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Post by Amy81 on Sept 30, 2005 15:05:59 GMT -6
"It's only natural, Brie" Amy observed, "to wish we had a place to call home. People weren't meant to live the way we do, drifting through space like this. And it is not wrong to wonder if some people are used to the way things are, and don't want it to change."
"Who would want that?" Brie asked.
Amy shrugged. "Higher ups. People in command. They'd lose that authority if we found a planet."
"You actually believe that?"
"Goes with the longing I have for a planet to call home. It's just the doubt that creeps in, as to why it's taken so long and still no home."
"We still have Cylons chasing us" Brie reminded her.
"You don't have to remind me of that" Amy replied. "One of them cut my life short. But we could build an entire battlestar, but not secure a place to call home."
"There's more to it than that."
"I know. But the longing is still there. And the doubt. It makes people vulnerable to people like Pierce, cause his core message makes sense. People are tired of running. Of wasting away inside walls. We want earth, or a place like it, before we die. I mean, it's too late for me, but for others it's not. And if it doesn't happen, sooner or later a Pierce-type is going to succeed in either finding us a home or bringing the fleet to ruin. One or the other."
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Post by Brie on Oct 1, 2005 12:38:34 GMT -6
“Vulnerable, yes,” Brie agreed. “I just don’t understand where the change comes. How does someone go from telling people that he can offer them a better life to convincing them that he’s a god? Pierce, a man who the very sight of him made my skin crawl, had his women followers do WHATEVER he wanted, if you get my drift.”
“But you saw him differently,” Amy reminded her. “He had your husband murdered and he tried to ruin your life. He could have looked like Starbuck and he STILL would have made your skin crawl.”
“That’s true,” Brie said, “but believe me, Pierce was NEVER like Starbuck. Now there’s someone who I would have easily believed could get people to mindlessly follow him.”
“Did you ever think about having kids?” Amy asked, seeming to change the subject. The irony of having her biological daughter ask her if she had ever wanted children made Brie laugh. “What’s so funny?”
“Me, a mother?” Brie asked, covering yet again. “I lost my parents when I was three, I’m a squadron leader who takes all of the most dangerous assignments, I think that my bringing a child into my life the way it is would be an extremely selfish thing to do.”
“What about when Turner was alive?” Amy asked.
“We talked about it,” Brie replied honestly. “He was also orphaned, he never even knew who his parents were. We agreed that unless the Lords had a different plan, we would wait until we were in safer positions, or living on...”
“On a planet?” Amy interrupted with a grin.
“Yeah,” Brie said. “I see what you’re saying. I’ll admit, back then nothing would have made me happier than for us to stop and live somewhere.” She smiled. “How did you get to be so smart?”
“I must have inherited it from my mother,” Amy joked. “My dad didn’t always have a whole lot of common sense.”
“You’re definitely right,” Brie agreed, hoping that there was NOTHING that Amy would have wanted to inherit from her biological father.
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Post by Amy81 on Oct 4, 2005 16:34:34 GMT -6
"Well, at least in that other timeline Turner showed you, I turned Pierce down, right? The me in the red dress?"
"Pretty sure you did" Brie replied.
"So you see, not everyone allows their dream of a home to be twisted. I should have been a prime candidate the way I feel, but I didn't follow him."
"And it cost you your life" Brie concluded.
"Yeah, that's me. Dying at the hands of Cylons, almost at the hands of Adrian and the Nomen, and dying at the hands of a lunatic in another timeline." She thought about this, and Brie sat with her in silence. "I think I get that from my dad" Amy said finally.
"The dying part?" Then quickly, "Amy, I'm sorry, it just came out."
"It's okay. I'm dead too" Amy reminded her.
"So what did you get from your dad?" Brie asked.
"The knack of hurting people. I've been doing nothing but hurting people since I started on the path of a warrior. Charybdis, Adrian, Najinn, about every doc in medlab, the list goes on. I step on peoples toes, get them angry with me, or just hurt."
"But not physically" Brie said. "You don't actually hurt them bodily."
"Hurting feelings can be worse. My dad carried all that with him, and passed the knack for it down to me. Physically, emotionally, it's all the same. He hurt his parents, then mom and me. It's in the genes I guess."
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Post by Brie on Oct 5, 2005 9:48:43 GMT -6
“You never hurt me,” Brie said quietly. What a strange conversation they were having. It almost made Brie wonder if more had been revealed to Amy than she had let on. She sighed. “I think genes are overrated.”
“Overrated?” Amy repeated.
“Maybe that’s the wrong word. Used too much as an excuse.”
“What do you mean?” Amy asked.
“Take me, for example,” Brie suggested. “My whole life I knew I was going to become a warrior.”
Amy looked at her friend as if she was insane. “Brie, your parents were both warriors, and your mother became one at a time when very few women made it that far.”
“So it was EXPECTED for me to become one,” Brie said. “I became one because I was always told that it was my destiny to become one, because of my genes. I wasn’t given a choice. Just like your dad was upset when you didn’t want to be a farmer. Was farming ‘not in your blood’ so to speak, or were you just sick of your sheltered life and wanted a way out? I really envy you sometimes. Your life path was set out before you, but you chose what YOU wanted to do. I wish sometimes that I had had enough guts to do that.”
“Do you regret your career?” Amy asked.
“Sometimes,” Brie replied. “There are things that I gave up because of my career that I wish I hadn’t had to. I remember that I once held this little baby girl, just a few centons old. She was so tiny, so fragile, but yet so strong. She was the most incredible thing in the universe.” Brie wiped a tear from her eye.
“What happened?” Amy wanted to know.
“I handed her back to her mom,” Brie replied. “She grew up, like most of us do. But I never forgot that moment. Because of my career, my being a parent wasn’t in the pyramid deck.”
“You would be a good mother,” Amy commented.
Brie stared at Amy for several microns as yet another ironic moment passed. “I’d be a lousy mother. But back to what I was saying. What if someone is a terrible person, and he fathers a child? Will the child be bad because of the father’s bad genes?”
“Of course not,” Amy replied.
“So that means you’re not destined to repeat your father’s mistakes. Not that Elmer was a bad person, because he wasn't, but you know what I mean.” Brie smiled. “And remember, you’re not dead yet.”
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Post by Amy81 on Oct 5, 2005 11:45:56 GMT -6
"Well, more likely than not I am dead" Amy replied. "But you are right about genes. I guess it's more than that that makes a person what they are. Take me. For whatever reason, I thought farming was the most boring thing to spend a lifetime at. I mean, it's important, important as all hades, but that just means that people who love the work and can do it well should be the ones doing it. If that means I was bored and looking for a way out, I don't know. If it really was what I was born to do, I should have felt something positive about it."
"And you didn't" Brie concluded.
"No. I hated it. Now, becoming a warrior, that fit naturally on me. Like I was born to do that. Ange would have made a great dad for me, cause we clicked on that point. And I picked up on it from you after we met. It's why I think you'd have made a good mom. Cause you would have made a good mom for me. But my parents? They really didn't pass along frack to me, except show me a life I didn't want anything to do with. How I got born into that situation I'll never know. The Lords must have had a good laugh over it."
"So if both your parents had been warriors" Brie asked, "you wouldn't have resisted becoming one yourself? You wouldn't have wanted to become, say, a farmer?"
"No way!" Amy laughed. "I mean, nobody can know for sure I guess, but having parents that were both warriors, that would have been like a dream to me."
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Post by Brie on Oct 6, 2005 9:26:47 GMT -6
“Be careful what you wish for,” Brie said quickly.
“Excuse me?”
“Believe me,” Brie began, “it’s not a dream, it’s a nightmare. I barely remember my parents. I was only three when they died. But you know what I do remember?”
“Brie...I...” Amy stammered, embarrassed.
“No, it’s okay,” Brie replied. “I understand what you meant. The thing is, I see the other side of the cubit. What I remember most from my early childhood is saying good-bye. Constantly. The war was going strong. We lived on the Columbia where they actually had a place set up for warriors with families. My parents were always leaving, and somehow I understood that there was always a chance that they wouldn’t come back. I remember friends suddenly being gone, and I found out later that they were moved quickly because their parents had died. And then they came for me. Now THAT I remember. They actually had a staff member whose main duty was to move newly orphaned children. Most of them had only lost one parent, I lost both in the same battle. This woman with a blue uniform came and told me to pack my things quickly. I asked about my parents, and all she said was that they weren’t coming back.” Brie chuckled. “Maybe that’s why I’ve resisted moving to the bridge all these yahrens. It’s the memories of the uniform.”
“Maybe that’s also why you’re being so hard on Charybdis,” Amy suggested.
“Nah,” Brie said, “I’m just mad at him, and I have every right to be. How hard is it to send a note? But back to what I was saying, I think it was really difficult for my parents. They not only had to deal with the thought of losing their own lives and losing each other, but they worried about me, what would happen if they died. And being a warrior death is constantly on your mind, you can’t help it. I learned when I was older that I came as a surprise and that my mom actually tried to hide the fact that she was pregnant for sectars. A warrior first, a warrior first, a warrior first. I’ve heard that mantra my entire life. It’s a lousy way to live. It would have been nice to feel like I was more important to my parents than the war. But now I understand where they were coming from.”
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Post by Amy81 on Oct 6, 2005 12:34:44 GMT -6
"Wow" Amy replied. "I never thought of that side of it. It must have been pretty stressful."
Brie nodded.
"I suppose it's a pretty selfish thing, two warriors having a child. It's not fair to put a child through all that worry. But I can't say I blame them. It's tough trying to survive, and also trying to live. To have a life, to try and enjoy it to some extent."
"The happy life doesn't exist, not in this fleet anyway" Brie observed.
Amy laughed, but wasn't smiling. "I had something close to it, and all I wanted to do was get away from it. How's that for irony?"
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Post by Brie on Oct 7, 2005 9:56:52 GMT -6
“Life is just one irony after another,” Brie observed. “I get the feeling that you wouldn’t have liked farming, even in the Colonies.”
“That’s probably true,” Amy agreed. “Although I can’t even imagine what life was like before the fleet.”
“Me either,” Brie said. “My life, even before that fateful night, was still spent in space. As I said before, I was born on the Columbia and then after my parents died I was sent to a military orphanage. It was still a ship, not a building, and we traveled to the different colonies and outposts. Our home was still in space. They used to tell us how lucky we were to be able to see so much of the galaxy. None of us felt lucky. We were there because we had lost our parents, and we were expected to someday be killed by the Cylons as well.”
“If you could be anything else, what would you want to be?” Amy asked.
Brie thought for several microns. “I love to cook,” she replied, slightly embarrassed.
Amy seemed surprised. “Really? Me too! Although my dad used to tell me that I wasn’t very good at it.”
“For me I guess it comes from being a vegetarian,” Brie replied. “When I first became one, there weren’t many choices. Things have changed...at least somewhat.”
“How did you ever get into that?” Amy asked.
“I lost a bet,” Brie replied. “Turner was a vegetarian when we met, had been for yahrens. I don’t even remember what the bet was about, but if I lost, I had to ‘veg out,’ as he used to call it, for a secton. By the end of the secton I was hooked, as he knew very well I would be. When we finally were granted couple’s housing, he smuggled in a small hotplate. There was someone on the kitchen staffed that he conned into giving him raw ingredients during light cycle...” Brie smiled at her memories. "What I never told Turner was that I lost the bet on purpose. The male ego is such a fragile thing."
“I don’t think that I could do it,” Amy commented. “It’s bad enough that I had to watch it grow. To eat it all the time?” She shuddered. “Besides, I’d miss my cheeseburger and fries.”
“Veggie burgers are just as good,” Brie replied quickly, “but without all the hormones that they add to the meat. You really should try it sometimes, just for a secton...”
“Sure, considering the fact that I’m currently on a feeding tube, waiting for my mom to make up her mind.”
“Oh yeah,” Brie said. “I forgot. So, forget farming, forget the military. What else would you want to be?”
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Post by Amy81 on Oct 11, 2005 6:07:16 GMT -6
Amy shrugged. "How about bartender?" she replied.
Brie laughed. "Very funny!"
Amy laughed too. "Okay, okay. How about Triad cheerleader. They're tougher to get into than the academy is!"
"True" Brie replied. "But they wear less than the players do."
"And that's barely possible!" Amy answered, laughing.
"Barely is right" Brie said. Amy laughed harder at the pun. Brie shook her head. "To hades with cheerleading. We could have been players."
"Not too many female players in the league" Amy reminded her.
"And that means we couldn't have done it?"
Amy shrugged. "Seems a waste to me. Waste of time and potential. All for a silly game."
"A game that means an awful lot to quite a large number of people in the fleet. Think of the following you'd have had. You have guys chasing after you and that's fully clothed in a warrior uniform!"
"Leaves more to that imagination that way" Amy laughed. "Besides, I'd feel funny seeing myself on posters all over the fleet. Plus me and sports don't get along too well. Looking good in the outfit only gets you so far. You have to be able to play too!"
"You'd have been great. Just think of it" Brie said, looking off into the distance, "You and me, stars of the Gold team, knocking off Apollo and Starbuck..."
"Nobody could beat them, without supernatural help anyway..."
"It sure would have been fun to try though" Brie replied, still staring at something unseen in the distance. "Oh yeah, a lot of fun."
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Post by Brie on Oct 11, 2005 10:12:45 GMT -6
"It sure would have been fun to try though" Brie replied, still staring at something unseen in the distance. "Oh yeah, a lot of fun."
Amy stared to her friend. “Okay, what’s with the distant look and silly grin?”
“I never told you...I never told ANYONE,” Brie said, slightly embarrassed, “but when I was sixteen, I had SUCH a crush on Starbuck.”
“Didn’t every 16 yahren old girl back then?” Amy asked with a grin of her own.
“Yeah, but not every 16 yahren old girl was offered a spot in a special program on the Galactica,” Brie replied. “I was the only girl in the program, and some of the teenage boys would sometimes ‘get ideas’ if you get my drift. So I had to be no nonsense on the outside, but melting on the inside whenever I would get a glimpse of Starbuck. Athena was heavily involved with that program and she got him to come speak. I swear, it was like he was teaching the class especially for me.”
“Well you were the only girl in the program,” Amy reminded her. “Did he ever find out?”
“No,” Brie replied. “At one point I had actually thought that I’d wait until I was eighteen...”
“And legal,” Amy added.
“I didn’t say that,” Brie replied quickly. “But then I was raped not too long before my eighteenth novayahren, and the thought of allowing any man, even one as charismatic as Starbuck, into my life...” Brie shuddered. “But eventually Turner changed all that.”
“Turner was good for you,” Amy remarked.
“Yeah,” Brie said with a smile. “He was really special. Charismatic in his own way, but unlike someone like Starbuck he wasn’t afraid to commit. He was a good warrior and a good person and a good friend and an incredible husband.”
“You’re lucky,” Amy observed. “Most people never find that kind of love. I never saw anything like that in my parents.”
“I think part of it comes from both Turner and me being warriors,” Brie replied. “Think about it, they stick us in these tiny little ships and tell us to go shoot down the same Cylons who are trying to shoot us down. It’s crazy, we’re just out there as bait. So every time one of us left we knew that we might never see each other again. When you know you might die you can’t end mad, and you have to part with an ‘I love you.’”
“That I almost can relate to,” Amy said. “Before we left for the moon mission, when Charybdis and I said goodbye...”
“I know all that I want to know about when you and Charybdis said goodbye,” Brie said with a smile.
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