DISCLAIMER: "Battlestar Galactica," the characters, and situations depicted are the property of Ron Moore, David Eick, SciFi, R&D TV, Sky TV, and USA Cable Entertainment LLC. This piece of fan fiction was created for entertainment not monetary purposes. Previously unrecognized characters and places, and this story, are copyrighted to the author. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
SPOILERS: Season Two.
They Walk In Beauty
By AsianScaper
…there was a kaleidoscope of red that spilled outward from her chest, spattering on her dress like a palette of maroon on white. She felt fear as the shock ran through her cells and told her brain that here, here at last was death.
Pain. Jealousy. Certainty that no, this was not pathetic at all. As her attacker embraced the one with child, and Six's eyes closed to that memory and the instant between life and death stretched into…
A large inhalation of bio-fluid prickling her lungs, stacked nails against her ribcage and crucified her to wakefulness…then sleep.
Viscous, dark. She opened her eyes to the dim contours of a room, which writhed with snake-like lines, obscured only by the ripples of water, of life-juice that pressed against her as it would a child in a womb.
Was this rebirth?
Because she choked in a cocoon, not knowing what was beyond the filament except air and the possibility of death. She shook violently, remembering the most recent experience, then disappointment that Charon, the way-man, was not waiting with his boat.
It attracted her. A veritable end.
Push forward, Six. Six. Six. Echoes of numbers and limbs grown on farms. An identity.
She writhed again and there were voices, a conference of angels, demons, dryads of the artificial world.
They wrenched her from the tank. She, all-new with memories grown into her cells that –inefficiently, she noted –started dying with the beginning of thought.
She barely felt the wetness of the birthing chamber and did not taste the salt on her cheeks.
=New Caprica=
There was a lady; she walked like a vision in white. She walked –long legs and stares, with Cylon escorts that clunked about, stood in contrast to luminescent skin and litheness. Laura sat where she usually did, by the tent flaps, and watched this happen every morning, when the sun blew a slow mist into the camps as it paused beyond the trees –only to flare out with viciousness at noon.
Laura, Laura. Still the Cylons, after a year, still you tempt fate. She kissed Maya gently, careless meanderings –days with stolen marketplace kisses or groping when Hera was asleep.
Yes, sweet lips, that gave her all the nourishment she needed; the hands that fed her at night.
But the Cylon witch invaded the open tent flaps at morning –flashed inquiries with her gaze, and sometimes with too-close snatchings of arms and available limbs and questions that bit from too perfect (inviting? Oh, no…no, no, no…) lips.
We're watching you, it said, trailing gazes down Laura's throat as though shoving violent touches with its eyes.
But no. No, no. The Six only raped her with its inquiry, never its touch. The every-day procession of her tent-flap-peerings amounted to Laura whispering into Hera's ear.
"Help me understand them, little one," and the little one would coo while Maya watched, dipped greens from Callie's communal garden and made the fruits sweat with the moisture of earth-drawn water from the wells.
Ah, the wells. They never tired of petty untruths, tickling news. She forced them to exhaustion by a three-month-old pull into the shadows with her hands in Maya's own as kiss upon breathless kiss on Maya's lips robbed them of their lungs and plucked their words from hiding into those of solid words.
But Six watched from beyond as Laura woke and sat by the sagging entrance of her tent that wouldn't close, that Laura wished Maya could have mended. But not with Hera in her arms, bribing them both into comforts and meals of silence, looking, and desire.
Six did not tire of the scene.
Laura thought she had that same curiosity of little Kayle from reading class who could not understand J from G in sound or even in form. Or Barker's unusual tenaciousness –was silent and only exhibited itself in tantrums –thrown chairs, uncharitable discoveries of gum-in-hair and other secret tellings. Never caught, but created crying kids who shouted his name and sounded too much like lying.
Hera, Hera…
She bound them all by her mother's eyes and father's tall transparency –through half-and-half, never woke to the Cylon side. Or was this Cylon side the entirety of her?
Laura hated those thoughts and drank her coffee, drank the Maya-potions that tamed her. The other woman's scent and Laura's remembrances of picking coffee plants in isolated forests and picking, too, those loose threads of her dress and pulling, pulling, pulling the fabric that bound the vest which hid her breasts, tasting moist niches, drinking nectar from her folds and thinking –Lord of Kobol, it would've been good to die in bliss –but no, there was the child and her cries and vast intonations of grief that sank though the spaces and made their love-making so painful that she reveled –oh Laura reveled in sweat and tears and Six-suspicion.
The strange tension-filled visits that made her fear her own future –or its lack…
If Maya were to die…oh gods, if Hera was to be taken…
…Six delivered such painful blows, painful thoughts as she pulled asides with that cerulean, deep-sea-monster gaze; she grew teeth that maybe, maybe would bite the nipples of her breasts and make her feel the violence that would be Hera's birthright.
Maya, Maya…
The months have passed. Maya or the Six. And Six shoved the tent flaps with ferocity, finally, on that one day Maya left with Hera in her arms to pick berries without her.
Swindled a lip-tearing kiss that was hot and heavy with Cylon-want and gave Laura no reprieve.
Dammit, stop. What are you doing? And Six tore the Maya-woven-fabric and grabbed Laura's breasts like the first fruits of harvest, drank from hardened tips that sprang under her fingers in pink, and shoved Laura's knees with her palm sideways and apart, as fingers taunted the joints of her inner leg –What? Frak it, get off me! –a deep, swindling kiss, a tongue running through the roof of her mouth and down its sides and tangling with her own as Laura softened, softened, softened…
…What if Maya comes? What if anybody sees?
"You know you want to know our secrets," Six whispered.
"Of what?" Breathless. Not thinking.
"Your Cylon heritage." Glinting. "We led you here, and you listened very, very well."
And Laura screamed the decibels off their charts, the gods from their high places. And Maya came with Hera in her arms and horrified, grabbed Laura from under the monster's tendrils and embraced her.
Running, stumbling, a hand over her nakedness, Laura fell by the bed and the stash of Resistance bulk produced a pistol.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Six said. She pointed a gun at Laura.
Maya or the Six…
Six died first, dies and dies and dies…
And Laura wasn't relieve. Her lover absorbed Six's death, a thousand Cylon deaths and could not see that one other –the one she touched with supple hands and erotic wit –would die the thousand, too.
"She shouldn't have…my god. Laura…"
"They killed her when they found her; their suspicions were confirmed, Admiral. The weapon that killed the Cylon model was on her person."
"And the child?"
"She was taken."
=Cylon Basestar=
Six, Six…
It laughed at the mutiny of her cells. Six was warm, was trailing all the maps of Kobol into her skin, touched her and those curls that glistened with sweeter sweat than those that dotted her brow.
Cancers and dreams and robots that pranced among the living. It was over. She was dead. Over, over, over…and here Six was, demanding that Love was nigh and so was God and Laura frakked her into disbelief just because she could. Died the thousand deaths in absolute bliss and absolute loathing, only to live again.
She was the raven-crow who brought the omens and spoke of gods, an animal domesticated by the timeless cloning of the clones themselves.
Gods and goddesses who told her of her Cylon likeness; Six, the jealous divinity dressed in white, demanded her love. It was all too much to bear.
Laura snapped, gave her the beating, and smacked her against the wall and said, "I don't want to know any of this. Take me back!"
Time squeezed, popped, and went out.
Three wasn't pleased. "You've taken a very big risk. There are…problems with erasing her memories after the very first wakening. You should have taken into account that she's been summoned from the tanks only this once."
"I know."
They paused, weighing risks.
"What makes her special?" Three finally demanded.
"She's so convinced that 'her people' are worth saving. She'd rather be dead or dying and be saving humankind, than alive, and alone. She would never believe she was one of us. Rather, she can't."
Three raised her brow. "Interesting. "
Laura, Laura…
She was found in the forests of Kobol, dazed, in grief, knowing only that she lost Maya and the child and grieving also for something that she could not grasp. Would not grasp even if a thousand, eye-blinding lamps showed her the way.
She wanted no memory of the days beforehand and didn't fail to live the rest in ignorance.
The End