A shot. Pain. I could see it written all over her face, as her body cracked against my frame. She collapsed, and I went down with her, my knees giving, my frame opening, elbows bending so that my arms were cradling her bleeding body. It was second nature. I swear. I swear, I saw her. Her - in so many ways my Sharon and in so many ways not - dying in my arms. She was in pain, bleeding, vulnerable. And a machine. What could I do but hold her?
She looked around, her dark eyes wide and that heaviness of confused torment was pulling on her skin until her eyes were guided to mine. With perfect, hurting purpose she looked at me. "I love you, Chief." Her voice curdled and broke at the end of what had been a steady sentence, breaking my name where the rest of the words had been whole.
I watched, as she just stopped moving. I could feel her pulse, her fake, toaster pulse, slow beneath my hands and then shut down completely. It was one of the simplest, most horrifying things I've ever been made to see.
I know she was a cylon. Since I'd been told I'd never been able to forget. Not even as she died. I know she wasn't human and I know that she couldn't have loved me because she was all software and wires no feelings, no nothing. But in those moments, I had a part of Sharon in front of me, even as I didn't.
And I loved her so damned much.