![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[Washington, DC, USA, Earth]
The rest of the day passes uneventfully. Gaeta sticks to the guest room for most of it, quietly paging through the comics Steve lent him, sipping the coffee Orpheus provided. When he ventures out for dinner, he surreptitiously sizes up the kitchen: maybe if he wakes early enough, he could make them breakfast tomorrow morning.
Maybe he would have been all right in Milliways after all. If he's not even going to leave the godsdamn apartment --
(But he could leave the apartment if he wanted. That's the difference. He's not trapped by the celebration downstairs; when he looks out the window, he can see a landscape he's never seen before.)
Night falls. He stays up late, perched at the guest room's windowsill, watching lights flicker on along the streets below. There's a circular sign with a green-and-white mermaid not too far away; several doors down from that, bright red neon inscribing something called Kramerbooks & Afterwords illuminates the way.
By the time he returns to bed, most of the cars have disappeared.
And when he stretches his arm across the empty mattress, in the near-silence of an unfamiliar place, he feels his throat catch.
For over a year, something's anchored him while he slept. Gogo took up the mantle for a while; Louis shared it once time settled into alignment. Even as Milliways broke his last connections to the Colonies -- to home -- he had that small tether, a weight on the other side of the bed, an arm around his waist.
He's on a planet that didn't burn, and no one understands what's so funny about Starbucks or a city named Thrace, and if he walked down the street yelling about godsdamn frakking anything all he'd get were bewildered looks, and nothing counterbalances the weight of his body on the mattress, and gods, gods, he's completely alone and severed from everything and he can't sleep.
One minute gets him a donned prosthesis. One more gets him the pack of cigarettes from his hastily assembled overnight bag.
Fifteen more puts him on the roof of Steve and Orpheus' building, looking out over Dupont Circle as he lights a cigarette; then another, after the first one's done.
The air presses warm and damp against his skin, like the heaviness of a departing rainstorm. All of the buildings look like they've had their tops shorn off: Gaeta's in the middle of a city, yet a tree's more likely to block his sight line than an apartment complex. It's not that he's particularly high up. It's just that everything's so short for some reason.
The Kramerbooks & Afterwords sign clicks off. A few late-night patrons straggle out onto the sidewalk.
Gaeta watches, silent, and keeps smoking.
Maybe he would have been all right in Milliways after all. If he's not even going to leave the godsdamn apartment --
(But he could leave the apartment if he wanted. That's the difference. He's not trapped by the celebration downstairs; when he looks out the window, he can see a landscape he's never seen before.)
Night falls. He stays up late, perched at the guest room's windowsill, watching lights flicker on along the streets below. There's a circular sign with a green-and-white mermaid not too far away; several doors down from that, bright red neon inscribing something called Kramerbooks & Afterwords illuminates the way.
By the time he returns to bed, most of the cars have disappeared.
And when he stretches his arm across the empty mattress, in the near-silence of an unfamiliar place, he feels his throat catch.
For over a year, something's anchored him while he slept. Gogo took up the mantle for a while; Louis shared it once time settled into alignment. Even as Milliways broke his last connections to the Colonies -- to home -- he had that small tether, a weight on the other side of the bed, an arm around his waist.
He's on a planet that didn't burn, and no one understands what's so funny about Starbucks or a city named Thrace, and if he walked down the street yelling about godsdamn frakking anything all he'd get were bewildered looks, and nothing counterbalances the weight of his body on the mattress, and gods, gods, he's completely alone and severed from everything and he can't sleep.
One minute gets him a donned prosthesis. One more gets him the pack of cigarettes from his hastily assembled overnight bag.
Fifteen more puts him on the roof of Steve and Orpheus' building, looking out over Dupont Circle as he lights a cigarette; then another, after the first one's done.
The air presses warm and damp against his skin, like the heaviness of a departing rainstorm. All of the buildings look like they've had their tops shorn off: Gaeta's in the middle of a city, yet a tree's more likely to block his sight line than an apartment complex. It's not that he's particularly high up. It's just that everything's so short for some reason.
The Kramerbooks & Afterwords sign clicks off. A few late-night patrons straggle out onto the sidewalk.
Gaeta watches, silent, and keeps smoking.
no subject
no subject
no subject
He sighs. Takes a moment to crush out his cigarette, and fish out a third one.
"It was home," he says, simply. "It's all I knew for twenty-one years, give or take. Peaceful. Not always quiet, where I lived," he adds, "since we were in a major flight path. But I never had to worry about much. A lot of trees, a harbor not too far away..."
no subject
no subject
Milliways is as close as he'll come from now on.
"Galactica came after, that was the ship I served on, but it's not like she offered a lot of stability."
no subject
"You served on a ship?" He's thinking boats, even though Milliways should have broken him of the habit.
no subject
Below them, a taxi slows to a halt several buildings over, admitting a few laughing twentysomethings into the muggy night.
"Um -- spacegoing, not seagoing." (Milliways quickly got him into the habit of clarifying Galactica's nature.) "I served for seven years total."
no subject
"No need to for sirs. I have no rank. I never have."
After another moment and another long drag on his cigarette, he asks, "Did you like it?"
no subject
Instead, Gaeta shrugs. "It's what I always wanted to do," he says. "Serve on a battlestar. But I never intended to stay that long. I was..." He makes an absent gesture with the cigarette, tracing smoke through the air. "Going to study biogenetics, hopefully at the most prestigious graduate program I could get into. If you put in enough time with the Fleet, they'd pay for school."
no subject
no subject
Gaeta examines his cigarette.
"At least until a motherfrakking robot holiday takes over the place for a whole weekend."
no subject
"At least it's only a weekend?" he offers with a faint shrug.
no subject
A beat; he scrubs a hand over his face.
"Sorry I'm shitty company. I'll, um, make both of you breakfast tomorrow to make up for it."
no subject
no subject
"...So where's Thrace, anyway?"
no subject
no subject
Nowhere, anymore implies a situation with which Gaeta is intimately familiar.
"I'm sorry. I didn't realize."
no subject
Not long enough ago that he doesn't still miss it on occasion, but certainly long enough that it is not constantly in his thoughts.
"The land itself is still there, but no one there would recognize it as Thrace."
no subject
For a moment, he struggles with his next question.
"So it gets easier to deal with?" he asks. "Losing your home that way?"
no subject
After a brief moment, he adds, "Out of curiosity, what way are you thinking of?"
no subject
His gaze returns to the streets.
"Completely."
no subject
no subject
Give it enough time, and maybe every place that isn't Picon or Galactica won't feel like it's carving out his chest, small but inexorable.
no subject
He's quiet for a long moment, and the he nods again and briefly touches Felix's shoulder. "Thank you for the light," he says. "I hope you find some peace while you're here."
And then he turns to go, leaving Felix with his thoughts for however long he wishes.