This will be a series of stand-alone stories which deal with the choices that the characters on Battlestar Galactica have made throughout the mini-series and first season (I'll be posted in as much of the order of the season as I can). I want to explore what would have happened/changed if things had gone differently. Some of the stories will be angst, some will be shippy, some will be funny. There will be different pairings throughout. Don't feel like you have to check out each one to understand the others. All I ask is that if it intrigues you, then give it a try. Hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed writing them!
There are pivotal moments in one's life where if you take the wrong path everything may change. Those changes may be for the good or for the bad. The possibilties are endless.
You're not her.
That's the first thing that everyone is quick to remind me when I tell them the news.
You could never be her.
I tell them I know and that I don't care. They don't know the Lee that I know. If they did, they'd understand.
The Lee I know was the one who didn't leave my bedside for the first twenty hours because he felt responsible for what happened. The Lee I know, after sneaking a taste at the hospital issue food I was being served, snuck me sandwiches every day until I was released. The Lee I know talks about how he could have loved her forever if only she would have given him a chance.
I know about her, but she never really knew about me.
She never took the time to ask me how I was dealing with the death of my best friend. She never took the time to wonder if maybe I was mourning the loss of Geminon as much as she missed Caprica. And she definitely never took the time to introduce me to her best friend, who I had been staring at since the second he stepped foot onto Galactica.
The news Lee shares surprises the old man the most.
He never thought his son would do something so spontaneous. Not the good old predictable Lee. No way.
But then Lee hadn't been making predictable moves since he came with me down to the sickbay that day. He had decided to forget the duties of being the CAG and the Commander's son. Instead, he just remembered his duty of making sure a young girl was not permanently injured because he had let the situation get out of control.
He carried me halfway across Galactica in his arms. That man has the greatest sense of duty and responsibility that I've ever seen. It's almost as infuriating as it is endearing.
Later he told me that the reason he didn't leave me in the beginning was because he remembered what it had been like to gun down the Olympic Carrier in those first agonizing days of our flight from the Cylons.
He had let his duty to the Fleet overshadow what he felt was right in his heart. And now he was either a murderer or a mindless solider. Not a pleasant outlook on life. And I said that to his face.
He didn't laugh in those first few visits. At least not in the way I was trying to make him laugh.
The pain of living life was fresh on his face and in his eyes since the moment he first grumbled to me about the slightly out of whack left engine on his Viper VII. He was exhausted from the first day he joined us. And I told him that.
I think that was what made him notice me. I didn't hold my words back. Kind of like her.
I've accepted now that it all comes back to her. Everything I do comes back to her. My ships aren't good enough if she can't fly them through death defying maneuvers. My words and actions are not good enough if they aren't modeled after her normal behavior. Somewhere down the line, she dictated what a woman in this Fleet was supposed to be, and everyone accepted it as fact.
I'm different. And he sees that.
He was the first one to ever see past my dirty exterior. The first one to understand that I didn't belong in this world. I was as much of an outsider on Galactica as he was. More so because at least he belonged in the military world. I didn't.
Back on Geminon, I was the best swimmer in our town. Put myself through school on an athletic scholarship. Then the Cylons destroyed our world while I was on my first practical assignment, and my god-given talent became useless. What does a world champion swimmer do when there's no water to swim in?
The answer to that is find something else you're good at.
I'm good at what I do now.
It seems I'm good at staying alive, too. Not quite as risky about my choices as others in the Fleet, but I don't play it safe either. Granted, my pride was being threatened at the time. But I was pretty brutal. Guess I did pick up a few things from being around her all the time. I can defend myself.
And it got me into just as much trouble as if it were her doing the biting.
The gunshot wound healed up nicely after the doctor made sure all remnants of the shattered bullet were out of me. It took hours. I don't remember much.
Lee took the time to melt those shards into a makeshift dog tag to give to me in order to celebrate the first time I got out of bed and walked around the ship. That was when I first realized that he wasn't just being polite. Nice doesn't make you want to give someone a present.
He was the only one that remembered my birthday that day. I hadn't even realized until he explained that he was celebrating more than my speedy recovery. How he knew that I was turning nineteen, I'll never know.
I returned the favor.
About a week later, I was the only one who could remind him that his was coming up in a few days, too. It seemed like birthdays aren't allowed in a ragtag Fleet running for their lives from the toasters.
For whatever reason, he got as much out of our talks as I did. I'll never really understand it.
Maybe it was because we started out as two people with no one else to turn to. My best friend and family were dead. Had been dead for weeks. His best friend was unapproachable, and the only family he had left was almost as out of reach.
I was accessible.
That description doesn't hurt as much as you would think.
I was easy. I was there. I was convenient.
All those words have been flung in my face when I told the rest of my friends the good news. They don't know him like I know him, though. It might have started as an obligation, but it didn't stay that way for long. You don't take the early shifts in order to see a wounded girl in sick bay out of duty.
Not even when you had as much duty welled up inside you as he does.
His switching those shifts to make time to help me recover really surprised me. I had been taking care of myself since the holocaust happened. It was odd to think that someone else was vying for the job. In fact, I had always prided myself on being able to take care of myself with no help from others.
That was probably why, instead of calling for help, I bit that prisoner's ear off. I could have easily yelled for Lee. He would have come running, no matter the danger. That's the kind of guy he is.
Well, the kind of girl I was told me that wounded pride was worse than death.
I explained that to him. He seemed to understand.
Maybe that was why I told him that I thought I was in love with him.
That was when he first talked about her. Not superficially, but really, truthfully, brutally honest talk.
How he had thought for so long that he was in love with her. How he figured being in love with her would be his way of owning up to his part in the death of his brother. How it just hadn't happened as easily as that.
He wasn't really in love her. He didn't wake up with her face in his thoughts, and he didn't fall asleep to dream of her in his arms.
It took me quite a long time before I was willing to believe that I held that place in his life and not her. The ship's gossip is incredibly strong and usually accurate. And the ship said she was the reason he got up in the morning and the reason he fell asleep without nightmares.
Not in this case, though. They were wrong. He told me the truth.
He didn't love her.
Damned if that man isn't always honest.
When I started walking, he would escort me around the nearby corridors. Every day he would tell me the story of how one of the pilots got their call sign. It kept my mind off of the shooting pain.
Eventually I got tired of waiting and asked him how he had gotten his.
He explained that in simulations he had a bad habit of choosing to fly head first into where the most danger was. Somehow he came out each time with his life and a barely functioning ship. The instructors could only verbally scold him as he worked his way through training session after training session. He risked his hypothetical life at every single corner, always choosing the most dangerous route. He went against direct orders and did what he wanted to.
He couldn't stop looking at the sun, even when he knew he wasn't supposed.
Apollo. God of the sun.
I had laughed and told him most of the Fleet thought he got it because of the way he looked. When he gave me a confused look, it was beyond priceless. He really had no idea he was the subject of every woman's fantasy now that all the usual movie stars and celebrities were gone. He was about as close to a pin-up as a girl could get these days.
That was the day I learned he could blush.
Apollo the sun god could blush.
It was breathtaking.
He had prefaced all his distracting stories with a message.
Call signs can say a lot about who a person is, he would say. Who they want to be. Where they come from and where they are going. They are branded on a person, and the person almost changes themselves to fit the sign. They are both controlled and controlling. Call signs have a certain unspoken power to them.
I always thought that was a very interesting theory.
Now I have my own little theory to tell him.
Names also say a lot about a person. That's why I'll just let mine defend me when I don't have the energy. When I'm tired of arguing that she's not going to ruin my marriage like they all think. That she is actually happy for the man she considers the only friend she had left in the world. That maybe she actually does know what it's like to find someone you can imagine being with until the day you die.
People forget she has feelings.
People forget that she has a heart under that hard exterior.
People forget she has a name, too. One that was going to be a lot more similar to mine if only the gods hadn't intervened.
Names have that same unspoken power, too.
Which is why I chose to let mine stand strong and proud in my place when I don't have the energy to do so. It speaks for itself when I cannot figure out how to get the Fleet to understand that she just might be happy for us. It could be possible.
What is definitely possible is the idea that we're both happy to have one another. We found someone to spend the rest of our lives with.
The Fleet is stupid if they cannot understand that my name stands for hope. That this isn't the end of the world. That there is the possibility of being able to move on from this tragedy. That there is a future.
It stands for all of that and more.
Calinda Rilo Adama.
Cally to those who know me.
Cal to the man who loves me.
Because he does love me.
No one can take that away from me even if they wanted to.
Not even her.