Crescendo
Title: Crescendo
Date posted: 12-13-11
Fandom: BSG
Word count: 1866
Disclaimer: These characters definitely don't belong to me, but instead RDM.
Characters: Sonja 'Legs' Sigardson, Sam ‘Longshot’ Anders
Notes: So, kag523 wrote this awesome 'choose your own adventure' fic called Chain Reaction where readers got to vote on outcomes and suggest objects/people/themes to be included. Being myself, I requested a Six, and then specifically Sonja. As always, K hit the ground running, creating a pilot persona for Sonja where her callsign at the academy was Legs. At some point she mentioned to me that Legs and Longshot were still together when the attacks happened. This fic follows Prelude and Fermata, the first two in this series (?!)
In addition to giving kudos to kag523 who is a rockstar 24/7, I’d like to thank nicole_anell for looking this fic over/brainstorming with me/generally being awesome.
Sonja makes excuses not to tell him. They just scored a victory, or they just lost some friends. She doesn’t want to ruin his day by telling him in the morning, she doesn’t want to ruin his day by telling him at night. She doesn’t want to spoil his meal, his week, his night’s sleep. There are thousands of reasons to keep him in the dark a bit longer. It’s not vanity to think that she’s the last bright spot in his life- he’s the last one in hers. She wears a rubber band wrapped around her left ring finger as an engagement ring, and oh, she wants to keep it. She wants to keep quiet.
He’s talking to Jean Barolay about playing pyramid later when she walks over to him, knots in her stomach. “Sam, can we talk?” she asks, and Jean flicks her eyes over. Sonja’s tone was too tight, too forced. Jean will remember this, the way she sounded. Jean loathes Cylons.
“Sure, baby,” Sam says easily, slinging his arm around her shoulders. Everyone knows he loves her. “What’s up?”
“I need to talk with you in private.”
At the words ‘in private,’ Sam’s eyes light up. He thinks he’s getting lucky, and he bounds up the stairs without looking back at her. He trusts her to follow.
She’s barely shut the door before Sam is kissing the side of her neck, his arms around her waist. She wants to remember this moment, this one last moment, the feeling of him. “Sam,” she says, and oh, how she loves him, “We really do need to talk.”
“That wasn’t the signal?” He was kissing the sweet spot just under her jaw, and Sonja could feel her resolve melting away. What was one more day?
“It usually is,” Sonja says, pulling away. “But this is important.”
She puts the gun she carries on the desk they’d pushed against the wall, and then her switchblade. She doesn’t want to be a threat. Sam watches her, his brow furrowed. He’s still by the door where he kissed her. “Okay. What is it?”
Taking a deep breath, Sonja says, “The doc and Brother Cavil are Cylons.”
Jean and Sam had seen several Dorals working not long ago, so the fact that Cylons looked like humans was no surprise. It was still a blow to Sam, who closes his eyes for a second. “How did you find out, did you see more of them?”
He’s only curious. He doesn’t suspect a thing. Sonja is filled with the urge to say something theatrical to preface what she’s about to say-- ‘Sam, remember that I love you,’ or ‘I just want you to know that I’ve always loved you,’-- something sweeping, something that make her feel better. She wants to kiss him one last time. “I’m one of them.”
“What?” Sam asks, his brow still furrowed.
“I know that they’re Cylons because I’m one too.”
She had imagined this a hundred different ways, but she had always told him the truth in a strong, direct manner. Instead she sounds broken.
Sam shakes his head. “No, Sonja-- that’s crazy--”
Sonja screws her mouth up to one side, trying to keep from crying just yet. “It is. I didn’t know, Sam, but I think you’re going to have to shoot me.”
“What?”
She’s going too fast for him and dragging him along. She can’t slow down. “You should keep O’Neill and Cavil for prisoners. If they die they might report your location. I won’t. You’ll-- you’ll just have to trust me on that. I understand if you can’t--”
“Stop. Stop talking.” Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. “You’re a Cylon.”
Sonja nods. She wishes she had waited til after dinner, this will ruin the rest of his day.
“You’re a Cylon, and you want me to shoot you. How am I supposed to do that?”
She had never gotten this far when she pictured this conversation. “I don’t know.”
Sam is silent for a long minute, and then he asks, “Did you do anything, So?” He looks as devastated as she feels, and she wants to go to him, to hold him tight and to kiss his brow.
“No,” she says, and then she amends, “Maybe. I don’t remember. I might have... done something on the Atlantia.” The thought makes her sick. “I didn’t know, Sam, I didn’t know until the attacks. I knew when we saw the smoke. You have to believe that I didn’t know.”
“You’ve been planning missions,” he says numbly.
“I haven’t sabotaged anything, I swear. I’ve only helped.” It’s hard to speak over the lump in her throat. Sam hasn’t looked at her since she told him. “I know what you’re going to have to do, but I want you to know that I’ve only helped the resistance. I hate what they did, and what they’re doing.”
And she does, that’s the worst part. Her brothers here try to remind her about God and His will, and how what they’re doing is all part of His divine justice, and she wants to slap them. She would have, too, if it hadn’t been for her precarious balance.
It’s quiet for a while, and Sonja doesn’t know what to do. “Sam?”
“Can you defect?” His voice sounds raw.
Sonja can see where this is going. “Honey, you can’t--”
“If you defect, then you’ll be helping us. It’s already what you said you were doing, it’ll just be in the open.” He’s looking at her now, and he looks wounded but hopeful, and she has never loved him more. “Tell me you’re a defector, Sonja.”
“I am,” she tells him, and she wants to cross the space between them but doesn’t dare. “Of course I am. I swore an oath to the Colonies and I meant it.” She was a traitor no matter what she did. “But the others aren’t going to care.”
“What? They’ll care. They’ll care that you defected.”
She shakes her head. “No, Sam, they won’t. I’m the enemy.” She knows the blood lust that thunders in the veins of every Resistance member. They’ve lost their entire civilization. They’re going to rip her to shreds.
“You’ve been with us this whole time--”
“-- and that makes it worse. They’re going to be angry, really angry, they won’t want my help.” She swallowed hard. “And they’re going to be confused about you, about whether or not you can lead them. They need you, Sam, but they’re going to be so blinded by this-- that’s why you need to cut ties.”
“I don’t know what that means.” He sounds weary.
“It means you need to lead these people, Sam, and you need to make sure they don’t think you’re soft on Cylons. Having the other two as prisoners might work, but me... I have to be an example.”
“How are you so calm about this? How can you just... say this stuff like it doesn’t matter?”
“I’ve had time to think about it.” It’s true. “Would it be better if I did it?”
“What?” He looks aghast. “If you killed yourself, would that be better?”
“It wouldn’t be hard for you to explain. And you wouldn’t have to do it.”
She thinks he might be taking this worse than the Cylon revelation. Now he’s looking at her like he’s never seen her before. “These are the my options- I kill you or you kill yourself.”
“I don’t know what else to do.” And this is what breaks her. Three tears escape.
Sam looks torn, seeing her cry, and Sonja feels even worse. She didn’t want to do this to him. “I’m okay,” she tells him, and tilts her head back. “Really, it’s okay.”
He crosses the room and puts his arms around. Even though she knows she shouldn’t, she hugs him back. “Sam,” she cries into his shoulder, “Sam, don’t.”
“Just shut up for a minute,” he says gruffly, but the hand on the back of her head is gentle. “I need to think.”
When he speaks again, his voice is unsteady. “You wouldn’t betray me.” He believes this to be true, and Sonja is torn. He loves her, and he could lose everything because of it. “I know you. You wouldn’t betray me.”
“No,” she replies in a whisper. Her cheek is pressed against his, and she can feel the prickles of his seventeen hundred shadow. “I’ll never betray you.”
“I trust you.” He hasn’t thought this through, she thinks. His love is keeping him from grasping the enormity of what she has said; he’s blinded to it. He doesn’t understand. “Let’s wait. We don’t have to tell them now.”
“Sam,” she sighs, and pulls back to face him. His hand is still resting lovingly on her neck. “We can’t. What if they see another Six?”
He looks at her and she realizes how strange it is that he doesn’t know this. “A Six,” she repeats, “I’m a Six. They could see another Cylon that looks like me.”
His fingers twitch on her neck, but that is the only sign that he’s distressed at this thought. “We haven’t yet.”
“No,” Sonja agrees, “But that doesn’t mean we won’t. It’ll be better if they know.”
Sam lets go of her then, and starts to pace the small room. It’s hard for him to be still for too long, especially when he’s full of nervous energy. Sam Anders is a man of action. “I should tell Barolay first. She can help me with the others.”
If she will, Sonja thinks. Jean Barolay is loyal to Sam, but there are limits. “Yes,” she says, agreeing that Jean should be the first to know. “You need to tell her.”
“You should stay up here, though.” This is Sam’s concession to the fact that Jean won’t be accept this as readily as he did. He looks the way he would before a big game, tense but confident. “It would better if it was just me. But it’s going to be okay. I’ll talk to the team and--”
“Sam,” Sonja interrupts, and she looks away to gather her strength before finishing, “Why don’t you hate me?”
This time it’s Sam who looks up to the ceiling before answering. “The same reason you don’t hate me, I think.”
“Why would I hate you?” The idea alone is preposterous.
“I’m your enemy too, Legs. It goes both ways.”
He’s right. She might have realized her true nature and turned on them immediately, turned on Sam immediately. She might have led them all into ruin dozens of times. It’s a dark and twisted thought. Shaking her head, she says, “I don’t hate you.” Her voice is thick with emotion again, much to her dismay. “I love you. I always have.” Trite theatricality.
“I believe you,” he tells her. “I don’t understand how this happened, but I believe you.”
He comes back and kisses her, his hands warm and reassuring on her face. “It’s going to be okay,” he promises, and his voice is so soothing that Sonja is almost convinced.
Date posted: 12-13-11
Fandom: BSG
Word count: 1866
Disclaimer: These characters definitely don't belong to me, but instead RDM.
Characters: Sonja 'Legs' Sigardson, Sam ‘Longshot’ Anders
Notes: So, kag523 wrote this awesome 'choose your own adventure' fic called Chain Reaction where readers got to vote on outcomes and suggest objects/people/themes to be included. Being myself, I requested a Six, and then specifically Sonja. As always, K hit the ground running, creating a pilot persona for Sonja where her callsign at the academy was Legs. At some point she mentioned to me that Legs and Longshot were still together when the attacks happened. This fic follows Prelude and Fermata, the first two in this series (?!)
In addition to giving kudos to kag523 who is a rockstar 24/7, I’d like to thank nicole_anell for looking this fic over/brainstorming with me/generally being awesome.
Sonja makes excuses not to tell him. They just scored a victory, or they just lost some friends. She doesn’t want to ruin his day by telling him in the morning, she doesn’t want to ruin his day by telling him at night. She doesn’t want to spoil his meal, his week, his night’s sleep. There are thousands of reasons to keep him in the dark a bit longer. It’s not vanity to think that she’s the last bright spot in his life- he’s the last one in hers. She wears a rubber band wrapped around her left ring finger as an engagement ring, and oh, she wants to keep it. She wants to keep quiet.
He’s talking to Jean Barolay about playing pyramid later when she walks over to him, knots in her stomach. “Sam, can we talk?” she asks, and Jean flicks her eyes over. Sonja’s tone was too tight, too forced. Jean will remember this, the way she sounded. Jean loathes Cylons.
“Sure, baby,” Sam says easily, slinging his arm around her shoulders. Everyone knows he loves her. “What’s up?”
“I need to talk with you in private.”
At the words ‘in private,’ Sam’s eyes light up. He thinks he’s getting lucky, and he bounds up the stairs without looking back at her. He trusts her to follow.
She’s barely shut the door before Sam is kissing the side of her neck, his arms around her waist. She wants to remember this moment, this one last moment, the feeling of him. “Sam,” she says, and oh, how she loves him, “We really do need to talk.”
“That wasn’t the signal?” He was kissing the sweet spot just under her jaw, and Sonja could feel her resolve melting away. What was one more day?
“It usually is,” Sonja says, pulling away. “But this is important.”
She puts the gun she carries on the desk they’d pushed against the wall, and then her switchblade. She doesn’t want to be a threat. Sam watches her, his brow furrowed. He’s still by the door where he kissed her. “Okay. What is it?”
Taking a deep breath, Sonja says, “The doc and Brother Cavil are Cylons.”
Jean and Sam had seen several Dorals working not long ago, so the fact that Cylons looked like humans was no surprise. It was still a blow to Sam, who closes his eyes for a second. “How did you find out, did you see more of them?”
He’s only curious. He doesn’t suspect a thing. Sonja is filled with the urge to say something theatrical to preface what she’s about to say-- ‘Sam, remember that I love you,’ or ‘I just want you to know that I’ve always loved you,’-- something sweeping, something that make her feel better. She wants to kiss him one last time. “I’m one of them.”
“What?” Sam asks, his brow still furrowed.
“I know that they’re Cylons because I’m one too.”
She had imagined this a hundred different ways, but she had always told him the truth in a strong, direct manner. Instead she sounds broken.
Sam shakes his head. “No, Sonja-- that’s crazy--”
Sonja screws her mouth up to one side, trying to keep from crying just yet. “It is. I didn’t know, Sam, but I think you’re going to have to shoot me.”
“What?”
She’s going too fast for him and dragging him along. She can’t slow down. “You should keep O’Neill and Cavil for prisoners. If they die they might report your location. I won’t. You’ll-- you’ll just have to trust me on that. I understand if you can’t--”
“Stop. Stop talking.” Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. “You’re a Cylon.”
Sonja nods. She wishes she had waited til after dinner, this will ruin the rest of his day.
“You’re a Cylon, and you want me to shoot you. How am I supposed to do that?”
She had never gotten this far when she pictured this conversation. “I don’t know.”
Sam is silent for a long minute, and then he asks, “Did you do anything, So?” He looks as devastated as she feels, and she wants to go to him, to hold him tight and to kiss his brow.
“No,” she says, and then she amends, “Maybe. I don’t remember. I might have... done something on the Atlantia.” The thought makes her sick. “I didn’t know, Sam, I didn’t know until the attacks. I knew when we saw the smoke. You have to believe that I didn’t know.”
“You’ve been planning missions,” he says numbly.
“I haven’t sabotaged anything, I swear. I’ve only helped.” It’s hard to speak over the lump in her throat. Sam hasn’t looked at her since she told him. “I know what you’re going to have to do, but I want you to know that I’ve only helped the resistance. I hate what they did, and what they’re doing.”
And she does, that’s the worst part. Her brothers here try to remind her about God and His will, and how what they’re doing is all part of His divine justice, and she wants to slap them. She would have, too, if it hadn’t been for her precarious balance.
It’s quiet for a while, and Sonja doesn’t know what to do. “Sam?”
“Can you defect?” His voice sounds raw.
Sonja can see where this is going. “Honey, you can’t--”
“If you defect, then you’ll be helping us. It’s already what you said you were doing, it’ll just be in the open.” He’s looking at her now, and he looks wounded but hopeful, and she has never loved him more. “Tell me you’re a defector, Sonja.”
“I am,” she tells him, and she wants to cross the space between them but doesn’t dare. “Of course I am. I swore an oath to the Colonies and I meant it.” She was a traitor no matter what she did. “But the others aren’t going to care.”
“What? They’ll care. They’ll care that you defected.”
She shakes her head. “No, Sam, they won’t. I’m the enemy.” She knows the blood lust that thunders in the veins of every Resistance member. They’ve lost their entire civilization. They’re going to rip her to shreds.
“You’ve been with us this whole time--”
“-- and that makes it worse. They’re going to be angry, really angry, they won’t want my help.” She swallowed hard. “And they’re going to be confused about you, about whether or not you can lead them. They need you, Sam, but they’re going to be so blinded by this-- that’s why you need to cut ties.”
“I don’t know what that means.” He sounds weary.
“It means you need to lead these people, Sam, and you need to make sure they don’t think you’re soft on Cylons. Having the other two as prisoners might work, but me... I have to be an example.”
“How are you so calm about this? How can you just... say this stuff like it doesn’t matter?”
“I’ve had time to think about it.” It’s true. “Would it be better if I did it?”
“What?” He looks aghast. “If you killed yourself, would that be better?”
“It wouldn’t be hard for you to explain. And you wouldn’t have to do it.”
She thinks he might be taking this worse than the Cylon revelation. Now he’s looking at her like he’s never seen her before. “These are the my options- I kill you or you kill yourself.”
“I don’t know what else to do.” And this is what breaks her. Three tears escape.
Sam looks torn, seeing her cry, and Sonja feels even worse. She didn’t want to do this to him. “I’m okay,” she tells him, and tilts her head back. “Really, it’s okay.”
He crosses the room and puts his arms around. Even though she knows she shouldn’t, she hugs him back. “Sam,” she cries into his shoulder, “Sam, don’t.”
“Just shut up for a minute,” he says gruffly, but the hand on the back of her head is gentle. “I need to think.”
When he speaks again, his voice is unsteady. “You wouldn’t betray me.” He believes this to be true, and Sonja is torn. He loves her, and he could lose everything because of it. “I know you. You wouldn’t betray me.”
“No,” she replies in a whisper. Her cheek is pressed against his, and she can feel the prickles of his seventeen hundred shadow. “I’ll never betray you.”
“I trust you.” He hasn’t thought this through, she thinks. His love is keeping him from grasping the enormity of what she has said; he’s blinded to it. He doesn’t understand. “Let’s wait. We don’t have to tell them now.”
“Sam,” she sighs, and pulls back to face him. His hand is still resting lovingly on her neck. “We can’t. What if they see another Six?”
He looks at her and she realizes how strange it is that he doesn’t know this. “A Six,” she repeats, “I’m a Six. They could see another Cylon that looks like me.”
His fingers twitch on her neck, but that is the only sign that he’s distressed at this thought. “We haven’t yet.”
“No,” Sonja agrees, “But that doesn’t mean we won’t. It’ll be better if they know.”
Sam lets go of her then, and starts to pace the small room. It’s hard for him to be still for too long, especially when he’s full of nervous energy. Sam Anders is a man of action. “I should tell Barolay first. She can help me with the others.”
If she will, Sonja thinks. Jean Barolay is loyal to Sam, but there are limits. “Yes,” she says, agreeing that Jean should be the first to know. “You need to tell her.”
“You should stay up here, though.” This is Sam’s concession to the fact that Jean won’t be accept this as readily as he did. He looks the way he would before a big game, tense but confident. “It would better if it was just me. But it’s going to be okay. I’ll talk to the team and--”
“Sam,” Sonja interrupts, and she looks away to gather her strength before finishing, “Why don’t you hate me?”
This time it’s Sam who looks up to the ceiling before answering. “The same reason you don’t hate me, I think.”
“Why would I hate you?” The idea alone is preposterous.
“I’m your enemy too, Legs. It goes both ways.”
He’s right. She might have realized her true nature and turned on them immediately, turned on Sam immediately. She might have led them all into ruin dozens of times. It’s a dark and twisted thought. Shaking her head, she says, “I don’t hate you.” Her voice is thick with emotion again, much to her dismay. “I love you. I always have.” Trite theatricality.
“I believe you,” he tells her. “I don’t understand how this happened, but I believe you.”
He comes back and kisses her, his hands warm and reassuring on her face. “It’s going to be okay,” he promises, and his voice is so soothing that Sonja is almost convinced.