swatkat | Fic: Feet of Clay (Dee, gen)

Title: Feet of Clay
Fandom: BSG
Character(s): Dee, gen (Lee/ Dee, Billy/Dee)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1170
Summary: Gods have this habit of having feet of clay.
A/N: Characters are not mine. Many, many thanks to

jaybee65 for making this coherent and teaching me how to spell, not to mention general encouragement. The remaining incoherence is mine. This is set during 3.19, Crossroads Pt. I.

*

She saw it coming.

*

Billy was different.

Billy was different, sweet and shy and oh-so-earnest. Billy worked for the craftiest politician in the Fleet and spoke of college and Caprica and the President's thoughts on the tragedies, and Dee would be in awe of him, sometimes.

He didn't sweep her off her feet (she thinks she swept him off his). Billy was different.

His hands were soft, like a child's.

(Dee has a soldier's hands. Farmer's.)

The first time they frakked, she pinned him down on his bunk and swung her leg over his body to straddle him, easy, and he looked up at her with something bordering on reverence. His fingers fumbled with the clasp of her bra.

*

Every year in Spring they would visit the altar at Didyma to pay their honours to Apollo and drink from the fountain. For inspiration, her father would say.

Anastasia never felt particularly inspired, but the water was cool and sweet, as refreshing as the crisp mountain air.

(Dee has never tasted anything like it again.)

The mountains were green in spring, so unlike the rest of Sagittaron (barren).

There would be pilgrims from every corner of the colony, seers and musicians and people who were dying (always, the dying). Alex loved the gymnasts best. He would drag her along with him every year and there they would sit, watching the naked, gleaming bodies perform impossible feats for Apollo, till their father dragged them back to their tent again.

(If she closes her eyes, she can still smell the clear mountain air, the incense and the flowers at the altar.)

*

The entire Fleet is engrossed in Baltar's trial and she is no exception: Dee sits beside Felix and watches the proceedings. The old man on the judge's table, stern as a rock and Gaius frakking Baltar, flanked by the defence counsel. Lee.

After a while, Felix whispers, "They're going to ask me to testify."

Dee nods. "I know."

"I believed him," Felix says. "I thought – "

"Shh. I know."

She does not say you should've seen it coming.

In front of them, the prosecution interrogates Colonel Tigh. Gaius Baltar leans to his left to whisper words into her husband's ear.

*

A year before the world ended, Dee was in Caprica, and she and Felix Gaeta went to watch what they were calling a 'revival' of Agamemnon.

Inside, the playhouse was beautiful: warm lights and soft, plush seats, so luxurious. Clean.

"First time in ten years," Gaeta read out from the brochure. "That should be interesting." He was excited, she could tell. She didn't think he got out very often.

Halfway through the first act, Dee told Gaeta, "They're doing it wrong."

Gaeta looked puzzled.

*

Eight months after the settlement on New Caprica, Lee took her flying on a Raptor.

"This is your idea of romantic getaway?" she teased him.

"Better than that planet full of muck any day," he smiled back.

The stars were unusually bright that night.

*

There was uproar in the rec room the day Duck took out his tiny Artemis statuette and laid it down on the table.

Galactica was new and strange, and the pilots intimidated her. She stayed away from the rec room with its loud voices and laughter, occasional brawls and the stench of sweatsmokehooch, suffocating. (Normal.) At times, Gaeta would cajole her into coming and she sat quietly at the back, watching the pilots gamble and swear at each other.

"Sure you want to risk getting hit by a thunderbolt?" Boomer raised an eyebrow.

"She never lets me down," Duck said, smiling his crooked smile, earning a glance of approval from Nora.

"If you say so," Boomer said, and shrugged.

"You don't believe in the gods?"

"Frak, no," Boomer said. "Unless you count the old man."

Starbuck, who was her partner, laughed so hard that she nearly upset the bottle of hooch on herself.

(Later, much later, Dee will think that maybe they weren't joking after all.)

*

The theatre festival was her favourite. All of Sagittaron would throng the shows, and her father would grip her hand very, very tight so that she wouldn't get lost in the crowd.

Alex insisted on spending every waking hour at the festival. Enough, her father would say, and her mother would laugh and laugh.

(She remembers the music: the heat and dust and dancing, the energy, the cheering, pulsating crowd and scent of ambrosia in the air. But most of all, the music.)

*

"Did you know Baltar's from Aerelon?" she asks Felix.

(She's still surprised that they don't look at her and know she's from Sagittaron.)

*

Lee had never been to Sagittaron.

"We moved around a lot with Dad, but he was never posted there," Lee told her the day she asked. A lazy afternoon on Pegasus, just the two of them, no Cylons in sight. "After the divorce, Mom took us back to Caprica and that's where we settled." He toyed with the pencil he had been using to scribble on the charts.

"You didn't miss much," Dee said. "There wasn't much to see." (Barren.)

"Helo and Kara once crash-landed in Sagittaron, back when Zarek…" he trailed off, suddenly, and Dee had to say, "I know that story." Lightly.

Lee smiled at her, but afterwards he wouldn't look her in the eye.

(She thinks she saw it coming.)

*

A week before the world ended, Dee spoke to her brother for the last time.

She let him speak, drinking in the warmth in his voice and all his stories over the patchy connection - the inter-colonial networks in Sagittaron left much to be desired.

"Talk to him," he said in the end.

"Not now, Alex," she told him. "Not now."

*

"You ever wonder what it's like back home?" Chief Tyrol asked her one day, passing on a glass of his freshly-brewed grog.

She was here on duty, actually, armed with blueprints and maintenance staff rosters. These days, there was precious little time when she was not on duty.

"Galactica's our home now," she said, swirling the clear liquid in the glass. The grog smelt, well, foul. The rosters could wait a little.

"There were survivors in Caprica. How do you know there aren't any in the other colonies?" Chief persisted.

"I don't think about it," Dee said.

(When Starbuck and Helo returned they had stories: the empty streets and rubble in Caprica City and the way the sun shone under radiation haze.)

The grog's taste was as foul as its smell.

*

She has barely closed her eyes when Lee stumbles back to their quarters.

"Hey," she says, noting the weariness on his features and the disheveled hair, the slight unfocused look in his eyes. His uniform. "Lee – "

"Hey," Lee says, shucking off his clothes, all but collapsing beside her on the bed. "It's been a long day."

"Lee, your – "

He reaches for her, then, and she lets herself be drawn, ambrosia on his breath and his fingers fumbling with clasp of her bra.

*

Current Mood: sleepy

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

queenofthorns.livejournal.com

Oh, this is really lovely - I am a big fan of Dee, and this is a beautifully drawn picture of her own alienation and loneliness, which to me, is a wonderful explanation of why she married Lee. And I love the little details you've added about how things were back home, to where they can never return.

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Fic: Feet of Clay (Dee, gen)

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