Part IV: Lay Down Your Burdens
He leaned by the make-shift bed, looking at his President as she breathed deeply, lay resolute before the fate the gods had given her. Except she managed to look worse every time he saw her.
"You were right about Cain," he told her. "Pegasus had a civilian fleet with her, fifteen ships. Cain stripped them. For parts, supplies..." He choked out the last word, "people."
He reminisced on the time Lt. Cain, his wing-man, did not sleep while Michael Roslin drew resolutions for the Colonial government and made her read them out loud, right in the middle of the Persephone Base mess hall amidst cheers and the occasional rant. The mess became a hall of debate. After, she would take these pieces of paper to the Taurons and Styxians picketed outside the base's fence, whispering the resolutions to them like a storyteller amidst children.
It had been a powerful image, subverted by the realities of the present.
"I wish I could say I was surprised, but it's who she is," Laura told him. "She's playing for keeps; you've got to do the same."
He patted her over the blanket. "What's gotten into you?" There was a sigh while Bill continued, "You've gotten so bloody-minded."
"I know that as long as Cain lives, your survival is at risk, I know that." He felt his throat tighten, and not entirely from the sorry image Roslin made as she coughed and as he handed her a glass of water, but more for the woman Cain had become. "What can I get you?"
"A new body. Perhaps, one of those young Cylon models from the Resurrection Ship."
The joke rippled through them, silently, tenderly, and Bill threw in another pebble, "I can't see you as a blonde."
"You'd be surprised." She laughed feebly and Bill felt the urge to voice it out, if only to convince him self that she would be there the next time he visited, "We'll see you tomorrow."
"Mm-hmm." A comfortable silence then, "Commander, she won't hesitate to kill you. Don't let her."
They shared the sadness, and even the sanity, like water from a well running dry and it was Bill's hesitance to rise from his chair that urged Laura to put a hand on his arm.
"What is it, Bill?"
"I don't know if this is the proper time to tell you."
"I'm not dead yet. I'd sooner you tell me now."
He sighed, a low, rumbling sound and for a moment, he hesitated. "She talked about you," he said. "Often. As much as she talked about the statutes, the Styxians, the poli…poli-something."
"Politismos," she filled in kindly.
"She talked a lot about politismos," he repeated, while rubbing a thumb against Laura's wrist, trying to impart some of his warmth as he felt how cold she was. "And she told stories about Caprica, and the university in the city. And about you." His voice lowered, as it delved into territory that it hadn't tried to breach before. "When Michael died, she told me something before Fleet Command finally transferred and promoted her."
"I don't know if I want to hear this."
"She told me," Bill carried on. "That if I ever saw you –the Roslin with the fiery hair –that she was sorry, and sorrier still for all the things she was going to do, all the things she was ever going to do, from that time on."
But Laura had already turned away, staring at the bulkhead with a bloated grief that threatened to burst. Bill whispered again, "She said she was sorry. She still is, for everything."
"That doesn't make everything okay, Bill."
"No. But what I'm trying to say is that: I hope the gods are kind enough that I won't have to do what I have to do."
Laura turned to him, her face pale and her eyes dimmer. "So say we all, Commander. So say we all."
Helena Cain couldn't take the heaviness off her chest; she wasn't quite ready for the revelations it would bring if she faced it.
Bill had become a liability. Fisk had his orders and if, after the battle for the Resurrection Ship everything went according to plan, she would have two ships instead of one.
Instead of making her way to her quarters, she found herself stopping by the hangar deck, where Vipers hummed and choked on oil, grease; where pilots seemed as resolute about flying as they were about getting drunk or losing all their possessions in a card game. Death in the cock-pit put everything into perspective; health and property were fed to chance.
Her deck chief quickly came to attention and she raised a hand to keep him from announcing that she was present. Instead, she discreetly approached a familiar figure, laughing in these dire times in much the same way Helena would on Persephone Base during the Accord, when everyone seemed to pose arguments against her.
She found an elusive peace behind the Tauron-Styxian picket lines; she recited the resolutions Michael drew for them, whispering in a concrete voice that reinforced a genuine, Styxian passion; she would laugh with them, eat with them, be condemned because of them but she had been young and no amount of pressure from the Tauron-ousodis could pull her away.
"Lieutenant Thrace," she called and the woman stood in attention.
The officers around her, formerly from Galactica, followed suit, saluting with their terror-stricken respect.
When had it come to this, Cain asked herself as they looked at her with shifty, uncertain eyes. When had any of it come to this?
"If you could join me at my office, please."
"Of course, Admiral."
Bill Adama commanded a silent, nurturing loyalty and it bubbled out of Starbuck easily enough. Cain knew exactly how it felt. She had been under his command, too.
Godsfrakkit.
Unlike all those years ago, she was going to fight with fire and tribulation for the only home she had; no resolutions, no talking, no negotiations. Just fire and brimstone and the gods damn her if she didn't try. She just didn't have the luxury to question her decisions; the world had gone mad and -madly enough -it warranted the end of William Adama's command.
It was a pounding insistence: they hadn't lost war. There were battles to be won.
Upon arrival in her office, Cain fetched a bottle of ambrosia and two glasses, harbingers of a conversation that Helena hoped would be an open one and less a product of fear.
"You drink, Thrace?" she asked, opening the bottle and pouring the drinks as she placed everything on the table.
"Only to excess, sir."
"Only to excess?" Cain said. She regarded the Captain with curiosity. "Learn that from Colonel Tigh, did you?"
"Not exactly."
"I understand you belted him once."
The captain's façade chipped. "That's something I did without really thinking."
"Don't apologize," Cain told her. "Some people get exactly what they deserve." Oh, did she know this. Forget the past, chuck all other obstacles from one's way without thinking, and it came back and bit you hard. Cain's gut felt like falling out, bitten and bruised, but her face remained passive. "From what I read about your XO, maybe he needs to get popped in the mouth every once in while, hm?"
Kara Thrace had the decency to keep her opinions to herself, and it prompted Cain to change the tide of the conversation.
"I know you're very close to Adama," she ventured.
"Yes, sir."
"And I know he's a good man." William 'Bill' Adama, the rock Cain held to if only for a time after the Accord fell apart and Michael Roslin found himself in a six-foot box. "And I know he's had to make some very hard choices over the last few months. Lord knows I have."
Starbuck wasn't without her own mind. "Well then maybe you can understand why he did what he thought he had to do when you said you were going to execute Helo and Tyrol."
It came, gushing out unto the surfaces of the room. Seeping from the crevices of Cain's past and flooding the present. There was compunction in her voice, and resentment. But there was also tranquility in knowing that it was all she could have possibly done.
"Let me tell you something," Cain said, very quietly. "I've had to watch a lot of kids be put into body bags. They're covered with flags and they float out that airlock. You think I don't understand his feelings towards his men?"
Thrace didn't seem keen on an answer, so Cain continued, "Sometimes terrible things have to be done. Inevitably, each and every one of us will have to face a moment where we have to commit that horrible sin." Oh gods, little girls in three-foot coffins. Gods, gods…would she ever escape the little, crying hands that held her at night? "And if we flinch in that moment, if we hesitate for one second, if we let our conscience get in the way, you know what happens?
"There are more kids in those body bags. More kids floating out that airlock." They darted out to space, those things, covered with Colonial colors as Cain crushed second-guessing with a grim, unalterable hand. She watched their parents erode the banks of hope and stopped her own tears from falling into their rivers. She would not shirk her duties, even then.
She continued as Kara Thrace stared at her with no heart to protest, "I don't know why... but I have a lot of faith in you. And I want you to promise me that when that moment comes you won't flinch." Cain's hands tightened into fists and she wondered if the words, once spoken, would do anything to change the reality they were in. "Do not flinch."
After the battle, Kara Thrace would report to Helena Cain, wait for Bill's command, and kill the admiral during the throes of victory.
For Bill, it wasn't going to be an easy decision. He needed something more, something beyond Laura Roslin's soft persuasion.
Everything in him screamed dissent. Helena Cain had been his wing-man, had been the person who watched his back more thoroughly than he did his own; he owed her more than a shot to the head.
It was highly unlikely that the person now standing before him should give him the answers he wanted to hear. Seeing her was tactically sound, militarily; sometimes, one had to understand the enemy to understand oneself.
He asked her to sit down, watched as she hobbled to the couch and nodded appreciatively when he sat beside her with nothing less than trust.
"I've asked you here to find out why the Cylons hate us so much."
She looked slightly bewildered. "I'm not sure I know how to answer that. I mean, hate might not be the right word."
"I don't want to fence with you," Bill sighed. "I just want to know why."
Sharon looked pensive, a small smile tugging at her lips. "It's what you said at the ceremony before the attack when Galactica was being decommissioned. You gave a speech that sounded like it wasn't the one you prepared. You said that humanity was a flawed creation. And that people still kill one another for petty jealousy and greed." Shadows of her rape in the hands of Pegasus officers gathered beneath her eyes. "You said that humanity never asked itself why it deserved to survive. Maybe you don't."
Nobody flinched. Nobody could afford to.
It was an elegant operation that stripped the two basestars of their squadrons and left them without their Cylon infantry. The two battlestars circled, took the brunt of the attack, while their canons battered the defenseless Cylon ships in an orchestra of fire.
When Apollo and the blackbird slipped past Cylon dradis and destroyed the Resurrection Ship's FTL drives, Helena felt the cold, streaming waters of vindication. Victory –that addictive strain of emotions –felt sweeter than it had ever been.
The next task felt like swatting flies from the walls. The Cylons began their retreat.
She reached for the wireless, unaware that her gratitude for Bill's contribution slipped uncontrollably into her voice.
"Congratulations, Commander."
"Congratulations to you too, Admiral. A significant victory." She could taste the jubilation, feel it in his voice. She could remember her wing-man carrying her on his shoulders as they celebrated her 100th landing, her 30th kill, her first successful run against a Cylon squadron.
He asked for Starbuck and she humored him.
Captain Thrace seemed drained of color as she listened over the wireless. After their recent campaign, Cain couldn't blame her if she was less than eager. Losing pilots was hard on anyone and officers had the ugly business of billeting the dead into coffins.
Cain saw Thrace's hands fidgeting on her sides, sweat on her brow; Cain remembered the mission she had entrusted to Fisk, thought idly that Thrace should have been happier for her heroics that day.
After Thrace's, "I think that's very wise, sir. Thank you," Cain asked for Fisk on the other line.
"Congratulations, Jack," she told her XO.
"Thank you, sir." Cain could hear the tension in his voice. Her marines would have surrounded the Galactica CIC by now and he seemed all too hesitant to carry her orders to their conclusion.
She breathed out, "That's all."
Relief? Gratitude? Perhaps, all of these in the cadence of Jack's voice. "Yes, sir."
She felt it wash over her, a thousand whispers of forgiveness that compensated for everything else. And there, in the Pegasus CIC, she put a hand to her neck as all her tensions tapered to a delicious ache.
Helena Cain looked out the Colonial One's windows, investigating the Pegasus' docking bay, the grey hollows and blinking lights, the latest CAP huddled on a platform as the Vipers descended to the deck below. Her neck had become a painful nuisance and she was tempted to unbutton the uniform as the pressures of combat battered her in the aftermath.
She could hear Laura say, "I took the liberty of landing on the Pegasus. I hope you don't mind."
"It's a very sound, diplomatic move, Madame President."
They shared a secret smile, unspoken worries and Laura Roslin led her to the presidential office.
Laura dismissed her aide and the two of them were left alone in the room. There was a long, mysterious silence as they stared at each other, trying to assess the sudden space they were in, trying to muster the events that had led to this place.
They supposed that nobody expected to be seeing the other quite as promptly.
Laura chose to speak. "Congratulations, Admiral."
"Likewise," Cain said.
"You didn't kill him."
Oh, Helena should have expected Laura's unscrupulous love of gore and details. Cain suppressed a fond smile, remembering also the boxing matches Michael would take them to and Laura's unintelligible, delighted screams that made Helena laugh in embarrassment and predilection.
Michael had a penchant for keeping Helena in constant discomfort, only because he liked to test the spectrum of her reactions. Laura and boxing matches had been a long and arduous test.
"No. I didn't think it was necessary," Cain said casually, as though nothing was amiss. "William merited something more, if only for keeping you in your right mind."
"Is that what you think he's been doing?" Laura asked. Her eyes were laughing. "Keeping me in my right mind?"
"Yes." No secrets between them now and Helena took the seat Laura offered. Laura's hand had settled on Helena's knee and she stared at it as she would anything unfamiliar. A pat, and the hand withdrew.
"I'm glad…" They both knew that there were too many things to say but Laura kept to the simplest of them. "I'm glad that we're all alive. It feels safer that you're around."
"I wouldn't count on that."
"I didn't always feel that way, but I do now."
I forgave you over, and over, and over. Cain considered Laura for a moment before saying, "I'd still have the prisoners' heads."
"Admiral, I honestly don't expect anything less from you but I hope that…" Laura changed her tone, changed the drift of her thought, and said with finality, "I hope. That's what I do, for all of us."
"Should we lay our burdens at your feet?" There was hardly any mockery in Cain's voice but Laura seemed to crumble at the suggestion. "Gods, Laura." Exasperation. "What are you hiding?"
Laura Roslin looked at her, a lingering hardness that spoke over the ages they had been apart. She took Cain's hand and before the admiral could protest, brought it over her chest and said, "I'm dead, Helena." Cain's eyes went from Laura's to the warmth that ensconced her hand, and back to Laura's face.
Realization. The paleness, the way Laura seemed to walk this world like a ghost, transparent and fragile.
"Gods, no."
"Quite simply, that." There was another, sudden kink on Helena's shoulder. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her hand darted to the strain on her shoulder, trying to wean some relief while her brain overloaded with a surplus of disquiet, pain, regrets.
"Here, let me get that," Laura said softly, reaching between them and resting a hand on where the strain was.
Tender but firm fingers –something that Laura's touch had always been –settled on Helena's neck and Helena Cain could not bring herself to pull away.
She could barely understand Gaius Baltar who stared into her eyes and seemed more whole when he did, or why it was that he told her to live and have her justice. 'God's Will' seemed to be the only explanation, except her mind could barely turn in the muck that was her hate, barely believe the pantheon of Cylon doctrines.
It hadn't been about hate, Gina told herself. Months in the cell, violations of every sort, and a body that meant as little to them as it was beginning to mean for her…as little as it already was to her. How could it not have turned into hate?
Suicide is a sin. But I need to die.
The firearm felt all too familiar in her hands.
Helena Cain entered her office –she was the Admiral who tortured her, sank figurative teeth into her skin, who condoned rape and violence on prisoners of war; there would be no other judgment for the Admiral except death and damnation.
Gina's lips twisted into a satisfied leer. There would be no escape.
Helena Cain touched her neck as though a ghost of a distant pain had burrowed there. There was something exasperatingly satisfied about her as she unbuttoned her uniform, creased as it already was with fore-touches of a different sort. A rare, child-like smile lent the room buoyancy.
It affected a hot, searing anger that lacerated Gina's chest; she escaped the shadows, mimicking Cain's words with mockery, with the saturation of beyond-pain.
"Tell me Admiral," she said. Cain pivoted towards the direction of Gina's voice. "Can you roll over? Beg?"
Admiral Cain tried to process how the prisoner had gotten to her room. It was the most precious. The deer-in-the-headlights look of being stripped of everything at the moment everything was right at hand. Gina savored it and it swelled inside her like a satisfying drought of liquid fire.
"Frak you," Cain spat. Defiant to the end, was she?
We'll see about that. "You're not my type."
Gina pulled the trigger on Helena Cain then promptly put the gun to her head. She repeated the action and saw the light burst in every direction like a wanton supernova.
There was nothing after that. The sweet nothing of true death.
To the Gods,
I don't think I've ever had the goddess of desire sing so completely to me, in a voice that rattled with strange hymns; that echoed about strange temples and beat, beat, beat like a tribal drum on a midsummer night.
I don't think anybody had ever bitten my ear in quite the same way, walked on all fours like a mountain cat privy to the gods' more menacing acts –put the entirety of her self for show and then, in that bitter, stinging style –replaced her fingers with fire. And nothing, oh no nothing, was performance from then on.
She rode on a different wind, pulled at my tresses with spider-fingers that stuck like ominous wands into my suit, my blouse, my somehow unadventurous bra.
I would writhe. And bend and shatter and melt into a pool, begging the gods to please –oh continue, and oh…don't stop! Or spiral into tides of forgetting –forgetting who I was, what I stood for, who it was that now loomed over me like milky tar of sky, gloom and desire. I would reach for her neck, untie the heavy knots of decades there and she would moan beneath my touch, kiss my mouth and line my teeth with her tongue. I'd taste more than thirty years of both our lives on her skin.
I've been told that I am my father's daughter, a product of the old world he once occupied, the little girl he treated so much like a son. On his lap I learned everything. The way men worked and stretched like worn rubber for him. The way women would bend their full bodies into his glass that he may drink, and drink, and drink.
But the old world was gone and so was my youth, replaced by old wars, life on an old battlestar and age that sank deeper into my bones as I dealt with pre-eminent Death.
Here I was, lingering in wet corners and plucking at sweet nubs of fruit that spread with the flavors of her. With the scent of her. With the newness of her that clung to me in nodes of sweat, heat, and wrath.
The Cylon would forever silence those thoughts, steal her affections and replace them with nothing. I would tell Bill Adama later on, "Thank the gods that you did not have to do what I advised," with understated relief and all the unsung pain of seeing him take her place.
I already knew that I could never go back.
So I drowned. Drowned enough that when I pulled through meandering pleasures, my throat was dry and I breathed only her.
Gods, I believe we deserve to live. I believe we deserve to survive if only for this, if only for everything that Helena Cain had proven, everything Bill proves every day because and in spite of our faults. You can damn us for it, batter us to extinction for it but I swear that as a people, that as I live and breathe, we will never flinch.
Laura Roslin
President of the Twelve Colonies
The Colonial Fleet
~Fin~