A/N: Thanks to everyone who read, or followed or favorited! I still can't believe anyone besides me would want to read this! So obviously the schedule thing isn't going to work, and I apologize, because my real life is extremely unpredictable right now between my job, school, and my health. So I'm gonna try to at least post once a week. That I much I hope I can handle!
LisaT: Not to give anything away, but um... I'm sure you'll figure out by the end of this chapter that Laura's death isn't exactly as clean-cut as most people (read: Birdie) believe it to be. But yes-no, not knocking all the baby fic! I'm a sucker for olga_theodora and miabicicletta's If Not, Winter-verse, as well as a couple of others. Although, you must admit, spaceparents baby!fic is usually hackneyed and contrived, lol. Thanks for reviewing!
Tawneyleaf: Thank you so much for spending all that time on your review! And of course I've read Children of Gods. It's like the thg/bsg crossover. And nope, Birdie's not really based off of anyone. But I've had her running around in my head for a few years, ever since my first read of thg so that's probably why she comes off so well. Thanks again!
Luawalshie: Thank you!
mserra109: Keep reading. ;)
CHAPTER TWO: WITH DEATHLESS FACE
Will brushes his fingers with Birdie's as they are rushed into the Justice Building, trying to temper her rising fury with an act of camaraderie. Caprica watches the girl bring her hands in front of her, lacing her fingers together. In avoidance.
So this was the Admiral's get. Roslin's kid.
Interesting.
Caprica doesn't know what she was expecting, exactly. She never even knew what the girl looked like, never asked. Never really cared. Probably should have. Gaius knew—knows—what she looks like.
Not like either of her parents. She's too short, too skinny. Lithe, and skittish. Kind of coltish. She crosses her arms under her breasts to hide that she's afraid, her fingers twisting into the sides of her shirt to keep herself from trembling.
Caprica wonders what the girl's heart is like—perhaps it is an empty room. The orphan child, the surgeon, who picks at the hearts of others. Who relies on others, and feels nothing. There's much to learn, when Caprica doesn't even know if she will be allowed to live and compete. She thinks that the Ones will give the order to execute her and claim her parentage false.
A child, though.
She's only a child.
Mercy must given to the girl. It looks like it never has before. Her face is scarred, and her hands. They're clean, though; well taken care of. Her fingernails are trimmed and neat.
The concept of this child is strange to her.
Perhaps Eleanor Adama should not have been allowed to live, Caprica thinks with uncertain sadness. Perhaps that would have been mercy.
They file into the Justice Building; the Mayor holds the door open for her. He looks shaken. How weak, she thinks. But Eleanor Adama—the bastard, the girl, the daughter—was never supposed to enter the Games. Her name was never placed into the glass bowl of uniform little slips. She had the perfect odds: none at all.
But she volunteered.
The cylons never accounted for that possibility—that she would volunteer for someone. Why would she? The daughter had no siblings. No cousins. No family. She was alone. Why would she step forward for anyone, place herself into the position of certain death, when she had the privilege of being the bastard daughter of the Admiral and the President?
She is surrounded by Peacekeepers the moment the doors are shuttered behind them, and Caprica watches a brief expression of terror flit across the girls face as they tear the two tributes apart. She emits a strangled sound, hands coming to her sides before reaching briefly for the Captain's boy, who, for his part, smiles at her.
They—Caprica, Gaius, the Mayor, and three peacekeepers—walk her down the plain, wood-paneled hallway and into a back room, where she is roughly sat down onto one of the benches. A Four joins them, wrenches open her mouth, swabs her cheek, and exits the room, before the Mayor and a Three bear down on the girl.
Caprica takes a seat.
There's nothing to interrogate her about. She's telling the truth. They all know it. She watches Gaius; he sits timidly next to the girl, even as Caprica's brother and sister yell at her.
She's strong, she thinks idly. Even as she shrinks in her seat, there's a… measure of quiet defiance in her.
The Four returns within minutes with a print out, only confirming what they already knew. The Mayor and Three go silent, all looming over the single piece of paper, before rushing out of the small, dusty room, their shoes leaving hard sounds against the timber floors.
Gaius moves closer to Eleanor. She tries not to look at him, wrapping her arms tighter around herself. The skin on her forearms draw taught, and when she shifts her arms just so, Caprica can see the 'B' and the '12' angry and violent against her sallow skin. Caprica wonders if the girl is similarly angry and violent. If she has what it takes to survive the Games. Her parents didn't have what it took to survive. She wonders what she'll be like when she's dying. Will she go out fighting, in a burst of flames and a blaze of glory like her father and brother, or will she be hunted down, starving and panting like a dog, like her mother? Will she beg?
Minutes pass slowly, the clock—which is ten minutes slow, and getting slower—ticking loudly in the silent, empty room. It is filled with breathing and the marker of passing seconds.
"I hope they decide to let you compete," Gaius tells her eventually, trying to put his hand on his shoulder. He falters at the last moment, allowing the girl to pull away.
She looks at him angrily. "It doesn't really matter, does it?"
Caprica raises an eyebrow. She doesn't expect to win.
Gaius stutters.
"Thank you," the girl mutters. "But honestly, like they'll let me win. They can't afford to let me win."
"I—I'm sure they'll—"
Eleanor's eyes—the same hue as her mother's, but a shade of green more intense, like her father's—flicker to hers, before glaring back at Gaius. "My mother should have stolen the election when she had the chance."
Gaius quiets then, folding into himself.
Shocked, Caprica watches a brief look of remorse blanket Eleanor's face, before the Mayor re-enters the room.
"She's good," the Five says, relieved. And so Caprica stands, crosses the room, and yanks Gaius up out of his seat.
It will be interesting, this year. Eleanor Adama has nothing left to lose, and everything to gain. She nods to Galen Tyrol, who lingers outside in the hallway with his family, holding the door open for them as the cylon party recesses into the back of the Justice Building, to wait.
"Five minutes," the Peacekeeper tells him.
His mother bursts through the door, moving quicker than she has in years and creating an all-around ruckus bigger than one woman should be capable of.
"William Thrace Anders," she starts, and then stops, frowning at him. She tilts her head, regarding him in a way he doesn't think she has before.
"Mom?"
"You're a moron," she says, hugging him fiercely to her. "A frakking moron, boy."
He huffs a laugh. "What did you expect from me, Mom? Never been the sharpest tool in the shed, me."
"Too much like your father," she mutters, pulling back and kissing his forehead. "Getting yourselves killed like you are. Walking to your death."
"Like a frakking soldier."
"Like a moron."
Will rolls his eyes. This is not how he wants his last conversation with his mother to go. "You were one once, if you remember. A soldier."
His mother sobers, sighing, holding him at arm's length. Will feels a twinge of sadness—not for the end of his life, but for leaving his mother alone. His blue eyes crinkle, and she smooths his blonde hair away from his forehead, before whispering something in his ear.
Roslin won't let go of her, arms locked solidly around her waist. Nick hangs back by the door with Isis, who stares at him sorrowfully as he holds back tears, hand clamped over his mouth. Uncle Galen looks ancient, Aunt Maya devastated, tears streaming down her kind, weather-worn face, Stephie in her arms. It's Doc who approaches her first, his mouth settled into a grim line.
"You're gonna be fine," he starts. "Look at you. You can do this. Will's gonna help you."
Birdie's brow furrows, shaking hands twisted into her red skirt.
"What if," she stutters, eyes pasted to the floor, where her feet are stubbornly rooted. In ten minutes, she will be on her way to the Capitol and then she will never return. It does not feel real. "I'm not—I'm not worthy of this. He shouldn't—"
"But he did," Uncle Galen says quietly. "And now District Twelve may have a victor."
Birdie looks at him quickly. She wants to memorize their faces, their voices, to die with them, her family, on her mind.
She wants to forget.
District Twelve could use the food and money a Victor would bring. Use it desperately. Needs it desperately. She could keep the people from starvation.
"Whatever you have, hold onto it," Doc says, leaning heavily on his cane, looking so old. "Find it. You've got so much, girly. Talent, smarts, wit, bravery. Find it in you and hold on tight."
Birdie's eyes well, almost painful, almost sweet. Too much, she thinks. Too much, Uncle Jack. He reaches and puts his hand on her shoulder, brings her head under his chin, Roslin moving with them, whimpering.
"Even if all you have left is an inch, don't let go of who you are. What you are. And if you have that inch," his voices wavers, and Birdie chokes back a sob. "Even if you have only that inch, they'll never break you. You are who you are, my girl. Don't let them take that from you."
"I'm not a soldier," she whispers back plaintively, mouth moving against his shirt. Only he can hear her.
He almost laughs, petting her hair. "Neither was your mother," he breathes into her ear. "But they never broke her."
"I'm not my mother," she says.
"No," Cottle murmurs back fondly. "But you've got her strength. Carry her with you. Carry both of them with you. They have to let you, now." He looks down at Rosie. "Little Rose, give Birdie back her father's tags."
Birdie steps back, but remains in his embrace. "She should keep them. Someone should have them. They'll be lost forever if—"
"Your mother left them with you," Cottle husks.
"To keep safe, not hand over to the cylons."
His eyes bore into her. "She left them with you, for you. Not to be treated as an artifact, or to be kept safe. For you, when you need them. Now shut up and put them back around your neck where they belong, before I hit you upside the head."
Rosie sniffles, lifting her face from Birdie's tummy.
"You need them," she peeps. "They didn't—I'm sorry they didn't work on me, I should have let you keep them. Then I wouldn't have gotten picked. The gods punished me for wearing them."
"No, no," Birdie answers, words like love on her tongue. "No don't think that." She drops to her knees before the smaller girl. "This was fate. This was supposed to happen. Everything happens because the Lords will it—it is not always a punishment, it's just a part of their plan."
She thinks of when she was just a little girl, her long, dark hair dancing in waves to her boyish waist, barefoot in the red dust that seemed to lacquer the long New Caprican summer. During the midnight sun, when the music didn't stop for days, and she and Momma would dance and sing and they were almost happy and weren't hungry, until night fell again, and all the delirium went away.
She was eleven, when the Peacekeepers broke through the red door, and Momma told her to run. The festival had ended and they were exhausted as night fell at last, curled up together in her bed, warm and safe and calm, blanketed by the darkness, and hidden by the thousands of others who also slept. And while the thousands slept, the cylons took Laura Roslin away for the last time. Laura Roslin, who barricaded the door to her bedroom, pressed the father of child's dog tags into her daughter's hands, hoisted her out the window, and whispered for her to flee into the woods.
And then was arrested, tried, and executed.
It was the day that Birdie learned she could be a weapon instead of a girl, hiding among the trees for nearly a month and killing anything she could eat. The day Ella died, alongside Laura.
When she finally walked back into her district, mangy and greasy, half-dead and no longer a child, they seared the 12 into her arm. And the house with the red door, all that Birdie had of a childhood, was burned to the ground.
Run, Birdie thinks. Keep running. Hunt. Keep hunting. Live. Keep surviving. And stay strong.
She's never killed a person, though. Not even a skinjob. And that isn't even killing.
She saves lives. She doesn't take them.
And they all expected her to be able to watch Will lay down his life for hers. Because.
She vows that is not how it will end. (She doesn't know how, but too many people have died for her already and she will not go out dragging yet another person, her best friend, with her.)
Kneeling, she allows Rosie to loop the plain, dimly-glinting chain around her neck again. The warm tags fall into the valley between her breasts, the slight weight calming. Reassuring. Her mouth twitches into a small curve. She will go where so many have tread before her. The path well-worn by the feet of the infinite. The billions of lives extinguished in the attacks. The thousands more by the cylons since. But her journey will not end. She will have to come back, in time.
Life, through death. The snake eats its own tail. Over and over in the cycle, she thinks, remembering early Sunday mornings at temple service, sitting in the long, bleached pews with the other children of the home.
It doesn't help.
I will not be afraid.
That is a lie, and she trembles.
Slowly, she turns to Nick. Inhaling with a shaking frame, she reaches out to him—he fills her arms in seconds, his long, muscled legs carrying him across the floor in three paces. He crushes her to him, a dry, heaving sob escaping at last.
"I'm scared," she says, low enough that only he can hear.
"Good," he replies, lips brushing against her ear. "Fear's good. Healthy. It'll keep you alive. You can do this, Birdie. You can hunt better, and run faster than anyone we know. And—and you have Will going with you."
"I didn't want him to."
"I should have volunteered." His voice cracks.
"No!" she whispers forcefully. "No. I volunteered to take Rosie's place because your parents shouldn't have to lose any more children. You shouldn't have to lose another sister. And they—they need you, Nicky. No one needs me."
"I need you."
"Promise me." She takes a steadying breath, unable to look at him. She speaks again, cutting off the beginning of his protest. "If I don't come back—"
"No, no—Birdie."
"Yes, Nicholas," she says, punching him half-heartedly on the shoulder. "If I don't come back, move on. Marry a pretty girl without a brand. Get yourself out of twelve."
"I won't."
"Nick," she croaks, wiping at her eyes. In the background, she can hear Aunt Maya begin to cry. "Nick you have to."
"Not without you. I love you." His large hands—rough, calloused, worked—come to frame her face, and he brings his lips to hers. "You're coming back."
"In a box," she tells him facetiously.
His face darkens, but he doesn't turn away. Nick searches her eyes, and she tries to keep her face from crumpling, tensing every muscle in her body as her arms and legs tingle, a heavy weight pressing her lungs against her ribs. Fingers stroking over her cheeks, his eyes ignite hers.
Rosie makes a desperate, gasping sound. "You have to try!"
A cold feeling climbs up Birdie's back, slicking her back, making her blouse cling to her skin.
A Peacekeeper opens the door with a bang, the doorknob hitting the wall with a forcible bang. "Time's up!" he barks.
And then they are gone—Aunt Maya kissing her forehead, Uncle Jack clasping her shoulder, Isis giving her a careful hug, Uncle Galen bestowing a solemn kiss on the cheek, Rosie refusing to let go, and Nick, tugging her out with him.
His brown eyes won't leave.
Hundreds of miles away, two men stand on a beach, watching the waves crash onto the shore below a darkened sky.
"She finished breaking things?" the one asks.
"She broke one thing," the other grumbles in reply, kicking at the wet sand beneath his feet. "Can't blame her, either. How 'bout you? You've got a kid in there too. You just froze up. Can't blame you for that, either."
Felix Gaeta tenses, shoulders rigid under his parka. "They do it every year. It was a matter of time."
"Not for her little girl," the man growls. "She should have been safe. She struck a deal."
Gaeta snorts, his face as ominous as the sky. "Not all of us are so lucky."
"Oh shut the frak up. I wouldn't call 'em lucky. Not those two."
"And my Mina—"
"We're gonna go and get 'em." The other man says forcefully. "This is the last year of the Hunger Games. It ends now."
"I'm sorry!" Birdie squeaks as Kara comes through the door, gathering the tiny girl to her sturdier frame. "Aunt Kara I am so, so, sorry. I'm—"
"Don't be." She swipes a lock of hair out of the girl's eyes. "Just… don't be. Everything's…. it's gonna be alright now."
"How did you—when you were a pilot?"
Kara nods, understanding. "Some soldiers went into battle with the mindset they were already dead. Some gave everything up to the Lords, the religious ones. Could always hear them praying over the radio. Some—the cocky ones, went in thinking they were the gods."
"I thought you were god."
"Hmm…" Kara wrinkles her nose. "Sometimes." She hesitates, looking over Birdie's shoulder instead of in her eyes. "Your father, Admiral Atheist, was an adrenaline junkie. Fed off the fear. Turned it into bravery. And as for your mother… all I know is that she had a habit of pushing semiautomatics out of her face."
"That won't serve me much," she answers with a sad giggle. Too much like her, I think. The girl was too much of her mother. Too willing to die for others. Too willing to give up her life on the will of the gods.
Not when she promised Laura to look after her little girl. Kara Thrace was a woman who kept her promises, especially a mother's promise.
"No guns the arena."
"Too quick."
"Not a good show, that would be."
"Not at all," Birdie replies, voice shaking, body following in suit. Kara grasps her arms, tugging her closer. "Need to find other methods. Make it more dramatic. Valiant. Painful. Slow. We who are about to die salute you."
"Hey," Kara says softly, dropping kisses into her hair. "Hey. We raised you right. You're not some prissy middle District kid. You've got guts. You're half viper-jock."
"I don't think I can do it, Aunt Kara. I'm not a killer."
"You can hunt," she replies, voice hard. This girl cannot die. Laura's little girl cannot be allowed to die; wheels have been set into motion and it will be done and in the end… this is their moment. "You can't think of them being anything different than animals. You hunt to survive. Now you'll kill to survive."
"We can't both come back." She takes a strangled breath, eyes widening, chest heaving. "Aunt Kara we can't—bury me next to my mother, if I don't—if I die. I'm, I mean—I'm coming back…" Her voice deadens and trails off. "Come back with your shield or on it, right?" she intones, rubbing her palms along the soft cotton sleeves of her blouse.
Kara smiles sadly. "We shouldn't have let the Taurons get their hands on you, half or not."
Birdie laughs shortly. "No matter."
Kara reaches out and lifts up her chin, forcing the girl to look her in the eyes. She gives Birdie a lop-sided grin, and Kara thinks that maybe Birdie's seeing Starbuck for the first time. They're equals now. The girls who went off to die. If Birdie must become a tribute, then she can become Starbuck again. After all, Starbuck didn't die, even if everyone thought she had a time or to. Even if she should have.
"Maybe I'm already dead."
Kara kisses her forehead, strokes her hair. "Don't think like that. Just—don't. Don't fear death. You can live with it, or not be afraid of it, but don't go off thinking like that."
Birdie laughs again, shaking her head. Her eyes sting, and Kara wipes away the tears before they fall. "I was raised with soldiers and pilots. I learned how to die years ago, right? I'm—I'm sorry Will's coming with me."
Kara barely holds back a sob, and manages to do it with a thin smile. Her boy. Her darling boy. Too much like his father, and Eleanor, too much like hers. Too much to carry, for children. To high a cost, and the cylons make them pay it. "I'd expect nothing less of him."
There is a moment of silence, and they look at each other. A woman now, Kara thinks. But the girl is long dead. And perhaps Birdie is now too.
"Eleanor Adama," she says, forcing Birdie to stand straight, chin up, shoulders back. Stand like a soldier. A woman. The daughter of the two bravest people she's ever known. Bravest, and greatest. And immortal. "It suits you."
An exquisite young woman, Gaius thinks. Not even a flicker of emotion. Some tributes cried. Most did, actually. Cried and shook and carried on. These two sit in their seats in the car, looking straight forward, almost emotionless. Eleanor absentmindedly traces the scars inlaid on the thin flesh of her forearm. William looks out the window, the muscles of his face tight, eye pinched. They are older than his tributes usually are, though.
Little Roslin Tyrol is twelve. The boy who had been volunteered for, Alexander Stavrou, barely thirteen.
District Twelve does not win, he thinks tiredly. District Twelve is too dangerous to be afforded hope.
Well, they have it now. This is their shot.
The girl looks like her mother. The thought strikes him over the head, suddenly, when her gaze shifts almost imperceptibly, pale eyes casting him with a knifing glare. The kind of look to pin someone to their seat and make them squirm, make them feel incompetent.
Small thing she is, though. Gaius wonders how strong she is.
And in the next moment she is her father, serious green eyes looking mournfully at her fellow tribute. Gaius wonders if they're dating, if that's why William Anders decided to follow her into the arena. It's a good story. He could spin it to their advantage, if Caprica let him. These kids could have a chance, even if their names were unfortunate.
The driver steers them down the Main Street of District Twelve, towards the gates to the Capitol. How sad of it all. Every year, the faces got hungrier the closer to the gates the car got. Hungrier, and paler. And sadder.
He turns to look at his Caprica, who is filling the silence with her usual diatribe, explaining the rest of the day to them—it would be a twenty minute drive to the Capitol, and then another thirty minutes after entering the Capitol to reach the Games headquarters where they would meet with their stylists.
If I remember correctly…
He twitches in his seat, watching Eleanor shift slightly in hers, eyes studiously avoiding his.
Of course he remembers correctly.
He looks at the boy. He had forgotten that Kara Thrace had gotten married. William looks like he takes after his mother—strong jawline, impish blue eyes, straw-colored hair. He supposes that any girl like Eleanor, even scarred and mottled as she was (he hopes the stylists could do something about that, if she was to stand a chance with sponsors at all) would want someone like him. All girls wanted someone like William Anders.
That would work in their favor.
Star-crossed lovers then? And she'll need a sob story. He ignores that fact that Eleanor Adama's life was already a sob story, disregarding it for the fact that it in the eyes of many, it was just punishment, not cruelty. The poor, desperate child of two traitors, paying for their sins. Volunteers for her redemption in the Games, only to be followed into the Arena by her loving boyfriend… no, fiancé. Slept on a damp floor, dreaming of the day she could bring honor back to her family name.
The radio crackles softly before the chime of the news broadcast theme sounds over the wave. The reporters have been going nonstop on Reaping Day. Best frakking day in the year, in their opinion.
"And in a dramatic turn of events, District Twelve has not only its first volunteer, but two!" Gauis' eyes move to Caprica. She reaches over to lay her hand on Eleanor's forearm, only for the girl to blanch and jerk away. Something in the cylon's expression softens. "And not only that—it's the Admiral's bastard! Who would have thought?"
The girl's eyes bulge, fingers twisting in her skirt once more when they replay the audio of her pleading gasp, the sound of thousands of people inhaling at once. And then, replaying the audio of her bastard's rites.
"Her DNA has already been tested and she's the real deal. Who would have thought the old devil had it in him? Left behind a little legacy."
Gaius doesn't think the girl is breathing, looking pointedly at her window, not through it, with a sharp frown on her face.
"We'll be speaking with President Cavil shortly as to this… interesting development that has—"
"Shut it off!" he stutters, twisting in his seat to look at the driver and the Peacekeeper sitting in the front passenger. "Turn it off!"
With his second request—demand—the driver complies.
When he turns around again, the girl's forehead is resting on the window, eyes closed.
She'll need to work on hiding her emotions better, he thinks. She'll get herself killed.
They are collected around the Tyrol's table in a matter of minutes, scribbling furiously on scraps of paper, shoving them around the circle. Too many bugs. Too many spies. Too dangerous to speak. The scraps of paper enter the fireplace as soon as they are read, the flames reaching higher and higher as the frantic energy dissipates and information is spread.
"Has anyone got the list of tributes yet?" Cottle finally says aloud.
"Right here," Isis says, from her perch near the wireless, pencil scratching deftly on yet another sheet of paper. She stands behind her father at the head of the table, resting one hand on his crooked shoulder, her slight fingers pressing into the knotted muscle.
Poor father, she thinks. She raises her eyes. And my poor, poor Nicky. She feels it all too keenly—Dad's anger and remorse, Nick's desperation, the shade of his denial, Rosie's immense guilt, Mom's sorrow, Steph's confusion. Cottle's deep, deep blue hue of crushing sadness (yet still tinged with a hue of hope) and Aunt Kara's boiling rage and indignation. And all the others in her home—anxiety.
And hope.
It's almost overwhelming, in the amount, she muses, before opening her mouth to speak.
"District One: Rhys Phelan and Penelope Palacios. Both bastards, both careers, both eighteen. Rhys is taking his father's name, Penelope's her mother's." Murmurs ripple through the room. "District Two: Mako Hamilton and Hopewell Kimmit. Careers, seventeen and eighteen. District Three: Sean Cassidy and Artemis Cantrell. Fifteen and Seventeen. District Four: James Lyman, Jr," someone curses, Isis does not look up to see who, but feels a burst of annoyance flow through the room in a strong current, "and Amandla Laird. Sixteen and thirteen."
Another burst of annoyance, but also sadness. Isis wishes she knew the names of more Resistance members from the other Districts, but Mom and Dad only tell her so much.
"District Five: Dempsey Hughes, twelve… and Wilhemina Gaeta."
Mina Gaeta she knew—the District Twelve orphan who had been adopted by Felix Gaeta, only to have her father condemned to hard labor in the Settlement for treason a few years later, and then raised in the Children's Home.
Anxiety. The girl, from what Isis remembers and was told from the broadcast, was only fourteen, and wouldn't know who to trust.
"District Six: Noah Schaffer and Samantha Baggot. Fourteen, both. District Seven: David Wilkens, sixteen, and Lorena Seaborne. A bastard. Not a volunteer, though. Eighteen."
There are few mutterings of recognition.
"District Eight: Francis Birch and Cecilia Tarney. Seventeen and thirteen. District Nine: Roger Palladino and Lily Taylor. Thirteen and fifteen. District Ten: Quinn Hillard and… Constantina Hadrian. Thirteen, and twelve."
Nick shifts in his seat. Mom puts her hand over his arm, fingers wrapping around his wrist. He looks down at the table, lips forming a hard line. Children. Just children. And Birdie. And Will.
And it is such a nice day out.
Rain would be logical.
"District Eleven." She pauses. These names she knows. "Laurel Venner… and Genna, well, Clellan now, was reaped."
"Frakking gods," her father swears, banging on the table with his good hand. Nick jumps. Isis wrinkles her nose. She's missing something, she thinks, reaching down to scratch Birdie's dog behind the ear, avoiding the mutt's baleful gaze. The dog whimpers before curling back under the table to mourn.
Even he knows everything's gone wrong.
Doc clears his throat, taking his flask out of his coat pocket, uncapping it with his gnarled fingers. Isis quells the urge to take it from him and do it herself. Gods, how long had she and Birdie been apprenticed under him now? How long had Birdie been sleeping on his couch? How long… how long had she been living here, too, essentially? Helping Mom with dinner and helping Dad in his shop? Loving Nicky? Swinging Rosie up on her back? Singing Steph to sleep, patching Billy up?
How many years since the fire?
How many years since Laura Roslin died?
How many years since the fleet jumped away? Since they were blasted out of the sky?
Frakking toasters.
She wants to pin the past like an insect on the board—it is fragile, and dead, and so pretty and yet so weary to look at. She'd put her hand through the glass pane just to hold it in her hand, but it would still be just as dead, and her hands would be covered still in blood. And it would be crushed. Ruined.
Her memories are to be looked at, only. Not relived.
(She's a freak, she knows. A tender, shattering lie. And all is about to change, like the leaves. Or the rose petals that flake and fall across the floor. Waiting to be swept up and pressed between the pages of the sacred texts.)
Doc raises his flask. "To Eleanor. And William. To our boy and girl. To the children."
The rest of the room raises their glasses in unison.
(How soon we all must fall.)
They agree to meet back after sundown.
It's disgusting, she thinks. The high, pale buildings—the skyline is familiar, it's what she's been looking at every day of her life. The towering monoliths behind the Capitol Wall.
So much waste.
The people walk in colorful clumps in similarly colorful clothing and makeup and hair and tattoos and piercings. Birdie watches as a man casually buys food from a street vendor, fishing for the money out of his wallet and handing it over as if it is nothing. Nothing for a piece of food, like it was nothing. Hunger is only a passing sensation here.
Her stomach churns uneasily. Such… people. Are they like her at all—their powdered faces, full and rounded and clean? Walking easily among the Peacekeepers and cylons. She fights every instinct to run, wishing she had a forest her legs could carry her to. No forest here, just the buildings. So much… bigger and intimidating up close, she thinks. And they're not even lit up, the sun still high in the sky.
The car slows, pulling along what appears to be a main avenue. The people lining the streets—they're waiting for us , she realizes—cheer, waving streamers and throwing confetti. A spectacle. What a spectacle what a—
Birdie thinks back to her mother's stories about the Coliseum on Kobol, in the city of the Gods, how she had stood on the ruins when the fleet was still on the path to Earth, before the Lords sent them New Caprica as temptation and Gaius Baltar and the cylons as punishment for their sins. How humanity had evolved past the bloodlust and sensuous violence, the parade and the ceremonies of death.
Perhaps not.
She will not be cowed by them, she thinks determinedly as the car halts in front of a daunting, gleaming building. She allows the frakweasel to escort her from the car, and onto a red carpet.
She looks at Will, who nods at her.
She knows how to be a symbol. How to put on the show. How to be the daughter of these people.
If they want a show, they'll get it.
She might be able to do this, she thinks, standing proudly and waving, leaning on Will's arm. She will be proud. She will hold back her disgust, her anger.
Be smart, her mother had told her.
Hundreds of miles away, the sea licks at the feet of a woman. A man comes out and joins her on the sand.
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