Cake
WHO: Elihu Ramai & Jilleen Simmons WHERE: Battlestar Avalon WHEN: Morning hours of 5 Dec Y02
In quarters A-12 for visitors where up to six people could be accommodated, Jilleen sat alone at the center table between the bunks. She talked to a small camera attached to the screen on her laptop. “I’m at a lost Jenny,” she said to her sister addressed in the video letter. “It’s my entire fault. I should have left him years ago. If it wasn’t for what had happened to him on Sagittaron, I would have done it. Except now the timing could not have come at the worst time with Robby in office. Why does Aerilon have to be so backwards sometimes?” She paused to rub her forehead. “If I was from Caprica no one would think twice that I was a divorcee.”
Eli stepped inside, barely catching the end of her last sentence. He stilled, uncertain whether or not Jill knew he was there. It would be best to leave, he knew, and yet, if she'd heard, there was little point.
He took a single step back, careful to be certain that this one was loud enough to hear.
“I’m so sure Dad would understand, I hope so,” she stopped when she heard a noise and looked back to see that Eli had come into the room. Her heart almost skipped a beat because it could have easily had been James at the door. She looked back into the video camera, “Jenny I have a visitor, I’ll finish this later.” She pressed the stop record key.
“Frak Eli, do you know how to knock?” she said when she turned to face him again. Jill was not upset with him, just embarrassed he might have heard.
"I'm not used to it, no." He decided to play it as if he knew nothing despite the fact that his heart had thumped just a bit harder at the sound of "divorcee." It didn't mean, he thought,what he believed that it meant. And Eli wasn't sure that it would be entirely a good thing if it did--not now that he'd met her husband. "Should I come back later? I don't mean to interrupt."
She snickered at his answer, “right.” She then looked at her laptop and then closed it before looking back his way. Her mood changed now that he was there, as if a balloon of anxiety had burst by a pin. “It’s nothing. I might not send it anyway. It’s just me ranting on about my complex issues to my older sister. She ignores them anyway.” She laughed and then focused on his eyes. “So you’ve met my husband?” She never warned him that he should avoid contact, but she never expected James had suspected she was seeing someone else. Let alone would quickly figure that person to be Eli. If the raptor pilot looked at her hands, he would notice she still wore her wedding ring on her finger.
"Yes." Eli paused. "I did."
He stood there, looking at her for a moment and trying to read her face. He wasn't certain what he saw there and his gaze dropped down, to her hands and the ring that he'd known was there from the time that he met her. It had seemed so much less real before he'd met James. He wondered what the other man had said, if anything. More importantly, he wondered what Jill thought of the fact that they had met at all--if somehow, she'd engineered it. No, he thought. I don't believe it of her. She's not that kind of woman. There was still the same strength there that had attracted him in the first place and it wasn't built on manipulating others to do the work she wouldn't do herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “It must have been so awkward.” She drew in a deep breath which visually filled her chest under the double layer of T-shirt and tank top. “James knows about us and apparently approves. The fraking ...” Her eyes narrowed and looked pass Eli. “I’m so sick of his games.”
Jilleen had been heartbroken about the whole matter, and slept very little last night, but her anger masked the hurt. She could not blame Eli. It was not fair for him, she thought. Jilleen initiated the affair. Flirted with Eli almost from the first day they met on Sagittaron. Under her breath she apologized again, “I’m sorry.”
"Sorry?" He crossed the room. "About what? That he approves?" His mouth twitched. "It wasn't what I was frakking expecting, that's for damn sure."
Why? Elihu wondered. What kind of man could accept his wife's affair?
Hearing those words ‘he approves’ stunned. It was the worse than being hated. She glanced to the floor, “I know what it feels to be used, and I’m afraid I might have used you to seek my husband’s attention on a subconscious level. So I understand if …” she could not bring herself to complete her sentence. Jilleen did not want to end her relationship with Elihu. She had unsorted feelings for him beyond the carnal relations which made this difficult.
"If what? I just want to know what the frak I've gotten myself into." He tensed. She was using him--that wasn't surprising. The fact that she'd admit it, however, was.
Jilleen picked up on the tension.“I don’t know Eli,” she looked up to him and then sighed. “You have every right to be upset. I’m a married woman and I used you. Right? No strings attached. We both used each other.” At least she thought so at start of the affair, but there were many times that she just enjoyed his company and conversations. “You know its okay because I may not be married soon.” She lightly puffed and then got up on her feet to grab her blue tunic hanging behind her.
"No strings attached," he repeated. "Right. That is what we said, wasn't it?" He flexed his hands, looking away from her. "What do you mean when you say you might not be married?" And even if she wasn't, would it matter? He was a dirt-eater, that's what would be said. And worse, they'd committed adultery. If she wanted to continue in politics, the hint of it would be a scandal in certain colonies.
She heard his question while she slipped on her blue uniform tunic. “Divorce?” She said as she buttoned up. “If we still had an open marriage this would probably not matter, but James is not the same man I married.” Jilleen glanced at Elihu. “I really never talked to you about him.”
"You never did." He leaned back into the wall. "Maybe you should start." Especially if this turned into the mess he expected it would.
She shook her head and a little smile appeared. “Gods no, if you haven’t walked out that hatch already, you might if I start. Contrary to what I might have said earlier about I’d understand ‘if’ you left me. I don’t want to chase you away.” For the first time since they both arrived aboard Avalon, she reached for his hand. I can’t let go of you too, she conveyed with the gesture.
Eli shook his head. “I need you to be honest, Jill. There’s something between the two of you--he loves you. It’s not right, just walking into that and taking it.” He hesitated. “Why don’t you have an open marriage?” He didn’t think it was James.
She withdrew her hand and shook her head. “He doesn’t.” In her state of mind she did not believe her husband did love her. “I think our openness the first time around was a mistake. In the beginning it made sense. We were both away from each other for long periods of time, assigned to different ships or stations.”
Jilleen looked down at her hand while she fiddled with her ring. “It’s very hard when your spouse is with other women. I’m from Aerilon, and I’m not as metropolitan as people may think I am.” She stopped with the ring play. “Anyway our marriage was falling apart years ago. I even had divorce papers drawn up by my lawyer, and then James was almost killed by an IED.”
She still did not look at Elihu and continued. “You don’t divorce a war hero who is fighting for his life and struggled to walk again. How horrible would that have been?” It changed a lot of things in their relationship and most of it in a good way at first. “We spent the longest time together after that. I left the air wing and took a job with the ministry of defense on Caprica while he recovered and learn to walk again. I supported him one hundred percent and then some.
“Come on James, you can do it. Get on your feet. My Dad ran a Colony with only one leg, and you have two. Don’t be a pussy, you’re supposed to be special ops, don’t let them down.” She acted out a moment of encouraging her husband during physical therapy. “It’s weird that brought us back together and we became exclusive.”
She looked back at Elihu again. ”We started to drift again in the last couple of years, and then I met you.” In the last few years she lost her best friend suddenly in a car accident, her mother died, and James rejoined Special Force Operations and they started to live apart again.
He hesitated. “Leaving James... I can’t promise that it’s going to change anything between us.”
Eli didn’t think that she’d want it to, not once she stopped and thought about it. There was too much at stake--politics, both their careers--and he didn’t know how either would take this woman leaving her husband after a life like that. There was a small, selfish part of him that wanted to ignore that and tell her that it didn’t matter but every inch of the rest was insisting that it did.
“Who said I wanted it to change?” A small smirked crossed her face briefly before she turned back to the opened wall locker. As far as leaving James, they were already apart. She would return to Sagittaron soon and he would remain with his team on Avalon. “I’ll figure it out.”
She tucked her tunic in her pants behind the locker door, and then buttoned the remaining buttons on her uniform. It was time to set aside her personal problems and focus on her job.
“The Admiral wants to spend a day on Tauron, before returning to Sagittaron. So have your raptor ready after lunch today,” She tied back her hair. “At the moment he’s meeting with our new chief of staff, Commander Jurgen Belzen. Have you heard of him? He was my CAG on Atlantia.”
“Heard of him, yes. But not much.” Elihu replied. He hesitated. “That can only be a good thing if you worked with him before. You did well with Atlantia.”
“Yes, my first battlestar after flight school. You remembered,” she was pleased. “He took good care of his nuggets.” She took one last look at herself in the small mirror hanging inside the locker door and combed her hair a little with her fingers.
She stepped out from behind the locker door, ready to get back to work again.. “How do I look?”
“Perfect.” His mouth quirked, amused at how easily she put herself back together after what, for most women would have been a scene not swiftly recovered from. “I suppose I should let you go.” Elihu leaned in, lightly kissing the corner of her mouth in a rare, gentle gesture.
Jilleen did not expect that, but she was not going to complain too much about it. She smiled. “Eli …”, she was interrupted by the phone ringing on the wall. She lifted a finger to tell him to hold on, before she went to pick up the phone.
“Simmons,” she answered.
“Jill,” was the reply from a voice very familiar to her. Caught off guard again she hesitated to answer back for a second. She did not want to speak him, unless it was official business.
“Captain Chase,” she glanced at Elihu when she said her husband’s name.
“Okay Jill, if you want to play like that. I am calling to inform my wife, that I’m being promoted today to the rank of Major. If she could managed ten minutes of her time to attend the pinning ceremony, I would be very honored to have her pin my new rank.”
She raised an eye brow. “Major? You’re not joking?”
“I’m serious. I found out this morning, effective today at noon.”
“Wow okay. I’ll have to check with the Admiral. We are due to leave for Tauron this afternoon. I can’t make any promises.” She knew she could attend.
“I’m sorry about last night, Jill. I didn’t mean to be an ass.” he quickly said.
“Yeah, that’s good to know,” she said in a soft voice. She knew how he could play with her emotions. “Alright, I have to go and I’ll see you later.”
“I’ll see ya.”
“Congratulation, Major.” She then hung up.
Eli hadn’t heard the first part of the phone call. He’d turned, deliberately trying to block out the sound of her voice. After what had happened due to the first call he’d walked in on, it didn’t seem prudent to eavesdrop a second time. He listened instead for the sound of the hangup as she placed phone on receiver.
He was halfway out the door by the time that she had, sensing that it might take some time for her to finish. He looked back at her, not quite daring to question.
“I’ll see you... later?”
“Wait,” she called after him. The timing of the news could not have come at the worst time, as if the walls had ears, she thought. Very unlikely though. Jilleen quickly caught up to him.
He stopped, eying her uneasily. Clearing his throat, Eli said simply, “I wasn’t listening.”
“That’s why you’re one of the Admiral’s pilot. You know when to keep your nose out of other people’s business,” she smirked. Jilleen reached to touch his chest. “It’s what I like about you. You’re honest.”
Honest? He glanced down at her hand, wondering what she meant by that. Elihu had the feeling that it wasn’t him she was really talking to. He believed himself that his own actions had not been honest, not when he was with another man’s wife. It had, perhaps, been a dishonesty to them both that he had allowed his feelings to go as far as they had.
His fingers closed around hers, holding them for a moment before letting go, if only to remind himself that, however strong Jill was, there were other ways in which she was delicate.
“I suppose,” he answered her, rather than giving her the thoughts inside his head. “But honesty won’t get our jobs done.” He smiled, fighting the urge to reach for her one last time. “I should go, Jill.” He wondered if, after he left, she would tell James the same things that she had told him or if, politics and circumstance would dictate otherwise.
She was about to tell him about James’ promotion, but it would only make things more awkward she feared. So many things had to be sorted and decided. Jill was the type who believed she could have her cake and eat it too.
“I’m going to be with the admiral for most of the day.” James’ pinning ceremony would only take about 15 minutes at the most, maybe less she hoped. “I’ll see you at dinner. Admiral’s treat, just check your schedule.” She made reservations on behalf of the Admiral at one of the city’s exclusive steakhouses for his staff in honor of tomorrow’s Tauron holiday.
She let him go and packed her things. Today would be her last day on Avalon because they will be returning to Sagittaron after tomorrow.