Hmmm... Thanks for a review!
I hope there is more than one person still reading this? ;)
---
THIS OUGHT TO BE DIFFERENT
Chapter Seven
---
"Frak, Apollo, what was I drinking last night?"
Lee willed himself to stay conscious. Kara was awake. And not only that, she said his name!
"What's with my hands?" she gazed at her palms, covered with greasy salve; Dee decided that since the pilot wasn't moving, her burns would heal better if not bandaged. Now that changed of course. Luckily the damage wasn't as bad as they first suspected.
"Don't touch--" Lee warned, but another coughing fit stopped him.
"Hey," he heard a voice right next to his ear. Saw her face hovering above him, though his vision was clouded by pain. "Lords, my head . . . " she mumbled. "Do you have any idea, why?--No, don't talk! I'll figure it out. Where the frak are we?" Kara finally looked around.
Lee concentrated on evening out his breathing. Short gasps – in and out, in and out. He was getting better, he knew he was. Earlier this morning – or what they decided to call morning – he'd been awake for nearly four hours straight, the longest since the crash. He'd been taking active part in Shelly's research, arguing with Sam, begging Dee to stop making funny comments, because he couldn't laugh. He was getting better, this cough was simply a result of the walk to the far side of the hall, nothing more.
"Is that?--" Kara asked, and then called louder, "Hey! . . . Frak, my head." Turned back to Lee, before anyone reacted. "That's Sam, right? Don't answer." She squinted and puffed out a mouthful of air as if it could relieve some of the pain.
"Kara!" Sam noticed her. He sped up, wanted to run to her right away, but his scream alarmed Dee and the cylon, and of course the petite woman was first at Kara's side, Sam's limping stride far to slow to reach them sooner.
"You're awake!" the brunette screamed, overjoyed. She lost hope that anything good would happen yet. Kneeled next to Kara, held her head in her hands and looked deep in the other woman's eyes. "Look at my finger." Moved her finger from left to right and back and Kara's gaze followed, but then the pilot snapped up.
"You know what you're doing?"
"Not really. But Cottle did that when I hit my head, so I thought it fit. How are you feeling?"
"I hit my head?"
"What do you remember?"
Too many questions all at once.
"I remember . . . " Kara hesitated. Looked at all the unfamiliar faces, at three pairs of strange eyes staring at her intently. She knew she'd met them already, she knew their names. And she knew one more thing. "I remember apple . . . Apollo."
"Right," Sam snorted.
Dee only set her jaw and looked away.
Their behavior meant something, but what?
"Apollo, the God?" Shelly asked, to the surprise of everybody.
"Yes," Kara responded. "Who else?"
"Why?"
Kara shook her head feebly. "Listen, I'm a little confused, I have a headache. Could we leave this interrogation for later?"
"Sure," Dee answered softly, patting her arm. Then she stood up, facing the tall cylon. She really had to perk her head, and didn't appear intimidating at all, but certainly tried to sound so. "Why are you asking?"
Six's eyes flared.
Sam ignored them and crawled closer to his wife. She was pale, seemed about to pass out again.
"C'mon. Lie back down." He made an attempt to support her, and failed miserably. "Why did you get up anyway?"
"Because he--" Kara gestured to Lee. His blue eyes were misty, but he kept observing them all. She remembered something about husbands and wives, but was too tired to muse over it now.
"I don't know why!" Shelly's scream caught their attention. The blonde towered above Dualla and the smaller woman seemed to have shrunk even more.
Six shot a glance at the other three, and her terrifying posture evaporated.
"Starbuck is the key," she seethed. "The key to the Temple, to our safety, our future. Possibly to the future of both the cylon and mankind. I don't know how, I don't know why. So don't ask me!"
They fell silent.
Sam stared at the cylon for a long while. After seeing so many copies of her back on old Caprica he'd stopped considering her kind beautiful; though at first he'd thought she was the Aphrodite personified. It hit him more and more these days – this woman bore the vibe of the Goddess.
When Six turned away, and the spell broke, his gaze was caught by the green eyes of Dualla. The last two days, when they'd been practically communicating with each other and hardly anybody else, had seen the creation of a strange bond. There were moments when he thought he could read the girl's thoughts and now he saw how frightened she was.
Then her gaze slipped from him down to the woman at his side.
He turned there, too.
Kara's eyes shot to Six, to Dee, to Sam and back to Six.
"Me?" she squeaked. "The key?"
"Okay!" Dee composed herself at the sight of this and took charge again. "So she's the key. Fine. But right now she's going to get some sleep, or else we'll have no key at all. You and I are going back to staring at that ancient writing on the wall, and Sam is going to look after Kara. Starbuck, do you need morpha? No? Then get back to business everyone."
She marched toward the column purposefully, and Six followed her with an amused shrug. Sam leaned over confounded Kara, and helped her wrap herself in the blanket. She wanted to ask what was going on, but felt so tired, she fell asleep before she even knew it.
And Lee thought how completely useless he'd become, if even his wife didn't spare a look at him or a word to instruct him what to do.
---
Kara woke up several hours later. She was feeling much stronger, and she had a dream.
"Holy frak!" she jumped up, ignoring Sam's concerned "What?" Felt dizzy, staggered, but regained her balance. Sam's helping hand was of considerable importance there. But then she forgot all about him and nearly run to where Dee and Shelly were arguing about something fiercely.
Sam cursed under his breath. He observed the twosome for a while, curious what made them so outraged. He even wanted to go there, but once he tried to stand up, his leg hurt so much, walking anywhere was out of the question. So far he was pissed off with the fact that he couldn't move – thought even if he could, there wasn't anywhere to go in the cramped space of the Temple's hall. But now the pain piled up on his earlier frustration. The shots were no longer an option. And if within the next day or two they didn't figure out that power, pitch, yaw, and roll . . . They were frakked way beyond simple hurting.
And even though Sam was not into the ship's mechanics – Dee seemed to be the one to have some ideas, along with the Major while he was alert enough to share his thoughts – sitting on his ass was simply against the man's nature.
He envied Kara now more than he was concerned for her. Damn, just a few hours ago, she was out cold, and now she stood in front of the other two women, gesticulating wildly. Sam would give just about anything to hear what she was saying.
Not that he would make much sense of it.
"Slow down, Kara." Dee lay her hand on the taller woman's arm, steadying her. "What egg? What apple?"
"The egg. The seed of the fruit of life," Kara tried again. "The symbol--It's Apollo!"
"What symbol? What does Apollo have to do with it?"
"Wait a minute!" Six interrupted. "You mean that round symbol?" Concentrated on deciphering the writing, they all forgot about the most evident figure in the room. "It's the symbol of Apollo?"
"But it's the Eye of Jupiter!" Dee objected. "Not Apollo's."
"Jupiter is another name of Zeus, the father of Apollo, this might be connected," Six picked up Starbuck's train of thought. Approached the symbol and stared at it. "It's so obvious! This is the sun, sun rays, see? The sun is Apollo! Apollo is the god of sun."
"Yeah, what does it change?" asked Dee.
They both looked at Kara expectantly.
"I have no idea," she whispered.
Dee sighed impatiently, but Kara kept staring at the circles in circles in circles. They meant something. The egg, the seed . . . She had a dream about Apollo, the protector of life.
Six put her finger on the sun rays, and looked at Kara. "We're here," she whispered.
"And we need to get here," Kara replied in a whisper too, and put her finger in the center of the symbol, on it's golden heart.
At the pressure the smallest circle plunged into the stone. The whole Temple trembled, a rumbling noise was heard from beneath the ground. The darkness was briefly lit by a flash of energy from the crystals atop the column, and the four taller pillars surrounding the column sunk into the ground with a loud scrape, brought into line with the smallest one.
Dee and Six looked around with shock.
Kara looked around too, when another disconcerting noise was heard.
Both Dee and Six turned to her with alarm.
"What was that?"
"I think I'm hungry," Kara replied slowly, with embarrassment.
---
t.b.c.
