{ split subject }

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.

title: The Map
fandom: Battlestar Galactica (with crossover appearances by Global Frequency [TV], Eureka, and The L Word)
pairings: assorted rare girlslash
words: 250x8 (two are doubles) +300 (at the end where I cheated)
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
summary: how not to find Earth: a cautionary tale, or, the shape of things to come


faith / mists of dreams / 2006-12-04

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.


hope / Genesis turns to its source / 2006-11-27

Laura loves the child. She sits by the cradle, watching Isis sleep (wrapped in her own silence, which travels elsewhere).

Maya is looking in on the scene from the doorway, and Tory comes up behind her, nests their hips together with an arm around Maya's waist. "She's still worrying about Kara," Tory says (whispers, her lips brushing Maya's ear).

Maya arches her neck in invitation.

"I'll bet we can distract her," Tory says (louder, so Laura turns). She watches (silently) as Tory unbuttons Maya's shirt (slowly), trailing her fingers down the ribbon of exposed skin. Laura's breath catches with Maya's as Tory's hand disappears into her pants.

Loving a child means loving its mother. Tumbled onto the bed, haphazardly stripped of jeans and sweaters, Laura's skin glows pale (angelic) between them. She pins Maya under her weight (with her eyes) as Tory fraks Maya, covers her mouth so her screams won't wake the baby.

Laura has just shifted toward Tory (called her "troublemaker" and caught her wrists above her head) when they hear an unhappy mewl. Maya untangles herself. "No," Laura says, "I'll go." She nudges Maya into her place between Tory's legs ("Lick her, but don't let her come").

Isis (Hera) quiets as Laura rocks her, snuggled against her shoulder. She listens to Tory's moans, faint through the canvas wall, feels the child's heart beat where their chests are touching. The pull of hybrid blood flows between them (prophet and messiah), tracing a map of destiny in invisible veins.

:::

Three loves the child. Her love is flawless (simple), so she doesn't understand Caprica's heartache. Caprica goes to Sharon to talk about Gaius (always Gaius), cheek wet in Sharon's sympathetic hand. Hera squirms on Sharon's knee, grappling for attention. Three scoops her up (it's irresistible, the way Hera's tiny, perfect fists twine into Sharon's hair), tickles her until she loses interest in the grown-up conversation. She lets Hera tug her hair, instead; watches Sharon kiss Caprica, stroking the tears off her face.

Sharon turns to Three (breathless as Caprica's teeth mark her throat). "The baby shouldn't see this," she says.

Three doesn't understand the ways of humans, but the child is half-blooded so (in trivial matters) she'll defer to those who do. She takes Hera to the nursery, settles her in the crib with a Centurion on guard. When she comes back, Caprica is naked, arching her hips into Sharon's mouth.

Loving a child means loving its mother (Three understands this, now). She slides in behind them so Caprica can lean against her. She could kill Caprica (head thrown back on Three's shoulder, screaming as Three twists her nipple and Caprica comes), blithely as Caprica once killed her. She loves her instead, blesses Caprica's skin with her hands where the forest casts its dappled shadows. They're canopied by Earth's blue sky, and the Hybrid whispers to her from the planet's core ("The child is the map that will lead you there / the race that will people your homeland").


temperance / the essence is all one / 2007-02-02

Maya is a teacher. Jo is a vigilante. Uta is a prostitute. They take care to move in separate circles on New Caprica. There's a greater risk of discovery than in the fleet, but also a greater opportunity to

(Maya always ends up between them, impaled on Jo's hand with Uta's teeth at her throat.)

They meet in Breeder's Canyon once a month to share intelligence.

"The Child?" Uta says (stripping Maya roughly, pinning her arms behind her). "The Prophet?"

Maya smiles (gasps as Uta presses her bare breasts to Maya's shoulder blades). "The Prophet is falling in love with me" (Roslin's head pillowed on Maya's breast, her fingers circling Maya's opening as Maya pleads, "hurry, the baby will wake up soon" and Roslin, rapt, says, "Tory's watching her").

"And the Disciple?" Jo drops her guns and her pants. She hooks her leg around the two of them, transmitting skin to skin to skin (finds the pulse at Uta's jugular with one hand, the pulse in Maya's cunt with the other).

"She's lost," Uta says, "to contaminated faith" (Leoben bound and writhing under Uta, gagged with the bills he pays her so he can't scream Kara's name while she fraks him).

"Three begins to believe," Jo says. "Enough to let him keep his prisoner."

"Now," Maya says, "we wait. Without the Trinity, there is no cure." They can share one orgasm between them, in this communion; they can share one calling, against

(Earth is sacred. So say the Final Five.)


charity / exquisite the colors run / 2006-12-10

"Well Tory, it's just like old times." D'anna is unpacking a box of videotapes, shelving them in chronological order (#187 Baltar surrender; #349 harvest riots; #625 Tigh interrogation). "Want to brief me about something, for nostalgia's sake?"

Three closes the door behind Tory, who's cradling a file-folder under one arm ('The Disappeared: Kara Thrace').

"These days, you're the one with the information," Tory says. She glances between D'anna and Three; 'one' becomes plural.

"Roslin sent her," Three says.

"She didn't," Tory says. "She doesn't know I'm here. But she knows Leoben has Starbuck."

D'anna crosses her arms. "If she knows, why are you coming to me for evidence?"

"I don't know how to find her."

Three sits on the edge of the desk, inches her skirt up her thighs. "What's it worth to you?"

Tory looks Three in the eye as she drops to her knees. She hooks her fingers in Three's underwear.

"Three's collecting Presidential mistresses." D'anna grins. She hoists her camera to her shoulder, points it at Tory like a weapon. "One recording for another?"

Tory makes Three come in less than five minutes. When they're finished, D'anna labels the tape (#708 sexual favors: Three and Tory). "I have a video of my execution," she says. "Do you want to watch it?"

Tory stands, wiping her mouth. "Aren't you wondering how Laura knows?"

"Some of us," Three says, "have visions of things to come."

Tory picks up her folder. Her hands shake. "Help me," she says, "Please."


prudence / the path of ashes / 2006-11-14

Kara can't tell. She chokes on the words like rising bile. She can't tell the men who loved her, before a Cylon did (her husband, the Admiral, his son). She can't tell Tigh, who wears his trauma on his flesh. And Laura (Laura on the wireless in her new white suit: prophet before lover, mother, partner) -- she can tell Laura least of all.

She sits on the cot next to Julia, watches her watch Kacey play. There's this look on her face (terrifying, infinite devotion), and the words vomit from Kara in a fountain of horror ("I was his prisoner for months. I lost count of how many times I killed him. He told me she was ours").

Julia cups Kara's face in her palm. "We all became family, down there. We hated each other like family."

Kara wants a family more than anything. She buries her hand in Julia's hair, closes her fist to pull her closer. She says, "Let's find a babysitter."

Kara scouts out a hiding place: the carcass of a raptor that was totaled in the exodus. She presses Julia against the scorched inner hull and kisses her. Kara knows that this is reckless (sinful). When she's twisting her fingers inside Julia, trying to get deep enough to belong to her, she hears Leoben's voice in her ear ("you stray from God's path, Kara, but your destiny is a web that ensnares you without escape, like the baseship runs through the Hybrid"). She fraks Julia harder.


justice / the nascent echo and love no more / 2007-01-01

"I want to see her," Athena says (as if they're enemies).

Two ways this could happen: Roslin buys the child (at some unthinkable price); Athena betrays the humans (just like they said she would). Boomer's consciousness laps at the shoreline of her thoughts.

"Where are you?" Boomer says (no orders to take her into custody, but the marines got her out of the passageway; they're in an empty wardroom, the open hatch framing the guards' backs).

Boomer takes a step toward Athena, reaches out to touch her cheek. Boomer says, "No, where are you?" (it's vaulted like a temple above the columns, all metal perforated by squares of light; the rustic cradle is incongruous in the center, a tiny whorl of humanity marring the machine angles).

Athena pulls away from Boomer's fingers, and she's home again. "I didn't learn to project and transmit until after I resurrected," Boomer says. "How could you forsake this communion?" She takes Athena by the shoulders and kisses her (Hera's curls tickle her nose as she presses her lips to the child's velvety forehead; they rock to the rhythm of the engine, gravity, heartbeats, and Hera drifts into sleep against her).

Boomer's hands map Athena's back, breasts, hips through her uniform. "Give me your skin," she says, "and I can give you all the memories."

Athena thumbs the buttons of her jacket. "I want to kill Laura Roslin. I want to kill you."

Boomer smiles. "You're one of me." (Right now she has nobody, except

:::

this sorority of blood). The marines stand at attention when Laura Roslin enters. She waves them off without taking her eyes from Boomer.

"You've made things complicated for me," she says. "Again."

Boomer clasps her hands behind her back (unconsciously military). "You'll want to steer clear of Sharon. She went back to Helo's quarters."

"I'm sure she wants to kill me." Roslin doesn't seem afraid.

"How do you know I don't want to kill you?" This is Roslin's fault. Hera (Galen, Caprica) wasn't meant for Boomer.

Roslin smiles. "Sharon," she says, "the child. You said she was ill?" She reaches for Boomer's hand (data whispers through the skin where their fingers touch).

Boomer jerks back. Roslin unbuttons her blazer (underneath, her arms are bare).

"Did you know we're family, Hera and I?" she says. She parts Boomer's jacket, lays her palms on Boomer's collarbones, thumbs at a pulse point. Closes her eyes, wets her lips, and leans in until Boomer can feel her breath (Hera's wails echo through the ship, a phantom apocalypse).

If Roslin can commune with her, Boomer wants to give her Hera, however indistinct the transmission. "Touch me," she says, "please" (unbuttoning her pants).

"Why are you here?" Roslin says (touching her, reading the impressions inside her). "We could execute you for treason. We probably will."

"Our prophets have lost their way. But so have you," Boomer says (they're both gasping). "Yours, I mean." There can be no prophet without a disciple (no cure without a homeland).


fortitude / I'll be dead in a thousand light years / 2007-02-03

Kacey holds a bronze orb out to Kara, saying, "Present!" Julia has no idea where she got it. Kara goes back to her bunk (not to Sam, not to Lee, not to the bar where they're getting drunk, and certainly not to sickbay, where the Agathons are fretting over a baby she still thinks of as Laura's). She falls asleep with the tarnished and filigreed relic cradled against her breasts.

(The dream is like a memory of things to come.)

The woman looks like Admiral Cain. She touches Kara's cheek like Admiral Cain, fingers gentle and terrifying as a haunting.

"Kara Thrace," she says, "I'm Miranda Zero. And you're on the Global Frequency."

(This could be a vision of heaven, or of Earth.)

Kara trembles. "Are you of the Gods?" she asks.

Miranda Zero laughs. She wraps her hand around Kara's throat, barest threat of pressure on her larynx. "I'm neither God nor his oracle." She leans close, breath kissing the arabesque of Kara's ear. "I safeguard Earth against God and man alike."

And then, the orb is back in Kara's palm. Miranda cups it to Kara's center, as if to push it inside her.

"You've been given a compass, Kara, a relay to this world," she says. "It belongs to Laura -- as does the hybrid child, as do you. Or these things pass to the Cylon prophet. Either way, they bring the holocaust of your races upon the Thirteenth Colony."

Miranda touches her lips to Kara's, pulls back from Kara's brazen tongue. "The map dies with the child, with the disease encoded in her. The compass, Kara, is yours to conceal. From your people, your president, your prophet. Earth is yours to save."

(Redeemed by the divine, or by Laura: That's a choice Kara doesn't know how to make.)