milliways_bar | (no subject)

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It's been a long day.

A long week, actually.

(Gaeta won't even talk about what the past month's been like.)

Not having something to occupy his hands and mind -- a report, a stack of notes, even just a pen and paper -- feels awkward enough that Gaeta's taken to folding a small fleet of paper airplanes at his table. Being made out of napkins, all of them are too wobbly to fly, but that's not exactly the point; the point is to stay alert, stay awake, and do anything but sit around doing nothing.

...Even if it's much more likely that any alertness Gaeta currently possesses comes more from the three empty mugs rimmed with coffee stains, not the slowly massing collection of floppy aircraft.

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"All right." Quiet, far more to himself than to her, as he nods down at the half-folded plane in his hands.

Gaeta drops it on top of the splayed pile of airplanes and collects the rest of his thoughts.

"How long have you been here?"

Sharon hesitates.

Then, she sets her mug down on the table, among the paper airplanes. She doesn't, however, sit down yet.

"A few days," she answers, with no particular certainty. "The door I came through - locked."

He hadn't been aware of the possibility until she abruptly refuted it, and it aches, sharply: maybe I could cross through Milliways to get to Galactica. Adama's been here before, he would understand how I got on board --

No matter. No point.

His gaze slips to the mug for half a beat before it goes back up to Sharon. "It happens sometimes," he says, no louder than before. "It's called being Bound."

"They said that."

Her hands fidget, for a moment.

"All right, I don't know what's going on right now, but -"

Sharon's not struggling at all for the words, and she meets his eyes.

"It's been a long time since they've heard anything from the planet."

And she wants to know, but doubts Gaeta would want to hear that from her.

Gaeta's mouth sets in a thin line. He crosses his arms atop the table's edge and glances away again, just for a moment.

"Baltar surrendered. We're under occupation." Very level. "They're conducting regular raids. They've built a detention center. They shot up a temple a couple of weeks ago."

Each they weighs like you, almost unconsciously.

And then it shifts, devolves by a touch, brushes against pleading before it retreats: "Where the frak is the fleet?"

Sharon, once again, keeps any outward reaction to this reigned in.

It's not until the question that she slips, breaking eye contact again.

"Gaeta, I'm not an officer."

Neither, for that matter, is he.

That's not the frakking point, he nearly says...but it is, and he knows it is.

Still, with all he's doing, has done, why can't anyone else --

In frustration, he grits his teeth against one another and cups his forehead in his hand, taking a moment to make sure said frustration is fully contained before he says anything.

"We need their help," is what he finally settles on, voice low.

She nearly trips over the first word, but stops herself.

"They know."

Sharon hesitates again, but this time, yanks out one of the chairs at the table and sits, leaning with her elbow resting on her legs.

"But the Fleet's not in shape for anything, and - I don't think there's been any contact."

"So consider this contact."

He sees her face every day alongside the Sixes and Threes, he knows what she's become, but before she was a Cylon, this model was Boomer. If he looks from the corner of his eye, his mind will sometimes stutter and stick on that fact. And by now, Gaeta will take anyone who's set foot on Galactica within the past two and a half months.

Anything, a far less charitable part of him would say.

He spreads his hands. "You can't be the only one in the brig. I know there'll be Marines at least, once you're able to get back -- "

Edited 2009-08-24 02:43 (UTC)

"And tell them I walked out of the brig, into a bar, and ran into Felix Gaeta?"

Her frustration breaks into her voice, not only because she's still not sure she believes any of this. Sharon knows the Marines are hardly the only ones she could talk to now.

"You're not the only one who's been here before. The admiral knows about it, so does Lee and..."

And that's all, he realizes. Everyone else who's found a door -- Roslin, Starbuck -- they're stuck on New Caprica alongside him. Maybe even dead.

If he wasn't grasping at straws before, he certainly is now, and Gaeta is fully aware of it. His hands curl back in on themselves; he turns them over, and doesn't continue.

Frak.

Edited 2009-08-24 03:15 (UTC)

Sharon's eyes flicker to the floor again.

"I can talk to the admiral."

Gaeta lifts his head, swiftly, as a dim but undisguised hope flashes across his face.

"But -"

She puts one hand to her forehead, for a moment, before looking up again.

"- you have to help me here, all right? I still don't really know what this is."

Gaeta sighs, very softly.

She could be lying, says another stray thought. She could be one of the New Caprica Eights, and if I tell her anything else --

A far wearier voice contradicts it: If you do, will it really matter all that much?

"Did anyone else tell you the basics already?"

"End of the universe. Crossroads between worlds."

She still doesn't sound entirely convinced about any of this.

"And the door can not let me leave."

Which is, in fact, about as basic as one can get.

Gaeta tucks one arm underneath the other, watching Sharon. "The way I've tended to think about it is that it's a localized temporal anomaly that creates a multiversal point of intersection. I know multiversal theory's lost popularity in the last ten or fifteen years, but..." He inclines his head to the side, indicating the bar around them. "This might be the closest to proof there is.

"The Window I still can't explain, and being Bound...I've never had that happen to me, so I know even less about it. Besides how either the door locks or flat-out disappears," he amends.

There are many subjects of which Sharon has memories of doing very well, but theoretical physics was not one of them.

She is honestly trying to keep up with with what Gaeta is telling her, though once he hits 'multiversal theory,' she's trying to do so while staring at the floor again.

Quietly (maybe even a little nervously), "So what you're saying is, the people here, aren't from the same - place we are?"

"Right," he says. "Or even from the same time, necessarily."

He hesitates.

But finishing that thought, asking her, have any of them actually told you where they're from? and leading it into the news that nearly every human being in this room is from Earth...even telling himself that it doesn't matter can't stop him from balking.

Peter Petrelli hadn't reached Earth in his string of words she didn't recognize.

But she also can't get herself to ask what she wants to, so she draws the mug she left on the table over, now filled with cold, weak tea, and asks (though it could hardly be called a question), "And you just... walked through a door and came here."

Gaeta nods.

"I've heard the door can shift," he says. "Sometimes it'll appear in one location, then, ah, switch to another one without warning. But mine's stayed pretty constant."

"Well, it's not like I have that many options."

It's a few moments after she's made the joke that her expression seems to freeze, and she sips from the mug a little awkwardly.

Yeah. Awkward's a good word for it.

Gaeta glances to the paper planes and mutters, a touch flat, "I guess you don't, yeah."

She lowers the mug again, balancing it between her hands.

Neutral, "I'd go back there."

If Gaeta were in a similar situation, he'd go back, too. It's rule of the Fleet; it's what you do.

He's learned exceptionally well in the past year that people don't always think like him, though. And to hear a Cylon say it --

It's enough to prompt him to ask, with full curiosity, "Why?"