Molly Stearns (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
losttheright) wrote2015-11-13 02:04 am
losttheright) wrote2015-11-13 02:04 am
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In retrospect, maybe she should have seen this coming.
For a couple of weeks now, Molly has been helping to draft statements about this string of disappearances, people vanishing and returning days later with stories about some alternate, fucked up version of Darrow. The story is largely the same as it was when the same thing happened a few years ago: a roundabout way of saying that they have no fucking idea what's going on, and that people shouldn't panic about something that absolutely merits panicking. At least, that's how she sees it, but she remembers not long after people started turning up in this place, when the whole city was like that and she nearly died trying to get to one of the churches. She remembers, too, the shape Russell had been in when he got back the last time this happened. The fact that, once again, it's apparently temporary is a small comfort, but the idea of it happening at all is still terrifying, and so she mostly doesn't think about it. Outside of the context of work, it isn't worth it, nothing that's affected her yet, nothing that she has any reason to think will do so.
The latter is clearly where she's mistaken. Not giving it any more thought than she has to has helped insofar as making sure she doesn't freak out about it, but it means that when she steps out of City Hall in the evening to find the world changed in a way that's uncomfortably familiar, she doesn't know what to do with it. All she can do is stand there for a moment, trying to force herself to breathe, difficult as it is with the ash in the air and when she's so fucking terrified. She could have prepared herself for this, at least to an extent, but she didn't. None of the official statements issued by City Hall could really have driven home what it would be like to find herself here, with the knowledge that, when it finishes getting dark, she'll really be in trouble, at least if what happened before is any way to judge. She might be a little more capable now than she was three and a half years ago, but that's only saying so much. It's certainly not enough for her to want to take any chances.
Tempting as it is to stay there and shut down and start to cry, she knows she'll only be worse off if she does that. Instead, she tries to think through things she can use to try to keep herself grounded — that she's lived through this or something like it before, that she's lived through what she would describe as worse, that it is, by all accounts, something that should only last a few days. That, and that there's still a little bit of time left before the sun has set and she's screwed.
It's with the latter in mind that she finally heads away from City Hall, in the direction of the nearest church. From here, it's a bit of a walk, straight through the park to the other side of the city, and she probably won't be able to stay there for too long, but she might at least have a chance to pull herself together and possibly get some sleep tonight before dealing with this head-on. Right now, she barely feels like she can deal with it at all.
For a couple of weeks now, Molly has been helping to draft statements about this string of disappearances, people vanishing and returning days later with stories about some alternate, fucked up version of Darrow. The story is largely the same as it was when the same thing happened a few years ago: a roundabout way of saying that they have no fucking idea what's going on, and that people shouldn't panic about something that absolutely merits panicking. At least, that's how she sees it, but she remembers not long after people started turning up in this place, when the whole city was like that and she nearly died trying to get to one of the churches. She remembers, too, the shape Russell had been in when he got back the last time this happened. The fact that, once again, it's apparently temporary is a small comfort, but the idea of it happening at all is still terrifying, and so she mostly doesn't think about it. Outside of the context of work, it isn't worth it, nothing that's affected her yet, nothing that she has any reason to think will do so.
The latter is clearly where she's mistaken. Not giving it any more thought than she has to has helped insofar as making sure she doesn't freak out about it, but it means that when she steps out of City Hall in the evening to find the world changed in a way that's uncomfortably familiar, she doesn't know what to do with it. All she can do is stand there for a moment, trying to force herself to breathe, difficult as it is with the ash in the air and when she's so fucking terrified. She could have prepared herself for this, at least to an extent, but she didn't. None of the official statements issued by City Hall could really have driven home what it would be like to find herself here, with the knowledge that, when it finishes getting dark, she'll really be in trouble, at least if what happened before is any way to judge. She might be a little more capable now than she was three and a half years ago, but that's only saying so much. It's certainly not enough for her to want to take any chances.
Tempting as it is to stay there and shut down and start to cry, she knows she'll only be worse off if she does that. Instead, she tries to think through things she can use to try to keep herself grounded — that she's lived through this or something like it before, that she's lived through what she would describe as worse, that it is, by all accounts, something that should only last a few days. That, and that there's still a little bit of time left before the sun has set and she's screwed.
It's with the latter in mind that she finally heads away from City Hall, in the direction of the nearest church. From here, it's a bit of a walk, straight through the park to the other side of the city, and she probably won't be able to stay there for too long, but she might at least have a chance to pull herself together and possibly get some sleep tonight before dealing with this head-on. Right now, she barely feels like she can deal with it at all.
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Just a few inches in front of her, Lee falls to his knees, a bullet in his back, and she's aware of that before anything else, before she hears Lee calling out to them, let alone has a chance to process what it means. At first, it's just him on the ground, dying if not dead already, and she can't think past that. Even when she can, when pieces start fitting together, the sight of Lee moving towards them and what he's saying starting to make sense, it's hard to bring herself to look away, harder still to get the image out of her head. Whether or not that really was Lee — and there isn't yet any way to be sure, a thought that makes her stomach turn — the sight of it is still the same. She still has effectively just watched her boyfriend die, and it's fucking hard to move forward from that.
What gets through to her is the sound of Kara saying her name. Everything snaps into focus again then, and when she takes in the scene in front of her — Kara between her and Lee, gun aimed right at him — she can't stay caught up in her own head. Any reaction she's going to have to this has to wait, because she knows what will happen otherwise, and she can't let it. Not with what she just saw, and not because of this place.
"No," she says quickly, shaking her head as she moves to stand in front of Lee. It's an utter fucking cliché, and she hates herself for it a little bit, but she's not sure that anything else would have the same effect. As it is, she's suddenly, absurdly grateful for her height, and the fact that doing something like this isn't completely ineffective. It's stupid, yes, but it's the same thing that always happens to her in times of crisis: she remembers that she's living on borrowed time. If anything happens to her right now, then it'll be fucking worth it. At least she'll have gotten to do something. "No, you can't do this. It's this fucking place, it's what it does, and even if it's not..."
She steals a glance back over her shoulder at Lee, silently praying that this is her Lee. It's a look that makes what she hasn't said clear. Even if this isn't just a trick of the place they're in, she doesn't care.
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Still, Lee doesn't drop his gun, if only because now, Kara's is pointed at Molly, who's jumped between the two of them. It's a desperate move, a risky one, but it's probably a pretty safe gamble that Kara's not going to shoot Molly. Whether or not she can hit him even with her standing there is another matter entirely.
He catches Molly's desperate look over her shoulder, and as much as he wants to return it, doesn't dare take his eyes off of Kara Thrace with a weapon pointed at him.
"Starbuck, stand down!" he says, just barely stopping himself from calling it an order. Neither of them are soldiers anymore, not here. And he stopped being her commanding officer a long frakking time ago.
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This, she distantly realises, is what it feels like to have your entire world fall apart. She wonders if it's what Chief felt when he found out that Sharon was a toaster, that weird gut-wrenching sensation of your throat sliding one way and your stomach the other.
It doesn't make sense. Unless they grow up like children, it makes no sense with Zak and his dad, and when she exhales it's with a shaking, pathetic sound that she can't control. Either they're all Cylons, or none of them are, and Kara doesn't even know what's true anymore since there's a frakking skinjob on the ground with a bullet in him.
Everything's wrong. Everything in this place is wrong, and Lee's a toaster and he shot himself, and when he yells at her to stand down, when he uses her callsign, she barks out a laugh that he knows. It's one that he's heard from her when she doesn't think there's a way out, when they're all frakking dead anyway. "You're a frakking cylon, Lee. You think I'm going to take orders from you?" Her voice is harsh as she moves to the left of Molly, her steps taken with her knees bent so she doesn't lose the shot. "Get out of the frakking way, Molly. He's a cylon, he's not going to frakking play house, they kill people. They kill everyone." Except the ones they keep, and somehow it's so much worse.
It's the snap of a twig to her left that ends up saving Lee's life. There's another one, another copy and that one's got a gun, too. It's not pointed at her, it's pointed at Molly, and she moves without thinking.
The crack of the gun is deafening. Lee - the other one, the one that's got shorter hair and he's in his flight suit - drops like a stone, the back of his head blown out, a neat bullet hole in the temple over his left eye, the gun skittering on the ground.
She makes a sound like a wounded animal, and she stares down at the corpse. There's a ringing in her ears that's a high-pitched whine and it's like time slows down. Somewhere in the back of her head, she knows that there's another one, that Molly's not safe, that Lee's a cylon and Sharon's a cylon and everyone else is a frakking cylon except apparently her and Chief and Molly, but all she can do is stare at Lee, at her Lee, the one who looks like who she left behind.
Laying in the middle of the street, his brain splattered on the sidewalk. She hasn't made a sound since that initial, horrible animal-esque sound, and she's started to shake badly even though she feels like she can barely breathe, staring at the widening pool of blood on the ground. She's killed them both, and absurdly she wonders what their dad would say before Adama killed her himself.
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When the sound of a gunshot cuts through the air, she thinks for a second that maybe she was wrong. That maybe this is the end, if not for her, then for Lee, and with her heart lodged up in her throat, she's too scared, for a moment, of what she's going to see to turn and see it. It's the Lee behind her that she looks at first, the one she'd be willing to lay money on being the real one, now that he's here, and the fact that he's alright, that he doesn't seem to be hurt, gives her the courage she needs to look at the body on the ground. There are two of them now, both unmistakably Lee, but a bullet in the back is a far cry from a bullet through the head. Half-convinced she might be sick, she thinks instead of the worst things she can to try to keep it at bay. Andrea cut open on Patrick's bed. Patrick with a screwdriver going through his head. The way she'd looked in the mirror when she first got out of the hospital, her face like Frankenstein's fucking monster, her chest and arms littered with stitched-up wounds. Russell bleeding on the sidewalk, her hands covered in his blood. None of them really have anything on seeing someone's, seeing Lee's, brains blown out, but it keeps her going.
She's survived worse things than this, and right now, someone needs to make sure they all survive this, too.
There are tears in her eyes as she makes her way to Kara's side, but she blinks them back, glancing periodically at the Lee who's still standing as she does, her own gun lowered again. "Kara," she says, voice quiet but firm, and reaches for her gun with her free hand before she's even said anything about it, its metal still hot against her palm. "Kara, give me the gun."
It takes some doing to pry it from Kara's fingers, but once she's done so, Molly steps back, putting herself halfway between Kara and Lee so she can look at them both as she speaks. "Listen," she starts, and realizes distantly that she doesn't recognize the sound of her own voice. There's an edge in it born of raw desperation, and though she's shaking a little too, she doesn't let herself be slowed down by it. "We have to get inside. We're not safe out here, obviously, and there's no telling what else there might be. So here's what we're going to do."
This whole thing is somewhat ironic, she thinks, when she's probably the one of them least equipped to be stepping up like this, but it's clear that she's the only one who can. There's no chance of her being a cylon, and somehow, she hasn't fallen apart yet, and besides, she knows this place and how it works and how fucked up it is. Maybe she's not so out of her league after all. At least she knows for a fact that she isn't as useless as she'd worried she might be, a solution piecing itself together in her head.
"We're going to go to the church like we planned. All three of us. If this is the real Lee, he'll be able to go inside. If it's a copy, he won't, and... Well, we'll cross that bridge if we come to it. But right now, none of us are shooting each other. Got it?"
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He drops his guard for a moment too, seeing himself blown away on the asphalt, the back of his head open and bleeding, but he tries not to look, tries not to focus on it. He does that and there's a good chance they're all dead.
Lee wonders to himself if this is how it was after Cloud Nine, when Billy had died and he'd been shot. They hadn't really talked until a long time after that, after he was already on the mend and she'd been transferred to Pegasus, and by then he'd been too pissed off to really notice that the whole thing had messed her up almost as much as it had frakked with him.
He lowers his gun, slightly, before he turns to keep his eyes peeled for threats, for his own face to try and ambush them again. At least, until Molly speaks.
"Church?" Lee asks, confused, and oddly, he's reminded of back on Galactica. A tomb, a temple, a nebula. Now there's a church, and some kind of doubt about whether or not he'll be able to go inside of it. But Molly sounds like she knows a hell of a lot more about what's going on than he does, so he's not doubting her judgement. At least there, they'll be out of the open, which can only be a good thing.
"Okay, I guess we're going to the church."
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She keeps staring at Lee - at the Lee that she shot in the head, at the trickle of blood that has run from the entry wound in his forehead. It's like she's frozen in place, unable to pull her eyes away. She doesn't hear Molly ask for the gun. It's masked by the deafening whine in her ears, and her mind's stuck like a rabbit in a trap.
She'd shot him. She'd shot Lee Adama in the head, right over his eye, and he's definitely, completely dead.
She'd killed Zak and Lee both. Kara's breath catches in a sort of soundless laugh, a huff of hysteria that is abruptly gone and replaced with blurry vision from sudden unshed tears. A wave of absolute helplessness rolls over her that she hasn't felt since she'd still lived at home. She takes half a step towards the body, when--
Church?
It's Lee, it's his voice. How can it be his voice? Kara looks up in complete confusion, and it takes her a second to even realise where it's coming from.
"What?" One word, barely voiced. Her eyes flick to Molly like she's surprised that it's not just Kara and dead-Lee, before she looks at her hands like she's trying to figure out where her gun went. Lee's lying there on the sidewalk in a widening pool of blood, but he's right there, too, and her brain won't even connect the Cylon part of it anymore. Just that Lee - the Lee she knew - was dead but he's right here and looks all wrong.
We can't leave him is what her brain provides, but that's a lie. They can leave him. Honestly they should leave him, because she knows it. Save your own skin. Carrying a body around just slows you down, makes it more likely that you'll be killed.
A distinctly unhuman howl echoes through the streets, getting noticeably closer. That's what finally cuts through her circular, endless thoughts that ranged from what Lee's father would think, about what Chief would say, about how her mother somehow had been right. Blinking, Kara yanks the gun from the back of her pants, and that's it. She's shoved aside what happened, and instead she starts backing up with her eyes locked with where that thing seemed to be heading. "We've got to move." It's not about Lee. It's not. It can't be, or else whatever that is is going to catch up with them. "Probably heard the gunshot." She pauses, because she has to do one thing. She has to.
She does one thing, and that's move two steps forward bending down, yanking the dogtags off of Lee's neck. The corpse falls back to the sidewalk with a wet sound, and her boots are stained with blood. Standing, she looks between the other Lee and Molly. "Church. You said church, let's move it."
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So when Kara prompts them to move, fortunately not pointing her gun at Lee again, Molly doesn't hesitate before doing so, still glancing warily between the two of them, gaze lingering a moment longer on Lee as she walks. "They're the only safe places," she explains, careful to keep her voice pitched low, so it doesn't carry. "All the shit that's out here can't get inside, for whatever reason. So if you're... you, it'll be fine." She doesn't want to consider what they'll do if not yet, though she's reluctant, too, to go too far in assuming this actually is him. She'd been wrong once before, and got to watch him die for her trouble. Having done so a second time hasn't been quite as hard on her, but only because she hasn't let it be. Even then, she knows it's an image that's going to haunt her, nothing so easily shaken.
Only after she's spoken does she realize that he wouldn't know how she'd know, and the words come out flat when she continues, figuring she owes both of them an explanation. "I've been here before." It wasn't quite the same then, in those early days, when it was the entire city, not just people going missing and winding up here instead, but it's close enough. She knows as much from the last time this happened, what Russell and so many others went through. As much as she hates that it's this, of all things, that gets a repeat occurrence, at least it gives her some idea of what to do. Under the circumstances, when there are copies of Lee running around, two of whom they've seen die, Kara having shot one herself, it's fucking strange to think so, but they could be worse off. She just has to try to keep remembering that until they're inside and out of danger.
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He turns to Molly, and remembering a vague mention she made about some place like this, but he can't recall if she ever went into detail. Still, it's something, and with himself, and presumably Kara, flying blind here, it at least gives them a heading, something to cling to.
"Okay, lead the way. I'll bring up the rear, Starbuck, you take point," Lee says, and it's as much because he knows Kara's a better shot than it is not wanting to keep his back to her before he can really prove that he is who he says he is and not a cylon. Not to mention, Molly will be safer if Kara's the one on the lookout.
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"Go, then." Her voice is harsh as nods for Molly to move it, the dogtags shoved in her pocket, the back of the chain smeared with blood. Starbuck leaves bloody bootprints for the first few steps, until enough ash has stuck to them that there's no sign any longer.
She'll figure it out later. Lee's somehow dead and here, and she'll figure it out later. Never mind the other one -- there's two bodies that they're leaving behind, but one's Lee as she knew him, and... well. Nightmare fuel, just to dump in with the rest of it.
They pick their way through the dark, mostly quiet streets, and Kara can feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as whatever's hunting them gets closer. She can see the church just as there's a crash, and the thing - the monstrous, giant thing that's horrific enough that her mind can't even put a description on it skitters into view, it's many legs skittering for purchase on the street, the walls, anything they can manage. "Apollo-" It's not even a question, it's the I see it, too, I've got your back exchange that they've had a hundred times; they're going to get Molly and each other into that church, and then they'll sort out everything else.
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Kara says something, but Molly only half-hears it, already lifting her gun, trying to remember in the span of the time it takes her to do so everything Andrea taught her. She's fired at targets countless times. There's no reason for this to be any different. It's with that in mind that she doesn't hesitate to take aim and shoot. The bullet hits its body, and the creature slows, its movements more erratic, legs twitching, like a bug that's been stepped on but isn't quite dead. The second shot, fired just a moment later, stops it.
Her arm falling to her side again, she takes a deep breath, expression even. It would have been easy enough to let Lee or Kara take care of this, but even now, after everything that's already happened, she's determined not to be dead weight, someone useless, only to be looked out for. This may not be exactly what she had in mind when she she started learning how to protect herself, but it's as good a time as any to put that into practice. "Come on," she says, sounding distant but calm. "Before we run into anything else."
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When he turns around, he expects to see Kara with the smoking gun, but it's Molly, and some creature she's just shot twitches and dies on the ground. Molly's mentioned that she knows how to use a weapon before, and Lee can't help but thing how it's a lucky thing that there are three of them who can handle themselves instead of just himself and Kara.
At least, he's slightly less worried about what happens if somehow, they end up separated.
"Nice shot," Lee says, and while there's something impressed in his tone, this isn't really time to stand around patting each other on the back. "Right. We keep moving."
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The monster thing drops as Molly empties her gun into it, but what's so much worse and more and she doesn't even know what to think is Lee.
Lee-not-Lee, because Lee's on the ground next to his other body and now there's another with a rifle and when she looks up from the body-- there's another one coming.
He's too far away and it's too dark, but she knows his build and frak. "There's more of them," she doesn't quite breathe the words, but they crawl under her skin as they head to the church; so that they can escape this hell, even as she's already starting to mentally calculate when she's going to need to line up the shot for the skinjob that's two blocks away.
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Hell, for all she knows, this Lee is one of them, too. They're not far from the church, though, and as she said before, they'll deal with that when they come to it.
"The church isn't far," she says, by way of response to what Kara has said, heading in its direction and trusting that the others will, too. Once they get inside, whatever is out here won't matter, and that's the goal. She didn't make it this far to be stopped this close to their destination. "Just at the end of this block. We can make it."
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This is much worse.
Still, the church comes into view before they know it, and Lee gestures with his gun for Molly and Kara to head in ahead of him.
"You two first, I'll cover you," Lee says, "I'll be right behind you."
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If it was another lifetime, she'd argue with him about taking point.
It's neither. It's now, and Kara's shellshocked enough that her eyes sweep past Lee into the darkness and she thinks she can see more of him - as ridiculous as that sentence is, there's more of him, and she can't even bring herself to care.
She doesn't see a gun in their hands, so she turns to move in front of Molly, to get the door open and make sure that she's safe because she's on autopilot and Molly's the civilian.
"Clear," Her eyes sweep the church, the words coming from her lips before she even mentally processes that there aren't threats on the other side.
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She hadn't expected anything else, knowing how this place works, but it's still a relief when Kara says the inside is clear. Just how long they'll be able to stay here, she doesn't know, but at least they'll have a safe place to regroup, to figure out what they do next. Perhaps even more importantly, they have a way to determine that this Lee really is who he says he is. After everything that happened earlier, all that shit some part of her is still reeling from — she put herself in front of a loaded gun for him, and that's not something easily forgotten, even if she's pushed it aside for now — any lack of certainty would only make things worse.
Instead of making her way further inside, she hangs back by the doorway, her eyes not leaving Lee. Part of it is wanting to make sure he's alright, that he doesn't get hurt between the sidewalk and the church door. The other part of it is painful anticipation, with her desperate to be sure if this is really him or not. And, awful as she feels for it, there's some small piece of her that doesn't think she should look away, just in case it actually is all a lie.
"Come on," she says under her breath, one hand braced against the door frame, foot tapping impatiently on the tile floor. "Come on, come on."
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There's a moment, before he enters, where he wonders what it was like for Sharon, right before she shot the Old Man. She didn't know she was a toaster, so who was to say that it wasn't the same for him? Maybe, like Molly said, he won't be able to go inside. At least, if that's the case, he knows Kara will make it quick. Thank the gods for small favors.
"Entrance is clear," Lee says, and, to his relief, he backs over the threshold and into the church.
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It's all she's got. She's fallen back on her training, because otherwise there's facing what she's done, and it's not something she can do. Once they're inside and the door's shut behind them, she scans the room, even as the other refugees stare at all three of them. Holstering her gun, Kara looks back at Molly and Lee, and runs a hand down her face, moving down to sit in an empty pew, her eyes tired and empty, her hand slipping in her pocket to feel the sticky dogtags there.
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Even just staying on her feet feels, suddenly, remarkably difficult, but she moves towards Lee, resting a hand against his arm. "Hey," she says quietly. "I'm... glad you're okay." That barely begins to cover it, but she isn't quite sure what else to say, especially after what happened earlier and the enormity of that, something she can barely wrap her head around. She loves him, of course she does, but she isn't sure that she'd realized just how much until she stepped in front of a loaded gun for him. That in itself is as terrifying as all the rest of it.