BSG Fic : Crash (5/9)
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 andjoey51 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. And if you feel the need to offer con. crit., thanks, but not on this one, please...)
Chapter Five
The Leoben model found him a little before dusk.
Lee was drinking water, kneeling on the bank of a small stream he had found earlier in the day-a day he had spent dozing on and off in a cavern he had stumbled upon about an hour after it had started raining.
The rest had been good for him. For what was probably the first time since the crash, he had woken up remembering where he was and why he was here. The headache that had plagued him for as long as he could remember had mercifully lessened in intensity, though it was still lingering. His leg, on the other hand, hurt like crazy.
"Could be worse, could definitely be better," he said aloud.
The voice coming from behind had him on his feet, gun pointed in the direction of the noise, before he could analyze the words.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Captain."
His heart beating wildly in his chest, headache coming back full force, Lee kept a steady aim as Leoben walked to him, a smile on his face and hands held at shoulder's level as if to emphasize that he wasn't a threat.
Shit.
"But maybe I can help," Leoben offered.
"Well, you could leave," Lee said without thinking, hoping he was imagining the slight trembling in his hand. "That would be helpful."
"Lower your weapon, Captain," Leoben replied. "You wouldn't shoot your only way off this planet, would you?"
Lee didn't reply. What would have been the point? The Cylon was only going to play games with him if he got an opening, and Lee didn't plan on giving him that chance.
"If you follow me, I'll take you back to the Galactica," Leoben added.
Lee would have laughed if he hadn't been so terrified. As it was, he settled for a terse, "You really think I'm that far gone?" He had to force each word past the lump in his throat and it came out more strangled than he would have liked.
"Well, you don't look… How do the humans put it?" Leoben made a show of pondering the question before finishing, with a sardonic smile, "Peachy. I thought it might be worth a shot."
Lee gripped the gun a little tighter.
"Think, Captain. Surely, if rescue was going to come, it would be here already. They're gone, and you know it. If I die, I'll just resurrect into another body and tell the others where I last saw you. If you cooperate with me, you'll get out of this alive. We'll even heal you."
"And what do you want in exchange?" Lee asked, knowing that he had to make his move now. He doubted Leoben was here alone, and if they were circling him, he couldn't risk waiting longer.
"Nothing much, real-" Leoben started.
Lee pulled the trigger before he could finish, the gunshot echoing impossibly loud in the dead silence. Lee stared as Leoben's body stumbled backwards, landing on the ground with a heavy thump, then as the blood started to run from the head wound.
Move, move, move, move.
He started to run straight ahead, bypassing the corpse, ignoring the way his body protested, ignoring how much everything hurt and how much he wanted to lie down and rest.
He ran ahead, set on putting as much distance as possible between Leoben and himself before night fell completely and he couldn't see anymore.
*
Lee woke up in a cell. Everything was white around him-the walls, the ceiling, the ground, the light. He had been stripped of his flight suit and uniform and dressed in white scrubs as well.
Leoben was staring at him from the other side of the bars. The bars were also white, and Lee couldn't hide his surprise upon noticing it.
"So, Captain, how are you doing?" Leoben asked, but while his voice matched with Lee's expectations, his face had morphed to Kara's.
The expression on her features was something he had never seen on her, though. It was cold and heartless-the expression of a machine.
When he was a kid, he had heard a lot of stories about the first Cylon war-stories whispered by the officers who sometimes came home to visit his parents, stories told by the other kids at school who also had family members in the military. Stories about glorious battles, stories about the heroism of pilots, stories about prisoners of war and what the Cylons did to them.
With the years, Lee had realized that most of these stories must be apocryphal-the Cylons transformed into bogeymen to scare the little kids.
Some sounded real enough to be true, though.
He tried very hard not to remember the horrors he had heard, told by overeager kids who were still ignorant enough to think that there were good, exciting things to be found in war.
He swallowed nervously, noticing that the pounding in his head was getting worse. It's because I'm scared, he thought, and a wave of shame washed over him. In the stories from his youth, the soldiers who had been taken prisoner had never been scared, not even when faced with the certainty of torture and death-especially not when faced with the certainty of torture and death.
Of course, the stories he had heard as a kid were a bunch of crap. If he'd had any doubt left about that after going through flight school, they would have been totally dispelled when they left the civilian ships behind them to reach the Ragnar Anchorage in time, abandoning civilians-men and women, children and babies-to be slaughtered by the Cylons.
Heroes didn't do that.
But survivors do.
Humans do.
He took a breath through the pain. He was going to get sick if this went on for much longer, and sadly, the Cylons probably wouldn't even care if he threw up on them. At least it might piss off a human… Damn toasters, not even thrown by a little vomit, he thought, and muffled back a chuckle.
"So, Lee? Enjoying yourself?" Kara/Leoben asked, still with Leoben's voice.
"No," he said, his throat tight. He was sweating in the scrubs and he wondered how hot it was. His hands felt cold though, so cold he could barely move his fingers.
"No? What's wrong?" She pouted at him, and that, too, was something his Kara would never do.
He couldn't be interrogated.
He knew a lot about the Fleet, about the Galactica-not as much as his father, Tigh or the President, but still too much to be taken prisoner.
"Come on, Lee," Kara/Leoben said, and Lee blinked in surprise. She had stepped into the cell-when had that happen? He hadn't seen her come in-and she was running a hand up and down his chest.
Lee tried to step back but found he couldn't move, his feet rooted to the ground, couldn't do anything but stand there as she smiled up at him and said, "Come on, we're friends. We can have some fun. We can confide in one another."
Lee closed his eyes, willing the whole scene to disappear, willing himself to wake up.
He didn't, but as he opened his eyes to look at Kara/Leoben again, he felt something being slipped in his hand.
A gun.
"Come on," she said, her face hard. "Do your duty." She slapped him hard enough that he had to take a step back-his feet cooperating at last. "Be a good little soldier."
He raised his hand, the cold of the metal seeping into his skin, right down to his bones. Why had she given it to him?
She stepped back, crossed her arms against her chest. She was watching him, her face expressionless, and that was even more disturbing than the way she had acted before, because Kara wasn't that absent, ever.
She was waiting.
I can't allow them to interrogate me.
He met her gaze, reading nothing there, and raised the gun to his own temple.
I can't allow them to interrogate me.
She laughed then, a metallic, bitter laugh. "Oh, bold. I like your style."
Lee pulled the trigger without replying, then blinked at her, horrified to find that he was still alive.
"You didn't really think it would be so easy, did you?" she asked. She put a hand on his, unclenching his fingers without effort, then took the gun away from him. "Too bad," she added as two Centurions walked into the cell. "If you had tried again, it would have worked. One empty slot. Seven full ones."
The door opened and the Centurions grabbed his arms. Lee tried to struggle away from them but couldn't break free, no matter how hard he fought.
"Guess we'll have some fun now," Kara/Leoben said.
*
Lee woke up with a scream stuck in his throat.
For a while, he sat there, panting, looking around wildly for a sign of Cylon presence.
There was nothing to be seen but that didn't reassure him. His hand went to the gun strapped on his thigh, and only met the fabric of his flight suit.
I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore-
He dropped to his knees, frantically searching around for it-
-I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore-
-only taking a breath when he found it against the roots of a tree, a few feet from him.
He sat against the tree, trembling, arms wrapped around himself, gun held loosely between shaking fingers, and waited for his heart to stop hammering in his chest.
Absently, he touched his cheek. He could almost feel the sharp sting of pain as Kara/Leoben hit him but even though he prodded hard, it didn't hurt. It wasn't bruising.
Because it was all a dream.
He leaned back on the tree, resting his head against the unyielding wood. He was hot, his face flushed and sweat running over his back.
It shouldn't be so hot.
He shifted against the tree, trying to find a comfortable position.
"Guess we'll have some fun, now."
Lee closed his eyes, desperately trying to deny the fact that he was going to get sick. Unfortunately, denial didn't help. He let out a strangled moan as he got to his knees and tried to keep from crying out as his stomach emptied itself, the pain in his head growing worse with every second that passed.
When he came back to himself, he was sitting against the tree again, his whole body aching with strain and exhaustion.
He shot a look at the makeshift bandage he had wrapped around his leg, grimacing at how filthy it was despite the fact that he had changed it in the cave, only a few hours ago.
He should really take care of that; it would at least give him something to do besides think about his encounter with Leoben (had he downloaded into another body by now? Were they looking for him again? Was the Galactica looking for him or had they given up?)
When he reached out for his thigh, he spotted the black ink on his hand.
Cylon War.
Colonies lost.
Viper crash.
Focus!
Right.
Because his memory kept playing tricks on him and he kept forgetting where he was and what was going on.
Did that mean that his encounter with Leoben had been a dream? A hallucination?
He closed his eyes, groaning softly. He hated not being able to rely on his own memories, his own thought processes.
You need to listen to your instincts more. The voice sounded clear in his mind, as clear as if his father had been sitting next to him-and Lee checked to make sure that wasn't the case.
Great advice, he thought sourly. Except my instincts are telling me I'm screwed and I'd rather not believe that just yet.
"I don't understand you," he said out loud, as if his father had been around to hear him. "When you listen to your instincts, you save us all. When I do… I end up committing mutiny and almost causing a civil war."
His father, of course, didn't reply.
Because he was never there.
"I don't understand you," he repeated, and it made him feel a little less lonely to talk to his father, even if the man couldn't hear him. "I don't understand how you do what you do, how you can keep us together, how you can keep yourself together. I don't understand the way you think; I just know I'll never be like you."
His father was somewhere up there, taking care of whatever few survivors were still escaping the Cylons and probably already mourning for him.
47,853 survivors at last count.
Well, 47,852 now.
"And here I am, having a discussion about instincts with myself." It struck him as hysterically funny and he chuckled, then started to laugh, unable to stop himself.
Everyone's dead, he thought as the laughter grew, coming from deep inside him and engulfing everything. He slid to the ground, curled up on his side, wrapped his arms around his midsection and rested his head on the ground. Everyone's dead and I crashed my Viper and I'm going to die too, and I'm talking alone.
He tried to muffle the sounds-mustn't attract Cylons, wouldn't want to become a prisoner of the toasters, no, wouldn’t want that-and at some point, the laughter turned to sobbing and Lee brought an arm to his face, hiding his eyes in his flight suit.
I'm going insane.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to die and I'm crying like a baby. If Kara was here-
Thinking about Kara sobered him up as abruptly as getting hit with a bucket of ice water would have.
Kara's looking for me, she must be, and if I go insane now, and all she finds is a slobbering mess, she'll have my ass.
That dragged one last chuckle out of him and he rubbed his eyes, feeling embarrassed and winded and empty.
I'm going to die.
He ached all over, a distant pain that seemed to come from deep inside his bones, that made him feel weary and drained of all energy. A pain he associated with his father leaning over him as he lay on his bed-how old was he? Six? Seven?-and promising that everything would be fine and he would feel better soon.
Slowly, an explanation made its way to the forefront of his mind. I'm running a fever.
I'm dying.
He swallowed back the laughter that was still bubbling under the surface and his eyes fell on his leg again.
Right. Still need to take care of that.
He reached for the makeshift bandage, his hands pausing a few inches from the cloth. "I don't want to look," he said aloud, his voice hoarse and strangled.
He didn't have a choice. Even if he couldn't do anything to heal it, he could at least put a cleaner bandage around it.
"I don't want to look," he repeated, as he undid the knot and unrolled the bandage. With shaking fingers, he peeled his flight suit from his skin and carefully prodded the area around the wounds.
Aside from the cuts themselves and the bruised area surrounding it, the rest of his leg didn't hurt, which was good. The edges of the wounds had taken on a shade of red that was too deep for his liking, though, and he was pretty sure that the surrounding area was also too red.
It got infected.
The infection was going to spread and if help didn't come before that happened, he'd be in even more trouble.
"See, there's still room for improvement," he said. "Things can always, always get worse." Until you die, he finished silently.
Shaking himself, he struggled out of his flight suit to cut a few more pieces of his uniform and bandaged the wound again.
By the time he was finished, he was frozen to the bone, and it took all his energy to put the flight suit back on.
He rested his head on the bunk of the tree and closed his eyes. Just a few minutes rest, he thought. Then, time to look for another place to hide from the Cylons.
He could afford to rest for a little while.
Chapter 6
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 andjoey51 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. And if you feel the need to offer con. crit., thanks, but not on this one, please...)
Chapter Five
The Leoben model found him a little before dusk.
Lee was drinking water, kneeling on the bank of a small stream he had found earlier in the day-a day he had spent dozing on and off in a cavern he had stumbled upon about an hour after it had started raining.
The rest had been good for him. For what was probably the first time since the crash, he had woken up remembering where he was and why he was here. The headache that had plagued him for as long as he could remember had mercifully lessened in intensity, though it was still lingering. His leg, on the other hand, hurt like crazy.
"Could be worse, could definitely be better," he said aloud.
The voice coming from behind had him on his feet, gun pointed in the direction of the noise, before he could analyze the words.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Captain."
His heart beating wildly in his chest, headache coming back full force, Lee kept a steady aim as Leoben walked to him, a smile on his face and hands held at shoulder's level as if to emphasize that he wasn't a threat.
Shit.
"But maybe I can help," Leoben offered.
"Well, you could leave," Lee said without thinking, hoping he was imagining the slight trembling in his hand. "That would be helpful."
"Lower your weapon, Captain," Leoben replied. "You wouldn't shoot your only way off this planet, would you?"
Lee didn't reply. What would have been the point? The Cylon was only going to play games with him if he got an opening, and Lee didn't plan on giving him that chance.
"If you follow me, I'll take you back to the Galactica," Leoben added.
Lee would have laughed if he hadn't been so terrified. As it was, he settled for a terse, "You really think I'm that far gone?" He had to force each word past the lump in his throat and it came out more strangled than he would have liked.
"Well, you don't look… How do the humans put it?" Leoben made a show of pondering the question before finishing, with a sardonic smile, "Peachy. I thought it might be worth a shot."
Lee gripped the gun a little tighter.
"Think, Captain. Surely, if rescue was going to come, it would be here already. They're gone, and you know it. If I die, I'll just resurrect into another body and tell the others where I last saw you. If you cooperate with me, you'll get out of this alive. We'll even heal you."
"And what do you want in exchange?" Lee asked, knowing that he had to make his move now. He doubted Leoben was here alone, and if they were circling him, he couldn't risk waiting longer.
"Nothing much, real-" Leoben started.
Lee pulled the trigger before he could finish, the gunshot echoing impossibly loud in the dead silence. Lee stared as Leoben's body stumbled backwards, landing on the ground with a heavy thump, then as the blood started to run from the head wound.
Move, move, move, move.
He started to run straight ahead, bypassing the corpse, ignoring the way his body protested, ignoring how much everything hurt and how much he wanted to lie down and rest.
He ran ahead, set on putting as much distance as possible between Leoben and himself before night fell completely and he couldn't see anymore.
*
Lee woke up in a cell. Everything was white around him-the walls, the ceiling, the ground, the light. He had been stripped of his flight suit and uniform and dressed in white scrubs as well.
Leoben was staring at him from the other side of the bars. The bars were also white, and Lee couldn't hide his surprise upon noticing it.
"So, Captain, how are you doing?" Leoben asked, but while his voice matched with Lee's expectations, his face had morphed to Kara's.
The expression on her features was something he had never seen on her, though. It was cold and heartless-the expression of a machine.
When he was a kid, he had heard a lot of stories about the first Cylon war-stories whispered by the officers who sometimes came home to visit his parents, stories told by the other kids at school who also had family members in the military. Stories about glorious battles, stories about the heroism of pilots, stories about prisoners of war and what the Cylons did to them.
With the years, Lee had realized that most of these stories must be apocryphal-the Cylons transformed into bogeymen to scare the little kids.
Some sounded real enough to be true, though.
He tried very hard not to remember the horrors he had heard, told by overeager kids who were still ignorant enough to think that there were good, exciting things to be found in war.
He swallowed nervously, noticing that the pounding in his head was getting worse. It's because I'm scared, he thought, and a wave of shame washed over him. In the stories from his youth, the soldiers who had been taken prisoner had never been scared, not even when faced with the certainty of torture and death-especially not when faced with the certainty of torture and death.
Of course, the stories he had heard as a kid were a bunch of crap. If he'd had any doubt left about that after going through flight school, they would have been totally dispelled when they left the civilian ships behind them to reach the Ragnar Anchorage in time, abandoning civilians-men and women, children and babies-to be slaughtered by the Cylons.
Heroes didn't do that.
But survivors do.
Humans do.
He took a breath through the pain. He was going to get sick if this went on for much longer, and sadly, the Cylons probably wouldn't even care if he threw up on them. At least it might piss off a human… Damn toasters, not even thrown by a little vomit, he thought, and muffled back a chuckle.
"So, Lee? Enjoying yourself?" Kara/Leoben asked, still with Leoben's voice.
"No," he said, his throat tight. He was sweating in the scrubs and he wondered how hot it was. His hands felt cold though, so cold he could barely move his fingers.
"No? What's wrong?" She pouted at him, and that, too, was something his Kara would never do.
He couldn't be interrogated.
He knew a lot about the Fleet, about the Galactica-not as much as his father, Tigh or the President, but still too much to be taken prisoner.
"Come on, Lee," Kara/Leoben said, and Lee blinked in surprise. She had stepped into the cell-when had that happen? He hadn't seen her come in-and she was running a hand up and down his chest.
Lee tried to step back but found he couldn't move, his feet rooted to the ground, couldn't do anything but stand there as she smiled up at him and said, "Come on, we're friends. We can have some fun. We can confide in one another."
Lee closed his eyes, willing the whole scene to disappear, willing himself to wake up.
He didn't, but as he opened his eyes to look at Kara/Leoben again, he felt something being slipped in his hand.
A gun.
"Come on," she said, her face hard. "Do your duty." She slapped him hard enough that he had to take a step back-his feet cooperating at last. "Be a good little soldier."
He raised his hand, the cold of the metal seeping into his skin, right down to his bones. Why had she given it to him?
She stepped back, crossed her arms against her chest. She was watching him, her face expressionless, and that was even more disturbing than the way she had acted before, because Kara wasn't that absent, ever.
She was waiting.
I can't allow them to interrogate me.
He met her gaze, reading nothing there, and raised the gun to his own temple.
I can't allow them to interrogate me.
She laughed then, a metallic, bitter laugh. "Oh, bold. I like your style."
Lee pulled the trigger without replying, then blinked at her, horrified to find that he was still alive.
"You didn't really think it would be so easy, did you?" she asked. She put a hand on his, unclenching his fingers without effort, then took the gun away from him. "Too bad," she added as two Centurions walked into the cell. "If you had tried again, it would have worked. One empty slot. Seven full ones."
The door opened and the Centurions grabbed his arms. Lee tried to struggle away from them but couldn't break free, no matter how hard he fought.
"Guess we'll have some fun now," Kara/Leoben said.
*
Lee woke up with a scream stuck in his throat.
For a while, he sat there, panting, looking around wildly for a sign of Cylon presence.
There was nothing to be seen but that didn't reassure him. His hand went to the gun strapped on his thigh, and only met the fabric of his flight suit.
I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore-
He dropped to his knees, frantically searching around for it-
-I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore, I don't have my gun anymore-
-only taking a breath when he found it against the roots of a tree, a few feet from him.
He sat against the tree, trembling, arms wrapped around himself, gun held loosely between shaking fingers, and waited for his heart to stop hammering in his chest.
Absently, he touched his cheek. He could almost feel the sharp sting of pain as Kara/Leoben hit him but even though he prodded hard, it didn't hurt. It wasn't bruising.
Because it was all a dream.
He leaned back on the tree, resting his head against the unyielding wood. He was hot, his face flushed and sweat running over his back.
It shouldn't be so hot.
He shifted against the tree, trying to find a comfortable position.
"Guess we'll have some fun, now."
Lee closed his eyes, desperately trying to deny the fact that he was going to get sick. Unfortunately, denial didn't help. He let out a strangled moan as he got to his knees and tried to keep from crying out as his stomach emptied itself, the pain in his head growing worse with every second that passed.
When he came back to himself, he was sitting against the tree again, his whole body aching with strain and exhaustion.
He shot a look at the makeshift bandage he had wrapped around his leg, grimacing at how filthy it was despite the fact that he had changed it in the cave, only a few hours ago.
He should really take care of that; it would at least give him something to do besides think about his encounter with Leoben (had he downloaded into another body by now? Were they looking for him again? Was the Galactica looking for him or had they given up?)
When he reached out for his thigh, he spotted the black ink on his hand.
Cylon War.
Colonies lost.
Viper crash.
Focus!
Right.
Because his memory kept playing tricks on him and he kept forgetting where he was and what was going on.
Did that mean that his encounter with Leoben had been a dream? A hallucination?
He closed his eyes, groaning softly. He hated not being able to rely on his own memories, his own thought processes.
You need to listen to your instincts more. The voice sounded clear in his mind, as clear as if his father had been sitting next to him-and Lee checked to make sure that wasn't the case.
Great advice, he thought sourly. Except my instincts are telling me I'm screwed and I'd rather not believe that just yet.
"I don't understand you," he said out loud, as if his father had been around to hear him. "When you listen to your instincts, you save us all. When I do… I end up committing mutiny and almost causing a civil war."
His father, of course, didn't reply.
Because he was never there.
"I don't understand you," he repeated, and it made him feel a little less lonely to talk to his father, even if the man couldn't hear him. "I don't understand how you do what you do, how you can keep us together, how you can keep yourself together. I don't understand the way you think; I just know I'll never be like you."
His father was somewhere up there, taking care of whatever few survivors were still escaping the Cylons and probably already mourning for him.
47,853 survivors at last count.
Well, 47,852 now.
"And here I am, having a discussion about instincts with myself." It struck him as hysterically funny and he chuckled, then started to laugh, unable to stop himself.
Everyone's dead, he thought as the laughter grew, coming from deep inside him and engulfing everything. He slid to the ground, curled up on his side, wrapped his arms around his midsection and rested his head on the ground. Everyone's dead and I crashed my Viper and I'm going to die too, and I'm talking alone.
He tried to muffle the sounds-mustn't attract Cylons, wouldn't want to become a prisoner of the toasters, no, wouldn’t want that-and at some point, the laughter turned to sobbing and Lee brought an arm to his face, hiding his eyes in his flight suit.
I'm going insane.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to die and I'm crying like a baby. If Kara was here-
Thinking about Kara sobered him up as abruptly as getting hit with a bucket of ice water would have.
Kara's looking for me, she must be, and if I go insane now, and all she finds is a slobbering mess, she'll have my ass.
That dragged one last chuckle out of him and he rubbed his eyes, feeling embarrassed and winded and empty.
I'm going to die.
He ached all over, a distant pain that seemed to come from deep inside his bones, that made him feel weary and drained of all energy. A pain he associated with his father leaning over him as he lay on his bed-how old was he? Six? Seven?-and promising that everything would be fine and he would feel better soon.
Slowly, an explanation made its way to the forefront of his mind. I'm running a fever.
I'm dying.
He swallowed back the laughter that was still bubbling under the surface and his eyes fell on his leg again.
Right. Still need to take care of that.
He reached for the makeshift bandage, his hands pausing a few inches from the cloth. "I don't want to look," he said aloud, his voice hoarse and strangled.
He didn't have a choice. Even if he couldn't do anything to heal it, he could at least put a cleaner bandage around it.
"I don't want to look," he repeated, as he undid the knot and unrolled the bandage. With shaking fingers, he peeled his flight suit from his skin and carefully prodded the area around the wounds.
Aside from the cuts themselves and the bruised area surrounding it, the rest of his leg didn't hurt, which was good. The edges of the wounds had taken on a shade of red that was too deep for his liking, though, and he was pretty sure that the surrounding area was also too red.
It got infected.
The infection was going to spread and if help didn't come before that happened, he'd be in even more trouble.
"See, there's still room for improvement," he said. "Things can always, always get worse." Until you die, he finished silently.
Shaking himself, he struggled out of his flight suit to cut a few more pieces of his uniform and bandaged the wound again.
By the time he was finished, he was frozen to the bone, and it took all his energy to put the flight suit back on.
He rested his head on the bunk of the tree and closed his eyes. Just a few minutes rest, he thought. Then, time to look for another place to hide from the Cylons.
He could afford to rest for a little while.
Chapter 6