A/N: To any and all of you still interested in this story, sorry about the long delay in updating. Sometimes life just gets in the way of the best laid plans of mice and men.
Sharon moved fast, leaping towards the Admiral in a single, fluid motion. Before the guards outside could react, she had him pinned to the cot, her hands around his throat. "What the frack do you mean she's alive! What have you done to her!" she screamed, her hands spasmodically closing even tighter on his throat with every word.
The old man tried to speak, but couldn't bring in enough air to push the words past his lips. His vision was beginning to blur and the sounds of Sharon's shouts, mixing with those of the guards as they burst into the room, began to fade away.
"Release him!" the Marine Sergeant who'd been so reluctant about leaving the Admiral in there alone commanded. "I said release him or we will open fire!"
Instantly, as though someone had flicked a switch, Sharon's screams came to a halt.She looked up at the three armed Marines, locking her eyes on those of the Sergeant in charge. "You won't fire," she said calmly as she finally eased her choking gripon the Admiral, hauling him effortlessly to his feet as though he was no more than a rag doll. "There's no way you'd risk hitting the old man."
The Admiral's mind beganto work again nowthat Sharon's grip on his throat had loosened. Her reaction wasn't wholly unexpected, but expecting it wasn't the same as actually facing her fury head on. "It's okay Sergeant," he managed to croak out, his voice sounding funny even to his own ears. She must have bruised his throat he thought to himself, trying to shake off the faint fuzziness still lingering at the edges of his mind. He need to think fast in order to regain control of the situation.
"But sir!" Protesting the Admiral's orders seemed to be the thing of the day the stunned Sergeant couldn't help but thinking.
"This won't help you find her," the old man whispered hoarsely, just loud enough for Sharon to hear him. She tightened her grip slightly, causing the old man to grimace.
"Where is she?"
"Let me go first, then we'll talk," he countered.
"What's to stop me from killing you where you stand?"
"If you kill me, you'll never find her. Your choice is simple, Sharon. Either you give me what I want and in exchange I'll help you get your daughter back, or you keep threatening me until that trigger happy Marine over there shoots you and then you'll never see her. Sergeant, you and your men lower your weapons," he ordered,mentally crossing his fingers that he was making the right decision.
"Negative, Sir," the Sergeant replied, tightening his grip more firmly on his weapon as he disengaged the safety switch.
"Sergeant, that is a direct order from the Admiral of the Fleet," William argued. "Lieutenant Valerii will release me as soon as you and your men lower your arms." He was taking a real chance here, he thought. Logically, Sharon would do what he was suggesting; it was her only real chance of locating her child. Emotionally though, she was in a bad enough state that he feared she'd refuse to co-operate out of pure spite. But which would prevail, logic or emotion? That was the real question. In what almost felt like slow-motion, the soldiers finally lowered their weapons.
"If this is a trick, you'll be dead before any of them know what happened," Sharon hissed into his ear before releasing her hold on the old man. Cautiously she kept herself positioned so that she was half-shielded behind his body.
"Step towards us Admiral," the Sergeant instructed, somewhat amazed at the Cylon's compliance thus far.
"That won't be necessary Sergeant, you and your men can leave us again, there won't be any more instances like that," William spoke reassuringly to the soldiers. "I believe the Lieutenant is ready to continue our conversation in a little more civilized fashion."
After a few more attempts at convincing the Admiral to exit the cell with them, the Marines once more resumed their positions outside the door. Once they were out of earshot, Sharon spoke.
"So I'm back to being a Lieutenant now? Dangling my daughter in front of me like a lure and treating me like I'm one of you, is that your new angle? Give the Cylon prisoner what she wants just long enough for you to get what you need?"
He was silent for a long moment. "To be blunt, yes. You have what I need to get my people back. I have information regarding your daughter, an even trade."
"What the frack did you do to Hera?" As she spoke of her child her face filled with rage, her body practically quivering with her barely contained fury. "I saw her body!"
It was the one thing he wasn't prepared to answer, so he explained it as best he could. "I'm not privy to everything that was done, although I do know that Doc Cottle was a most unwilling participant. President Roslin thought that it was in the best interests of the fleet to let the general word around the fleet be that the baby died shortly after its birth. It was then adopted out to another woman to be raised as her own."
"Why? She's my child!"
"Did you really plan on raising her in this cell?"
"Would you have given me any choice? No matter how I helped you humans," she spat the word out as though it was something vile, "No matter how many times I proved myself loyal, you locked me in this room."
"Why are the Cylons so desperate for a hybrid child? The farms on Caprica that Kara told us about...your child with Helo. What is so important about a hybrid?" he asked, sidestepping the answer to her questions.
Sharon looked away, unable to meet his eyes and lying to him for the first time since he'd entered the room. "I don't know."
"The Union is more important to us than ever before," Chief Tyrol called out to the group of workers crammed inside the school tent. He stood before them atop a desk that acted as his makeshift stage. Rain poured down on the tent, dripping through in a few weak spots. It was a miserable night, which, in a way, symbolized the plight of the workers gathered there.
"The Cylons are never going to acknowledge us!" a voice near the back shouted out.
"That's right, we're nothing but slave labor to them now, we have no say," called out another.
"I'm here because it's the only way for large groups to meet without drawing suspicion on ourselves," Kara drawled out from the edge of the crowd closest to his 'stage'. "Right now, the Cylons are out there, sitting inside their dry ships, leaving just the tin cans out there to guard us, laughing at the pathetic, lowly humans, huddling inside a tent crying on each others shoulders about the injustice of it all. Don't fool yourselves into thinking that our pain brings them anything less than enjoyment. And while they're sitting there, enjoying our suffering, we can be here, planning on how to fight our way out of here."
There were some murmurs of agreement throughout the crowd, which encouraged her to continue.
"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not ready to just back down and give up. They already destroyed our worlds once, are we gonna let the take this one away from us too? Just hand it over without any kind of fight at all?"
"You're crazy Starbuck!" shouted out a voice from the crowd. Kara recognized the sound, its owner a former Viper pilot from the Pegasus. "We're outnumbered a thousand to one! We can't fight them."
"So we fight until we can't fight no more," the Chief said, speaking the words that Kara herself had uttered on more occasions than she cared to remember now.
"We'll all be killed," another person called out. "What's the point of fighting if it just gets us all killed? Life is the only thing we have anymore."
"What's the point of living a life that isn't really living?" Starbuck shot back. "Sure, we're going through the motions, eating, sleeping, working our fingers to the bones on that damned city, but we're not really living."
At the side of the stage Cally listened to the argument drone on and on. They were going to fight back, of that she was certain, the question in her mind was how long it would take them to stop fighting amongst themselves and turn their anger outward towards the Cylons. As she thought about it, she rubbed her hand absently at her lower back that had been aching even worse than usual all day. A picture perfect way to end the day, she thought to herself as a much sharper pain pierced her abdomen. She doubled over, letting out a sharp cry of pain.
"Cally!" the Chief called, pushing his way off the stage to her side. "Cally!"
"I'm okay…..it's just….the baby," she panted.
"Somebody get Doc Cottle," he shouted, scooping her up into his arms as he did. He staggered a little as he made his way towards the tent's opening, unaccustomed to her unwieldy form.
Starbuck rushed out of the tent ahead of him, running in the direction of the old doctor's tent. "Doc!" she called, charging into his tent.
"Starbuck!" he asked startled. He turned away from the others in his tent, and Kara didn't even notice them.
"Doc, Cally's in labor, you gotta come quick," she told him, grabbing his arm and making as though she was going to just drag him out of the tent with her.
"I have to get my things," he replied, tugging his arm away from her grasp as he turned towards the black bag beside the table where another baby lay. He began loading the bag and directed his attention towards the others in the tent, Kara pacing restlessly beside the entrance. "We'll have to finish this up tomorrow ladies, but I don't think you have anything to worry about, just a minor case of sinusitis. Keep the fluids down her, and I'll check in on Hera tomorrow."
"Are you sure there's nothing else we can do for her?" Laura Roslin asked, stepping out of the shadows.
"Without any antibiotics on hand, all I can prescribe is rest and fluids," the doctor answered. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got another patient waiting and I think Captain Thrace is about to the end of her patience over there."
Together they hurried through the rainy night towards the Chief's tent. Following along in the shadows Sharon Valerii watched their every step, listening to Doc's questions and Kara's answers about Cally.
"She's having the baby," Caprica Six said, joining Sharon's vigil. There were no questions about who 'she' was though. Sharon had taken a very active interest in the woman's pregnancy after learning that her executioner was now married to the Chief. The first time she'd seen them together she'd been filled with a mixture of anger and pain, now she just watched them with a sense of sad resignation. As Sharon continued to watch in silence, Six spoke again, indicating the duffle bag of supplies in the other woman's hand. "Are you just going to stand here all night holding that? Or are you actually going to deliver it? It's not doing them much good sitting here in the rain," the blonde felt compelled to point out.
"He wouldn't want me in there…..upsetting her, especially not now."
"Neither one of them even have to know you're there. Leave the bag with one of the people hanging around outside they'll see that it gets to the doctor."
Sharon didn't respond, her attention focused on the brightly lit tent ahead of them. Something was going on there, the small crowd gathered outside becoming louder as someone stepped through the flap. From where they stood, the two Cylons managed to piece together what was going on. The baby was in a breach position, and Cally, who'd been in labor for most of the day without even realizing it, was growing weaker from exhaustion alone.
Without a word to her companion, Sharon grabbed the bag and strode forward towards the crowd.