InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Rhythm nation!"

Lt. (jg) Colton Nathaniel West (colton_west) wrote in kobols_legacies,
@ 2008-05-09 12:28:00

Entry tags:

( a completed scene), (c) colton west, (c) rosie shayl, (l) avalon

A Second Chance
Cole stood in front of the door to Captain Tarix's door and raised his angry fist. He took a deep breath, paused and then lowered his arm. He couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd been given so many chances that it somehow felt wrong to just end someone's career as a Viper Pilot before it even started. Still, enough was enough.

He turned and stormed back into the barracks, slamming the door behind him without missing a stride. He cleared the barracks in three steps and reached into Rosie's bunk, where she lay crying softly. With his free hand he tore the privacy curtain off it's track. With a slight grunt and a single, swift motion he yanked her out of the bed and lifted her several inches in the air. He slammed her into the bulkhead, holding her by the corner of her shirt with his forearm pressed across her throat, cutting off her circulation ever so slightly.

Dropping the torn privacy curtain to the floor, he drew his own sidearm and put it to the side of her head. "You want to die pointlessly, Cupcake? Is that it?"

His eyes burned with a merciless fire and his finger lingered near the trigger. He stared at her as if he were some kind of mad executioner, just waiting for the command.

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viper_cupcake
2008-05-09 12:19 pm UTC (link)

Her breath wrenched from her. This was too much. There was no way she'd been prepared for any of this, and at this point all of the night's events were slammed together into one horrible mess. Nothing made sense anymore, and the idea of Vagabond's gun to her head made a poetic sort of sense.

Not that it made it any less terrifying.

Her eyes went wide, still shiny and red-rimmed, her heart in her throat. The haze was no longer comforting, she suddenly wanted nothing more in the world than to be sober. Somehow, the reality of having the muzzle of Cole's gun pressed against her head was enough to stop her tears, though.

"Are you going to kill me?" What a stupid question, full of fear and fascination. Behind it, a certain stoic acceptance. Rosie did not want to die, she didn't know what she wanted, but there was something. It hovered on the edge of her mind, she could almost feel it on her tongue. It tasted cold and metallic, but that could have been adrenaline.

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colton_west
2008-05-09 10:09 pm UTC (link)

His eyes were wide, spilling over with madness. He continued to stare at her with the gaze of an asylum inmate, but relaxed his arm and allowed her to breath normally. As he watched her slump to the floor he holstered the side arm.

"Is that what you want, Rose?" he turned away from her and grabbed a metal framed chair and collapsed into it. "Because if you want to die, I can square with that. We'll put you in a sewage transport and set you up to fire ship a Basestar."

He reached up, fingering his dog tags for a moment. "Or, you can die for something that matters." He let out an exasperated sigh, "Don't you get it?"

"This fleet is probably the last remaining collection of human beings in the universe. We're all that's left. So, you've got to ask yourself how important that makes you in the grand scheme of things." An impish smile slid onto his face as he continued speaking. "I don't know about you, but it was nice to go from a frak-up to one of the best pilots in the Fleet."

"And that's what I'm saying, Rose. We're the heroes. We're the last scions of a golden age. We're the ones who matter. If you die, if I die, if Captain Tarix dies - well it makes a huge fraking difference to the entirety of the human race. So, if you're not going to step up and take your place next to the Lords of Kobol, then get to dying and get the frak out of my way."

"Now," he stood up and walked over to her bunk. He shuffled with her bedding for a few moments, then he pulled out the small box containing her drugs. He turned and casually tossed it on the table. "You can either bury yourself in the mediocrity of this crap or you can make something of yourself."

He reached into the box and casually, prepared a needle full of Morpha. Even to the point of flicking the tip. All that was left was to plunge the needle into the arm. He held the needle out to her, "So you've got a choice to make, Rose Shayl. You can either pony up and become the Viper pilot that humanity needs, that the Fleet needs, that I need you to be. It will be hard. You will cry. You will bleed. You will endure more than you ever have before. And frankly, Rose, I can't make you many promises. You might become the best pilot the Fleet ever sees and still die by the will of fickle fate. But I can promise you that if you do die, whether by fickle fate against the Cylons or gallantly saving the entire Fleet single-handedly that you will have died for a purpose."

He held the needle out to her, "Or you can shoot this Morpha."

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viper_cupcake
2008-05-10 01:08 am UTC (link)

She took a breath. The needle didn't even look tempting, not now. She wanted the haze gone, she felt uneasy so weighed down by the drug. Another deep breath, and,

"You know, I never wanted any of this," she gestured around, making a sort of incorporating gesture that could have meant her life, the battlestar, or the entire universe. "All I was ever doing in the fleet was trying to figure out who I am. I still don't know, but what I mean is...I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

"If we're ever going to fly, you ought to know what I did. I totaled a Raptor, and it wasn't because of uncontrollable conditions. Before you ask, it wasn't 'cause of the drugs either." She fixed him with a glare, one that she hoped would show that she was being honest. For once.

"It was pilot error," she said simply. "I wasn't prepared for it. Honestly? I'm not a natural. You are, I can tell," she gave a halfhearted smile. "I'm jealous of that. I have to work really hard to make it look easy. I don't even know why I'm saying all this..."

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colton_west
2008-05-11 10:34 am UTC (link)

"Don't be jealous. Train harder." His voice was even, calm. For once, the touch of bravado that surrounded his words seemed to vanish. "Raw ambition is what gets you somewhere around this place."

His voice mellowed for a second, "That's why I'm still an El Tee." He shook off his own self-pity and turned back to her, "So if you want to be a Black Hydra than be a frakking Black Hydra. Afraid of being a loser? Then train. Afraid of getting others killed? Then train? Afraid that you'll let someone down? Then train."

"You can die a thousand times in the sims and learn from each mistake. That's what they're there for." He put the needle away and tossed the box on the table. "Or you can be a disgrace to that uniform and and sit around feeling sorry for yourself."

"It's time to suck it up, Cupcake. No more pissing and moaning. No more blaming it on some Raptor accident that happened long before C-Day. You're a Black Hydra, start acting like one."

He looked down at her, his gaze even and firm, but not without compassion. He held out a hand to help lift her from her bunk. "What do you say, wingman?"

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	viper_cupcake 2008-05-11 12:05 pm UTC (link)
	"If that wreck happened before C-Day I wouldn't have even made it this far. And maybe it's an excuse, but gods damn it, I'm opening up to you. I'm baring my frakking soul here." There was a certain amount of sarcasm in her tone, enough to make it safe. That way it was almost a joke. Finally, she shook her head. "No more excuses, fine." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

colton_west
2008-05-11 12:09 pm UTC (link)

He clenched his outstretched hand and let out a sigh, "I know that, Rose."

He paused for a moment, allowing the tension to hang heavy in the air like some kind of invisible miasma. "That's why I'm being so difficult, so hard. If I'm easy on you, when the time comes to be made of steel you won't have the mettle if I'm coddling you. You'll end up dead."

He ran a hand through her hair, "And I'm tired of seeing people I care about die."

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	viper_cupcake 2008-05-11 12:23 pm UTC (link)
	"Oh well thank you for your consideration," she snorted, but paused immediately after, glancing downward. Anywhere but at his eyes. "Oh, so you care about me now?" she mumbled. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

colton_west
2008-05-11 12:30 pm UTC (link)

His eyes flashed with anger and he seemed to almost snarl. The compassion vanished from his face in an instant. He whirled around in a single, fluid motion and grabbed the box containing her drugs and threw it across the room. It hit the wall with a satisfying smashing noise.

He looked down at her, breathing hard to contain his rage: "Frak you, junkie." He went over to his locker and flipped it open. He knelt down by it, idly screwing with whatever brick-a-brack he kept inside. "In three days, when you're shaking for a fix, don't come to me for some much as a sympathetic look."

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viper_cupcake
2008-05-11 12:38 pm UTC (link)

That was it? It was gone. Nothing. It could have been her imagination that he'd been soft with her, kind even, a moment before.

And she'd frakked it up.

She slumped to the floor, suddenly conscious that she was still just standing there in her underwear and PT top. She hugged her knees to her chest, her back against the bulkhead.

"I don't want your sympathy," she said flatly. "And I'm not trying to be an asshole. I just." She sighed. "I really didn't know."

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	colton_west 2008-05-11 12:41 pm UTC (link)
	He slammed his locker shut and stood up, turning on his heel. His eyes were cold, hard, and unforgiving. "When you do know, come find me." Without so much as a second glance, he flopped onto his bunk and began to unlace his boots. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

viper_cupcake
2008-05-11 01:21 pm UTC (link)

She stood, wrapped her arms around herself and glared for a few endless moments. Finally, she went to her own locker and dug out her PT sweats. She wiggled into them, finally relieved to be less naked. Both literally and figuratively. Finally, she crossed the room and collected the discarded box's contents. She placed it all on the table, too exhausted to even care if anyone else barged in.

She stared at it all for awhile. And then, she did something she did not want to do.

She lifted the vial and threw it as hard as she could against the cold metal floor. With a sound like a gunshot, it ricocheted off the hard surface, landed at her feet.

The glass vial was still in pretty good shape, but now a fissure ran down the side. Good enough. She put it on the floor drain and shoved her foot in a boot. She brought her booted foot down on the vial so hard she felt a shock reverberate through her skull. The fissure exploded, the glass crunched under her boot.

By now she was of course shaking, her eyes were wet but she held back the tears. The morpha dripped into the drain, gone forever. Rosie sank to her knees and started cleaning up the glass.

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colton_west
2008-05-11 06:47 pm UTC (link)

He watched her as she gingerly swept the glass into a pan. A part of him wanted to stand up, to walk over there, to clean it up for her. But, he stopped himself. This wasn't his battle, and no matter what he did it never would be. Instead he finished unlacing his boots, sat them beside his bunk and laid down.

After a long, difficult minute he came to the stark and frightening personal conclusion that, at his heart, he wasn't much different from Dagger or Jester. He realized that the only thing that separated any of them from becoming as broken and desperate as the Cupcake was nothing more than simple, obstinate refusal to feel something. It was a cold conclusion as he realized the chilling nature of the Colonial Fleet wasn't that different from the emotionless CPU of the Cylons.

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viper_cupcake
2008-05-11 07:50 pm UTC (link)

Her work accomplished, her hands decorated with cuts from the glass, speckled slightly with blood, she rose. She kicked the boot into her locker and put on her shower shoes and picked up the box.

"I'm getting rid of this," she explained as she crossed the cabin and made her way to the hatch. She stepped through the hatch and had moved into the corridor, when she turned back to look at Cole.

"What I meant before was I didn't know you cared." And then, slamming the hatch shut behind her, she headed off down the corridor.

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