Gaius looked around that primary site of his little commune, empty now. Most of his flock had followed the leads given him by his own personal version of Caprica Six, that angel of death who was now his own angel of hope, guiding him to reparation for his chosen sins. Certainly he could never have known where to send his camp of followers, but she had come to him, as if in a dream, and softly, even seductively, whispered in his ear, as she always had...
"You know what you must do, Gaius. You must kill the one threat to the burgeoning attempts at peace - between Cylon and human. You must kill Billy Keikeya."
"But you must forgive me Caprica Six - you know I would follow your love and guidance to the end of the verse... but Billy is still a boy, a child really, a veritable babe in the woods! Even though he has taken up residence in Cloud 9, he could never oust the Presidency of the Free Colonies from Roslin as he hopes, even with Tom Zarek's admittedly questionable aid! Anyone who's enlisted that tyrant's help has learned to regret it! Really-"
"Gaius! Listen to me if you love me! Billy Keikeya will end this newfound dialog of peace between the warring sons of God! You are his instrument, and only you can wield his divine power and retribution! Only you, my love, only you can do what must be done! You must slay Billy Keikeya, before he slays us all with his hatred for all the things the Final Five hold dear!"
Gaius had only mutely gazed into her eyes with implied tears of regret and resignation brimming within his own.
President-Elect Billy Kekeiya glares down without any real understanding of Zarek's latest "report" that he's been trying to read for the last 45 minutes. It's no use - even though the young boy who was so incensed into self-sacrifice by Dee's betrayal in that bar on Cloud 9 - the very place he had refitted, with Zarek's uncertain "help" through the raw muscle of his army of henchmen - Oh Gods, what have Idone? - into his base of operations to wrest the Presidency from that growing madwoman, Laura Roslin - even that boy could never have foreseen the difficulty his ultimate answer to Laura's rapidly increasing errors of judgement, grave with implied, and indeed, eventually proven psychosis (if only to him, at least at first)...
Laura... myGods!
He had loved her, for her fire, hercapacity- indeed her certainty in the necessity of her ever-escalating self-sacrifice for the good of her people - those people whom she had sworn to protect despite never seeking out that honor, (for that was how she saw it, even though even he would never have)... those people whom she had kept such a firm but caring eye on, if it was only represented as a global statistic that did nothing - nothing - to reveal the extent of her desire to save them... caring at the cost of her own safety and - eventually - her very sanity... She had grown so convinced of her role as savior, driven to such drastic and destructive exigencies by the Camallahe had so freely supplied her with, even when she had been incarcerated for her sweeping and extravagant mistakes at the hands of her newfound spiritual certainty... a certainty he had tacitly agreed to - if not actively supported - but he had supported her growing insanity in any way he could. Oh, his misguidedyouth!
- How could I have been such a fool?
Please Laura, please
Laura! See the love I had for you, that I have even now... as I seek to strip away the power that is eating away the core of your spirit - that spirit that was so indomitable, so undeniable... it couldn't be denied, not by Commander Adama, not by anyone...
not even me...
never me...
Kekeiya, that lickspittlewho brought you your Camalla even when it was killing you... and breaking my heart...
...Laura...
...I have no choice... I'm so sorry...
...You'll never expect him when he breaks in... and nothing canstop him now, not even me... the boy that Bill tried to encourage into bravery he didn't possess by telling him the sweet lie that you wanted me to succeed you... I know, I know that you could never do such a thing for me - I was never meant for this any more than you sought it out -
- but even now I don't have the courage that General Adama had asked of me, even required of me - not enough to prevent your death... not now...
End of Chapter 1
...