To her knowledge, she's never mentioned that fact to anyone, so it's a little unnerving to find it taking form on her rack. She picks it up again and tucks it into the wooden box she keeps on the shelf at the head of her rack, staring at it against the black velvet interior that's bare of anything else. She never dreamed of glory or honor, just flying, and she knows that maybe somehow she's earned the medals her grandparents had hoped would go in this case when they gave it to her as a graduation present. Medals are for survivors though. Maggie's pretty sure that she qualifies, but she wonders if that even means anything anymore.

Two days later, there's another one, this time in her locker. They used to keep them locked, but now there's nothing left to barter or steal, so it's not worth it. Cigarettes are made out of algae and everyone's given up smoking except Doc Cottle. Maggie thinks that he mostly just chews on them now, since she's stopped smelling the horrid stench that she remembers permeated the ship when he lit the first one.

This flower is the pale pink of an old CAP roster, though all the name and dates are gone. It's folded like the tulips of Aerilon, and the points are sharp enough to sting when she touches them. She stares at it a long time, wondering if the times on the back of this and the random words on the back of the other mean anything. Wonders if the flowers mean anything. And she realizes, maybe for the first time, that she hasn't smelled a flower in nearly two years.

She blinks away the moisture in her eyes and tugs on her suit. There's no time for that here, not now. She's got a bird to fly.

Another three days pass this time, and she likes to pretend she's forgotten, but the flowers are still there on her mind. She stares at them at night, putting them side by side. She's come close to throwing them out and even closer to crumpling them up, but every night they go back in the box for safe keeping. She's beginning to think that they don't mean anything when she sets foot in her bird and there's a light blue one on the seat. Hospital supply record with the words ripped in half.

It's curved delicately, folded in three different directions, like the irises of Tauron in bloom. It unnerves her a little more than normal - she's got a thing against unknown people in her bird - but she can't figure that there's anything malicious in it. Still, she double checks everything, then double checks it again, and she's twitchy the entire time she's in the air, the flower folded very carefully inside her suit.

The fourth one is sitting on her chair in the flight briefing room. She doesn't say anything as she picks it up, trying to shove it in her pocket before Hot Dog and Scattershot can see it and make fun of her. Beehive snags it out of her hand before she can manage it, and the next thing she knows, there's a flash of green over her head and a game of keep-away punctuated with ribs and jibes at Maggie's admirer, questions about her sexuality and the very slow burn that Maggie's building until Apollo's voice echoes around the room.

Everyone falls in and the flower gets snagged out of the air over Maggie's head by Helo's hand. He passes it to the Major and Lee looks at it, raises an eyebrow and looks at her. "Looks like freesia. This yours, Racetrack?"

"It was on my seat, Sir."

"Close enough." He hands it over to her and she takes it, not bothering to look as she crumples it into a ball, something different about it, now that it's been touched by someone else's hands.

The next one is plain white. The petals are individual and distinct and sparse, and she traces each one. He loves me, he loves me not echoes sing-song in her head as she touches each one, remembering the feasts and festivals on Scorpia, young girls dancing in circles and plucking the delicate petals before the bacchanals.

It's on the cold metal of the table in the pilots' rec and she looks around and makes sure she's alone before she actually takes it into her hand. Whoever this is, it has to be a pilot, knowing the precise moment she'd be here, alone. She's getting used to the idea, which makes her even more uneasy, but she still goes to her room and puts it away, the drink she'd gone to get, and the game she'd planned to start forgotten.

She's come to expect them now, wherever she shouldn't expect them to be. In the head on the shelf above the sink she always uses, reflecting back at her in the mirror. Tucked amongst her folded tanks when she comes back to her rack after laundry's been in. She has a collection of eleven now, the green one from the ready room replaced one day on the hospital bed when she went down to Doc Cottle for her required monthly check-up. She'd stared at it, wondering if she was crazy, and if Cottle would be able to tell. He hadn't said a word, other than to tell her to get more sleep and drink less booze and then that he was required to say all of that. Then he offered her a cigarette that Maggie very politely (surely Do I look frakking crazy? counted as polite these days) declined.

She's done research, sure there is some clue in all of this, and knows that the flowers are all representative of the colonies, knows that someone's maybe trying to send her a message. She doesn't look anyone in the eye and she wonders for a moment - just a moment, never longer, never more than a few moments a week, a day, an hour - if maybe this is a sign. Maybe she's a Cylon, maybe she's crazy. Maybe…maybe…Frak. She doesn't know what maybe means anymore.

She opens the box and freezes for a moment before an involuntary shiver courses through her. She dumps the contents on the scratchy blanket beneath her and counts them carefully, the paper of many of them gone soft from her frequent touch.

Twelve

Twelve colonies. Twelve Cylons. Twelve flowers. Maggie closes her eyes and swallows hard, then forces herself to count them again, touch each one as she places it in the box. A rose and dahlia, chrysanthemum and alstroemeria, carnation and anemone and now a gladioli in white paper, colored with the dangerous red of an alert. She wants to tear them all to pieces, wondering what it all means. She wants to unfold them all and lay out the pieces and put the puzzle together, but she's scared there's no answer there.

She walks differently now, like someone looking over her shoulder. She knows people notice, and she's knocked more than one Viper jockey on his ass for being dumb enough to say something. She's one more dust-up from the brig and she knows it too well, but everyone's acting frakked up and crazy right now, listening at walls and defending Baltar, mourning Starbuck and falling apart.

She's surprised to find Helo in the pilots' head, leaning against the wall with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He tilts his head as she comes in, watching her as she walks to the sink. She glances sideways, her eyes going to the gun at his hip, then back to the mirror. Maybe Sharon's taught him tricks to tell who else is a Cylon and he's caught her out, knows what she really is inside. She stares at herself, her eyes locked on the glass and not looking away.

He pushes off the wall and she flinches, trying to hide the reaction by reaching forward and turning on the water. Helo walks over to her and stops, standing close enough behind her that Maggie can feel the heat of him against her skin. The back of his fingers graze her cheek and then there's something else, the feather-soft slide of paper. She meets his eyes and whispers softly, "Why?"