(TM) 162: "I never thought I'd say this, but ..."
William Adama sits at his desk in his quarters, updating the ship's logbook. He fills a few pages with the day's events, his movements brisk and spare as they ever are. Once done with the official document, he sets the book aside and pulls out his own personal log, only to stare at it, sitting in front of him, for long minutes.
At last he stands and crosses to his sideboard to get himself a drink. Not ambrosia ... he doesn't want sweet right now. Were an observer standing next to him, he or she might notice a faint tremor in the Admiral's hands as he pours. Or perhaps not. He has long experience concealing such things, even when alone.
After knocking back his shot, he returns to his desk and begins.
I never thought I'd say this, but ...
... I felt sorry for Gaius Baltar.
I've tried to imagine having a mind as brilliant as his, but so bound in the chains of denial and self-absorption that he refuses to follow the simple links of cause and effect to see his culpability for his own actions. I watched our former President as he lay on that gurney, led him with questions as he came out with tortuous, desperate negations: not my fault, didn't intend, not responsible.
But in the end, he did see. Only deeper awareness of his own guilt could have driven him to want to be a Cylon ... to pray for it to the Cylon single god, no less. He saw it as his only way out, his only chance at redemption. If he was a Cylon, he was guilty of nothing. All my sins lifted from me, he said.
Sorry, Doctor. It doesn't work that way, not for anyone. If you insist on claiming personhood, then species be damned, you claim individual free will and all the responsibilities that go with exercising it. No matter how we twist and torque and try to evade, we all carry our sins with us.
My own breathe cold in my ear tonight.
There was no electroshock, no ripped-out fingernails, no bludgeoning with blunt instruments, nothing so crude as physical trauma. Instead, I took charge of Baltar's mind and turned his own fear into a weapon. I did things with that fear that would have made my father, the civil rights advocate, recoil in horror. No comfort to Baltar even if he could have known that deep inside the relentless Admiral, William Adama shuddered at what he was doing, and even more at what he was making others do, and witness.
(I'm sorry, Jack, Layne ... Laura.)
Not for the first time or the last, I made myself the sword, the honed edge that cuts without thought or remorse. It is part of my charge, to do the necessary evil in defense of my people (was it necessary? was it evil?), but I carry every sin with me. One day a reckoning will come, and when it does, I'll face it squarely.
We cannot wash our hands of the things we've done. No matter how badly we want to.
Muse: Admiral William Adama
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica '03
Word count: 518
At last he stands and crosses to his sideboard to get himself a drink. Not ambrosia ... he doesn't want sweet right now. Were an observer standing next to him, he or she might notice a faint tremor in the Admiral's hands as he pours. Or perhaps not. He has long experience concealing such things, even when alone.
After knocking back his shot, he returns to his desk and begins.
I never thought I'd say this, but ...
... I felt sorry for Gaius Baltar.
I've tried to imagine having a mind as brilliant as his, but so bound in the chains of denial and self-absorption that he refuses to follow the simple links of cause and effect to see his culpability for his own actions. I watched our former President as he lay on that gurney, led him with questions as he came out with tortuous, desperate negations: not my fault, didn't intend, not responsible.
But in the end, he did see. Only deeper awareness of his own guilt could have driven him to want to be a Cylon ... to pray for it to the Cylon single god, no less. He saw it as his only way out, his only chance at redemption. If he was a Cylon, he was guilty of nothing. All my sins lifted from me, he said.
Sorry, Doctor. It doesn't work that way, not for anyone. If you insist on claiming personhood, then species be damned, you claim individual free will and all the responsibilities that go with exercising it. No matter how we twist and torque and try to evade, we all carry our sins with us.
My own breathe cold in my ear tonight.
There was no electroshock, no ripped-out fingernails, no bludgeoning with blunt instruments, nothing so crude as physical trauma. Instead, I took charge of Baltar's mind and turned his own fear into a weapon. I did things with that fear that would have made my father, the civil rights advocate, recoil in horror. No comfort to Baltar even if he could have known that deep inside the relentless Admiral, William Adama shuddered at what he was doing, and even more at what he was making others do, and witness.
(I'm sorry, Jack, Layne ... Laura.)
Not for the first time or the last, I made myself the sword, the honed edge that cuts without thought or remorse. It is part of my charge, to do the necessary evil in defense of my people (was it necessary? was it evil?), but I carry every sin with me. One day a reckoning will come, and when it does, I'll face it squarely.
We cannot wash our hands of the things we've done. No matter how badly we want to.
Muse: Admiral William Adama
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica '03
Word count: 518