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The Wide Expanses
by Sage
Thank God.
Sometimes it happens like this. He's waited so long, so terribly long.
True, this body hasn't been active for more than a few months, but she has needed decades to be born, to grow, to become.
When he lifts his head from the table and sees her – sees her again – he thanks God.
~
He remembers the injury that has her leg bound and the cane gripped fast in her hand. He remembers the pain of it. He sees she is healing well, possibly faster than last time, although he isn't sure yet of the timeline here, of where she is in time.
This face is slightly different from what he thinks he remembers. Sometimes it happens this way, some small variation, either in her bloodline this time or in his memory. It could be his memory, his visions revealing the women he knew instead of the woman he'd meet, or the women he has yet to meet.
She looks so young now. She tends to be. It's better, better for so many purposes, that she be young, strong, healthy.
He has waited so long, every bit of the plan so carefully designed and orchestrated. All to accomplish a simple bit of work: to secure his hiding place on the Gemenon Traveller and await discovery. Await her.
It's worth it. It's always worth it.
~
He sees instantly that again, like almost all of her kind, she recalls nothing.
Hate, prejudice, rage, grief. He remembers as he sees it in her eyes. Billions of souls reduced to fifty thousand in a single day.
She's entitled. As much as anyone is.
He has to work fast. He speaks his line.
~
They send her because she's steadfast and because she's disposable. He could snap her neck and they'd lose their best pilot before the guards destroyed his flesh, but Starbuck isn't President Roslin or Commander Adama. At this point, Starbuck is only Lieutenant Kara Thrace. Still no more than that.
They send her also because she is injured and because she's a woman; because she looks like someone a cruel, lonely man would want to talk to, confide in, possibly over dinner, with soft music and Caprican wine. That means they don't know about the farms yet. Their speculation is rooted in their own old habits of gender and desire.
He knows she won't touch him until she has to.
Someday that will change, but he isn't sure when. He doesn't know yet how fast this part of the story is playing.
~
She's calm, as she should be. As she must be. He sees her hide behind the faade of it and changes tactics.
The story unspools like thread, the same each time in its fundamental aspect; but there are slight variations: pacing, depth of tone, the order in which certain details appear.
His fate is written, but he has to make her see. He has to open her eyes to the light.
He knows she'll try to make him beg. That's no trouble.
~
The other is more trouble and less. The president is enfolded deep in the confines of her illness. It is a simple matter to confound her inside her chamalla dream. She is not a seer yet; she doesn't understand what she's meddling with, stumbling around a dangerous forest in the dark.
At least she knows well enough to fear.
There are so many human roles; few matter. He doesn't remember this one as President. She commanded the fleet last time. She was Five's pet scientist the time before that. An eon ago, she was Three. It isn't always easy to keep track.
In his vision of her dream in the trees, she's soft in his hands. Her pulse flutters in a way Starbuck's never has. And won't.
Yet, this one is far closer to understanding.
~
The torment is incidental. It's a means of emphasizing his point, of showing her what he is and what she is.
It is playing out the script, but, as always, it's more than that. There must be a reason for God to send them all on this journey together cycle after cycle, again and again. He has gained recall when the others, largely, have not. A few oracles and priests believe they see. Many more believe they see than actually do. Kara does not. She is not a prophet. She is not meant to be a prophet. She's meant for far more than that.
"It's your destiny," he tells her, and he fills his words with as much conviction as he thinks she'll accept from him. He knows she will scoff, and she does, but not as forcefully as he anticipated. Probably it's only that her knee is giving her pain and she's grown weary of this ordeal.
He has so much to offer her.
His time is growing short.
Her neck is as soft as he remembered. The scent of her body is bright, acrid, telling. The stink of the ship's innards on her gives him another piece of the timeline; but under that, he smells her. It isn't the same as the last, but he'll have it at the front of his memory for the rest of this cycle.
It will be as a balm to him when he wakes afresh in the birthing tank. The scent of her skin, the worry in her eyes.
~
She does not believe herself to be anything more or less than human. She prays to her gods. She sees him as little more than a disguised piece of chrome on the other side of the table. She kills for survival, but has made it as much a sport as she can. For her own survival.
He understands. He did the same in her place.
They each strive so hard: him to show and bait her enough to make her see; her to destroy everything that he is in a tide of grief and vengeance. He can't blame her for that, but he also cannot allow it to impede his mission and her destiny.
She will bring him to God. As he has brought her in other cycles. As they will each bring each other in cycles to come. Millennia to come, perhaps, if God will allow time to be counted in such a way.
~
The other one, Roslin, accepts a crushing half-embrace without executing him on the spot. He smells her fear and her illness. He smells the chamalla in her sweat. He sees in her expression that she remembers her vision vividly. This is interesting. It is a new unfolding.
He and Starbuck unfold new layers of each other with each passing; in this they are matched, violence for violence, argument for argument, prayer for prayer.
This president doesn't see yet, but now that she knows there's something hidden from view, she will uncover it. With cool resolve and awareness and precision.
~
"Do it for me," he tells Kara, "it's your destiny." He doesn't say, We do this for each other, you and I. We do this every time.
He wonders if this cycle will speed up or slow down once the airlock vents him out into space. He looks into her eyes through the reinforced glass, willing her, as always, to see.
She extends her hand.
She makes her vow – soon enough this time that he gets to see it, share it. Soon enough, this time, that in the brief surge of infinite calm before his body dies, he has to swallow back a relieved chuckle. He bows his head and gives thanks.
For the wide expanses of hell you have yet to cross, he doesn't say as the claxon sounds. He doesn't need to.
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