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

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.

[ She walks with him back to her room, matching his pace. Pauses, before turning the wheel and opening the door. ]

It's a normal Galactica rack on the other side. You know that, right?

I know. I used to have one, too. [He pauses, glancing away.] I asked the Admiral to change it.

What'd he change it to?

[ She shoves it open, and gestures for him to precede her. ]

I don't know, exactly -- it looks like one of the cheap racks off Cloud Nine. I just asked for anything that wasn't so... [Military.] Galactica. [But he's well prepared, and he doesn't seem to react much when he limps inside. The pilot's quarters are no different from the junior officer's quarters, and however much he'd like to deny it, this is home, in a way.]

[ She goes for one of the lockers and digs inside, producing a bottle of what's more or less ambrosia. Two tin cups, too, and those she drops on the table. ]

I might ask for something that's not this big. It just... it's really empty.

[ She pours a little in each, and slides into one of the chairs. ]

Bathroom's that way.

Re-Entry 08: Video/Spam

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