twooftwelve-blog

[twooftwelve-blog]

He quirks a perplexed brow, "A volus? Are they ... the small rotund creatures I have seen?" He shakes his head, "Perhaps ..." He sighs, "These aliens ... they are difficult. You don't know if you are insulting them or not simply by saying hello." He smiles weakly, tired and frazzled from the long day of wandering. 

vigilancevictorysacrifice started following you

She feels almost guilty for how uncertain he looks, as if he feels he shouldn’t even talk to her. The wage gap is present everywhere in the galaxy. Not one species or civilization seems to have gotten true equality quite right yet.

“Please, feel free to keep me. I’m trying to avoid a conference call with the new volus ambassador. He’s…I’m trying to think of an inoffensive word but it’s just not coming to me.”

#twooftwelve

[twooftwelve-blog]

Leoben can tell she is important to the inner workings of this place, the Citadel. She wears a sleek suit, coiffed blond locks and an easy expression that carries an air of non-trifle. He is aware that his shabby appearance makes her smile fake and she doesn't want to take his hand. She does though, which shows more of her character than she realizes. 

"If you are busy, I will not keep you." He says with a smile and his hands clasped behind his back. 

vigilancevictorysacrifice started following you

Elissa glances up from the calendar application on her omni-tool and takes in the man in front of her. Haggard, older—but not past forty-five, obviously poor. She gives him a shaky smile and allows him to grasp her cool hand. “Elissa Cousland. The pleasure is mine.”

#vigilancevictorysacrifice

[twooftwelve-blog]

Internment

"Kill me now! End it, you frakking toasters! LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT!"

The angel made flesh is screaming again. She's tearing out her hair and foaming from her perfect mouth. She begs for death because she doesn't know it isn't time. That now is not the moment of her end. An end that will turn the tides for human and Cylon alike. 

“Are you sure?” Six asks, eyes searching as they always are, carefully measured words and unwavering devotion just underneath it. “Perhaps you should leave her be today.”

“Do you love Gaius?” He answers her question with another, one that shocks her and makes her step back and wear a face of insult. Her disgust is answer enough. 

I walk past her, up the stairs and through the unchanging corridor. I have long grown past projection, finding solace in God's creation that is real and" unimagined. I come to the bars that separate me from her, the cold iron that always seems between us. I pause, breathe and shut my eyes. When I open them again I wear a smile, the one she fears but can't shy from, the one she reviles and is drawn to all the same. 

When I enter the room she sits with her back straight and her eyes have a predatory shine. She's contemplating all the ways she will kill me today, each more outrageous and violent than the last. I know it because I can smell her absolute hatred for me, can feel it permeate the air around us both. It matters so little, her hate, because soon enough she will know that I am right. 

“Good morning, Kara.” I say it easily, stepping over the vessel that was before, the one with his eyes still open and stunted blade still stuck in his carotid artery. “How are you today?” I ask her even when she stands, moving within inches of my face. She thinks to threaten me, but she is unarmored, unarmed and has choked me twice this week already. She's one for variety, to be sure. 

“You don't get to ask me that.” Her fingers curl and make fists she keeps tight against her side. 

“Oh?” I quirk a brow, smile easily because I am with her, filling the space beside her. “Isn't it polite to ask after someone's welfare?” Ah, this game. It's always this game with her, where she establishes authority and shoves her bravado down my throat. It's just she doesn't need to. I'll love her when stars fall out of the sky, when man and Cylon do not exist anymore. 

“You are my captor. It stands that I'm not doing so well at all.” She doesn't smile but it's hidden in her tone. I love the way she breathes when she's angry. A sneer and cruel turn to her lips that begs for my teeth to find them. It's the way her clearwater eyes bore into mine that tells me of all her secrets tucked so carefully away. I would shout to Heaven, call upon God's own ear and demand he hear me. I am her messenger, I am the one who will show her the way. 

But there are no words. There is nothing but the barest of inches between us. 

“Have you had breakfast?” I ask because I know she hasn't. I know she's scratched and clawed at the windows and doors. It's a perfect replica of her apartment on Caprica and I built it just for her. My hands, the one she has sundered many times over, crafted this home for us. And she loathes me for it. She despises me to one end of the universe to the other. 

“I am not hungry.” She speaks as she follows me to the little kitchen, her long and weathered fingers white knuckle tapping on the counter-top. She keeps her tempered eyes on my movements – eggs, milk and a fresh loaf of bread. Simple fare, but better than she had among the people. 

“Did you sleep well?” She hasn't. She's paced. She's prodded. She's mulled. She's stared at the ruined body she laid at her own feet. I wonder if it's because I never touch her. I never provoke her beyond the truth I am destined to speak. I love her and do not understand why she thinks I will harm her. 

“No.” Her body is rigid. She's on the offensive, lining me in her sights. She can feel her skin prickle like it does when she's about to launch. That excitement she had the first day of flight school, her officer commission and the shame of feeling just so when the colonies came under the slaughter. Fight, her body screams. Destroy is boiling the very blood inside her veins. 

“How today, Kara?” Her fear shifts before my very eyes. “May I at least handle my,” I can't choose the right word for what I feel about seeing my own death, the one I remember keenly. The one staring wide-eyed with blood dried upon his – my – teeth. “ … Former self?” I crack a grin just to see if she gets the joke, but she wears a cheshire look and I know she's already chosen. There's no preparation and death has become an old friend. 

I shut my eyes and feel the metal pan crack against my skull. Once, and I can hear her howl with a rage like God's old vengeance. The intensity of it rattling my bones. Twice, and the pain I feel radiates every inch of my body and I fall. Three times and the deep still waters are waiting, just as they always are. 

#drabblings #leoben & kara #setting: new caprica internment #KARBEN FEELS

[twooftwelve-blog]

Her expressiveness, the range and motion and her question, draws a curious tilt to his head. He considers it and her, and his surroundings. Unfamiliar, though not in many ways. Strange creatures that raise many questions and these machines the organics have named 'Reapers'. He worries over Kara, always one to follow into trouble gleefully. And to hear talk of the humans who have broken off, staining righteousness with their division. 

“Very carefully,” he leans in closer, smoothing his voice along the thick drum and bass in the bar. “She's military,” he speaks vaguely, dropping a careful slur on the edge of his syllables. Funny how Cylon are affected by alcohol, not a wonder why two of the Five imbibe as much as they do. It's a rare thing for Leoben, and he knows he'll have to chide himself later. “You know the type – pilot, brash, maybe a touch crazy.” The smile he wears now is real, because though she doesn't love him back, she will keep him in the space between, at the convergence and by time's riverbed. 

“But she's – I can't explain it, but there's something.” He looks into her eyes, as is the polite thing to do when you want to tell someone the truth. Another lesson learned – how she follows him in all his doing. “It's like she's everywhere.” 

He shakes his head, knowing he's doing his feeling injustice. It's not love like romance or aching, not of want or need, but connection. Fate. He's known her before, another life, another moment, another stage where he was someone else and she still the same. The pieces fit, the pattern and shape of all things he knows because it has happened before and will happen again. The same here too, if what he's heard and seen is to be believed. 

“Do you know what I mean? Have you ever felt that before?” I turn my attentions on her now, seeking out my memory of the long and wending waters to see where she dwells, to find her moments. A good soul who has suffered so unjustly. A lovely face that's known war and scorn, derision and hollow feelings. A person. Alive with her heart beating. For now she is caught in a mess that impossible to defend against. 

He feels guilt. He is a machine, not so unlike the ones that threaten her life – the entirety of this galaxy's life. He was once part of a plan that ended in slaughter by nuclear fire. He knows what genocide feels like when you have witnessed it, prayed for it, studied the angles and hidden nooks. How much did the dogs ravage her home? How much has she put upon the scales? He died and lived again so much that it's impossible to number. His scales are broken and there's nothing left to measure. 

But the guilt is still there, the old memories of guile and the feel of victims clawing inside his skull. Every death he gave he received again, deservedly so. But it would never be enough to forgive action or willingness. Even knowing his mistake, his brethren who were party to it, still isn't enough to cleanse his sin. Destruction of the chosen ones, of his own creators is the sin that will keep him alive. 

His penance is in the knowledge of them that hath wrought his very bones. The humans he was made to reflect, to strive for, to push emotion and strength and will to the very limit and beyond. Intuitive, individualistic, sentimental and flawed, so very flawed at the cores of their souls. But there is beauty in that and this woman who bears a pretty face and the weight of the world on her shoulders is part of that.

Ambrosia

Shae’s heart thuds in her ears when he takes her hand. Goosebumps raise across her arms at the feeling of his thumb tracing the raised bumps of calloused skin on the underside of her knuckles.

A little disappointed smile ghosts across her lips at the mention of another woman. Of course, she thinks. His touch is more distant now, the warmth on her cheeks and chest subsides.

“How do you do it?” she asks. “How do you love someone who hates you?”

She doesn’t know the answer to that question, but she knows the answer of another. How do you love someone and hate them at the same time? She knows that feeling. A clenching in the chest, followed by a clenching of the fists. You don’t know whether to kiss them or punch them. Shae knows the taste of betrayal and hurt. It makes hoping painful. It’s brought her nothing but cynicism.

She finds comfort in comforting others. She chases away her own sadness with the smiles of her friends. She finds company in the quelling of another’s loneliness.

Shae sees loneliness in the man in front of her, in the shadows under his eyes and the haunted way he looks at her and past her. It’s the only reason she doesn’t move her hand.

#location: purgatory #twooftwelve #purgatorybartender #[i am beginning to ship this #i ship everything though]

[twooftwelve-blog]

vigilancevictorysacrifice started following you

Always a careful man, he smiles and makes shrewd, small movements that draw her eyes to shoddy clothes and unkempt hair. He has a shadow of stubble across his jaw and his eyes are tired, sunken and have a hollow spin to the center. He plays the part well of a weak man. But he is more, so much more and the parts he cannot hide are reduced to a feature and expression no one can place. So he smiles easily and offers a warm hand. "Leoben Conoy, a pleasure."

#vigilancevictorysacrifice #(( thanks for following :3 ))

[twooftwelve-blog]

Leoben Conoy/#2/Callum Keith Rennie appreciation post

#callum keith rennie #leoben conoy #[ leoben's lovely face ] #the genetic destiny of the queue

[twooftwelve-blog]

She, the harbinger, the pestilence spread, is confluence to his very soul. He is not the ferryman, nor her guide, but he feels compelled to do so. She sees an after, a future where there would be none. She embarks toward light when only dark will dwell. It is a difficult thing to reconcile when she speaks the language so fluently. 

She speaks of vengeance as it’s bred into her skin -- the parts of her that aren’t real anymore feel its foreign tracks and split the skin of her face and neck. The glow that paints her stark features that were once beautiful are still. He sees beyond them. The righteous hand dolls vengeance, he knows, but how long can one dance upon a razor edge before slipping?

“You see a future beyond your war?” Hope seems strange in her mouth, as though the words are not a language she has heard or spoken before. And she doesn’t believe them, not fully, the hope that the others feel and strive for is only theory for her. “But,” he wonders, he looks and searches, but the path ends in desolation. “You are cast as a martyr. You will die for your cause because that’s what has been laid before you.” 

“He did not restore your life so there would be an after. You were returned to bring an end, to sacrifice while others cannot.” She is both an avatar of humanity and of God, the perfection sought in creation has not touched her because she is an instrument, just as he is. She is a weapon, he is the word and though they are vast, stark opposites, they -- he believes it, anyway -- were meant to discover each other. 

He shakes his head, more curious now than he was before. He does not know of her other enemies, the ones she calls Cerberus or the Snake. A three-headed dog, the gatekeeper of the underworld and the tempter and orchestrator of the end times. Those were only legend in his mind, a terrifying tale told to Colonial children meant to keep them amid the fold. Their false gods stand amid mountaintops, raining down judgement and playing the mortals as pieces on a board. Made of clay and reduced to dust, fed to the hounds should they not toe the hard and thin line. 

“Are these mortal men? Humans?” Ah, the divide. There is always one, those who hold themselves in false esteem, claim they are blessed with charlatan lips. “So there is war within as well?” He shakes his head, disappointed. In a moment where mankind must stand at the gates of Hell itself, division reigns. Betrayers, all, he is sure. 

“I know so little of your war, it seems. Even less of this galaxy or these machines that threaten your civilizations.” In the days since his arrival he made attempts to touch their minds, but found only nothingness. A vast and empty space where whispers reign with questions that bear no answer. They did not question his presence -- he is machine, like them, though inky tendrils attempted interface, they were pushed back. He is not software or hardware -- he is code, flesh, bone and sinew. He bears no metal, he has free will in lieu of programming. He is evolution as practice instead of concept. He is the synthesis of man and machine, the future and the end. A corruption of the constant pattern.

arielshepard started following you

#arielshepard #[ long is good #you are good #you are splendid ]

[twooftwelve-blog]

#[ leoben's lovely face ] #ckr watareudoin

[twooftwelve-blog]

I think I have just hypnotised myself making these. Callum Keith Rennie is smoking and smiling at me and I am smitten. 

#callum keith rennie #[ leoben's lovely face ]

[twooftwelve-blog]

Leoben is not a man of hypotheticals or rhetoricals. He was not created for this, he was made to transcend. To see the pattern and to interpret its meaning. He was chosen to guide the hands of an angel born into woman, to show her the path she was meant to stride. This one, Claire, is not his test but he is drawn to the broken parts -- ever the mechanic, the fixer and closer of wounds.  

He relaxes his stance, careful now as not to frighten her into flight. He is the mad prophet, the one who sees the constant change amid the wide track of water that flows through time as though it doesn't adhere. He takes the lines of her face, the soft shade of her eyes and the way she tightens her hands at her side. She is beautiful, a paragon's avatar -- an angel, like Kara but not her at all. 

"You've seen the dark forest, witnessed the tree split from lightning and see the roots that stay stalwart in their place. You've seen the child. The one. He is false, a liar and will offer you nothing but death that you will gladly run toward." The boy who was burned to her mind was never there, yet she dreams of him. She gives chase but he is out of reach. "You know what's coming. You know where the answer and the question truly lies."

"There is a saying where I am from, 'what has happened before, will happen again'. It's an article of faith -- of my faith, for I am the seer, the watcher and guide. And I am man. I am synthetic. I will give you honesty if you provide the same." 

He smiles again as she draws back. He knows his own intensity, having been honed by hours and years spent by the side of his hybrid. She spoke, he listened and he watched the shift of her eyes. She did not trust him, she did not know him, but she would.

She takes an instinctive step back as he advances. There is something hopeful, but something not entirely identifiable. Faith? Wonder?

So many religions are nothing more than their names these days. People carry their faith around like an accessory; not really believing a word of it, but keeping it as an artifact from a bygone era when science didn’t have an immediate answer to all of life’s questions.

Claire regards her religion as a set of ideals. She doesn’t believe the fanciful feats of heroes like Herakles and Perseus. She doesn’t believe Almighty Zeus will strike her down if she becomes too proud. But she, like many, believe the universe is too cold a place without something greater. She hopes that there are ears to hear her prayers when she’s on the front lines.

Convergence…hollow of time.

The macabre poetry isn’t lost on her this time. She looks into the stranger’s eyes and shakes her head. “Are you sure you want me to tell you?” 

#claireshepard

[twooftwelve-blog]

He cocks his head to the side -- it cannot be possible, but is he ... wrong? No. No, certainly not. He can feel it. He knows she's been washed in the river, she's seen the space between in a gasp for breath. 

"You glimpsed the convergence. You dwelled once in the hollow of time." His body goes still and his tawny eyes search her face for recognition. Her false gods have filled her head and made her forget -- yes, that must be it. 

"What did you see?" He asks again, smooth voice and silent feet moving toward her, near her, enough to feel the warmth of life she was given twice.

Her smile fades as her forehead creases in a semblance of a frown. Is he speaking of combat or of something else?

“I don’t know what you mean.”

#claireshepard

[twooftwelve-blog]

He can't suppress a small chuckle at her question. Direct. Concise. These are the things he likes. She is pulling from his mind the myriad of ones and zeros. She can't read them well -- they are only numbers to her, not a sequence, not language or precision. 

"Do you believe in fate, River Tam?" A question for a question, a meeting -- a dance of minds beyond comprehension. He searches her in the many garbled images gifted to him by the mouth of God. She was not among them, but he knows she was there, a small flame set to march along the streams. 

Barefeet and wringing hands. Needles. White coats and scuffed floors. They tie her down and work while she does nothing but watch. Her fascination is what he sees, but her face remains hidden. 

"Why did they change you?"

She feels something in her head, a mix between a dull ache and the pins and needles you feel in a limb after it’s gone to sleep. It’s new, nothing like the wash of emotions she gets from most people. It frightens and intrigues her.

“Why are you here, Leoben?”

#ourwitch

[twooftwelve-blog]

She has nice little grin. It fits her face well and Leoben cannot help but make yet another comparison to Kara Thrace. She is always on his mind so it's expected. 

"Civilian," he repeats as though the word doesn't quite fit in his mouth. "I suppose that's what I am now." Leoben the Soldier, Leoben the Keeper of God's words, Leoben  who walks beside the ever-winding and ever-changing rivers of time. Over time he has become more than a Two, he has become the Two. There is little difference, he knows, but it's still something to become accustomed to. 

"This may be forward," he prefaces with a finger catching in the button hole that has lost its button and he sways in shoes that are worn and pants with holes at the crease. "But what have you seen?" Though his purpose is to guide only one, he can't help but find the others -- the other walkers, the ones who have glimpsed the space between. It's an endless fascination and he wonders if she can even recall her own tribulation. 

She takes his hand and shakes it firmly. “You can just call me Claire,” she says with a sheepish smile. “I get so used to talking to stuffed suits I forgot how to talk to civilians.”

#claireshepard

[twooftwelve-blog]

He nods respectfully, offers a charming smile and warm hand. "Leoben Conoy, Commander Claire Shepard. The pleasure is mine." She is not like the others -- no eyes of blazing fire, no smile faked or plastered -- she is good and he can see it. But she is astray, keeping of the old gods. And he knows which cards to hold and which to show; words to wed to tongue and cheek and others to keep.

twooftwelve started following you

#claireshepard

[twooftwelve-blog]

He can feel her inside his head. It's like water, moving delicately and peeking at all the little bits and pieces. But can she read it? The myriad of zeros and ones all tucked neatly into place must be something of confusion for the humans -- even this one. 

"Leoben is just as well, Miss River Tam." Her name is fitting for what he feels from the snaking of her mind's spindly fingers. There is much in her he can see -- a brother loved, a mind lost to a far off place she would rather not touch, and the reconciling of what she is to what she has become. 

He smiles for her, glad to do so as he's becoming drawn to her. Her intelligence is strong and has a pull of it's own. She reminds him of his hybrids in the way she fidgets and the odd manner of speech. It's a comforting feeling indeed.

River smiles softly. The voice is soft, but synthetic. He doesn’t sound like a human. The thoughts are organized, separated one from the other. Humans are muddled and thoughts permeate each other, slipping and splitting like amoebas. His thoughts are hard, solid molecules. Immobile, ordered.

“River Tam. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Conoy.”

#ourwitch #[come to work on ambrosia #reply to river and dance instead]

[twooftwelve-blog]

She rolls her neck, haunted eyes on him like eagles dogging for field mice. She knows what he is but cannot name it. She sees, though not like he does. He inclines his head politely and offers a charmed grin, "Leoben Conoy, miss ...?"

twooftwelve started following you

Pawn on the chessboard. Part of a set, but alone incomplete.

#ourwitch #[:3 rivvvveeerrrrr~]

[twooftwelve-blog]

"Threaten my life, if you wish. It's hollow." He doesn't take her threat as a challenge. He doesn't fear her though he likely should. "What would you gain by killing me -- other than personal satisfaction? You don't strike me as the reveling type." 

He taps his foot once, twice. She is a harsh woman, one in which he sees the image of the life before. She was the woodland flame set to blaze that encroached upon the shanty homes. She was the quiet plague that killed without sign or name. Even before her end, before her slip into the stream, she was the carrion bird who flew straight and fast, wherever there had been a call. 

"But you do wish for enlightenment." His smile takes a turn, a careful thing while he took her in. She studied him curiously, was open to listening despite what had happened before. Synthetics -- they were cruel and skewed, creatures who deemed their purpose much more worthy than mankind. But their judgement was one they had no right to hand down. Men are never to do the job of God. "You would not be such a faithful and righteous woman if you did not seek enlightenment at all." 

Leoben doesn't pressure, he is not here to convince her of her destiny. She knows it. She lives and breathes it, the wild flames of war is the air that fills her lungs and moves her heart to beat. But the hybrids would gain much from her as she would from them. To be in communion with the very words of God -- one should be awed, humbled, brought to their knees. How many times has he pulled out his own hair? How many times has he railed against the prescribed path laid so clear and bare before him? How many times did he fantasize about snapping Kara Thrace's neck? 

Again he finds himself recalling that this woman is not Kara. Not even the barest reflection of --

And he sees the throne, placed so high above the masses, they gather and caterwaul and extend their hands for her to touch. But she is unmoved. The veil that hides her eyes is that of fire, her gown, though beautiful to look upon is made of ice. They wail and lament her, decry her as their queen, and she stays unmoved. They beg for a word but she can only give them silence. She is not there, though it seems she is. 

A battle wages, the dead walk and a wretched sound cracks open the sky. Tendrils of smoke cloud the green land, staining it black and making all the oceans run red. Her sword is cut from the sun itself, blinding and fierce, so fast as it strikes again and again. Her foe is a beast of clubbed feet and vast eyes filled with a terrible void of nothing. 

The storm rages, crackling and deafening, splitting the very earth in two. But the roil of the ground does not touch her. She smiles, a terrible thing and whistles. The wind that comes is enough --

He offers a small smile. It's only pieces for this woman. Only the cubed throne, the shimmering glass and blood diamond eyes that visit in fractures. His mind's eye is a fickle thing, a wanton thing that cries for succor. These visions leave him hollow after, spent. She will go or she will stay and he will play the game so long as she rises to it.

arielshepard started following you

#twooftwelve #arielshepard #[ oh ariel ohhh ]