PHD #429: We're Still on the Same Side
We're Still on the Same Side
Summary: Pallas and Solstice have a spirited debate over Cylons and humanity at the Memorial Wall until Keenan breaks it up.
Date: 1 May 2042 AE
Related Logs: None
Players:
Keenan Pallas Solstice 
Deck 9 - Recreation - Battlestar Cerberus
The floorplating along the corridors of the Cerberus are standard military. Their forged steel plates are welded seamlessly together to run nearly the entire length of each hallway. The hallways themselves are the typical load-bearing structural design of the angled quadrilateral. Oxygen scrubbers and lighting recesses are found at nearly perfect intervals throughout the angled passageways.
Post-Holocaust Day: #429

Some things just go together well. Pallas, for example, with cigarettes and booze. The familiar trio are seen walking up and down the Memorial Wall, and the observant will note that his path takes him back and forth between Tisiphone's photo and Rejn's. On one leg of his short walk, he stops before the Cylon's photo, takes a long swig of his bottle, and rips the picture off the wall.

Solstice for her part had been slow to even visit the wall, matters needing to be seen to and so as she arrives to pay tribute to those lost in the fight, a new soma braid having been made by herself, she is clasping it around her right wrist. Tanks and sweapants adorn her and those dark curls are half restrained back at the nape of her neck. As she rounds the corner, she pauses upon seeing Pallas and then thinks better of it, continuing past him to begins her prayers before those she knows, clasping her hands together.

Pallas is staring with such intense hatred at the picture of Allan Rejn that one might think he doesn't see Solstice. "Shoulda known you were a frakking Saggie," he comments when she passes, obviously having seen the soma braid. His eyes remain on the photo still. "Now it all makes sense." He puts his cigarette out on the likeness of Rejn's face, the bright cherry burning a hole through the fat Cylon's forehead.

That venom spills past his lips and Solstice lifts her head to turn and look at him. "What does it explain?" She asks him, her brows pulling into a deep furrow. "Are you threatened by differences, Spiral?" She asks him. She watches what he does and steps closer. "You should really not be drinking.." She offers again. His space is still respected before she swallows. She rubs at the soma braid that hides the deep scar on her wrist.

"Threatened? By you?" Pallas barks a harsh laugh and flicks the picture away. Of course, it flies all of maybe an inch before falling to the floor. "And you really should not be frakking telling me what not to do." Defiantly, he takes another drink, longer than the last. "If you've come to pay tribute to the Gods-be-damned Cylon, you're too late." He points at Rejn's picture with a flick of his cigarette, sending a clump of ash upon it. "Whichever frakking traitor put his picture up here deserves to have an airlock shut on their fingers."

The ECO pulls back a little, reaching down to pick up the picture slowly. She stands back up slowly and runs her finger along the edge of it. "So full of hate and childish actions…your threats get you no where and improves nothing." Solstice pauses, still holding onto the ruined picture. "You sound more and more like Kepner." She breathes. Burned by his words of her person as a Sagittaron and further by his uncontrolled words, she turns from him, keeping the picture in hand as she does.

"Welcome to the war, little girl," Pallas says with a derisive laugh. "Kepner was right. He was frakking right about everything. If he hadn't taken hostages from the frakking Fleet and executed them indiscriminately, I would have fought under him." He washes away the bitter words with more alcohol. "I watched as they hooked up that killing machine, that frakking bastard that nuked our planets, to the heart of Cerberus and gave it free reign over our ship." His voice crescendoes into a rage-filled frenzy, his words coming faster and faster. "Command frakking betrayed us, they collaborated with the Gods-be-damned enemy, and nobody gives a frakking shit because they're all so grateful to be alive and getting medals and promotions and a frakking knuckledragger is telling the Fleet to ally with the Cylons and people are listening?" The mostly-empty bottle is hurled against the wall, where it shatters and sprays amber liquid all over.

Wincing at the explosion of glass, Solstice furrows her brows. "People are not blind, Spiral. They see. We are mourning, recovering, and part of that is trying to inspire hope. When you are as you are..that is all that will remain is hatred and bitterness. It helps nothing." She reaches down to begin to pick up the larger pieces. "Don't be a fool. No one wants to ally with the Cylons." She says. Ignoring the little girl comment, she rises with the larger pieces in her hand. "You are the lost one, the broken one. You have no faith even in yourself to respect your body and consciousness. You poison it with drink. I am not the girl…you are." She says, backbone grown, despite the softness of her voice. Yet the last comes off stronger than the rest and she is moving past him to gather up another large piece. "Cylon or not…they were part of this Fleet..too burn this picture is to forget. Perhaps they put it up here to remember ..to be wary."

Pallas sneers condescendingly at Solstice, shaking his head. "You ignorant, leaking cunt," he scoffs, disdain dripping from his voice. "People are frakking blind and clueless, though probably not as much as you." He crushes a piece of glass with the heel of his boot and grinds it in to the floor. "They should've shot that blonde bitch and thrown that subversive knuckledragger into space, but they're too busy trying to suck their own dicks to do what's right for the Fleet." Drunk as he is, his finger is unwaveringly steady as he points to Tisiphone's picture. "She was the only frakking Saggie who wasn't a waste of recycled oxygen. She at least tried to kill a frakking Cylon, and they punished her for it. When you're a quarter of the officer that she was, then you can try to frakking lecture me on right and wrong."

Rising up slowly, Solstice looks to Tisiphone and then back to him. Her jaw tenses a moment and she looses her hold on the glass. "I am sorry I never met her. And yell at me all you want about who I am, but you, Spiral, have never tried to get to know me outside of your own base needs and broken sense of humor. I am sorry for that." She says to him, meeting his gaze. "But I am not your enemy…they are. The Cylons. And if you keep as you are…you won't have anyone but yourself." She tells him. Shakes keeps the larger pieces of glass in her hand. "So be that angry person you are if that is what you want. But don't make this life any more harder for other people to live in." She says sharply to him, meeting him gaze for gaze, perhaps there is pity in her gaze. "We all suffer, Pallas."

"Save your feel-good bullshit speeches," Pallas snorts. "The Gods be damned, you're all the frakking same. I'm surprised nobody's put this all to music by now." He tosses his cigarette angrily and talks to Solstice as he would to a deaf, mentally disabled child. "This is the military. Not a frakking nursery. I don't give a half-chewed shit if I hurt your feelings or don't play nice with others. All I frakking care about is killing the enemy and beating sense into the frak-wits who don't seem to be able to get it through their thick frakking skulls what the words 'war' and 'enemy' mean."

The yelling is obvious, travelling up the hallways and into part of the stairwell. Taking the last few steps a little quickly, Keenan pokes his head out of the stairwell with his eyebrows raised. "Everything okay in here?" He asks, calling out to the people. It's the most socially polite way of explaining that yes, they can be heard for a distance. That's when he sees who's involved, leading him to start walking towards both Pallas and Solstice. He's heard some of this over the comms. "Is that glass?" He asks as he steps over to Solstice, watching Spiral closely.

"It's not feel good anything, Pallas." She says sternly, Solstice looks at him. "Its the fact that some of us deal with things differently. And as for the Reporter and Bannik, you were not in that Raptor. Sweet Pea and I didn't want to bring them back in.." She wants to yell at him but she controls herself. "I am sure you know what an order is." She mutters. "I don't want to be coddled or handled gently, but I want some frakking respect and not have your sense of 'fun' thrown in my face while in the head. We have our own demons, yours is now scattered over this memorial. In your anger you are disrespecting that same woman you hold aloft. Get your head together if you want to impress me." She says, stepping closer, the smaller woman dropping the glass at his feet. "You are your own waste of space…Pallas." She tells him. "You improve nothing as you are." She says to him. "This is the military, not some frat party." She tells him, her gaze darkening till she hears the voice of Keenan behind them and stops. She catches her breath and is nearly in Pallas' face if he has even let her get that far. Swallowing, she is silent, no response.

"I'm not here to impress anybody," Pallas hisses through his teeth. "And my respect isn't given, it's frakking earned. I don't give a frak how you deal with things. I give a frak when people put this ship and the Fleet in danger and naive little fraks like you let them and try to rationalize it." He brings his face even closer to hers, his cold blue eyes locked unblinking onto hers. "Go ahead, Solstice. Tell me how my drinking is worse for the frakking Fleet than hooking a Cylon up to the ship or allowing Cylon-sympathizer propaganda to spread. You frakking holier-than-thou Saggie bitch." Keenan is completely and utterly ignored for the time being.

"Woah. Woah woah woah WOAH." Keenan urges as he hustles in towards them. Trying to press a hand to Pallas' chest to push him way from Solstice and intervene in the argument, he plays the part of the concerned bystander. His brows furrow, thoroughly done with the conversation the moment it got to this level. "Back it the frak down, Spiral, back it the frak down." Keenan likes to repeat things, apparently. "Last I checked we're still on the same side here, break it up, guys."

"It's worse for you.." Solstice says to him and does not back away, even as he flings more insults at her. Her lips part to say something else and the woman instead touches her soma braid with her free hand, curling about it as she backs up a step with a crunch of glass. She watches Keenan intervene. "Keenan, let him be.." She says, worry apparent in her eyes as she reaches forward to try to grab for his arm, clasping her fingers around him. "Let's just go." She says, obviously done here and it is not for herself as she is utterly watching Poms right now. "No one is on his side.." She says to Keenan, "No one is ever on his side, not anymore. At least not to him. Come on, Poms." She says, taking a step back to tug him with her, trying to lead him away from the Wall.

When Keenan pushes Pallas away, he tries to shove off the intervenor's hand but misses it completely and stumbles back a few steps, off-balance. He has been drinking. "Get your frakking hands off me," he growls, lip curled in disgust. "Frakking…" he takes another step back, dusting off where Keenan had his hand. "I'm on humanity's side. You better figure out which frakking side you're on." He turns around and stalks off the other way, steps faltering a bit over the broken glass littered all across the floor. "Good thing you're not frakking around to see this storm of bullshit," he mutters to Tisiphone's picture before heading for the stairs.

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