Fic - BSG - Five Things That Definitely Didn't Happen That Year

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Title: Five Things That Definitely Didn't Happen That Year
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through the end of S2 (LDYB2)
Disclaimer: They're not mine. I apologize for any trauma they might suffer at the hands of this fic.
Summary: Exactly what the title says.
Note: This fic is not serious in any way, shape, or form. Thanks a million to mjryan for the beta. Enjoy!

One

"As the second order of my presidency," Baltar announced to anyone within hearing, "I require secretaries."

"Sir?" asked a skinny blond fellow whose name the new president hadn't yet bothered to learn.

"Did you not hear me the first time? Secretaries," he repeated. "Surely you don't expect me to perform the menial tasks that come with the office of President of the Twelve Colonies. Gods know I'll be far too busy."

He wandered over to the windows of the grounded Colonial One. Already, he could see the budding new civilization taking root before him. There were hundreds of tents out there, he was sure of it. One of the groups even had a small fire going! Progress, indeed.

"Uh, sir," the blond began again. Baltar maintained a disinterestedly confident posture and didn't turn around. The man continued, "Former President Roslin has offered her staff-"

Now was the moment; he whirled around and captured the nervous attendant's gaze. "Do you think I'm a complete idiot or do you simply know nothing about politics?" he demanded. "Roslin's staff supported Roslin, and they'll have no place in my inner circle. Some lower functionaries might stay, perhaps." It was always wise to make the underlings feel like they were contributing in some way.

The aide - was it Percy, maybe? No, Alex. Or Alan? Whoever he was, he nodded and scribbled something on his notepad. "I'll put out a call among the civilians, sir." He turned to leave.

"One moment." Baltar sidled over to his chair and relaxed into it as best he could. First task for the secretaries: Acquire a better presidential chair.

The aide was waiting.

"Put a special call out to the former denizens of the Prometheus. You know the ones. I believe their...unique talents will fill my needs perfectly."

The aide did an admirable job of not reacting to Baltar's request with anything but obedience before he hightailed it out of the room. Baltar rather liked him. Depending on what he brought back, he might keep him around.

Good help was so hard to come by these days.

Two

Laura Roslin was beginning to realize that not having an exit strategy for your presidency was really a very poor idea. Granted, she'd expected to have it all taken care of for her by the cancer, thus eliminating any need for messy cleanup, at least on her part. All she'd ended up with was special dispensation from "President" Baltar to remain in orbit with a few close advisers. They'd hid out on one of the ships now serving as a ferry station, thus making them the first stop for all press shipments. Speaking of which...

She flipped the last page of the magazine closed. "Tory!" she called. "I'm ready for the next issue!"

"Get it yourself," Tory grumbled from the next room. "You're not the president anymore. I don't have to do what you say."

Laura heaved a sigh. "I miss Billy," she muttered, lifting herself out of the easy chair in which she'd been sitting for the past...who knew how long anymore?

She shuffled into the next room. Tory had her feet up on her desk and seemed absorbed in her newspaper, so Laura made a face at her as she snatched another magazine from the pile.

"I saw that," Tory said, her eyes never leaving the page.

She would've been a teacher kids love to hate, Laura thought bitterly.

But Tory wasn't done yet. "You brought this on yourself, you know. If you'd listened to me, we would've won the damn election and neither of us would be sitting on our asses reading about dead celebrities."

"Oh, don't start with me." Laura tried to cut her off, to no avail.

"But nooo, somebody had to have a moral crisis and ruin all of my hard work. Gods, you could've just had the guy killed and no one would ever have complained!"

It was no use trying to stop her once she was on a roll. Laura returned to her chair, tuning out the ongoing background noise. The magazine cover was very familiar, and she realized she'd read this one before. Not wanting to go back for more punishment, she flipped to a random page, which turned out to be housing ads from a company on Tauron. Real estate was a post-presidential venture, wasn't it? She supposed, if nothing else, she could get in now while the property was still cheap. But then there would be the cost of development....

The phone rang in the other room. "If it's Maya, just get the update and I'll talk to her tomorrow," she called in the vain hope that Tory would realize this order was easier to follow than complain about. The ringing cut off.

Laura went back to her magazine. Maybe something in the country. Well, it was all country right now, but theoretically, it wouldn't always be, and they did have a lake nearby. Docks couldn't be too expensive to build....

Tory poked her head in the room. "Call for you."

"I thought I asked you to tell her-" she started.

"It's not Maya. Actually," Tory said, cracking what might have been her first smile since the election, "it's a job offer, down on the planet."

A job?! "Give me that receiver."

"It doesn't go that far."

"Ugh!" Getting up turned out to be easier if you'd done it recently. "What kind of job?"

Now Tory was definitely smirking. "Teaching."

Teaching. Well. It sure as hell beat rotting away in post-presidential purgatory. Laura straightened her blouse and put on her best "I'm a government official" voice as she went to take the call.

Three

"Chief, I have something to ask you."

Tyrol looked up from his still to find Cally wringing her hands and looking anywhere but at him. It was a cold day on New Caprica (weren't they all?), and his hooch would be in even more demand than usual, but something about her agitation told him he should pay attention this time.

He leaned back in his chair, stroking the fuzz on his chin, which he'd been growing since the day they landed on the planet. "Sure, Cally. Anything for my hardest worker."

"Well, that's the thing," she started hesitantly. "See, all my life, I only wanted to be one thing. And now that I don't have to fix Vipers every day, I figure I might as well go for it." Cally took a deep breath, raised her head, and looked him square in the eye. "Chief, I want to have your baby."

Tyrol jumped in his seat, accidentally ripping out a few hairs of his beard in surprise. "What? I thought you wanted to be a dentist!"

Emboldened by her admission, Cally relaxed her stance and waved a dismissive hand. "Well, yeah, but that was only going to be temporary. I was planning to go into practice in an office with a young, single, male dentist, seduce him with my ruffled shirts and drill-handling skills, and retire early to raise our extensive family. Duh."

Tyrol gaped at his ever-surprising former subordinate for a good thirty seconds before his brain kicked into gear. A baby? Now? It didn't seem the time or place. Then again, former President Roslin had directed them all to have babies. And Galen Tyrol was nothing if not a patriot.

He shrugged. "Why not?"

Cally squealed. "Thanks, Chief! This is gonna be so great! Can I call you Galen when we do it?"

"All right. Can I call you Sharon sometimes, if I feel like it?"

She shrugged. "You're the boss."

Tyrol figured he should end the conversation by hugging his new babymama for the first time.

Four

It was a subtle progression.

It started with little things: volunteering for extra shifts; jumping to learn new duties; ferrying coffee around the ship.

But it wasn't until Helo complimented Commander Adama's mustache that Gaeta decided that he was definitely up to something.

With much of its crew gone to build the new colony, it was easier for a person to lose himself in the emptier flagship, but Gaeta wasn't first in his ship's ops class for nothing, and he'd learned a trick or two during his time on Galactica. No detail on the ship was safe from him, if he chose to find it, and no person, either.

He's meeting secretly with Cylon agents, Felix thought first, but actually, Helo didn't ever seem to stray from the more frequented areas of the ship. The bored pilot he had following the ECO reported dutifully, if lazily, that the only places Helo ever went were CIC, the hangar deck, the brig, the mess, and quarters. Well, and the head, but Gaeta had secretly followed him in a few times and never caught anything out of the ordinary.

In a subversive sense, of course. After he caught him mid-shower, Gaeta had to double-check Helo's boot size just to be sure of his estimate. Wow.

Okay, so maybe he was somehow communicating with the enemy through their Cylon prisoner. It took a little more finessing to plant recording devices in the brig without anyone else noticing, but Felix Gaeta was a man of many skills. He rushed to Doctor Baltar's former lab after his shift ended, jammed headphones on his ears, and started the playback.

Five hours later, he tossed the headphones aside. Gods, they had to be the dullest couple in the universe! The Cylon whined about her lost baby, and in response, Helo told her about whatever trivial tasks he'd done that day. And he was teaching her to knit. Gaeta imagined a cell full of unused baby booties. Unless they were speaking in some elaborate code, Helo probably wasn't passing information to the Cylons through Sharon.

There was nothing for it. He'd have to bring it up with the commander. The next day in CIC, as the smarmy infiltrator informed Adama that he'd fixed his coffee just the way he liked it, Gaeta slammed down his clipboard and shouted, "Don't listen to him, Commander!"

Everyone froze and stared at him. "Excuse me?" said Adama.

"Sir, I have reason to believe that this man is collaborating with the enemy!" There were gasps around the room, but Helo and the commander shared a knowing look.

"Mr. Gaeta, you wouldn't happen to know why Lieutenant Agathon is being followed around the ship, would you?" queried Adama.

"His movements were suspicious, sir. I had to investigate before taking action."

"And what were the results of your investigation?"

"Er, nothing conclusive - yet," he emphasized. "Sir! Don't drink that, it's probably filled with Cylon poison!"

Adama's hand froze with his mug halfway to his mouth, but somehow, Gaeta didn't feel relief. Adama nodded to the specialist waiting to the side, who brought forward a very familiar recording device. "This is one of your tools, I believe. Am I to understand that you placed a networked system on board my ship?"

Frak. "It was just a little one," he mumbled.

Helo leaned forward, and said in a whisper that wasn't, "Sir, I didn't want to mention this before because I was worried about embarrassing the lieutenant, but I caught him...well...staring at me in the shower." Gasps rang out again. "I apologize for not mentioning it before, sir."

Adama's gaze held only cold steel. "Mr. Gaeta, I have recently been informed that President Baltar is looking for a new personal aide on New Caprica. I think you'll find that your previous working relationship with him will serve you well in your new position."

"No! Sir, please, you can't!" Gaeta pleaded.

In response, Adama took a deliberate sip of his coffee and turned to Helo. "Lieutenant Agathon, I believe you're familiar with all of Mr. Gaeta's former duties?"

"Yes, sir."

As the marines led him away by the elbows, Gaeta could only manage incoherent protests in his shock, but he was quite certain that as he was taken through the hatch, Helo looked right at him, smirked, and winked.

Five

The hatch on the Raptor from the Pegasus slammed open and out leaped a fuming Commander Lee Adama. He landed with a deck-shaking thud. "KARA!" he bellowed across Galactica's hangar deck.

The crowd of pilots and mechanics parted to allow Apollo an unimpeded march across the deck. Starbuck stood lazily examining her cuticles, though her body was tense and ready for a confrontation.

Huffing and puffing, Apollo eventually reached her. "Give...them...back," he panted.

She looked up. "No."

"Dammit, Kara!" he yelled, face going florid. "You had no right to take them from me."

"It's for your own good, Lee," she retorted.

"What do you know about my own good, Miss Drunk and Disorderly?"

She snorted. "Please. Like anybody cares about that old news anymore." She shook her head. "Admit it: you're addicted."

He somehow managed to puff up his chest even more than it already was. "I am not!"

Starbuck rolled her eyes. "Just look at you! You're practically bursting out of your uniform!"

As if to prove her point, a button popped off his jacket and flew across the deck.

"Oh, this is just like you, Kara. You just have to have your way, don't you?" His nostrils flared as he drew breath.

"It's not just me, dipstick. Ever notice how your dad never comes to visit anymore?"

Lee ignored her and continued his tirade. "You can't just stage an intervention like everyone else, no, it's got to be a floor show!" He gestured wildly around the room. The seam on his jacket's underarm ripped.

"This is an intervention. I've taking them away, and you'll never get them back."

"You can't do that!"

"Oh, but I already have. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a shuttle to catch." She swung her suspiciously lumpy duffel's strap over her shoulder. "It's been nice knowing you, Apollo. I'm off to be a civilian now." And with that, Kara tugged out her hairband, shook out her flowing blonde tresses, and climbed into the transport shuttle.

Lee tried to chase after her, but at a good third of his size, she was too quick for him. As the shuttle flew away with its precious cargo, all he could do was pound his fist against a viewport and scream, "MY NOODLES!"