Rating: M for mention of torture and angst!
Chapter 16
Wind was blowing on the African mountains endlessly and storms gathered on the East side of the slopes, coming from the Indian Ocean and gathering rain. Thunder was rumbling and for the third time in a month, Helena's trip to the hidden tribes of the Uluguru Mountains was postponed. It rained that night, steady drumming of drops on the waterproof fabric of her modern tent. Helena remained working on her laptop, listening to the rain falling, the wind howling and the distant calls of wild animals. She felt close to Laura in a tent similar to what hers would have been.
"Sixty fourth day of the cylon occupation.
And this is how my days were, day after day, dragging along without end, hours after hours in the murky gray of the day, teaching, gathering food and wood for the stove, visiting Cottle and methodically listing all of the victims of the cylon occupation. Hell must be this way, endless pain and suffering for the rest of times. No hope, and the desperation of those who know there is nothing to expect. Wounds, pain, cries and torture of those arrested affected me more than I am willing to admit, even on those pages. Most of the time I did not have the time to write, but, when the nights were lonely, this writing book has become my only companion, the repository of my thoughts and a way to release the horror I would see each day. Outside, I remained brave and strong, giving others a hope to cling to, a strong pillar to rely on. In many ways I was still their president, now that they realized Baltar had betrayed them. Families, who had lost loved ones, would come to Cottle or me and let us know who was missing, had been taken, or had been killed. He was listing the injuries from torture and keeping track of those arrested. Day after day the list was growing longer. After school was over in the afternoon, I helped there with the doctor and comforted men and women as they came out of the detention center. We saw bodies with horrible mutilations, marks of torture, raped women and beaten children. They would torture wife and children to make the men talk. There were no words to describe the brutality of the beatings some endured. People came to us searching for lost ones, hoping we would have heard if they were detained or killed. Those released informed us of the conditions inside the prison. They identified other prisoners or the dead ones. Each arrest was a tragedy. Some would disappear never to be seen again. We never saw again Kara Thrace, although her husband and everyone looked for her endlessly. The cylons soon needed manpower and they started to recruit humans as guards and police force. I had met two of those guards while in detention. The situation was made worse by those who turned against their own race and who became informers for the cylons. How could any human work for them? On the other side, as the terror was taking over the population, some young men would take the arms and fight the cylons. Our human population was split into groups, those helping the cylons, those fighting against the cylon and the others bearing the blunt of the violence. The insurgency was active and while I do not know who was involved, I heard they had gotten hold of weapons and explosives."
"The weather was slowing down the fighting. It had stopped snowing, but the day and night temperatures plummeted to dangerously low, way below freezing levels. During the day, the temperature barely went up. We had to keep wood stoves burning all the time, night and day, as it was dangerous to be exposed to such colds. Everything outside was frozen solid. We were walking with layers of clothes; everything we had, we put on our bodies. I had not realized how cold it was until the ink of my pen froze and I had to rub it in my fingers to write those lines. I had moved my cot closer to the wood stove so that I could feed the fire and remain warm during the nights. We closed the school due to the cold. We had a stove in the school tent, but traveling outside was dangerous and all activity was reduced. Maya, Tory and Isis remained with me most of the time. I often held the little girl while her mother was searching for wood and food. Her little soul, promise of things to come, reminded me that there would still be hope, and that we needed to fight for her and all of the others."
"Food was scarce. Cylons were controlling the distribution of food. A starving population would not fight as efficiently. Without food, resources and wood to heat up, we were at their mercy. The centurions distributed grains at the market and wood for heating. They would give out enough to maintain us alive, but not comfortable. Enough, such we depended on them to survive. With the freezing cold and the lack of food, we lost several people from starvation and illness, or simply dying of cold. Medications were rationed. Antibiotics were impossible to find and diseases started to propagate among the population. People were dying and we could not bury them in the frozen ground. Many were sharing tents and living in horrible conditions, confined in cramped tents to fight the cold, without running water, without decent food to eat, and ravaged by disease. Still some were still fighting against the cylons. At night, gunshots could be heard and cylons could not walk isolated even during the day or they were attacked, often stabbed. Explosions could be heard. Each attack by the insurgents led to reprisal measures and retaliation with more arrests, less food and less wood."
"The night was clear now, and, despite the curfew, I ventured one step outside my tent silently to look at the sky. It was the same constellations, unknown to me, without any reference to those I once knew on Caprica. It was the same night sky that Bill and I had watched on that summer night. We had lost ourselves in the constellations, our thoughts and our conversation. Then we had lost ourselves in each other. It was hard to believe that night ever happened. It was surreal. It was not the same world anymore. We had lain naked on sandbags wrapped in a light blanket in the soft warm night air. Now the air was biting me, and my breath was crystallizing on my lips. The sky remained empty. I was clinging to this desperate hope that I would see the point of light coursing silently across the sky, the Galactica. And even if my reason was telling me that it was not going to happen, I kept on looking at the sky. 'Bill,' I whispered, 'Where are you?' How much more could we take? How much more could I take? Every day I was seeing people coming at the hospital with injuries and wounds. The first times, it had been horribly difficult to see their suffering, but as terrible as it sounds, I was getting accustomed to see blood and open wounds. I was getting used to hold screaming and sobbing women, children and men in my arms. Listening to them, holding them and comforting them made me forget my own pain. Everyone suffered so much more that I was. Most were distressed to see that the violence was not just coming from the cylons, but mostly from the human guards they had hired as their police. People were turning on each other. The cylons did not even have to kill us; famine, cold, disease and hatred would continue to claim us. My status of former president helped me, as people would provide me with food and wood. I gave everything I did not need to those who had nothing and kept for myself the strict minimum. I felt I needed to be there for the people and help in the hospital. I needed to give back to them for the caring they surrounded me with."
"I wrapped the blanket around me, burying my face in the soft fabric and looked out into the night sky. I tried to imagine why Bill would not come back, making excuses, evoking all possibilities. But in my heart, I feared that he had been killed. I went back inside, shivering uncontrollably and sat on my old Colonial One chair by the fire. I would have given the world for a warm shower. I had not washed since the beginning of the cold wave. At such temperatures, it was dangerous to wash hair or even to bare skin. I was filthy. I felt sticky, my hair greasy and heavy from dirt under the wool hat that was keeping my head warm. I remembered the night Bill washed me, the way he gently warmed my skin up, running the warm wet towel over my back, my legs, my chest and the way he washed my hair. His gentleness had warmed me more than the heat of the water. I thought I was cold then. I really did not know what deep cold felt like, when the air was like needles, and it hurt to breathe, lungs constricting, when the cold burned through the skin of the fingers and numbed them beyond pain, leaving frost bites on any skin exposed, when lips turned blue, dried and split from the cold. I tightened the blanket over the clothes I had not removed in days and reclined on the chair by the fire. I thought of the homeless men and women sleeping in the cold back on Caprica, when I barely cared about them, if not for a coin tossed at them occasionally. I probably looked now just the way they used to. I heard the sinister steps of the patrol in the night. The blanket was dirty. It had not been washed since Bill brought it to me and we slept in it; it did not even smell like him anymore. Bill. I needed to smell him in the soft fabric. And my heart tore, when I buried my face in the fabric and could not anymore. His scent was the last physical contact, the remaining physical bound through time and space linking me to him, the proof he had existed. He was so far away, so far. I needed to hold him and feel him against me, inside me. His warmth, his gentle touch, his love was like a dream from another life, a life which would never come back, which I often doubted ever had existed. I lowered my fingers under the layers of my clothes into the liquid heat, which I knew had pooled there. As I did so, I realized that it was a mistake, that recalling his body would rip me apart, but I needed so much to feel alive. I thought of his hands caressing me, his mouth exploring me, of the fullness of him and the sensual passionate experience we had shared. I thought of the elation he had brought to my body and the completeness he had brought to my life. I missed him so much that it hurt as a tear in my flesh. The violent physical pleasure I experienced was also searing pain to my soul. His absence was like shards slicing my heart apart, and yet, his memory the sweet comfort, I needed. I felt the emptiness, the negative space left by his life, tightening around me. I could not be sure he was still alive. As days went, the probability of his death increased. How long would I wait before I decided it was over, before I would let go of him? As I formulated the question, I realized the only answer I had: forever. I would wait forever. It would be so easy to die instead, to make the pain stop, to make it go away. I had hated the idea of death, struggled against it, and fought it as my cancer progressed. And then it had come. I was flirting with it, remembering my life as I was slipping into oblivion, bits of memory good and bad. I had only survived because Baltar gave me a blood transfusion from the half-cylon baby, Hera. I had seen death, been very close. For me it was already charted territory. I would welcome the relief, the darkness, the absence of cold, and the absence of pain. But no, I could not die. I did not even have this simple freedom. People needed me. I had to be there for them. I had to wait for Bill, even if it meant living in the hell that this life had become. Clutching the blanket to myself, I let my tears fall without restrain, screamed and cried my pain aloud, and sobbed into the night. Alone."
"When I woke up the next day, I cursed myself for my weakness. People were dying, and I was crying my despair over the absence of a man, and all he meant for us. Laura Roslin was never meant to have a private life. Attachments meant pain and pain brought weakness. I had to be strong for my people, because I would always be their leader, especially now that the man they wrongly elected betrayed them. I should have stolen the election and prevented them from this horror. I should never have relaxed into this life enough to let my feelings open and dare to think of a normal life. Our life was never going to be normal again until we reached earth. And maybe then, I am not sure it would be normal and even that I would see it alive. Normal did not mean anything anymore. I made the pledge never to let such weakness invade me again."
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