itstopped | 01: Video

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01: Video

[The screen turns on to show Felix, new to the barge and newly free of the breach. He's standing in the middle of a metal room, the walls honeycombed with bunk beds -- industrial in appearance, but spaced with a certain military precision.

As with the breach, he's missing the lower half of his right leg. But now, he has a clunky-looking metal prosthetic attached, extending down to a black boot, and he leans on a single forearm crutch instead of the awkward things he relied on back in town. He's neat and trimmed and wearing some kind of uniform.

And he looks very, very confused.]

What the frak was that? I thought it was a dream, or maybe even one of those visions everyone keeps having. Some last flash before the end...

...But then, how could I possibly be back on Galactica? There's no way I'm a Cylon, too... if nothing else, I don't think they'd let me resurrect like this. [He taps his crutch against his leg, with a hollow metal sound.]

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Perhaps it's not in his charter. It's nothing he shares with any of us, warden or inmate. Apologies.

But that's ridiculous! You all just take orders from some nameless, faceless figure because he's more powerful than you and says he has your best interests at heart?

I just left a place like that, and believe me, they didn't there. I died trying to stop them!

That's not why we take orders, the wardens. And he's got anything but our best interests at heart. We aren't here for our own benefit, and times it shows. No, we're paid for it. Each of us makes a deal with him-- the sort of impossibility that we couldn't get otherwise.

Of course you do. [This is said with a mixture of resignation and utter scorn. Felix distantly remembers a time when he thought better of people, but life's taught him well enough by now.]

But what about us? The... inmates. I wasn't offered any deal. I am being asked to take orders, right? This is a prison ship, you said it yourself.

[Stildyne meets his gaze without shame and defensiveness. He works for a living. Always has.]

You won't take orders as you'd be used to in a Fleet. I told you, the goal is rehabilitation. You'll have a job, but no worse than re-coating the same bulkhead or cleaning the washrooms in Basic. Whatever your Fleet had for basic.

Your warden may ask you to do things, but the admiral doesn't hand down orders often. If at all. Your life will only be different than mine, from day to day, in that I can visit the environmental simulator and the bar without asking permission.

Being here in the first place is an order, Chief. Going through this farcical idea of rehabilitation is an order. Being paired with one of you is an order.

I'll ask you again: what happens if I refuse? You can't punish me for disobeying a man I never agreed to follow!

And I'm telling you that nothing happens. You can ignore your warden; you can sit pretty and do nothing. Keep up with your job and you likely won't be sanctioned, though if you don't do your busywork then your warden might lay restrictions on you. But no matter how deep your lack of cooperation, you'll be clothed, fed, and quartered.

I just can't leave. That's what you're saying?

Precisely. Nor be killed for any length of time, if that's your plan; folks are brought back fairly handily.

[It hadn't been his first thought, but he would have gotten there soon enough. It wouldn't even be the first time. But now, he just scowls.]

Frak that. This is completely absurd!

Fairly, yes.

The inmates all just go along with this? How have you not had an uprising by now? I understand he's a powerful-- thing, but you can't tell me everyone's willing to just stand for this!

[He lowers his voice slightly, voice taut, intense. There are a few things that will crack the frak out of his poker face, and after what he went through on Galactica, this is definitely one of them.]

I died for my freedom, Brachi, do you understand me? The people in charge in my world were making terrible, dangerous decisions that were-- that are going to see the destruction of the human race, so we did something about it! We rose up against it! And--

[He sags back a little, some of the fight leaving his face.] And we failed, but we... I went about it the wrong way. I'm here because I frakked it up, not because it was the wrong thing to do.

[He reduces his tone of hyper-pragmatism, a bit, unbending.]

Inmates do revolt, but against who? The wardens aren't a cohesive unit and can't make policy, and there's no finding the admiral. Most of them make what they can of this place.

Lieutenant. I'm not your warden, to tell you what you have and haven't done wrong. I don't know. But you've died to come here. All the inmates have. Graduate this place and you've got a chance to go back and live for your freedom. Or request to be put ashore in any universe that strikes your fancy. You don't come away from this with nothing.

[Felix lets out a cold, bitter laugh.]

Come away and go where? If I go back to my world, my only choice is to turn traitor for real and go over to the enemy. So I should go somewhere else and start with nothing, on a planet I don't understand, with this? [He nods down to his leg again.] I saw how people treated me back there. You were kind. A lot weren't.

Who says I want to go anywhere at all? Maybe I wanted to be dead.

Where are you? The Admiral brings people back from the dead and collects them from every universe. Creates matter, heals bodies. And you think that your choices are that limited.

If you still want to be dead when you're done, then it's on the table. But there's a man aboard who started an inmate. And stayed to warden, too. When his man graduated he left a while. Walked by the prison he'd died in and got to make them mend their ways.

Don't assume there's so little waiting.

There's no mending those people. Not our Admiral, not our President. The moment they realized that-- [He cuts off, shaking his head angrily. There's a long story, there, long and full of bitter memories.] There's no going back to that place, Brachi. It's just as likely humanity won't even exist anymore by the time I get out.

[And he doesn't want to hear any more about chances. He raises a hand to forestall any argument.] But you raise a good point, anyway. If your Admiral can bring people back from the dead, why do I still have this? Why can't he just... put my leg back the way it was?

[The use of his first name by someone he doesn't know well is starting to feel a little aggressive, but he'll chalk it up to a difference in styles. And they knew each other, after a fashion.]

Ask your warden, when you get one. It's possible it'll get fixed. It's happened before.

[He never knew Rex before his face was healed, but he's seen the records on the network, and frankly the man gave him a run for his money in local barge ugliness. He would have risen to the challenge if necessary, though.]

[It's more about himself than Stildyne -- he'd mostly stopped using military titles the last time he'd stopped being in the military, and he's not sure what the hell he is now, but he suspects he's a Felix and not a Lieutenant, so the Chief gets to be a Brachi.

And what Brachi says grabs his attention, really for the first time.]

...Are you joking?

Yes. You can tell my jovial and friendly expression.

[It's more sardonic than either of those.]

I'm not joking. I can't promise it'll be done for you but I know that it's possible to be done.

[This is the first thing anyone's said that makes him actually want to do something other than airlock himself at the next available opportunity. The shock coincides with the fatigue in his wounded leg becoming sort of overbearing -- he's not used to standing this long on it -- and he sits down heavily at the room's long steel table, a hand to his mouth.]

Gods...

How long's it been since you ate, Gaeta?

What? I don't know... a day or so, I suppose.

You should probably get some food in you and then see the medical staff. Someone could bring you something if the leg's hurting.

[Someone meaning Stildyne, but it sounds so damned mother-hennish when he out and says it. He has a reputation of bastardry to keep up with.]

It's not, really. It stopped hurting when I died. I'm just... tired. There's a lot going on, if you haven't noticed.

[Woke up, started a coup, got some people killed, failed to take over, was executed, woke up homeless, found himself on the Barge... He guesses in that time he technically ate and slept, but it feels like it's all been one long, long day.]

I'm tangentially aware. Do you know where the mess is?

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