First Elegy, Ninth Verse
Zepherine Drouhin

1 Sextus 6490
Demeter Transfer Station

The regular transport shuttle out of the Caprica City spaceport carried its usual daily consignment of around fifty warriors, bringing them out to that great military melting pot, Demeter Transfer Station, on their way to rejoin their units or their ships to do their military duty by the Colonies. The shuttle came into Gate 9 with all the innate excitement of a man parking a bus. Collecting his kit together and queuing to disembark, Apollo reviewed his ideas at the Inquiry about the attraction of bombing out into the Transport Fleet. There were better deaths than terminal boredom. There were worse, of course, as he most certainly knew, but on the whole he'd rather do something with a little more energy in it even if it meant he was unlikely to see a ripe old age.

A couple of dozen people waited in the small room beyond the security gate, and more than one loud (if not rapturous) reunion blocked Apollo's route to the door and Demeter's vastness beyond. Dodging past a group of outstandingly raucous Infantry, he didn't see her at first. It was only when she caught at his arm and called his name that he realised she was there in the crowd of friends and well-wishers and, awareness kicking in a little late, that she'd called him, quietly, more than once. He stared when she touched him, taking in the short crisp curls and wide brown eyes and only after that long stare, realising it really was Rosie.

Rosie.

It was several centons later before they let each other go. He hadn't kissed anyone like that since he'd left for the Columbia, over a yahren before. She tasted of mint and lemon and he'd had his hands tangled in hair that smelled of herbs in the sun.

"Rose," he said when he could speak again, cupping her face with both his hands., ignoring the laughter and catcalls around them, ignoring the open curiosity and amusement and be damned to officers being expected to show military decorum to enlisted. Be damned to it. "Rosie."

"Hello, love." Her eyes were very bright. She rested her forehead against his for a micron, and smiled.

"But—" He stopped, laughed, going with the surge of delight. He slid one hand down the side of her neck, feeling the fine gold chain. The pendant nestled in the hollow of her throat.

"I don't ever take it off." She gave him a decisive little nod in emphasis.

He kissed her again, her mouth opening under his with a willing heat. "I never expected to see you!"

"I know. Surprise! How long do you have?"

That sobered him instantly. "Shit. The Galactica's shuttle will be waiting for me. I'm going straight out."

"Oh." She looked down at the room key in her hand, and pushed it into her hip pocket. "Oh."

He put his hand over the pocket, feeling the curve, remembering what it felt like to hold both hips in his hands as she straddled him, hot and damp with sweat, and wanting her. "No time."

She smiled, shrugged. "There never was." She put a brave face on it. "I was hoping... oh, well."

The ache in his groin was like a stab. "I wouldn't have said no," he said. "Rosie."

She shrugged again, tightening her mouth, but still it trembled visibly. "I know. Me, too. I've missed you. A lot." She closed her eyes for a micron, and when she opened them, she managed another one of those brilliant smiles. She put her hand over his, pressing it against her hip. "All we can do is make the best of what we have. What gate are you heading for?"

"Eighteen."

"So if we walk slow, we could have maybe a half-centar? Oh, Apollo. Not quite the reunion I had in mind."

"No." Apollo looked rather helplessly at the kit bags beside them. He'd have his hands so full, he wouldn't even be able to hold hers.

"I'll deal with that. I thought some brawn may be needed." Rosie beckoned forward a trooper; had to be from the Hype, but someone he didn't know. "After your time," she explained, loading the man up with Apollo's kit. Apollo kept the datapads with him, as usual, slipping on the backpack while she ordered up her human mule and sent him on his way.

"I've missed my efficient lieutenant," he said, when she slipped her hand into his.

"And Rosie?"

"I've missed my Rosie even more. It's been a long yahren, more than a yahren."

"Letters don't do it," she agreed.

"Better than nothing."

"Only just." Rosie sighed and tightened her grip on his hand. "I heard the last job was a bad one, Apollo."

"How?" he asked, sharply, wondering if the entire Regiment was talking about the way he'd lost a battlestar.

"Your mother keeps in touch, didn't you know? She told me that you'd been on a bad job for the Supreme Commander and that you'd be arriving on Demeter today. She wanted me to try and meet you. I didn't expect I could, but the Hype needed some minor repairs and we brought her in a couple of days ago." She looked at him sideways, and added, quickly, "No details. She wouldn't have known anyway, would she?"

"No," he conceded. "She wouldn't. I hadn't realised she wrote to you."

"Not very often, but enough. Your mother's a born matchmaker."

He stopped, and drew her to one side of the corridor, letting the traffic flow past them. "Maybe she has the right idea. Why don't we?"

"Be serious!"

"I am serious, Rosie. Seal with me."

She laughed, but her face was pale. "We can't even manage a decent affair! I haven't seen you for over a yahren. Long distance marriage wouldn't work for me, Apollo."

"It doesn't have to be long distance."

"It'll always be long distance. You're in Fleet and I'm not; and when you get back , I'm due my rotation out in another two yahrens and we'd be split up again. But even when you come back, it won't be to the Hype."

"No." Wherever Martens posted him when he got home, she wouldn't disrupt the Hyperion's command, not after three yahrens under Tarrant. Hype was Tarrant's ship now. It hurt to admit it. "I won't get the Hype back."

Her expression was taut. "It won't work."

"What I mean is that we don't have to stay in the military."

Rosie stared. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again.

"You're overdoing the astonishment," he said. "I've been thinking about it for the last few sectons. The apartment's mine outright, so we'd have somewhere to live. I could work at the Kobolian, no problem. And even if there isn't a Fellowship available immediately, I've got enough income from the family trusts to live on, more than enough. More than the military pays me, in any event. We could resign."

"What would I do?" she asked, dazed. "Stay at home and have babies?"

"Sounds like a plan to me."

She laughed. "Oh love! We'd be sitting at opposite ends of the room, sneering and throwing china at each other within a sectar! We're Shield. We don't know anything else—no, Apollo, let me finish. If this wasn't all hard wired into you—" her hands caressed his captain's insignia as she spoke, "—if this didn't mean everything to you, you'd have stayed at the Kobolian when you were twenty. You'd never have gone to SSI and you and Joss would be the ones living in wedded bliss."

"I mean it."

"You think you do." She leaned up against him, getting out of the way of being jostled by curious passers-by and he could smell the herbs again. "It must have been a very bad job, this one your mother mentioned."

It was difficult to speak. "Yeah."

"You'll get over it." She kissed his cheek. "But marriage isn't a cure."

"I wasn't looking for a cure. I was looking for something else."

"It's not me you really want, love, and I'm not going to settle for being second best. I love you, but I've more pride than that."

"I've just asked you to marry me!"

"You didn't really mean it." She put her hand over his mouth to hush him. "It's all right, Apollo. I've always known what I was getting into. You didn't make me any promises then, and I'm not looking for any now. We had a yahren together and it was pretty damn good. But if he walked in here now, you wouldn't even notice I existed."

"That's not true—"

"Yes it is, as little as you want to admit it. I know you love him."

"I love you."

"I know, but it's not the same. It was good when we weren't long distance." She smiled, sadly, and shook her head. "Although I do sometimes wonder if we ever got over that real distance of me being a girl."

And there was hardly any arguing with the fact he preferred men. Bisexual? Yes, he supposed so, but his preference definitely swung to morning hard-ons, stubble and a strength he couldn't use with her or any other woman. "Gender isn't the first thing I think about, you know."

"Really?" Rosie quirked an eyebrow at him. "Am I the only woman in your life?"

He shrugged, angrily. "You know it."

"Then that's as good as it'll ever get. It'll do."

"I do mean it," he persisted.

"I know, but you can't hide here, Apollo. Sorry." She shook her head, and he had to suppose that his argument might have had a little more force if he hadn't been on his way to the Galactica.

"So, what are you saying?" he asked, unwillingly.

"Goodbye?"

"Oh."

"Well, that we go back to the way we were before you left Joss." She shrugged. "The way we have been for the last yahren, really, but formalising that. Freeing each other up."

"For what?"

"You are on the way to the Galactica, remember?" And he saw that for all the brave front, she was close to tears.

"That's not going to be a consideration," he said past the lump in his throat.

The look she gave him was sharp. "No, I suppose not, not with the fraternisation rule. Did you want to sleep with me when I was still your lieutenant?"

He nodded.

"Oh well," she said, with a funny little grimace. "It kept your hands off me, maybe it'll keep your hands off him."

After a centon, he took her hand and started along the corridor towards Dock 18, merging back into the stream of human traffic. "I don't want it to be goodbye."

"Me neither, but it's fairer on both of us.

"Yes." He couldn't tie her to him. That was more unfair than he'd been to her already.

This time it was Rosie who brought them to a halt, near an intersection. "Will it wait for you?"

"What?"

"The Galactica's shuttle. Will it wait for you?"

"I suppose so," he said. "So far as I know, I'm the only one they're picking up."

She smiled, and took the key from her pocket.








Zepherine Drouhin
Family: Rosaceae.
Genus: Rosa.

An exquisitely scented, thornless rose.