FIC - Possibility: Cylon (1/1)
Title: Possibility: Cylon (1/1)
Author: Hackaddict
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Six/Gaius, Starbuck/Gaius
Spoilers: events take place during “Home, Part 2” (though potential spoilers for the entire first half of the second season)
Disclaimer: They're not mine. I wish they were mine. In some cool alternate universe, they are mine. But, alas, that universe is not the one I'm currently living in. So they're not mine. Direct quotations of dialogue came from: www.twiztv.com/scripts/battlestar.
Summary: What if Six’s choice to mimic Starbuck was intentional? What if Six was only the Cylon’s back-up plan for Gaius Baltar?
Words: 1,800
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This will be a series of stand-alone stories which deal with the choices that the characters on Battlestar Galactica have made throughout the first half of the second season (I’ll be posting in as much of the order of the season as I can). I want to explore what would have happened/changed if things had gone differently. Some of the stories will be angst, some will be shippy, some will be funny. There will be different pairings throughout. Don’t feel like you have to check out each one to understand the others. All I ask is that if it intrigues you, then give it a try. Hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed writing them!
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Baltar stared at the cleverly positioned chair as it showed him just enough of Six to make his blood stir. He would have a definite problem on his hands if only her sudden appearances weren’t starting to get on his nerves. “Do you have any notion of how ridiculous you’ve become? The whole turn of our conversation completely shot to pieces. I’m the father of a baby who will be born to me from my fantasy woman who I see solely in my head. My fantasy woman, by the way, who stopped being my fantasy.” He could see the surprise on Six’s face and pressed on. “You’re not my fantasy anymore. No, sadly, no, you’re nothing more than a common tease.”
“I never said I would bear the child,” Six corrected.
Baltar rolled his eyes as the remainder of patience flew out the door. “Oh, wonderful! More double talk, more mind games! All right then, who’s it going to be? Who’s going to bear our secret love child? It’s not Starbuck, is it?”
Baltar watched Six clench her jaw and was surprised to see the jealousy sweep across her face. He had thought they were done with that chapter of their relationship. “Careful, Gaius,” she warned, “you’re in dangerous territory now.”
“Then I guess I’m really scared. So what’s it going to be this week? What is it? Don’t tell me, I’ll guess. Um… the ship’s going to blow up! No, damn, damn. Done that one.” He was surprised to see Six actually crack a smile. Maybe he was finally getting to understand this woman with which he was so infatuated. “So it’s got to be someone else. Somebo-- me! Yes, of course, me! I’m going to explode!” Baltar started gesturing wildly as he spun around to face the cell wall. “Good! God is going to make me spontaneously combust in a great big ball of flame, and then the whole crew of Galactica can celebrate on ambrosia. Get really drunk.”
The sound of Six’s laughter made him freeze. He turned to look at her and was surprised to see her clothed in sweats. Her hair had been straightened and pulled back in a ponytail. Baltar was used to her sudden transformations, but this one felt different. She had never toned down her sex appeal like this before.
“Okay. Enough. I can’t do this anymore.” Six gave him a smile that sent chills through his bones. “You’re right. Game’s over. You win.”
“Win? Ah, um… what did I win?”
“You don’t get it?” Six chuckled. “Come on, Gaius. Wake up and smell the psychosis already.”
Baltar did his best not to stare at her appearance as she continued to mock him. It felt awkward to see her like this, but he had no idea why that would be. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay, look. There is no Cylon chip implanted in your brain,” she explained, relaxing into her chair. “I’m not real. You’re not really getting secret messages from the Cylons. You’re just crazy.”
Baltar did his best to figure out what Six was trying to tell him, but it was hard to focus on her words instead of the way she was acting. Everything about her had changed. The most bewildering part was the way she spoke to him. It was familiar. He just couldn’t place where.
Her words drew him back into the argument as she insisted there was no chip in his head. “If there is no chip, then who… or what… are you exactly?” he asked, sure that she couldn’t answer that question.
“I’m you.” Six shrugged. “I’m your subconscious fraking with your mind. Okay, check it out. You helped the Cylons commit genocide against your own people, and your fragile little mind couldn’t handle it. So poof! I appear and start telling you how special you are. How God has chosen you. Yeah… right.”
Her sneer was what finally made the connection in his head. “You’re emulating her,” he whispered. His eyes widen in surprise. “Why?”
“I have no idea what you’re asking,” Six said as she stood up.
“I don’t get how mimicking Lieutenant Thrace will help convince me that I’m crazy!” he yelled.
A smile spread across her face as she stepped in close to Baltar. “Do you think I wouldn’t pick up on how much you fancy her?”
“You think that acting like her would turn me on?”
“I was there the night she let you frak her. You haven’t been that… enthusiastic since long before the attacks.”
Baltar threw up his hands. “Unbelievable! You’re trying to convince me I’ve lost my mind because you’re jealous. You can stand the fact that I may actually be infatuated with another woman.”
Six reached out to grab his hand and gave him a sympathetic look. “I could never be jealous of God’s plan, Gaius.”
“God’s-” Baltar felt his throat close up and choke his words. He tried again. “God’s plan?”
“Do you think this happened by chance?” Six let out a laugh that seemed to travel from head to toe, shaking her whole body. “We need you, Gaius. The Cylons needed you.”
“I don’t understand.” His whole world seemed to be spinning out of control right in the middle of Galactica’s holding cell. For the thousandth time, he found himself wondering what his actual part in this war was.
“You have a thing for blondes,” Six smirked. “I know because I’ve been watching you for far longer than you’ve known me. You were the key to our plan, and we needed to make sure we had a way to get to you. The first weakness you ever showed was for human women. It was easy to exploit that.”
“This isn’t news to me,” Baltar insisted.
Six mostly ignored him as she crossed to sit down on the cot. Her hand came out to pat the chair in invitation. “You have two types of women, Gaius. The first one was easy to see. An attractive blonde who seems like she should be on the cover of Caprican Life? Who wouldn’t desire that?”
“It’s painfully obvious that you’re my type, darling,” Baltar patronized. “I dated enough models and actresses for anyone to come up with that.”
“But it’s your soft spot for tough women that’s hard to guess. Your first crush was for Samantha McDonal, the school bully. She pushed you down and stole your triad money every day, and you loved it. It took me only a few days of watching you before I understood your soft spot for women who can hurt you.”
“And you used that soft spot by continually causing me pain.”
“It was a little perk to my job,” Six said, sending him a mischievous smile. “I was to entice you until it stopped working, and then she was to take over.”
Baltar’s face twisted in confusion. “She?”
“The Cylons knew it would take both types to get you to do what we wanted,” she informed him.
“I hate to kill your plan, dear,” Baltar smirked, “but the she in question is not with the Fleet anymore. What with you living within my head and all, you might have missed that development.”
“She’ll be back before the end of tomorrow, Gaius. It is God’s will that she be a part of what is to come. After all, he spared her from unspeakable horrors while she was on her suicidal mission. She has been returned to you whole.”
“Instead of in pieces?” he mocked. “How nice to know the Cylons did not want to kill one of their agents.”
“If you knew what could have been done to her, you would understand how much God really loves her. She had a destiny that not even I could touch.” Six reached out to grasp his hand. “Gaius, you need to start thinking of the future. I can help you stay safe.”
“You haven’t propositioned me like that in a long time,” he commented. “It’s usually just commands and physical violence when you have a use for me.”
“The more open you are, the easier it will be to choose between us.”
Baltar squeezed her hand. “I think you know who I would pick.”
“When it comes time, you might be surprised. She will come to mean a lot to you.”
“I don’t understand how you know this.”
Six gave him a weak smile. “This has all happened before, and it will happen again. Only this time, things are a little skewed. Something went wrong, and Kara Thrace doesn’t have the attachments she should have.”
“Attachments to me or to someone else?”
“She feels something for the Cylon she was forced to torture, but it is not what it should be. The love is missing.”
Baltar’s mouth dropped open. “She was supposed to love a Cylon? I don’t understand how a human could do something like that.” Six raised her eyebrow at him. “Our case is special.” Six shook her head slowly. “There are more out there?”
“We are not that different from you.”
The cell filled with silence as Baltar tried to imagine that humans all over the Fleet were developing love for the machines that destroyed their civilization. As much as that prospect confused him, it was even harder to understand how Lieutenant Kara Thrace factored in. There was no way a Viper pilot as tough as her would ever let herself be taken in by the Cylons.
“I don’t think you have any chance of convincing Starbuck to follow her destiny,” Baltar pointed out. “She’s not the kind of woman who lets people tell her what to do.”
“As always, it will be her choice whether to follow her heart.”
“And her heart is supposed to lead her to a Cylon? There’s no way any person would let themselves-” His voice cut off as his eyes lit in horror. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve been dancing around it this whole time. She’s not like the others in the Fleet.”
Six shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not trying to tell you she’s a Cylon, Gaius, but she isn‘t like the rest of humanity. She‘s special.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Baltar yelled, jumping to his feet and turning away from his companion. He turned in time to see that the façade had slipped off of Six’s body. She had returned to the normal skimpy dress and curly blonde hair and was now standing inches away from him. “If she’s not a Cylon but she’s not like the rest of humanity, then what the frak is she?”
Six stared at him a moment before reaching out to touch his cheek in sympathy. Baltar looked up at her and was suddenly afraid of what he saw.
“She’s our salvation.”