Pressed Palms by Rosie
Summary: Cally feels guilty. She hurt the last person she ever wanted to. But now things are starting to change between them, and the one thing she's always wanted is what scares her the most. A Cally/Tyrol fic.
Disclaimer: I don't own Battlestar Galactica (duh), and these characters are not mine. But I do own these words. Please don't copy in whole or in part w/o my permission.
Right Hand
She hadn't always been the best. The Chief had reserved that status in his mind for Prosna. Not to undermine her, Cally was good, but so were all his members of Deck Crew 5. Yet with the loss of so many, the Chief found himself depending more and more upon her. His most common utterances soon became "Cally get over here," and "Cally take care of that." She worked with a nimble efficiency that he somewhat lacked. He marveled at her delicate fingers. At first, the Chief was mildly concerned as to whether or not such ladylike hands could handle the roughness of a Raptor engine. But witnessing her confident movements and precise execution soon led him to trust those dainty fingers as much as his own.
His right hand.
Cally didn't know it, but he watched her. When not too focused on his work at hand, the Chief would let his eyes drift over to her. She rather reminded him of a honey bee, buzzing about and tinkering with spare parts, gathering stray nuts and bolts as she went. It was much the same way he had watched Sharon, only with less obsession and more fascination. He even came to envy those little fingers of hers. Cally was always able to wriggle her arms far into the belly of a Viper, places he could not reach without removing three or four parts first, unless he had her to help him.
Watching Cally, the Chief felt something deep inside his chest swell with pride. She worked hard for him and he trusted her with anything, even his life. That trust had been violently shaken when Sharon was revealed as a Cylon. The Chief couldn't bring himself to trust anyone anymore. People lie. And then Cally killed her, stretching the rift between them even further. But the memory of Kobol still resounded in his mind. How afraid she had been when given that suicidal order by Crashdown. How brave she had been when providing covering fire over his back.
With the coming of the other Sharon, Helo's Sharon, that swell of pride had been temporarily replaced with a sting of jealousy and an ache of longing. She remembered him, them, but none of it was real. She wasn't real. They weren't real. It had all been a lie, right? The Commander, now the Admiral, had asked him if he was prepared to see her again.
He wasn't. Not after loving her so deeply and feeling the life escape her body. She bled. He felt it. He supposed that his Sharon had simply woken up somewhere in a nice, new, comfortable body free of the bullet in her stomach and the wound on her cheek. Why would a Cylon try and kill itself? None of it made sense. His thoughts were thick and smothering.
Did she love him? It didn't really matter. She was fake, a liar, a murderer. But seeing the new Sharon with Helo and love they shared made him second-guess his resolution. The Chief had been frakked with on the deepest level. Love, Cylon, suicide, murder, Sharon...Fake.
The wrong hand.
Cally was real though, at least as far as he knew. Watching her seemed to temporarily settle the cold fire in his heart and cleansed his mind with a little more clarity. After he had come so close to smashing Helo with a wrench, the Chief came to understand Cally a little better. He could empathize with the rage that so wildly consumed the soul. He could no longer hold onto blaming her for shooting Sharon. Hell, if he hadn't been so in love with her, he probably would have done it himself.
When building the Blackbird, he had held a wrench to her and told her that was what he understood. It was simple, mathematical, an escape. Not long after his incident with Helo, he began to view Cally the same way. Rather ironic, really. Of course, Cally could still easily aggravate him with a few cutting words. Not that he didnt deserve it, but as long as she wasnt speaking, the Chief was free to think of her the way he wanted. Clean and logical and clever. Dedicated and hardworking and loyal to her Chief. In his mind, she was the perfect crewman.
The right hand.
His right hand.
She had even lightly defended the other Sharon when those crude Pegasus pilots laughingly discussed the raping of their Cylon prisoner. And thank the Gods they did, or else Sharon might have met the same fate. It didn't matter if she was a Cylon or not, no one deserved such a torture. The though that Cally had come so close to suffering that horrible deed made the Chief sick to his stomach. It was hard to admit, but he was glad that Cally had a received a bullet hole in her stomach instead of the lifelong agony of surviving a rape. Nonetheless, seeing her scar had still delivered a breath-stealing blow to his chest. With a doubled rage boiling in his heart, the Chief had murdered Sharon's would be attacker. He didn't mean to, but that was after the fact.
Now he was a murderer too, and this even further lessened the blame on Cally. He considered themselves equal, both victims of their own rage, both murderers in crimes of passion. They were one and the same. Though she still had the unfair advantage of those small hands. "Its nice to be small," he told her. The Chief wished there was some way to express his forgiveness, his understanding. He wanted to tell her it wasn't her fault. He wanted to say he knew her. And as he watched her silently working away on Kat's fried Viper, he wondered if she felt the same.
A/N: Just thought I'd get into the Chief's head a little before delving into some real action. Love it? Hate it? Review it! Seriously, give me a review and I'll be your best friend forever. Feedback is like crack.