mr_gaeta | (no subject)

(no subject)

Just over a year ago, Gaeta made an implicit promise to Laura Roslin: keep an eye on Milliways.

There's been idle talk among some of the Ones -- always bitter, always the least likely to behave as if this is cohabitation and not occupation -- about shutting down the school; he can hope that it stays idle, but Gaeta knows that he ought to prepare for the possibility that it may not be. That could mean collecting data in an attempt to convince them otherwise.

That could mean visiting the school.

He keeps his head down for the entire walk to the tent, and it has less to do with the cold than one might assume.

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She shakes her head.

Roslin takes another breath, then opens her eyes and meets his.

"The admiral."

Beat.

"He's been there before, too."

Nearly the instant she says it, Gaeta arrives to the same conclusion. One corner of his mouth twists in something very much like helplessness.

"I know," he says. "But...someone I've spoken to there, Dr. Simon Tam -- " Gaeta turns a hand palm up. "When he mentioned he'd seen the admiral, he also told me it'd been years since he had seen him."

A pause, then, considerably more wryly: "In fact I had to correct him when he asked if I knew a Commander Adama."

"Oh. Oh dear gods."

She rubs at her temple, then lets her hand drop.

"It's been so long since I myself have able to get there, I hadn't realized..."

Her passage had been through Colonial One, after all.

"What about Commander Apollo?"

He doesn't bother to ask Apollo's been there, too? -- clearly he has, and the only indication Gaeta wasn't expecting that is the mild surprise that crosses his face.

"I haven't seen him," he says, shaking his head. And that's followed quickly by: "Who else do you know from our world who's been there?"

Her smile is somehow sad as she tells him,

"Starbuck."

A beat.

"... I don't suppose you...?"

It's been a long time without any word from Kara Thrace.

(Longer for Anders than anyone else.)

"No."

He tucks the notebook between both hands now, lacing his fingers together around the spine.

"I'm sorry."

She nods.

"I'm sorry, too."

Roslin pushes her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and tells him,

"I only saw the two of them there the once. Remember when we were all jumping every thirty-three minutes? They were there from a year or so after that."

"It was a hopeful thing to know, then."

Gaeta remembers that very well: calculating two hundred and thirty-eight jumps in the span of five and a half days, running on nothing but stims popped by the handful (enough to make his hands shake and his heart race), still reeling from the destruction of the Colonies, and knowing that one misplaced variable on his part could reduce the human race even further.

That would have been a hopeful thing for him to know then, too.

His eyes widen by a fraction. "You mean," he says slowly, "the fact that people can arrive at Milliways from different years as well as different places. That difference can arise even if they're from the same universe?"

Roslin nods again.

"It seems that way."

Her lips tighten just a fraction.

"Although if you haven't seen the admiral, or the others... you may be the only one who's able to get there since we settled on New Caprica."

Him, and now the Six.

When she puts it that way --

It does bring a new clarity, of the much harsher sort, to Simon's question: are you working alone? Perhaps moreso when he opens his mouth to tell Roslin of the notes he's left for Adama at the bar -- how he's been watching the Cylons, in case the information he gleans can help the fleet -- and closes it half a beat later.

Because the tent walls are thin, and Gaeta's taken a risk to come here in the first place -- let alone relay the news of Caprica and Milliways. He still wonders, too, whether it wouldn't be better to simply destroy those notes now that the bar's been compromised.

So he doesn't say it.

Instead, quite carefully, he tells Roslin, "For, ah, what little it may be worth...the Six seems to understand that the bar's meant as neutral ground."

"Let's hope so," she replies. "And I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, Felix, but ... watch your back."

"I will," he answers quietly.

"And...the same to you, if you find your way back there."

"I'm afraid that I don't think it's likely," Roslin tells him, not without a certain wryness to her expression.

"But believe me, if I do? You can be certain that I will."

The first garners an inquiring look from Gaeta; the second, less of one, and another nod to match.

He opens the notebook and frees a few pages from the back: slowly, so as not to make the rrrip of tearing paper too loud. Clipping his pen to the top of them, he offers the sheets to Roslin.

"When you have the chance," he says, voice still low. "I can come back in a few days if that would be easier."

"If you come back, I can put together something that's a little more thorough."

She hesitates, then reaches out slowly and takes the sheets.

"But just in case you need to have any of the details before then..."

Roslin moves to the table, and seats herself in one of the chairs there. She adjusts her glasses, takes the pen, and begins to write in quick, precise strokes.

As she does, she adds,

"I've not found a route to Milliways aside from the door that I used to use on Colonial One, Felix."

A pause. She finishes the first few lines and glances up at him.

"That's why I haven't returned."

"...Ah."

Given how many times he's heard, from other patrons, about doors shifting and popping up in unexpected places, Gaeta had almost forgotten: he used to believe that the only way to Milliways was through Colonial One, too.

Maybe in their world, right now, it is.

(And that would certainly explain why Roslin doesn't expect to go back any time soon.)

"Yes. And as I doubt that I'm likely to be invited to visit the ship any time soon..."

Dryly said, and she leaves the obvious conclusion unspoken. Roslin turns her attention back to the pages, writing quickly.

It doesn't take long. She folds them in half, re-clips Gaeta's pen to them, stands up, and offers them back.

"I hope it's of use."

"I'm sure that it will be," he says, accepting the papers; he unclips the pen, tucks the sheets into the notebook, and slips both into the inner pocket of his jacket.

"Thank you, Laura."

"Thank you, Felix."

A beat.

"For everything."

The small smile that emerges then comes hesitantly, as if uncertain it belongs there at all, or expecting the thanks to be recanted suddenly.

"You're welcome," he says.

I'm just doing what I can, he thinks; but it would be repeating himself to say it aloud again.

As he turns to go: "Have a good day."

"You, too."

If he can, considering what he's going back to.

"If you need anything else... you know where to find me."

He glances over his shoulder. Gaeta's smile may be rather more crooked this time, but it's somewhat steadier as well.

"I'll keep that in mind." And because this, at least, never hurts to repeat: "Thank you."

He buttons up his jacket, and steps out into the cold.

Her slight smile lasts only until the flap falls shut behind him, then vanishes utterly.

If the school ends up being shut down, it's going to be a problem for more reasons than the children's education alone.

Roslin scrawls a carefully-worded note in code phrases that would mean nothing to an untutored eye, tucks it under the flap of the second box in the pile stacked on the chair, and then returns to the classroom.

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