04th landing . video, locked from felix gaeta

[landfall]

So.

What do you guys do when you're really mad at someone?

Productive and unproductive tactics welcome. I also enjoy colorful stories.

[ Private to Felix Gaeta, later ]

[ Okay, it's time to confront this. She's calm. She's good. She's going to say something elegant, and Felix is going to respect her, and they will be friends.

Here goes! ]

You're stupid.

[ wow not as planned ]

Comments

[landfall]

Yes, I would.

Because you're all I've got.

[itstopped]

[That quiets him, sobers him. He doesn't want to fight with her. It's the whole reason he's stayed away from her, barring that incident on the lunch line. It's not entirely true, of course: she has whatever she has with Mal and whatever other friends she's made, and he has Dean and Barbara, but-- she's still the only one who was there. She's still the only one who will ever really understand.

He sighs, slouching very slightly, rubbing a hand over his mouth.]

Then I want you to believe me when I say that I did believe in what we were doing. I always have. I always will. I just... I don't know what I could have done differently, aside from Tom, but it should have been different.

[He's quiet for a second, then:] I was one of them, this last flood.

[landfall]

Then what if Tom is what you were supposed to do differently?

...what do you mean one of them?

[itstopped]

I was a-- [Not a Cylon, not really.] --a robot. I switched with David. It wasn't... he's very primitive compared to the ones we know. Somewhere between being a skinjob and a chromejob.

[He's staring down at his hands, now, because he doesn't want to see the look on her face.] And I ran... simulations in my brain, because I could. How things could have been different. How they would have changed. Where the clues I missed were.

[landfall]

...okay, I'm not trying to be a smartass here, but if you missed the clues, how would they make it into the simulation?

[itstopped]

Because it's amazing how much more clearly you can think when you're not bound up in... feeling things. [He says it a little dismissively, almost embarrassed.]

[landfall]

I want you to lift your hand up and just smack it right on the back of your head for saying that.

Feeling is way better than thinking.

[itstopped]

Not when it comes to judgment calls. Not... when you're so desperate to see something done that you think you'll do anything to get it. [That's an admission, quieter than before.]

I don't think either of us could have stopped what happened on New Caprica. Every version of events that I ran... there was no way we could have known. Not about Gaius, not about the Cylons. I can wish I had let Roslin steal the election, but how could I have known what that would do? Or what would have happened next? For all I know, it would have just turned her into a tyrant sooner.

But... the Eight, and Tom... [His mouth tightens for a moment.] I was desperate. That's the frakking truth.

[landfall]

But when something feels wrong you have to trust yourself. You can't rationalize it away because this is the best thing to do, even if you hate it. You have to listen to that part of you.

And the right thing at the time might have bad consequences in hindsight, but that doesn't make it any less the right choice at the time.

[itstopped]

[He's quiet for another moment, and doesn't look up when he continues.]

That's what people keep saying to me. That I should have listened to myself. That it must have felt wrong. Everyone's assuming I could have felt it and known, but... what if I couldn't? What if that... part of me doesn't work?

[landfall]

It does, Felix. Of course it does. If it didn't, why would you have felt so strongly that mutiny was necessary in the first place?

[itstopped]

Because it was. [He's about to leave it there, but-- she knows about the Eight now. She was worried it had led him to something, and it had. Just not in the way she was thinking.] Because I saw what they were capable of. Even the ones we thought we could trust.

[landfall]

So you were real suspicious of Cylons but not at all suspicious of Tom Zarek?