Green Lights
Summary: Cally should have seen it coming.
Rating: K+ for character death
Authors Notes: Well they kill my favorite character, or what has been my favorite character. And watching Cally's death, I started to imagine what was going through her mind. Then in English we read the Great Gatsby, the green light reference reminded me of her death and this started forming in my mind. So constructive criticism is welcomed… and hoped for. Enjoy.
It's 2am nearly two years after I originally published this character sketch, and I feel the need to rework it, I blame my insomnia. I am 2 years more mature and have had 2 more years of experiences. I'm struggling through some darker times in my personal life, and writing is a release. Enjoy.
"I glanced seaward- and distinguished
Nothing except a single green light,
Minute and far away,
That might have been at the end of a dock.
When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished,
And I was alone again in the unquiet darkness."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Cally should have known.
She should have seen it coming when Tori first walked through the door.
The haze from the anti-depressants fogged her mind, distorting her consciousness and numbing her feelings. All the feelings except the pain.
The pain had a numbing effect of its own, breaking down her already damaged soul. The last however many days weighed on her chest. The albatross around her neck pulling her down further into despair.
That was all there was, the pain, the numbness, and the color of the light.
She sobbed harder as the familiar weight of her son left her side. She was doing this for him, for her Nicky. She couldn't believe she had done this to him. She loved him too much, too much to let him take the force of being one of them, for being a machine. A Cylon.
She loved and hated what he was. He was her Nicky, he was her machine.
The blow to her jaw took her by surprise, the shock echoing throughout her weakened body.
She barely cried out when her body hit the cold deck, her head spun and a soft darkness momentarily joined the fog around her vision.
Cally knew it then, after all she had been through, all that she has overcome, that this was it, this was the end.
Uncountable memories flashed through her head, some she could grasp, others slipped away. All of the people she had lost, their faces smiling, then fading away.
Why did this happen? Why was it always her? Why always her?
The faces of her family broke through the veil of numbness, her brothers, her parents. Her friends from home, from growing up, each and every face of lovers, crewmen from her years in the fleet, each and every friend that she had lost. The faces rushed on through, the important ones stayed.
Prosna. His smile was lighting up her day, pushing her though the long hours of basic training, him being there whenever she needed. The love she felt for him. Then his blackened lifeless face, feeling his dead weight resting on her legs, and the tears of pure pain staining her cheeks for days.
Socinus. He was laughing at her during a game of cards, sacrificing himself for the Chief, being her support when no one else could hold the pieces of her together. Lying in the brush, the life fading from his wide, innocent eyes.
Jammer. He was harassing her for months, and then finally finding her as a support, not an enemy. Everything he went through on new Caprica, and finally the gruesome thought of his body loosely flying from the airlock.
Her three best friends, all taken from her by the Cylons. By those machines.
Cally moved her fingers slowly over the railing on the launch bay, wrapping her fingers in the soft fabric of Nicky's blanket as his cries filled the bay. Her friends, her husband, and now her son?
The bay was filled with silence. Cally knew she was alone.
No one but her and the flashing green light.
Galen, there were so many memories of Galen.
Her first day on Galactica, her first day as his knuckledragger. The attack, her losses, Galen holding her up, holding her as she cried over the lifeless friends, him walking her back from the brink of suicide.
Standing weakly next to him every 33 minutes, too fatigued to comprehend, to numb to speak. The Astral Queen, being afraid to never tell him she was sorry, the stronger fear of never seeing him again, him calling her his girl.
His visits every day, him walking her to her first day back on the deck,
The fear of almost losing him after the explosion, being at the colonial day dance with him, and laughing and smiling for one of the first time in months.
They all flashed through her head, not even staying long enough to be measurable in time.
The first day she knew she loved him, that she needed him. Realizing that he was the first person that could make the numbness of loss fade away, the only person she had the ability to feel for.
Shooting a cylon for him.
The feeling of him breaking her jaw, and then him walking into the med bay to see her.
Their wedding, the first time she was truly his, everything on New Caprica, the birth of their Son, it was the first time in her life that she was truly happy.
Cally pushed herself up on the small grove in the deck, her eyes frantically searching for her son. The edges of her vision fogged, blurring out all but the cylon holding her son, holding her Nicky.
The blur of Tori's hand moved forward, turning the key. The green light illuminated the pure malice in her face, alarms sounded all around her.
Terror overtook Cally, fading to acceptance as the green light ebbed.
The Cylons had taken everything from her, her family, her friends, and now they had her husband and her son.
To her, that pulsing green light was her way back to what they took, back to the memories she had chosen to live for, the memories that they could not take away.
She looked into her son's eyes, so many mixed feelings coursing through her. He was a piece of her, of Galen, of her grandfather. But he was a cylon, and she could not forgive herself for putting him through that.
The reality of the situation sunk in, the numbness fading. Her life flashed before her eyes, she began to pray.
This had all happened in less than a minute, but this, her death, felt like an eternity.
She thought she saw Prosna leaning over her, his hand outstretched, "I'm here Cally, I'm here."
His voice resounded in her head.
Tori pressed the airlock release, the great door groaned and opened.
Cally's fingers tightened around the soft fabric of Nicky's blanket, finishing her prayer.
The key turned, the chamber decompressed.
Galen's voice echoed in her head, "I love you."
Cally finally grasped one thought in her racing mind, 'I love you too, Galen.'
Her body flipped over itself the cold closed in around her, watching the green light flash.
Everything faded around her; the air forced itself from her lungs, the green lights, and her feelings, all faded away.
And Cally Tyrol knew no more.
Cally should have known when Galen first walked through that door.