Been Where You Are
Disclaimer: Please...if I owned BSG Galen/Cally would be the entire premise of the show.
Cally's eyes flutter open when she hears Nicky crying softly. Turning her head she sees Galen stepping through the doorway to their quarters. She watches as he picks up their son from his crib and rocks him close to his chest. "It's late," she says, startling him. "Where have you been?"
"Cal! You're awake," he said with fake enthusiasm, avoiding her eye.
"Yeah, well, I wasn't really asleep to begin with." She sat up in the bed, looking more directly at him. "You didn't answer my question, Galen. You've been avoiding that question a lot lately. Coming home late, leaving early—and don't try to blame it on work; the President's training program has been sending new people to the deck for a month." She paused, as if giving him a chance to decide what to say. "I'll ask again, where were you?"
Absently rocking a fussing Nicky, Galen was concentrating on finding a way to answer his wife's question. "I…I wasn't working, no. I was just…thinking, I guess. Collecting my thoughts."
"Galen, what is going on? You've been acting odd since we entered this nebula; I feel like I'm a single parent. Nicky and I never see you." There was unmistakable bitterness in her voice as she said it. Not looking at him, she took Nicky from his arms and immediately calmed him. Sliding past him to return the baby to his crib Galen put his had tentatively on the small of her back. Moving away from his touch, she looked at him and shaking her head sadly, "I don't even know who you are anymore."
The words had hit him hard, harder than Cally could have ever imagined. "Me either," he mumbled as he crossed the room in a few steps and plopped down on the bed. With a sigh of frustration he covered his face with his hands. "Cally, there is something I need to tell you. I…it...it's hard to say. Before I tell you though, I need you to know a few things, okay? Firstly, I love you. I love you so much. Secondly, I love this family. You and Nicky, us, well, that is everything to me, everything. And I would do—will do anything to protect that, to protect you and Nick. You know that, right?"
"My Gods, Galen! What the frak is going on?" Her voice shook slightly, but whether it was from anger or fear, he couldn't be sure. She was next to him on the bed, now.
"Just answer the question. You know all that, right? Right?" His voice was the one shaking now, but he knew what was causing it, and it wasn't anger. "I know things have been different since everything happened on New Caprica, but nothing has changed about the way I feel about you or this family." Galen turned to his wife, taking her hands in his own. However, he instantly regretted when he realized how much they were trembling, something that did not go unnoticed by Cally.
"Cal, I, well Anders and Tory, the Colonel and I…I mean, when we entered this nebula we were all hearing things. Not like voices, but like a song we couldn't quite remember but had never really forgotten. It brought us together and well...what I am trying to say is that we are—I mean," his voice was dripping with desperation, "we didn't know; I didn't want this! You have to believe me! We, the four of us, we're…we are…well, we're Cylons."
As soon as the words left his mouth he felt sick, he leaped up from the bed and crossed to the door. Not sure what he was going to do, he paused, holding his breathe, waiting. Waiting for what he was sure was coming. He just hoped she wouldn't do it in front of their son. No child should be forced to witness his father's murder. Immediately he thought of Resurrection Ship and the proximity with which one must be in to one in order to be downloaded again. He physically cringed as he thought of it. He was brought back from his thoughts as Cally cleared her throat behind him. He turned around and faced his wife as she was standing up from the bed.
Cally's face was pale, drained of color with look of disbelief. Her eyes, however, which had always revealed more about her than she cared to admit, were filled with the most intense sadness Galen could have ever fathomed. "Cal," he said, wanting to reach out to her, to hold her. He let the rest of his sentence drop and thick silence hung between them.
A shrill whisper disrupted the air in the room, "So, what are you saying exactly? You're leaving? Or perhaps you're going to snap our necks while we sleep? This was all," she moved her arm around the room indicating their life together, "what, part of your programming? What Galen? How the frak am I supposed to react to something like this? Putting aside our lives for a second, let's take a moment to think about something else. How about that you're race, you're people," she put a distinct emphasis on the word people, "are responsible for the death of 29 billion souls. I mean, my Gods! That's mass genocide and you're a part of it! You're a fraking part of it!"
The whisper she was attempting to maintain for the sake of Nicky was ebbing and her volume rose as the tears poured down her face. The sadness Galen saw in her eyes before was not replaced by rage. He realized she had moved to put herself between him and the crib, to shield Nicky from him.
"Cally…Cally, please." His voice was pleading now. He begged, as much to convince himself as her, "I am still me—I never had any part of that! Nothing! I didn't even know, none of us did! I'm still the same Galen Tyrol you married! I'm the same man who has worked for days without sleep, beside you, doing our part in protecting this fleet from Cylon attacks. I've wept for those we lost and for those who never had a chance and I have raged over the path of destruction the Cylons left behind them. You have to believe that I didn't want this—I still don't! The Colonel says we can be the men we want to be. I just want to be your husband and Nicky's father." Hearing his name, Cally backed up against the crib, as if being reminded of the danger her son was in. She franticly glanced down at her child who had chosen this night, of all nights, to sleep deeply, unperturbed by their fighting.
"What number are you?" She asked, in a flat voice. Galen stared at her blankly as she went on, "Boomer and Athena are eights and the one they have in the brig is a six. So, what number are you? I want to be able to provide as much information the Admiral as I can," she said, answering his unasked question.
"Cally, please. Please, listen to me." He lifted his arms this time to touch her but quickly reconsidered. "Cally… Cally, just look at Sharon. Yes, she is an eight to the Cylons, just one of many, but to us and to Karl she is Athena, not the same Sharon who we knew as Boomer, she is not that same person I was with; despite the fact that they are, supposedly, identical in every way. She is a Cylon, yes, but she is so much more than what we thought we knew about the Cylons. I am too. I understand your feelings, better than anyone probably. I've been where you're standing. I've felt what you are feeling. I lost Boomer. I lost her because of our…your…uh, humans'…misconceptions about Cylons."
Discussion of Boomer was always uncomfortable, even at the best of times—it was by no means the typical "ex-girlfriend situation," but he needed her to understand that it could work, Cylon and human. However, he was reminded of how he felt when he found out Boomer was a Cylon. He remembered how betrayed he felt by her, how used. Letting his biases get the best of him, he had even felt disgusted; disgusted that he had been with a Cylon in the way that he had been with her. He knew he was asking a lot of Cally; asking her to accept this, it was unfair, unfair to put her in this position. He was being selfish, he knew, but he also knew he couldn't live without her. Galen needed Cally to understand because he refused to lose her like he lost Sharon. He refused to live a life without Cally in it. Whether it was his programming or something else, he didn't know, but he knew that he loved her with everything he had.
Cally sat down in the chair adjacent to Nicky's crib. Her hands in her lap she watched the baby sleep for nearly an hour before she said anything. With a defeated tone in her voice, she broke the silence, "Galen, I just—"
"No! Cal," he cut her off, his voice was near hysterical as he jumped up from the chair he had been occupying. "Please. Please! Look at Athena and Helo! Look at them! He loves her despite what she is. He has made a sacred vow to love her and support her forever, despite what she is. " He stepped towards her; however, it seemed to do little to close the physical gap between them and perhaps even widened the emotional one. They stared at each other from these positions for a long time, saying nothing.
Suddenly, Cally started to fall to her knees as she began to weep uncontrollably. Galen leapt forward and caught her in his arms as they both sank to the floor. She let him hold her as she gasped for air between sobs. He felt her shaking beneath his arms as his own tears began to fall in streams down his cheeks. "I love you. I love you, Cally," he whispered into her hair as they rested on the floor, tangled in each other, wallowing in their sadness.
They sat there for a long time, long after they had both stopped crying. Cally hesitantly moved her body more into Galen's, burying her face in his chest. She whispered, "I love you, too" so softly he almost didn't here it. He looked down at her.
"What do we do now?" he asked her tentatively, as if afraid of scaring her off. Her eyes met his and the sadness he had seen in them before was back. But something on her face was different this time.
Cally met his stare; she was sure he was trying to read everything on her face. "I don't know, Galen. I just don't know. This is so…" the rest of her sentence trailed off as shook her head and turned away from his face.
"I need you. I need you and Nicky; I need our family to keep me from going insane. I don't know who I am, or what I am. I can't get through this without you." She looked back up at him and he could see that there was still fear in her eyes. She feared for Nicky more than anything else. Suddenly, hundreds of nightmarish scenarios danced in her mind. She turned from her husband to look at the still sleeping Nicky, as if to make sure the horrors she imagined weren't real.
"I would never hurt him, you know," Galen said, as if reading her thoughts. "There is no power in the universe that could force me to harm him."
She continued to stare at the baby with great intensity. "I know," she said finally, as she settled back into him with her eyes closed. He closed his eyes too, on the floor of their quarters, holding her, listening to her breathing ease to a soft purr as she drifted off to sleep.
Just before her mind approached oblivion of slumber, Cally considered her life. She had always imagined it would involve Galen, how could it not? She had made a vow in front of the Gods to stand by him no matter what. Although she was pretty sure they didn't have this in mind, she aspired to honor that vow. And while she knew that her life was going to be anything but easy, she realized that loving Galen was never hard.
Neither she nor Galen knew what the rest of their lives, or even the next day, would hold; but as they slumbered there, on the floor of their home on the Galactica, in the shadow of their son's crib, their dreams were filled with thoughts of love.