Fic: Monster
Title: Monster
Author: kappamaki33
Characters: Hoshi, Cain, Gina, Gaeta, 2 OCs
Pairing: Gaeta/Hoshi, Cain/Gina
Summary: I’m mean.
Rating: Definitely R.
Warnings! Violence, torture, talk of and aftermath of rape
Notes: For geekbynight’s prompt, Felix is the Pegasus Cylon prisoner. I mean, that’s bound to get dark, but yikes. I feel like I need a nightlight. Not so sure I’m going to cross-post this one right away, either... On the bright side, I did finally manage to write something under 2,000 words for a change. Also, I'm getting really lazy when it comes to titles. Also, I realized this makes me worse about same-sex relationships than RDM, since this is a fic with both of the canon ones at least in the background, and they're really, really frakked up.
Monster
Louis Hoshi sat in a cell and whispered the words, “Please, gods; please, dear gods,” over and over again, never finishing the sentence because he honestly didn’t know what he was begging for.
Two marines sat outside his cell. He faced away from them, but he could hear them talk, if he worked to focus his attention. He was in a makeshift hack with actual bars instead of the clear, silencing plexiglass of Pegasus’s real brig. Those cells were both full, and he wasn’t much of a threat by comparison.
“Gods, how could somebody ever let a thing frak them like that?” the man, Private Rimes, asked.
“Careful,” said the woman. Corporal-Louis struggled to remember her name. Anything to get his mind off of-Laramie. Dana Laramie. “You’ve heard the rumors. I don’t think you want to be accusing the Admiral of anything right now, even though that’s not who you’re intending on accusing.”
Louis knew that the truth behind those rumors and all the untidy hypocrisy that would come with it were the only reasons the Admiral hadn’t put a bullet between his eyes. Yet.
The power of love, he thought to himself ruefully.
Rimes squirmed in his chair. “But-wouldn’t you know? They’re frakking machines. It has to feel different.”
There was a long pause. “You been down to visit the prisoners?” Laramie asked.
Rimes snorted. “Frak, yeah. Couple of times.”
“Both of ‘em?”
“Why not?” Louis’s stomach churned when he heard Rimes’s voice edged with laughter.
“Did it feel any different?”
“Well, yeah.” It was obvious Rimes hadn’t thought about it like that before. “Can’t say exactly how, but-course it does. I mean, you couldn’t do that if they were real, right? Admiral wouldn’t allow it.”
Laramie breathed out, long and slow. “So you think their crying and screaming is all make-believe?”
“Well, Gina-” Louis could feel the heat of Laramie’s gaze, even without seeing it. First rule the Admiral had made: things do not have names. “I mean, the female one-she wasn’t crying anymore by the time I got down there.”
The implication of what was left unsaid made Louis want to vomit. There was no toilet in his cell, though, and someone had taken the bed pan an hour ago to clean it and hadn’t brought it back yet. He would be damned if he’d ask them to escort him to the head for that. He couldn’t show that kind of weakness, so he swallowed down the bile as he felt his guts twist in knots.
“Weird,” Laramie said. “Y’see, I want ‘em to hurt. Frankly, I don’t see much point in any of this if they can’t hurt. But maybe that’s why I can’t do the kind of things you and your friends like so much.”
“You been down there, too?”
There was silence, long enough for a nod, Louis thought.
“What did you do, then?” Rimes asked.
“Broke the son of a bitch’s kneecap with a good kick,” Laramie said, voice warming a bit with anger. “Spat on him. Line was too long for her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Laramie said. “Told him, ‘That’s for my Gram, you son of a bitch.’ Then spat in his face. Gram was all I had before the attacks. Crazy old lady raised me good, though. She was in a home on Aerilon. Kind of hope she didn’t know what hit her. But as for that thing in the brig, I wanted him to feel it. Wouldn’t have been worth it if he hadn’t screamed when the bone cracked.”
“Oh,” Rimes said quietly, almost quavering.
“What did you think the Admiral kept them for? So you horny fraks could have two talking blow-up dolls?”
“Course I didn’t.” Louis could tell even Rimes didn’t really believe what he said.
Laramie sighed. “Eh, what do I know about it? Maybe I’m just not as angry as the rest of you. Maybe I didn’t have as much to lose.”
Louis was busy taking deep, shuddering breaths and counting his losses, squeezing his eyes shut and fighting back tears every time he came to the latest name on the list, when the cell door clanged open. He looked up, then stood bolt upright and saluted almost instinctively.
“Mr. Hoshi,” Admiral Cain said evenly, eyes blazing. “I’m not going to bother asking whether you knew anything. For one, I saw your face when Lieutenant Shaw put through the security camera feed, and I don’t think you’re that good of an actor. For two, you’d be a fool to answer anything but ‘I didn’t know’ at this point, and you’ve worked under me long enough that I know you are generally not a fool.”
“Yes, sir,” Louis ventured, though he was afraid he was speaking out of turn.
The Admiral considered him for a moment, then cocked her head. “Come with me.”
“Yes, sir.” Louis noted that she didn’t call him by any rank-he figured he’d be lucky to have one at the end of all this. She turned and walked out of the cell, and Louis followed obediently. Rimes and Laramie fell into step on either side of him.
They walked in silence through a maze of side corridors. Even taking the less-traveled halls, they still ran into other crew members. Louis didn’t know whether they looked at him with contempt or confusion or pity or even saw him at all, because he couldn’t bring himself to meet anyone’s eyes.
Somehow, even though he’d known deep down where they were going the whole time, Louis felt himself start to tremble when they came to the hatch. The empty observation area stretched out in front of the two glassed-in cells; the Admiral must have cleared out the lines of crew members before she’d come to get him. The only ones left were a few marines, armed to the teeth, and Lieutenant Thorne, who finished tucking in his uniform jacket before saluting.
“That’ll be all for now, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed,” the Admiral said. Thorne smirked at Louis as he left.
“Corporal, open that cell,” ordered the Admiral.
Louis flicked his gaze over to the cell that remained closed. All he could see was a hank of dirty, matted blonde hair and a shuddering, blood-stained shift.
The Admiral nodded at Louis. “Go on.”
He had avoided it as long as he could, but there was no escaping it now.
It-no, there was no way to eradicate names when they were face-to-face, Louis realized instantly-Felix, his Felix, lay on the floor. His wrists were bound and stretched behind his back, chains attached to the cuffs on one end and fed through a hole in the floor on the other, like a dog with its leash tied to a stake. Louis saw the bruises blooming on his legs and arms and face and didn’t want to think of the ones the soiled shift was hiding. His knee had stopped bleeding, but no one had bothered to bandage it. Fresh blood trickled from a cut above his brow, and his nose looked like it was broken.
But his eyes-dear gods, Louis thought, those are still his eyes, seeing everything. Louis wasn’t sure whether that gave him satisfaction or made him even sicker.
Felix tilted his head slightly to look past Louis, and apparently he saw Admiral Cain standing outside, watching. His demeanor changed in an instant, and he rolled over, with obvious pain and effort, away from Louis.
“No, you look at me,” Louis ground out. “Look at me!”
Felix groaned when he kicked him in the back, not as hard as he could have. Felix didn’t move.
Louis stepped over his feet. “Look at me!” Another kick, this time harder and to the stomach. Another groan, and Felix curled his legs part way over his abdomen.
That was when Louis really looked at him again. Felix’s expression had changed completely, and Louis’s breath caught in his throat.
It’s okay, Felix mouthed, eyes wet and understanding. He knew this was a test of Louis’s loyalty, just as well as Louis had known from the start. Felix had rolled over so the Admiral couldn’t see.
Felix tilted his head and closed his eyes. Please, he said silently.
A few solid kicks to his temple, and it would all be over. The marines wouldn’t be able to stop Louis in time. The Admiral might be angry, but not for long. It would seem natural to her. Not to mention, she would still have one prisoner to rip information out of.
Louis stood silent for a long time. Finally, the tension inside him broke like a wave.
“How the frak could you do this!” he yelled, punctuating many of the words with more kicks to Felix’s stomach. “You killed them all! You piece of Cylon filth, you killed them all!”
He looked up at Felix’s face. He had opened his eyes now and looked a little scared, but still...trusting.
Louis moved up so he was square with Felix’s head. “Look at me,” he demanded. Felix did, a question in his eyes.
He spat in Felix’s face.
When he saw Felix’s heart break, that was when he learned for certain that Cylons had hearts.
“That enough, Lieutenant?” Admiral Cain said over the intercom. He looked up. He couldn’t say exactly what it was about her expression, but he could tell that he’d passed. He stepped over Felix and did his best to ignore the sobs until the plexiglass door shut behind him, sealing the pitiful noises in with Felix.
“You still have a hell of a lot of explaining to do, Hoshi,” Admiral Cain said, almost tired.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re confined to quarters, except for duty, until further notice.” She nodded at the marines, a silent order.
“Yes, sir.”
As Rimes and Laramie escorted him to his bunkroom, unbearable thoughts still buzzed in his head. He still didn’t know why he’d spared Felix. It could have been because of some sick, selfish lingering affection for a person responsible for killing almost everyone he’d ever known. Or it could have been because he couldn’t bear to give Felix such an easy way out to resurrection or oblivion or whatever awaited him, because he wanted Felix to hurt. Even worse, Louis wasn’t sure which reason would make him more of a monster.
Author: kappamaki33
Characters: Hoshi, Cain, Gina, Gaeta, 2 OCs
Pairing: Gaeta/Hoshi, Cain/Gina
Summary: I’m mean.
Rating: Definitely R.
Warnings! Violence, torture, talk of and aftermath of rape
Notes: For geekbynight’s prompt, Felix is the Pegasus Cylon prisoner. I mean, that’s bound to get dark, but yikes. I feel like I need a nightlight. Not so sure I’m going to cross-post this one right away, either... On the bright side, I did finally manage to write something under 2,000 words for a change. Also, I'm getting really lazy when it comes to titles. Also, I realized this makes me worse about same-sex relationships than RDM, since this is a fic with both of the canon ones at least in the background, and they're really, really frakked up.
Monster
Louis Hoshi sat in a cell and whispered the words, “Please, gods; please, dear gods,” over and over again, never finishing the sentence because he honestly didn’t know what he was begging for.
Two marines sat outside his cell. He faced away from them, but he could hear them talk, if he worked to focus his attention. He was in a makeshift hack with actual bars instead of the clear, silencing plexiglass of Pegasus’s real brig. Those cells were both full, and he wasn’t much of a threat by comparison.
“Gods, how could somebody ever let a thing frak them like that?” the man, Private Rimes, asked.
“Careful,” said the woman. Corporal-Louis struggled to remember her name. Anything to get his mind off of-Laramie. Dana Laramie. “You’ve heard the rumors. I don’t think you want to be accusing the Admiral of anything right now, even though that’s not who you’re intending on accusing.”
Louis knew that the truth behind those rumors and all the untidy hypocrisy that would come with it were the only reasons the Admiral hadn’t put a bullet between his eyes. Yet.
The power of love, he thought to himself ruefully.
Rimes squirmed in his chair. “But-wouldn’t you know? They’re frakking machines. It has to feel different.”
There was a long pause. “You been down to visit the prisoners?” Laramie asked.
Rimes snorted. “Frak, yeah. Couple of times.”
“Both of ‘em?”
“Why not?” Louis’s stomach churned when he heard Rimes’s voice edged with laughter.
“Did it feel any different?”
“Well, yeah.” It was obvious Rimes hadn’t thought about it like that before. “Can’t say exactly how, but-course it does. I mean, you couldn’t do that if they were real, right? Admiral wouldn’t allow it.”
Laramie breathed out, long and slow. “So you think their crying and screaming is all make-believe?”
“Well, Gina-” Louis could feel the heat of Laramie’s gaze, even without seeing it. First rule the Admiral had made: things do not have names. “I mean, the female one-she wasn’t crying anymore by the time I got down there.”
The implication of what was left unsaid made Louis want to vomit. There was no toilet in his cell, though, and someone had taken the bed pan an hour ago to clean it and hadn’t brought it back yet. He would be damned if he’d ask them to escort him to the head for that. He couldn’t show that kind of weakness, so he swallowed down the bile as he felt his guts twist in knots.
“Weird,” Laramie said. “Y’see, I want ‘em to hurt. Frankly, I don’t see much point in any of this if they can’t hurt. But maybe that’s why I can’t do the kind of things you and your friends like so much.”
“You been down there, too?”
There was silence, long enough for a nod, Louis thought.
“What did you do, then?” Rimes asked.
“Broke the son of a bitch’s kneecap with a good kick,” Laramie said, voice warming a bit with anger. “Spat on him. Line was too long for her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Laramie said. “Told him, ‘That’s for my Gram, you son of a bitch.’ Then spat in his face. Gram was all I had before the attacks. Crazy old lady raised me good, though. She was in a home on Aerilon. Kind of hope she didn’t know what hit her. But as for that thing in the brig, I wanted him to feel it. Wouldn’t have been worth it if he hadn’t screamed when the bone cracked.”
“Oh,” Rimes said quietly, almost quavering.
“What did you think the Admiral kept them for? So you horny fraks could have two talking blow-up dolls?”
“Course I didn’t.” Louis could tell even Rimes didn’t really believe what he said.
Laramie sighed. “Eh, what do I know about it? Maybe I’m just not as angry as the rest of you. Maybe I didn’t have as much to lose.”
Louis was busy taking deep, shuddering breaths and counting his losses, squeezing his eyes shut and fighting back tears every time he came to the latest name on the list, when the cell door clanged open. He looked up, then stood bolt upright and saluted almost instinctively.
“Mr. Hoshi,” Admiral Cain said evenly, eyes blazing. “I’m not going to bother asking whether you knew anything. For one, I saw your face when Lieutenant Shaw put through the security camera feed, and I don’t think you’re that good of an actor. For two, you’d be a fool to answer anything but ‘I didn’t know’ at this point, and you’ve worked under me long enough that I know you are generally not a fool.”
“Yes, sir,” Louis ventured, though he was afraid he was speaking out of turn.
The Admiral considered him for a moment, then cocked her head. “Come with me.”
“Yes, sir.” Louis noted that she didn’t call him by any rank-he figured he’d be lucky to have one at the end of all this. She turned and walked out of the cell, and Louis followed obediently. Rimes and Laramie fell into step on either side of him.
They walked in silence through a maze of side corridors. Even taking the less-traveled halls, they still ran into other crew members. Louis didn’t know whether they looked at him with contempt or confusion or pity or even saw him at all, because he couldn’t bring himself to meet anyone’s eyes.
Somehow, even though he’d known deep down where they were going the whole time, Louis felt himself start to tremble when they came to the hatch. The empty observation area stretched out in front of the two glassed-in cells; the Admiral must have cleared out the lines of crew members before she’d come to get him. The only ones left were a few marines, armed to the teeth, and Lieutenant Thorne, who finished tucking in his uniform jacket before saluting.
“That’ll be all for now, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed,” the Admiral said. Thorne smirked at Louis as he left.
“Corporal, open that cell,” ordered the Admiral.
Louis flicked his gaze over to the cell that remained closed. All he could see was a hank of dirty, matted blonde hair and a shuddering, blood-stained shift.
The Admiral nodded at Louis. “Go on.”
He had avoided it as long as he could, but there was no escaping it now.
It-no, there was no way to eradicate names when they were face-to-face, Louis realized instantly-Felix, his Felix, lay on the floor. His wrists were bound and stretched behind his back, chains attached to the cuffs on one end and fed through a hole in the floor on the other, like a dog with its leash tied to a stake. Louis saw the bruises blooming on his legs and arms and face and didn’t want to think of the ones the soiled shift was hiding. His knee had stopped bleeding, but no one had bothered to bandage it. Fresh blood trickled from a cut above his brow, and his nose looked like it was broken.
But his eyes-dear gods, Louis thought, those are still his eyes, seeing everything. Louis wasn’t sure whether that gave him satisfaction or made him even sicker.
Felix tilted his head slightly to look past Louis, and apparently he saw Admiral Cain standing outside, watching. His demeanor changed in an instant, and he rolled over, with obvious pain and effort, away from Louis.
“No, you look at me,” Louis ground out. “Look at me!”
Felix groaned when he kicked him in the back, not as hard as he could have. Felix didn’t move.
Louis stepped over his feet. “Look at me!” Another kick, this time harder and to the stomach. Another groan, and Felix curled his legs part way over his abdomen.
That was when Louis really looked at him again. Felix’s expression had changed completely, and Louis’s breath caught in his throat.
It’s okay, Felix mouthed, eyes wet and understanding. He knew this was a test of Louis’s loyalty, just as well as Louis had known from the start. Felix had rolled over so the Admiral couldn’t see.
Felix tilted his head and closed his eyes. Please, he said silently.
A few solid kicks to his temple, and it would all be over. The marines wouldn’t be able to stop Louis in time. The Admiral might be angry, but not for long. It would seem natural to her. Not to mention, she would still have one prisoner to rip information out of.
Louis stood silent for a long time. Finally, the tension inside him broke like a wave.
“How the frak could you do this!” he yelled, punctuating many of the words with more kicks to Felix’s stomach. “You killed them all! You piece of Cylon filth, you killed them all!”
He looked up at Felix’s face. He had opened his eyes now and looked a little scared, but still...trusting.
Louis moved up so he was square with Felix’s head. “Look at me,” he demanded. Felix did, a question in his eyes.
He spat in Felix’s face.
When he saw Felix’s heart break, that was when he learned for certain that Cylons had hearts.
“That enough, Lieutenant?” Admiral Cain said over the intercom. He looked up. He couldn’t say exactly what it was about her expression, but he could tell that he’d passed. He stepped over Felix and did his best to ignore the sobs until the plexiglass door shut behind him, sealing the pitiful noises in with Felix.
“You still have a hell of a lot of explaining to do, Hoshi,” Admiral Cain said, almost tired.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re confined to quarters, except for duty, until further notice.” She nodded at the marines, a silent order.
“Yes, sir.”
As Rimes and Laramie escorted him to his bunkroom, unbearable thoughts still buzzed in his head. He still didn’t know why he’d spared Felix. It could have been because of some sick, selfish lingering affection for a person responsible for killing almost everyone he’d ever known. Or it could have been because he couldn’t bear to give Felix such an easy way out to resurrection or oblivion or whatever awaited him, because he wanted Felix to hurt. Even worse, Louis wasn’t sure which reason would make him more of a monster.