Shadowsong26x's Fic

He did not fall in love in an instant.

Like all of his brothers, Simon was a logical thinker--a scientist, a doctor, a mechanic. Find the problem, identify the steps to a solution, implement them. That was the mindset he brought with him, when he came to live among the humans before the end.

Falling in love was not so exact, of course. Emotions weren't simple or logical. But the way he was designed, the way he thought, he could see each step along the way as he took it.

Admittedly, he didn't recognize all of them in the moment. And as for recognizing it as love--well. That particular puzzle took him more time to solve.

At first, he was simply drawn to the things he and Giana had in common. A logical mind; find the problem, identify and implement a solution. She was a gifted engineer, a person who--resonated, somewhat. More than the other humans he'd spent time with. Even other doctors.

They'd met at an engagement party, celebrating one of his coworkers and one of Giana's college friends. He'd accepted the invitation because, at the time, he was still establishing his cover and it would be useful to build relationships with his coworkers. And he wanted to get a better picture of how humans interacted with each other.

The party itself was--fine. Not something he'd choose to do purely for his own enjoyment, but not unpleasant. He'd met Giana at the bar, doodling on a napkin; a work problem she was trying to sort out. It caught his eye, he'd asked her about it.

"Not many doctors are interested in engine design," she'd said.

"Is a man not allowed to have hobbies?" he'd replied, raising an eyebrow.

She'd laughed. He'd liked the sound of it.

They'd spent quite a bit of time talking; at the end of the night, when she'd suggested meeting up again, for coffee or something similarly casual, he'd offered her his number.

That was step one.

At the time, he'd recognized that he enjoyed her company, or at least that brief taste of it he'd had in a broader social situation. Enough to want to see more, to follow this particular thread and see where it might lead. A further study of human behavior if nothing else; and wasn't this how a man in his position would be expected to respond to someone attractive expressing interest?

She was attractive; beautiful and clever and charming. He readily admitted that from the start.

And, apart from that…

Simon wasn't quite lonely, among humans, but it was--an adjustment. Being away from his brothers, from all of the others. He knew there were others like him, spread throughout the human worlds, but even if he'd known where to find them, reaching out wasn't an option. And if a certain amount of distance from the humans around him was important, to remember who he was and what he was doing here…well, he'd been programmed to exist in a community. When he met Giana, he'd been living among humans for months, and that distance was, perhaps, beginning to wear on him.

So, he went into the next step--coffee--with all of that in mind. What he might gain from pursuing this, both practically and emotionally, as long as he kept his head about him.

Giana was, of course, just as beautiful and clever and charming in the light of day as she had been at the bar. She, clearly, had a similar good impression of him; the next few steps--dates--came in quick succession.

After each one, when he got back to the quiet organization of his apartment, he took stock, evaluated where he was. He was a logical thinker, after all.

It was after their fifth date that he had to admit he was gaining more from this on the emotional side than the practical one. Or that he was beginning to care more about that, at least, more so even than supporting his identity. Not that he called it love, even in the privacy of his own soul. Not yet.

But he liked her. He looked forward to spending time with her. He felt less…alone, when he was with her.

Sleeping with her for the first time was--an interesting experience. Not an entirely novel one; he'd had sex before, once with a Two and twice with Eights. But it wasn't the same. It wasn't exactly her being human that made it different, he didn't think. It was something else, something he couldn't quite quantify, no matter how long he turned it over in his head and studied it.

Despite not being able to share a projection with her, there was--a connection there. Something that he hadn't experienced with the others.

Acknowledging that was, of course, another step. He considered the word 'love' at the time--the concept--but decided that that was too much, too powerful a thing for what this was.

And then he began to notice other things. Little things; unique things; things that only they shared. Not just inside jokes--though there were plenty of those, too, of course--but something more ephemeral. Harder to define. Something in the way she looked at him, and he looked at her; in the way they related to one another, independent of everyone around them.

He thought about love again, and thought--maybe. Maybe that was, in fact, the right word. Even if this wasn't some towering, world-shaking passion. Even if it was just…quiet. Ordinary, almost.

It would have been ordinary, in fact, if he were the human man he was pretending to be.

When Giana asked if he was willing to meet her daughter, he knew, beyond all doubt, that he loved her. And she loved him.

He agreed, of course. Because this--this connection, this relationship, this shared thing, this love, was too precious and powerful to waste.

And when he met her child--God. He'd known, of course, that they were commanded to have children someday. But it wasn't until he met that little girl, until Giana shared her with him, that he understood that it could be a joy, not just a duty.

He knew it wouldn't last. He knew what was coming for them, sooner rather than later.

But he loved her. And she loved him. Perhaps it was selfish of him--no, there was no perhaps to that. But even if it killed him, even if it truly and permanently killed him someday, he convinced himself that it would be worth it. To spend what little time was left together.

When he proposed, he told her a version of the truth. That he couldn't promise her forever, because life was strange and wild, but what he could promise was to love her, truly and deeply, for as long as their lives were shared. If she would have him.

Giana, who had divorced her first husband years ago, brought her own meaning to that, and promised him the same.

It was a strange feeling, for a Cylon, for a man who was used to being one of millions of copies. To build something that was only his.

His and Giana's.

Theirs.

Nadia knows Sayid is lying to her.

She has known him, and loved him, for too long to be fooled; and is too intimately familiar with truth and lies and the space between them to not see what he and his friends are doing.

(She is also far more familiar with bullets and their wounds than she would like, and there is a too-fresh scar on his shoulder that tells a different tale.)

Nadia knows Sayid is lying, but says nothing.

She has loved him, and waited for him, for too long to let that space between the truth and the lies, the space where he and his friends have chosen to stand, come between them.

Whatever really happened to him (and the others) after their plane went down; whatever he suffered and survived during those one hundred and eight days stranded in the South Pacific--the facts of it of course matter, but the lie does not. Not to her.

When he is ready, he will tell her. She has faith in that, and in him. And until he is, she will hold that space open for him.

After all, she has known him, and loved him, and waited for him for a very long time.

Every year, right around his birthday, Mum would take him down to the river.

Never on the actual day, of course, but always close. She’d find a time when Dad wasn’t around--gone into town and left her to mind the farm, or off mending fences on the other side of the property, or any number of things--and then she’d find him, and off they’d go.

Dad never knew about these walks to the water’s edge. It was something for just the two of them.

It wasn’t a particularly long walk, even when he was a small child and she'd had to carry him off and on. They’d get there, the sun would be shining--she always picked a sunny day--and then Mum would nudge him into the water to swim. He couldn’t recall her or anyone else actually teaching him how to swim, but somehow, he’d known. By the time he was old enough to remember, he was as comfortable in the water as he was on solid ground.

As for Mum, she’d take off her shoes and socks, pile them neatly on the bank, and stand right at the edge of the water, letting it almost but not quite wash over her feet. He didn’t notice it then, but there was something soft and hollow behind her smile while she watched him splash and play.

And for years, nothing else happened. They would spend their afternoon together, in the golden sunlight reflected off this slow-moving bend of the Euclid, and then go home and say nothing about it until the next time.

The year he turned eleven was different.

It had been a difficult one. Watching endless videos of actors and politicians, watching the way their mouths moved, trying to correct his accent. Dreaming of another future than the one his father wanted for him--a better, brighter one. Even if it meant leaving the Euclid and his mother and everything he’d ever known behind.

He was more aware, too, of those hollow places behind his mother’s eyes, but her smile when she came to fetch him to the river was bright as the sun.

As she often was, until they actually reached the banks.

He pretended he didn’t see it--not that she would have admitted that she was sad anyway--and went into the water.

Everything was simpler there. Cleaner. Clearer. All he had to do was swim, feel the texture of the water on his skin; the river welcomed him, wrapped itself around him like a blanket; he felt lighter and heavier all at once.

Which was--strange. That had never happened before.

The analytical part of his mind noted that, was vaguely alarmed, but the rest of him was bound up in that peculiar sensation. Suddenly hydrodynamic, suddenly shifting direction and turning under the water easily, even with much less movement from his hands, a more limited range of motion from his legs--

He surfaced close to shore, and found his mother on the bank, but this was strange, too; even more strange; like the colors had leached out of her and the world around her.

“Mum?” he said, or tried to, but a sound that was and was not his voice, but certainly nothing like a word, came out instead.

“Easy, love,” she called, and there was pride and pain and so much else he couldn’t decipher in her voice.

But it was her voice, and she loved him, and even if it wasn’t quite so golden, the sun was still shining on the Euclid.

That steadied the frantic beating of his heart. A little bit, anyway.

He made his way over to her, dragged himself up onto the bank. She reached out a hand--it was shaking, just a little, was she frightened? Did he frighten her?--and rested it gently on his head.

It felt familiar, but so different--the sensation of his mother’s hand on his head, closer and rawer, the texture of her palm and fingertips tripping against surface nerves in an altered network, no longer cushioned by his hair.

“Easy, love,” she repeated. “It’s all right, Gaius. You’re all right.”

He leaned his head into her strange-familiar touch, and breathed in and out.

The world smelled different, too.

“It’s about will,” she said, after a moment. “You can will it, love. Close your eyes, and will yourself back, and sit up straight, yeah? You can do it. I know you can.”

He did as she said, closed his eyes, kept breathing. There was an odd, prickling sensation, running from her hand on his scalp all the way down his back and limbs; the warm weight of the water slid off him.

Cautiously, he opened one eye, and then the other.

Mum was back to normal, the world was back to normal, and he was curled up on something sleek and grey-brown that hadn’t been on the shore before.

His second skin.

He sat up straighter, slid off of it, picked it up with wondering hands. It was smooth, heavy, soft. Warm.

His.

Mum smiled at him, the hollows behind her eyes deeper than they had been before, and kissed his forehead.

“Mum?” he said, not sure how to--not even sure what the question should be, let alone how to ask it.

“You’re a child of the river, love,” she said. “It’s as much your home as the earth around it. As long as you have your skin, the river will welcome you home. So, keep it safe, yeah? Guard it, closer than your heart.”

“I will,” he promised, hugging the skin to his chest.

Tomorrow, of course, he’d start to wonder what this might mean for the future he dreamed about, the one he’d already started building for himself, in endless hours mimicking politicians and actors on a screen.

Was he only a child of the River Euclid, or would the rivers on Caprica want him, too?

But that was for tomorrow.

Today, he slipped the skin--his skin--back on, practiced willing himself back out of it; practiced swimming in both his skins, weighed and measured the differences and learned all he could about this other side of him.

Because he knew Mum wouldn’t--or couldn’t--answer any of his questions. When she put her shoes back on, and they walked back to the house under the setting sun, it would be the last they spoke of it until next year.

This past year was a pretty slow year for me, writing-wise, so I'm not going to so much do a retrospective, haha (though I will check back on my resolutions from last year, of which I think I met zero).

But some things (outside of Formal Resolutions, which are coming below) that I'm planning to work on this coming year:

BSG

The Other Battlestar--I really really would like to get started posting it finally. I know I've been talking about it for like...two or three years now, since I started falling back into this fandom properly, lol.

Selkie AU/Backup Plans AU--I did some foundation stuff for these in Year of the OTP back in 2023, and I like them, and someday I'd like to revisit them (maybe for GBB? IDK; Backup Plans is probably out of scope, but maybe I could do something in the Selkie AU)

GBB--or alternatively I'll come back to Percussive Maintenance or The Blood of Angry Men, lol. We'll see.

Star Wars

SWBB is taking a hiatus this year, but even if it wasn't, I wouldn't be participating. I might do some one-shots, especially if that ends up being one of my matched fandoms for pod_together, and I really would like to get back into Precipice/Protectors at long last. Again, we'll see.

Les Mis

Picking up P&J and getting to Provenance; and actually getting enough down on Acheron to start posting. Those are my goals here, haha.

Original Fic

No real specific plans here, other than trying to post at least one thing to RF each month.

Other Fandoms

Well, the new WoT season is coming out in March, we'll see if it awakens anything in me (whether the BSG crossover I have partially sketched out, or some of the stuff with Taim and Logain I had in my head way back in the day...

Also at some point I will sit down and watch Castlevania: Nocturne; I'm not sure if I'll actually like it as much as the original series, but it'll probably get me back into working on Incinctus.

Also also, I do plan to do pod_together again this year, whether it's AtLA again or something else, we'll see. I don't have any current plans to revisit one of my longform fics that I have partially plotted out but it could happen.

And there's always the possibility that something new I stumble into will awaken something in me, but. These are much lower priority than the above.

Last, putting this in this section since it covers a few areas--I may or may not try to finish the 2023 Year of the OTP list, or start the 2025 one? Haven't decided yet. If I do start the 2025 list, IDK if it'll be five ships again, lol...that was a lot.

Okay, I think that covers things! Time for Resolutions, haha

2024 Goals:

Get back into Precipice; post at least three chapters of Protectors and at least one Preludes one-shot. [Nope]

Write at least 10k of origfic content. [Nope]

Participate in at least two challenges/exchanges. This one I actually did! SWBB (which was like pulling teeth all the way through) and pod_together, plus I was a beta and ran GBB.

Start posting The Other Battlestar; complete P&J; and start or post at least one other non-challenge fic project. [nope]

Complete the Year of the OTP fills. [nope]

Bonus Goal: Write at least one holiday fic (Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, New Year’s, etc.) and post on the appropriate day [nope] Bonus Goal #2: Update origfic archives [nope] Bonus Goal #3: Post at least one AU Outline. [well I did start writing one? but never finished/posted it, haha...]

2025 Goals

(much smaller and simpler than last year; trying to ease back into things after a fallow year)

Post at least one orgific piece to Rainbowfic each month

Write and post at least one fanfic (or chapter of a longfic) each month

Participate in at least two challenges/exchanges.

Bonus Goal: Write at least one holiday fic (Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, New Year’s, etc.) and post on the appropriate day Bonus Goal #2: Update origfic archives Bonus Goal #3: Post at least one AU Outline.

ETA:

FULLY unrelated to writing but. I got my own doggo this fall! Her name is Ruby and she's perfect and I love her. And dog tax:

The Other Battlestar

So this is an AU that I technically started building the first time I was in the fandom, so like...twelveish years ago now? Haha.

The premise, essentially, is Baltar ends up on Pegasus instead of Galactica. Which means a lot of gaps to fill in, both in terms of getting the fleet into roughly the same position when everyone reconnects, and also, even with Razor filling in some gaps, there's a fair bit of 'how do I fill those six months' on the Pegasus side of things.

There are a few OCs involved in filling in those gaps--splitting Baltar's canon shenanigans across two people, one to do the Politics and one to do the Science. Politics is Vance Kimball; movie star/philanthropist, went to university with...I'm blanking on his name; Roslin's original VP pick; anyway the two of them were at an alumni event and got off Caprica together along with the Science person, who is admittedly the most self-indulgent part of this fic but I've decided to stop feeling guilty about my pleasures and honestly what is fandom for if not self-indulgence lol.

Also adding a few people on the Pegasus side of things--there's a Marine officer who grew up with Baltar on Aerilon; Daphne Reed who is the senior medical officer (Cottle's counterpart); and a Four with the civilian fleet who gets drafted to work under Reed.

I did also figure out how to keep Helo on Caprica so he can meet Athena, because they are important to me and see above about self-indulgence, and Fleet!Cavil and Vera (Tough!Six/Hooker!Six/Punk-rock!Six/whatever the cool kids are calling her these days) are probably going to show up once or twice.

So, yeah, the holdup here is...figuring out the best way to balance all the different threads, how much I actively need to rewrite vs. how much I can handwave, and so on. Even if I stop at the end of the Pegasus arc (which is my current plan; I have some vague ideas for where the second half of S2 and beginning of S3 might go but no Active plans at this point), I'm guessing this will end up being like. 150k? It will not be short, anyway. But it's been in my head for a long time and I'm very fond of it.

2. Papa and J----, August '34

So this (and its companion piece, Provenance) is something I was having a lot of fun with and just. Need to get back to, haha. It's outsider POV, an art history grad student named Ari doing some Research into a previously-undiscovered painting by Cosette (who is a moderately well-known painter). Obviously this is a post-canon AU where both Valjean and Javert survived the summer of 1832. I left off with Ari about to go to Europe to continue working there, going into museum collections and archives to try and a) identify J; and b) put a name to 'Papa,' now that we have his face. Anyway, I do plan to get back to this, just...again, slow year, haha.

3. Precipice

I will not quit this fic until/unless I entirely quit the Star Wars fandom which doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon (even if it's back-burnered a bit). So, yeah, even if it's been...::checks notes:: three years since I updated, I haven't forgotten this, it's too big a part of my SW fandom life for me to do that.

(For those who don't know, it's a 'the Republic falls but Anakin doesn't' AU, we've just reached about the timeframe of ANH where I left off)

4. Other Miscellaneous AUs

Just kind of rapid-firing--

The Selkie AU and Backup Plans AU I started with the Year of the OTP project back in 2023. They could go interesting places, and I want to explore them some more.

Acheron is another Les Mis fic, Groundhog Day loop for Javert, fun times.

Percussive Maintenance is the one where D'Anna accidentally unlocks Sam's memories what with all the concussing when they're trapped in the parking garage during Downloaded. It involves a lot of Sam talking to Philosopher!Cavil; I still need to decide whether or not I want to involve/reference the girls from Caprica-the-TV-series. I had a general outline going from Sam regaining his memories up through when they get back to the Fleet that I was hoping to do for GBB this year, but I didn't get enough into it to make it happen. Maybe I will moving forward.

Someday I'd like to get back to Serenissima (which was a Baroque/Renaissance Venice BSG AU)

I have some BSG crossovers floating around that I'd like to actively work on At Some Point (mostly Star Wars, though some of the self-indulgent Stargate crossover stuff I've done in RPs with a friend of mine is always percolating in the back of my head, lol; also the Wheel of Time stuff I started noodling with back when I watched S2 of that series is still interesting--maybe when S3 comes out or when I start my reread of that series)

Someday I'd like to get back to the Avatar Zuko fic or a couple other AtLA AUs I started working back when the fandom renaissance really picked up.

5. Original Works

The Farglass Cycle/Feredar is a fairly typical swords-and-sorcery type fantasy world; it's one of my oldest/longest-running projects and just sort of always a constant in the background of my writing universe.

Lux is the Apocalypse in SPACE. I think a lot of what I've written lately has focused more on the Horsemen than the original two main characters, lol (which would be Lux (Lucifer) and her human love interest Mariko). I still need to get around to fully explaining who Trixie Milton is, among other things.

Untitled Intrigues Story is technically a fantasy because it takes place on a made-up map. The pope/High Priest has sent his two sons as envoys to two rival kingdoms to try and prevent them from going to war, each of them ends up tangled up in the internal politics in different ways, and it's mostly about that. There's also some Politicking going on within the higher ranks of the church (this world is kind of modeled after late-Renaissance Europe soooo), which I find a lot of fun when it's. y'know. fictional.

Reed was unsurprised by the substance of the orders she'd been passed. The civilian ships they'd stumbled upon were to be stripped, both for supplies and parts and to replace personnel Pegasus had lost since the attack.

Being forwarded a list of the seven people on those ships in any kind of medical profession was a little less unsurprising, until she thought about it. The implication was clear--the ship needed more people, with useful skills, and there were few people more useful in wartime than competent medics. But there were only so many resources to go around. And Cain and Fisk didn't have the knowledge or experience to whittle down the list to the absolute necessities.

Which made it Reed's problem.

All right. Let's get this over with.

Maryam Adair; nurse Leona Fox; nurse Alexis Hunter; oncologist Lucas Nyall; nurse Simon O'Neill; pediatrician Tobias Richter; nurse Elina Wey; dentist

The nurses, she'd take. All four of them. Even at the best of times, a good nurse was worth their weight in gold. True, Reed had no way of knowing if these four were good nurses, but she was willing to take that chance.

As for the others...

No surgeons, no emergency medicine specialists, no anesthetists--gods, she would [universe-appropriate 'sell her soul' metaphor] for a halfway-decent anesthetist.

Beggars can't be choosers, I suppose.

Dr. Hunter was a name she knew. Brilliant, by all accounts, but focused entirely on research and first-stage clinical trials for the past decade or more. Reed had read the journal articles, and Hunter's work was solid.

But it also meant at least a decade since Hunter had done any real patient work.

On the other hand, an MD was an MD, and even if it had been a while, Hunter did have applicable training.

...I don't know.

The pediatrician, at least, was an easy call to make. He was actively practicing medicine, with direct patient contact--even if his patient population was pretty far removed from the crew of an active battlestar in wartime--and based on his age, only a few years out from his residency. It wouldn't take too much to get him up to speed. Hopefully.

As for the dentist...

On the one hand, depending on what exactly her practice looked like, there was a decent chance she knew her way around needles and scalpels and moderately-invasive procedures at least as well as O'Neill would. Just on a highly specialized basis. And serious facial wounds were messy. Having some kind of expert in that area of the body on hand wasn't a bad idea. Besides, despite what the civilian medical establishment seemed to think, treatment for dental issues was not a luxury; they could have serious complications.

On the other hand, how much of that was Reed trying to talk herself into finding a dentist useful in an active war zone? Because, yes, all of that was true, but given the situation and the implied priorities in Cain's orders, how much did any of that actually matter?

Of course, Reed thought, once we strip those ships, I know what will happen to the people we leave behind. A quick and violent death, if they're lucky. Slow starvation or suffocation if they're not. If I take Wey and Hunter, I can spare them that.

Then again--if either of them was travelling with family, Cain sure as hell wouldn't take any non-useful civilians onto her ship. If she took Wey and Hunter, if they had spouses or children with them, they might well prefer the certain death.

Frak. How the hell am I supposed to choose?

A fairly short one this month--mostly because I did a kind of half-update a couple weeks ago and there's not much new since then, haha.

Star Wars:

Okay technically I'm not actively working on anything in this fandom at the moment, beyond I haven't left it so Precipice is still lurking in the background. And I do need to catch up on my Year of the OTP list from last year that I got about halfway through, so I have six more one-shots to put out at some point. Hoping to get at least one or two this month? We'll see.

Battlestar Galactica:

Iiiiii ended up outlining both of my ideas for check-in #1 because I am still Indecisive, lol. I have next week off work, so I'll see which one actually starts shaping up into being Workable before story details deadline at which point I'm Committed, lol.

(Option 1, for reference, is Percussive Maintenance, which is Sam getting his memories back due to all the head trauma in Downloaded. Option 2 is The Blood of Angry Men (possibly to be stylized all lower-case), which is a Zarek backstory/character-study piece.)

(And then The Other Battlestar is this Giant Project where Baltar ends up on Pegasus instead of Galactica)

Also need to get back to Year of the OTP for this fandom; and I really want to start posting The Other Battlestar (which may or may not get retitled? I'm not thrilled with that as a title but I haven't come up with anything better sooooo).

Other Fandoms:

Working on some AtLA stuff for pod_together, which I'm excited for. I have a lot of fun with this event usually, and it's nice to come back to one of my forever fandoms.

I'm also working on a SPN AU Outline and I'm mad about it lol.

I have been watching season 2 of Interview With the Vampire and while it is reigniting my fondness for this fandom (and my favorite murder kitten/poor little meow meow Armand. Who is kiiiiiind of getting an Adaptational Villain Upgrade but in a way that is much closer to his book personality than the way the musical did it. Don't get me wrong, I adore the musical and that version of Armand is a lot of fun, but.) ...anyway, I don't have any plans to actually Write for this fandom. At this point. We'll see.

...yeah, pretty short one this month, lol. Like I said, next week I have off so I'm hoping to get a lot done for, in particular/in order of priority:

GBB

pod_together

TOB

Year of the OTP backfill

Precipice

Other Fun Stuff, especially origfic stuff if I get around to it and/or AU Outlines (either the SPN one or a couple of BSG crossovers that I've got kicking around that might work better that way)