Safer With Her

[wyrdwritere]

Author’s Note: The story is meant to address how the battle of New Caprica might have gone had Helena Cain still been alive.  It’s a sequel to an earlier fic, Hubris, an AU in which the budding civil war in mid Season Two between Galactica and Pegasus was averted, and Cain was imprisoned aboard the Galactica, where she has remained for a year,

Comments

[daybreak777]

You have such a knack for writing Cain. She scares me, not too much but enough. Somehow in your fic, I can read it. I don't like her or sympathize, but I can understand her more.

Did she die? Still don't like her. :-) I did enjoy this, though, and found myself wondering what was going to happen next. And I really liked your use of Racetrack, Laird, and Kat here. Particularly Laird. He's remarkably laid-back for all he's seen. He needed some resolution to his trauma.

“And yet, here you are.” Her words were neutral, but her tone stained them with contempt.
I could totally hear her saying this. Made the fic very real for me somehow.

Thanks for sharing it.

[wyrdwritere]

I'm glad that you like my version Cain better than the real one. She's a great character, and I think she'd become a great person, if her death wasn't fated.

I agree that Laird needed resolution. It's one of the dropped threads that's nagged at me, perhaps second only to Boomer.

Yes, she dies at the end of the story. I wanted my story to track with canon as much as possible, so having her sit around in prison for a year, then coming back for a guest appearance, and then dying at the end, means that the course of the show isn't disrupted by having her around post-Exodus.

I do wonder how much things would be changed with Pegasus surviving the battle, and the humans having more time to escape from New Caprica. I think not that much. Or at least, nothing that couldn't be tweaked as the season developed.

Thanks for your comment.

[jaybee65]

This is fantastic. Simply fantastic! Tight, well-plotted, and well-characterized. Can't ask for more!

[wyrdwritere]

Thank you so much. I'm insufferably pleased with it right now, and I'm very glad that I'm not the only one. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

[jaybee65]

You *should* be pleased! You deserve a much more detailed comment than I have the time to leave right now (I'm only barely keeping up with my online reading), but I definitely plan on going back and exploring what else you may have written.

[wyrdwritere]

Thanks very much. I love long comments, and I hope you like my earlier fic.

[millari]

Your Cain is really great. She's a hard character to write, I think, because she's so determined, and so stubborn in her wrongheadedness sometimes. It's hard to write in the voice of a character like that, and I'm impressed with how well you did it here. And yet, you made me believe in her turnaround at the end, despite Laird's betrayal

[wyrdwritere]

I actually didn't find Cain that hard to write. I think it's because I really pick my battles when it come to fic, and I only write characters I 'get'. I haven't written a lot Baltar or Gaeta, you'll notice

[millari]

That was a lovely reply, the kind that totally makes it worth it to put extra thought into a comment. :)

[rebelliousrose]

I can't say I enjoyed this; Cain isn't really a character you enjoy, ever, which is why I think you did a great job with it. Cain was.....Cain. And poor Laird.

[wyrdwritere]

I'm glad you did not enjoy it. :) I've really come to feel bad for Helena. Hope and imagination are little celebrated virtues in our society (and I suspect Colonial society, too) and they're precisely the virtues that Cain lacked, which allowed her to stray onto her dark path.

And, yes, poor Laird. :(

Thanks for commenting!