itstopped | Re-Entry 08: Video/Spam

Help!

[The cry goes out while the video is still turning on. The picture, when it appears, is chaotic: Felix Gaeta, ashen grey and soaked with sweat and tears of panic, but only for a second before the shaking camera turns on what looks like an empty Western ghost town, caught from a high vantage point, shingles visible at the bottom of the screen.

Not empty. There are snarls and yowls and a terrifyingly organic sound coming from below.

Felix's voice cuts in again, tight with fear. He's not a hero. He's not a fighter. He's the one at the controls, and for all that he's usually good at staying calm in a crisis, it's a lot frakking easier when there's a console between him and it. He sounds a little hysterical.]

SOS! SOS! I'm pinned down in the-- oh, gods-- [There's another furious roar from below; his voice hitches, the camera shakes.] --the CES. Something attacked us. I think Dean is dead. I--

[There's a scream from underneath, unmistakeably human. The communicator drops against the shingles--] Dean? [--and cuts out.]

[Open Spam for Level Two/Infirmary, Later]

[After it's all over, after they've done what they can with Dean's corpse and patched up whatever needs to be on the survivors, Felix is set adrift into the aftermath. He should get cleaned up and then stay with Dean, he knows, or else he should get back to work and keep something like this from happening again. But he can't seem to make himself go to the latter just yet, not with Dean dead less than an hour, and the former...

He's always known that the death toll exists here, but he's never had to really confront it before, not in a way he couldn't brush off and ignore. The truth is that it scares him more than almost anything else about the Barge, even here, even now. It's not ignorance; it's not that he's never seen anything like it before. It's that he has.

The pull to sit by Dean's side and wait is powerful, but in the end, he winds up haunting the door to the infirmary, still red-eyed and disheveled, constantly peeking inside.]

((Right after/congruent with this, obviously.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She sees the message too late to do anything. The least she can do, then, is visit the infirmary.

When she sees Felix her chest tightens, and it's a moment before she speaks, voice soft and concerned.]

Hey.

[Barbara means more to him than most of the people here, but that makes it harder, in a way, to keep it together. With Riddick, with the Marquis, it was about information, pure and simple. He's good at handling information calmly when he's not on the verge of death. With Barbara and Racetrack, though... he's just not used to being on many people's priority lists, to have people checking in with him for something other than business, and there's about half a second where he kind of just wants to break down at her.

But she's still his boss, and he's made enough of a spectacle of himself today, so he takes a deep breath and flashes her a tight smile.] Hey.

[Barbara smiles back, a little, but then she's shaking her head.]

You really don't have to do that.

No, no, I'm fine. [He will be in a second, he swears.] I made it. Nothing happened to me.

Sometimes that makes it worse. [After a brief hesitation, she reaches out to take his hand.]

[Again, there's that obvious waver on his face, the warmth of her hand on his breaking right through his comfort zone. Felix may claim to eschew all the military stuff, the ranking, the authority, but he still kind of thinks of her as above him. He respects her. Technically, Dean is his boss, too, but that's really never meant anything between them; it's not the same.

If it were just that, he might let go anyway, because the whole last year of his life has been about breaking those boundaries one way or another. If he admits, though, to what she's saying, if he lets the floodgates open on this one, he'd have to admit the same truth about the Colonies, and New Caprica, and that he can't do. That's something he gets around by thinking about as little as possible; even now, it swims past his thoughts and is immediately shoved away.

So he just gives her a brittle smile and gives her hand a quick squeeze before pulling back.]

Really, Barbara, I'm fine. I just... [He can admit to one truth, anyway; he exhales shakily, giving a glance to the door.] ...I can't stand this frakking death toll.

[She's not going to push. Felix is a private person, quiet and controlled, and if not breaking down is more important right now - that's fine.

But she won't leave him alone, either.]

It freaks me out. [It's a quiet, solemn confession.] Resurrections - they've happened on my world, but they're not exactly an everyday occurrence. It's not natural, not for us.

[Her lips quirk.] But I guess that's kind of hypocritical, considering my deal is supposed to bring people back. I'm hoping it just - changes things so they never died.

It's not natural. [His agreement is instant and emphatic, and maybe again a little grateful, because no one has actually been saying that but him and it's upsetting, how much everyone else is taking it for granted.] It's not supposed to happen. The Cylons -- the enemy -- had resurrection and they gave it up, for frak's sake. Even they said it was immoral.

[Barbara considers this, for a moment.]

Were the Cylons based on humans?

The skinjobs-- the humanoid ones were. Just like us, except immortal. Until they changed their minds. [There's a jeer in his voice when he says it; he's not exactly sympathetic to the cause, here. He gets serious again, though, when he adds:] Even they thought that being able to die was what made us human. So what happens if you take that away?

[Her nod is grimly earnest.] Humanity without mortality - it doesn't work. We're not built for that, not raised for it.

[Her voice goes quiet.] Especially when you're coexisting with people who can die.

Or a whole ship full of people who are supposed to be learning how to... better themselves, or what the frak ever. A do-over, the others keep calling it. More chances. More chances to what -- lose what makes you a person?

[Barbara can only nod at that. On the one hand, she's glad people come back; she's tired of losing them. On the other, it feels so unnatural.

She's always accepted that she's going to die, probably on the job. Coming back, on the other hand...]

It probably helps that it's - we know it's not forever. Eventually, we go home. [After a moment, quietly.] Or we disappear.

[It's not like Felix has ever been shy about admitting what he wants most out of the Barge; not since he came back. He's said it openly, publicly: the Admiral's taken the right to die from his inmates, just as much as any other right. But still, right now, he's upset enough as it is, and it seems to be increasingly not worth bringing it up. Some inmates agree with him. Most wardens don't. The few that like him try to bring him around and get exasperated that he won't come.

So he stiffens a little at her addendum and glances away, pressing his lips tight together.]

That's not necessarily permanent, either. [He says it as neutrally as he can, tries not to sound as bitter as he feels about it.] Do you think that's the idea? To instill some... new paradigm of impermanence in us?

No, it's not. I'm sorry. [She can't say she's not glad he's here, glad he's alive, but it's not fair that the choice was taken from him. Would she ask for him back, if he died here? She doesn't know.]

It might be another way to keep us off balance.

To curb any nascent uprisings, you mean? [That gets the first smile out of him in a while. He glances back over at her, looking tiredly amused.] I guess he'd have to put in a few extra barriers, in a place like this.