lyssie: (Cally duuuuuh)
lyssie ([personal profile] lyssie) wrote2007-02-15 06:44 pm

fic: Blake's 7, End With a Bang

Disclaimer: Not mine.
Rating: er... 13? Violence, language.
Characters: Cally of Auron, Travis
Set: post-season four. As always, this is an AU. Previous installments can be found, at the least, here.
Notes: Was bored at work, listening to a combination of Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, 30 Seconds to Mars, Stabbing Westward, Fall Out Boy, and Garbage. This really did get started with 'Hallo Spaceboy', however. (mental prompt "Cally, moondust")

End With a Bang
ALC Punk!

The explosion blasts through the air, shattering windows and sending debris nearly a quarter mile into the stratosphere. It shines, a bright flare of light against the dark of the night sky. Cally stands under an awning three blocks down, and watches the glare against the clouds above. One more Federation control center to notch in her bedpost, up in flames for the universe to see.

Not an easy task, this rebellion with dirty fingers and quick results.

Like a tide that forgot to allow the moon to control her movements, she's relentless. A swathe of destruction behind her, and so many before her she's lost count.

Ironic that Blake would tell her she wasn't right.

He hadn't been right, either.

The chaos leaves the planets poorer, eking out existence without the help of the long arm of the law. But it's a cleaner living, it has to be--there's no more time for decadence and sloth. No brocade ball gowns while people starve in the streets. Now they're all starving in the streets.

"As a piece of art, it lacks a sort of quality." Travis' voice is derisive as he slides from his shadow into the one next to hers.

"I wasn't painting the sky."

They both know that's a lie, and he laughs, though the sound isn't amused. "Should there be connoisseurs at the end of the world, I'll be certain to let them know your intentions."

"Art isn't supposed to explain intention."

"Neither are bombs."

They fall silent, the air stirring with disaster crews, sirens, and the sounds of people who are injured or worse. Cally thinks she sometimes hears the dead more than the living, and that's why Travis stays. He sees the dead, too. It's not a balanced scale, of course. She kills for the cause of justice and rebellion. He killed in the name of king and country, President and Federation.

Neither ideal truly works, in the end.

A sound calls their attention to another shadow, and they both watch the Federation trooper collapse, hacking. His helmet off, they can see where the fires burnt him, and Cally imagines the crispy insides of his lungs. He won't have long to live, there's no burn unit close enough. There's detachment in the bullet she puts into his brain.

"Have you ever wondered if mercy and pathos are two sides of the same coin?"

Cally doesn't answer him, the smoke thick in the back of her throat. She can taste blood and burnt flesh, and suddenly, she needs a drink.

The footsteps behind her as she walks silently for the space port tell her Travis is following.

Travis is always following, these days. Like a carrion bird, he's waiting for her corpse to stop moving. The spirit animating her flesh sparks a tiny rebellion against that thought and she quickens her pace. There's a part of her not willing to die yet, it's the same part that keeps her to the shadows.

No longer a follower, she's not quite a leader. There's no one to listen to her suggestions, no one to die for her. Avon wouldn't have called it bleak, but then, Avon had never quite understood what drove her. Travis doesn't, either, but he's closer to human than Avon ever was.

She takes no comfort in that.

Just as she takes little comfort in the warmth of the alcohol that slides down her throat in the worst bar she can find. Travis sits opposite, his own glass something red and sticky. He takes a perverse pleasure in trying to rattle her with something blood-like, so she ignores it.

She's stopped asking why he's there--no point in his endless pedantry and sneering commentary upon her life-style. Reversing it back upon him doesn't exactly work and usually makes her want more to drink.

Sometimes, the thought occurs to her that this, here, is the kind of thing Blake would have understood in the end. She's heard enough about his life on Gauda Prime, seen the bits and pieces of his failed army to know: Blake would have undertaken something far different, in the beginning. The man he was would have looked upon both rough bounty hunter and savage terrorist with the same disgust and remorse that he looked upon the President with, as they burned his garden of shadow cacti.

And sometimes, the thought occurs to her that this is exactly the sort of thing he would have fought against--or at least, his clone would have. Travis told her of him--the man with a belief in life that led to his death far quicker than most would expect. And how he'd seen him at the end on Jevron, and stood on the outskirts of the funeral crowd, watching as Servalan made it a show.

The Supreme Commander Servalan calls herself Sleer now, of course.

Another thing Blake wouldn't have understood.

Hiding in plain sight. Blake was a bit of a simple man, he would have eschewed the idea as basic cowardice.

No one ever said Servalan wasn't a coward.

But then, the woman did have the sheer balls to conduct a killing spree that still hadn't ended. She was lucky most of her command staff had already been dead. It still had taken her most of four years to get everyone.

Sleer tried to kill Cally, once, near the beginning. Cally had held a knife to her throat and suggested she remember Dayna's father.

For an instant, there had actually been a flicker of humanity in the woman. Cally had been almost impressed. The flicker had made her pull back, leaving merely an angry red line across the white skin of one of the most beautiful women in the galaxy. Beautiful, and ruthless.

Cally remembers that, now. Remembers it every time there's a damp chill in the air, feels it in every muscle that aches as she trudges against a juggernaut.

She won't ever win. She knows that, philosophically, metaphorically, physically. There's nothing she can do to completely end the Federation. Not without using Travis' plan of genocide.

All megalomaniacs have to start somehow, she figures.

She's just very bad at the cold, uncaring part. Although, she's not particularly angrily passionate, either--and she's not sure that she knows how to get back feeling human. But she's trying.

The question escapes her before she can stop it, "Do you suppose apathy belongs to the kingdom of the megalomaniac?"

A laugh escapes Travis, this one almost amused, though it's mostly full of surprise, "Did they double the amount in your glass without me noticing?"

"Should they have?" A question for a question, and she suddenly thinks in amusement that she could keep this up all night.

"Are you doubting your purpose?" Now he's lazy.

Cally snorts, "Is there ever a question that doubt comes to us all?"

"Did you ever doubt Blake?"

Direct, and suddenly the game is less fun. She goes for her glass before remembering that's a tell, and curses mentally, "Didn't we all?"

A snicker again, "Do I look as though I was part of your crew, Cally?"

"Haven't you ever wondered if you could have been?"

"Are you delusional?"

"Are you?"

He goes for his glass, but it's not a tell, even as he drains it to the dregs and sets it back. "That should go without saying."

"Yes," she agrees, finishing the last of hers.

"Well," there's a brightness in his tone that's belied by the darkness in his eye, "that was fun. We should remember Blake lots."

"Obviously," her tone is dry and she settles back further in her chair, wondering if the proprietor would notice if she stayed for the next millennium.

"To Blake," Travis offers, empty mug held high, "may he be rotting forever."

Amused by the irony, she lifts her own, "To Blake, may we never forget the lessons he taught."

"How best to be a stuffed shirt."

"Travis."

"And blow up well-meaning Federation officers."

"You were well-meaning?"

"Of course."

Cally snorts and leans back, bringing her legs up to prop her boots against the edge of the table. "Yes, I can certainly remember all of your mercy."

"I said nothing about mercy."

"Of course you didn't."

They're both silent, then.

It's a stopping point, a moment where she simply has to be. And maybe she's not so apathetic after all.

-f-

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