InsaneJournal

Catching Up

The multi-purpose room 3 located near the administrative section of the battlestar was relatively quiet to the rooms used by the pilots and marines. It was where Jilleen spent her down time after a full day at work. She sat in the corner of a long couch with as leg tucked under the other wearing a pair of dark sweat pants and a gray hooded sweat jacket with Avalon's circular green and blue emblem on the right front corner. In her hands was a book, old Caprican literature, that she had checked out from the ships library to read.

She lost herself within the story, ignoring the others in the room as she read. A story about a gentleman's quest to win a lady's heart, the usual stuff found in Delphian literature.

Dani normally spent her leisure hours either with her friends from the squadrons or with Rhys, but tonight she felt like having some quiet time. That wasn't going to be possible in the pilot's bunkroom she shared with the rest of her squadron, the Black Hydras were a boisterous bunch and were coming off CAP. She might be on temporary duty until after her children were born, but she was still part of the group and they'd want to get her involved in a game of triad or some other activity.

Because of that, she wasted little time changing into more comfortable clothes once she got off shift as Air Liaison and leave the bunkroom. With the way her waistline was expanding her blues were getting very uncomfortable even with elastic waistbands and she'd felt relieved to change into sweats and sneakers, which were much more forgiving of her swelling figure than her uniforms.

Soon after leaving the bunkroom she found herself wandering into multipurpose room three.

At the end of a chapter, Jilleen bookmarked the page and laid the hard cover book on her lap before she dug her hand into a pocket on her jacket. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes produced by one of three ships that grew hydroponic tobacco. One non-edible crop allowed to be grown because of the demand and addiction to the product with in the fleet.

Jilleen pulled out a cigarette before she saw that the pregnant woman was in the room and now thought against having a smoke at that moment. Replacing the cigarette back into the pack, she greeted Dani. "Hi there." She smile.

Dani smirked at the sight of the pack of cigarettes in Jill's hand. "Hi Jill," she replied sitting down on the other end of the couch with a bit of a sigh. It was good to be off her feet already, she was starting to find that she didn't want to stay on them for long periods of time as the pregnancy progressed. "Those things will kill you, you know." She teased the other woman about her habit, not that it mattered much. They all had to do something these days.

"So would sudden decompression," she replied in jest.

"How were things at the top?" She didn't actually interact with Jill that much during the work day even though she was on temporary duty in the other woman's department.

"Same old thing, working on aftermath of the last crisis and preparing for the next one," said Jilleen while she returned her pack of cigarettes to her pocket. Engagements with the enemy had become less frequent as the Strike Group escorted the refugee fleet farther away from the Colonies in the last three years, but in no way had the war between the two had ceased. Two months earlier, in a series of battles the Avalon and her sister Battlestar, Pacifica, had lost a few good pilots and crew. It seem the Cylons would never give up their pursuit.

"Its got to be difficult walking around this ship with the extra weight," she pointed at Dani's stomach. "You would think that having a child would be a lot easier, but you got twins." Jilleen's sister had twins, two boys. On Aerilon, twins seem to be more common than on other colonies, some result of living in an agriculture based community.

The woman next to Jilleen had become a friend in the last three years, and she felt for her. She knew how difficult it had been for her sister to get around, but she had the luxury of staying home and having people to assist her. Assistance was limited on a warship. All Jilleen could do was try and make her friends work more accommodating, which meant paperwork.

"Thanks for the reminder," Dani groused good naturedly and rubbed her stomach. "I found myself starting to waddle the other day, I guess I'm hitting the part where the growth kicks into overdrive because I feel like I'm suddenly huge." She'd just passed the five month mark the day before, and measured close to eight months along for one baby. How she was going to make it to full term she had no idea. There was always a job to be done on a warship, and so Dani would work until it simply became too much for her which hopefully wouldn't be for several more weeks. If it were something more strenuous than paperwork that day would most likely come faster, but Jilleen had stepped in when Dani had needed to be temporarily reassigned from flight duty.

She and Rhys were on the waiting list for one of the new batch of family quarters being built in the ship, which were kept limited to discourage the very thing that had happened to her. While she and Rhys had been seeing each other for some months prior to her getting pregnant it hadn't been planned.

"Don't follow my example, being pregnant on a warship is no fun."

Jilleen let out a little laugh. "Please, do I look stupid?" She teased, not intending to insult. "Anyway, I don't pray to Aphrodite everyday. So I don't think she would bless me with the joy of motherhood." If the circumstance of her life had turned out differently and the war had never been started, she might have been ready to have a family now. Something that her ex-husband did not understand when they were new in the service. Her career had been first, a subject that eventually led to their separation and later divorce four years before the attack on the Colonies. She loved children, but she had not been ready back then to have one.

"I wasn't expecting her blessing to come when it did," Dani muttered. She hadn't been praying for children per se but more the possibility of them down the line once the fleet found a suitable home. Her entire childhood and teenage years had been spent in Aphrodite's service, it was difficult sometimes not to think in that mindset.

"Hey, I can get you into some semi-private quarters, maybe next week. Are you interested?" She asked. A part of the ship that had been damaged in a fire and a hull breach several months earlier were nearly repaired and ready for use again. It had also been a place where they had lost a dozen officers who died in their quarters during the sneak attack.

"Would I be interested?" Dani shook her head in disbelief at the question. "Yes I'm interested...do you have any idea how hard its getting to get myself into the rack these days? I'll owe you big time, but as soon as its ready let me know." She was definitely looking forward to having quarters for her, Rhys and the babies. Anything that could speed that up was a good thing in her book.

"Yeah, I imagine," she replied. The CAG, Major Kobe Sykes had requested that she do something to get Dani out of the pilot's quarters. She was becoming a liability according to him. It was hard to treat her like an equal among the pilots, as her condition made her a special case and extra care had to be taken with her. Jilleen had not done this as a favor, but as a solution to a problem. "I'll put your name on top of list. As if I really thought you would turn down the offer." She smirked.

"No, I definitely won't turn it down!" Dani exclaimed fervently. She was well aware of how awkward her presence in the bunkrooms had become over the past six weeks. If she only carried one baby then perhaps it wouldn't have been as much of a problem, since she was only five months along. But with two she was looking as if she were due any day and it had become a real issue in the narrow confines of the shared quarters, she was simply getting too big.

"How soon did you say? maybe next week?"

"Yes, sometime next week it should be ready. Or it could also be later if something is unforeseen. We are beginning to see some lag time on materials from the industrial ships." Jilleen had inform the Admiral about it earlier in the day. "Other than that, sometime next week."

Jilleen shifting her body on the sofa to better face Dani. "What kind of grief is your farm boy getting from those on the deck gang? It must not be easy on him. Both of you two would have been in serious trouble during peace time." She reminded. "A knuckle dragger and pilot. They don't make for a romantic couple in those old war movies." She teased. Jilleen could sometimes come off a little arrogant in her comments and in her humor.

"That's because most of the time the knuckle dragger and pilot are both guys," Dani teased back. "It's that Caprican bias showing up in all those old movies." She didn't care for Capricans all that much, they tended to look down on the Sisterhood as some kind of weird cult and it rubbed Dani the wrong way. Still, it was her burden to bear if she wanted to serve in the fleet.

She knew that the Admiral could have thrown the book at her and Rhys for their relationship, but the fraternization regs had been relaxed even if they hadn't disappeared altogether. These days human life was simply too precious, and it wasn't as if either of them could look elsewhere for romantic partnerships. They were stuck in the military for the duration, though Dani supposed she could have tried to get an exemption due to the babies. That would have been cheating though, in her opinion. Until she couldn't function as both a Colonial officer and a mother, she'd continue to perform her duties as assigned.

"He's gotten some ribbing about it, but I think it's actually more a point of pride for them that one of their own has 'knocked up' the 'exotic Virgonese officer'," Dani replied with a shrug. The deck gangs and pilots were two very separate communities, and Virgonese were relatively rare in the military compared to those from other Colonies such as Aerilon and Caprica. So Rhys bagging Dani was an especially rare event in the eyes of the deck crews.

Jilleen took no offense to Dani's comment about Caprican bias, though she was half Caprican herself from her mother's side. She was an Aerilan, born and raised, even if she lived her young life mostly in the capital of the Colony, Casperon, and was part of the landowners class.

"I could see it," she paused a moment to take in the picture in her mind. "He's got him one'um them classy ladies." She imitated one of the thicker Aerilon accents and then laughed.

Dani giggled herself at the imitation. Rhys's accent was pronounced, but wasn't quite as rough as Jill made it sound. "I can see them slapping his back and shaking his hand when they heard the news, even if they ribbed him about it at the same time." She giggled again and then stopped suddenly and put her hands on her stomach.."Ooph...I don't think they liked that. Kicked me right in the kidney." She glared at her swollen midsection accusingly.

"That's not my problem," Jilleen raised her hands up in the air in jest. She could not imagine what that actually felt and it sort of creep her out that something could kick from the inside. She grabbed her book and with nothing better to do, she got on to her feet. "Would you like to have water or something?"

There was something subconscious that made her uncomfortable seeing Dani in her current condition. Reminded of ghosts from the past perhaps. A suppressed image of a pregnant woman on Libran, about Dani's current term, bleeding between her legs from a miscarriage due to radiation sickness. Or maybe it was leaving expecting mothers behind, because they did not meet the standard for selection. She had many hard decisions back then. In any event, she had semerald in her system to help her suppressed those memories.

"A glass of water would be nice thanks." Dani frowned slightly, something wasn't quite right but she wasn't sure what it was. Since she didn't have a clue what it was, she decided best just not mention it as it could just be the overactive imagination of a pregnant woman. Still...she made a mental note to keep an eye on her friend.

If Jill was in trouble Dani wanted to be there to help.