BSG Fic : Crash (3/9)
Title : Crash
Author : Helen C.
Rating : R
Summary : Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit. (Set in S2, somewhere between Final Cut and Flight of the Phoenix).
Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
AN. Many thanks to elzed , siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and whined about this fic.
AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me.)
Chapter 3
When Lee woke up, he was lying on the ground, shivering. Everything hurt, like he'd been in a fight or a car accident-like bruises on top of bruises.
What's going on?
The last thing he remembered was climbing into his Viper earlier in the day. How he had gone from his cockpit to here was a total mystery but he didn't like the feeling of urgency lurking at the back of his mind-the feeling that he was missing something important, maybe something vital, and he needed to remember, needed to figure out where he was and what was happening to him.
He let out a soft sigh that echoed unnaturally loud in the silence and rolled onto his back. Something scratched at his face and he let out a yelp, raising his hands to protect himself. His fingers met something thin and solid and familiar, but it took him a moment to place the feeling.
Wood-branches-and leaves.
He was under a bush.
What was he doing here?
He tried to find a memory, an image, a word, anything that might shed some light on the situation. Nothing came to him.
He tried to sit up but the branches came too low to allow him to move that much. He'd need to crawl from under here.
Crawl to where?
Lee shook his head as the thought imposed itself, uninvited.
I need to get out in case they're looking for me, he told himself. But in case who was looking for him?
"The Solaria," he whispered, but the answer didn't sound right for a reason he couldn't pinpoint.
He was sure that he had been on the Solaria landing deck earlier today.
He was sure that he hadn't been on the Solaria landing deck earlier today.
Damn it.
"What's wrong with me?" he asked aloud. When no reply came, he shivered again.
I should know that.
Why don't I know that?
He needed to move.
He needed to stay put.
What was wrong with him?
He had been in his Viper and then-
His Viper was shaking like it was going to come apart. A planet was looming on the horizon, blocking everything else from his view-a planet he didn't know, a planet that didn't match any of his mental pictures of the Colonies.
"I've been through this before," he said, and that sounded right. "I've been through this before and-"
But the feeling of deja-vu dissipated before Lee could fully study it, leaving him with the frustrating sensation that the memories he so desperately needed were lurking close below the surface, just within his reach and yet totally inaccessible.
He clenched his right fist in frustration, slammed it on the ground once, then another time, the impact of his hand with the cold dirt barely registering through the numbness.
He shivered, even though except for his face and his hands, he didn't feel so cold.
Out of nowhere, a flash of memory rushed through his mind. The Viper, falling to the ground-need to get out, need to get out, need to get out, need to get out, need to get out-grabbing the ejection handle, pulling it, something catching in his leg, making him yell in pain.
As abruptly as it had come, the memory vanished, leaving him shaky and breathless. His head pounded with every breath he took-a dull, throbbing pain that seemed to come from the center of his brain and encompass his whole body.
Head injury, he thought. But why-
"I'm telling you," Black Sheep was saying, and it didn't surprise Lee in the least that he was now in the locker room of the Solaria, getting ready for a drill. "We'll be done in plenty of time to organize that game, and if we're not-"
"And I'm telling you," Shadow replied, her voice rising in annoyance to cover Black Sheep's rambling. "There's no way we can pull it off in under twelve hours. That's the point of the damn exercise."
Black Sheep turned to Lee, who was finishing securing his flight suit. "What do you think, Apollo?"
Lee turned to them, a winning smile in place. "Just because no one has ever gone through that drill in under twelve hours, doesn't mean that we can't," he replied, grabbing his gloves before closing the door to his locker.
"That's the spirit!" Black Sheep got to his feet, his flight suit making a creaking sound as he stretched out. "Piece of cake."
"Famous last words." Shadow didn't look very happy with either of them and Lee shrugged. He privately thought that Shadow was right. The exercise-survival on hostile ground, parameters of the planet unknown, no backup and few resources-was designed to be impossible to accomplish in twelve hours, or so the legend went. The best way to deal with Black Sheep, however, was to humor him, which was something that Shadow just didn't seem to understand. Of course, she was new on board. She had never spent eight hours stuck in a Raptor with him. She'd learn soon enough, as the rest of them had.
"We'll make it quick, won't we?" Black Sheep insisted, staring at Lee.
"You guys always make it quick," Astrea threw in as she entered the room, helmet in hand.
"Ah ah," Lee said, his tone as flat as he could make it. "Your wit never ceases to amaze me."
"Look at our two little deities, sniping at each other," Black Sheep said, putting an arm on Shadow's shoulders and pulling her close to him.
She shrugged him off with a glare promising a slow and torturous death if he ever touched her again, just as Lee and Astrea turned to him, annoyed. "Frak off," Lee said, as his wingman snapped, "Still atheist, frakker."
The Solaria locker room dissolved around him. Lee barely had time to notice that the three other pilots kept talking while he vanished away, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The last thing to go was his locker, and then, he was alone in the dark again.
He shook his head in an attempt to clear it.
Had the drill gone wrong? Was that why he was here?
The objective had been for the two Vipers to land on the planet and for the pilots to vanish out of sight, so the crew of the Raptor could look for them. Each of the Viper pilots had received specific orders; Lee's were to prevent the Raptor crew from reaching Astrea.
Getting injured in a crash hadn't been part of the plan.
This was ridiculous. They must be looking for him and he needed to get out from under the cover of bushes if he wanted to be found.
Just as he was about to start crawling out, he heard a metallic clanking from a few feet to his left. He opened his mouth to call out to whoever was out there but a glimpse of metal caught his eyes and-
-he was standing in a hallway and a Centurion was rushing to him and he was trying to fire his gun but the magazine clicked on nothing. Empty, it was empty, and he was going to die and the Colonies were gone, and his mother was dead, along with billions of people, and-
Lee felt a scream wanting to make its way out. He brought his arm to his mouth and bit on his sleeve-noting absently that it tasted like wet dirt-closed his eyes and tried to keep the noise in. He couldn't be discovered. He had to stay immobile, he had to keep silent, he had to stay under cover, he had to be quiet, they wouldn’t find him, they couldn't find him, if they did it would be-
He cut off the thought with some effort; now really wasn't the time to think about what the Cylons would do to him if they spotted him, not if he didn't want to lose it.
Still biting on his sleeve, Lee observed the Centurions as they patrolled the area-the Cylons were back. The humans had lost the war. How the frak had he managed to forget that? How could he not have remembered that they had lost everything, that they were on the run, that they were losing a little more ground every day?
Were they looking for him? Was his bird spotted when it crashed? Was there a heavy Cylon presence on the planet?
Was the Solaria looking for him anyway?
No, not the Solaria, he remembered now. The Galactica. He had been stranded on the Galactica on the first day of the war and it had saved his life.
Up until now.
Moving as quietly as he could in this position, he brought a hand to his leg, noting with relief that he had a gun. That was something, at least.
He took a few quiet, deep breaths, his hand hovering near the gun. They wouldn't take him without a fight. They wouldn't take him at all if he had anything to say about it. If it came to that, he would have to find a way to keep one last bullet for himself.
The Solaria was gone. Black Sheep and Shadow and Astria and dozens of other pilots, most of whom he had once considered his friends, were gone with her.
His eyes were burning and Lee bit down on the fabric of his flight suit again to stifle a sob as the scope of the defeat washed through him all over again.
Gone, it was all gone. Most of his family. His friends. Gianne-her face the last time they had spoken like a punch in the gut. Everything he'd ever owned, but his uniform and his flight suit. The flight school, the military headquarters. His home. His old school.
All their schools and their teachers and what they had learned over generations.
48,000 humans left-all that remained of twelve planets.
Everything else had gone up in smoke in a few hours; their entire civilization, their families, their scientists, their writers, their musicians, their painters, everything they had ever built, now merely a memory the survivors were condemned to live with.
It took him a while to identify the surge of heat that rushed through his body as hatred. The rage he had felt as he buried his gun deep into Boomer's face paled in comparison to this feeling. It took everything he had for him to keep still, to keep from rushing to the Centurions and take them apart with his bare hands.
It would only have gotten him killed, though. He needed to stay alive until his shipmates found him or until it became clear that rescue would never come.
Once he reached that point… Well, then all bets would be off. If he had to die, he'd rather go in a spectacular and useful way. Offing a few Centurions seemed to fit the bill.
The Centurions-four of them, as far as he could see-were heading away. He refused to relax, though. It was too soon, they might still come back.
He settled in for the wait. How long until he could consider it safe to move? Thirty minutes? An hour?
He took a look at his watch; it was broken, the hands stuck on 2.16.
I've done this before. I've checked the time, and the watch was broken.
An icy fear twisted at his insides. How many times had he repeated the same actions? How many times had he remembered the fall of the Colonies before forgetting it again? How many times had he wondered what was happening to him?
How long had it been since the crash? Several hours? Several days?
He willed his breath to remain even, hoping it would help him to calm down. There was no way he had spent more than twenty-four hours here already; he was hungry but at most he had missed two or three meals, no more, and he didn't think he would have been careless enough to eat anything down here since he had no way to make sure that the vegetation was edible.
He was thirsty, though. Now that he paid attention to the fact, his mouth seemed downright parched. He'd need to find a water source at some point.
He reached for the pen and notebook he always carried on the pocket on his arm, and studied the first page for a while. There was nothing written there, yet something was nagging at him, like an insect buzzing around him, annoying, teasing.
He waited, staring at the blank page, allowing his thoughts to drift freely without trying to shepherd them to order, and eventually it dawned on him that he could see clearly enough to notice that he hadn't written anything.
A look at the sky through the branches confirmed it. The day must be rising.
Check that, he told himself. You survived your first night here. The words were cold comfort. The longer he spent here, the less likely it became that he would be rescued-and the more chances he had of running into Cylons.
He pushed the thought away. Hopefully, there wouldn't be a second night. Hopefully, tonight, he would be back on the Galactica.
In the meantime, he had to make sure that he wouldn't lose precious time trying to gather bits and pieces from his fragmented memory again. It would be useless to write in the notebook; for all he knew, it wouldn't occur to him to check it the next time his memory played tricks on him. Instead, he used the pen to write on the back of his left hand, Cylon War, Colonies lost, Viper crash, Focus!
Hopefully, that would be enough to prevent him from going around in circles next time he lost track of what was going on.
Once he felt sure that his surroundings were clear, he'd get out from under here and look for somewhere safer-and hopefully more sheltered.
He shuddered, suddenly feeling very tired, and struggled to keep his eyes open. He couldn't fall asleep here again; he had to move first.
It took a lot of effort, but he managed not to lose consciousness.
Chapter 4
Author : Helen C.
Rating : R
Summary : Galactica, Apollo, I've been hit. Repeat, I've been hit. (Set in S2, somewhere between Final Cut and Flight of the Phoenix).
Disclaimer : The characters and the universe were created and are owned by Ronald D. Moore and Universal Television Studios to name but a few. No money is being made. No copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
AN. Many thanks to elzed , siljamus and joey51 for beta'ing this, and to the countless people on LiveJournal who held my hand while I whined and whined and whined about this fic.
AN2. Pure, unadulterated H/C. (If you don't like it, lie to me.)
Chapter 3
When Lee woke up, he was lying on the ground, shivering. Everything hurt, like he'd been in a fight or a car accident-like bruises on top of bruises.
What's going on?
The last thing he remembered was climbing into his Viper earlier in the day. How he had gone from his cockpit to here was a total mystery but he didn't like the feeling of urgency lurking at the back of his mind-the feeling that he was missing something important, maybe something vital, and he needed to remember, needed to figure out where he was and what was happening to him.
He let out a soft sigh that echoed unnaturally loud in the silence and rolled onto his back. Something scratched at his face and he let out a yelp, raising his hands to protect himself. His fingers met something thin and solid and familiar, but it took him a moment to place the feeling.
Wood-branches-and leaves.
He was under a bush.
What was he doing here?
He tried to find a memory, an image, a word, anything that might shed some light on the situation. Nothing came to him.
He tried to sit up but the branches came too low to allow him to move that much. He'd need to crawl from under here.
Crawl to where?
Lee shook his head as the thought imposed itself, uninvited.
I need to get out in case they're looking for me, he told himself. But in case who was looking for him?
"The Solaria," he whispered, but the answer didn't sound right for a reason he couldn't pinpoint.
He was sure that he had been on the Solaria landing deck earlier today.
He was sure that he hadn't been on the Solaria landing deck earlier today.
Damn it.
"What's wrong with me?" he asked aloud. When no reply came, he shivered again.
I should know that.
Why don't I know that?
He needed to move.
He needed to stay put.
What was wrong with him?
He had been in his Viper and then-
His Viper was shaking like it was going to come apart. A planet was looming on the horizon, blocking everything else from his view-a planet he didn't know, a planet that didn't match any of his mental pictures of the Colonies.
"I've been through this before," he said, and that sounded right. "I've been through this before and-"
But the feeling of deja-vu dissipated before Lee could fully study it, leaving him with the frustrating sensation that the memories he so desperately needed were lurking close below the surface, just within his reach and yet totally inaccessible.
He clenched his right fist in frustration, slammed it on the ground once, then another time, the impact of his hand with the cold dirt barely registering through the numbness.
He shivered, even though except for his face and his hands, he didn't feel so cold.
Out of nowhere, a flash of memory rushed through his mind. The Viper, falling to the ground-need to get out, need to get out, need to get out, need to get out, need to get out-grabbing the ejection handle, pulling it, something catching in his leg, making him yell in pain.
As abruptly as it had come, the memory vanished, leaving him shaky and breathless. His head pounded with every breath he took-a dull, throbbing pain that seemed to come from the center of his brain and encompass his whole body.
Head injury, he thought. But why-
"I'm telling you," Black Sheep was saying, and it didn't surprise Lee in the least that he was now in the locker room of the Solaria, getting ready for a drill. "We'll be done in plenty of time to organize that game, and if we're not-"
"And I'm telling you," Shadow replied, her voice rising in annoyance to cover Black Sheep's rambling. "There's no way we can pull it off in under twelve hours. That's the point of the damn exercise."
Black Sheep turned to Lee, who was finishing securing his flight suit. "What do you think, Apollo?"
Lee turned to them, a winning smile in place. "Just because no one has ever gone through that drill in under twelve hours, doesn't mean that we can't," he replied, grabbing his gloves before closing the door to his locker.
"That's the spirit!" Black Sheep got to his feet, his flight suit making a creaking sound as he stretched out. "Piece of cake."
"Famous last words." Shadow didn't look very happy with either of them and Lee shrugged. He privately thought that Shadow was right. The exercise-survival on hostile ground, parameters of the planet unknown, no backup and few resources-was designed to be impossible to accomplish in twelve hours, or so the legend went. The best way to deal with Black Sheep, however, was to humor him, which was something that Shadow just didn't seem to understand. Of course, she was new on board. She had never spent eight hours stuck in a Raptor with him. She'd learn soon enough, as the rest of them had.
"We'll make it quick, won't we?" Black Sheep insisted, staring at Lee.
"You guys always make it quick," Astrea threw in as she entered the room, helmet in hand.
"Ah ah," Lee said, his tone as flat as he could make it. "Your wit never ceases to amaze me."
"Look at our two little deities, sniping at each other," Black Sheep said, putting an arm on Shadow's shoulders and pulling her close to him.
She shrugged him off with a glare promising a slow and torturous death if he ever touched her again, just as Lee and Astrea turned to him, annoyed. "Frak off," Lee said, as his wingman snapped, "Still atheist, frakker."
The Solaria locker room dissolved around him. Lee barely had time to notice that the three other pilots kept talking while he vanished away, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The last thing to go was his locker, and then, he was alone in the dark again.
He shook his head in an attempt to clear it.
Had the drill gone wrong? Was that why he was here?
The objective had been for the two Vipers to land on the planet and for the pilots to vanish out of sight, so the crew of the Raptor could look for them. Each of the Viper pilots had received specific orders; Lee's were to prevent the Raptor crew from reaching Astrea.
Getting injured in a crash hadn't been part of the plan.
This was ridiculous. They must be looking for him and he needed to get out from under the cover of bushes if he wanted to be found.
Just as he was about to start crawling out, he heard a metallic clanking from a few feet to his left. He opened his mouth to call out to whoever was out there but a glimpse of metal caught his eyes and-
-he was standing in a hallway and a Centurion was rushing to him and he was trying to fire his gun but the magazine clicked on nothing. Empty, it was empty, and he was going to die and the Colonies were gone, and his mother was dead, along with billions of people, and-
Lee felt a scream wanting to make its way out. He brought his arm to his mouth and bit on his sleeve-noting absently that it tasted like wet dirt-closed his eyes and tried to keep the noise in. He couldn't be discovered. He had to stay immobile, he had to keep silent, he had to stay under cover, he had to be quiet, they wouldn’t find him, they couldn't find him, if they did it would be-
He cut off the thought with some effort; now really wasn't the time to think about what the Cylons would do to him if they spotted him, not if he didn't want to lose it.
Still biting on his sleeve, Lee observed the Centurions as they patrolled the area-the Cylons were back. The humans had lost the war. How the frak had he managed to forget that? How could he not have remembered that they had lost everything, that they were on the run, that they were losing a little more ground every day?
Were they looking for him? Was his bird spotted when it crashed? Was there a heavy Cylon presence on the planet?
Was the Solaria looking for him anyway?
No, not the Solaria, he remembered now. The Galactica. He had been stranded on the Galactica on the first day of the war and it had saved his life.
Up until now.
Moving as quietly as he could in this position, he brought a hand to his leg, noting with relief that he had a gun. That was something, at least.
He took a few quiet, deep breaths, his hand hovering near the gun. They wouldn't take him without a fight. They wouldn't take him at all if he had anything to say about it. If it came to that, he would have to find a way to keep one last bullet for himself.
The Solaria was gone. Black Sheep and Shadow and Astria and dozens of other pilots, most of whom he had once considered his friends, were gone with her.
His eyes were burning and Lee bit down on the fabric of his flight suit again to stifle a sob as the scope of the defeat washed through him all over again.
Gone, it was all gone. Most of his family. His friends. Gianne-her face the last time they had spoken like a punch in the gut. Everything he'd ever owned, but his uniform and his flight suit. The flight school, the military headquarters. His home. His old school.
All their schools and their teachers and what they had learned over generations.
48,000 humans left-all that remained of twelve planets.
Everything else had gone up in smoke in a few hours; their entire civilization, their families, their scientists, their writers, their musicians, their painters, everything they had ever built, now merely a memory the survivors were condemned to live with.
It took him a while to identify the surge of heat that rushed through his body as hatred. The rage he had felt as he buried his gun deep into Boomer's face paled in comparison to this feeling. It took everything he had for him to keep still, to keep from rushing to the Centurions and take them apart with his bare hands.
It would only have gotten him killed, though. He needed to stay alive until his shipmates found him or until it became clear that rescue would never come.
Once he reached that point… Well, then all bets would be off. If he had to die, he'd rather go in a spectacular and useful way. Offing a few Centurions seemed to fit the bill.
The Centurions-four of them, as far as he could see-were heading away. He refused to relax, though. It was too soon, they might still come back.
He settled in for the wait. How long until he could consider it safe to move? Thirty minutes? An hour?
He took a look at his watch; it was broken, the hands stuck on 2.16.
I've done this before. I've checked the time, and the watch was broken.
An icy fear twisted at his insides. How many times had he repeated the same actions? How many times had he remembered the fall of the Colonies before forgetting it again? How many times had he wondered what was happening to him?
How long had it been since the crash? Several hours? Several days?
He willed his breath to remain even, hoping it would help him to calm down. There was no way he had spent more than twenty-four hours here already; he was hungry but at most he had missed two or three meals, no more, and he didn't think he would have been careless enough to eat anything down here since he had no way to make sure that the vegetation was edible.
He was thirsty, though. Now that he paid attention to the fact, his mouth seemed downright parched. He'd need to find a water source at some point.
He reached for the pen and notebook he always carried on the pocket on his arm, and studied the first page for a while. There was nothing written there, yet something was nagging at him, like an insect buzzing around him, annoying, teasing.
He waited, staring at the blank page, allowing his thoughts to drift freely without trying to shepherd them to order, and eventually it dawned on him that he could see clearly enough to notice that he hadn't written anything.
A look at the sky through the branches confirmed it. The day must be rising.
Check that, he told himself. You survived your first night here. The words were cold comfort. The longer he spent here, the less likely it became that he would be rescued-and the more chances he had of running into Cylons.
He pushed the thought away. Hopefully, there wouldn't be a second night. Hopefully, tonight, he would be back on the Galactica.
In the meantime, he had to make sure that he wouldn't lose precious time trying to gather bits and pieces from his fragmented memory again. It would be useless to write in the notebook; for all he knew, it wouldn't occur to him to check it the next time his memory played tricks on him. Instead, he used the pen to write on the back of his left hand, Cylon War, Colonies lost, Viper crash, Focus!
Hopefully, that would be enough to prevent him from going around in circles next time he lost track of what was going on.
Once he felt sure that his surroundings were clear, he'd get out from under here and look for somewhere safer-and hopefully more sheltered.
He shuddered, suddenly feeling very tired, and struggled to keep his eyes open. He couldn't fall asleep here again; he had to move first.
It took a lot of effort, but he managed not to lose consciousness.
Chapter 4