itstopped | Re-Entry 08: Video/Spam

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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

[He hasn't changed yet, has only barely cleaned up, the dust of Cold Oak still on his clothes. There's another thing he should probably do, but isn't. Or he should go the frak inside... but he isn't.]

Hey.

How long?

[ Until he... wakes up. Is what she means. ]

I don't know... A few hours, I think. I don't know how long the-- [Download. Resurrection. He laughs silently and shakes his head, almost rolling his eyes.] --process takes.

[ Okay, then. She takes this in, her mouth twisting. ]

Would you rather be here or somewhere else?

[He softens a little, gratefully, but in lieu of answering all he says is:] You know what's going on in there right now?

Whatever it is, it's something I don't want to see.

[ She's not going to say anything about grisly, horrible frakking maimed pieces, but that's what's in her mind right now. She's seen enough dead bodies, really. Burned, asphyxiated, shot. She's never seen anyone torn to death.

She's angry. But she wouldn't take it out on Felix. ]

[His mouth tightens briefly, a grim smile of acknowledgement. He's barely even thought about the gory part of it. The gory mechanics of death are something he's grown... not inured to, but nothing he's seen in a long time has been quite so visceral for him as kneeling on the floor of his rack, trying to keep Dee's brains from leaking out of her head. Even on board the Raptor, it was the why they'd died and not the how that had almost made him turn the morpha on himself.

No, he's not talking about that now. He's talking about what happens next.]

He's resurrecting.

[He's quiet for a second, then leans his head back, looking up at the ceiling.]

I've always had this impression that it happened in some kind of... pod. I've never actually been on any of their ships, but it always seemed like pods must have been de rigeur. I know I saw some on the surveillance of the Hub, anyway. I've thought about how it must have worked, gone over it over and over... wireless transmission of data across entire systems is impressive enough, but then to download into this pod, infuse whatever matrix it is that they use that we've never even gotten close to figuring out, turn on the life support-- all the ingredients for creating life reduced down to a science even more complete than the best we can do with genetic engineering...

...And then you go from having a machine to having a person, and it's like nothing ever happened. Oh, I mean-- they say you learn from it, allegedly. But not enough. Not enough that there aren't some that it happens again, and again, and again to. Like that, uh... what was that one Raider, the one that all the Viper pilots had such a hard time with?

Edited 2013-05-20 03:31 (UTC)

[ Her eyes stay on him. The parallels - yeah, she's thinking about them too. Viscerally, it makes her skin crawl. Intellectually, she's thinking - can it really be that bad? Knowing you're not going to lose any of your friends.

Problem is, lately she's resolved to go with her gut, because it seems like her brain can get her in trouble. ]

The one with the scar.

[ She remembers. ]

The scar. [He nods, affirming.] That was the reigning theory, I remember, when we found out that the Raiders resurrected. That he'd been killed, oh, gods know how many times. And he just... kept coming back, because that's what they did before we blew the Hub.

Remember how it fought when it was cornered? When it was going to die for real?

Gods.

[ She's dead too, isn't she? She should be gone. Is that any frakking different? ]

I heard. Down in the CIC, we heard just about everything. [He's still staring at the ceiling, still lost in his own dark web of thoughts, but if he knew what she was thinking he'd only agree. He thinks the same of himself. They should be gone.]

And then they had us destroy it.

It would have destroyed us if it had the chance.

[ She can't manage to feel that bad about it. She has a million other things to feel bad about, and those are taking up most of the room. ]

No-- Resurrection, I mean. The Hub. [Please, even he's not so far gone into moroseness that he's going to care about some Raider.]

[ She nods, once. ]

Yeah. [ Second best move they ever made against the Cylons. ]

Maybe we should stop thinking of ourselves as 'alive' here. Maybe it's just some frakking cosmic waiting room.

[He hasn't actually thought of it that way before, it's clear from the way he blinks at her now, brow furrowing. It makes more sense, though, than Ned's save point metaphor, or at least he finds it less troubling.]

Then... what's all this? [He nods towards the infirmary.] Why die at all? Why bother with this resurrection crap?

Could just be a big game of pretend.

We can't earn our way back to life if we can't... live enough to do it. But if we're not living, we can't really die either.

[There's the word game again, though. He scowls, eyes darkening.] Except that this isn't a frakking game. I know he likes to treat us that way, but it's not.

You don't say.

[ Game pieces never like it being a game. ]

[He wants to argue, but it's only going to devolve into more of the same, he knows: she's chosen to be here and he hasn't, she's working for the Admiral and he's under his thumb. He can say it until he's blue in the face, but it's never going to be any less true. Not until he graduates, and that's still not any clearer for him, or she leaves -- and he doesn't actually want her to.

Frak, he doesn't know what he wants anymore.]

Fine. So it's a game. No resurrections, no immortality, just... practice.

Not really. Well, kind of, but less practice and more training.

[ She steps, leans against the wall next to him. ]

That's the point, right? It's like training you how to go back into your life.

[ Except neither of them really have a life to go back to. ]

Gods, I don't know, Felix. I'm... I don't know. I'm sorry. I came here to drag you off to get drunk, if you don't want to be here.

[He'd point that out, but does he really need to? She, at least, died fighting the Cylons; he died fighting his own. If he went back, they'd execute him all over again.

Of course, he's still pretty sure that there wouldn't be much of a world to go back to even if he did want to. How much longer can their version of humanity possibly have left? It's not exactly inspirational.

Then again, neither is this. He stares down at the floor, shaking his head, sighs.]

I should stay here. If-- when he wakes up...

- he'll have given you long enough to torture yourself about what this means?

[ Felix, she decides, is probably thinking too much. Her forte isn't thinking. In this case, it might be a virtue she can rub off a little on the more restrained Felix Gaeta. ]

I've got ambrosia in my rack with your name on it. Come on.

[ She's going to try the gently encouraging "c'mon let's go" first. If that doesn't work, she might literally drag him. ]

[He snorts, looks up at her with a little frown, but not exactly an angry one.] I should be here, I meant.

[She'll ask Dean about them later, but the truth is, that's already a sign in itself on his end. Like her, Felix is practical, pragmatic. He doesn't really know how not to be, and he doesn't really know how to be comforting, either. He doesn't do a lot of waiting by bedsides, as a rule.

Even now, he glances back at the door, then at his watch, and nods uncertainly.] I guess I could stand to get cleaned up, too... just for a little bit, though.

Ever had an entire Galactica-style bathroom to yourself? Because that's what you can have if you hang out with me.

[ She reaches for his arm, and tugs. ]

Also the ambrosia.

Just one drink. [And he'll stick to that, he really will. Whatever he calls them, whatever Dean calls them, he doesn't want to be away from here for that long.

But he lets her tug him along and even musters up a tired smile for her, his eyes shadowed but grateful in a way he can't really articulate.] Thank you.

Re-Entry 08: Video/Spam

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