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2012-06-04
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2012-06-04
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You Can Never Go Back

Summary:

Set pre-Galactica, before the Cylons destroyed the Colonies. This was written before "Razor" came out. A deeper look into Cain, Roslin, and Adama's motivations during the Pegasus and Resurrection Ship episodes.

Notes:

Beta readers who have read and edited beyond the call of duty: ana_khouri and selenay_x. Thank you for allowing me to impose upon your time, for the various readings, the endless attachments, and for tolerating my pestering. Thank you to ana_khouri for holding my hand through-out the entire writing process. This would not have been possible without you.

Inspiration came in many forms: Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry and Joe Haldeman of The Forever War. Also, many thanks to ariestess and selenay_x for the mere power of suggestion; I wouldn't have written anything pre-Galactica if it weren't for your prodding. This story is inspired, also in part, by aeonian and projectcyborg's story The Book of Ambition.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Home

Chapter Text

Running away from home was much like growing a new shell, except that it was populated by women in trapezes who flew in houses without floors. It terrified her; but like a hot tumor, it would not fall off. She had lived like that for five years and returned limping under its weight. She plunged the memory in a bucket of cold water...if only for a time.

She crept from the house on the cliff, called by a father who kept the house and wrote history on the back-sides of his cohorts.

Her white legs dangled from trees' high places while her eyes flared out to the endless blue. The sea stared back into her fire-hair, ran its fingers through her roots. Salt grains formed at her arms and legs like the careful, gritty ideas in her head.

She was twenty-five and everything was oblivious to time.

A man looked up at her and his eyebrows crumpled inwards into a bush of white. His face was the outer shell of an oyster, crinkled by sea-time.

"I don't suppose I can convince you to come down from there," he said blithely. He followed her gaze to the ocean.

"No."

"Right." His face broke into a smile, his lips sealed in a secret.

"You can't hide what you've done from me," she said.

"No, I don't think I could." He slowly stepped away and his steps seemed like the loud stomps of a giant. The joke was evident in his eyes. "I cooked the sea bass despite your misgivings about having fish this evening…"

She climbed down, down into the world where the she could feel her feet.

It was true, she wanted to taste the sweet flesh of the afternoon catch.


The roar had been imperceptible at first; then it became a screaming wind that bit into the shingles of their house. Hot light streamed into the windows and onto the dinner table, flickering as it descended.

She had a fork over her plate when her father stood and wiped his mouth.

"They always drop in uninvited." It wasn't a complaint; it was a fact.

"I don't understand how you can work for the government."

"I don't understand how anybody could sit and be complacent after this war," he countered. His back was to her when he called, "There's a Raptor in the drive way. Care to help me haul it out?"

Laura said, secretly grinning, "I wouldn't mind."


"I suggest you go down and meet him," the lieutenant said, flipping switches as the Raptor settled on grass that fled into the shadows of the Roslin summer house. Detron Bay shimmered behind it, lending the water an orange hue which made his space-farer-eyes ache.

His wing-man stared straight ahead, her hands in fists.

"Perhaps I shouldn't have allowed that to be a suggestion; it's an order," he said. "Or I'll have you scrubbing the deck when we get back."

With cold precision, his co-pilot unhooked her safety belt, straightened her dress uniform and stared menacingly at him with a pair of unerring, brown eyes. He doubted he would ever forget how it pierced through the haze and made the coldness in him freeze into a second winter.

"You know better than to threaten me, Husker."

"And you know better than to take it personally," Lieutenant Adama replied.

He heaved a sigh of relief when she finally made a move to step out of the Raptor, hoping that her transfer to a different battlestar would be in order sooner rather than later.

And it wasn't for him. It was for her.

She was serving on her first tour with the Battlestar Atlantia; she was already ripe with more than a hundred kills in her first run on the fringes of Cylon space. If it weren't for the common respect Bill commanded from everyone in the landing bay and the fact that Fleet Command had expressed bigger plans for her, she would have replaced him as CAG several months ago.

She knew this. There were at least two letters of commendation in her locker, one of them from the Caprica-Aerelon victory. On the top shelf of that locker were three black boxes. He had one himself, for bravery.

"I'll have you later at cards. Or triad," she said. "Remind me to win all your credits so you won't be able to afford shore leave."

"Ooooh. I'm trembling in my boots."

With a sudden, understated grin, she slapped his shoulder. "Frak you, Adama."

She was never keen on going planet-side; she could barely hide her aversion, seated –as she always was –at the front of the briefing room. She was even less thrilled that her CAG picked her for a diplomatic stint to Detron Bay, ignoring Bill completely when he asked her to join the triad table.

Not that anyone was happy about that last night, after the briefing.

Having her for craps or cards or any other game, was an educating experience. Sharp wit, wicked humor, and a scalding intelligence usually shut most of the boys up but she never –no, not once –made you feel like you were less part of the group.

Taurons were like that. The tylium mines, one's ability to keep her humor in dark, cramped spaces: these shaped their sensibilities. Up until she was angry. Then everyone stayed away as she took it out on entire Cylon squadrons.

When the war ended two months ago, she seemed lost, uncomprehending. There were no targets on her hub, none of the live ammunition flaring in space. Bill was convinced that bringing her down to the outskirts of Caprica City would somehow remind her of what it was she was fighting for exactly.

Peace.

She approached the Raptor's exit and Bill hollered her call sign, "Huntress!" She stopped. "Enjoy the air. You won't get any of that for the next six months."

"Yes, sir." But her eyes told him she'd be doing otherwise.

Helena Cain was sixteen and time seemed to tick perceptibly whenever she was close.


Michael had no qualms about having his daughter around Colonial Fleet personnel. She enchanted naughty six-year-olds at the resettlement a few miles down town. Her undergraduate class at Caprica University found every excuse to ask for consultations during the summer break. Consultations that she gave, regardless.

After all, education in the capital had been on hold for nearly five years. An unkind spring five years ago found one hundred thirty-two students killed at the steps of Athena's Hall, right after another virus deleted the library systems and threatened to wreak havoc on written, Colonial history.

The past year had seen their apartment in Caprica City destroyed by a Cylon air raid; it was spent hiding in the suburbs, scrambling for passage to one of two battlestars in orbit. It didn't take long for everyone to realize that the virus was the initial tide of another Cylon insurrection, which they had all thought was a continent, a whole planet away.

The war ended eventually; experience was on humanity's side. The Cylons were pushed to the stars. In these listless months of rebirth, of rebuilding, Michael knew that Laura felt she was doing her part in restoring what once was.

Luckily, the house on Detron Bay had been spared. Michael, when he first saw it intact, burned incense to gods he hadn't believed in since his wife died. This time could possibly be the last time he would have her at the summer house before she agreed to do consultations for the government.

He warmed to the fact that Laura seemed to enjoy this particular summer more than she had the rest.

"Try not to look too interested," Michael said, indicating the Raptor's passengers.

"Dad," Laura chided.

Michael knew that the military had always been an enigma to her, especially during her last few weeks as a senior in university, when the students and the faculty abhorred –in principle –the stifling, military presence during the first Cylon strikes on Caprica City.

He remembered the time she brought home a strapping, Viper captain who didn't know the finer points of Monclair's paintings or the fact that Monclair traveled to all the Colonies for his art. Michael remembered, much to his dismay, creating bereaved looks for Laura to see as he served dinner under the captain's bewildered, clueless gaze.

Inwardly squirming from the memory, Michael opened the door to the front lawn.

His radiant daughter walked barefoot on the thick grass of the front lawn, her arms across her chest. A person jumped from the Raptor's exit, brushing off dust from the uniform and slipping on a pair of sharp-looking sun-glasses.

Laura's smile disappeared and was replaced by a deepening frown.

The person in the uniform was visibly the youngest pilot they had seen with the ranking of lieutenant.

"Oh my," Michael said.

"They don't usually send very young and impressionable officers to the lions." By lions, Laura meant the Colonial Diplomatic Corps.

"If you didn't know," Michael said off-handedly, "they send the youngest ones to the Gorgon of War to be eaten alive."

"And they sent a teenager, so they could soften you up." The challenge was apparent and he couldn't keep a smile from tugging at his lips. Laura continued, "I didn't expect this." She grimaced. "I hate surprises."

Michael was thinking of something else entirely, harking back to the first, traumatic day she brought home a soldier to introduce to her parents. "You didn't look too displeased when that…that pilot person –oh, what's her face? –confessed her undying love."

"That's because it wasn't a surprise, Dad."

"Good point." His face broke into a grin, faltering only at the edges while he took a more serious note, "Promise me you'll behave."

"I always do. It's the admirals, captains and countless majors that don't."

The pilot eventually stopped in front of him, offering a hand to shake. The pips on her collar glistened in the fading light and the gold-threaded lines of her cuffs shimmied as she removed her eye-wear.

The lieutenant had shortly cropped hair, which stuck out in dark brown spikes. She stood a few inches shorter than Michael, her lips set in the grim way that people sent to their deaths do. She had intensely dark eyes that reminded him of the sea during a hurricane.

She had remarkable presence, pulling everything to her in a violent cohesion of thoughts. Untamed, she openly studied the two of them; a reckless, if almost rude scrutiny that would have left him self-conscious if he hadn't mingled with the worlds' most ruthless.

His eyes automatically went to her cuffs.

More than a hundred kills. She wasn't even over twenty and already, the girl was a war hero. Oh, belay that. Not a girl, a woman.

"Lieutenant Helena Cain," she introduced herself as she shook his hand.

"Michael Roslin of the Colonial Diplomatic Corp as you probably already know." He gestured to his daughter. Laura reached out, her clothes flowing about her like a plenary. "This is Laura, my daughter."

Lieutenant Cain took his daughter's hand and let go just as quickly. "Sir, we're here to escort you to Persephone Base near Tauron City."

"I wasn't called."

"No sir. But I have with me written orders from Admiral Arko Peleus." She produced the paper and gave it to him. "We are to escort you to Persephone immediately."

"But the war is over."

"The Tauron insurgents on the tylium mine Styx III think otherwise." There was an almost imperceptible crack in the woman's voice.

He made a show of reading the document. "I don't suppose you're from Tauron, are you?"

She cleared her throat. "I am, sir."

"Ah." He smiled gently, before handing the paper to Laura, who read the entire document with a sweep of green eyes. Michael continued without stopping, "Then I'd like you to be my personal aide."

"Excuse me?" Lieutenant Cain asked, taken aback.

Laura looked like she had swallowed her tongue. The paper had fallen out of her hands and she stooped to the ground to pick it up.

"My military adviser, if you will," Michael clarified. "I'll have Peleus' permission first, of course. But that's pretty much written in stone now that I've decided it. I'll be away from my family, Lieutenant, for months at a time. I'd like to know that I have someone I can rely on."

Helena's eyes darted to where Laura stood with a more affable air.

Somewhere, on another Colony, a doting father was waiting for Helena Cain to return safely from her first tour of combat. He would pray to the gods that she was in the company of good men and women. He would wish that they would keep her alive for him. At least, that's what Michael would have wanted for his own daughter.

His heart suddenly and inexplicably constricted when he saw Laura give the Lieutenant an encouraging smile.

"I…it would be my pleasure, sir." Helena eased back into her coldness. "If Admiral Peleus orders it, I shall obey."

"Good!" Michael said, clapping his hands together. "That's that, then."

Laura loitered by her father's bed as Michael Roslin pulled his clothes from the closet and dumped them unceremoniously into a bag.

She didn't stop him.

This felt strangely like free-falling, not knowing where your limbs were or where up and down truly was.


"You have the house," he was saying. "Well, you've always had the house. You won't need to move to the city 'til six months from now."

She could hear the pitter-patter of the two Colonial pilots at the foyer, drum-like. The Roslin house was built in such a way that a conversation held at the porch carried on to all the other rooms. It reminded her of just how similar it was to her father's business, that aspect of listening to every nuance in a negotiation.

There was a low, husky voice, talking about his 1000th landing while the one named Helena Cain tried desperately not to laugh out loud. Then 'Husker' mentioned something about being carried on Little Wind's shoulders. There was a snort and they both rankled the house with their snickering.

"It's strange…" She picked at the loose threads of the blanket, pulling it up to her chest as she brought her knees to her chin.

"What is?"

"That in some places in the system, we treat each other in much the same way we treat the Cylons."

Michael narrowed his eyes at her. "They aren't human, Laura. I doubt the Cylons have any notion of compassion towards our race. The Taurons are a different matter, entirely."

The uncertainty stayed with her, much like the feeling of free-fall. A constant river of air that brought her everywhere and also, nowhere: to reflexively see things from everybody's point of view and then, to lose hers completely.

She did not notice, but 'Husker' Adama and 'Huntress' Cain finally fell silent as the sun disappeared and the crickets began to call.


Helena Cain stepped into the Raptor and tried hard to ignore Bill's idiotic grin. Bill had a way of milking rapport from his people in a very personal way and she grudgingly gave him a thumbs-up when she took her seat beside him.

"Well, that wasn't so bad," Bill said.

"No, but…" She gestured with her chin at the Roslin house. "That one's a wild card."

"What made you say that?"

"Roslin negotiated the Mercury uprising; he parried Red Nero's threats to use Caprican citizens as human shields. And this was nearly twenty years ago." Helena could hardly keep the amusement from her voice. "Then he practically went behind the Caprican Governments' back by carrying out an investigation; he proved that the Caprican President's claim about uranium manufacturing was a farce. Michael Roslin managed to have the government after him for simply calling a lie, a lie. The Taurons were nothing less than grateful."

"Not that the Colonial government has a choice at this point," Bill pointed out. "He's probably the only representative to Tauron who's still alive after the Oasis attacks."

"Well, that's true but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Glad to see you haven't turned into a drone, Lieutenant."

Michael Roslin emerged from his home. The lady that was his daughter waved half-heartedly while she moved a wisp of red hair from her view.

Helena felt a wrenching in her gut as memories of her own father flooded her thoughts.

She could hear the older Roslin grunt as he clambered into the Raptor and took his seat, saying, "Oh gods. Vacations never really do last, do they?"

"No sir, they don't."

There was a term for diplomats on the Gideon mines she grew up in. Hardheads, they were called, people who could barely wrap their collective consciousness around mine culture, who couldn't and wouldn't understand the mentality behind the numerous uprisings, even if it was their job to do so.

The war may have changed that, Helena thought, especially with the Articles of Colonization of only twelve years ago. The Styx operation was in the cusp of a new beginning and Michael Roslin had a propensity for nonconformity.

All of this, of course, happened during the long years of the Cylon uprising.

Mom died during the Gideon unrest and her father, a Colonial captain at the time, left the military and ran for office. Helena never recognized him after that; all the shady meetings with Colonial officials, with the Tauron-ousodis who didn't know anything about politismos and who sat at the Quorum of Twelve. And then there were under-the-table bargains with the rebels.

She could still remember the eventual withdrawal of the Battlestar Ragnarok after her father denounced the rebellion. It was a move that silenced all the Gideon mines; he had the most outspoken ones hung for treason.

Helena fled from Gideon, took the first shuttle to Tauron, to university. Then her brother died and she enlisted.

"Insurgents are probably the most interesting kind of civilian," Michael Roslin was saying to no one in particular. "And rebellions have been a staple in our times but I'm hardly glad to be bunking in a battlestar. Oh, joy."

The 'rebellion', Helena sneered inwardly. The Gideon unrest was hardly a rebellion. It was an encompassing product of politismos, a term that was synonymous to mine-culture and attitudes, a product of thousands of years of living separately from Tauron. Politismos was validated under statutes of autonomy that –at the pace these mines grew especially with the dawning of new technologies, language divergence, and the Articles –were hardly equipped to embrace the politismos' undercurrent of self-rule.

Politismos wasn't just an aspect of Gideon identity; it was their way of life, it was the mine.

"Chat the old man up," Bill told her as he powered up the Raptor.

She sighed. Now there was Styx, and Mr. Roslin was staring at her with curiosity as she sat beside him.

"Is there something you wanted to say?" he asked.

It may have come out too forceful, but she didn't care. "Just give it to them."

"Give what to whom?"

"Give the Styxians their freedom. Leave them to their politismos; don't ask them to change because they won't. Three mines, Mr. Roslin," she said pointedly, opting to look him in the eye. "That's nearly 1.5 million people on three asteroids. And this time, they don't have Colonial or Tauron-ousodis dogs in the mayoral seats."

"That's easier said than done, young lady," Michael replied, seemingly impressed with her knowledge. "They're hardly represented in the People's Council. I doubt anyone would subvert an Article and grant them a separate colony-state, especially the Tauron-'ousodis' seated with the Twelve."

There was silence and Bill called out from up front, "Hey Huntress! Maybe you should leave the military and do something useful for a change."

"I am useful," Helena said. "I'm probably more useful than you are."

Michael's voice was quiet, non-confrontational "Maybe he means you shouldn't waste that head on flying." He added, suddenly smiling, "But Vipers are much too fun."

"And so, if I was interested in an education?"

"Then I'd be more than happy to help you out; but only if you help me." Michael winked. "Everything with a price, yes?"

Bill was laughing and Helena shut him up by saying, "Deal."


TO BE CONTINUED...