Title: The Messenger
Author: AsianScaper
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica 2003
Characters/Pairings: Boomer/Helo, other, Cmdr. Adama, Col. Tigh, Tyrol
Rating/Warnings: G
Genre: Drama/General
Spoilers: Season 2, Resurrection
Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine and neither is the show. Mercury is, however. I'm neither profiting (except in a highly non-material way) nor inciting insurrection of any sort, so please don't find a reason to sue me.
Summary: Set between Resurrection Part I and 2. Sharon Valerii (Caprica Copy) receives a visitor of the most unlikely sort from the Pegasus. This is an inquiry of what comprises humanity and the boundaries that buckle and shake when it comes to defining it.
Author's Notes: To the rowdy folks who call themselves fans. Cheers to you. And of course, to the show's cast and crew. First fic for this fandom. I hope you like; constructive criticism is most welcome.
Feedback/Archiving: Feel free to send me an email at Adama's Quarters

Commander Adama met his XO's gaze as Colonel Tigh put the tape recorder in front of him. With it was a case folder marked 'confidential' in discreet, red letters. To the Commander, it was either a portent of good, or a vile brew of something worse.

"The Captain's testimony," Tigh said. "And his profile."

"You cross-checked what he's told you? Verification from the different officers on the CIC when Cain's XO was killed?"

"Yes, sir." Tigh's eyes suddenly brightened in anger, smoldered in revelations. "She murdered her XO, Commander. This –" He tapped the tape. "-was the XO's younger brother. Considering his highly emphatic treatise and his obvious dedication to the Marines, I think we can rely on his context of things. We may have opened a can of worms, Commander but that court martial's a farce, if ever it begins. Damn her; Helo and Tyrol…"

"Easy, Tigh." Adama scanned the contents of the folder and nodded. Exceptional soldiers were hardly exempt from the constant admiration and loyalty of their peers. "An impressive record and numerous accolades from the Admiral herself. Can't go wrong there. I want a full report on my desk before tomorrow and we'll see what we can do."

"Of course." Tigh lingered for a moment as he placed a paper in front of his commander and cleared his throat. "This is a...personal request by the good captain."

Adama took the paper and sighed as he read its contents. He pinched the bridge of his nose, displacing his glasses as he scrunched his eyes in an effigy of exhaustion.

"Give the Captain whatever he wants. Just send another complement of Marines in case he does something funny. Or in case the Cylon does. I don't want a repetition of that unfortunate accident in her cell."

"Yes, sir."

!-!-!-!

Battlestar Galactica: Cylon Holding Cell

She reminded me of my brother; the dark hair, the mesmerizing black eyes, the sheen of unmistakable confidence that drew my gaze with rising curiosity. Those indentations on either side of her face, on her cheeks –dimples that emerged and dissolved against the tan of her skin as she ate. I wondered how it would be like to see those markings in a smile, or a laugh. No chance of that, I suppose. She was Cylon, after all.

I looked at the grey bulkheads, the bright fluorescent lights that lit her cell, the constant perusal of guards posted at every side of her prison. Then I studied their eyes –their bright, human eyes as they looked at her with fear, distrust and that ever-ready fiend, which rode on horses of anger and hatred, rearing its head when one wasn't looking.

It wasn't easy to live under that kind of scrutiny, to breathe and eat and be with hate at every corner, seeping across every inch of floorboard and down metal walls.

At every flicker and light of recognition on her part, lay humanity's loathing for the Other. She loved Galactica's 'family' –as I had heard Adama call the crew of this ship –by virtue of her memory of it. Then it hated her back with confused, riling faces, blasé with bigotry or spilling it outright. The first of her had died because of it.

It wasn't easy. I'd read the reports.

"Open the door, Sergeant," I said, my voice quivering.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Sir. You've got thirty minutes."

She was a Cylon but I'd afforded her the 'she'. I would either pay for it in blood or mutual respect.

Valerii, and that is what I would call her, stared at me from over her meal, her gaze confused as it transferred from the wary guards to me, and back again. She took note of the weapons on my escorts, took note of my sidearm, and then of the uniform.

She recognized rank and instantly stood from her place. Strange, that I'd been afforded some bit of respect without earning it, by a Cylon of all things.

"Hello Valerii," I said. I could see that she did not let that small detail of her name go as she cocked her head, the inquiry in her eyes. "Why don't you sit back down?" I continued, "Don't let me interrupt your meal."

"What do you want?" she asked, her bowl forgotten and the back of her knees touching the side of her bed. She had edged away from me but not from fear. I suspected that she was giving me the floor, letting me know that the space she put between the two of us was given and that in it, understanding could be had as well as its ugly opposite.

"I'm curious," I said.

"You can't possibly be curious about me," she said, smiling slightly and her lips in a barely-formed scoff. Her shoulders were squared against me, on the ready to defend as she stared at the guards and pondered on the futility of running past.

"Let me introduce myself," I began. "I am Gabriel Gibraltar." I threw something else into the brew that I'd thrown my name into: "My friends call me Gigi."

Valerii laughed and raised a brow. "Gigi? That's a sissy name for a…" Her eyes glanced over my insignias "–a captain and a guy."

"Easy on the insults. My call sign is Mercury, call me that." My brows furrowed as she sobered up. But it wasn't her sudden gravity that struck me. It had been the reaction to my nickname. Her laugh had been full, the dimples deep, as though digging for mirth and finding it, with every flash of white teeth and arching lips.

"Mercury, right. You call me whatever you like," she said. "Either way, I'm glad you're not like the others. From Pegasus, that is, who can't keep their frakking pants on." She indicated the docility of my guards and my general demeanor.

"That's an understatement, fortunately." I took the only seat in the room and gestured for her to sit on her cot. I passed her plate of half-finished porridge and fruit, then wondered slightly if it fed her physically inasmuch as this conversation had brought with it an opportunity to learn for us both.

She warily took her bowl. "Are you here to interrogate me? Or are you going to tell me that you're asking all the questions?"

"You're very clever," I said. "But no. This visit wasn't authorized by Admiral Cain. But Adama did, all of it under wraps of course."

"Then why are you here?" she asked, ready to stand.

I spoke without the edge to my voice, "I came here to simply inquire on your psychological state. I heard about the assault and decided to personally see if you were alright."

"And you think that as a Cylon agent, I'd have such a thing –that I'd have a 'psychological state'," Valerii sarcastically said, her meal completely forgotten, her anger clamped between her puzzlement and a half-baked desire for more information. "Look, I'm not buying it. Your fellow officer was killed by people I knew –people who couldn't possibly be in their right minds for saving a toaster." The slur came out surprisingly well, bitten and clenched in her mouth as it was. "I'm a Cylon; my kind must've wiped out your whole family. And you're here, talking to me, benevolently."

I considered her words. With that, came an image of my brother's face, flashing like a sign. He had been the elder, spoiling me at every chance of shore leave we got but a slave driver otherwise, on the fighter decks and the CIC. He had been the 701st soul borne to the heavens under Cain's command. And it was not from a Cylon raid; he had been Cain's XO, shot through the head in front of the bridge crew, his death translated into a threat for anybody else who would question the Admiral.

That may have been the time conscience died on Cain's ship, preserved only by my hatred for her. My brother had weighed the thousand or so souls on the battlestar against a Cylon-induced demise and stood his ground. My brother rose for the preservation of the crew –a decision rooted in human ideals of humility, and it landed him the only sure thing in life: death.

Cylons were created by us. Dressed in artificiality, their sins seemed no different from ours.

So I said my piece, "Intelligence –and intelligent is what you are –cannot entirely be equated to being human. But being human cannot ensure one's autonomy from inexcusable behavior." I stared at intently, my heart in a sudden shamble as I super-imposed images of the other Cylon prisoner on Pegasus over this one's possible future. I continued, blanching, "I saw the other Cylon on my ship take beatings, get raped, abused…all of it justified simply because she was a machine. Is a machine. But –and here is where it gets complicated –

"My brother didn't die in a Cylon attack; he died at the hands of a human leader. Everything you're not, or so I thought. My brother was killed by a murderer, by something or someone that is perhaps, less than you." Was this sympathy I saw from Valerii? Was it sympathy I heard in my voice?

She remained quiet, allowing my words to flow out and back, a chance for me to process every self-targeted query. "I don't know how human beings could provide luxury for their pets and yet fail to treat you with some bit of…" I stumbled on the word and Valerii sensed my hesitation. "Humanity. After all you've done."

The Cylon regarded me a moment, perhaps juggling the word 'humanity' amongst the horrors of her experience with us. "I doubt you can claim that people are inherently good at this point, Captain."

"I can't apologize for the human race, Valerii. I'm not even going to try to understand the demons that motivate us. My father's land racer had been treated infinitely better than the prisoner was…than you were." I chuckled, "Better even than my brother. It's a disease we have." I blinked, not noticing that tears had formed at the cusp of my speech. "I don't know how to apologize."

"Don't," she said, sighing.

I found it suddenly odd, suddenly stupid that I had asked to see the Galactica prisoner in order to find some parallels on mine. To learn a new, increasingly tangental way of extracting information, to glean it rather than pick it off from ripe, purple wounds as my subordinates had done. Ever since my brother's death, I was in a constant state of questioning, finding it harder by the day to watch my crewmates' animosity turn from logical, to animal.

Perhaps it wasn't stupid after all.

They were hesitant, her words, but they poured from her mouth like a libation. "I look at you, Mercury…I look at you and I see something. Not visions, not computations nor protocols nor the absoluteness of numbers or the cold fact of metal. Not the ugly mouths that belt their loathing, or fists to knock you senseless with. No. I look at you and I see…" She laughed again, as though realizing something, those dimples smearing her Cylon cheeks, rendering them unmistakable in their emotion.

"Oh Mercury," she said, still laughing. "You –closest to the Sun, to Helios! You remind me of him."

"Who?" I dared to ask, suddenly aware of this space she had created and the palpable community of passion she had maintained for a name.

"Helo," she sighed, standing from her cot and walking towards me. "You remind me of him."

My escort opened the door at her approach, ready to storm the cell, but I raised a hand to stop them as she stood over me, inching her way between my legs. She put her thumb on my lips. My hands dropped to my sides as she lifted her palm and scoured the plains of my cheek, hovered over my jaws, and drew a strand of hair from my forehead.

She was so close I could feel her breath on me, warm and evidence of life, Cylon-heated and Cylon-induced. I thought that compassion wasn't solely doled out by the human race because her voice was gentle to my ears. "The last time Helo was here, your crewmates and that Cylon interrogator had driven a stake into my perception of humankind."

Sweet was her breath and soft were her lips as she let them graze over my forehead. "There's hope for you yet," she whispered, with some bit of sadness in her voice. "And I miss Helo, his touch, his kinds words. He took his chariot and lit my horizon and now I barely have leave to touch him, only hear him through walls."

She kissed my forehead then. That Cylon –neither thing nor beast but a child of me, rendering herself a mirror to memories of my older brother.

"I don't suppose you're going to stage a mutiny, are you Captain?" she asked, stroking my cheeks in recollection of someone she loved quite well. "And I'm sorry about your brother. He didn't deserve that fate, any more than I deserve to be treated like an animal." She stepped away, resuming her position at the bed and finishing the rest of her meal.

I stared at her throughout the intervals of swallowing and chewing, watching as she filled her spoon and wasted nothing. She gave me a wink, and sighed. "Thank you for the visit," she said.

"No, thank you," I said. "It was a fresh perspective."

"For you, it was. For your guards, it was. For Helo it wasn't. You remind me of him and touching you feels like touching a part of me, a ghost of him." She chuckled. "He'd be surprised to find another one as kind as he, just as I am surprised -but in a good way -right this moment. I have a feeling you'd be spreading the good word. Just like your namesake, Mercury." She spoke my call name as though meandering on sacred ground.

I stood up to leave, about to mutter my goodbye's but she called after me, "Wait, Captain. I have to ask." She shifted her gaze to the deepness of mine. "Why? Why talk to me when you're the warden? On Pegasus, no less?"

"There are those, Boomer, who would weigh you against the cruelty of my subordinates and my admiral. I bank on inherent good, too, and the conscience that drives noble men, my brother, and even myself…Dare I say that I bank on yours, too?"

It was my turn to wink as she gave me her smile, dimples at the ready, her skin tanned by a different sun. She nodded her acknowledgment as I exposed my back to her, a leap of undeniable faith. Slowly, I sealed the doors, hearing the clank of the locks, searing my mind with thoughts and images of her as though bearing the memory of her permanently, in a secret place where my brother had been.

The End...

!-!-!-!