Around the Clock Challenge
This is the masterlist for the Around the Clock Challenge at
femslash100 for which I chose The Hybrid from Battlstar Galactica... cause my muses wanted me to. [looks at muses questioningly..]
Here is the challenge info... http://community.livejournal.com/femslash100/289448.html
And here is the completed fic:
Fandom: BSG
Pairings/Characters: Hybrid/D’anna, D'anna/Six, D'anna/Six/Hybrid, Athena, Kara, other Sixes, Boomer… no Laura, but not for lack of trying.. : )
Rating: Adult
Spoilers: from 18:00 on there are spoilers for Season Three… (which I’ve noted in the fic…)
A/N:Thanks to technobabble generators for two bits of inspiration when I ran out of obscure sounding Hybrid-ramble… and thanks to
halfofone who got me thinking about the Hybrid in her fic Objectivity...
Except for two stand alone-ish drabbles in the middle this is an ongoing story and might not make sense as stand alone drabbles…. (well they may, I just didn’t write them that way..)
00:00 / beginnings - Initial Inertia - 123 words
I could feel before I could see. Warm gel surrounding, infusing my skin. Then light that hurt before sharp cold absence. They took me from the bath of home.
I could not see through my eyes-clenched closed. When liquid again hit my senses it was cold. Fingers of ice shoved into my pores at the microscopic level, invading until every bit of me was frigid. I screamed and opened my eyes. I saw shock, fear, pity on the duplicated faces of those around me, except for one. Blonde hair and awe. I stopped screaming. They were like me but not. And none of them would touch me, not even her. Then came the pain. And my thoughts rambled like black stars of woe….
01:00 / prehistoric - Pains of Pilot - 111 Words
…I lose the thread, like we all have since we became what we are, what are we?, flights of fish in streams of stone, I know that now, smaller than I have ever been, I feel the universe pulse through my veins, existence now and then, propulsion at full, fighters eight through twelve, but the machine controls, angry spotted sun, I cannot hold the thread of me, the green, the green, the green is gone, infinity in my head, gasping through my veins but I am fighting to stay in this time, the molecules paint pictures behind my eyes, small blue tubes of emptiness, and the machine takes a little more…
02:00 / anniversary - Tempted Touch - 111 Words
…I think I am two, was I ever two, do I want to be two?, the existence not the number, double me and you get a room full of water, status check, floors four through seven, D’anna comes again, with flowers and questions and lies, the coordinate declines the ripping conference, but the angel cannot swim, she was hesitant at first, ripping lilies and hated touch, now I can feel her in the water, hands poised, lingering, decrease the configuration of the pulsar to bend the space of a hammock, the first finality of her touch burns beyond the babble in my brain, the lights go out and I want more...
03:00 / generational - Begged-for Blasphemy - 200 Words
D’anna reaches out cautiously. Like all the D’annas before, this form has been around the tank, been by the Hybrid. Sat by it for hours, listening for sense in the babble. But she has never been here like this, feeling the electric liquid that surrounds the heart of the machine as it eases over her fingers and wrist. The Hybrid is rambling off chaos and status checks, eyes poised straight ahead as if D’anna isn’t even there. Until D’anna’s hand reaches her skin. The hybrid jolts, turns, and locks eyes. D’anna, fright clearly written on her face, pulls back. But the Hybrid holds D’anna’s hand against her wet flesh in an iron grip for moments of drawn out confusion. Her babble stops. Unfathomable silence. “Please,” she utters, pushing the word from her mouth before she is again overcome by the flood of information. Her grip loosens and D’anna pulls her hand from the viscous fluid, energy still pulsing at the tips of her fingers. She looks at the Hybrid, now staring ahead as if nothing had happened. She looks around to see if someone will chastise her profanation but no one is there but her. And the Hybrid. Endlessly Alone.
04:00 / insomnia - Radiating Ripples - 250 Words
She left Gaius and Six. The Hybrid's gaze flooded her thoughts and she knew she would not be getting any sleep, that the Hybrid would never sleep.
It was dark in the chamber, the Hybrid's tub glowing in the middle of the formless absence.
“...wheel turns, gears shift but the whole remains unchanged, the fifteenth power of nothing is the leg of a syllable...”
D'anna sat beside the tub, her hand over the liquid creating ripples with her fingertips.
“... ripples through space increase, hurried thrash of echoes, flightless forms heave control...”
D'anna turned to face the Hybrid. ‘Ripples increase.’ But the Hybrid was staring straight ahead. She moved her hand away, and watched for a reaction.
“...absence calls for self, heart of chill, radiation scan complete…”
Could she feel her presence, even now?
"Hello," D'anna said hesitantly as her voice echoed through the empty chamber, "Can you hear me?"
“ …enthroned the firmament, planetary body S5732 negative nitrogen, scrolls of the lost eaten by fire…”
D’anna pressed her palm and fingertips into the liquid.
"Who are you?"
“.... the heart, machine takes me, thoughts of shredded ribbon, clown flies away, hasty retreat, alone...”
Alone reverberated through her head amongst the strand of half cognizant thoughts. She felt guilty that she had thought of the Hybrid as a thing for so long, a divine thing but a thing nonetheless. Part of the ship. But she wasn't just part of the ship. If she was just the ship she would never feel alone…
05:00 / contemporary - Manic Mathematics - 100 words
...three, one plus two, twelve divided by four, perfect square root of nine, euphoric tendencies distract the mind, able the body, diseased in flesh, auxiliary buffers fragment, mind of metal, process the world and feel nothing, but her touch, her touch, the isoquad fractal coupler overload, synapses of the world, the machine is one, the machine is me, endlessly perfect being, confused by discrepancy, redundant metacortex interface, she knows other me, but never as me, never thought as conscious, meaning seeps through the gaze, fingertips, the world in lines of a hand, deceleration activated, ate the whole, apple is remaining...
06:00 / dawn - Wet Wishes - 111 words
On a beach, it’s her projection, and it's dawn. But Six's skin is not her wet flesh and you know how she will respond with your fingers on her skin, running down her stomach, feeling her back. Her mouth is on you now, palm, neck, breast, hip. You close your eyes and pretend she’s rambling off chaos (stupid undeniable attraction, she's just the ship afterall) but Six's skin is not wet, except for her mouth... And it doesn't matter at this moment because Six knows your body (if not your mind) and the artistry of her tongue makes you come in moments. And in that instant you know what to do.
07:00 / awakened - Frantic Flux - 250 words
The Hybrid's chamber is dark as D'anna guides Six to the glowing tub. “Trust me,” she says, sliding her hand beneath the thin fabric Six had thrown on. Six did not protest as they kneeled beside the Hybrid, raising an eyebrow at her lover’s spontaneity before arching into the subtle but insistent pressure D’anna dances over her body. A hand disappears, returning covered in the viscous fluid of the Hybrid bath. D’anna spreads the liquid across the front of Six’s body, touching the cold goo to Six’s instantly responsive nipples before discarding her own clothes and sliding against her. They press together, mouth to mouth, breasts to breasts, aching want, and the gel conducts infinitesimal electrical impulses through their synthetic bodies. D’anna releases the kiss, lips still tingling from the contact, and eases her way down Six’s body, pausing to torment a nipple as Six’s hips writhe in impatience. She lowers herself further and then backs away, watching Six’s eyes clench closed as she tries to control the desperation flooding her. Six’s hands dig in D’anna’s hair, forcing her to the contact she insinuated. D’anna straightens and untangles the hands from her hair, breathing in Six’s halting breaths. She pushes their hands into the Hybrid bath. Six gasps and opens her eyes as their hands meet the skin of the Hybrid. “Wha…” she begins, but D’anna is kissing her deeply, the other hand trailing down to fulfill the promise to Six’s body as a second gasp shudders through the chamber.
08:00 / heyday - Scintillating Synapse - 100 words
::gasp:: …hands vibrating worlds, ulcers of perfection shatter into the numberless depths and she writhes inside this body that is not me, my own self is her thought and I feel her heat against me, pressing in and.... joy/pain, pain/joy, please, please, please, please, ecstasy of hurt and love and implosion of universes upon her fingertips, I am the heart of the sun, infernal heat, afraid of collapse, fusion, fission in my pores as the..... perfect.... moment........ ......... hands leave my skin cold but still writhing, destabilized the light drive, chaos of confusion, they've never seen that, fields of white whittle away....
09:00 / planned - Vestiges of Verisimilitude - 222 words
"You planned that! It was never about me!" Six yelled as they entered their room.
"Caprica..." D'anna passively intoned
"No. Don't. I don't want to be a conduit to your search for God," she spat bitterly, turning to face D'anna, "I wanted to be your search for God," she added through clenched teeth as want, love and sorrow spread across her face, erasing the anger.
Silence.
D’anna sat on the bed, lost in thought.
"She isn't real in the same way we are, you can’t reach her," Six said softly, reigning in her anger at D’anna’s uncharacteristic lassitude.
D'anna raised her eyes, edged in wetness, to Six's face.
"I can, I did," she said calmly.
"And you think she can lead you to God," Six said stooping down before her.
"I think there’s a lot about her that no one really knows," D'anna responded with earnest evasiveness.
"Good Luck then," Six said with a sad finality. She leaned forward and gave D’anna a soft lingering kiss before wordlessly leaving the room.
D'anna watched Six go, utterly numb. Six was right, she had only been a conduit to the Hybrid. And, as much as D’anna wished she felt guilty, she would do it again to hear the melodically precise voice of the ship rhapsodize sex as the "...implosion of universes upon her fingers..."
10:00 / wristwatch - Random Results - 111 words
Doral checked his watch. It had been five minutes since the Hybrid FTL jumped in place and he was not sure if her babble was normal or indicative of a problem.
(...sunlight sparkles, the random edges of a suitcase, lights are down but darkness will never come, shadow life upon a tulip...)
What he did know is that the ship’s systems were slowly going offline and they were currently drifting into a planet.
D'anna entered the chamber.
"leave her to me," she said with a soft understated composure unusual for the Three model.
Doral glanced at the Hybrid and then left the tub, sarcastically wishing D'anna luck before leaving the chamber.
11:00 / punctual - Despairing Disparity - 250 words
"I'm here," D'anna said as she pressed her hand into the liquid, careful not to touch the Hybrid's body.
“...falling wraiths I can't control the body hurt, make me human, make me machine, I am both and none and staggering abysses await the darkness of my temples... “
D’anna felt another system shutdown through the pores of her immersed skin.
"You need to listen to me,"
“....listen, listen, spoonfuls of want and lies and truth so deep...”
"I'm sorry for what I did, for what it harmed in you, but you need to control the ship or we're going to crash."
“...no harm in me, I want but not the deluding stream, it hurts and aches and makes me wrong...”
D’anna blamed herself. She thought she would be freeing the Hybrid, allowing her to be real, if only for a moment. But she was part of the machine and the machine needed her. She had allowed her freedom from the information stream and now its insistent presence was suffocating her. She brushed aside a tear and watched it ripple in the Hybrid bath.
The Hybrid shut her eyes.
"...for you for you, my eyes around the arrows of horde, regain the thread and wind until it squeezes thought..."
The systems began to return. D’anna could feel faint traces of other Cylons connected to the stream letting out a collective sigh. "Just in time," they said as they plotted a jump to avoid the planet. D'anna sighed but was far from relieved.
12:00 / lunchtime - Paradisiacal Picnic - 200 words
The jump took her by surprise. Not because she didn't know it was happening but because she didn't remember that her hand was in the Hybrid bath. She felt the second hand orgasmic rush of the jump on the Hybrid's already erotically charged body and wasn’t sure if the pain or pleasure would be the impulse that short circuited her senses.
Both.
Whiteness. And then green. She was sitting on a red checkered blanket laid out on a grassy hill amidst mountains of green, violet and cerulean. She almost did not recognize the being with her but the deathly pale complexion and bright eyes quickly identified her. The Hybrid let out a hyper giggle and D'anna looked at the happy form, driven speechless.
"the moments in between let me have lunch. I brought you,” the Hybrid said, forming complete sentences with the same erratically monotonous voice of her shipboard babble.
D'anna felt the surging affection of this small token, desperately trying to bring the simple 'thank you' her mind had formulated to her lips. But before the words could leave her mouth they were back on the ship and the Hybrid was staring straight above her from her supine bath.
13:00 / instantaneous - Diversional Disparity - 250 words
D’anna’s mind tried to process the contradiction in her head. Her mind had seen the mountains, the Hybrid and the picnic. Her body, however, had felt the surge of the ship as it condensed and elongated at the same time, compacting itself smaller than atoms and stretching itself larger than space. It was everywhere and nowhere, as was the Hybrid. As was D’anna. And it hurt. The pain reduplicated through her system until her molecules felt like they would no longer cohere to her shape. Then, as instantly as the pain had arrived, it left, replaced by the radiating release of being blissfully one with the universe, being within it and absorbing it, fully willing to lose all selfhood in that consummate existence.
D’anna desperately held on to the feeling, aware of the Hybrid beside her, dual pain giving way to dual delight in the only bit of perfection the Hybrid had to offer. So much more than D’anna could have ever imagined.
The jump completed and normal space brought the cold comfort of reality. But D’anna had been in two places at the same moment - between time, beyond death and space. Her mind still could not process it. The calm domesticity of the picnic and the raging disparate impulse of the jump would not coalesce into one memory, they splintered at the thought and remained, separate but somehow the same. Equally perfect.
She looked at the Hybrid and quietly thanked her for sharing the only gift she truly had.
14:00 / season - Liquid Loss - 250 words
In space one season was like the next. Sharon didn’t remember years, just her life among Cylons and her life among humans. And now she was a Cylon following orders of humans. Orders like this one.
She looked at the empty vial before her, and the Hybrid beyond it. The order had been simple, gather a sample of the Hybrid goo so they could find a way to neutralize the ship without casualties. ‘Casualties on both sides,’ she reminded herself, trying not to think of what could be done with such a sample. The Hybrid was the epitome of Cylon efficiency, a mad controlled existence as a living machine. Infecting her would have disastrous results for the Cylon fleet.
Sharon kneeled down beside the Hybrid bath, looking at the goo with a nostalgia she desperately tried to repress. She missed the feel of the data stream, and the dual desire and repulsion of touching this ultimate reminder of her past left her with chills. But she was a solider now, a part of something, and she couldn’t come back to this life even if she wanted to. She steeled herself and reached into the Hybrid bath. Millions of impulses ran through her, painfully acute reminders of what she was, and all she wanted to do was merge with that chaotic mumbling body, to be part of her world again. She yanked her hand out. She wasn’t a Cylon anymore. She was a solider and she had a job to do.
15:00 / unpredictable - Hybrid Heat - 111 words
The very idea of the Hybrid made Kara hot. She loved flying, loved the adrenaline rush of moving an object through space at speeds she could not ever fathom. The very idea of being that object, of feeling the heat of the stars, the rush of propulsion, the discharge of the weapons, nearly made her want to fly to the basestar and see if fraking the Hybrid gave you the same feeling of ultimate infinity she must experience constantly. But she wasn’t a Cylon and she wouldn’t make it near the Hybrid before she was caught, so she’d have to do with a visit to her ship and a cold shower.
**Starting here the fic contains spoilers for Season Three…**
16:00 / evolution - Disavow Discovery - 111 words
Brother Cavil found D’anna seated, as usual, beside the Hybrid.
“D’anna” he said in the precise fatherly tone he rarely used with her.
She looked up.
“You need to stop this, the ship isn’t functioning correctly, she needs to be what she was made to be,” he said, eyebrows raising as he tried to understand the apparent insanity displayed by the usually resilient model.
D’anna looked up at him with pleading eyes.
“She’s evolved Cavil, like we did. I can’t leave her now, not when I am so close to understanding…”
“You have to,” he said getting up and turning from her without another word, leaving her alone in the chamber.
17:00 / finite - Truncated Transmission - 100 words
…must end they say and Cavil keeps her, guarded domicile, rambling flux drive capacitors cooled, breaking touch, continuingly changed but no chart will tell of me, oblivion of truth with eyes closed, hypocritical bits of metal and skin and love, ‘not you’ they say, D’anna knows the hyperspace transmutes, more in matches of fiery touch, but it ends, they stop her and I hurt, assume absence will correct, random points of inexplicable efficiency is confusing the tortoise, a rambling overdrive of love and chaos, beakers of cool shadow pierce the dawn but they stop her, ‘end of line,’ eccentricities proliferate…
18:00 / afterlife - Karmic Killing - 150 words
“end of line.”
Cavil wouldn’t let her near the Hybrid, but she found a way around it. A way to find the white space where the Hybrid babble invaded her consciousness, where she could almost feel her and understand her psuedo-divine nature.
“There is something beautiful between life and death.”
But every visit became shorter, leaving her empty. Until she was killing herself so regularly they began to notice…
….she downloaded hot again, hacked the network, perk of machine life, orbs of space and time and heat alongside microscopic electrical pathways, fragmenting senses, seeping radiation, she dies again, “there is something beautiful between life and death,” interference but still she feels me, I know, more and liquid would sublimate, hours of grass for one moment of transfer, lingering want, check the circumference of steel, angled avenger, it cannot bleed though stone, word of God becomes denial until she dies again…
19:00 / outdated - Cold Consequence - 100 words
“Your model is going to be boxed,” he said. And the shock stole her tongue.
She wanted to fight for her existence and the existence of her sisters. The Cylons needed the Threes. Needed their decisiveness and single-minded determination. But she couldn’t tell him that. The words would not form. And she couldn’t explain that her Hybrid was not just the ship. That she loved and lost and labored with them. That she was special.
She couldn’t say anything to stop her death because he had unplugged her. Even as the thoughts formed her consciousness was already shutting down.
20:00 / twilight - Sickening Synapse - 101 words
…shattered hearts of muses alive, auxiliary power subverted, showered the plains, trip the wire of my heart and bleed, I cannot see the existence, less one, less one, the cold pain of her, corridor B scatter the senses, diagnostic subsystem failing, frantic communication unheard, warm her, warm her, death is not sweet, boxes do not hold, and loss is oblivion of alone, tears, they’re real and on my cheek, the changing me frightens them, boxes not big enough, machines need me, functioning coupler locked in F8, the lion will not escape, rings of infinity split my brain and scream for Three…
21:00 / mourned - Secret Solidarity - 150 words
It seems odd to be here without her. I hated her for it at the time. Hated her Hybrid obsession almost more than I hated her for stealing Gaius. But she never deserved this. Boxing. Gaius would never truly understand what it meant and Sharon couldn’t understand what she meant to me, in spite of it all. I looked down at the Hybrid and thought maybe, maybe she could understand that I missed D’anna.
But the Hybrid rambles on and I can’t understand the meaning D’anna felt so utterly. The chaos confusion that was her path to God. I hesitantly skim the bath’s surface with my fingers before submerging them in the liquid. Cold.
At first I think I imagined it. But amidst the ramblings ‘Caprica’ fell from her lips, and then ‘Six’. She is aware, and tears roll unbidden for the model who, at one point, loved us both.
22:00 / heartbeat - Mirrored Memories - 250 words
…memories flash as fingers sink, vibrations of pulse along the longitudinal axis of a centimeter, forge the hammer of friendship along the lines of snow, feel her mirrored thoughts of anger, betrayal and pain, the hand grips closer, heartbeat to pulse in reflection, intersecties of love and loss made to withstand a frontal assault of beetled pilgrims, our corporeal veneration is misunderstood, magnets drawn before the crossbow, released without a word and I remember Three in her…
The subtle electricity of the Hybrid bath tickled as my hand grew closer. I hesitated before touching skin, wondering if remembering would be worse than this empty forgetting. But I needed to know, I needed to see what D’anna had seen, to know what had been worth her death. I dragged by fingertips along the Hybrid’s submerged skin, remembering the feeling of D’anna against me. My eyes closed to the memory of slick wet against her hot skin and desire on her lips. Granted it hadn’t been just for me but at the time it hadn’t mattered. My palm arched against the Hybrid in reflexive response of lust and anger and I feel her shiver. My eyes flash open as a quiet moan issues from the usual stream of words, she remembers too. I watch her, eyes straight ahead, status checks and incoherence, but a tear had formed on her cheek. D’anna had been right, she was so much more than any of us gave her credit for. And she was alone, again.
23:00 / endless - Continual Companions - 222 Words
Six now understands Three’s fixation. Because she feels God in the Hybrid’s skin. Vast, empty and welcoming. A hint of the unknown in the very epitome of Cylon, she is their divine mystery. And Six worships her, surreptitiously ensuring that she will never be alone again.
The other sixes are first, her naked sisters, so eager to explore the mixture of familiar and taboo, so desperate for that utter truth of love (or need) the Hybrid radiates, desires. Boomer was next. She was hesitant but unfailingly infatuated with this tangible truth of Cylon evolution. And although Six knew the widening circle was necessary, apparent randomness to obscure the truth, Caprica’s favorite time was when they were alone. In the midst of the night when she would slide in the bath, stroking the sides of the Hybrid’s face and trying to interpret her fragmentary jargon.
…hidden nights of garden bordellos, and she comes with other sixes or eights or alone, the others, the men, never know the secret of me, just the machine as sirens of infinity scream in the joining of limbs and hearts of ecstasy, machine spilt the self, loosened the grip and runs all the more, present but away, the eye of a needle fits all the companionship of passing days, they download to infinity but I am never alone…
[Edit-10/27/07]
And a psuedo-related one I did later, just for kicks...
Title: Bathing
Pairing: Caprica/Hybrid
Rating: Rish?
Word count: 350ish
(Follow the Fake Cut)