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tellitslantTitle: She is the Earth, call her what you will
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tellitslant
Fandom: BSG 2003
Spoilers: 2.07-ish.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Ron Moore's.
Rating: PG
Summary: The struggle between Roslin and the gods is, unsurprisingly, not one-sided.
Thanks: tocherryice, for beta and sanity check.
Written forjennyo in the Female Gen Ficathon. I had loads of fun writing this, so hopefully you'll enjoy it. I also hope you don't mind that it's not entirely gen, but I figured, Roslin? Also really not entirely gen, so. ;)
Title from Euripedes' Bacchae. Please excuse the impressive way in which I play fast and loose with Greek mythology. Also, and here's something you don't get on ficathons too often, this is not dial-up friendly. In other words, now with 100% more Real Live Chamalla Visions!
To name something is to give it power.
Madame President. The Prophet. His mistress. Secretary Roslin. The whore. The schoolteacher. The traitor.
She has been called many things over the years.
Roslin, the martyr. The Chosen One.
Once, she found herself believing them.
Adar used to call her by the names of goddesses she didn't have time to believe in.
In her kitchen, he would laugh and brush at the flour across her face, and she would cover his hands with hers and lean back against him as they kneaded the dough together. He would flip her skirts askew and whisper stories about Demeter's Mysteries into her hair as she set the bread to rise, and sometimes they remembered in time to bake it and sometimes she banished him to the porch and started over again.
Eos, he called her when the sunlight glanced through her windows and turned her hair to burnished gold. Thetis, he whispered when she came in drenched from the rain. Eris, he murmured as he swept past her after a debate in the Cabinet. Calliope, he said, discarding a half-written position paper and pulling her glasses from her nose. Goddesses fell from his lips and described themselves as Laura as easily as he spun his political rhetoric, but she loved the politician as deeply as the man. What amazed her was that he always seemed sincere.
Once she told him acerbically that she was surprised he hadn't tried to reinstate Saturnalia as Caprica's main feastday. "With all the time you spend thinking of mythological pick-up lines, wouldn't it be easier just to go back to basics?"
She didn't remember anymore what he'd replied, only that it had led to a serious wrestling match at the time and, years later, a truly complicated joke involving a mock campaign poster. Only that he had kissed her open-mouthed, laughing. Only that his office was gone now, or at best occupied.
Occasionally, she was compared with different figures of myth. She giggled for hours when one of the trash journos named her another Calypso, leading Adar from his true path. She'd had enough name-calling in fifteen years of politics to thicken her skin considerably, and it was obvious that the article was born from spiteful speculation over why Adar consulted with the Secretary of Education on so many issues. Her aide was far more upset than Laura herself.
It had been more than seven years by then, and Laura knew he wasn't sailing away any time soon.
It wasn't that she didn't know the stories, of course. She'd studied them, debated their literary merits, even read terrible student compositions on the subject, years ago. She understood the history and the myth of her worlds, but to truly believe? She appreciated Earth as a symbol, and though its use in her speeches never had the same fervor behind it as Adar's, it usually got her the same result.
Sometimes she thought that the early politicians of the Twelve Colonies had been brilliant to come up with such an involved unification myth.
Sometimes she thought she wanted to believe.
She tried to pray for her mother, before things had gotten worse but after she knew they wouldn't get better. She knelt in the hospital temple, burned incense, invoked Asclepius, and yearned for an answer.
The next time she was in the temple, she lit candles to Hermes. An easy road, an easy crossing, an end to suffering, she prayed. An end.
She had never expected a miracle from the gods. It didn't surprise her that mercy was apparently beyond their powers either.
It never occurred to her to pray for herself.
Elosha believed from the moment Laura mentioned the snakes. Laura herself took a bit more convincing. She spent days with Elosha's copy of the Sacred Scrolls, taking notes and scribbling thoughts in a frenzy. At one point, partway through her third or fourth reading of the text, it occurred to her that she wasn't sure whether she wanted to prove or disprove the theory.
Forty-seven thousand, nine hundred and fifty-four people were all that was left of the human race. Which did she want to believe more: that she was fated to live, or that she was fated to save them all?
She forgot to question whether she wanted to believe in fate at all.
It seemed so easy, at first, to take on the role, to shape the name in her mouth and to hear it in others'. After all, she reasoned, all she had to do was die. It was just her timing that was crucial.
Hubris. She should have remembered the stories. Even the favoured of the gods were never spared from their manipulation. Even the most revered of monuments eventually faded to ruin. Even when she couldn't stop the visions, she should have remembered.
In the myths, Pythia was an oracle of Lord Apollo at his temple in Delphi. In most of the myths, at least. Some of them hinted and whispered of earlier myths, before the Exodus, before Kobol. Myths of Pythia before Apollo, when she answered to no one. Her power came from the earth and her sacrifices were anointed with flour, and the Lords of Kobol used her like they used everyone. Like she was fated to be used.
Laura supposed she was lucky. At least she had people who believed in her prophecies. At least the only sacrifice necessary to ensure her visions would be her own.
Hubris. Power can be taken as easily as given.
Even when they found Kobol, part of her still couldn't accept that she was involved in a story that had been written thousands of years before she was born, that had been played out across the skies time and again, that would write itself as history and legend and song. A story that she would never be around to see the end of, but an epic nonetheless. A third of the fleet believed in it, believed in her, but she held back.
It wasn't real until she had Elosha's blood on her hands, and then she believed, then she was convinced of the gods and their vengeance and their disregard for human life. Blood on her hands and blood on the Scrolls, death within her and death around her and her faith was renewed and affirmed.
She stopped being afraid, suddenly, sharply. Fear of punishment from the gods for absence of faith, fear of retribution, fear of failure. None of it meant anything to one dying woman.
Forty-seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty-one. She would not be afraid. They were her worshippers, her disciples, her children, her cause. She would not disappoint them before she had to. She would not doom them with her weakness.
If the gods wanted to use her, they would use her. As long as she accomplished what she needed, nothing else mattered. She might not be the President of the Twelve Colonies any longer, but she was still the Chosen One, and it would suffice.
Author:
tellitslantFandom: BSG 2003
Spoilers: 2.07-ish.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Ron Moore's.
Rating: PG
Summary: The struggle between Roslin and the gods is, unsurprisingly, not one-sided.
Thanks: to
cherryice, for beta and sanity check.Written for
jennyo in the Female Gen Ficathon. I had loads of fun writing this, so hopefully you'll enjoy it. I also hope you don't mind that it's not entirely gen, but I figured, Roslin? Also really not entirely gen, so. ;)Title from Euripedes' Bacchae. Please excuse the impressive way in which I play fast and loose with Greek mythology. Also, and here's something you don't get on ficathons too often, this is not dial-up friendly. In other words, now with 100% more Real Live Chamalla Visions!
To name something is to give it power.
Madame President. The Prophet. His mistress. Secretary Roslin. The whore. The schoolteacher. The traitor.
She has been called many things over the years.
Roslin, the martyr. The Chosen One.
Once, she found herself believing them.
Adar used to call her by the names of goddesses she didn't have time to believe in.
In her kitchen, he would laugh and brush at the flour across her face, and she would cover his hands with hers and lean back against him as they kneaded the dough together. He would flip her skirts askew and whisper stories about Demeter's Mysteries into her hair as she set the bread to rise, and sometimes they remembered in time to bake it and sometimes she banished him to the porch and started over again.
Eos, he called her when the sunlight glanced through her windows and turned her hair to burnished gold. Thetis, he whispered when she came in drenched from the rain. Eris, he murmured as he swept past her after a debate in the Cabinet. Calliope, he said, discarding a half-written position paper and pulling her glasses from her nose. Goddesses fell from his lips and described themselves as Laura as easily as he spun his political rhetoric, but she loved the politician as deeply as the man. What amazed her was that he always seemed sincere.
Once she told him acerbically that she was surprised he hadn't tried to reinstate Saturnalia as Caprica's main feastday. "With all the time you spend thinking of mythological pick-up lines, wouldn't it be easier just to go back to basics?"
She didn't remember anymore what he'd replied, only that it had led to a serious wrestling match at the time and, years later, a truly complicated joke involving a mock campaign poster. Only that he had kissed her open-mouthed, laughing. Only that his office was gone now, or at best occupied.
Occasionally, she was compared with different figures of myth. She giggled for hours when one of the trash journos named her another Calypso, leading Adar from his true path. She'd had enough name-calling in fifteen years of politics to thicken her skin considerably, and it was obvious that the article was born from spiteful speculation over why Adar consulted with the Secretary of Education on so many issues. Her aide was far more upset than Laura herself.
It had been more than seven years by then, and Laura knew he wasn't sailing away any time soon.
It wasn't that she didn't know the stories, of course. She'd studied them, debated their literary merits, even read terrible student compositions on the subject, years ago. She understood the history and the myth of her worlds, but to truly believe? She appreciated Earth as a symbol, and though its use in her speeches never had the same fervor behind it as Adar's, it usually got her the same result.
Sometimes she thought that the early politicians of the Twelve Colonies had been brilliant to come up with such an involved unification myth.
Sometimes she thought she wanted to believe.
She tried to pray for her mother, before things had gotten worse but after she knew they wouldn't get better. She knelt in the hospital temple, burned incense, invoked Asclepius, and yearned for an answer.
The next time she was in the temple, she lit candles to Hermes. An easy road, an easy crossing, an end to suffering, she prayed. An end.
She had never expected a miracle from the gods. It didn't surprise her that mercy was apparently beyond their powers either.
It never occurred to her to pray for herself.
Elosha believed from the moment Laura mentioned the snakes. Laura herself took a bit more convincing. She spent days with Elosha's copy of the Sacred Scrolls, taking notes and scribbling thoughts in a frenzy. At one point, partway through her third or fourth reading of the text, it occurred to her that she wasn't sure whether she wanted to prove or disprove the theory.
Forty-seven thousand, nine hundred and fifty-four people were all that was left of the human race. Which did she want to believe more: that she was fated to live, or that she was fated to save them all?
She forgot to question whether she wanted to believe in fate at all.
It seemed so easy, at first, to take on the role, to shape the name in her mouth and to hear it in others'. After all, she reasoned, all she had to do was die. It was just her timing that was crucial.
Hubris. She should have remembered the stories. Even the favoured of the gods were never spared from their manipulation. Even the most revered of monuments eventually faded to ruin. Even when she couldn't stop the visions, she should have remembered.
In the myths, Pythia was an oracle of Lord Apollo at his temple in Delphi. In most of the myths, at least. Some of them hinted and whispered of earlier myths, before the Exodus, before Kobol. Myths of Pythia before Apollo, when she answered to no one. Her power came from the earth and her sacrifices were anointed with flour, and the Lords of Kobol used her like they used everyone. Like she was fated to be used.
Laura supposed she was lucky. At least she had people who believed in her prophecies. At least the only sacrifice necessary to ensure her visions would be her own.
Hubris. Power can be taken as easily as given.
Even when they found Kobol, part of her still couldn't accept that she was involved in a story that had been written thousands of years before she was born, that had been played out across the skies time and again, that would write itself as history and legend and song. A story that she would never be around to see the end of, but an epic nonetheless. A third of the fleet believed in it, believed in her, but she held back.
It wasn't real until she had Elosha's blood on her hands, and then she believed, then she was convinced of the gods and their vengeance and their disregard for human life. Blood on her hands and blood on the Scrolls, death within her and death around her and her faith was renewed and affirmed.
She stopped being afraid, suddenly, sharply. Fear of punishment from the gods for absence of faith, fear of retribution, fear of failure. None of it meant anything to one dying woman.
Forty-seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty-one. She would not be afraid. They were her worshippers, her disciples, her children, her cause. She would not disappoint them before she had to. She would not doom them with her weakness.
If the gods wanted to use her, they would use her. As long as she accomplished what she needed, nothing else mattered. She might not be the President of the Twelve Colonies any longer, but she was still the Chosen One, and it would suffice.
