Disclaimer: I don't own Battlestar Galactica or any of its characters. I wish I did. Then I would have money and be a television genius.

Author's Note: This one-shot takes place just after the bonus scene for "The Son Also Rises."

Cally stepped into the quarters that she shared with the Chief and closed the hatch behind her. After twisting it shut, she turned and leaned against it, feeling the cool metal press into the back of her jumpsuit. She let her eyes slide shut and allowed her thoughts to drift back to the confrontation she'd had with Athena a few hours previously. Those words kept rolling through her head like a train, derailing any attempts to drive them from her mind.

"But you won't kill me – because I love my husband and I love my child. Because I love this ship and what it means to me. Now I don't think that you would take a mother away from her child."

As she'd stood there with a gun pressed against Athena's chest, Cally remembered shooting another machine that looked exactly like this one. Cally remembered watching as that Cylon's miserable excuse for a life drained into nothingness. She remembered the extermination of seventy billion people at the hands of the Cylons and the countless times the few survivors had narrowly escaped further death from those damnable machines. Even more pointedly she remembered the times they hadn't escaped death – when tragedy followed tragedy and yet another friend and colleague had to be placed in a body bag, given a funeral, and launched out an airlock. The hatred and anger she felt towards the Cylons had raced through her veins and begged her to pull the trigger.

And at the same time, Athena was right – Cally couldn't kill her. This Cylon - this toaster - had become more than that. She had fought months of captivity, helping the Colonials survive even as those she protected kept her incarcerated and treated her as less than dirt. In time, Athena had won the trust of Admiral Adama, a man Cally trusted and admired. She had even been permitted to join the Colonial military. Even more poignant to Cally was that Athena was a wife and a mother, two things that resonated very deeply in Cally's life.

"So you can hate me – but you damn well better keep it to yourself."

Cally hated everything that Athena was – when the Cylons came, Cally lost everything. Her family, her friends, and her future. Her species was brought to the edge of extinction by those machines – the same machines that had the gall to call their attack on the colonies an "error in logic" and to leave the fleet alone, claiming "no harm done" and "Man and Cylon will now go their separate ways." After that, when the Colonials had finally settled on New Caprica and began building a new life and raising new families, the Cylons returned and destroyed that too. Even now they pursued the fleet, seeking to find Earth and rob the Colonials of the last salvation they had. It was very, very easy for Cally to hate Cylons. They represented the ultimate evil, a force of destruction that even after two years was incomprehensible. But Athena seemed different - she had a family to care for on Galactica and that was an area in which Cally could certainly sympathize.

"You alright?" Cally was disturbed from her reverie by Galen's voice as he came around the corner. "You look tired."

"Yeah," she answered, opening her eyes giving him a small smile. Leaning into his arms, she let him give her a small kiss on the forehead.

"Long day?"

"Something like that."

As she let herself be lead further into their cabin, Cally knew things would be different now. She still hated Cylons and she probably always would. The atrocities they caused were unforgivable.

But she could no longer hate Athena.