Requiem
by Saber Girl Jaina
A/N: I'm an ardent fan of Galactica, but I'm afraid I've still missed too many episodes to know just how AU this is. Never the less, let the Mozart reference begin- and I don't even like classical music.
Disclaimer: Blame Canada.
It's not a piano, but it's pressure sensitive at least, so it'll do for now. The frakking thing cost her her entire ambrosia supply, and a few cigars besides. But she wouldn't have settled for less: it would have bordered on sacrilege to try to play this piece on a one-volume-fits-all mockery of a keyboard.
It wasn't a piano, but it was a damn good keyboard, the last model Stella Electronics had put out before C-Day, with who-knew-how many instrument settings, and it really did play as near to a piano as anything electronic could. Still, there were a good few decent keyboards floating around the fleet, ones that were more than good enough be able to play properly, ones it wouldn't have required the surrender of all of her booze to acquire. What made this one special was its size.
It was a sweet little portable, just a couple centimeters thick, full eight octaves long, and it folded easy as anything along five seams- electronic components neatly arranged so that it was just wires, not chips, under the flexible plastic folding it revealed- until she could hide it in the junk at the bottom of her locker. That was where she hid the sheet music too, where she had hidden all these years, in every locker she'd had, starting as soon as they got them in middle school.
That music was her secret, the anchor of her faith. That music, not all the pain-soaked lessons her mother had taught her, was why she still believed in the gods, and in the Prophesies.
Her father had been a real intellectual, not just a composer. He had studied the Prophesies in both Modern Standard and Ancient, but for the poetry, not the religious content. He was never very religious, and her mother had made it clear that that lack of faith was what had killed him.
He had died of cancer, just as Laura Roslin was now. They had put him on Chamalla near the end, just like the president was on now. But the president had visions, whereas her father had heard music. He had spent his last few weeks composing like a mad man, struggling to pin down to ink and paper the music only he could hear. He had never been able to work for any length of time at that point, or even to stay awake for very long. He had been so tired, yet he had poured every waking moment working on his music.
Her mother said he would have lived if he had spent that time praying.
He had finished the piece the day before he had died. She and her mother had gone to see him in the hospital that day. He had smiled at them, weakly and said "It's done." Then he had lain back into his pillow and closed his eyes. Her mother had been holding her hand since they got out of the car, and now her grip had gone from merely painful to bruising. She hadn't said a word, just listened as her mother had screamed at his limp form that he was a fool, that his sickness had been a test from the gods and that if he had only prayed to them rather than indulging his wicked obsession with music he wouldn't be dying. Eventually her mother had grabbed his shoulders and started shaking him violently until a nurse had come in and dragged her out of the room. The seven year old girl who backed away from the yelling until she was practically part of the wall went un-noticed.
Moments afterwards, her father had opened his eyes and winked at her.
"One good thing about hospitals- they sure do keep marital disputes under control."
She'd grinned. She knew what "marital" meant of course. The school counselor had explained it when he asked her about her parents.
Then his face had turned serious, and she could see in his eyes just how exhausted he was.
"Kara sweetie, come here."
She'd run over to his bed and hugged him as hard as she could, crying her eyes out. Looking back, it must have hurt him like crazy, but he hadn't let it show. He'd just stroked her hair and held her close, making shushing sounds and telling her he loved her. When she'd finally stopped crying, he'd leaned away from her and looked her in the eye.
"Kara," he'd said, "your mother is wrong about the gods. I don't know whether or not they're real, but if they are then they didn't want me to spend my last days praying- they wanted me to spend them writing this.
I may not know about the gods, Kara, but the Prophecies… they're real baby. And it's starting again. But you know what sweetie? Your mom, and the rest of humanity, is wrong about them too."
"Dad… You're scaring me." This wasn't like him- he wasn't a believer in anything but music, certainly nothing as outlandish as the Prophecies.
"I guess I can see why sweetie, but trust me when I say that your old dad hasn't gone about turn on the issue of divine avatars and dragons and the like. I've been thinking about the original language a lot lately, and a whole lot of that mystic gobbldy-gook comes from the translation. Look at the avatars- avatar is our word, not the original term. The original word- well, avatar is probably the best translation, but the original doesn't imply divinity. The avatars are just normal people, 'cept for the roles they're going to play. I'm still working on the dragons."
He'd paused for breath, grinning at her but plainly exhausted. It was then that he'd pulled the music out from underneath his blankets and handed it to her.
"Your mother wouldn't understand. She'd tear it up. Keep it safe Kara, keep it hidden. I sent a copy of the first few bars to Professor Macwell a week or two ago- you remember him? He's been teaching music theory on Picon for the last few years, but he used to come over for dinner when you were little."
She was busy folding the pages of sheet music as small as she could and stuffing them into her shoes- her mother would notice if she put them in her pockets or under her shirt- but she paused to respond to the question.
"I think so. Should I send him the rest?"
Her father had smiled at her and let out a quiet chuckle. "No, baby. You keep those hidden. See the title?"
She looked down at the sheet in her hands. In the bottom-right corner, next to the page number, her father's steady hand had spelled at the words "Requiem for the Prophet." She would have decided he was nuts then and there, except that would have meant her mother was right about everything, including why he was sick. She nodded and went back to folding the paper.
"That'll be played often enough one day, but not now. I know when this will first be played Kara, and where, and who they'll play it for." His eyes lit up with something alien, but not so alien as to be frightening. He closed them again, resting.
She stuffed the last sheet into her sneakers.
"The Avatar of Artemis- she'll play it at the Prophet's funeral, when they burry her on Earth. You hold on to that, you make sure no one else knows about it, and it'll all work out. It's starting again, Kara." He'd said it in the strangest tone, as if he knew a joke that no one else did, but didn't find it all that funny. Then he'd looked at her one last time and said "I love you Kara, and I believe in you. Never forget that. I'm so proud of you." And with that he'd finally fallen asleep for the last time.
It was a few hours later, just after she and her mother had gotten home and she'd hidden the sheet music under her mattress, that they'd gotten the call. Her father was dead. He'd never woken up.
The first few bars, the ones he'd sent to Professor George Macwell of Picon University, were well know. The professor had expanded on those first bars, titled simply "Requiem" and scored for a single piano, to create the piece that he played at the funeral.
No one had ever found the rest of the piece, though according to Jonathon Thrace's wife, he had claimed to have finished it. "Thrace's Lost Requiem" had become something of a legend among the musical community, an unsolved-mystery-cum-Atlantis.
And now, a little more than twenty years after her father's death, Kara Thrace sat in the abandoned hanger bay among the powered down vipers and began to play.
She was a believer, because believing meant her father had bee right, and meant that there was some purpose to the pain of her childhood. She was not a fanatic by any means. Being a fanatic would have meant believing as her mother believed, and Kara Thrace would not be her mother. She was a believer, but she had her doubts.
She didn't know for sure if Laura Roslin was a prophet or not. She didn't know if the planet they were now headed towards, the one their probes had confirmed the existence of only that day, was really Earth or just another inhabitable world. She didn't know what the Cylons were up to, though she doubted they had seen the last of them, and she sure as hell wasn't sure she was the Avatar of Artemis. But she had the music, they were head to a new home, and Laura Roslin was dying.
So Kara Thrace sat with a keyboard in her lap and played her father's last masterpiece, while around her the dragons slept.
And so ends my first venture into BSG fanfiction. Please review and tell me if I should bother coming back. Or with concrit. Concrit wuld be REEEEEAAALLLY good.