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Re-Entry 13: Spam/Audio
((Backdated to the last day of port.))
Felix Gaeta doesn't know this beach.
Well, he might. It could be Picon. For all that he grew up by the sea, for all that he can swim as well as any fisherman, he's never exactly been much of a beachgoer. But no, he thinks there's another reason he doesn't know this beach. He's never stood under this misty sky. He's never stood on this white, gauzy shore.
Because he never got off the ship, and he never set foot on--
All of this has happened before, something whispers into the air. He turns and looks at the wreckage extending out to both sides. Ahead, the view is empty. Featureless. Nothing but sea and sky, muddled together at the horizon. To the sides, though...
Each ship is as big as a town. He's dwarfed beneath their massive carcasses. Some are still smoldering, their names still picked out on their sides like bones: the Galactica, the Zephyr, the Hitei Kan, the Inchon Velle. Others, in the distance, are older, long dead. The Pegasus, the Atlantia... even a Pan Galactic freight liner from Caprica. If he squints, he can make out one of his father's ships.
This is the graveyard of the Twelve Colonies. Of his people. It's just twenty billion bodies and him.
Not just him. Not anymore. He opens his mouth to speak as Racetrack comes up beside him, but something prevents him.
All of this has happened before.
Everyone knows how the proverb, the prophecy finishes -- all of it will happen again -- but that's not what's happening this time. He turns around again, twists, looking for some hint in the wreckage, and what he sees instead, at the same time she does, is the sapling. One tiny green shoot, barely visible against the hulking, elephantine mass of Galactica's corpse.
They approach it together. They kneel and lay hands on it together. And as it starts to grow, he--
[Audio for Racetrack]
[--wakes up from a two-week coma and groans, burying his head beneath his pillow. He's on the comm to her a second later, though, sounding bleary but annoyed.] Tell me you didn't see that.
[Frakking visions.]
[ETA: Lazylog spam for Dean, towards the end of port]
And now there's another beach. A real beach, an Earth beach, in this city with the strange name. There's a part of him, in the back of his mind, that's still marveling at the fact that he's actually standing on real Earth earth -- or sand, at the moment -- and standing on a beach at all, for that matter, after all these years. But more than that, he's caught up by the coincidence of it all. The dream, only hours ago, and now this...
Not that this beach is a great deal like the one from the dream. It's a bright, sunny day, hot enough that he's stripped down to his undershirt and bare feet. He's found a quieter section of the shore, but there are still people everywhere, and no wrecks in sight. But the sand is the same shade of white, and the horizon looks even more the same than any other horizon would, and he just can't help but want to know what else might be here.
Not that he's taking any heed of the dream. Obviously not. It's just curiosity. He's here to see the beach, and... enjoy the sea and the salt smell and the many attractive half-dressed people milling around. And maybe he'll get an ice cream cone. It has nothing to do with anything else. There was no ice cream in his vision.
He's just turning to approach the food stands when he spots a certain and particularly enjoyable -- and particularly attractive, even when not half-dressed -- sight coming up the beach towards him. He brightens, flashing a smile. "Hey."
Felix Gaeta doesn't know this beach.
Well, he might. It could be Picon. For all that he grew up by the sea, for all that he can swim as well as any fisherman, he's never exactly been much of a beachgoer. But no, he thinks there's another reason he doesn't know this beach. He's never stood under this misty sky. He's never stood on this white, gauzy shore.
Because he never got off the ship, and he never set foot on--
All of this has happened before, something whispers into the air. He turns and looks at the wreckage extending out to both sides. Ahead, the view is empty. Featureless. Nothing but sea and sky, muddled together at the horizon. To the sides, though...
Each ship is as big as a town. He's dwarfed beneath their massive carcasses. Some are still smoldering, their names still picked out on their sides like bones: the Galactica, the Zephyr, the Hitei Kan, the Inchon Velle. Others, in the distance, are older, long dead. The Pegasus, the Atlantia... even a Pan Galactic freight liner from Caprica. If he squints, he can make out one of his father's ships.
This is the graveyard of the Twelve Colonies. Of his people. It's just twenty billion bodies and him.
Not just him. Not anymore. He opens his mouth to speak as Racetrack comes up beside him, but something prevents him.
All of this has happened before.
Everyone knows how the proverb, the prophecy finishes -- all of it will happen again -- but that's not what's happening this time. He turns around again, twists, looking for some hint in the wreckage, and what he sees instead, at the same time she does, is the sapling. One tiny green shoot, barely visible against the hulking, elephantine mass of Galactica's corpse.
They approach it together. They kneel and lay hands on it together. And as it starts to grow, he--
[Audio for Racetrack]
[--wakes up from a two-week coma and groans, burying his head beneath his pillow. He's on the comm to her a second later, though, sounding bleary but annoyed.] Tell me you didn't see that.
[Frakking visions.]
[ETA: Lazylog spam for Dean, towards the end of port]
And now there's another beach. A real beach, an Earth beach, in this city with the strange name. There's a part of him, in the back of his mind, that's still marveling at the fact that he's actually standing on real Earth earth -- or sand, at the moment -- and standing on a beach at all, for that matter, after all these years. But more than that, he's caught up by the coincidence of it all. The dream, only hours ago, and now this...
Not that this beach is a great deal like the one from the dream. It's a bright, sunny day, hot enough that he's stripped down to his undershirt and bare feet. He's found a quieter section of the shore, but there are still people everywhere, and no wrecks in sight. But the sand is the same shade of white, and the horizon looks even more the same than any other horizon would, and he just can't help but want to know what else might be here.
Not that he's taking any heed of the dream. Obviously not. It's just curiosity. He's here to see the beach, and... enjoy the sea and the salt smell and the many attractive half-dressed people milling around. And maybe he'll get an ice cream cone. It has nothing to do with anything else. There was no ice cream in his vision.
He's just turning to approach the food stands when he spots a certain and particularly enjoyable -- and particularly attractive, even when not half-dressed -- sight coming up the beach towards him. He brightens, flashing a smile. "Hey."
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So that's how he ends up seated at a table - stubbornly in the shade, screw sunburns, for real though - and fussing around with the chopsticks they set out, though thankfully at his bewildered look he also scored a fork. It's not that he doesn't notice where Felix's attention is, or that it's nearly unprecedented when he does start talking past more than their casual sniping, it's that he just listens while it happens.
The hunter is sucking the back of his teeth thoughtfully, carefully setting the chopsticks down as if they're some kind of particularly unstable firearm, and reaching for his water instead when he glances up.
A lot of things pretty much make sense once he knows that; why Felix is always cold, why the first thing he craves is fish of all things. Dean doesn't ask questions, at least not at first, especially when Felix tries to dismiss it. Instead: "We have mountains. Two main ranges, one of 'em between here and Kansas. The other shore is colder - the Atlantic - and you have to go North for the really spectacularly ball-freezing weather." Not that the northern states don't get impressively snow-bogged, but that's why he's content to stop there. He doesn't have any interest in driving the Impala where she could drive across the ice almost year round.
"Just two seasons? Winter and not-winter?" He raises an eyebrow, curious, but not to the point where he's willing to spoil the good mood altogether if it starts heading that way.
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And yet.
And yet it's warm here, and he can't help but think of summer, those short weeks when even he sometimes managed to get a real tan. He can't help but think of himself as a boy, reflected in the water: skinny back then, all arms and legs and hair he hadn't begun to learn how to tame yet, and usually huddled on the pier with a fishing rod tucked under one arm and a book in the other hand. And sometimes, rarely, his father with him, glasses misting, sleeves rolled up...
He clears his throat and glances back at Dean with a funny, bland little smile that's barely an expression at all, like an actual manifestation of repression. "You like the cold better, though," he notes conversationally, eyeballing the shade Dean has so carefully tucked himself into. "Or at least not the sun. And all those winter things? Winter sports, holidays... what was it? Christmas?"
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It's something that practice never makes easier, but there's one thing Dean can say for his life: he's had a lot of practice. Oh, sure, there's happiness scattered throughout, too, good memories he wouldn't trade for anything; he's seen more of the country in twenty years than most people will in their entire lives, he's met a wide array of people in all their quirky, odd, wonderful, terrible, mundane humanness, he's gotten to make a real, tangible, dramatic difference in a lot of people's lives, and he got to share almost all of it with the family he has left. Now, he sips his water, and listens like he rarely has patience for doing, and tries to figure out what it means. If it's good, if it'll be bad, if it...
Dean laughs. "Not the sun," he confirms, because he may not mind the cold, not as much as he claims to, but it doesn't mean he's looking to buy a set of snow chains for his car. Dean is shaking his head as Felix progresses down the list, until he's grinning, crooked and mild but sincere, at the last. "I like fall best. Beer festivals." He leers for a moment, but then wrinkles his nose and shakes his head.
"No, but like - don't laugh. But everything starts turning colors, and it's not kill-you-hot outside, and it's not fuck-me-cold yet, and there's Thanksgiving, and a little bit later yeah, Christmas." Here, now, it's easy to be excited about those holidays. He has someone to talk to about them, someone he wouldn't mind spending them with; he's in the shade and he doesn't like the beach as much as Felix clearly does, but the heat is still comforting in its way, the familiar surroundings, people and life and sun and food. It's easy to be excited, in a way that would surprise most people, but which Felix has probably seen a time or two by now. Never about big things, not science or ideas or miracles; small things. Every day things. Things he loves. "I mean c'mon: all the food you can eat, presents, and people you actually like."
Family, he doesn't say, nor does he try to put into words all the sense memories it brings up, not in something as flimsy and vulnerable as words, but he's still grinning.
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He leans his head on one hand and smiles over at Dean, a little more genuinely, soothed by his quiet enthusiasm. "They don't do them here?" he asks, honestly curious. If things are so different between Kansas and here, they may have entirely different cultures, entirely different practices. He doesn't know. He's asked questions about Earth every so often, but even knowing how many worlds the Barge visits, even knowing it's landed on this planet before, he somehow never expected to find himself so up close and personal with it.
It's probably a small thing to most of the others, except for Racetrack -- a detail -- but this is the first time in a long time he hasn't felt conflicted to feel gratitude for something the Barge has given him. "I know some traditions get observed on the Barge, but I have to imagine they're pretty different in the... uh, in the wild." I'd like to see that, he catches himself thinking, and his brow knits slightly.
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Then he's grinning again, sitting up a bit more in his chair so he can lean forward, elbows on the table and more actively engaged in the conversation. Dean isn't ever completely still, not easily, and it's not long before he's gesturing with his hands to illustrate what he's saying. It's probably a small thing, but Dean catches both the smile from Felix and the crease of his brow, and is eager to share what he can still see and smell and hear in his mind's eye.
"Yeah, the holidays happen on the Barge and all -" And he would point out their first breach together, now, if he didn't have his own wealth of memories to draw on, and if he weren't instinctively avoiding what could be considered an inciting incident. "- but they're supposed to be about family, and choosing to shut off all the bad shit that happens in the world for a couple days. When I was a kid we had a real tree in the living room, and we'd put up lights all over the outside of the house - lots of colors, Mom never liked just the white ones - and Dad always thought he was being quiet swearing, trying to get the tinsel to stay. Mom used to always try to make pies and stuff but we'd end up buying 'em anyway, and Dad would always talk about ice-fishing 'cause he grew up doing that but there wasn't any place to do it around where we lived."
He's only getting more excited as he goes, for once outrunning the time in between, the other thing that time of year means for him. It's easy, for now.
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Pennies, a memory whispers to him, and he shrugs. The only money he's seen here was the card Racetrack had. See?
He's more interested in Dean's version of the truth. This is Dean's Earth, even if it is California, and suddenly he really does want to know all the things he's never asked about before. He hadn't known it would set Dean off the way it does, but when it does, it's impossible not to get swept up a little in his startling enthusiasm for the subject. Dean rarely talks about his family, certainly never talks about happy memories like this one. Felix shifts his weight to lean on the table instead, to face him better, watching Dean's face curiously as it lights up.
Choosing to shut off all the bad shit... it's a foreign idea to him now, but then again, isn't that kind of what he's doing here? It's bizarre to think of himself as attempting anything optimistic these days, and yet...
"We should stay here," he finds himself saying, honestly startling himself more than anything else. He blinks, clears his throat, licks his lips, but doesn't take it back. "It's happened before," he says instead, dropping his voice, slightly bewildered. "I know he's left people in other ports."
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Dean's eyebrows draw together, settling down some. "What?" It startles Dean a little bit, too, and he's waiting for Felix to take it back, but he doesn't. Felix doesn't want to be anywhere, he's made that perfectly clear, and Dean has done his level best to learn it, to accept it; he's not that good at it, but he's tried. But then here, now, suddenly there's evidence that maybe it really is just the Barge where he doesn't want to be, maybe...
The hunter doesn't even stop to acknowledge those people - several of which he knew - left behind. He's on a much more important chase, and he may not get another chance.
"This is a real place," he says, quickly, newly focused. "I mean, this isn't my world, exactly, but my world has a Los Angeles, and a Venice Beach, and they're damn near perfect matches. It has a California, and a... and a Kansas."
And Christmas and Thanksgiving and Sam, even if there's no Mary or John anymore. Even if there's no Felix.
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And what he might be committing himself to if he continues.
"It is a real place," he agrees quietly, looking at his hands. "It's not an island where someone's going to try to take limbs for profit. It's not a town that wants to bury me in the past. I know who I am here. I have my own mind, my own history... and four years of that history were dedicated to making it here. I just--" He lets out a sound like a laugh, but a nervous one, a little helpless, and shakes his head, dropping his hands to his knees. "I don't know. Every other port, every other breach, the best I've been able to think is, it could be worse. But this..."
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Maybe Felix, with as badly as he doesn't want to be there. Dean doesn't look at that, either.
The laugh twists at something in the hunter's gut, and he realizes he's no good at this not hoping thing. It's not even a choice he gets to make. He just has to pursue it, he can't not.
"This could be better," he says, and tries to make it sound casual, like the natural follow up and not the wedge that it is in his mind. He should lean back, sprawl out, make his body language casual too but he can't do that; Dean stays leaned forward, features still bright but now focused on Felix's lowered eyes, his hands as they disappear, the slope of his shoulders. "It's not perfect, but it's real, and it's... good. It can be really, really good."
Dean draws in a slow breath, keeps his voice even. "I get it."
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No-- it was definitely a mistake, he realizes. He might have said let's stay here, we could stay here, but Dean... he won't. Not with Cain and a deal in the balance, he won't. Not on a world without Sam, he won't. And what hope does Felix have of staying by himself, even ignoring the extreme unlikelihood of the Admiral actually letting him go?
It was a mistake to bring this up. "I guess it was just a thought. We spent so long looking for Earth..." He shakes his head very slightly. "If I had the freedom to leave, the resources... the information I'd need..." Or someone to fill in the blanks for me, he adds silently, daring to glance up at Dean again.
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Dean licks his lips, not unaware of the tense turn the conversation has taken, and it's the instincts he's learned as a hunter as much as his inherent reaction to Felix that tells him to back off some; it's not fair, and it's not right. He can't win this way. Sam, John, they've already proven to Dean that he doesn't have what it takes to get what he wants through sheer force of will, not with people he loves, not with Felix, who is every bit as strong willed as any Winchester. Furthermore, he doesn't have the right to get what he wants at any cost.
Still. "It's a good thought," he says, and he can't help, either, the grateful note to it. That he had it at all. That Dean recognizes it for the concession it is. His hands on the table have closed to loose fists, and he bounces one knuckle anxiously to the beat of the foot that's started to bounce under the table, too. He can't do anything about the first thing, the second is conditional, but the third and the thought itself? "It just needs some... adjusting. Anything I know, anything I can do, it's yours. If you want it. Whatever you want."
Even if that whatever is for him to shut up and leave off it. Dean can mean it. He can.
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It's just that the way he feels doesn't change reality, anyway. "What kind of adjusting did you have in mind?" he mutters, not really looking for an answer, because there isn't one. This is all still on the Admiral's whim. Didn't Dean say they might only have a few hours at best here, anyway? Frak, for all he knows they'll be dragged back before the sushi even comes.
Luckily, that much doesn't happen, because the plates arrive even as he thinks it, and provide him with a very welcome out. "It was just a thought," he says again, dismissively, rubbing one hand over the opposite arm as the waitress doles things out. When she leaves, he pushes the plate of chicken across to Dean as a silent peace offering, shifting at the same time to bump his shin against Dean's jittering one. He hopes Dean knows he's grateful for the offer, but he doesn't bring it up again.
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That only happens when he feels Felix's leg brush his and then he goes still, like he was caught out at something he's not supposed to be doing, and it's his turn to keep his eyes down; a moment later he's reaching to pop a piece of chicken into his mouth because it's what he does. He chews longer than he normally would, thoughtful, and considers whether he's willing to drop this or not. Whether he can afford to push it, or drop it, or do anything with it at all.
"It's a good thought," he says again, quietly but firmly, when he's swallowed the food he doesn't even taste this first time around. Eyes flicking up, the corner of his mouth tugs briefly before he's clearly making the decision to let it go, too, even if it feels more like prying his grip forcibly from the topic than anything like graceful. The smile broadens. He straightens his shoulders and slouches back into the chair, reaching for the chopsticks again so he can have something to make an idiot out of himself with instead, gesturing at the food.
"Alright. Here's the deal. I'll try your stupid raw fish, but if I end up puking my guts up later, you're emptying the bucket." He's back in stride by the end of it; if he can't make it so Felix can stay here, not now anyway, he can make what time there is as good as he can. "And then you're going on the roller coaster at that carnival down the street with me, and we'll see who screams like a girl first."
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So however good a thought it might be, he lets it drop with a bittersweet wrench in his gut. Already, the thought of having to leave this place again... he sighs inwardly and digs into his sushi, forcing a smile at Dean's teasing. "Does it have to be specifically like a girl?" he asks mildly, pushing a roll across to him.
The avenue pulls at his attention again a moment later, even though nothing is really going on in particular. It is, in fact, the lack of eventfulness that has his attention -- the normality of everyday life. A part of him doesn't even want to go back out there, now that he's been reminded he'll have to leave it again.
But maybe the optimist in him isn't as dead as he thought, because the urge, that's still there. "So what else do I need to see around here? Besides the view from your room."
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Dean ruthlessly cuts that train of thought off before it gains enough momentum to hit the low, desperate thrum that lives in the pit of his stomach every time this topic comes up. But he does mean it, more - he would think, if he thought such things - than Felix is probably capable of believing. Dean can't make himself work himself ragged to send Felix back into oblivion, it's not how he's built, but if he wanted something like a future? If he wanted something Dean could solidly put into the good category?
But here, now, this is what Dean does. This is what he does for his family and for himself, and he takes the roll and wrinkles his nose at the question, smiling easily. "For this? Yes. I seem to remember that all other screaming has to be behind a closed door.
And don't tease. I told you there was a skypool."
He doesn't hesitate, doesn't falter, except to pull a face at his first bite of the actual sushi; it's mostly for comedic effect. He takes a second bite without half the reaction, having abandoned utensils entirely to use his fingers, and uses it to gesture with now. They're going to have a good time, dammit, and they'll deal with the rest of that when they have to.
"Would you be morally opposed to seeing live fish after eating their slower, dumber cohorts? There's a pretty awesome aquarium." Full of life, anyway, and Sam had always liked it. Speaking of things Sam had liked and Felix probably would as well: "Or the Science Center is a bit of a drive, but I know where it is from here. You can fuck 'em up by putting in a magic number or something from the future."
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For now, though, he's surprisingly on board -- for him -- with the plan that involves having as much a good time as possible outside of the confines of a hotel room. For now, the only further sign of stress he shows is that he fishes out a cigarette, pushing back a respectable distance from the table to light it. Still, he visibly and unsurprisingly perks up at the mention of-- "The Science Center?"
And yes, he knows he's one of the few for whom that counts as a vacation. But to see where Earth is in its intellectual development, to see what amounts, for Felix, to living scientific history... "Do you think we'd make it out there in time?"
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The hunter doesn't like the cigarette, he never does, but there's so much else to be concerned about that he never says anything; besides, he's not Felix's mom or big brother. He has plenty to fight about without that, and Felix never shoves it in his face, so he just picks up another chicken thing and smirks at the reaction. The feeling in his stomach still doesn't quite match what the surface of him is doing, but it warms a little bit at being right, at the familiarity of it both in Felix and because he's seen it before.
"Please. With me driving, you don't even have to ask," he quips back, cocky, though this time deservedly so. He's already plotting it out in his head, and there's not even any resignation or disappointment there; it's not a place Dean would go on his own, but for all his complaining, it's not that he finds nothing about science interesting. He's just very limited in what it applies to. And anyway, he can theoretically do anything he wants once he gets back to where he came from and it's not headed down the tracks for an apocalypse anymore.
That's if he'd ever say no to Felix anyway. "You just finish up your lunch, and let me worry about getting us there in time."