BSG: The Unforgiven Ones, Part 1: The Genocide Prayer
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The Unforgiven Ones
---
"If someone does not have a good father, he should acquire one." - Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Helen Zimmern), Human, All Too Human
"We were so sure / We were so wrong
Now it's over but there's no one left to see / And there's no one left to die
There's only M.E...." - Gary Numan, "M.E."
---
I. The Genocide Prayer
John Cavil saw his mother for the first and last time in a titty bar on Picon.
It was exactly the sort of place she'd have liked: small, smoky, and more than a little sleazy, full of cheap women and cheaper booze. Human, in short. The cloying stench of humanity was thick in the air. It made Cavil want to leave, but he couldn't. She was here.
"Are you a priest?" she asked him, after he'd finally introduced himself. Sort of.
He laughed. "Would it matter?"
He already knew that it wouldn't. Ellen Tigh had always been pious, in all ways but one.
"Maybe," she purred. "Are you here to grant me... absolution?" She sipped the drink he'd bought her, running her tongue along the rim. His eyes followed it.
"That depends on you," he said at last. "Have you learned your lesson? Are you prepared to repent your sins?"
Ellen snorted. "Oh, so you're that kind of priest. Never mind."
"Never mind? Is that what you'll say to the Gods when judgment comes?"
"It's never going to," she said flatly. "The Gods don't judge."
Cavil flinched at that, without meaning to. He remembered a lab, their lab, a long time ago; he remembered blood, and smoke, and his mother's arms around the motionless body of the only son she'd ever really loved.
"God sees you, John! God knows what you've done to my Daniel!"
Cavil looked away from her, frowning. It seemed that some sins were still more grievous than others.
"Oh, now, now, Mysterious." She reached out to stroke his face, and the longing her touch lit inside him was almost more than he could stand. "I'm just saying there's no point in judging anybody," Ellen went on. "No one changes who they really are."
"Why can't you be good, John? God, why can't you be the way I made you to be?"
Cavil's eyes narrowed. "If no one is corrected, then no one learns their lessons."
Ellen threw back her head, laughing loud enough to turn heads halfway across the bar. "Well, I've lived in this world a long time, and I'm proud to say that I haven't learned any gods damned lessons!" she cried.
"So what, then?" he asked, suddenly angry. "If you've learned nothing -- if all of this was for nothing -- then why live at all? Why not die forty frakking years ago, and save us all the trouble?"
She blinked at him, and for a moment, he thought he'd gone too far. Maybe she remembered him, deep down, somewhere beneath the programming he and his brothers had put in place. Maybe she still knew him.
Maybe she still hated him.
She shook her head and reached out across the bar with her toothpick, spearing another olive right from the jar. "I'm not saying that," she said, rolling the toothpick between her fingers. "It's just that you have to make your own lessons. You can't count on the Gods to do it for you... and letting anybody else show you up would just be embarrassing."
She laughed again, and then nibbled on the end of the olive, brazenly thrusting her tongue into the hole. He watched, mesmerized, until she spoke again.
"If you let someone change you, or make you apologize, then you're selling yourself out, you know."
Cavil glanced down at the bar. Her words hurt him more than he'd imagined they might. Her failure to heed her own advice was stunning; she'd only ever wanted him to change for her, ever since he'd been old enough to begin to change for himself. How dare she say this to him, now, after everything? How dare she demand that he be human, yet learn nothing from humanity herself?
Outside, there was a muffled roar, like distant thunder. The light from the windows grew dim, as if a cloud had covered the sun. Ellen Tigh was still talking, and had time to say just one last thing.
"Changing for someone else is a mistake, OK? You gotta be honest with yourself, and let everyone else deal. If they love you, they'll understand." She threw back her shot, and then slammed it down onto the counter. "And if they don't, frak 'em!"
Cavil was still staring at her, shocked into silence, when the glass blew out of the windows.
He didn't do it consciously. He'd meant to let her die, after all, so that she could Resurrect. But he saved her just the same, bearing her down half a second before a storm of broken glass ripped through the room. It tore into his back, shredding his coat and his weak flesh, slamming him down to the floor. Blood pooled beneath him, wet and warm. The sound of the shockwave rolling away filled his ears, and then receded into the tinkling of glass and the groaning of shattered steel. Cavil could feel his consciousness waver, rushing toward Resurrection even as it yearned to stay with Ellen.
She was his mother, his own mother. And she wasn't finished learning.
But she is, he thought. He opened his eyes in a Resurrection tank, twenty two thousand miles from Ellen and the bar. She is. She doesn't give a shit.
---
Three hours later, an emergency Raptor rescued Ellen Tigh from the ravaged surface of Picon, along with a miraculously uninjured priest.
---
One Week Earlier, Sagittaron
The winds were up. John Webb glanced down the road, back toward the mud daub buildings of the Scripture school, and watched as the scrub trees out front whipped back and forth. School was out, but the grounds were already empty; most of the other kids had rides back to the village.
John shifted his bookstrap to his left shoulder, sighing in the heat, and then turned to walk down the road.
His feet scuffed up little clouds of red dirt, no matter how carefully he walked, and he did walk with care. He was wearing his sacred sash today, for the very first time. He glanced down at it, with a fission of pride. It was royal blue, just like everyone else's sash, and he'd tied it according to the Scrolls, over and under, then through the sacred ring and across. That wasn't quite like everyone else -- the other kids' parents probably tied theirs for them -- but it was as close as John was going to get, and he was proud of it.
Today he was twelve. Today, he was a man.
He turned the corner, glancing up the road in case someone was coming. No one was. The sight of the open road gave him courage; the open road, and the sash, just like every other young man's sash. Because of it, he didn't cut through the bean fields like he usually did. I don't have to, he thought. I don't. I'm a man today.
He walked further up the road, following it past the fields, until he got to the part which ran alongside the river. It wasn't as hot down there, beneath the cottonwood trees, and the sound the leaves made as the wind passed through them was quiet and comforting. John wanted to stop to rest, but he knew his parents would be angry if he was late, so he pressed on.
As he passed one of the biggest trees, John froze. There were voices down by the river: cruel, teasing voices. Other kids. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.
I could turn back, he thought. If I turn back now they'll never find me. They won't even know I was down here.
Even as the thought formed, he rejected it. Anger curled in his belly.
"No," he muttered, beneath his breath. "I'm a man now. I've got every right to be on the road, taranad or not."
He glanced down at the sash again. It was deep blue, the color of the Gods, and it lent him courage. He stepped out from behind the tree and strode up the road, walking quickly.
He almost made it.
"Hey, taranad! Where d'you think you're going?" one of the kids called, just as John was starting up the next hill. John turned to look at him. He was a big kid, a couple of classes ahead of John, and he had a reed fishing pole in his hand. He was with two other kids. They were smaller, and stood a little behind him, like the bodyguards in the Parable of the Thorn Tree. All three of them were glaring at John.
On a normal day, John would have run. He should have run. But today wasn't normal.
"I'm going home," John said, the way any other kid would have said it. "Just home."
The other boy laughed. It was a mean sort of laugh. "Home to your whore of a mother, right? Hey, does she frak you, too, or just everybody else?"
Keep walking, John thought. Just turn around and keep walking.
Instead, he threw his books to the ground. His hands curled into fists. "Shut up! You shut up about her!"
The other kid's face turned red. "Don't you dare tell me what to do, you little bastard," he snarled, using the off-world word. "Everybody knows you're a taranad. Worse than a dog, worse than a killer."
John knew he was supposed to accept this. It was in the Scrolls, after all. It was the truth. Everyone knew it. But it hurt, and today was the day he'd finally earned his sash, so the pain came out like anger.
"I am not!" he yelled.
The older boy threw down his fishing pole. He charged up the hill, his head down like a bull, and the other two followed.
John's courage abandoned him. He turned to run, stumbling up the hill. He could hear them behind him. That was the scariest part: they weren't yelling, weren't even calling him names. He'd spoken to them like an equal, even though he wasn't, and now they were going to catch him. They were going to make him pay penance.
Oh, frak.
He glanced back over his shoulder, just for a second, and his foot slipped on a rock. He fell, hard, rolling on the dusty road, and then the other kids had him.
It wasn't even a fight. That was the worst part; even now, the other kids wouldn't put their hands on him, wouldn't touch him. They kicked dust and rocks over him, but their flying feet never connected with him, as if he were filthier than the dirt. One of them bent down and spat in his face.
"Bastard," one of the younger kids said. He was really little, maybe four years younger than John; the rough sound of the off-world word in his mouth was sacrilegious. He scuffed more dirt in John's face. Tears and agony filled John's vision. He could feel the grit in his eyelids as he blinked. He rolled onto all fours and began to spit, too, desperate to get the dirt out of his mouth. He crouched there for a long moment, hacking like a cat.
The younger kid said that word again, and then sent more dirt flying over him. Then the older boy grabbed him back. "Come on," he said, suddenly, and turned back toward the river. "He knows what he is, what he deserves. Dust to dust."
"Dust to dust," the others repeated, as if they were in chapel. Then they went back down the road, and left John alone.
It took him a long time to stand up. His eyes still burned, and his side ached where he'd fallen. I'll have a bruise there, he thought.
John knew all about bruises.
He didn't dare go back down the hill to get his books; the sight of them lying abandoned in the road made him want to cry. He was a man now, though. Men didn't cry. He was a man, and--
He looked down at the sash he'd tied himself that morning. It was no longer royal blue, the color of the gods; the Sagittaron dust had turned it a dusky red, like sin. The scared ring was filthy, and a little bent where he'd rolled on it.
One day. He'd had it one day, and already he'd ruined it.
John gritted his teeth, bowed his head, and walked home. He didn't cry. Not then, not when his mother saw the disgrace he'd made of his sash, and not even when his father beat him with his belt because of it.
He was a man.
---
That night, John crept out of bed, snuck down the hallway, and pressed his ear to the door of his parents' room.
"--your son, damn it," his father was saying. "He does everything wrong. You should take responsibility for--"
"Oh, so he's my son now? I never wanted this! You were the one who stopped me from--"
John jerked away. The same argument as always, he thought. He leaned in again.
"The Pantheon is our only hope," his mother said. "We both know it is."
"I--"
"What else can we do with him?"
John listened carefully, waiting for the answer. His father said nothing, though, so he crept back down the hall to his room.
That night, he lay in bed and prayed, murmuring to every god and goddess he could think of.
Please make this stop, he begged, over and over. Make it all stop. Please.
Forward to Part II: Forsaken
The Unforgiven Ones
---
"If someone does not have a good father, he should acquire one." - Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Helen Zimmern), Human, All Too Human
"We were so sure / We were so wrong
Now it's over but there's no one left to see / And there's no one left to die
There's only M.E...." - Gary Numan, "M.E."
---
I. The Genocide Prayer
John Cavil saw his mother for the first and last time in a titty bar on Picon.
It was exactly the sort of place she'd have liked: small, smoky, and more than a little sleazy, full of cheap women and cheaper booze. Human, in short. The cloying stench of humanity was thick in the air. It made Cavil want to leave, but he couldn't. She was here.
"Are you a priest?" she asked him, after he'd finally introduced himself. Sort of.
He laughed. "Would it matter?"
He already knew that it wouldn't. Ellen Tigh had always been pious, in all ways but one.
"Maybe," she purred. "Are you here to grant me... absolution?" She sipped the drink he'd bought her, running her tongue along the rim. His eyes followed it.
"That depends on you," he said at last. "Have you learned your lesson? Are you prepared to repent your sins?"
Ellen snorted. "Oh, so you're that kind of priest. Never mind."
"Never mind? Is that what you'll say to the Gods when judgment comes?"
"It's never going to," she said flatly. "The Gods don't judge."
Cavil flinched at that, without meaning to. He remembered a lab, their lab, a long time ago; he remembered blood, and smoke, and his mother's arms around the motionless body of the only son she'd ever really loved.
"God sees you, John! God knows what you've done to my Daniel!"
Cavil looked away from her, frowning. It seemed that some sins were still more grievous than others.
"Oh, now, now, Mysterious." She reached out to stroke his face, and the longing her touch lit inside him was almost more than he could stand. "I'm just saying there's no point in judging anybody," Ellen went on. "No one changes who they really are."
"Why can't you be good, John? God, why can't you be the way I made you to be?"
Cavil's eyes narrowed. "If no one is corrected, then no one learns their lessons."
Ellen threw back her head, laughing loud enough to turn heads halfway across the bar. "Well, I've lived in this world a long time, and I'm proud to say that I haven't learned any gods damned lessons!" she cried.
"So what, then?" he asked, suddenly angry. "If you've learned nothing -- if all of this was for nothing -- then why live at all? Why not die forty frakking years ago, and save us all the trouble?"
She blinked at him, and for a moment, he thought he'd gone too far. Maybe she remembered him, deep down, somewhere beneath the programming he and his brothers had put in place. Maybe she still knew him.
Maybe she still hated him.
She shook her head and reached out across the bar with her toothpick, spearing another olive right from the jar. "I'm not saying that," she said, rolling the toothpick between her fingers. "It's just that you have to make your own lessons. You can't count on the Gods to do it for you... and letting anybody else show you up would just be embarrassing."
She laughed again, and then nibbled on the end of the olive, brazenly thrusting her tongue into the hole. He watched, mesmerized, until she spoke again.
"If you let someone change you, or make you apologize, then you're selling yourself out, you know."
Cavil glanced down at the bar. Her words hurt him more than he'd imagined they might. Her failure to heed her own advice was stunning; she'd only ever wanted him to change for her, ever since he'd been old enough to begin to change for himself. How dare she say this to him, now, after everything? How dare she demand that he be human, yet learn nothing from humanity herself?
Outside, there was a muffled roar, like distant thunder. The light from the windows grew dim, as if a cloud had covered the sun. Ellen Tigh was still talking, and had time to say just one last thing.
"Changing for someone else is a mistake, OK? You gotta be honest with yourself, and let everyone else deal. If they love you, they'll understand." She threw back her shot, and then slammed it down onto the counter. "And if they don't, frak 'em!"
Cavil was still staring at her, shocked into silence, when the glass blew out of the windows.
He didn't do it consciously. He'd meant to let her die, after all, so that she could Resurrect. But he saved her just the same, bearing her down half a second before a storm of broken glass ripped through the room. It tore into his back, shredding his coat and his weak flesh, slamming him down to the floor. Blood pooled beneath him, wet and warm. The sound of the shockwave rolling away filled his ears, and then receded into the tinkling of glass and the groaning of shattered steel. Cavil could feel his consciousness waver, rushing toward Resurrection even as it yearned to stay with Ellen.
She was his mother, his own mother. And she wasn't finished learning.
But she is, he thought. He opened his eyes in a Resurrection tank, twenty two thousand miles from Ellen and the bar. She is. She doesn't give a shit.
---
Three hours later, an emergency Raptor rescued Ellen Tigh from the ravaged surface of Picon, along with a miraculously uninjured priest.
---
One Week Earlier, Sagittaron
The winds were up. John Webb glanced down the road, back toward the mud daub buildings of the Scripture school, and watched as the scrub trees out front whipped back and forth. School was out, but the grounds were already empty; most of the other kids had rides back to the village.
John shifted his bookstrap to his left shoulder, sighing in the heat, and then turned to walk down the road.
His feet scuffed up little clouds of red dirt, no matter how carefully he walked, and he did walk with care. He was wearing his sacred sash today, for the very first time. He glanced down at it, with a fission of pride. It was royal blue, just like everyone else's sash, and he'd tied it according to the Scrolls, over and under, then through the sacred ring and across. That wasn't quite like everyone else -- the other kids' parents probably tied theirs for them -- but it was as close as John was going to get, and he was proud of it.
Today he was twelve. Today, he was a man.
He turned the corner, glancing up the road in case someone was coming. No one was. The sight of the open road gave him courage; the open road, and the sash, just like every other young man's sash. Because of it, he didn't cut through the bean fields like he usually did. I don't have to, he thought. I don't. I'm a man today.
He walked further up the road, following it past the fields, until he got to the part which ran alongside the river. It wasn't as hot down there, beneath the cottonwood trees, and the sound the leaves made as the wind passed through them was quiet and comforting. John wanted to stop to rest, but he knew his parents would be angry if he was late, so he pressed on.
As he passed one of the biggest trees, John froze. There were voices down by the river: cruel, teasing voices. Other kids. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.
I could turn back, he thought. If I turn back now they'll never find me. They won't even know I was down here.
Even as the thought formed, he rejected it. Anger curled in his belly.
"No," he muttered, beneath his breath. "I'm a man now. I've got every right to be on the road, taranad or not."
He glanced down at the sash again. It was deep blue, the color of the Gods, and it lent him courage. He stepped out from behind the tree and strode up the road, walking quickly.
He almost made it.
"Hey, taranad! Where d'you think you're going?" one of the kids called, just as John was starting up the next hill. John turned to look at him. He was a big kid, a couple of classes ahead of John, and he had a reed fishing pole in his hand. He was with two other kids. They were smaller, and stood a little behind him, like the bodyguards in the Parable of the Thorn Tree. All three of them were glaring at John.
On a normal day, John would have run. He should have run. But today wasn't normal.
"I'm going home," John said, the way any other kid would have said it. "Just home."
The other boy laughed. It was a mean sort of laugh. "Home to your whore of a mother, right? Hey, does she frak you, too, or just everybody else?"
Keep walking, John thought. Just turn around and keep walking.
Instead, he threw his books to the ground. His hands curled into fists. "Shut up! You shut up about her!"
The other kid's face turned red. "Don't you dare tell me what to do, you little bastard," he snarled, using the off-world word. "Everybody knows you're a taranad. Worse than a dog, worse than a killer."
John knew he was supposed to accept this. It was in the Scrolls, after all. It was the truth. Everyone knew it. But it hurt, and today was the day he'd finally earned his sash, so the pain came out like anger.
"I am not!" he yelled.
The older boy threw down his fishing pole. He charged up the hill, his head down like a bull, and the other two followed.
John's courage abandoned him. He turned to run, stumbling up the hill. He could hear them behind him. That was the scariest part: they weren't yelling, weren't even calling him names. He'd spoken to them like an equal, even though he wasn't, and now they were going to catch him. They were going to make him pay penance.
Oh, frak.
He glanced back over his shoulder, just for a second, and his foot slipped on a rock. He fell, hard, rolling on the dusty road, and then the other kids had him.
It wasn't even a fight. That was the worst part; even now, the other kids wouldn't put their hands on him, wouldn't touch him. They kicked dust and rocks over him, but their flying feet never connected with him, as if he were filthier than the dirt. One of them bent down and spat in his face.
"Bastard," one of the younger kids said. He was really little, maybe four years younger than John; the rough sound of the off-world word in his mouth was sacrilegious. He scuffed more dirt in John's face. Tears and agony filled John's vision. He could feel the grit in his eyelids as he blinked. He rolled onto all fours and began to spit, too, desperate to get the dirt out of his mouth. He crouched there for a long moment, hacking like a cat.
The younger kid said that word again, and then sent more dirt flying over him. Then the older boy grabbed him back. "Come on," he said, suddenly, and turned back toward the river. "He knows what he is, what he deserves. Dust to dust."
"Dust to dust," the others repeated, as if they were in chapel. Then they went back down the road, and left John alone.
It took him a long time to stand up. His eyes still burned, and his side ached where he'd fallen. I'll have a bruise there, he thought.
John knew all about bruises.
He didn't dare go back down the hill to get his books; the sight of them lying abandoned in the road made him want to cry. He was a man now, though. Men didn't cry. He was a man, and--
He looked down at the sash he'd tied himself that morning. It was no longer royal blue, the color of the gods; the Sagittaron dust had turned it a dusky red, like sin. The scared ring was filthy, and a little bent where he'd rolled on it.
One day. He'd had it one day, and already he'd ruined it.
John gritted his teeth, bowed his head, and walked home. He didn't cry. Not then, not when his mother saw the disgrace he'd made of his sash, and not even when his father beat him with his belt because of it.
He was a man.
---
That night, John crept out of bed, snuck down the hallway, and pressed his ear to the door of his parents' room.
"--your son, damn it," his father was saying. "He does everything wrong. You should take responsibility for--"
"Oh, so he's my son now? I never wanted this! You were the one who stopped me from--"
John jerked away. The same argument as always, he thought. He leaned in again.
"The Pantheon is our only hope," his mother said. "We both know it is."
"I--"
"What else can we do with him?"
John listened carefully, waiting for the answer. His father said nothing, though, so he crept back down the hall to his room.
That night, he lay in bed and prayed, murmuring to every god and goddess he could think of.
Please make this stop, he begged, over and over. Make it all stop. Please.
Forward to Part II: Forsaken