This will be a series of stand-alone stories which deal with the choices that the characters on Battlestar Galactica have made throughout the first half of the second season (I'll be posting in as much of the order of the season as I can). I want to explore what would have happened/changed if things had gone differently. Some of the stories will be angst, some will be shippy, some will be funny. There will be different pairings throughout. Don't feel like you have to check out each one to understand the others. All I ask is that if it intrigues you, then give it a try. Hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed writing them!
There are pivotal moments in one's life where if you take the wrong path everything may change. Those changes may be for the good or for the bad. The possibilities are endless.
Sometimes she woke up in the morning and forgot that there are other, more dangerous parts to who she is. At those moments, she's simply D'Anna Biers, the last real reporter in the whole Fleet. It was her job to say the things that no one else had the strength to say.
It took her weeks after realizing she was the chosen copy whose job it was to infiltrate the Fleet to understand that everything she was came from being a machine. That nagging desire to report had nothing to do with the humanity programmed deep inside of her.
The day this really hit home was the day she lost control. She single-handedly destroyed the Fleet without knowing why.
She simply felt an inborn duty and an unconscious desire to say the things that no one else would.
The seeds started when she found herself taking an off-limits peek into the pilots' duty locker and got more than an eye full. The best part wasn't even witnessing the CAG as he had a towel malfunction. Granted, she enjoyed that very much. The fact was there were much more important things happening all around the duty locker as Lee Adama struggled to regain control of said towel.
D'Anna would not let herself act on her suspicion, though. For the next few hours, she was content with simply gathering the raw data. There was interview after interview to conduct, and each took her a step farther from the little voice in the back of her head, the one that begged her to do naughty things that neither the humans nor the Cylons would endorse.
Her interview with Petty Officer Anastasia Dualla was one of the more enlightening moments.
The young woman spoke of her father. She never agreed with him on the topic of her enlisting. Their relationship would always be unknown to the Communications Officer. The Cylons attacked before she could tell her father that she hadn't meant it when she said she never wanted to see him again.
D'Anna began to wonder if all the Fleet had daddy issues.
Her fascination sparked a comment that would probably have been better left unsaid.
But then who knew questioning if that point of common interest was the reason Dualla seemed to be so fascinated with Captain Lee Adama would strike so large a nerve?
D'Anna found it hard to believe that no one before her had recognized the common weak spot in the whole Fleet. It was plain as day in every single person she talked to.
It was ironic that it was the one outsider that united them all.
The point of no return came and went with barely a notice as Lieutenant Kara Thrace casually tossed her words over her shoulder before returning her attention to the punching bag.
"Yeah, well, Captain Adama likes to push my buttons."
It wasn't the words themselves but the tone they were said in. They matched perfectly the flare of desire she had seen in this hot-headed Viper pilot's eyes earlier that day.
She had an aggression to her that matched her persona. This was the untouchable Starbuck, the pilot who had journeyed to Caprica and came back alive. Granted no one knew that she returned as damaged goods. Even so, the Fleet worshipped her. She was a god in her own right, tough to the point of being insensitive and strong to the point of being unbreakable.
And yet she had a weak point.
D'Anna knew, as she kept up the light-hearted banter with Kara Thrace, that the Cylons would not win if Kara Thrace was alive and they could not win if she was dead.
She didn't know what made her say it, but she let out a cold chuckle that stopped the pilot in her tracks. Like clockwork, the impulsive human demanded to be told what was so funny. D'Anna held Kara Thrace's eyes for a few seconds before explaining she finally understood why the Commander's son loved her so much.
Kara had brushed it off, which was to be expected. The pilot seemed to be blind to what was in front of her face, and it was probably quite confusing having to deal with so many men named Adama. D'Anna waited until she was at the gym hatchway before turning back.
"It's quite brave when you think about. You belong to his brother in every sense of the word, and yet he still loves you."
She could see the words transform Kara Thrace. For one precious second, her whole being lit up with something she had been missing for a long time.
A glimmer of hope can be a tragic thing.
D'Anna would later learn that Kara Thrace left the gym seconds after her to seek out the CAG. She had been with Lee Adama in an equipment locked on the fourth level when the explosion rocked Galactica.
A Lieutenant Louanne Katraine had waved off at least half a dozen landings before finally giving up. The stim rage at her failure as a pilot sent her Viper down in a blaze that ignited the whole launch tube. There was barely any time to seal it off.
It was ironic. The two people who could have gotten through to her, the two people who could have talked her though the landing safely, were the only two people no one could find. Kara Thrace and Lee Adama were busy. Before that very day, neither pilot would have dreamt of putting themselves before others. One moment of selfishness can cost a lot.
D'Anna had found it charming to find out there had been a long-standing bet as to when the two pilots would finally find themselves "busy" with one another. It was the evidence of life after the attacks.
Too bad in order to win the pot, Kat had had to lose it all. At least she could use the money to try to locate someone to fix the burns.
A permanently grounding was a worse fate than death, no matter which way it was looked at. Knowing that it all would have been fixed if your CAG had kept his pants on took the pain to a whole new level.
She stumbled into sickbay and found herself face to face with a vision of the past. They had believed this copy of Sharon Valerii to be lost to them.
It had only taken a little deception to fool the Old Man who was keeping the Fleet afloat. He would have known she had given him the wrong tape if only he hadn't been distracted. See, his son had been forced to admit to him that he broke the military fraternization regulations only minutes earlier.
D'Anna was starting to enjoy the conflicts of interest that ran rampant on this ship.
In the end, D'Anna could have saved Saul and Ellen Tigh. She had known what was happening immediately upon seeing the old footage of that forbidden visit to the duty locker.
D'Anna prided herself on listening to the people's voice when they didn't even know they were speaking. That was how she came to find out what a large tear had occurred in the relationship between Lee Adama and his father's best friend. She had heard crew members retell the frequent flare-ups between the two officers of the Fleet.
Lee needed to be protected, and it seemed D'Anna was the only one who understood that.
Plus, Ellen Tigh was giving the Cylons a bad name. It was because of humans like her that the Cylons felt no qualms about killing their parents.
Originally, she thought her purpose was accomplished the day she stumbled into sickbay. D'Anna had gotten the footage that proved the child was still alive.
One day later, as she was showing her finished product to the President and the Commander, she realized her reason for being had nothing to do with Boomer or her baby. Granted, that was what would get her foot in the door. The footage would grant her audience with the tribunal of original copies, a tribunal which she had been so carefully exiled from.
D'Anna had never understood why. She was an original like the other eleven. Why was she the only one kept from protecting Caprica, the key to God's plan?
Now it all made sense. She was given a responsibility far greater than those who waited on Caprica.
It was up to her copy to make the others see the real discovery of her time on Galactica, and she only had twenty hours to do it.
D'Anna had confidence in herself.
Nineteen and a half hours later, a single Cylon Raider jumped in the Fleet's airspace. Its behavior puzzled Galactica as it hung in space and waited for the CAP to reach it.
It was over before anyone even knew it began. Two Vipers were no match for a Cylon Raider that had a distinct purpose.
Lieutenant Kara Thrace was left floating in the air, and for the first time in her life, she couldn't focus enough to fly. Fragments of what had once been the Viper of her best friend surrounded her. She simply collapsed under the stress of witnessing Lee's death.
The Fleet followed suit only days later.
These were good people, and she destroyed them without a second thought.
No one else had the strength.
She did it because she was a Cylon.
She enjoyed it because she was human.