Disclaimer: everything in Battlestar Galactica (re-imagined series) belongs to Ronald D. Moore, David Eick and the Sci Fi Channel, I'm just borrowing some of it. Not making any money. Don't sue.

Who Do You Wanna Be?

By chimère

"You pick your side and you stick. You don't cut and run when things get ugly. Otherwise you'll never have anything. No love, no family, no life to call your own."

*

"Who do you wanna be?"

I'm just another Eight.

I'm not a celebrity. I'm not Boomer, hero and traitor. I'm not Athena, blessed and free. I'm not even the Eight who wanted to be Athena so much that she accessed her memories, who convinced the human pilots to work with us and who was still bitterly disappointed by human distrust in the end.

I'm not a leader or anyone important. I've been trained in engineering and maintenance, and I've always lived on Baseships. I've downloaded once, when my Baseship was destroyed in the attack on the Colonies. And now I'm mortal, as we all are.

I think it's the mortality that's changed me. That's changed all of us. But I still have a long way to go, and I don't even know where I'm going to.

It's even difficult for me to think of myself. Cylon culture is all I've ever known; I've never been on any of the Twelve Colonies or New Caprica. And Cylon culture is – or at least it was – unity. I didn't have much of a sense of personality – I was part of the whole, and I thought and felt and acted as such. It's only recently that I've begun to think of me, and not of an Eight, a sister, a copy, a part of the machine.

I'm just another Eight. But I want to... I want to be a person.

I see him every day. Admiral Adama. Our former archnemesis. Assigned to the repair crew on the Galactica, I work twelve-hour shifts here, and for at least three hours of each shift I see him walking back and forth in the recesses of his ship, inspecting the repairs. And I see the pain on his old and tired face. What to us is an almost broken machine is a blend of love and duty and pride and habit to him, impossible to let go of. He loves the Galactica, even I can see that.

Even I, knowing as little of love as I do. Knowing so little of everything human, for all that I'm a perfect copy of one.

Don't Cylons have love, then? Love of God, love of our brothers and sisters? We do, but it's not quite the same, and that's what we envy the humans. At least I know enough now to know that something is missing.

I envy Admiral Adama that pain in the deep lines on his face.

Isn't this what it's all about now? Learning to be human? How ironic that in the end, that should turn out to be what we want. Or perhaps not ironic, not any more than destiny always is. Our parents had to die for us to understand how much we still missed them, admired them, wanted to be like them.

I suppose Colonel Tigh, Chief Tyrol and Samuel Anders are something like my fathers, but watching Admiral Adama, it's him I want to learn from. I get a strange impression that he is somehow grounded, in his proper place; that he knows who and what he loves and where he wants to go, no matter how much pain it will cost him. That is something to envy if you're a Cylon. We are so rootless and unsure that we've completely changed direction two times in just a few years, and the mistakes stemming from the fact that we don't know who we are or who we want to be have been colossal.

I only hope we'll have a chance to truly become a people. To find out who we are.

I've never been able to properly project a beautiful spot in nature or a house, a normal house on a planet, having never seen anything like that with my own eyes. I've seen images, of course, but in reality I've always been surrounded by the Cylon world of machines. The mere ability without anything to project is worth as little as freedom from slavery without love.

As I walk into Joe's bar, I can feel most of the patrons' eyes on me. The humans have grudgingly accepted the Cylon work force, but I don't look like one of them right now, and everyone can tell I'm not Athena with my black blouse and red silk skirt, complete with high heels. I've never worn such feminine attire before, but just for one evening, I want to feel like someone else than a maintenance worker. I had to refit the clothes from the wardrobe of a Six who'd passed away. With the Colony no longer continually supplying us, we are beginning to feel the same shortages that are haunting the humans. When I heard about the competition for the last tube of Tauron toothpaste in the universe, I felt a surge of pity stronger than I could remember ever feeling before.

I never get around to buying a drink, because I hear the music.

I don't know how I end up sitting beside the piano player. I don't know why he doesn't chase me away. I don't know when I start to cry.

The music is all there is, it's reminiscing and melancholic and proud, at once sad and refusing to despair, the way humans are. And I'm projecting without ever meaning to – a flat full of sunlight, slightly shabby and disorganised; a woman with a small child sitting on a sofa, listening to the man playing the piano. The music flows through the room, out through the open window that overlooks a city full of people. And all that's left of that flat is the man and the piano music, and the city vanished in a bright ball of flame, and everyone in the bar I'm sitting in had people they loved who were killed by my people, and they have almost nothing left, not even toothpaste, and I'm sorry and I'm sorry and I'm sorry...

It's sudden like the opening of a wound that has long festered ignored. I've never felt so much at once, and I'm not sure I can bear the pain I envied a short while ago. But now that the wound has been opened, there is no turning back. I can't help feeling. Isn't this what defines humans?

I see her sometimes as well. Laura Roslin. The first time was on our Baseship, when I was repairing a console on the bridge and she asked the question that has been haunting me ever since. Later I heard her vow revenge on Zarek and Gaeta with such passion that it made me shiver. I wondered then how it was possible to feel so strongly.

Now I know. It's just that guilt and shame are painful to feel.

Lately, I've seen Laura Roslin in the sickbay, when I've come to visit Caprica or others of my brothers and sisters who have been injured repairing this ship. I know that she is dying. Everyone knows that. Just as the Galactica is dying. The President and the last Battlestar, and with them two big portions of hope will be gone.

For Admiral Adama, I suspect most of everything will be gone. It's amazing that a man who has seen what he has seen still wears his heart on his sleeve. His loves are written on his face, etched as deep as the lines of age: his son, his people, his woman, his ship. He is about to lose half of himself, and I don't think that the half that'll be left will truly be him any more. He has suffered all he can, another blow will be too much.

The same is true for the whole Fleet, humans and Cylons alike. We cannot take any more. If our last hope – already stretched thin – runs out, we'll just give up and die.

I try to make up for it all with every ounce of resin I force into the Galactica's cracks. Even though I know that it's too little, too late. Too late for the Galactica, and nothing can ever make up for what we did to the human race, reducing them to this. It's almost obscene, and I don't know whether it would be better to blow up our Baseship to even the score a little or to destroy the entire human fleet to end this humiliating, demeaning agony of slow death. And yet what I actually do is get more resin and continue the hopeless repairs.

Admiral Adama wears his love openly on his face, but lately almost all of that love has turned into pain. Human feelings often revert to pain, I think it's their natural state. I wear my pain behind my mask of just another Eight.

The cost of being a person is higher than I thought.

My sister Boomer took Hera and left, tearing a hole into everything – the Galactica, the President's health, our hopes for the future, and finally even Admiral Adama's stubborn resolve to repair his ship at all costs. Again, one of us has left damage that can't be fixed. I've known all along that the repairs were futile, and yet it pains me to stop.

And then, the unexpected call for volunteers. It's so very human – just when you think they're finally beaten, they struggle to their feet once more. And that's why I'm going to go, suicide mission or not.

I stop by the sickbay to see a Two who was badly injured, but his bed is empty. He's dead, then. No one will have the chance to put his picture up on the memorial wall now, it's been stripped like the rest of Galactica. He won't even gain that much personality, he's just a nameless dead Cylon. Just another Two.

"I'm sorry."

I turn quickly to see Laura Roslin sitting on her bed, almost fully dressed. She is slowly pulling her jacket on, a genuinely sympathetic look on her face.

I didn't realise there were tears on my cheeks; I swipe them away quickly. "Thank you." I look at her and after a moment, the meaning of her getting dressed sinks in. "You're going."

"Of course."

Watching her weak and laboured movements, pity and wonder constrict my throat. "You won't make it there in your state."

"Then I'll see how far I'll get."

I step closer and hold out my hand. "I'll help you."

The President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol stares at the hand of a Number Eight for a long time. Finally, she takes it, and lets me pull her to her feet. Her skin is cold and clammy with sweat, the bones beneath it feel light and brittle. As we start to walk, she leans on me, but she is so thin that it's barely any weight at all.

We attract quite a few stares as we move slowly towards the hangar bay, stopping several times. I feel uncomfortable being so close to this dying human woman, but somehow I also know that this is right. It's right that I should help her.

I don't expect any talk, but when we stop for the third time, Laura Roslin suddenly asks, "Are you coming, too?"

"Yes." I don't mean to ask, but curiosity gets the better of me. "Why are you doing this? For your people?"

A brief, strange smile crosses her face. "Yes. It is for my people, I suppose. But I'm too… tired to think of them, now." She puts her palm flat against the bulkhead next to her. "I can't let him go alone."

I know who she is speaking of.

"I'm going for him, for the Galactica, for our journey. To prevent all our suffering from having been in vain. For Hera. And for myself, to find another death than the one that's waiting for me in that hospital bed."

I nod, as if understanding, although I know I cannot begin to understand Laura Roslin.

"And you? Why are you coming?"

She catches me off guard. I don't know what to answer. I don't know where the words that finally leave my lips come from, but they don't feel false. "For the future of the Cylon race. A future as a people, as persons. And for atonement."

The look that she gives me at my last words is sharp as a sword. It cuts, but I welcome it.

I let Laura Roslin walk on her own once we reach the hangar bay, and follow her unsteady figure slowly. I see the absolute beauty in her faltering steps and in the pride in Admiral Adama's eyes as he looks at her; and I finally know with certainty where I want to go and who I want to be. I step over the line of red tape before my feet.

"So, Chiyoko, you coming with us?"

I look up, startled. It's one of the human pilots, a man who looks like he might be my relative if I had any. "What did you call me?"

"Well I gotta call you something." Then, softer, "Chiyoko was my sister's name."

I stare at him, finding no words to express my gratitude. I have been given a name, and suddenly hope returns, as if I were human enough to never completely lose it. Finally, when the tears in my eyes threaten to flow over, I look away and reply, "Yes. I'm coming with you."