ultraviolet9a | Salvage

ultraviolet9a

>>Salvage

TITLE: Salvage

AUTHOR:

ultraviolet9a
SPOILER: for all things up to 3.16 in SPN and up to 4.10 in BSG

GENRE: gen, crossover SPN/BSG

CHARACTERS: Laura Roslin and BSG ensemble, Sam Winchester and other cameos.

SUMMARY: Would be very, very, very spoilerish.

RATING: PG13

FEEDBACK: Dude…duh.
DISCLAIMER: It’d be awesome if I owned any of it, really.

BETA: by lovely

aislinamara

Solid ground. Waves rippling. Clouds travelling, wind on skin. It should have been good.

Radioactive crackle on the counter. Ruins. Wasteland.

It should have been different. Not this late. Too late.

They don’t speak.

This sight feels like the cancer eating her inside out, only in reverse. She needs to sit down.

She’s still sitting when the stranger arrives. He seems to be flying, walking, hovering over the water, across it, long hair framing him like a halo. She does not believe in saints. Has given up on the gods as well since she set foot on this planet.

But she’s still the President. And she still has responsibilities. She stands up.

Bill’s hand grips her shoulder as she moves on. The stranger holds up empty hands.

Guns are lowered.

“What are you?” she hears Bill ask. “Are you a Cylon?”

“I’m not a Cylon,” the stranger replies. His voice is hoarse and thick with the accent of a different culture.

And no, Laura’s thinking. That is no Cylon.

He could be young. He could be centuries old.

He’s got irises that bleed from white to yellow to red to black back to white again, and they sweep over them as his face contorts in agony. Then his expression eases.

“You are the ones,” he says and there’s joy in his voice. “You came.”

“The ones?” she asks. He gives her a radiant smile.

“The ones from my vision. The ones to bring him back. You’ll bring them all back.”

She doesn’t ask who. And she thinks he’s insane, a strange survivor driven mad by loneliness and destruction, a solitary hope that maybe he won’t be the only one to have lived.

Because this? This is a dead world.

“No, ma’am,” the stranger says. “This is not a dead world. It’s just a world of the dead.”

She brings a hand to her mouth, because he, whoever or whatever he is, has replied to something she has not spoken out loud.

“Don’t be afraid,” he says. Pleads. “I mean no harm. I’m Sam. Sam Winchester.”

And his eyes have turned a startling, absolutely human green.

.:::.

It was a war, alright. Not a nuclear one, no, Sam says, but a war just the same, and Laura closes her eyes in resignation. Fugitives of a ruined world seeking shelter on a wiped out planet. She’s weary. All this struggle for survival to come to this. Wasteland. Wasteland.

And Sam… whatever Sam is or isn’t, clearly his mind is broken.

Because his tale of demons and the gates of Heaven and Hell opening and the worlds clashing and destruction… maybe that is an elaborate frakked up metaphor his mind conjured up to deal with all this, with being the last man standing. Because maybe he hovers over water and his eyes switch colours like a control panel, but Laura has a hard time believing that Earth could be destroyed by one man.

She shifts her eyes to Gaius Baltar.

Or maybe not.

Still. At least it wasn’t just for a good frakking. At least Sam was trying to get his brother back when all of it backfired. Or so he says. In a totally metaphorical way.

Her head hurts.

“No,” Sam patiently says. Even crouched on the ground he seems enormous. And she knows he’s been reading her mind again. She wonders if he’s reading all of their minds as they’re standing around him. Even the Cylon minds.

“No,” Sam says again. “This is not a metaphor. None of it is. Check the readings. Smell the air. This was not a nuclear war.”

The counter did detect radioactivity. But not as much as expected. And the air… the air smells of dead sea and ruins. Of burn and sulphur.

“This wasn’t like your war,” Sam says again. “I can fix this. We can fix this. I’ve waited for so long. The vessel and the spark.”

“I don’t understand,” Laura says.

“I know,” he replies. His eyes find and look at each Cylon long and separately.

.:::.

“This is impossible,” D’anna says. “Even if what you say is true, the Resurrection Hub has been…”

“… destroyed,” Sam says. “Doesn’t matter. The knowledge is still there.”

His fingers point at her forehead.

Laura closes her eyes.

“This is insane,” she says. “Sam. Sam, listen to me. I know that you are special and I know that you believe what you say, and I know that you’ve been through a lot. Your mind is trying to cope. Please. Please, tell us what really happened to Earth.”

Sam smiles.

“Ma’am,” he says. “You are trying to save your people. I am trying to save mine. I can bind them back. I can mend them. But I can’t make flesh. The Cylons can. They have before.”

“All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again,” Leoben whispers.

“Sam,” Laura says. “Even if the Cylons do create new bodies… your people are dead. You cannot bring them back.”

“You haven’t been listening. You don’t understand,” Sam says. He gets up. “But you will. I’ll show you. I’ll have to call them.”

“Call who?”

But Sam is already taking a step back stretching to his full height and his eyes are white like clouds as he concentrates. The wind plays with his hair and his shabby clothes.

And the dead come. They swarm around them like flood, like waves, transparent figures of men, women, children murmuring words she can’t understand; they come in hundreds, thousands, covering the land around the people of the Twelve Colonies, covering the ruins, the waves, till all they can see is a moving mass of…

“… souls. We’re not different. Neither of us different. We’re all perfect in the eyes of God.” Baltar is crying.

A lot of her people are. Laura touches her face and realizes it is wet. She is shivering. Her breath comes out like fog.

And the dead murmur louder than the waves.

Sam raises an arm and the murmur subsides. The dead stay still. Only one breaks the uniformity and moves towards Sam, and Laura knows, just knows that this is Dean, the brother Sam scorched the world for.

“These are the souls I could salvage,” Sam says. “Do you believe me now?”

And Laura does, oh she does. This war that was waged was different from theirs, but it left this world a wasteland, too. Just as theirs has been. Just as all wars are.

But she can see it, she can see the future now all too clear, and she doesn’t need any mystical visions. All they need is fresh starts.

Because Sam has spoken the truth and now she believes him: Earth is not a dead world. It is a world of the dead.

But not for long. Not for long.

-The End.

SIDENOTE: Some of the weirdest stuff I’ve written happened cuz I woke up with the concept stuck in my head. Same here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

tiffosis.livejournal.com

do you know how often i kick myself for not watching bsg?

i do read what people blog about it, so i know what's been going on (makes the self-kicking even more poignant) and this pairing of stories goes together nicely. well done!

you conveyed laura'a desperation and sadness with heart, and broken sam? i love broken sam. you did him good. =)

From:

the mirror lj so far? Don't know yet.

Salvage

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