Actions

Work Header

The Map

Summary:

how not to find Earth: a cautionary tale, or, the shape of things to come

Notes:

this is a compilation of 7 individual pieces written for femslash100's Heavenly Virtues cycle. linked (very loosely) to The Word, where the original posts (with more detailed headers and acknowledgments) are also indexed.

words: 250x8 (two are doubles) +300 (at the end where I cheated) [as best I can calculate, I accidentally counted hyphenations as 2 in this, resulting in -3 words; the software then counted separated dashes and / resulting in +4, for a total of +1]
spoilers: originally inspired by "Torn," but overall through "Eye of Jupiter" plus speculation for 3.5
thanks: especially to aeonian and mandysbitch and iamsab, for ever and ever amen

Chapter 1: FAITH / mists of dreams / 2006-12-04

Chapter Text

The dreams change when she leaves New Caprica. Every night, she dies (on the Galactica of D'anna's memories, but not as D'anna died). Here there's no pagan oracle to divine the import ("All the Gods weep for you," she said). Three slips out of bed, careful not to wake the others. She rubs her eyes, and the words of the dream blaze on the black of her lids (the last words she sees before she falls): End of Line. She's halfway to the child's nursery when she realizes where she's heard those words before.

The Hybrid doesn't sleep. Her garbled monologue runs perpetually, pouring into the stillness of the baseship's artificial night ("each coupling site creates the mode of force system check"). Three listens ("You don't know what you believe," the oracle said). She reaches out, touches the beads of fluid on the Hybrid's face, and what she hears reverberates into sense ("we don't enter until ape late"). Three's hand shakes. She lets the robe slide off her shoulders, hesitates with one foot immersed in the biotank. The mystical translation echoes on ("the continuum of evolutional matrix end of line" -- that convinces her). The pool is warm as her body, warm as the Hybrid's body where she floats against it. They line up (cheek to cheek, breast to breast, cunt to cunt), and the word of God wends into her mind from the babble. Three closes her eyes, presses her hips against the Hybrid's, and tries to conceive of death.