Hoshi swore and pushed himself to his feet in a sudden rush, sweeping his glass off the table to shatter on the packed dirt floor. He leaned across the table, thin arms tensed and face contorting and traced with tears.
"Well who do I talk to then, Starbuck? Who's going to listen to a man weep over his traitorous executed lover, huh? Who's going to give a frak about Felix being dead? They shot him! They frakking killed him! They don't give a frak."
Starbuck scrambled to her feet, the bottle of booze safely in one hand, stepping back from Hoshi.
"Yeah they did. They did. And I can't be sorry for that, Louis. He's the reason my husband is a godsdamned vegetable over in that hospital! He was responsible for the deaths of far too many godsdamned people. So no, I can't be frakking sorry. I can't sympathise with you over that." She was on a roll, eyes flashing,
"I'm glad Gaeta is dead, alright? I'm sorry, so frakking sorry, that he turned out to be a treasonous son of a bitch, but if I could've I would've shot the bastard myself!"
Hoshi lunged across the table at Starbuck, fingers closing over her singlet and dragging her close while the other hand aimed a wild punch. Her head snapped back and she almost dropped – gods don't do that – the bottle of booze as Hoshi's fist connected with her ear.
"Ow! My ear! Frakking hell, you frakker!" It hurt like shit and Starbuck bent over and hissed, a long string of curses spilling from her lips. Hoshi had staggered back, looking comically surprised by what he had done when Starbuck reared up, flipped the table out of the way and popped him one in the mouth, and again – in the nose, and when he fell down on his ass and clutched his hand to his face she scrambled on top of him, bottle still in one hand, the other striking blindly at Hoshi's face.
"Starbuck! Get the frak off him!" She heard Joe yelling and felt hands pulling at her, but she was lost in the rage. In the zone where it was all red and nothing mattered, and all the confusion and the pain and the godsdamned riddles disappeared. Cathartic. Blissful.
She was dragged off him and thrown unceremoniously backward, landing on her ass in the dirt with just enough presence of mind to keep hold of her precious bottle of booze. She was panting, ragged breaths, and her ear hurt like frak.
"What the frak, Starbuck?" Joe was down in her face, yelling, and she shoved him back and staggered to her feet, swaying, taking a swig from the bottle before anything else. Joe was bent over Hoshi who moaned on the ground, hands flapping helplessly in front of his face. Well shit. His face was a bloodied mess – she'd really done a number on him.
The mindless rage evaporated and Starbuck felt bad. Really frakking guilty. Godsdamnit. She shoved Joe out of the way not unkindly and stuck her hand down to Hoshi. He squinted up at her and hesitated before he grasped it. Starbuck hauled him to his feet, swallowed hard.
"Sorry." She muttered and offered the bottle. Hoshi choked and coughed for a minute and then took it from her wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He took a long gulp and gasped as it went down. Then he smacked her again, square on the nose and Starbuck winced, hand clamping over it. Frak. That had not been unexpected, though. Joe stepped in as though to restrain her and she waved him off, looking at Hoshi. She didn't think it was broken.
"Fair enough." She told Hoshi seriously and he met her eyes without a word. Somehow Starbuck felt a little lighter, but then she always did after a good brawl. It had been a long time since she'd had a chance to take out all that anger on something or someone. Not entirely fair on Hoshi, though. Although, perhaps he felt the same way as her, and the brief fight had helped him get out his anger as well. She grinned at Hoshi suddenly and although he didn't smile back, he didn't look at her like he hated her anymore. Hard to tell with his face like that, though. She snatched the booze back and wiped the top, drank.
"Everything alright here?" Joe was still hovering beside the pair of bloodied fighters and they both nodded at him. He spared a particular glare for Starbuck.
"I told you I didn't want any trouble." Starbuck shrugged as if to say, what can you do? And clapped her hand on Hoshi's shoulder.
"Best go see Doc Cottle, Lieutenant. Come on, I'll help you over there."
"I told you, I'm not a frakking Lieutenant anymore." He grumbled belligerently, but let Starbuck lead him away.
# # #
"Daddy! You're back!" Hera flung herself into Helo's arms and he scooped her up and kissed her round cheek, squeezing her tightly. It had been two very long days, and he had missed her.
"Sweetie. How are you?"
"I'm okay." She smelt good, her little form solid in his arms. Even though she wasn't in danger any longer Helo could never quite shake the feeling that he had to hang onto his little girl tightly. He noticed suddenly that the animated conversation he had heard approaching the communal log building had halted completely, and he looked around, confused. Immediately suspicious.
"You can go play, sweetie."
Hera ran off out the door and Helo called after her,
"Stay close!" There were older kids out there to keep an eye on her, but Helo still didn't like her wandering too far. He straightened up and brushed his hands on his hands off on his thighs – Hera had been distinctly sticky. Sharon must have been letting her eat maple sap again. He examined his hands, rubbing at the sticky spots, glancing up around the room. Sharon, Jeanne, Paulla, Lee, that kid, Boxey, several Twos and a couple of other colonists all sat or stood around the room, deadly quiet.
"What's up?" Helo asked cautiously, brow furrowing. People looked down at their feet and away from him, and Sharon bit her lip, moved to Helo's side and kissed his cheek. She was trying to distract him; he knew that. She was never demonstrative in public. Something was going on.
"You're back." Sharon said unnecessarily and Helo nodded, hand absently spreading over the bulge of her abdomen, where their little boy or girl was happily ensconced.
"Hmm." He nodded and looked at his wife's dark eyes, shuttered and nervous.
"How did it go?" She asked brightly.
"We brought down five deer." Not really deer but similar to what they'd had on the colonies, larger and with cloven hooves. There was enough meat on one of them to feed four families of three for a week – when rationed carefully – and everyone grinned, congratulating him and the other five colonists he'd gone out with.
He was getting distracted and he pulled his attention back to the room and the uncomfortable silence when he had walked in that only happens when you've just been talking about something you don't want the newcomer to hear. He turned his eyes to Lee.
"What's going on?" It had to be related to the divide in the colonists – what else could it be? He wasn't much interested in whether they kept their ships and all the equipment on there or not. He knew now that they could do without it for day-to-day survival – the only thing that worried him was Sharon, and the baby she carried. Part of this whole leaving technology behind thing sort of implied leaving behind other useful things, like modern medicine – and Helo did not like that idea. But this was important to Sharon, leaving behind everything and starting anew, and so Helo went along with it. Obviously, however, they didn't trust him. Lee shifted uncomfortably and shrugged,
"Just talking."
Helo crossed his arms over his chest and stared down the shorter man,
"About what?" He prodded and Sharon tugged at his arm and he knew she wanted him to drop it, but he couldn't. Things had only been getting more and more serious, and he didn't want their family to be involved if this divide worsened. That was how people got hurt. And his family had suffered enough hurt for one lifetime.
"Lee and Paulla went to see the President today, and he still refused to listen to reason. Basically mocked us – mocked what we believe in." Jeanne piped up when Lee was unforthcoming, her voice high with frustration. She was obviously in a state, and Helo narrowed his eyes.
"Bastard. We have a right to be heard – to be listened to and taken seriously! And Romo frakking Lampkin treats us like we're a joke!" Paulla glared around the room and Jeanne nodded in vehement agreement. Lee, however, did not look so enthusiastic with his follower's – because that was what they were, no matter how Lee argued otherwise – fervour. Lee wanted to be the reasonable leader, and Helo understood Lee's vision – he just didn't think it was ever going to come to pass.
Of the approximately thirty thousand remaining colonists at arrival on Earth, only seven thousand had been willing to give up their ships and their old way of life. And just over six thousand of them had scattered in small groups, unwilling to fight to force everyone else to give up their technology, they aimed to live the way they wanted far away from the settlements Romo Lampkin was building. That left the almost 1,000 people settled in the forest behind Landfall – who believed so strongly that technology needed to be eradicated that they stayed and fought, and a few, like Helo and Sharon, who didn't want to leave Landfall and the other colonists completely.
"He's never going to listen, you realise that, don't you?" Helo somehow always ended up being the voice of reason, and people always hated him for it. Now was no different.
"He has to!" Paulla hissed and Jeanne nodded along with her friend.
"We can't make him take us seriously, but we can keep trying. Eventually he'll have to take us seriously." Lee advised and Helo sensed the others' frustration with his plan. They had been trying to get Romo to do what they wanted for months, and he hadn't swayed on his stance. Helo wouldn't have, either, in the President's place. Surprisingly, the kid, Boxey, who was normally quiet as a mouse echoed Helo's thoughts, his young face sullen,
"He's not going to. Why would he? He doesn't care about the future. He just cares about being comfortable now. He's got no vision." His hands wielded a knife, whittling at a hunk of wood, lanky teenage form folded up cross-legged on the floor.
"I know it's discouraging, but there's nothing else we can do." Lee sounded calm but the strain showed on his face.
"Huh." Boxey laughed once, cynically, and Helo frowned at the kid.
"If this isn't working, which it isn't, then maybe we need to try something else." He let the words linger in the stuffy air of the large room, and everyone knew what he meant. Helo frowned as he saw Paulla and Jeanne and the Twos nodding, faces thoughtful.
Godsdamnit.
"I don't want to hear this." Helo leaned forward and pointed his finger around the room accusingly, voice harsh,
"And you shouldn't be godsdamned saying it. Shouldn't even be thinking it." Sharon tugged at his arm again and he went tense, muscles bunched up as he refrained from shaking her hand off. She couldn't be thinking the stupid kid was right, could she? Or Lee – he approve of that, would he? Helo felt very frakking tired all of a sudden.
"We'll do what we need to." Paulla smirked viciously and Helo bit back his anger.
"You're a bunch of godsdamned idiots. Lee? You aren't condoning this, are you?"
"Its just talk, Helo. People are frustrated, sick and tired of being ignored. Its just words, that's all."
Helo jammed his lips together and clamped his jaw shut, shaking his head in disbelief.
"That's a cop out answer, and you know it."
Jeanne glanced nervously from Helo to Lee, shrinking in on herself as she said,
"Maybe he shouldn't be here."
"Maybe I shouldn't." Helo replied sharply, furious under his control.
"Sharon?" She looked back at the others for a moment, face distressed and uncertain, but she nodded to Helo, her spine straight as always. Relief hit him. For a moment he had thought she might…all the old distrust and insecurities had come seeping back in for a split second.
"I'm sorry." Sharon said to the group of dissidents quietly, and led the way out of the building, Helo following behind with one last disillusioned glance for Lee. He never would have thought Lee would allow anyone to even entertain thoughts of violence.
"Hera! Hera, we're going home now!" Helo called for his daughter insistently and a moment later she ran out of the trees, cotton dress billowing around her legs, not as sturdy as they were a few months ago – Hera was shooting upward fast her toddler chubbiness melting away.
"Aw, Daddy, I was –"
"Come on, Hera." He took her sticky little hand firmly in his and looked over her head to Sharon, her eyes black and unreadable until her face softened with the hint of a smile, her hand clasping over Hera's.
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