Ficlet: 'Being A Lie'
ingrid_m requested - Battlestar Galactica - Gaeta - unknowingly.
Lieutenant Gaeta has doubts.
He wonders if others do too, if there's anyone else lying sleepless in their bunk right this moment, wondering if they're human or not, wondering if they're unknowingly fighting their own kind. He lists names in his head, but he can't imagine any of them sharing his doubts: the XO has different fears and anyway he'll have drowned them by this time of night, the Commander always trusts himself, and as for Starbuck, the idea of her losing faith in her own humanity is absurd.
But there's suspicion everywhere, oozing its chill current throughout the fleet and he feels the touch of it all the time. Only he's different from the rest: he doesn't look at others, doesn't question who around him might be a Cylon.
He just questions himself.
He fingers his temples, prodding roughly, as though he could reach inside and find answers. He doesn't fear the answers even though he dearly hopes he's human. But if he isn't, if he's a Cylon, he wants to know. He doesn't want to be a lie. He can deal with lying, if he has to, but he shouldn't have to live his life believing a lie.
He feels human of course and he remembers all his life - his mother hugging him and crying into his hair on his first day of school, standing on the steps in front of the Academy in awe that he'd finally made it there, the calloused fingers of the first guy who fucked him. But Sharon had all her memories too. The first Sharon. He's not sure that she ever really believed that she wasn't human, not deep down where it matters. But she was deluding herself, and that's something he doesn't want to do.
He wants the truth, whatever that may be.
The room is silent apart from soft breathing and the occasional moan from a bad dream. He turns on his side and faces the wall, closes his eyes and tries to shut down his mind as well. Whatever the truth, right now he wants sleep more than anything. The truth can wait.
Lieutenant Gaeta has doubts.
He wonders if others do too, if there's anyone else lying sleepless in their bunk right this moment, wondering if they're human or not, wondering if they're unknowingly fighting their own kind. He lists names in his head, but he can't imagine any of them sharing his doubts: the XO has different fears and anyway he'll have drowned them by this time of night, the Commander always trusts himself, and as for Starbuck, the idea of her losing faith in her own humanity is absurd.
But there's suspicion everywhere, oozing its chill current throughout the fleet and he feels the touch of it all the time. Only he's different from the rest: he doesn't look at others, doesn't question who around him might be a Cylon.
He just questions himself.
He fingers his temples, prodding roughly, as though he could reach inside and find answers. He doesn't fear the answers even though he dearly hopes he's human. But if he isn't, if he's a Cylon, he wants to know. He doesn't want to be a lie. He can deal with lying, if he has to, but he shouldn't have to live his life believing a lie.
He feels human of course and he remembers all his life - his mother hugging him and crying into his hair on his first day of school, standing on the steps in front of the Academy in awe that he'd finally made it there, the calloused fingers of the first guy who fucked him. But Sharon had all her memories too. The first Sharon. He's not sure that she ever really believed that she wasn't human, not deep down where it matters. But she was deluding herself, and that's something he doesn't want to do.
He wants the truth, whatever that may be.
The room is silent apart from soft breathing and the occasional moan from a bad dream. He turns on his side and faces the wall, closes his eyes and tries to shut down his mind as well. Whatever the truth, right now he wants sleep more than anything. The truth can wait.