(BSG) Who He Was
Title: Who He Was
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Rating: PG
Author: jackiejlh
Character(s): Gaius Baltar
Warnings: None
Summary: He'd always fancied himself more of a Caprican than anything else.
Who He Was
He didn’t change his accent because he was ashamed of who he was, exactly. He did it in order to be who he was. There’s a difference, a very real one, one he doubts most people have the ability to fully comprehend. He never fit on Aerelon, he thinks, and besides, he’d had bigger dreams, bigger ambitions. A bigger ego, really, than could be satisfied on his home planet. He knows that, isn’t ashamed to admit it. He likes being important, being looked up to and treated like he matters, and that was never going to happen for him on Aerelon. There, he was just the boy who was too busy "stuffin' his head in books" to be considered truly useful, and everyone thought him a bit conceited-not to mention an ungrateful, disrespectful son, which they probably thought was worse, the idiots.
Caprica had seemed like the perfect place to start over, re-imagine himself. Open-minded Caprica, with its loose morals that sent the Geminese into fits, its group marriages and sex clubs and smoke bars, was, as far as he had always heard, the place where anyone from any background could make a name for himself because there was so little… judgment.
That bit of gossip had, of course, turned out to be pure shit. Caprica may have had little to say on matters such as its citizens' private proclivities, but that was where it stopped: with Caprica's citizens. Those born and raised on the richest, most prosperous of the twelve colonies. To be accepted as their equal, one literally had to be their equal-or always, behind one's back, there were whispers. Taurons are always that way, and, I'd expect nothing better from a Leonis, and, Well, you know, she is a Sagittaron, the poor girl. Capricans have their own special sort of snobbery and conceit, the sort found in people that believe their lives are better simply because… well, because they are, aren't they? It makes sense to him, in a way. And he can't bring himself to feel it's unfair so much as just that he deserves to be a part of it, to benefit from that bias.
He'd always fancied himself more of a Caprican than anything else. More practical and realistic, more educated and refined. More deserving. It was just a matter of making sure everyone else realized what he had always known-that Gaius Baltar had a future, a wonderful one filled with riches and beautiful women and fame, and it most certainly would never again include farming and trudging through mud and herding frakking cattle. That simply wasn't who he was. And so... the accent, practiced to perfection to the point that even a Caprican wouldn't doubt his ancestry. Fifty years ago, integrating himself may have been harder; everything was scanners and records and files on harddrives, and somewhere there'd have been a record of his origins just waiting to come back to haunt him, but after the Cylon war, such things had seemed impractical. Networking was a danger; keeping important records on computers was idiotic. Eighteen-year-old paper hospital records were all that existed to relegate him to the less-worthy masses, and with the exception of his father, no one cared to go to the trouble of ruining his charade.
The day he arrived on Caprica, fresh off the transport ship and still carrying all of his belongings in a single suitcase ("I'd wanted to see the colonies before beginning university," he told the woman next to him in his perfectly clear, snobbish-even-for-Caprica accent, and she'd nodded and asked about his trip; his lies were easy, with a sort of excitement seeping in over being believed at once in a way that a boy from Aerelon normally wasn't), he left his old life behind entirely. His old life, his old clothes, his old accent. And he never looked back, never questioned his decision or felt ashamed or had regrets. He was on Caprica. He was home, and it was time to finally, finally be who he was.
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Rating: PG
Author: jackiejlh
Character(s): Gaius Baltar
Warnings: None
Summary: He'd always fancied himself more of a Caprican than anything else.
Who He Was
He didn’t change his accent because he was ashamed of who he was, exactly. He did it in order to be who he was. There’s a difference, a very real one, one he doubts most people have the ability to fully comprehend. He never fit on Aerelon, he thinks, and besides, he’d had bigger dreams, bigger ambitions. A bigger ego, really, than could be satisfied on his home planet. He knows that, isn’t ashamed to admit it. He likes being important, being looked up to and treated like he matters, and that was never going to happen for him on Aerelon. There, he was just the boy who was too busy "stuffin' his head in books" to be considered truly useful, and everyone thought him a bit conceited-not to mention an ungrateful, disrespectful son, which they probably thought was worse, the idiots.
Caprica had seemed like the perfect place to start over, re-imagine himself. Open-minded Caprica, with its loose morals that sent the Geminese into fits, its group marriages and sex clubs and smoke bars, was, as far as he had always heard, the place where anyone from any background could make a name for himself because there was so little… judgment.
That bit of gossip had, of course, turned out to be pure shit. Caprica may have had little to say on matters such as its citizens' private proclivities, but that was where it stopped: with Caprica's citizens. Those born and raised on the richest, most prosperous of the twelve colonies. To be accepted as their equal, one literally had to be their equal-or always, behind one's back, there were whispers. Taurons are always that way, and, I'd expect nothing better from a Leonis, and, Well, you know, she is a Sagittaron, the poor girl. Capricans have their own special sort of snobbery and conceit, the sort found in people that believe their lives are better simply because… well, because they are, aren't they? It makes sense to him, in a way. And he can't bring himself to feel it's unfair so much as just that he deserves to be a part of it, to benefit from that bias.
He'd always fancied himself more of a Caprican than anything else. More practical and realistic, more educated and refined. More deserving. It was just a matter of making sure everyone else realized what he had always known-that Gaius Baltar had a future, a wonderful one filled with riches and beautiful women and fame, and it most certainly would never again include farming and trudging through mud and herding frakking cattle. That simply wasn't who he was. And so... the accent, practiced to perfection to the point that even a Caprican wouldn't doubt his ancestry. Fifty years ago, integrating himself may have been harder; everything was scanners and records and files on harddrives, and somewhere there'd have been a record of his origins just waiting to come back to haunt him, but after the Cylon war, such things had seemed impractical. Networking was a danger; keeping important records on computers was idiotic. Eighteen-year-old paper hospital records were all that existed to relegate him to the less-worthy masses, and with the exception of his father, no one cared to go to the trouble of ruining his charade.
The day he arrived on Caprica, fresh off the transport ship and still carrying all of his belongings in a single suitcase ("I'd wanted to see the colonies before beginning university," he told the woman next to him in his perfectly clear, snobbish-even-for-Caprica accent, and she'd nodded and asked about his trip; his lies were easy, with a sort of excitement seeping in over being believed at once in a way that a boy from Aerelon normally wasn't), he left his old life behind entirely. His old life, his old clothes, his old accent. And he never looked back, never questioned his decision or felt ashamed or had regrets. He was on Caprica. He was home, and it was time to finally, finally be who he was.