TM 240. Scary People
OOC: Contains vague and general spoilers for the Hera story arc and one spoiler for a deleted scene in "The Son Also Rises."
Other than myself?
I scare myself all the time, but there's someone who's scared me even more at times. It's not even a valid fear, but it's something that I think about every once in a while.
[locked from Athena]
Athena scares me sometimes.
With everything that she's been through, everything that's she's lost and regained, you'd think she would have picked up some measure of empathy for everything the human race has been through, everything we've lost at the hands of the Cylons. But I know she still questions our right to survive. Does she still question why we want revenge for our lost family members?
She lost her daughter, like so many human beings have lost their own children. Yes, she had a right to her anger and she still does. I know if I were her, I'd still be eaten with rage for what happened to her daughter. But she blames us (not us literally, the collective us, the human race) for the climate that made President Roslin feel it was necessary to take the safety and well-being of the half-human/half-Cylon hybrid into her own hands. Was it the right decision? I don't know, but the President did what she thought was right. She always has, even if it's led her to make controversial decisions.
But Athena still doesn't understand why some of us can't just get over our hatred and anger and the need to strike back, to make the Cylons suffer as much as we've suffered. I lost my parents. Cally lost her parents and brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews. All of them snuffed out because they had the audacity to be human beings.
I don't think any of us have the right to speak on the subject of empathy, but right here and right now, I'm taking it upon myself to do so. Half the time she can't even manage sympathy for anyone who hasn't done something for her in the past. Is it something, some trait in the Cylon race that impedes feelings of compassion or guilt or empathy? I don't know. And it doesn't really matter, I guess.
But she still wonders why some of the crew haven't accepted her. Because they know she hasn't accepted them. They see her as a necessary... evil is too strong a word, but they see her as necessary because there's nothing they can do about it.
But I know she hasn't grasped the concept of empathy, because she saw a frightened, frustrated woman shooting her mouth off and didn't see the fear or frustration driving that woman and only saw the words that came from those feelings.
I won't defend the way Cally said what she did, or the fact that she said it when she did and in front of the people she did, but I can and will defend the feelings and the words themselves. Because what she said was one of several logical assumptions and most people who claim they weren't thinking of the exact same things are frakking liars.
[unlocked]
CPO Galen Tyrol
Battlestar Galactica 2003
511 words