(no subject)
Title: Against All Others
Author: prolix_allie
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen. (I'm pretty sure; let me know if I'm wrong! *is new*)
Character/Pairing: Cally, Chief Tyrol
Warnings: Angst, fake-swearing, references to airlocking.
Notes: Not mine. Also, this story takes place in the same universe as Double-Talk and if you've read that you might notice a little self-plagiarism.
Spoilers: Through Crossroads II
Prompt: #6
Summary:Cally and Chief have a talk after Crossroads II
"Damn it, Chief, where the hell have you been?"
Cally shouted the question across the flight deck, but didn't pause for an answer. She didn't want to admit how much it shook her to find Galen absent from his post at the start of a battle, but she quickly put it behind her. If you stopped to think too much you'd be overcome by all the things that had happened to you, and then; well, Cally still got the occasional ache in her jaw to remind her of what might happen then. She figured she could get her explanation later.
She never did. The fight had been the worst the crew had seen since - probably since the Exodus, but of course Cally hadn't been around for that. It was a disaster. A third of their birds were damaged beyond all hope of repair, and they had lost well over a quarter of their pilots. And they had gotten one back.
Now Cally sat in the middle of their bed and stared at the hatch her husband had just stormed out of, feigning a calm she didn't feel as she fed Nicky his bottle. Galen had been the one thing in her life as constant as this frakking war, and now, with the world turned upside down and the Fleet on the verge of splintering, now he chose to abandon her. Alright, she admitted, standing up and cradling Nicky over her shoulder, maybe that was a little melodramatic. This wasn't the first time they had gone through a period where they were fighting more than talking, and Galen spent more time at Joe's than at home with her. In truth it wasn't the fighting so much as the retreat that got to her. Family meant fighting; growing up with seven older brothers had taught her that. But it also meant that after you fought you stuck around, which was the part her husband seemed to have trouble with.
Nicky stirred fretfully as her arms involuntarily tightened around him, but thankfully he didn't start to cry. She set him down with her on the bed, turning him on his stomach so he couldn't see her face. This was why Cally rarely allowed herself to remember her family. They deserved better than that, she knew, but she didn't have the strength to face the full extent of her loss without drowning in it. Even on Aerilon, where big families were the rule, the size of hers had been the subject of much discussion and a few jocular remarks she had been too young to understand at the time. And that was from the adults; she'd sure understood the sing-song taunts of her schoolmates, and the falsely-innocent refrain of "So how come your parents have so many kids?" Because of me, Cally would smugly reflect as she punched the offender in the nose, because they were waiting for me.
Her parents hadn't tried to deny it. Not that it would have done much good; it wasn't hard to figure out when they'd stuffed seven boys - most born less than two years apart - into a cabin built to hold a family of five optimistically, only quitting in exhaustion once they'd gotten their girl. It made Cally feel pretty good, to be honest, enough to make up for hardly ever having her own things, never her own room, not even getting her own bed until puberty. Much better to be that sought-after girl, the one who did sometimes get her own clothes and toys because a girl needed at least one doll and one dress, than to be boy number six or seven, a disappointment only half denied. Of course, the first time someone tried to complain about that in front of their mother, she'd simply asked him if he would really prefer that she and Daddy had stopped at three like they'd originally planned. That had put an end to the complaining, but not to the resentment. Which was why Cally had learned to hit back before she'd really learned to walk.
But it was a different kind of fighting, Cally thought, looking down at her sleeping son with fierce protectiveness. She could fight with her brothers secure in the knowledge that if anyone outside the family laid so much as a finger on her, on the rare chance she couldn't take care of it herself she had a veritable army at her disposal. Her second-youngest brother, the one who'd broken her arm pushing her out of the tree-house when she was six, had also been the one to take on extra shifts at the auto-plant three towns over so she could go to the public college. "And make me rich," he'd said with a grin. Cally had rolled her eyes but silently promised to do just that.
And she would have, too. She would have. A girl in her senior class had lost her mother and her only sister in a car accident right before graduation, and Cally had marveled at the ease with which a family could be cut in half. She had been an aunt before she was out of diapers, and between her brothers and her multitude of nieces and nephews and cousins, she had taken a guilty pleasure in the certainty that that would never be her. It gave her the courage she needed when she left her little corner of Aerilon for the first time to join the crew of a frakking Battlestar. The universe might be a hard place, but she'd never face it alone. And then the Cylons had done in a few hours what fate and nature on their own could never have managed, and Cally thought she'd never have that feeling of being on the inside again. The deck crew was a kind of family. Hell, the human race was a kind of family now. But it wasn't the same. And then she had stared at the Chief through a haze of pain and drugs and heard him say that what he'd done was unforgivable, and had the wind knocked out of her again when she realized that he was right, and she forgave him anyway, and realized that she had found it again.
So first there was her family, her husband and son, against everyone else. And they were all a part of the working class - even Nicky. There were the knuckle-draggers, against the officers, and the working class against the wealthy Capricans and the religious freak Saggitarions. And last there was the human race, against the Cylons and the food shortages and the surrounding emptiness. If they would all just stick together, she was sure they'd be all right. Remember who the real enemy was. That was where she and Galen would never see eye to eye. Bad enough when he wanted to defend the officer-class, but now he was doing it for the godsdamned Cylon traitors. There was nothing worse than a traitor to her mind, someone who pretended to be on the inside and then betrayed their own. They undermined the trust people needed to survive.
Cally knew one in particular she wouldn't mind doing another 30 days for.
It was that she and Galen had fought about. Not that their fights made any sense these days. She'd just pointed out that that the Cylons were smart to make sure their spies were all pilots. A knuckledragger might be able to take down the whole ship, but if they were ever caught they'd get thrown up against the wall no question, no getting to relax all nice and cozy with three squares in the brig.
"We don't even know she's a Cylon," he'd replied, rolling his eyes in a manner sure to infuriate her.
"For frak's sake, Galen, she came back from the dead, what more do you need?"
He was pacing again, like some kind of cornered animal. "Even if she is, did you ever think she might not have known it?"
"What does that matter?"
More pacing. "Damn it, if she didn't know, then it can't be her fault. She can't have set out to betray anybody. Did you ever even stop to consider that? Or were you too busy opening the airlock?"
Frak. Only one thing he could be thinking of; Starbuck turning out to be a toaster had obviously stirred up some old issues for him. Feeling briefly guilty, Cally wondered why it hadn't occured to her before. Well, she wasn't going to apologize. She'd told him right up front that she wasn't sorry she'd killed Sharon, and she still wasn't. If he thought some arrogant hotshot favorite pilot turning out to be one of them was going to make her repent her Cylon-killing ways he had another thing coming.
"Right, poor Starbuck. She's the real victim here. Look, Galen, she's a toaster. A machine. Whether she knew it before now doesn't change any of that. The Cylons know how to do one thing, and that's how to kill us." By now she was just as angry as he was. She couldn't stand how frakking hurt he looked by what she said about Starbuck. Why was he always so determined to sympathize with the bastards who were hunting his own people to extinction? "Remember us, Chief? People like your wife, and your son? Who you haven't so much looked at in a week, by the way." It was true. To be honest that was most of what she was angry about. Even on New Caprica, when he was running the damn Resistance behind her back (or so he thought), he'd helped take care of Nicky. Now he acted like it would kill him to change a frakking diaper once in a while.
He shot a guilty look at his son, and Cally's fists clenched in fury as his eyes darted away just as fast. "How can you say she only knows how to kill us when she's saved this ship ... how many times? Godsdamnit Cally, that doesn't count for anything with you? You've known her for years, everything she's done for you, and that means nothing?"
Alright, what the frak was going on? Everything she'd done for her? Cally didn't even like Starbuck. Galen knew that. She liked Anders - and there was one poor bastard she felt sorry for, imagine finding out you were married to one of them - but Starbuck was the embodiment of that arrogant career military mentality that she despised. Sure, she was glad to have her around when the Cylons showed up and she'd pray for her to come back safe and patch up her bird over and over without complaint, but she'd had no particular fondness for the woman even when they were practically neighbors down on the settlement. Thinking about New Caprica only fueled her own anger. She knew for a fact that her husband had spent hours with Sam after Starbuck was captured, coming up with crazy, unworkable plans to get her out. Tigh had shot down every one of them, and thank the gods for that. She'd undoubtedly spent those four months eating steak dinners with Cavil and Leoben and laughing at them. But Galen would have gotten himself killed for the Cylon bitch. And he wasn't even sleeping with this one.
Okay, maybe that hadn't been the most tactful thing to say. He had started towards her, and she'd tried to mask her instinctive fear with anger, but must not have done a good enough job because he'd backed off immediately. Muttered something about coming back later and headed off, to Joe's presumably. Leaving her alone. Cally had never thought she would miss being crammed into one bunk with her son and her husband in the first few days they'd been back aboard Galactica, but their married quarters just seemed too damn big without him.
***
"Busy night, huh?"
Conner handed him another glass of the watery liquid that passed for beer these days and nodded ruefully.
"Y'know how it is Chief, things fall apart, people want to drink. If this were a paying gig, I'd be raking it it."
Galen tipped his glass at that. Conner turned away and his grin slowly faded as he scanned the crowd anxiously. He realized he was actually relieved that Sam hadn't shown up yet. Chief knew he might well be the most widely respected person aboard ship apart from the Old Man himself, but it had been a long time since he'd had a friend. He was every knuckledragger's superior officer and every officer's subordinate. His own wife was subject to his orders and even his whims when they were on the job, a fact that had been no small source of conflict between them. So he'd been unexpectedly gratified when Starbuck had dragged her new boyfriend off the rescue raptor and presented him to the Old Man with a grin like a kid who'd found a stray puppy. To his surprise, the two of them had hit it off almost instantly, and their friendship had only strengthened during the year on New Caprica.
Yeah, funny how that worked out, huh?
It had been nice to have someone he could just talk to as an equal, for once, without worrying about where they both stood in the chain of command. But for now those days were over. He and the Colonel both knew they needed to find out what was going on with Starbuck. She had returned at the same time that they were awakened. Was she one of them, and did she know it yet, the way they somehow did? Did she know what their purpose was? Sam was the best one to try to get through to her - she trusted him, and as her husband he'd have a reasonable chance of getting in to see her. The problem was that he wasn't being particularly cooperative. In fact, he'd been avoiding them for the past three weeks.
Galen had a feeling he knew how to bring him onboard, it just left a bad taste in his mouth. He'd spent more hours than he liked to think about here with Sam, and a lot of that time they'd been spent commiserating about their wives. The irony of that wasn't exactly lost on him.
"You ever think about Sharon and wonder, what if?"
He remembered that conversation, too. The major must have been pretty out of it to ask him that. "You mean, 'what if' the woman I married and the mother of my child hadn't shot Sharon in the gut? Why no, Major Adama sir, I try not to go there, personally. Can't imagine why." He'd forgiven her, eventually. She'd actually done Sharon a kindness, come to think of it, in sending her back to the Cylons and away from Baltar's tender mercies. Cal would hit the roof if she ever figured that out, though. Oh, the gods had been cruel to her. He couldn't think of anyone alive who hated Cylons more than his wife. Some might wonder at her ability to forgive people like Baltar, who'd ordered her executed for being married to the wrong man, but not Sharon - the other Sharon - who'd saved all their lives. Galen thought he understood though. Everybody liked to divide up the world into us and them, define themselves by what they were against, but Cally took it to an extreme. He remembered trying to convince her once that not all Capricans were their class enemies. "They have poor people too, they just keep them in tenements instead of farmhouses." He hadn't gotten very far. But the Cylons were the ultimate "them," the ultimate enemies, and even Capricans and corrupt former presidents were like your brothers and sisters in comparison.
Well, if he wanted to get rid of her he just had to tell her the truth. Not that she would believe him; she'd think he was going crazy again. Not again, he amended. That was why he hadn't responded with anger and denial like the other three. A part of him must have accepted this a long time ago. And that made his betrayal so much worse. If Cally ever found out ... He couldn't bear to think of it. When he was really honest with himself, he had to admit that his feelings for her weren't like what he'd felt for Sharon, but he did love her. She'd had a piece of his heart ever since she'd come onboard, just months before the attacks; a 21-year-old kid away from home for the first time, yet completely unintimidated. She'd been downright bored by the hazing rituals. Sometimes he caught himself looking at her with the same feeling he had when he looked at his son; amazement that something so small could be such a fighter. It filled him with an overwhelming desire to protect them both from anything that could harm them. And now it looked like their greatest threat was none other than himself. If Cally ever even suspected what he really was, the Colonel wouldn't be the only one guilty of destroying a woman just for loving him.
These cheerful musings were interrupted by his target's arrival. He nodded to Sam and indicated a booth at the back of the bar. Speaking of people getting destroyed by love. He knew more than he probably should about the deterioration of his friend's marriage in the months since the Exodus. More importantly, he thought guiltily, he knew why Sam had kept coming back to his wife; he worried for her constantly. Time to use that.
***
"They say she's refusing to eat." Sam handed him another glass of the watery beer but avoided his eyes.
"They?"
"Colonel."
"For how long?" Sam was still sullenly avoiding his gaze, but Chief could tell he'd gotten to him.
"Almost a week." Gods, he was getting good at being a bastard. It was necessary though; they needed information. He went in for the kill.
“Colonel’s worried about her. Says she’s acting different. Barely eats, won’t acknowledge the guards; she’s not even asking to see the Admiral anymore. Like she’s giving up.”
For a second he thought he'd gotten through, but then Sam shook his head.
“Well, I don’t know what you want me to do about it. Even if I could get in to see her, I’m the last thing she needs right now.” Galen knew that feeling. Funny, how the two of them used to complain about how their wives had treated them.
“She wouldn’t need to know that.” This was getting into dangerous territory. Nobody seemed to be paying them any mind, but they were taking their lives in their hands nonetheless. Cally had had a point about Starbuck only avoiding a summary airlocking because she was, well, Starbuck. Neither of them could expect similar consideration.
Luckily, Sam understood that. The trick to these conversations was just switching the pronouns. "Kara’s a Cylon, Chief. “ Sam said slowly. “That means that all the time I knew her, she was lying to me. Manipulating me.” Galen winced. That was the crux of it, wasn't it? How could you look at someone every day, make love to them at night, and know that the feelings you thought you had for them were an illusion? A way to trick you into going along with some larger plan. As if he'd heard him, Sam continued, “We know the frakking Cylon mandate is to seduce human beings, right? Breed with them.” Galen laughed at that. Guess he wasn't the only one who knew how to hit a man where he lived; he hadn't been able to pick up his own son once in the three weeks since he'd awakened. Could barely even look at him.
That freak in her belly could have been mine.
“Yeah, yeah we do know that, don’t we. So, you’re saying that Kara never loved you? Because she’s a Cylon.” The worst part was, he remembered exactly how it had hurt when he'd found out about Sharon, and how he'd poured so much emotion into someone who was incapable of feeling herself. And now he found out that he was the same kind of programmed ... thing. But that couldn't be right - he knew his feelings were real, he had them. Unless that was part of the trick. But if it was, it was a pretty damn effective one. His head was spinning.
Sam took a long drink. “You know, maybe she thought she did. Maybe she really thought she did. I mean she took me back,” that was pushing it “- She came back for me” he revised, “despite all of the … obstacles. But that must have just been what she was programmed to do. No matter what she thought.”
Galen almost choked on his drink as the words struck him. Frak - it couldn't be that easy, could it? Maybe it could. "Something funny Chief?" Sam was glaring at him.
“You think you love someone, you love them.”
“What?”
“That’s what love is, right? Thoughts.”
“You a godsdamned philosopher now?”
This didn't fix anything, it was too simple - but at the same time, he couldn't doubt his own feelings any more than he could doubt that voice in his head that had turned everything upside-down in the first place. He shrugged. "I thought it was pretty good."
***
Cally stirred at the familiar sound of her husband lumbering up the ladder. She thought about just rolling over and going back to sleep, since he'd probably ignore her anyway. But she'd be damned if she was going to make it easy for him. With practiced timing, she shot up the minute his foot hit the floor and glared at him sleepily. "Have fun at Joe's?" she asked caustically. "At least I didn't have to help you climb up this time." To be fair, that had only been once, but if Galen thought he was ever hearing the end of it ... She was surprised when he kicked off his shoes and sat down next to her rather than attempting to pass out straight away, and even more surprised when he started stroking her hair. It had been so long since he'd touched her.
"Cally Cally Cally," he murmured with drunken affection. "Everything has to be a fight, huh?" But he was smiling, and she had missed that so much that she couldn't help but wrap her arms around his neck.
"I like fighting with you." She didn't realize she was crying until he reached down and brushed the tears away with his thumb.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," she laughed. "Reminds me of home." He chuckled with her.
"What's going on with you, Galan? I feel like I'm losing you." She hated the plaintiveness in her tone. She'd much rather be screaming at him about the laundry or anything else. It would feel safer than laying it on the line like this.
"You're not gonna lose me."
"I feel like I am. You and Nicky are all I have left, and the Cylons could take you both away any minute. Or take me away from you. And I can't stand knowing that." And death wasn't the only way they could take someone away, it seemed. Steeling herself, she said, "Look, I know that Starbuck coming back has a lot to do with why you've been ... distant. And I know what that's about."
Galen froze instantly, and Cally's suspicions were confirmed. After a moment, he relaxed. "Boomer," he acknowledged.
Better to have it out, she guessed. "I hated her for what she'd done to you."
He pulled her close, and she was shocked to see that he was crying too. "Hey," he kissed her forehead, "I know. And I'm not going anywhere. You're not going to lose anyone else, Cal. I won't let that happen. Okay?"
It wasn't strictly true, Cally thought as she snuggled in closer. If the Cylons got lucky there wasn't much either of them could do to protect each other, or Nicky. But if felt good to let herself believe in him, just for right now.
Author: prolix_allie
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen. (I'm pretty sure; let me know if I'm wrong! *is new*)
Character/Pairing: Cally, Chief Tyrol
Warnings: Angst, fake-swearing, references to airlocking.
Notes: Not mine. Also, this story takes place in the same universe as Double-Talk and if you've read that you might notice a little self-plagiarism.
Spoilers: Through Crossroads II
Prompt: #6
Summary:Cally and Chief have a talk after Crossroads II
"Damn it, Chief, where the hell have you been?"
Cally shouted the question across the flight deck, but didn't pause for an answer. She didn't want to admit how much it shook her to find Galen absent from his post at the start of a battle, but she quickly put it behind her. If you stopped to think too much you'd be overcome by all the things that had happened to you, and then; well, Cally still got the occasional ache in her jaw to remind her of what might happen then. She figured she could get her explanation later.
She never did. The fight had been the worst the crew had seen since - probably since the Exodus, but of course Cally hadn't been around for that. It was a disaster. A third of their birds were damaged beyond all hope of repair, and they had lost well over a quarter of their pilots. And they had gotten one back.
Now Cally sat in the middle of their bed and stared at the hatch her husband had just stormed out of, feigning a calm she didn't feel as she fed Nicky his bottle. Galen had been the one thing in her life as constant as this frakking war, and now, with the world turned upside down and the Fleet on the verge of splintering, now he chose to abandon her. Alright, she admitted, standing up and cradling Nicky over her shoulder, maybe that was a little melodramatic. This wasn't the first time they had gone through a period where they were fighting more than talking, and Galen spent more time at Joe's than at home with her. In truth it wasn't the fighting so much as the retreat that got to her. Family meant fighting; growing up with seven older brothers had taught her that. But it also meant that after you fought you stuck around, which was the part her husband seemed to have trouble with.
Nicky stirred fretfully as her arms involuntarily tightened around him, but thankfully he didn't start to cry. She set him down with her on the bed, turning him on his stomach so he couldn't see her face. This was why Cally rarely allowed herself to remember her family. They deserved better than that, she knew, but she didn't have the strength to face the full extent of her loss without drowning in it. Even on Aerilon, where big families were the rule, the size of hers had been the subject of much discussion and a few jocular remarks she had been too young to understand at the time. And that was from the adults; she'd sure understood the sing-song taunts of her schoolmates, and the falsely-innocent refrain of "So how come your parents have so many kids?" Because of me, Cally would smugly reflect as she punched the offender in the nose, because they were waiting for me.
Her parents hadn't tried to deny it. Not that it would have done much good; it wasn't hard to figure out when they'd stuffed seven boys - most born less than two years apart - into a cabin built to hold a family of five optimistically, only quitting in exhaustion once they'd gotten their girl. It made Cally feel pretty good, to be honest, enough to make up for hardly ever having her own things, never her own room, not even getting her own bed until puberty. Much better to be that sought-after girl, the one who did sometimes get her own clothes and toys because a girl needed at least one doll and one dress, than to be boy number six or seven, a disappointment only half denied. Of course, the first time someone tried to complain about that in front of their mother, she'd simply asked him if he would really prefer that she and Daddy had stopped at three like they'd originally planned. That had put an end to the complaining, but not to the resentment. Which was why Cally had learned to hit back before she'd really learned to walk.
But it was a different kind of fighting, Cally thought, looking down at her sleeping son with fierce protectiveness. She could fight with her brothers secure in the knowledge that if anyone outside the family laid so much as a finger on her, on the rare chance she couldn't take care of it herself she had a veritable army at her disposal. Her second-youngest brother, the one who'd broken her arm pushing her out of the tree-house when she was six, had also been the one to take on extra shifts at the auto-plant three towns over so she could go to the public college. "And make me rich," he'd said with a grin. Cally had rolled her eyes but silently promised to do just that.
And she would have, too. She would have. A girl in her senior class had lost her mother and her only sister in a car accident right before graduation, and Cally had marveled at the ease with which a family could be cut in half. She had been an aunt before she was out of diapers, and between her brothers and her multitude of nieces and nephews and cousins, she had taken a guilty pleasure in the certainty that that would never be her. It gave her the courage she needed when she left her little corner of Aerilon for the first time to join the crew of a frakking Battlestar. The universe might be a hard place, but she'd never face it alone. And then the Cylons had done in a few hours what fate and nature on their own could never have managed, and Cally thought she'd never have that feeling of being on the inside again. The deck crew was a kind of family. Hell, the human race was a kind of family now. But it wasn't the same. And then she had stared at the Chief through a haze of pain and drugs and heard him say that what he'd done was unforgivable, and had the wind knocked out of her again when she realized that he was right, and she forgave him anyway, and realized that she had found it again.
So first there was her family, her husband and son, against everyone else. And they were all a part of the working class - even Nicky. There were the knuckle-draggers, against the officers, and the working class against the wealthy Capricans and the religious freak Saggitarions. And last there was the human race, against the Cylons and the food shortages and the surrounding emptiness. If they would all just stick together, she was sure they'd be all right. Remember who the real enemy was. That was where she and Galen would never see eye to eye. Bad enough when he wanted to defend the officer-class, but now he was doing it for the godsdamned Cylon traitors. There was nothing worse than a traitor to her mind, someone who pretended to be on the inside and then betrayed their own. They undermined the trust people needed to survive.
Cally knew one in particular she wouldn't mind doing another 30 days for.
It was that she and Galen had fought about. Not that their fights made any sense these days. She'd just pointed out that that the Cylons were smart to make sure their spies were all pilots. A knuckledragger might be able to take down the whole ship, but if they were ever caught they'd get thrown up against the wall no question, no getting to relax all nice and cozy with three squares in the brig.
"We don't even know she's a Cylon," he'd replied, rolling his eyes in a manner sure to infuriate her.
"For frak's sake, Galen, she came back from the dead, what more do you need?"
He was pacing again, like some kind of cornered animal. "Even if she is, did you ever think she might not have known it?"
"What does that matter?"
More pacing. "Damn it, if she didn't know, then it can't be her fault. She can't have set out to betray anybody. Did you ever even stop to consider that? Or were you too busy opening the airlock?"
Frak. Only one thing he could be thinking of; Starbuck turning out to be a toaster had obviously stirred up some old issues for him. Feeling briefly guilty, Cally wondered why it hadn't occured to her before. Well, she wasn't going to apologize. She'd told him right up front that she wasn't sorry she'd killed Sharon, and she still wasn't. If he thought some arrogant hotshot favorite pilot turning out to be one of them was going to make her repent her Cylon-killing ways he had another thing coming.
"Right, poor Starbuck. She's the real victim here. Look, Galen, she's a toaster. A machine. Whether she knew it before now doesn't change any of that. The Cylons know how to do one thing, and that's how to kill us." By now she was just as angry as he was. She couldn't stand how frakking hurt he looked by what she said about Starbuck. Why was he always so determined to sympathize with the bastards who were hunting his own people to extinction? "Remember us, Chief? People like your wife, and your son? Who you haven't so much looked at in a week, by the way." It was true. To be honest that was most of what she was angry about. Even on New Caprica, when he was running the damn Resistance behind her back (or so he thought), he'd helped take care of Nicky. Now he acted like it would kill him to change a frakking diaper once in a while.
He shot a guilty look at his son, and Cally's fists clenched in fury as his eyes darted away just as fast. "How can you say she only knows how to kill us when she's saved this ship ... how many times? Godsdamnit Cally, that doesn't count for anything with you? You've known her for years, everything she's done for you, and that means nothing?"
Alright, what the frak was going on? Everything she'd done for her? Cally didn't even like Starbuck. Galen knew that. She liked Anders - and there was one poor bastard she felt sorry for, imagine finding out you were married to one of them - but Starbuck was the embodiment of that arrogant career military mentality that she despised. Sure, she was glad to have her around when the Cylons showed up and she'd pray for her to come back safe and patch up her bird over and over without complaint, but she'd had no particular fondness for the woman even when they were practically neighbors down on the settlement. Thinking about New Caprica only fueled her own anger. She knew for a fact that her husband had spent hours with Sam after Starbuck was captured, coming up with crazy, unworkable plans to get her out. Tigh had shot down every one of them, and thank the gods for that. She'd undoubtedly spent those four months eating steak dinners with Cavil and Leoben and laughing at them. But Galen would have gotten himself killed for the Cylon bitch. And he wasn't even sleeping with this one.
Okay, maybe that hadn't been the most tactful thing to say. He had started towards her, and she'd tried to mask her instinctive fear with anger, but must not have done a good enough job because he'd backed off immediately. Muttered something about coming back later and headed off, to Joe's presumably. Leaving her alone. Cally had never thought she would miss being crammed into one bunk with her son and her husband in the first few days they'd been back aboard Galactica, but their married quarters just seemed too damn big without him.
***
"Busy night, huh?"
Conner handed him another glass of the watery liquid that passed for beer these days and nodded ruefully.
"Y'know how it is Chief, things fall apart, people want to drink. If this were a paying gig, I'd be raking it it."
Galen tipped his glass at that. Conner turned away and his grin slowly faded as he scanned the crowd anxiously. He realized he was actually relieved that Sam hadn't shown up yet. Chief knew he might well be the most widely respected person aboard ship apart from the Old Man himself, but it had been a long time since he'd had a friend. He was every knuckledragger's superior officer and every officer's subordinate. His own wife was subject to his orders and even his whims when they were on the job, a fact that had been no small source of conflict between them. So he'd been unexpectedly gratified when Starbuck had dragged her new boyfriend off the rescue raptor and presented him to the Old Man with a grin like a kid who'd found a stray puppy. To his surprise, the two of them had hit it off almost instantly, and their friendship had only strengthened during the year on New Caprica.
Yeah, funny how that worked out, huh?
It had been nice to have someone he could just talk to as an equal, for once, without worrying about where they both stood in the chain of command. But for now those days were over. He and the Colonel both knew they needed to find out what was going on with Starbuck. She had returned at the same time that they were awakened. Was she one of them, and did she know it yet, the way they somehow did? Did she know what their purpose was? Sam was the best one to try to get through to her - she trusted him, and as her husband he'd have a reasonable chance of getting in to see her. The problem was that he wasn't being particularly cooperative. In fact, he'd been avoiding them for the past three weeks.
Galen had a feeling he knew how to bring him onboard, it just left a bad taste in his mouth. He'd spent more hours than he liked to think about here with Sam, and a lot of that time they'd been spent commiserating about their wives. The irony of that wasn't exactly lost on him.
"You ever think about Sharon and wonder, what if?"
He remembered that conversation, too. The major must have been pretty out of it to ask him that. "You mean, 'what if' the woman I married and the mother of my child hadn't shot Sharon in the gut? Why no, Major Adama sir, I try not to go there, personally. Can't imagine why." He'd forgiven her, eventually. She'd actually done Sharon a kindness, come to think of it, in sending her back to the Cylons and away from Baltar's tender mercies. Cal would hit the roof if she ever figured that out, though. Oh, the gods had been cruel to her. He couldn't think of anyone alive who hated Cylons more than his wife. Some might wonder at her ability to forgive people like Baltar, who'd ordered her executed for being married to the wrong man, but not Sharon - the other Sharon - who'd saved all their lives. Galen thought he understood though. Everybody liked to divide up the world into us and them, define themselves by what they were against, but Cally took it to an extreme. He remembered trying to convince her once that not all Capricans were their class enemies. "They have poor people too, they just keep them in tenements instead of farmhouses." He hadn't gotten very far. But the Cylons were the ultimate "them," the ultimate enemies, and even Capricans and corrupt former presidents were like your brothers and sisters in comparison.
Well, if he wanted to get rid of her he just had to tell her the truth. Not that she would believe him; she'd think he was going crazy again. Not again, he amended. That was why he hadn't responded with anger and denial like the other three. A part of him must have accepted this a long time ago. And that made his betrayal so much worse. If Cally ever found out ... He couldn't bear to think of it. When he was really honest with himself, he had to admit that his feelings for her weren't like what he'd felt for Sharon, but he did love her. She'd had a piece of his heart ever since she'd come onboard, just months before the attacks; a 21-year-old kid away from home for the first time, yet completely unintimidated. She'd been downright bored by the hazing rituals. Sometimes he caught himself looking at her with the same feeling he had when he looked at his son; amazement that something so small could be such a fighter. It filled him with an overwhelming desire to protect them both from anything that could harm them. And now it looked like their greatest threat was none other than himself. If Cally ever even suspected what he really was, the Colonel wouldn't be the only one guilty of destroying a woman just for loving him.
These cheerful musings were interrupted by his target's arrival. He nodded to Sam and indicated a booth at the back of the bar. Speaking of people getting destroyed by love. He knew more than he probably should about the deterioration of his friend's marriage in the months since the Exodus. More importantly, he thought guiltily, he knew why Sam had kept coming back to his wife; he worried for her constantly. Time to use that.
***
"They say she's refusing to eat." Sam handed him another glass of the watery beer but avoided his eyes.
"They?"
"Colonel."
"For how long?" Sam was still sullenly avoiding his gaze, but Chief could tell he'd gotten to him.
"Almost a week." Gods, he was getting good at being a bastard. It was necessary though; they needed information. He went in for the kill.
“Colonel’s worried about her. Says she’s acting different. Barely eats, won’t acknowledge the guards; she’s not even asking to see the Admiral anymore. Like she’s giving up.”
For a second he thought he'd gotten through, but then Sam shook his head.
“Well, I don’t know what you want me to do about it. Even if I could get in to see her, I’m the last thing she needs right now.” Galen knew that feeling. Funny, how the two of them used to complain about how their wives had treated them.
“She wouldn’t need to know that.” This was getting into dangerous territory. Nobody seemed to be paying them any mind, but they were taking their lives in their hands nonetheless. Cally had had a point about Starbuck only avoiding a summary airlocking because she was, well, Starbuck. Neither of them could expect similar consideration.
Luckily, Sam understood that. The trick to these conversations was just switching the pronouns. "Kara’s a Cylon, Chief. “ Sam said slowly. “That means that all the time I knew her, she was lying to me. Manipulating me.” Galen winced. That was the crux of it, wasn't it? How could you look at someone every day, make love to them at night, and know that the feelings you thought you had for them were an illusion? A way to trick you into going along with some larger plan. As if he'd heard him, Sam continued, “We know the frakking Cylon mandate is to seduce human beings, right? Breed with them.” Galen laughed at that. Guess he wasn't the only one who knew how to hit a man where he lived; he hadn't been able to pick up his own son once in the three weeks since he'd awakened. Could barely even look at him.
That freak in her belly could have been mine.
“Yeah, yeah we do know that, don’t we. So, you’re saying that Kara never loved you? Because she’s a Cylon.” The worst part was, he remembered exactly how it had hurt when he'd found out about Sharon, and how he'd poured so much emotion into someone who was incapable of feeling herself. And now he found out that he was the same kind of programmed ... thing. But that couldn't be right - he knew his feelings were real, he had them. Unless that was part of the trick. But if it was, it was a pretty damn effective one. His head was spinning.
Sam took a long drink. “You know, maybe she thought she did. Maybe she really thought she did. I mean she took me back,” that was pushing it “- She came back for me” he revised, “despite all of the … obstacles. But that must have just been what she was programmed to do. No matter what she thought.”
Galen almost choked on his drink as the words struck him. Frak - it couldn't be that easy, could it? Maybe it could. "Something funny Chief?" Sam was glaring at him.
“You think you love someone, you love them.”
“What?”
“That’s what love is, right? Thoughts.”
“You a godsdamned philosopher now?”
This didn't fix anything, it was too simple - but at the same time, he couldn't doubt his own feelings any more than he could doubt that voice in his head that had turned everything upside-down in the first place. He shrugged. "I thought it was pretty good."
***
Cally stirred at the familiar sound of her husband lumbering up the ladder. She thought about just rolling over and going back to sleep, since he'd probably ignore her anyway. But she'd be damned if she was going to make it easy for him. With practiced timing, she shot up the minute his foot hit the floor and glared at him sleepily. "Have fun at Joe's?" she asked caustically. "At least I didn't have to help you climb up this time." To be fair, that had only been once, but if Galen thought he was ever hearing the end of it ... She was surprised when he kicked off his shoes and sat down next to her rather than attempting to pass out straight away, and even more surprised when he started stroking her hair. It had been so long since he'd touched her.
"Cally Cally Cally," he murmured with drunken affection. "Everything has to be a fight, huh?" But he was smiling, and she had missed that so much that she couldn't help but wrap her arms around his neck.
"I like fighting with you." She didn't realize she was crying until he reached down and brushed the tears away with his thumb.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," she laughed. "Reminds me of home." He chuckled with her.
"What's going on with you, Galan? I feel like I'm losing you." She hated the plaintiveness in her tone. She'd much rather be screaming at him about the laundry or anything else. It would feel safer than laying it on the line like this.
"You're not gonna lose me."
"I feel like I am. You and Nicky are all I have left, and the Cylons could take you both away any minute. Or take me away from you. And I can't stand knowing that." And death wasn't the only way they could take someone away, it seemed. Steeling herself, she said, "Look, I know that Starbuck coming back has a lot to do with why you've been ... distant. And I know what that's about."
Galen froze instantly, and Cally's suspicions were confirmed. After a moment, he relaxed. "Boomer," he acknowledged.
Better to have it out, she guessed. "I hated her for what she'd done to you."
He pulled her close, and she was shocked to see that he was crying too. "Hey," he kissed her forehead, "I know. And I'm not going anywhere. You're not going to lose anyone else, Cal. I won't let that happen. Okay?"
It wasn't strictly true, Cally thought as she snuggled in closer. If the Cylons got lucky there wasn't much either of them could do to protect each other, or Nicky. But if felt good to let herself believe in him, just for right now.