Sanctuary (Part 4 of 7)

[kappamaki33]

Return to Chapter 3




I’m bad and I’m going to hell, and I don’t care. I’d rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.
-The Sound and the Fury

Felix set his book aside and stretched in his chair. His eyes needed a break; he’d been reading all afternoon. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed having time to read when he’d been working so hard on Galactica. Now, he almost always had afternoons to himself with very little else to do.

Plus, it was something he could do while he sat at his window. Each of the workers had a large window in their room overlooking the street. Making oneself visible to passersby was a form of free advertisement that Rosie greatly encouraged. Felix had one of the eight rooms on the second story; there were four more on the ground floor, along with the front parlor. The kitchen, bath, and Rosie’s apartment were in back.

There was no such thing as a nice view on the Prometheus, but Felix’s room probably had as close to a nice vista as could be. The Rising Sun was on a busy thoroughfare, and Felix’s room was situated so that he could see down a cross-street all the way to the edge of the ship, too. The only thing that marred the view was the thick power line that drooped in front of the window just a few meters away, but it didn’t bother Felix.

Felix didn’t go out very often. Occasionally, Livia or Sora would drag him out to go shopping with them, but he usually just gave his grocery list to someone else. He didn’t each much-he didn’t feel like it, mostly, but he’d also learned there were certain aspects of his job best done on an empty stomach anyway. He didn’t drink much, either-again, best to have one’s wits about him on the job-though he did smoke a lot more than he used to, since smoking went so well with reading.

Reading usually provided Felix a much-needed escape from reality. It wasn’t working today, though. It was a good book, but the banter between the hero and his two best friends reminded him too much of slow days in Galactica’s CIC, when he and Dee traded good-natured barbs with Louis on the Pegasus over the wireless. Why did books always have to have a trio of good friends? He shook his head, knowing that it was him that was the problem, not the book.

Felix was reaching for another cigarette when someone knocked on the door. Livia poked her head in a moment later.

“Rosie wants me downstairs this evening?” Felix would go down to the front parlor when Rosie asked, but he didn’t really like it there. He got enough business through his few regular customers, word-of-mouth, and sitting at his window.

“No,” Livia said as she looked around the room. “You’ve made yourself a nice little home in here.”

It was strange to hear someone call this room a home, but he had, Felix realized. The room had only come with a bare bed and a nightstand, but he’d bought a little table and two chairs, one of which he was sitting in, the other he was using as a footstool; a soft comforter that he always put away when clients came, because that was his, godsdamn it; a bookshelf that he’d filled with everything from textbooks to schlocky thrillers and sci-fi paperbacks; and a canary in a cage that hung by his window.

Livia stood on tip-toe to look in the canary cage. “What’s his name?”

“Doesn’t have one,” Felix said.

“That’s not right,” Livia said. “Can I name him, if you don’t want to?”

“Are you sure it’s a ‘him’?”

“How do you know with birds?” Felix shrugged, and Livia continued, “I had a cat named Midnight when I was a kid. I say we name him Midnight.”

Felix laughed. “But it’s a canary. It’s yellow.”

“So was my cat. I just liked the name Midnight,” Livia said, smiling, fully aware of and reveling in her silliness. She looked around the room again. “You know, it’s really not fair. You boys can spend your money on nice things, because you have so much less overhead than we girls do.”

“Overhead?”

“Yeah,” Livia said, running her hand along his row of books. “What do you have to buy? Lube, antibiotics, condoms if you can find them, which, yeah right, and some liquor, right? But girls have to have lingerie, and birth control pills, and makeup, and perfume, and all that other crap, too.”

“Now that you put it that way, it is unfair.”

Livia leaned against the windowsill and grinned. “I’m glad you agree. So I’m sure you’ll agree that, in light of this unfairness, the boys should really take the girls out for a treat this afternoon.”

Felix laughed. Livia didn’t think it was healthy for him to stay inside so much, no matter how many times Felix explained to her that all that stuff about getting outside to get some Vitamin D didn’t exactly apply to living on a spaceship. But she’d clearly worked hard to think up this ploy, and he hated to disappoint her. “Okay.”

She clapped with glee and ran out the room and down the hall, knocking on doors and gathering up as many others as would come. By the time she was done, she’d managed to drag Rhea, Leah, a new girl whose name Felix couldn’t remember, and Timotheos, a large, quiet man who usually kept to himself, out of bed.

“Come on, Livia. If it’s going to be boys’ treat, go drag Anthony’s lazy ass out of bed, too,” Felix said.

The girls all looked at him strangely. “Anthony’s not here anymore, Hylas,” Livia said. “He packed up and left a few days ago, at the end of the month.”

Felix had wondered why he hadn’t seen Anthony at afternoon breakfast for a while. “Why?”

Livia shrugged. “People come and go around here a lot. Especially the men.”

“Where did he go?”

Livia shrugged again, but she was starting to look uncomfortable. “He was good friends with Daphne, I think. He said good-bye to her, at least. If you’re that curious, you could probably ask her.”

He could tell everyone wanted him to drop the subject. “No, it doesn’t matter. If we want to be back by seventeen hundred, we’d better get moving.”

Livia and Felix led the way. Felix heard Leah ask, “Seventeen hundred?” and Timotheos answer, “Fancy way of saying five o’clock in the evening.” Felix mentally cursed himself for slipping into military-speak and was relieved that nobody else called him on it.

Felix patted the cubits in his pocket. After years of eating in a mess hall, the very idea of having choices for food while in space still struck Felix as odd, so he asked Livia, “Since this outing was your idea, what are we going to have?”

Her eyes lit up. “Bok chakal! Definitely bok chakal.”

Rhea slid up between them. “That Sagittaron crap? That’s a really bad idea.”

“It’s not crap,” Livia protested. “Have you ever even tried it? I bet you’ll like it.”

Rhea said, “That’s not why it’s a bad idea. The stand that sells it is in Arrows’ territory.”

“Just barely on the edge,” Livia said. “I’ve been there before, and it’s not a big deal. Besides, it’s not like we’re actually Ha’la’tha.”

Felix stopped in the middle of the busy pathway. “Hold on, what? Why would we even be marginally Ha’la’tha?”

Livia took him by the arm and kept walking. “We’re not. That’s my point.”

“That’s an oversimplification,” Rhea said. “You haven’t been paying any attention to anything but getting frakked since you’ve been here, have you, Hylas?”

“What else is there?” Felix asked.

Rhea sighed. “Fine. Let’s go to the Sagittaron place. It is just on the edge of the Arrows’ territory, and they have tables. We’ll educate you-and you” Rhea looked at Felix, then back at the new girl, “while we eat.”

They walked all the way down C-Street, then turned and went a few blocks in the direction Prometheans had decided to label “west.” Felix noticed a subtle shift in the scenery. The streets were a little narrower, and the people dressed a bit differently, more earth tones and flowing fabrics. Most of all, it smelled different: the cooking smells wafting from food stalls were dominated by unfamiliar seasonings, and the scent of burdock root was so thick it made him a little light-headed. Felix wondered if he had never come to this area in the short time he wandered the Prometheus before going to the Rising Sun, or if he had but had been in too much shock to notice the differences then.

As they pushed through the crowd, Felix saw someone out of the corner of his eye that made him flinch. It took him a moment to regain his composure. He steadied himself with the knowledge that long, dark hair and almond-shape eyes were hardly uncommon features among humans, and if it really was her, there was no way she could hide on this ship. People knew her face far too well now. Still, that flash of mistaken recognition brought back memories of New Caprica as overpowering as the aroma of the burdock root.

Livia’s squeal of delight signaled their arrival at the bok chakal stand. She ordered for everyone, and she was so excited that Felix didn’t have the heart to tell her he didn’t want any. He and Timotheos split the bill, and they followed behind Livia as she carried a tray of the sticky pastries to the street-side table the other girls had claimed for them.

“See? Told you it was worth it,” Livia said as Rhea bit into her pastry and made a full-mouthed sound of approval. “Eat up, Hylas.”

“You can have mine.”

Livia’s brow furrowed. “You should’ve told me if you didn’t like vanilla-flavored when I was ordering. Here. Mine’s cinnamon, and I only took the one bite.”

Felix smiled. “No, that’s okay. I just don’t like bok chakal. Too sweet for me.”

Dee was the one who had introduced him to bok chakal. It was her favorite food-the only thing about Sagittaron culture she missed, she claimed. For some reason, Felix had felt it would be disrespectful to dislike the food when Dee gave him a precious portion of her spoils on the rare occasions she got a hold it, especially because he was so grateful for the friendship her generosity represented. Of course, one day she’d figured out his distaste anyway, and in true Dee form, she’d merely laughed and said, “More for me this way.”

Felix looked at Livia. For the past couple months, he’d been trying to convince himself that the two of them could be like he and Dee had been. Even though Rhea was perhaps a little closer to Dee in terms of personality, Livia attracted him in that way more. She inspired the same mix of wanting to be her big brother and knowing that she could take care of herself quite well, thank you very much, that Dee always had. As much as she made him smile, though, she wasn’t Dee.

Felix handed his pastry to the new girl, who smiled at him too shyly and wolfed it down in a few bites.

On the other side of the table, Timotheos nudged Rhea. “Look who found some new friends.”

He pointed over Felix’s head at the crowd on the street. Rhea had to stand part-way up to see. “That little shit.”

Felix turned around and saw Anthony walking arm and arm with two very pretty women wearing expensive dresses and makeup.

Leah was almost climbing on top of Rhea to get a better view. “Are those the girls from the Red Lantern with him?”

“That little shit,” Rhea repeated, plopping back down on the bench with a thump. “And here I was half-way worried about him becoming a kept man.”

“What’s going on?” the new girl asked. Felix was grateful that someone else was just as lost as he was for a change.

“The Red Lantern, that’s the establishment in the Arrows’ territory,” Livia explained, still trying to get a glimpse of them.

“Competition?” Felix hazarded a guess.

“Not that simple,” Rhea answered. She traced out a map on the table with her fingers as she explained. “Okay. So you’ve got the Arrows, who run the show in the Sagittaron third of the ship, right? And then the Ha’la’tha controls pretty much the rest of it, including the Rising Sun.”

“Don’t forget the Virgon faction,” Livia added.

Rhea brushed it off. “Yeah, there’s a tiny little area that the Virgonese syndicate has a partial hold on, and then there’s the temple societies, which everybody kind of backs off of. And the hangar deck and crew quarters, which they let run like a regular ship since it’s in everybody’s best interest. But mostly, it’s the Arrows and the Ha’la’tha, and as you can imagine, those two gangs don’t exactly get along. The Rising Sun is on Tauron turf, then, and the Red Lantern is Sagittaron. Anthony jumped ship, which doesn’t happen much.”

“Why’d he do it?” the new girl asked.

“Has to be Dillon,” Timotheous added with a shake of his head.

Rhea looked like she hadn’t considered that, but she couldn’t argue with it now that someone mentioned it.

“I wonder if Dillon will try to follow Anthony to the Red Lantern,” Livia said. “You know, kind of like a forbidden love affair, maybe bring the warring gangs together.”

Rhea snorted. “Have you been borrowing Hylas’s romance novels? No way the Guatrau’s right-hand-man is going to patronize an Arrows-protected establishment.”

Leah leaned in close and lowered her voice. “Wonder who Dillon’s going to find to frak now. Independent contractors aren’t very clean, and Lords forbid he ever try for anything like a real relationship.”

Timotheos shivered. “I’m just glad I’m not his type.”

Rhea hunched over the tabletop and said, “What I want to know is now that Dillon’s favorite boy-toy is gone, how’s Rosie going to cover the Ha’la’tha protection fee? Dillon took out a lot of it in trade on Anthony-so much so I think the Guatrau was getting a little miffed about him maybe cutting into her profits on the Rising Sun.”

Felix finally cut in, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Everyone, even the new girl, stared at Felix like a third eye had sprouted from his forehead.

Rhea said, “The Rising Sun’s in Ha’la’tha territory. The Ha’la’tha takes a flat fee, plus a percentage cut, in exchange for fending off the Sagittarons and for not torching the place themselves. Where the hell have you been since the worlds ended?” He could see Rhea knew she’d made a mistake bringing up his past the moment she said it.

“I’m sure it’s not this way everywhere,” Livia defended weakly. “I hear there are some ships where everybody knew everybody from the start that went on almost like normal. Like the Hitei Kan, and those kind of places.”

Rhea raised an eyebrow at Livia, but she continued, “Anyway, between the Guatrau’s men who drop in every once in a while and Dillon, the Guatrau’s right-hand man, Rosie hasn’t had to pay much at all since New Caprica. Even with their…discount, if you want to call it that, the Guatrau’s people rack up a pretty big bill. Not that we ever see any money from them above and beyond what’s charged against us for the protection fee, but it’s as close to fair as it’s going to be.”

“So that’s why you didn’t want to come to the Sagittaron sector of the ship? Because we’re…Ha’la’tha property?” Felix asked, not even attempting to hide his disgust.

“No!” Rhea said, recoiling in equal disgust. What bothered Felix most, though, was that it looked like Timotheos and Livia were about to say ‘yes’ before Rhea spoke up.

“If we work for anybody, we work for Rosie,” Rhea continued. “The Guatrau, she’s more like our landlord. But she’s a woman with lots of enemies in this area of the ship, and there are plenty of people who wouldn’t mind getting back at her through us.”

“Shit. Speak of the devil,” Leah whispered, nodding as subtly as she could at the crowd behind Felix. He didn’t turn around, but he could see that Rhea, Livia, and Timotheos all recognized whoever it was.

“Is it the Arrows?” the new girl asked tremulously.

Rhea shook her head very slightly.

A hand landed on Felix’s shoulder. “A little far from home, aren’t you, kittens?” The man leaned over Felix to get a good look at everyone at the table, then patted the new girl’s head before he stood upright. Felix twisted part-way around to get a better look. The man was very tall and muscular, with a mop of unruly straw-colored hair and a nose that looked like it had been broken a few times.

“Isn’t this neutral territory?” Rhea asked.

“Won’t be after tonight. The shit is just about ready to hit the fan,” the man said quietly. He was talking to Rhea as if she spoke for the group. Nobody else objected.

Rhea nodded. “We were just leaving.” Everyone stood, ready to go.

“Yes, you are.” He turned and called out to a man standing a little ways off. “Hey, Dillon! Should I walk these stray cats home?”

As the other man approached, Felix was struck by how much his appearance reminded him of Gaius. He had the same skin tone, the same dark eyes, and the same long but neat dark hair that Gaius had had back when they’d worked together in the lab. He was a little taller but just as slender and carelessly graceful. Even so, there was something else about this man that was very, very different from Gaius, and that made the hairs on the back of Felix’s neck stand on end. His features were much more angular than Gaius’s, and his face flashed with a sort of cold, crackling energy that gave the impression he could snap any moment. If he weren’t one of the Guatrau’s men, Felix had little doubt that Rosie would have labeled him “one of the crazies.”

“Nice work, calling attention to our presence,” Dillon said, his glare cowing the much larger man the way only the reprimand of a high superior could. Felix felt a chill run up his spine when Dillon fixed his gaze on him. “This the new boy I keep hearing about?”

“I don’t think he’s new anymore,” the bigger man said. “I seen him around Rosie’s for a few months now.”

Dillon wasn’t paying attention to his crony’s answer. He walked towards Felix until he was so close Felix could feel his breath on his skin. The strange part was, he didn’t meet Felix’s eyes. He took Felix’s chin in his hands and turned his head slowly one way, then the other, then ran his thumb across Felix’s lower lip. Felix tried not to shake.

Then, without warning, Dillon took hold of the hem of Felix’s t-shirt and pulled it up as high as he could without Felix taking it off. He bent low to get a better look and ran a hand down Felix’s back and his abdomen, then flicked his finger against the tiger tattoo and smirked. Felix felt like an animal at auction. He noticed the others were looking down at the ground.

Finally, humiliation overrode caution. “The crowd-I thought you were trying to avoid calling attention to yourselves?” Felix murmured.

Dillon stared at him for a long moment before saying, “I suppose,” and backing off. Felix scrambled to pull his shirt back down. Rhea slid up beside him and put a hand on his arm.

“They can make it back fine on their own,” Dillon said to his crony, still not taking his eyes off Felix. As the group walked away as fast as they could without drawing undue attention, Dillon called, “Tell Rosie I might drop by outside of regular business hours.”

Felix didn’t begin to breathe again until they got a few blocks into Ha’la’tha territory.

Leah spoke first. “Guess we know how Rosie’s going to cover the protection fee now.”

Rhea added weakly, “Anthony just got tired of Dillon monopolizing his time because it cut into his profits, that’s all. Well, that and Dillon has no manners.”

Livia patted Felix on the shoulder. “He’s not that bad, really. It’s not like you don’t have a choice. You can always leave, too.”

Felix took a deep breath before carefully arranging his expression. He could fake anything with a client; no reason why he couldn’t do it here, now, too. “Don’t worry about me. I can handle him no problem. Even if he takes up enough time that he cuts into my profits, I make more money than I know how to spend anyway, right?”

He grinned at Livia, but her return smile was fleeting.

“I’m not worried,” Felix said, his feigned sincerity much more convincing this time. “Somebody has to step up, and it might as well be me.”

When they finally got home, Felix immediately went up to his room. His book sat waiting for him on the windowsill. He reached for it, then paced as he read, but he set it aside once he realized he’d read the same sentence nine times without understanding it. He lit another cigarette and stared out over the busy street below.

~~**~~**~~

The little pill bottle weighed so heavily in Kara’s pocket. They always did.

The sleeping pills had cost her a lot more than they had the last time. She’d had to go back to McCarran, even though he screwed her over because she was military, because the other dealer she’d used had given her placebos, or something like that. Whatever it was, it hadn’t quieted Freaker’s anguished screams at all. No way Kara was letting that happen again, however much shit she had to take from McCarran.

Now she had four hours to kill before the shuttle went back to Galactica. There had been a time when she hadn’t hated the Prometheus. It had had one of the better bars on New Caprica before the Cylons came, especially nice when it rained and everything else was a sea of mud. But that was a long time ago, before Kat died.

Kat. The kid caused Kara as much trouble in death as she had in life. Kara had come to the Prometheus after Kat had made her last run through the radiation. She’d traded six precious batteries for the bottle of sleeping pills, though she felt like she was selling a piece of her soul. Suicide was wrong, and unlike most of her beliefs, that one had never really wavered before. But when Kara had been in the infirmary and peeked through the curtains, seen Ishay gently brush a hank of hair out of Kat’s face only to have it come off in her hand… Kat had even told Ishay that she hurt. Kat may have been a lot of things, but she’d never whined about pain. Never even admitted to it before.

So, though unused to compromise, Kara had told herself it wasn’t really suicide if Kat was never getting out of that bed anyway, with or without her help. Even though she didn’t actually believe her own rationalization, she told herself she could do it, just this one time.

Then Snowbird got hit in a skirmish and barely managed to land his wounded bird. He saved his ECO’s life, but Cottle had had to amputate his right arm and both legs above the knee. Then Freaker had gotten burned so horribly when her control panel exploded. And now Twofer.

Each time a friend of the fallen had come to her for that kind of help, Kara had balked. She’d told them drug dealing wasn’t a part of her job description, and that everyone involved could get their asses busted down to nothing for pulling a stunt like that. She’d argued that, if anybody, it was really the CAG’s place to do it, though she knew Lee was at once too soft and too principled to provide that kind of help.

And each time, she gave in when their friend said, “But you did it for Kat.” Whether it was a teary-eyed nugget or a squadron leader she’d flown with for years who asked, she’d known that her men had to feel confident that she had their backs, whatever that meant.

“You love your people so fiercely,” Leoben said as he sat on the couch. She stood next to the window, New Caprica’s watery sunlight shining on her face in bands through the bars. He said he was working on getting it replaced with shatter-proof glass, so it wouldn’t be so ugly and intimidating. A prison was no less a prison just because the bars were invisible, though.

“I wish you could understand that I love my people that fiercely as well,” he continued. “And yet, I was willing to disagree with them, to go against them, for you. They think I’m crazy for loving you so much.”

“The rest of the Cylons and I actually agree on something, for once,” she muttered.

“What if I could help your friends, your men?” he said, rising from the couch. “Some are in detention. I know which ones are former pilots. I could help them. Would you trust me then?”

He ran his hand down her bare arm. She shivered, but she willed herself not to pull away in revulsion.

“Get outta my head,” Kara muttered out loud.

It was bad enough that Leoben haunted her dreams, even if she got the strange feeling that the thing in the apartment in her mind wasn’t quite the same as the thing in the apartment on New Caprica. Sam kept wanting to stay the night, but there was no way she was going to let him see her wake up in a cold sweat. It was worse that this Leoben was haunting her in the cockpit now, the only place she’d ever felt completely free.

The only time she was sure she could get rid of that ghost, strangely enough, was during sex. That was only because other ghosts haunted her there, though. Whether it was Sam or someone else moaning against her skin, all she could think of was, what if I have to bring them one of those damn pill bottles one day? Then as she tangled her fingers in their hair, she imagined the strands falling out in her hands.

Kara decided to try to find the old bar. Even if being somewhere that reminded her of happier times didn’t chase the horrors away, at least the booze would quiet them down.

She wandered down what passed for streets, though they were really more like broad pathways, since the only vehicles that used them were a handful of makeshift rickshaws and the occasional bike. No matter where she went, she felt like she was going against the crowd. There must have been something wrong with the Prometheus’s gravity plates, too, because she felt like she was walking downhill-not exactly a sensation that made sense on a spaceship. Something about this place was so surreal that it made Kara wonder if she was dreaming now, and struggling to wake up.

White paint on her fingers, on his back where she’s clawed into his skin. White paint on the wall, fading, peeling, boiling away, and it’s still under there, waiting for her. The room tips-oh Gods, she’s going to fall-

Kara worked her way to the edge of the crowd and leaned against a building. After a few deep breaths, she gathered herself enough to stand upright, though she still steadied herself with one hand against the wall. She was surprised to see three people standing not too far from her, all looking up.

One turned his attention to her. He looked like he might have been a businessman in his former life. “You’re new here, aren’t you? The grav plates in this sector can go a little wonky for a few minutes sometimes. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”

“Like you are?” Kara groused. Her own weakness pissed her off. She was a pilot, godsdamn it. She didn’t get sick to her stomach when she flipped her Viper end over end, and here a little ripple in the sidewalk’s gravity was getting to her. She wouldn’t admit to herself what else might be influencing her.

“Oh, I’m not standing here because of the grav plate,” he said. He looked up again. “Can’t you hear it? What a place to find such a beautiful voice, huh?”

Kara listened. For a moment, she thought she might still be hallucinating, especially since the last time she’d heard that voice was at a funeral on New Caprica. But she finally accepted the truth: there was a ghost singing to himself, just barely audible from the street below his second-floor window.

“You’re dead,” was the first thing Kara said minutes later when she opened the door.

Felix Gaeta looked up at her, turning away from the window. He scowled and crossed his arms. “Sorry to disappoint, but reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” He stood up and wandered over to the far side of the room, pretending nonchalance. “What the hell do you want, Starbuck?”

Kara hesitated. She’d figured out what this place was when she’d blown through the red velvet front lobby, but she couldn’t say she’d ever exactly lusted after Gaeta. It was common knowledge that he wasn’t usually into women, and Kara wasn’t usually into men who folded their underwear and could recite the Colonial Military Rules of Protocol and Decorum backwards.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” she teased, picking a tattered paperback from the bookshelf and flipping through it before she tossed it on the table by the window. The room was about the size of an officer’s quarters, probably a little smaller, but it was dingy, with old fraying carpet and peeling plaster. As small as it was, there still wasn’t enough furniture in the place for it to look right. “How’s the neighborhood? I’m thinking of getting a little vacation home on the old Prometheus.”

Gaeta didn’t answer. He just glared at her flatly as he gathered up the comforter on the bed, folded it, and stuffed it in a tiny closet.

“Oh, come on, Felix. You have to have some sort of a comeback. Work with me here,” she said. “You still hate me, don’t you?”

Gaeta raised an eyebrow. “We’ve always hated each other.”

“Yeah, but we used to enjoy hating each other.” She added, much more quietly, “Before New Caprica.”

Kara could tell that struck a nerve. Gaeta sank down onto the bed. “Yeah.”

Even if she didn’t know what else she’d come up here looking for, she knew she wanted a distraction, not navel-gazing. “So get your ass in gear and snark at me or bawl me out for the launch tube or something, because I’m sure as hell not going to pay to watch you mope.”

Gaeta raised his head and looked at her incredulously. “You’re planning on paying me for talking to you? You do understand what people normally pay me for, right? I’m almost offended that you have no whore jokes or puns at the ready. You’re losing your touch, Starbuck.”

She was a little surprised at how willing he was to skip over all the ‘what are you doing in a place like this, Gaeta’ crap, which was nice. She couldn’t say she really cared that much. Instead, Kara latched on to that familiar spark of sarcasm and ran with it. “Like you could handle me. I bet you’ve never even frakked a woman before.”

She could see Gaeta light up a little at the first sentence, like he already had a comeback. A shadow passed over his face at the second one, though. “Oh, I have.” She watched him push some thought or memory away, and the evil glint came back in his eyes. “And handle you? Please. Rumor had it that even Hotdog could-and did-handle you.”

Kara smirked and made her way towards the bed. Since she wasn’t sure where the bar was and she was here already, why not spend the afternoon this way, she mused to herself. “I’m not one to kiss and tell, but there’s a big difference between frakking somebody and handling them.” She nudged Gaeta’s knees together, then straddled them, still standing over him. “How do you think he got the way he is? I frakked the poor boy’s brains out.”

She pushed Gaeta onto the bed and kissed him. There was nothing tender about the way he kissed back, but it wasn’t angry like she’d been expecting, either. More playful biting, testing, like the kiss equivalent of banter. She still held him down by the shoulders when she pulled back.

“What do you want?” Gaeta asked, this time a straightforward business question. “In the interest of full disclosure, though I have had some female clients, I should warn you that in light of…feedback, Rosie recommended I only charge half the regular rate for going down on a girl. The rest of it, though, I’m pretty damn good at.”

He was handing her an opportunity to mock him on a silver platter. She looked down at him, passive and almost smiling shyly up at her. Suddenly, it felt like the room was going to collapse in on her, and like there were bars across the window.

“I want to frak,” she said. Her voice almost wavered. Where had that come from? “I want a few minutes where I can’t think about anything or feel anything but a good, hard frak.”

She was almost shocked when Gaeta simply said, “A woman after my own heart.”

It wasn’t the best frak she’d had in her life, but it was far from the worst. Startlingly good, actually, considering it was Gaeta. He was much more athletic than she ever would have given a bridge bunny credit for, and what he lacked in skill he made up for in enthusiasm and an ability to read cues and follow silent instructions. But best of all, it was heat without passion, feeling without emotion.

They ended up against the wall, naked, sweaty, and gasping for breath. When it was over, they both slid down the wall and sat side by side, only their arms touching. They looked at each other.

“Huh,” was all that Kara could say.

Gaeta was surprisingly unoffended. “I know, right? Almost makes me wish I liked hate sex, since other than in this situation, that’s the only way I ever would’ve frakked you.”

“No kidding,” Kara said. “I gotta admit, I don’t see why you limit yourself to men so much.”

Gaeta took her comment the wrong way. “It’s not my call. We don’t get many female clients here. That’s sort of the specialty of an establishment on the Gemenon Traveler, of all places. Plus, it seems like the wealthier women, at least, are more likely to have a kept man than to frequent brothels.”

“‘Kept’? It’s the end of the worlds, and people still do that?”

Gaeta nodded. “Men and women. It’s a lot less precarious than this kind of work, a lot more creature comforts. I’ve had two offers.”

“What?”

“Both from men,” Gaeta explained, completely missing what about that admission had stunned Kara. “One of them was nuts, so there was no way I was taking him up on it. The other…frankly, if he hadn’t been purchasing me, I think I would’ve liked him.” Gaeta looked at the doorway. “I couldn’t do it, though. Even here, I can say ‘no’ to anyone who walks through that door. Not that I do very often, but just knowing that I can makes a difference. With an arrangement like that, though, no matter how kind he was or how much he said it’d still be my choice, I don’t think I would’ve felt like I could say ‘no.’”

Kara shook her head as if to wake herself. The relief she’d found here was so sweet, and she didn’t want to give it up quite yet. Gaeta’s talk was threatening to pull her back under. She reached for her jacket, which hadn’t landed that far away, and dug in the pocket for cubits.

“How much do I owe you?” Kara asked.

“You didn’t talk to Rosie about that before you came up?” Gaeta asked, confused.

Kara looked up at him, brow furrowed. “Who’s Rosie?” Gaeta smacked his forehead. “What? I don’t know how this works. I’ve never paid for sex before.”

“Really?”

Kara rolled her eyes. “Gaeta, look at me. Do I look like the kind of person who has to pay if I want to get laid?”

Gaeta shrugged. Kara brushed it off and handed him all the cubits she had left, minus what she needed for the shuttle back. His mouth twitched.

“What?” Kara said. “Isn’t that plenty?”

“Maybe if I’d gone down on you,” Gaeta muttered. He sighed. “You can pay me with something else.”

Kara fingered the ring on her chain with the dogtag and glared at Gaeta, making it clear she was insulted he’d even ask for it.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” he corrected. “You could tell me about news on Galactica. You don’t have to go yet, do you?”

There was something vulnerable about his expression that reminded Kara a little too much of when she’d had him pinned to the bed. She looked around the room, this little hole he’d dug for himself and climbed into like a grave. She didn’t have much pity for anyone who locked himself up by choice, but she had enough to pull her jacket on and settle her back against the wall again.

“Dee’s fine,” Kara said, remembering they had been friends. “She and Lee are doing better, I guess.”

“Better? Was there something wrong?”

It wasn’t until that moment that she realized just how long Gaeta had been gone. “Not really,” she lied.

“Who’s working on the map to Earth?” Gaeta asked when the silence stretched on too long. “Even with Dr. Baltar in the brig, I can’t imagine they’re letting him navigate.”

Kara wracked her brain. “Somebody from CIC. He’s from Pegasus, I think?”

Gaeta leaned in, clearly interested. “Thornton or Lou-uh, Hoshi?”

Kara shrugged. “Like I’d remember. Some bridge bunny. I thought I did good remembering he’s from Pegasus.” Kara started to get up again. “This isn’t gonna work. I don’t know anything about the bridge bunnies, and you don’t care about pilot gossip-”

“I’m sorry about Kat.” Kara froze. Gaeta continued, “I read about her in the newspaper. I read the list of casualties from Galactica every week. Most of the time, it’s the only reason I even get the paper.”

Kara sat back down again, careful to stay staring straight ahead. “That kid was no end of trouble.”

“I know you weren’t friends, but you two loved to hate each other the way the two of us used to.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gaeta draw his knees up toward his chest. “Why did you hate me so much?”

“Because you had a huge stick shoved up your ass, I’m a frak-up, and that mixes like oil and water.”

“No, not before,” Gaeta said. “I think I know, and I certainly don’t blame you, but I’d like to know for sure. In the launch tube, all the others were holding back and hanging on to the idea that it was about justice. You did it because you hated me. Why?”

If Gaeta actually mattered to her or to anyone else anymore, Kara never would have been able to say it. “Because you left me in that cage,” she said evenly. “I’m sure you had really noble reasons for staying all safe and comfortable up in Colonial One, but you didn’t even try to help me, did you?”

“Maybe it was a good thing I didn’t,” he barely whispered, not offering an explanation. Then he said louder, “What could I have done?”

“If our places had been reversed, I would’ve at least tried, even if I think you’re a prick,” Kara said.

“Yes, but if our places had been reversed, you would have tried something that would’ve gotten you shot in the street five minutes into the occupation,” Gaeta said much more coolly than sat well with Kara. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry that I couldn’t do more.”

Kara stood up, shrugged off the jacket, and gathered her clothes up so she could get dressed properly. Whenever she ran across an article of Gaeta’s clothing, she tossed it back at him without looking.

“And that’s not why I always hated you,” Gaeta said, almost as a plea. “I do have a stick shoved up my ass, I’ll admit, but you’re not a frak-up.” That wasn’t enough to get her to turn around, but it was enough to get her to stop and listen. “In fact, I hated you because you’re not a frak-up. You’d suck at my job as much as I would at yours, but you’re a great pilot-the best. You have friends who would walk through fire for you. And even when you do make a mess of things, they’re always ready and waiting to forgive you. You always had so much going for you, and yet you wanted everybody to write you off because you’re such a poor little frak-up. I never had any patience for people like that, but everyone else had endless patience for you. That’s why I hated you.”

There was quite the back-handed compliment in there somewhere, and not an insignificant amount of jealousy, but Kara had no desire to kiss and make up with Gaeta. He didn’t matter to her. That’s what had made this afternoon work.

“Whatever. I’m gonna miss my shuttle.” Kara looked over her shoulder as she pulled on her boots. Gaeta was sitting on his bed again, staring at his knees and waiting for her to leave his poky little room on this crappy ship so he could bury himself alive again. It was a pathetic sight, but she was going to be damned if she was going to carry any more guilt back with her to Galactica, especially over Felix Gaeta.

“Sorry about shorting you on payment,” she said, digging in her pants pocket. She pulled out the miniature book she’d bought while waiting for McCarran to get done with the customer before her. She tossed it at Gaeta, who looked up just in time to catch it. “It’s all I’ve got.”

“Kataris?” he said, turning the book over in his hand.

“On the Banks of the Lethe. Only the first four cantos. Ever heard of it?”

“‘Hell hath no limits, for where we are is Hell, and where Hell is there must we ever be,’” he recited quietly.

“‘Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell; and the lower deep still threatening to devour me opens wide,’” Kara finished.

“We’re even,” Gaeta rasped, not looking up. “Please go.”

There was no sappy, heartfelt good-bye or meaningful glance of forgiveness, because that wasn’t the way things between Kara and Gaeta ever ended. All there was when Kara strode out into the busy street was a new conviction that she wasn’t going to let herself be trapped in that hole of an apartment on New Caprica for the rest of her life. She was going to stare that thing in her dreams down and shoot that phantom Heavy Raider out of the sky, or die trying.

She did give one last thought to Gaeta sitting on the bed, looking out his glassless window. A prison was no less a prison just because you couldn’t see the bars. She didn’t feel guilty leaving him, though, because she knew that whatever was keeping him there, nobody else could break through those invisible bars for him.

And then Kara Thrace never saw or even thought about Felix Gaeta again.

ON TO CHAPTER 5