edge_of_forever | Blood Work [Open]

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Blood Work [Open]

Gaius Baltar is standing in the science labs of the third floor of the Prosperina, eye pressed against the eyepiece lens. This felt so familiar to Gaius; in a way, it was almost disconcerting. What was that phrase that Six liked to use? 'All this has happened before, and all this will happen again', was it? It certainly seemed to be the case now. Mostly, anyway. Instead of being surrounded by thousands of blood samples all in need of testing for Cylon pathogens, he was surrounded by four in need of just simple investigation.

One from him, one from Julien, one from someone he hadn't yet had the opportunity to meet, and one from the Commander.

Only one woman aboard the station had deigned to pay a visit to the science labs, and it had to be her of all people. What Gaius wanted was someone young and pretty like the girls he slept with on Caprica. Someone who would think he was all charm and intelligence. Someone who thought he was utterly irresistible.

And the Commander it seemed, had developed an immunity to his charms. In fact, she didn't seem to like him at all. And that alone Gaius couldn't stand; he didn't like the thought of anyone disliking him. Even Shepard.

"Cubit for your thoughts, Gaius." Gaius jerks up quite suddenly to find Six sitting there on the countertop next to him. She's quite lovely, in that red dress that he really loved. The one that seemed to hug every inch of her body, leaving very little to the imagination.

"When did you get here?" he asks her, though it comes out as more of a demand than a question.

"Just a second ago." Six smiles. "Are you going to answer my question?"

Gaius runs a hand over his sweatshirt, smoothing out the wrinkles. He'd feel more comfortable in a suit -- or if that weren't possible, a lab coat would probably do. But unfortunately, the ship had not seen it fit to outfit them appropriately.

Or at least not him. The rest of the space station's denizens could feel just at home in this kind of clothing, for all he knew.

"I was thinking about women," he says, finally. "The only one I've seen since I've cooped myself up in this lab is Shepard and frankly, she left a great deal to be desired." He peers through the eyepiece again and frowns down at a sample of her bloodwork. It sits on a microscope slide, bound to the stage with a set of stage clips.

Six pushes herself out the counter and steps towards him. She leans over him, breasts pressed against his back. Gaius briefly recalls the last time the two of them fooled around in a science lab, and remembers Kara Thrace walking in right in the middle of it.

Any desire he might have felt was killed with that very thought.

"Learn anything new about women by examining their blood?" she asks, her lips so close to his ear that she can feel the warmth of her breath there on his lobe.

"Abnormalities," he answers, somehow managing to squelch his newly-resurrected desire, however barely. "But I've seen a lot of abnormalities from the samples I've taken thusfar. I'll need more samples before I can draw any definitive conclusions."

He's both thankful and remorseful when Six decides to pull away a second later. "Well, then," she says. "I'll leave you to your work."

And in a blink of an eye, Six is gone again, leaving Gaius standing there, wishing very much that he was in some other place -- some private place, rather -- alone and with Six.

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Sansa hovered by the door of the lab, her arms hugging herself as she stared at the man - she'd heard someone talking while she'd walked by - there were too many people in the observation room, and her own bedroom felt claustrophobicly empty - but when she'd turned the doorway there'd been nothing there. She didn't know if he could have been talking to one of those holograms, or something else entirely, but she took a deep breath, forcing a small smile. "Excuse me," she said, her voice low and quiet. 'What are you doing?"

She forced herself to put down her arms, her hands first at her sides, then rubbing together, then brushing back a bit of hair that had come loose from her braid, as if she couldn't decide what she was doing with them. Her hesitant steps into the lab were accompanied by widening eyes - she had never seen these sorts of machines, and while she had to force herself not to touch them, her brows furrowed. "Do you - are these yours, m'lord?" Yes, m'lord. She was still Alayne Stone, would remain Alayne Stone until something - someone forced her hand, even though she knew it was chipping away more and more and more.

What are you doing?

Gaius spins around, mind already frantically fumbling for some sort of excuse. What he finds there is much more pleasant than he could have possibly imagined.

A very beautiful girl -- no, woman -- with the loveliest red hair and most stunning blue eyes. She's nineteen or twenty, maybe, judging from the look of her. He's had girls that young, before on Caprica. Mostly young co-eds hoping to learn more about the scientist they idolized.

Gaius was committed to allowing each of those students the opportunity to know Gaius Baltar on a more intimate level.

Gaius puts on his most charming smile. "I talk to myself," he says, settling on his default answer to such queries. "It helps me to think, to put my thoughts together." He presses his lips together tentatively as he watches her move towards the various devices the powers that be deigned to leave to them for whatever research tickled their fancy.

"'M'lord' is not necessary," Gaius says, though he does find that he likes the sound of it. Too many people aboard the Galactica defaulted to calling him "Doc" -- a title he hated. M'lord was much nicer. That, he'd be willing to settle for.

He wonders briefly if she'd be willing to call him 'M'lord' in bed.

"They're not really mine, no," he admits, though he felt they were more his than anyone else's, since he was the only one using them most of the time. "I just use them for testing."

A beat, as Gaius realizes that he has yet to properly introduce himself.

"Gaius Baltar," he says, extending a hand out to her. "Please, call me Gaius. And you are...?"

She nodded slightly when he said he talked to himself, but her brows knit as if she didn't understand even as she agreed to it. "Of course," she said quietly, as she looked around her, at the large metal boxes and circles and things that she could not make sense of besides being a jumble of objects. He spoke again, and she glanced at him, her smile a bit wider - not because she was particularly pleased, but because she was well accustomed to this dance and all its' steps.

"Testing what?" She did not see how these boxes could test anything - you would try something, you would use it and then test it that way. "And how?"

She paused, and then shook her head slightly. "I'm sorry, that's very rude of me." He had introduced herself, and she just peppered him with questions. "Alayne Stone," she said, and she glanced at his hand for a moment, before she gently placed her hand on top of his and moved to curtsey even though she was wearing pants, because it was ingrained in her since she was old enough to walk. "I'm pleased to meet you, Giaus." She paused for a moment, looking at him, her brows high. "What- If you do not mind my questions, what do you... test?"

"Alayne Stone," Gaius repeats, savoring the taste of it. "It's quite a pretty name." It's a half-truth; stone makes him think of the hard outdoors which he doesn't much care for, but Alayne is fairly nice, as far as girl's names go.

He lets his eyes wander over her for a second. "Unique," he adds. Apparently, neither of her names are commonplace in wherever it is he comes from.

Of course, even if Gaius disliked her name, he wouldn't tell her that. In fact, he'd probably pass on the same compliment. That was simply how these things worked.

He can't help but feel a little charmed when she curtsies at him; he lets his arm fall back down to his side. He wonders where exactly this girl came from. Was she from some fantasy world? He'd never been particularly interested in reading fantasy, though some of his classmates in school had been.

"Blood, actually," he says, wondering if any of this was really of any interest to her. Regardless, he continues to explain himself; if she looks disinterested, he'll simply segue the conversation elsewhere. She did ask, after all. "We're looking for anything unusual present in the samples we've collected. So far, we've found a number of anomalies present that are constant across all samples. Anomalies that couldn't possibly be present by coincidence, given our very different backgrounds and realities."

Gaius offers her another charming smile. "Might I ask what sort of reality you came from?" Women generally very much enjoyed talking about themselves -- something Gaius had picked up at an early age. He learned to tune whatever they said out soon afterwards.

"Not hardly unique." she admitted, her voice low. "Stone is the name given to those who cannot claim their father's name." She tipped her head to the side, her brows knitting. "Blood? How could there be something... in it?" She thought of something huge, something - the way leaves mixed with water. "It's blood."

She was genuinely confused, since nothing here made sense, and she was hardly one to just let things that did not understand just slide by unless she must.

She blinked at his question. "I am from Westeros," she said quietly. "But it seems like almost no one knows where that is." She realised that meant nothing, but him saying reality made her confused.

"'Stone'," Gaius begins to lie, "Reminds me of kimberlite and lamproite, somehow. The rocks that encase diamonds. Beneath the surface, there's something beautiful there, if someone dares to venture below the surface."

But Alayne has other questions -- questions he's happy to answer because it gives him the opportunity to showcase his massive intellect.

"There's lots to observe inside blood," he says, lifting a vial from the stand; it's a vial of his blood and he places it in her hands for her to hold and observe and examine, then cups his hands around hers. "You just need to know how to look for it. Inside your blood is the framework for life as we know it. Your hair color, why you're born with a certain stature, the color of your eyes... the DNA inside your blood can tell you -- or anyone else -- why you are what you are."

He finally relinquishes his grasp on her hands and smiles.

"Isn't she a little young for you, Gaius?"

Gaius immediately spins around to find Six sprawled across the countertop. "How long have you been here?" he blurts out at her and only after the words have left his lips does he realize what he's done. Immediately, he begins to sort through paperwork, trying to look as though he had spun around to work on filing -- not to talk to his invisible friend.

"Long enough to see you flirting with her. You didn't answer my question."

Gaius swallows, trying to think of some way to answer Six without coming across as a complete lunatic. "No," he emphasizes, looking at the blonde. "...doubt," he finishes, glancing quickly over his shoulder at Alayne, "this has all been very difficult for you to process."

Gaius frowns up at Six as he continues to straighten his papers.

He was saying words that she did not know, and her brows knit further, but she recognized the words of a man who was trying to be flattering for his own ends. She smiled prettily, and then shook her head. "I do not think those things are in my blood, my lord." The words were habit, purely, and she did not realise she said them. "Those things come from my parents. My blood is merely... blood."

She stares down at the vial of blood, and that is all she sees - a glass stoppered tube, filled with blood. She smiles when he does, but her smile vanishes when he suddenly whirls, and she backs up a step, stammering an answer. "I- I have been here since the first day, I-" She was trying to find the words, and then he said No, and it didn't make sense, none of it, and she honestly nods when he says it's difficult for her to process, and she doesn't know if she's talking about in general, or the last ten minutes.

"Nothing here is what I know," she said quietly. "The showers, the magical lights - I have been told that all of this is technology-" the word sounded foreign on her lips - "-not magic, but it seems impossible."

"Some people think science is magic by another name," Gaius says, still looking up at Six. She's sprawled across the countertop, a single foot bobbing up and down. A high-heeled shoe in the same color of his dress -- a shoe that better resembled a sandal than a shoe itself -- dangles precariously over her toes. Six smiles down at him. He takes this as a cue to continue. "Both are capable, as I understand it, of anything."

"Ask her how old she is, Gaius."

If the two of them were alone, he'd let out a long-suffering sigh at that and argue; his patience with Six is running thin, but he decides to indulge her anyway. He'd like to see her proven wrong if at all possible.

Gaius glances over his shoulder at the redhead. "I know this might sound like an unusual question, given the discussion at hand, but how old are you, exactly?"

Alayne was taken aback, her mouth opening and closing as she stared at Giaus. Why was everyone here mad? Why was he speaking to her but not looking at her, staring into nothing? She kept looking at it, to see if anything was there, her brows furrowing as she opened her mouth to ask, only to have him interrupt her.

"What?" She blinked, and stared at him. "I'm- I'm fifteen, my lord." Her brows furrowed. "Why?"

She said it more sharply than she had intended, but she couldn't not.

And then she just kept going, because- because this was very difficult for her to process, because this all was so difficult for her to process. "What in the gods' names are you looking at?" Because it wasn't her, because it was air, and she was so tired of not being able to know what was going on.

Her face paled at her own outburst. "Beg pardon. I- It has been... difficult. You just- Is there something there I cannot see? There are so many things I do not understand, and I don't know what to do. Forgive me."

"Fif," Gaius manages and he glances up at Six (who is smiling and looking quite satisfied with herself) before spinning around to face the redhead. "Fifteen?" His tone is incredulous, disbelieving. He can't believe the unfairness of the world, if her words are accurate (and there's no reason to doubt that they aren't.) But before long, she's asking a number of questions, all of them as accusing and equally unpleasant as her age.

Fifteen, he thinks.

"Um, no," he says, "I just have a tendency to stare out into space while I work." A beat. "I talk to myself sometimes, too; helps me to sort my thoughts together."

A small, forced smile. He'd go on about how such eccentricies were normally the hallmark of genius, but he's feeling a little embarrassed now and he wants to cut loose. Rambling on about the many ways in which he is amazing will not bring them to the quick conclusion he's hoping for.

"I should, ah," he turns back around to his papers and begins to line them up. "Get back to work," he supplies. "Analysis of the current samples is going to take some time."

"Yes? I will be sixteen in-" She hesitates then, because she realises she has no idea how much time had passed. "Soon,' she said finally, clearing her throat. "Oh. My pardon, I- There have been many odd things here that I do not understand." She said it softly, before she realises that she's being summarily dismissed, and she pulls back slightly, her smile easy because it was largely fake.

"Of course," she said quietly. "Well, if I can be of any assistance - I mean, I hardly know what exactly it is that I would do, but since there is nothing to do here-" She rolled one shoulder up into a shrug. "It seems that I am learning."

She nodded to him once, then took a step back, fully capable of seeing herself out.

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Blood Work [Open]

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