FIC: Internal Exiles

[lls_mutant]

Oh, good God. I took the boys to get haircuts today. Misery is taking a 1 year old and a 3 year old to get haircuts. Let's just say I tipped the stylist REALLY well, okay?

So I ended up writing that fic that started percolating in my mind. Sheesh. It wasn't on my list of things to write (I was supposed to finish my Watchmen review today, and maybe Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Long-assed-title), but it demanded to be written. So, written it was.

Title: Internal Exiles
Author: lls_mutant
Characters: Baltar, Narcho, Tigh, Caprica Six, Adama, Lee, and Hoshi
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through No Exit
Summary: Five people who didn't pin Gaeta's picture to the Memorial Wall, and the one who did.
Notes: It's been one of those days. I forget who to blame for this one, but I was really desperate for someone to put Gaeta's picture on the wall. daybreak777, I think you'll laugh when you see who I had do it.



Gaius Baltar

"Fire."

The guns ring out, deafening in the airlock. Gaius forces himself to watch, and Tom and Felix's heads snap forward simultaneously. The ringing echo of the shots dies away slowly, the smoke clearing, and then there is silence.

"Save the chairs," Adama tells one of the Marines. His face is stone, impassive. The Marine nods and steps forward, cutting the two men away and letting their bodies fall to the ground. To Gaius's surprise, a second Marine steps forward and, after a quick glance at Adama, kneels and removes Felix's dogtags. Adama doesn't react.

Gaius feels like he should say something- anything. Step forward and say a few words over the bodies. But somehow, he doubts that the Admiral would allow that. Zarek and Gaeta are traitors, and traitors don't rate funerals, did they? So he bows his head alone, closing his eyes and trying to shut out the picture of the violence.

"Baltar." Tigh's voice is rough and too loud in the aftermath. "Get your ass in gear unless you want to be flushed out the airlock, too."

Gaius jerks back to reality and nods, stepping out of the airlock. There are a few people milling around: Marines who had been guarding the doorway, and a Colonial officer in his duty blues with a white face and stricken eyes. He stands between two Marines, and Gaius can't quite tell if he's being restrained or supported.

The Marine who has the dogtags drops them into the officer's hand without a word. The gesture seems cold, but his silence is respectful; the silence of a soldier handing the folded flag to the widower. The realization of who this officer must be and what he must have meant to Felix comes too late, after Gaius is walking down the hall and away from the man.

I know who you are, Felix.

The words ring in his head, as deafening as the gunshots themselves. And they're true… in their way. He's now painfully aware of just how many specifics he never knew and he stops in his tracks, wondering if he should go back down the corridor to find that officer. Funerals and wakes are for the living, but for once Gaius has the sense to realize that this man won't welcome him with open arms, and his presence would only increase the officer's pain.

Besides, he'd rather be alone right now anyway.

Galactica is full of nooks and crannies and places to hide, and it's not hard to find a locker that was meant to hold foodstuffs but is now empty. He closes the hatch behind him, and when he does, the tears streak his face and he slides down the wall to sit on the cold floor.

He's been charged, entrusted to carry on a legacy. And he has no frakking idea of how to go about doing it.

Well, it's not that he doesn't know. He's got a wireless and an audience. He's written a book before, he can do it again. He could just walk up to people and tell them, hold a public funeral, fight Adama if he really wanted to.

And right now, that would accomplish nothing. Nothing but stirring up more bitterness in the wrong places, and getting his own self killed or tossed in the brig, most likely.

What he should do is put a picture of Felix on the Memorial Wall. The thought seizes him and he jumps to his feet like an eager puppy, even as he imagines the sentimentality of putting Felix's picture next to Adrian's. He's opened the door and halfway down the hall when it hits him.

He doesn't have a picture.

Felix was the closest thing he's had to a friend- Felix was his best friend- since the Colonies fell, and he doesn't have a Goddamned picture of him.

He creeps back to his locker and shuts the door quietly, and he hides.

Noel Allison

The brig door clangs open, and Noel jumps to his feet, heart in his throat. It's not Gaeta or Zarek, but Louis Hoshi. For a wild moment Noel thinks that Felix finally broke down and told Louis, but then he realizes Louis is probably just in here until Adama can question him. He walks over to the bars of his cell, wrapping his hands around the cold metal.

"Louis?"

Louis ignores him, but Noel knows him well enough to know that the set of his shoulders and the way his jaw twitches that he's very aware of him standing there. He tries again. "Louis. What happened to Felix?"

"Dead," Louis bites out. "Firing squad."

"Frak." Noel reels back from the bars, his knees threatening to give out and his stomach clenching. He bats eyes irritably- he is not going to cry. Not right now. "I'm sorry," he says.

"You're sorry?" Louis wheels around, and reaches through the bars. He manages to grab Noel's tanks and yanks him forward. "You're frakking sorry? 'Sorry' doesn't make a damn thing better. It doesn't make a frakking mutiny better. And it doesn't bring him back! Don't give me your frakking 'sorry'!" He pushes Noel away and Noel stumbles until his knees hit the cot in his cell. He sits down, and when he looks, Louis is still standing, arms crossed and eyes blazing.

"You're sorry," he spits out mockingly. "We all took an oath. You took an oath, and I know how frakking much you believed in it. Of all people…" Louis shakes his head in disgust. He started to turn away, and then turned back again.

"And why are you even here? Why is it that you know and I had no frakking clue? You and Felix never said two words to each other until he and I…" he shakes his head again. "Why the frak you?"

"Because he knew damn well we'd probably all end up here!" Noel shouts. "You think he wanted you in here? You think he wanted you in front of that firing squad? Use that frakking head you're so proud of, Louis. Felix made sure that you were safe, not just now but later, when Adama starts asking questions."

"And if I didn't want to be safe?" Louis demands. "I don't need your pity or your protection!"

"Well, then, that would have gone really well for what we were trying to do, wouldn't it?"

Louis glares at him, frustrated, and then storms to the opposite side of his cell. It's footsteps away, but his point is made.

It's then that Noel notices that Louis is clutching a pair of dogtags for all he's worth, and that's when it sinks in that this is real.

He sits back against the wall and huddles in on himself. He didn't expect the news to feel quite like this- Louis is right when he says he and Felix never were friends until Felix got involved with Louis. But they bonded quickly, and there had been nights of cards and smoking and laughter before Felix had left on the Demetrius. With so many friends dead, you cling to the ones who remain pretty tightly.

There's a picture in his rack. It's the three of them, and they're making faces at the camera and drunk out of their minds. He wipes at his face. "Hey, Louis," he says, getting up and moving towards the bars.

Louis doesn't answer- he's pretending to be sleeping. But Noel slept beside him for two years; he damn well knows that Louis is faking it. He sighs. "I know you're awake," he says, "and you don't have to say anything, okay? Just listen. In my locker, on the mirror. There's that picture Cally took of the three of us." He suddenly realizes exactly where this request is going, and he has to cut off to swallow hard. "Put it up on the Memorial Wall, will you? Not just for Felix, but for me."

Louis rolls over and blinks at him for a long time. "Adama's not going to kill you," he says.

"What?"

"Not yet. He killed Felix and Zarek," Louis almost spits the second name, "but he won't kill the rest of you. Not yet. He might need you."

Noel nods, and oddly, finds a part of him envying Felix. It's die now or die later from the sounds of it, in a suicide mission or a last-chance battle. "Well," he says slowly, "hold onto it. And when I die, put it up."

"Whatever," Louis says angrily, and turns over. But Noel knows that means yes.

He sighs and sits back down on the cot. Die now or die later, but it doesn't matter. They're all going to die anyway.

Saul Tigh

The last order of business of the day is dealing with Lieutenant Hoshi. "Go get some rest," Bill tells Saul. "You need it, and I can handle this one on my own."

He's exhausted, but Saul shakes his head. "No, I'll come with you. I can't stand beside him in the CIC unless I'm convinced he doesn't belong in the brig."

"Suit yourself," Bill says.

They walk down toward the brig together, and Saul catches a whiff of alcohol in Bill's wake. But he doesn't say anything, because damn it, he'd really like a drink himself. This is the kind of day that made him start drinking in the first place.

They bring Hoshi out, all anger and fire and clenched hands and trembling. Bill sits down.

"How much did you know about Gaeta's plans?" he demands.

"Nothing," Hoshi spits out. "Absolutely nothing."

Saul raises his eyebrows. "Nothing, sir," he corrects, not unaware of the irony of the last time he made that correction.

"Nothing, sir," Hoshi grinds out, and Bill gets the parallels, too.

"I find that hard to believe, Mr. Hoshi. As I understand it, you and Gaeta were close."

"Yeah, well, I thought so, too." Hoshi looks away, and that's the first indication that something's up.

Bill presses on. "You were romantically involved, am I right?"

"Going to bust me for fraternization now?" Hoshi demands, a bitter laugh punctuating the sentence. "Oh, excuse me. Going to bust me for fraternization now, sir?"

"If you're trying to convince me you're guilty, you're doing a damn good job of it, Lieutenant."

Hoshi winces and looks down. He's angry, but he's broken at the moment, too. Saul finds himself wanting to say something, but keeps quiet for the moment, letting Bill handle it.

"I'm waiting for an answer."

Hoshi sighs. "Sir," he says, sitting back loosely in his chair, "I didn't know anything, except that Felix was angry after you didn't do anything about the Raptor."

"I didn't do anything because investigating put him at risk," Bill growls. "If I started asking questions, I'd have a basestar of Cylons looking for his head."

"I know," Hoshi says, and the grief surfaces a little more. "But he didn't. And he was angry. He told me he was going to do something… but I never thought he'd do this. Never. Not Felix."

"Yeah, well, neither did we," Saul says, and his voice sounds rougher than he thought it would. "But he did."

Hoshi shrugs. "He left me, you know," he says, and the knife comes back to his voice. "Right before he started all this, I'm guessing. A matter of days. Was it really only days?" His voice cracks and he closes his eyes and rubs them, hiding them with his hand. His other hand is still clenched around the dog tags, and that's when Saul realizes that Hoshi is crying. He loved Gaeta, and now he's having to….

He's having to hand him a cup of poison, because no matter how much he loves him, Gaeta betrayed them all, and he has to answer for that.

Bill opens his mouth to speak, but Saul puts a hand on his arm. "He's telling the truth, Bill."

"Really." Bill is skeptical, but Saul is convinced.

"Really."

Bill looks up at him, nods, and then nods at Hoshi. "All right," he tells the lieutenant, "you're free to go. But if we have any reason- and I mean any reason- to suspect you knew about this, you'll be right back in here, and then out the airlock."

Hoshi nods. "Yes, sir."

The look on the lieutenant's face haunts Saul as he walks back to his quarters. When he arrives, Caprica is asleep, looking peaceful despite the exhaustion still obvious on her face. He turns on the light and hesitates as she stirs, and then pours himself a drink and sits down at the desk.

He knows exactly where he put the files, and after he takes a long swallow he reaches for them. Gaeta's is right on top, just like it was when he put them away after the Circle was disbanded. He takes another drink and opens it, and Gaeta smiles out at him from New Caprica, from the CIC, looking twelve years old in his dress grays.

Who took that frakking picture anyway? Saul doesn't remember it, but he should, given that he's standing right there.

It's even later when he realizes he's never going to make sense of any of this by staring at pictures, so he knocks back the rest of the drink and goes to bed.

Caprica Six

Saul's gone when she wakes up, and Caprica worries for him. Yesterday was a nightmare, and today won't be much easier. She shivers, pulling the blanket around her shoulders as she slides from the bed and pads across the cold metal floor.

Something crashes and she jumps, her hand over her stomach protectively.

Whatever it was is routine, and she curses herself for being so jumpy. She never was before. But it's not her life she's scared for, it's the baby. It's always the baby.

Saul left a bottle of liquor opened on his desk, and she goes to cork it, her stomach turning at the smell. But her hand freezes midair, glass stopper balanced delicately between her fingers, when she spots the picture on the desk.

Gaeta.

She picks up a picture slowly, remembering him from New Caprica. All angry eyes and coldness, doing his best to ignore her, especially around Gaius. Gaius, whom they'd both loved so much. Who had let them both down so badly. She wonders if anyone on Galactica knows that he'd had Gaius under his gun and let him go.

She would have shot him, but that was the difference between him and her.

She looks back at the bed where Saul had slept beside her, and then puts the picture down and dresses.

She walks through the halls of Galactica, carrying the picture and not quite sure where she's going with it. There are signs of the mutiny everywhere; bloodstains and bullet holes, grief and anger and tears. She stops abruptly and stares at a hole in the wall, and nearly collides with someone.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she says, and then realizes that it's Helo. "Shouldn't you be in sickbay?" The wound on his head looks terrible.

"Not particularly comfortable away from Sharon and Hera," he says, and she nods. He turns his head and looks at the bullet hole in the wall. "I can't believe it. I still can't turn it over in my head."

"It is hard to fathom," she agrees, but Helo's miles away.

"He was my friend," he tells Caprica. "Gaeta, I mean. I never… I know I made the call not to get him back to the Galactica, but to take it out on Sharon and Hera…."

He's hurting, so she puts a hand on his arm. As she does so, she notices an officer walking down the hall towards them. His pace slows, and he's watching them with wide eyes. "He's always been good at hiding," she tells Helo. "He fooled us all on New Caprica, humans and Cylons alike. There was no way you could have known. No way you could have seen this coming."

"No?" Helo bends in, and the officer that's been approaching has stopped completely now. "Maybe I could have seen it coming, if I had taken the frakking time to look. In two weeks he lost his leg, we lost Earth, and he lost Dee, and was on that Raptor. Maybe I should have seen it coming, if I was such a good friend."

"That doesn't justify what he did," Caprica says. The officer standing behind Helo has his jaw clenched, and she notices dark circles under his red eyes. She turns away from him. "He tried to kill Hera." She sees Helo's muscles strain.

"No," the officer says, and Helo spins around. Whatever he was about to say dies on his lips. "He didn't try to kill Hera," the officer says quietly. "He wouldn't have locked her up if that was the case. He would have just killed her, and he wouldn't do that."

The tendons in Helo's neck stand out, and Caprica realizes that he's restraining himself. The officer doesn't stare him down. Instead, he ducks his head, mumbles an apology, and continues down the hall, picking up speed as he goes.

"Helo?" she asks, and he turns back to her.

"Sorry," he says through clenched teeth. He takes a deep breath, and then glances back at in the officer's direction, who's now disappeared around a corner. "Look, I need to get home to Sharon and Hera, okay? Be careful, and I'll see you around."

He walks away, and she wonders for a second if he's going after that officer. But no, he turns the opposite direction. She looks down at the picture again.

This man almost brought about Hera's death. She understands his bitterness, but nothing justifies that. She crumples the picture in her hand and drops it into the nearest receptacle. And then she continues on.

Bill Adama

The CIC hatch opens. Bill looks up, expecting Lee, but it's not. It's Hoshi, creeping in and staring down at the CIC quietly, as if he expects the room to blow up as he walks in. Bill watches him for a moment and then turns away. He can't afford to let this time be any different than the others. It's like ripping off a bandage. The first time will hurt, but then after that it will be okay.

"Take your station, Mr. Hoshi," he says, gesturing to the tactical station.

"Yes sir."

Every eye in the CIC is following Hoshi down to the tactical station, and when he glances at him, Bill can tell he knows it, too. His chin is raised defiantly and his shoulders are squared, but as he passes, Bill realizes he's avoiding looking at anyone. He takes his seat, and although the CIC never really paused, the unspoken rhythm starts up again, like a machine rolling back into operation.

Years of serving with Tigh have taught him how to surreptitiously drink on duty, and he manages to take a swig from his flask. Everyone thinks that this is easy, that only anger propels him and he can banish Felix Gaeta from his mind with no effort. But the truth is he has to be careful or he'll call the wrong name, and that every time Hoshi speaks, he expects to hear Gaeta's voice. The truth is that he sees Gaeta's eyes in front of him constantly, accusing and angry, hears him yelling that he loves this ship more than he loves the people on it. He doesn't say a word about it, because his crew needs him to pretend he doesn't care, but it's there.

Hours pass, and then finally the door opens and Lee comes in. He looks professional and assured, although the nerves are there under his polished surface. Bill can see it in the dishevelment of his hair and the way his tie is loosened.

"What have you got?" he asks, without preamble.

Lee opens a folder. He's organized, and he takes Bill through his list of questions and concerns as fast as he can. These aren't the big issues, not the ones that have to be discussed behind closed doors, and so it's easy to fire back and forth.

At least, it's easy until a scrap of paper flutters to the ground.

Bill picks it up, staring at it. It's a picture of Zarek and Gaeta on New Caprica, Zarek's arm around Gaeta's shoulders as they both smile at the camera. He swallows hard. "You brought this into the CIC?"

Lee's stare is penetrating; he's not fooled like everyone else pretends to be. "I found it while I was cleaning out the Vice President's office," he says. "It was the only picture he had in there."

"I find that hard to believe." Bill sets the picture down on the table. The light behind it makes it look ethereal, and he looks away from it. A mistake, because he finds himself looking directly at Hoshi, and he realizes that there is nowhere this CIC that he can look without feeling guilty. "What are you going to do with it?"

Lee shrugs. "I thought that someone might want to put it on the Memorial Wall."

"You weren't thinking me, I hope." The words taste sour on his lips, and this time he doesn't hide the swig he takes. And Lee doesn't hide the disapproval in his eyes.

"I wasn't thinking of anyone," Lee says, and hoists himself into his presidential posture. But Bill knows he was meant to see the picture, meant to offer. Maybe Lee thought it would give him some peace, maybe Lee thought it was something the Admiral should do. Either way, Lee was wrong.

"Is there anything else?" Bill asks.

"No."

"Then we're done here." He turns back to the CIC table, raises his chin defiantly, squares his shoulders, and avoids looking at anyone.

Lee Adama

He should have known better than to expect anything from his father. Lee sighs. Some sense of fairness dictates that he should understand, that the wounds are too raw. And yet, one day can't erase years of feeling, and Lee knows that just as well as anyone else in this Fleet.

He stands in the Memorial Hall and looks at the picture. Tom Zarek was… what was he to Lee? A mentor, of a sort, although Lee never wanted to be the kind of politician Zarek was. Just the kind that Zarek wanted to see himself as.

A father figure? In a strange way, Lee had once believed that, until he'd found this picture. There is something about Zarek's stance that is relaxed and easy, and something about the way he stands with Gaeta that is… well, Lee can't put his finger on it except to say that now he knows "father figure" isn't the right term.

Funny that he finds himself envying Felix Gaeta over that one, just a little.

Whatever he was, Zarek had been someone in his life, and Lee wants to honor that, even as he wants to forget it forever. There is no better way than to leave the man's picture on a wall he doesn't have to look at and doesn't have to walk past.

He takes the picture between his fingers, ready to tear it in two.

"Don't."

Lee stops. "Lieutenant Hoshi."

"Sir… please. Don't tear it."

"You saw the picture?" Lee asks, a little wary. He's known about Gaeta and Hoshi since they began, because it was back when Dee was still with him. And now Hoshi's standing here in front of him, and he nods.

"Ididn't see it. I knew it existed. Felix told me, a while back." He shakes his head in frustration. "I didn't know that you'd bring it over here, but when I heard the Admiral mention the picture, it wasn't hard to guess which one he meant."

"Yeah, well…" Lee shrugs. "I thought maybe someone would have put a picture up by now." He draws a breath in as he looks at the wall. "Unless I missed it, I was wrong."

Hoshi looks forward, eyes fixed on the wall in a way that suggests if he looks at Lee, he's not going to finish his sentence. "I have four pictures of Felix," he says. Lee looks down at Hoshi's hands and realizes he's holding them. The one on top is a picture of the two of them together, Hoshi behind Gaeta, arms wrapped around him, Gaeta's hands over his, and both of them laughing. "I don't really want to give them up…" Hoshi looks down at the pictures.

There's something in the way he looks at Lee then that reminds Lee of days on the Pegasus. Days when he was a commanding officer, someone who was entrusted with the responsibility of his soldiers. And he realizes that this man has no one to grieve with, that he's bearing his loss alone.

He nods, fumbling for words because there's nothing that's right to say. He takes the pictures from Hoshi and looks at them. The one he saw, a picture of Gaeta in a flight suit shaking an older officer's hand, Gaeta in civilian clothes in Joe's, and a picture of Hoshi, Narcho, and Gaeta all making ludicrous drunken faces at the camera. Hoshi stares at them helplessly, and Lee realizes as he looks through them that these are the only four pictures that Hoshi has.

He hands them back, closing Hoshi's hand around them. "Come on," he says, extending the untorn picture of Zarek and Gaeta. "Let's find a place for them."

They choose an out of the way corner, Lee pins the picture there. Tom and Felix smile at them, hopeful and alive in the sun of a new world. Hoshi smiles, reaches out, and touches the picture softly, and for a moment, he's at peace.

There are bootsteps, and they both pull away from the wall and from each other. A deckhand glances at them as she passes by, headed to a different part of the Hall. But the moment is broken, and Hoshi just nods at Lee, and then turns and walks away.

Lee watches him go, and then turns and walks the other way.