Magnus
I usually try not to post multiple ficlets in a single day, but since bsg_aussiegirl challenged me to finish both the ar_drabbles and thequorum prompts within a specified time...
For the Quorum speed prompt "If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right." Time: 20 minutes.
Character: Baltar
Word Count: 457
There's no such thing as an Aerilon boy made good. To make good on Aerilon means to do what your father did, and what his father did, and what his father did before him. Turn the soil, plant the crop, curse and cry, reap, repeat.
But what of the boy who can see beyond the soil, who can see the connections, who looks toward the sky? What of the man whose mind is like a flood, whose personality is fluid like the tides?
At the age of nine I knew I was better than this world, than this life. At the age ten I knew I'd have to change. At the age of twelve, I knew I'd have to leave. At the age of eighteen I knew my father would never love the man I was becoming, that he'd never approve. I stowed away on a freighter and let it take me where it would.
I am brilliant. It would be false modesty to claim otherwise. I've known glory and I've been given power. I've been respected and feared and loved. I've been sanctified and sullied and enshrined and entombed.
What I've never been is understood.
I've brought life to a dying woman, I've saved the child of two races. I've begun a new religion. I saved civilization once, on a frozen mudball whose only purpose was to give me reign.
And still I know my father would never have loved the man I've become.
I saw his face in the pictures lining the memorial hall, all those people who thought I'd betrayed them because I should have been brilliant enough to stop the inevitable. I saw his face in the elite who let me join them for a time but never accepted me, who always feared how much more deserving I was than their accidental greatness. I saw his face in the women who flocked to me, who wanted to re-make me in their own image. I saw his face in my lover, my angel, who only accepted her god and never her Gaius.
I am the storm, the flood, the power and the glory. I am the one who will redeem this people, save them from the universe and from their selves. They will never thank me. They will not acknowledge me. They will sell me for silver, for a fistful of bread, for a piece of the Golden Arrow or a split second of belief.
I don't need their acknowledgment, their praise or their thanks. God loves me, and that's enough.
I know that God loves me, because I love myself.
And I, like you, and you, and you and you, am God.
And all that God's ever asked of us is to love.
For the Quorum speed prompt "If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right." Time: 20 minutes.
Character: Baltar
Word Count: 457
There's no such thing as an Aerilon boy made good. To make good on Aerilon means to do what your father did, and what his father did, and what his father did before him. Turn the soil, plant the crop, curse and cry, reap, repeat.
But what of the boy who can see beyond the soil, who can see the connections, who looks toward the sky? What of the man whose mind is like a flood, whose personality is fluid like the tides?
At the age of nine I knew I was better than this world, than this life. At the age ten I knew I'd have to change. At the age of twelve, I knew I'd have to leave. At the age of eighteen I knew my father would never love the man I was becoming, that he'd never approve. I stowed away on a freighter and let it take me where it would.
I am brilliant. It would be false modesty to claim otherwise. I've known glory and I've been given power. I've been respected and feared and loved. I've been sanctified and sullied and enshrined and entombed.
What I've never been is understood.
I've brought life to a dying woman, I've saved the child of two races. I've begun a new religion. I saved civilization once, on a frozen mudball whose only purpose was to give me reign.
And still I know my father would never have loved the man I've become.
I saw his face in the pictures lining the memorial hall, all those people who thought I'd betrayed them because I should have been brilliant enough to stop the inevitable. I saw his face in the elite who let me join them for a time but never accepted me, who always feared how much more deserving I was than their accidental greatness. I saw his face in the women who flocked to me, who wanted to re-make me in their own image. I saw his face in my lover, my angel, who only accepted her god and never her Gaius.
I am the storm, the flood, the power and the glory. I am the one who will redeem this people, save them from the universe and from their selves. They will never thank me. They will not acknowledge me. They will sell me for silver, for a fistful of bread, for a piece of the Golden Arrow or a split second of belief.
I don't need their acknowledgment, their praise or their thanks. God loves me, and that's enough.
I know that God loves me, because I love myself.
And I, like you, and you, and you and you, am God.
And all that God's ever asked of us is to love.