Gravity Always Wins

They read the newspaper articles and listen to the debates, but the idea still feels distant and odd and far away.

“Do you think it’ll actually happen?” Wilson asks, kicking his bare feet up onto the table. He could go to sleep right now, but that would be too much work. He’s tired though, at the point where everything’s comfortably numb and the world around you feels like molasses, moving at half-speed.

House snorts and taps his cane against a table leg in a steady rhythm. “Baltar’s desperate. He’s willing to say anything at this point.” In about ten minutes, Wilson will find the tapping really annoying, but at the moment, it’s not bad, so he lets it go.

Besides, House is probably right, anyway. He leans back and closes his eyes, wondering what it’s going to be like on Earth.

But then Baltar wins, and everything changes.

Frak hope, House wants to say, wants to push the words out of his mouth. (But it’s settling there, in the nooks and crevices of him, the places that have felt empty for a while.) Frak New Caprica, he wants to say. Frak Baltar.

Someone on the wireless is talking about settlement. House sits and listens, even though it’s the same frakking arguments over and over again. Barely habitable surface, time needed to set up infrastructure, solid ground under your feet, clear air in your lungs.

House is pretty sure Wilson wants to go, because he’s Wilson, and therefore susceptible to blind optimism. (It’s how he always ends up married, House knows. Wilson goes stupid and hopeful and conveniently forgets his better judgment.) Wilson would want to go.

House doesn’t know what he wants. He presses a hand against his temple and tries not to think about it.

Frak hope.

Amanda is one of Wilson’s patients, on the Baah Pakal. Pregnant, six months. Today, she’s glowing in a way Wilson hasn’t seen ever. Usually, she’s quiet, withdrawn, but today she isn’t.

“I want my baby to be born on the surface,” she says, her voice bright and dreaming. “The fresh air will be good for him, right?” She fiddles with the edge of her shirt, and for the first time, Wilson notices how young she is. The lingering fear had always made her look older.

“I don’t see why not,” Wilson replies. He smiles. It feels dishonest, in a way, to reassure her without being certain himself, but he thinks that she’s had so little happiness that he should be able to give it to her (and maybe to himself).

He watches as she places a hand on her belly, as her eyes light up, as a smile spreads across her face.

There are times when House wishes he was on Picon when the bombs hit, because that way, at least, he would be dead and not treating patients. He’s exempted from making housecalls on other ships because of his leg, but that only makes it marginally better.

They’re like the frakking wireless, can’t stop talking about New Caprica, and while the wireless is annoying, at least they aren’t annoyingly chipper or annoyingly worried when they’re talking about it and how it might affect their various medical conditions.

He’s become rather good at resisting the urge to tell them that it’s just a frakking planet, and that they’ve seen them before, and that he doesn’t really want their thoughts about it, thank you very much, and can they now let him do his frakking job?

Or, at least, he’s become good at resisting that urge most of the time. Cuddy would be so proud.

There’s something in the Fleet that feels restless, that feels moving. Things are changing, rearranging themselves into new shapes. Wilson isn’t quite sure where they fit anymore, in the scheme of things.

They’ve been orbiting New Caprica for two weeks now, and it still catches Wilson by surprise to see it when he passes by one of the Sargon’s windows, big and round and white. Waiting.

At this point, it’s not a matter of “if” so much as “when”, but they still haven’t talked about it at all. They need to. At some point. In the near future.

When Wilson sleeps, he dreams of falling through gray, cloudy skies, opening his arms to embrace the ground.

“We should go,” Wilson finally says one Tuesday late at night, when he should be asleep. House can feel himself at the edges of it, just about to slide away, Wilson’s voice half-faded in his ear.

It’s an underhanded move, and if House were capable of pulling himself fully awake, he could tell Wilson just how much of jackass he is for doing that, but for now he mumbles an, “In the morning,” before closing his eyes.

He can feel Wilson’s palm on his cheek, Wilson’s hair brushing his temples, Wilson’s breath against his ear. “Think about it,” Wilson says, softly.

The words linger long after House has fallen asleep.

FIN.