BSG ficlet: Comrades (Tigh, Caprica; PG-13)
Title: Comrades
Characters: Tigh, Caprica
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Post-"Blood on the Scales." 375 words.
Comrades
He worries about the baby only when it's over.
He's not used to thinking about people who need protecting-not physically, by his very hands. People who need him to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them-that, the soldier in him is used to. People that can hold each other up. Like Bill, his comrade in arms. Or even like Ellen, often vulnerable and unstable but so passionate and strong. She was more than anyone knew, more than maybe she knew herself, this time around.
But a baby? He hadn't had time to really consider the life growing inside the Six they call Caprica, not in the face of everything else that was happening. He'd weighed it in his heart without thinking and didn't turn back for her. It wasn't an option. It scares him shitless, because it's not that he doesn't care. He never wanted a frakkin' kid, but now that it's happening…well, it's different.
It had spooked him at first, and it went way beyond the fact that he knocked up some woman he never meant to touch. Then, he still didn't know how to accept being a Cylon. Eventually, he'd been forced to, had his best friend finally look him in eye and know him for what he was. He isn't scared anymore, not of being a toaster.
He isn't scared of having a toaster baby, either. Or of having a baby at all. It will be a life, amid all this death. Now, he realizes that he's willing to protect the child-and its mother, too-with every bit of strength he has. He just wishes there weren't so many other people and things he needs to be able to lay down his life for.
So he starts thinking, but only when it's all over, and then he can't really stop, not until he sees her in the infirmary, whole and bright and holding onto Hera for dear life.
"Are you okay?" he asks her, feeling foolish before the words are even out of his mouth.
She just slowly breaks into a smile, warm and sharp like one of Ellen's but entirely her own, and says, "Miraculously. But yes."
Then her fingers drift up to the dried blood on his forehead, and she asks, "Are you?"
~
Characters: Tigh, Caprica
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Post-"Blood on the Scales." 375 words.
Comrades
He worries about the baby only when it's over.
He's not used to thinking about people who need protecting-not physically, by his very hands. People who need him to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them-that, the soldier in him is used to. People that can hold each other up. Like Bill, his comrade in arms. Or even like Ellen, often vulnerable and unstable but so passionate and strong. She was more than anyone knew, more than maybe she knew herself, this time around.
But a baby? He hadn't had time to really consider the life growing inside the Six they call Caprica, not in the face of everything else that was happening. He'd weighed it in his heart without thinking and didn't turn back for her. It wasn't an option. It scares him shitless, because it's not that he doesn't care. He never wanted a frakkin' kid, but now that it's happening…well, it's different.
It had spooked him at first, and it went way beyond the fact that he knocked up some woman he never meant to touch. Then, he still didn't know how to accept being a Cylon. Eventually, he'd been forced to, had his best friend finally look him in eye and know him for what he was. He isn't scared anymore, not of being a toaster.
He isn't scared of having a toaster baby, either. Or of having a baby at all. It will be a life, amid all this death. Now, he realizes that he's willing to protect the child-and its mother, too-with every bit of strength he has. He just wishes there weren't so many other people and things he needs to be able to lay down his life for.
So he starts thinking, but only when it's all over, and then he can't really stop, not until he sees her in the infirmary, whole and bright and holding onto Hera for dear life.
"Are you okay?" he asks her, feeling foolish before the words are even out of his mouth.
She just slowly breaks into a smile, warm and sharp like one of Ellen's but entirely her own, and says, "Miraculously. But yes."
Then her fingers drift up to the dried blood on his forehead, and she asks, "Are you?"
~