Fic: Tempest Fugit
This is SO not going to be done in time for NaNo. My brain is evil. My
muse is evil. *sigh*
Fandom: BSG
Pairing: Gaeta/Dualla
Rating: Adult.
Word Count: 2029
Warning: Spoilers through "Flight of the Phoenix".
Summary: Time flies. And sometimes it has an FTL drive.
Previously.
I.
“A brain scan?” Baltar echoes, incredulous. The worst thing
about sharing a room with Baltar is the creeping feeling of someone else
being in the room, not helped by Baltar’s habit of staring off into
space for long tracts of time, or twitching away from things no one else
can see. “You can’t be serious.”
“Doctor, have you ever known me to not be serious?”
“Well, no,” Baltar admits, conceding the point with a
shrug and a flick of his eyebrows.
Dee says that he reminds her of her grandmother’s cat Hephaestion,
nervous and nervy from constantly being picked on by the other cat, Nibby.
Felix wonders who’s picked on Baltar to make him such a nervous mess?
But really, it’s not just the doctor himself. Felix doesn’t
often give into his mother’s superstitious and mawkish nature, but
for as much as he admires Baltar—and he still does—the man himself
gives him the creeps. He swears, any room the doctor walks into, the temperature
immediately drops ten degrees or more, and even the shadows themselves seem
to move.
“Shouldn’t you go to Major Cottle…”
“No,” Felix cuts him off, aware of the doctor’s propensity
to natter. “Cottle will have questions. He’ll want to know
why.”
“And you don’t want him to know?”
“I don’t know! I just…” Again he fumbles
for what to say, what’s safe to say, what he can say without putting
his neck in the noose.
Baltar cocks his head consideringly. The light washes white over his glasses,
hiding the nervous twitter of his eyes. “Lieutenant, when was the
last time you slept?”
“I’m not tired.” He’s a better liar than this; he
doesn’t know why he can’t summon the energy or calm to make it
more convincing.
Baltar makes a face. “Oh, don’t tell me how brilliant I am and
then insult my intelligence, Mr. Gaeta. Have you looked in a mirror
recently?”
Felix draws in breath to speak. Under his feet, the deck twitches. Just
a minute drag and slur, the machine noise that forms the background music
of his life stuttering briefly into silence, then going on undeterred. Felix
doubts Baltar even notices. But he does. And he knows that all across the
ship, those who’ve made Galactica their life—like him—all
heard it. He knows they all stand in a mirror of him, listening with the
unspoken question of what now?
“I’m tired because I’ve been having…headaches, dreams,”
Felix says wretchedly. There’s no time, no time. He’ll prevaricate
as much as he can, but he has to know. For the sake of everyone aboard,
all those mirrors. “I can’t sleep.”
Another tilt of Baltar’s head, and his eyes swim back into view, magnified
by the rounds of his spectacles. Ironically, he’s the calm one, now.
“What do you dream?”
Felix shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, no
one can afford for me to go crazy.”
“Do you think you’re going crazy?”
He looks down and watches his thumb endlessly circle his fingers, a nervous
habit he’s never been able to rid himself of, even after his father’s…inventive
solutions.
Stand on your own two feet, boy.
Yes. No. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “I hope
not. But…I don’t know.”
“Hence the brain scan.”
“Yes.”
Baltar sighs and looks across the lab. “Well, it’s at least
three hours until Cottle signs off his duty shift. I’d rather not
have to answer to him either; he already thinks I’m a loon.”
Baltar scrapes a hand through his hair and Felix tactfully says nothing.
“Why don’t we talk about what’s going on with the lights,
in the meantime?”
A breath goes out of Felix that he wasn’t aware of holding. “Thank
you, Doctor.”
Baltar waves him off. “I haven’t done anything yet, Lieutenant.”
But that’s not really true, and they both know it. “Thank you
anyway,” Felix says softly, and Baltar looks quietly gratified.
Felix goes to the computer terminal and inserts the data wafer he brought
with him. “Here, look at this data string…”
Baltar joins him, putting one steadying hand on his shoulder.
Has he tried to have you yet?
Felix shudders and tries to concentrate on the matter at hand.
II.
Again she floats.
Not between unconsciousness and wakefulness, but between dreams and the
outside world. It’s like standing at the entrance of a cave, being
able to see out, and yet remain hidden. But like the cave of her analogy,
she knows how thin and fragile her disguise of safety is. One incautious
movement, and she’ll be outed, seen, revealed.
It’s hard not to move, though. If I knew my dreams would
be like this, I might’ve been concussed sooner.
In her sleep, she moans.
Cottle comes to lay his hand—healing hands, coarse with work and yet
gentle—against her forehead. Rough and a little stilted, he murmurs,
“Shh. It’s all right. It’s all right.”
Even in this elastic half-sleep, she is amused.
He thinks it’s a nightmare, rather than the magic that is Felix Gaeta’s
fingers that makes her cry out, twisting languid amid the sheets. She sinks
deeper—into the dream, into Felix—her thighs and stomach trembling
and taut with pleasure-pain throbbing in time to her accelerated pulse.
She swallows back her cries, and flakes away from the real world entirely.
Later, when she can’t hide in dream any longer, she wakes.
The sheets are clenched in wrinkled bunches in her hands. She relaxes her
fingers gingerly, the joints cracking with the pain of being in one position
for too long.
Her head still aches, but not as bad. It’s a dull roar that can be
pushed to the background. Dee flexes her fingers one last time, then levers
herself carefully into a sitting position. Her stomach isn’t entirely
pleased with the motion, but that could just be hunger. The infirmary stays
firmly in position. So far so good.
She’s aware of wetness on her thighs; the last residue of pleasant
dreams. She flushes hot to think of it and wonders if she’s strong
enough to get to the sink and wash up before Cottle returns. She swings
her legs from beneath the covers—resulting in instant goose bumps as
the cold gashes her—and again checks for residual weakness. Nothing.
A quiet gasp of breath off to her left startles her and makes her freeze
in place. Through the gauzy drapery that separates the cubicles, she sees
a silhouette she recognizes as Laura Roslin. Even in shadow puppetry, she
can see the President’s hands are shaking. Then, abruptly, Roslin
steps out into the main bay of the infirmary and asks quietly, “Will
I be able to work?”
“Unless the cancer goes to your brain…”
Dee swallows. It’s public knowledge that Roslin has cancer, and that
it’s terminal. But knowing is different from overhearing.
It’s a private conversation—or one that should be private—between
a patient and her doctor. It’s none of her business and she doesn’t
want Roslin to know she’s here, that she saw or heard. Roslin should
have at least that much privacy.
So she sits, quiet and still, until Roslin’s gone, called away on some
emergency or another.
It’s funny, she thinks. In the beginning of their courtship, or whatever
you wanted to call it, whenever Roslin was aboard, she used to listen for
the sound of Billy’s voice, crane for the sight of him. Now she’s
sitting here with the residue of another man on her and she’s not sure
whether Billy was with Roslin at all.
III.
Time flies. And sometimes it has an FTL drive.
It’s not that he forgets the brain scan. Not at all; it’s the
only way he can think of to discover what Shelley Godfrey did to him while
he was unconscious and vulnerable—another shudder rips down his spine
with barbed hooks, just on recollection, and he’s glad there’s
nothing heavier than coffee in him.
But as he and Baltar seine carefully through the schools and shoals of data
enclosed in Galactica’s many, separate networks, turning up strange,
predatory bits of rogue code, his sense of worry and urgency fractures.
Galactica is his home. He’s been more at home here than he ever was
anywhere else, including in his father’s house. And now it’s
his only home; the only home of a quarter of humanity, and the only defense
of the rest.
Something is wrong with her. Something loathsome and secretive hides inside
of her, dangerous, and he has to wonder if it’s the same thing hidden
inside of him.
Then too, he’s never been able to resist the lure of a puzzle; a problem,
finite, definitive and solvable. Even through the headache that wraps like
a spiked band around his temples, even through glassy-eyed fatigue, and a
stomach that’s filled with nothing but acid and blood, he loses himself
in the crystalline heart of her, his first girl, first love.
And then she tries to kill Lee, Kara, and that kid Hotdog, and there’s
no more time to worry about brain scans, because Galactica is starting to
turn. Turn ugly, sly, and dangerous.
He’s dragged Baltar with him up to the CIC, collaborating in between
lists, reports, and call-ins. In between repairs and malfunctions, none
of which are so serious as the one that just nearly claimed the lives of
three of his crew. His friends. Well, his friends and Hotdog, but guilt
isn’t making nearly such a fine distinction.
Is this my fault? he wonders, while Lee stands at his shoulder, absently
rubbing his neck and the Old Man stands at his back. Did I pass this
on to her like a bad case of the clap, or did the Cylons frak her, the way
they frakked me?
“Sir, I think I've found what's causing it,” he says to Adama
the elder, and it’s a struggle not to stammer. He brings up some of
the code they’ve managed to trap, a fritz that looks like static.
“What is that?” Tigh, on his other side, is empty of his usual
bluster.
“It's a Cylon logic bomb,” Baltar speaks up for the first time,
with an enigmatic glance at Felix. He’s still in a calm phase, and
Felix isn’t sure how to take it. “A heuristic computer virus.”
The lights flicker and sizzle, underscoring the point. “It's capable
of learning. Evolving. And probably running in parallel with every computer
in the ship right now, just waiting to be activated. No doubt left behind
when the Cylons infiltrated the network Colonel Tigh set up the day you were
shot, sir.”
“That was weeks ago. Why now?”
“Most likely, sir, it took this long for it to crack our encrypted
pass codes.” He steels himself to look at Adama. Any way you look
at it, this is his fault. He didn’t want to let anyone down?
Ha. He already has, and he knows he’s going to see that, reflected
in Adama’s eyes. “And once that happened, it started testing
its ability to control our systems-- electrical, environmental.”
“How do you kill it?”
Felix has always admired Adama’s brisk and straightforward practicality.
He’s the man who has to roll the hard six; it’s only appropriate.
Nonetheless, he can hear Adama saying those same words, equally as dry,
about him. For a moment, he can’t collect his voice.
Baltar steps in to his rescue again, this time obvious. “Well, that's
the tricky part. If it's a Cylon virus, it is extremely difficult to eradicate.”
“Well, I guess I’m pretty lucky, then, 'cause I have an expert
on board. Tell Helo to run this past our prisoner.”
Lee nods and goes to do just that. Another angle Felix hasn’t considered;
immediate death is the easy answer. What, then, if they decide he’s
more ‘useful’ to them alive, a prisoner? What will he become
their expert on, and by what means will they extract his confessions? The
nail of his middle finger cuts into the pad of his thumb.
Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer; Hermes, Keeper of the Doors, hear my
prayer; Hephaistos, Lord of the Forge, hear my prayer…
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