"Do you love me, Gaius?" Six purred, fingering the curly dark hairs on his chest as she laid on top of him in Gina's suite on Cloud Nine.
"Of course I do." He mumbled sleepily. "Why else do you think I've done all of the things I have done?"
She lifted her head and reached over to turn his face so that he was looking her square in the eye. Once she had his attention, her expression and voice grew harsh. "I'm hoping that you did all of those things because you have a destiny, a destiny that will be enough to pull you from your egomania and lead you to a more selfless way of life." She leaned up and kissed his chin. "You belong to a family now."
"With you and Laura." He stated.
"With the Cylons." She corrected. "Your life will be blended with ours, and it will play in harmony with God's plan; the plan that allowed our daughter to exist in the first place." Six rolled off of him and looked up at the ceiling. "We have waited for her for so long. First—we waited for her conception, and then for her birth. And then these last two years have been like purgatory for us; having to stand aside and watch her live their life with them, knowing that they would try to hide their unrighteousness from her, knowing that they would show her love. Even knowing that she would grow attached to them."
Baltar sat up in bed. "Yes, that………I'm sorry, that always seemed odd to me. The people on Galactica, they……..they actually do love her. But she's a Cylon—the enemy—how could they?"
Six sat up as well and wrapped her arms around his chest from behind him. "She's not a Cylon, she's something much more. Even the humans believe that, which is why they allowed her to stay with them."
He turned his face to look at her. "They think she will do something for them?"
"We know more about their religion than they do." She grinned wickedly and nodded, placing a kiss on his bare shoulder. "The prophecies of the one true God and the false gods are remarkably similar. The stories are the same……………. only the endings are different. The humans allowed her to be a part of their family because their gods told them that it would happen that way, they told them that she would lead them somewhere. And she will—but she will show us the way too, and then we will complete the mission we began on the day of the attacks."
"What mission is that?" He smiled a sexy smile.
She laughed at his obliviousness. "Destroying the unrighteous…………… destroying humanity."
"You could've done that a thousand times over." He goggled at her. "The Cylons are a superior force, and you have agents all throughout the fleet. You could've destroyed them at any time."
"Why would we have done that? They're not what we want." She pushed him down so that he was lying on his back again, and she straddled him. "The fifty-thousand people in this fleet are insignificant apart from their destiny to find the last remaining siblings of mankind. Other humans exist in this galaxy and they are as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach or the stars in the sky."
"Earth." He whispered.
"No one amongst us knows its location……..but our child does. This is why she is so important to us." Six leaned down and kissed him. "We will raze humanity into nothingness. Then, and only then, can the new generation of God's children fully come into their own and take their rightful place as God's chosen. And our daughter will be revered by them, and with our help, she will be worthy of that reverence."
"And if she tries to fight us? Our daughter?" Baltar asked, slight hesitation in his voice. "Even if it is misguided, she loves her human family and she may not welcome her destiny to help their enemies. What do we do then?"
"She won't fight us; she is a broken shell of a person. And even though it was indirectly, it was her humanity that did that to her." Six smiled forebodingly. "And once she finds out that her human family has discarded her like a broken machine—much like they discarded the Cylons—and once we put her back together, better and stronger than she ever was with them, she will see that she is better off with her own kind."
Baltar sat up, his lusting eyes boring into her as he trailed his hand down her ribcage. "It's only 02:30, I still have several hours before I have to be back on Galactica."
"What time is the meeting with the Adamas?"
"12:00." He answered and then stopped shortly, pulling his hand back. "But then it will be some time, maybe a few weeks, before I can pull enough strings to take her off the ship and bring her to you." He reached up and touched her hair. "I shouldn't even be here now. I've been here to see you twice in the last three days. I need to be more careful of my whereabouts so that they don't grow suspicious."
"But you just couldn't resist me, could you?" She smirked and then closed her eyes. "We can be patient. Our family has waited its entire existence for this to come. A few more weeks will seem like nothing, if we get our child out of it."
"You do realize that even though they are signing these papers……..they aren't giving her to me, it is only going to give me temporary medical guardianship?"
"It will be enough. Papers don't matter, Gaius." She replied, taking his hand and putting it back on her skin. "It is the act that will close the door on their life with her. At noon today, they won't just be signing their names on a dotted medical form…….they'll be giving up."
"Kara? Kara?" Lee whispered harshly to her, waking her up from her sleep. "You're gonna be sore all over tomorrow is you stay in that position."
Kara sat up from where she was hunched over the arm of the couch and rubbed her eyes. "What time is it?"
"02:45." He answered, sitting on the couch next to her and rubbing her back. He then looked over at Laura where she lay asleep in her bed. "She's sleeping really well."
"Out like a light." Kara confirmed. "I keep getting up and checking on her…….." She turned to him and smiled. "But I think she's okay."
He leaned back on the couch and she went with him, nestling against his side. "I can't believe Cottle released her."
"You heard what he said. There's nothing wrong with her," Kara stated, running her fingers in a circle on his chest. "She's exactly the way she was before."
"Maybe not exactly that same." He replied, looking at Kara assuredly. "But she's still our girl. It's good to have her back."
She leaned into his neck and took a breath. "Uh-huh."
"If you're tired, you can go to bed." He whispered, running a hand through her blond hair. "I'll sleep out here on the couch."
"I'm not really tired, but I am going to bed. And you're not really sleeping on the couch." She pulled back and winked at him. "You are aware that we haven't slept in the same bed since Laura got sick."
"We slept in the same bed, just not at the same time." He chuckled softly and then groaned in the back of his throat. "And trust me, while I was in our bed before I came out here, I was more than aware of the fact that we weren't in it together."
She disentangled herself from him and stood up, reaching out a hand for him and smiling lasciviously. "Well, let's correct that, shall we?"
Kara stood in front of the kitchen sink and felt the warm breeze on her face as it came through the nearby window.
"Did you ever learn to cook, Kara dear?" The blond beside her asked as she chopped the vegetables on the counter.
"A little bit." Kara responded.
"Not at all." Lee responded immediately after from his chair at the kitchen table behind them.
Kara turned around and smirked at Lee. "Please don't answer for me, Lee."
Lee smirked back at her. "Please don't lie to my mother, Kara."
"Fine, I can't cook at all." Kara stuck her tongue out at him. "You happy now?"
Caroline Adama laughed to herself. "With parents like you, how my granddaughter grew to be such a lovely young lady remains a mystery to me." She then looked up from her chopping and glanced at Lee and Kara as they still stood, grinning lovingly at each other. She smiled sweetly and closed her eyes. "Or maybe not that much of a mystery."
Kara turned back to continue to wash the items in the sink and then passed them to Caroline. "You know Laura?"
"Of course, I see Laura just as you see her. I've seen every moment of her life." Caroline replied. "Just as I've seen every moment of yours."
Lee coughed deliberately and Kara bit back a laugh as her eyes got wide.
Caroline winked at Kara. "Alright, there were some moments where I gave you your privacy."
"Good to know." Kara and Lee responded simultaneously.
"She's a good person." Caroline stated simply.
"Laura?" Lee smiled to himself. "Yeah, she is."
"She's one of the 2 percent."
The crinkle formed between Lee's eyebrows and he put his feet on the table. "That one you'll have to explain, Mom."
Caroline turned to look at her son. "It's very simple, Major Adama—."
Kara turned back around and glared at Lee. "Get your feet off the table! What, you think that just because you're back in your mother's kitchen that you're thirteen years old again?"
"As I was saying………." Caroline chuckled as Lee complied with Kara's order. "Really only 2 percent of the population is either all good or all evil. Very few people do good things simply because their hearts are pure. The rest do good for other motives: recognition, validation, because they themselves will benefit either in this life…..or the one after." She took a controlled breath. "Their motives may not be pure, but we've learned to ignore them and accept the outcome, because good is good, no matter what the motives may be."
"And Laura's one of the purely good ones?" Lee questioned.
Caroline smiled proudly. "As if you ever had any doubt."
"Oh, I don't know." Kara snorted amusedly. "There were times when she was a teenager that I had doubt."
"The tricky thing is that evil is the same way." Caroline continued. "It's rare that evil occurs simply for the sake of committing evil, and rare that the person who commits the act does so because they have a black heart. Most often, evil is a by-product of other things: jealousy, greed, selfishness………." She closed her eyes. "And ego; believing that you know better than everyone else."
Kara's voice hitched in her throat. "Oh gods."
"The motives for when someone does evil are harder to ignore, because on the same level………….. evil is evil, no matter what the motives may be." She looked at Kara. "In those situations, sometimes it's worse when the person you're dealing with isn't completely evil."
Lee leaned forward in his chair, starting to grasp what she was saying. "Because you don't see it coming."
"And because they prey upon your weaknesses to serve their own purposes. They prey upon your grief, your uncertainty and desperation." She looked at Kara again. "And they also turn your strengths against you. Like your love……..the very thing that is most often used for good."
Kara took a trembling breath. "We think we understand what you are trying to tell us."
"That's good, I'm glad you understand. But you should know that I've been given permission to stop all of this 'dancing around the issue' crap that we've been doing." Caroline grew determined. "So let me make myself perfectly clear: Gaius Baltar does not lay one finger on Laura."
Kara nodded in obedience. "Yes, ma'am."
Caroline looked pointedly at her son. "Tell me you now believe that something greater is happening here, Lee. Tell me that you're listening, that you understand me."
Lee nodded as well. "Yes, ma'am."
Caroline turned back to the counter and looked out the window. "I'm not even saying that to you because she's special, or because she was sent to you by the gods to fulfill some divine purpose." She then looked over at the refrigerator and the two of them followed her gaze. Inexplicably taped on the refrigerator door was a picture of a cat that Laura had drawn when she was little, and scribbled across the bottom in Laura's handwriting was the word BOY. "I'm saying that because she's my family…………..and you seriously don't wanna mess with my family."
"Hey." Lee said the next morning when he exited the bedroom and saw Kara sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee. "How long have you been up?"
"A while." She answered, but at the same time, held up her index finger to her lips and gestured back to where Laura was still asleep in her bed. "I don't wanna wake her up, she's still really tired."
"Cottle kept her in sickbay until midnight." Lee reminded her softly. "That takes a lot out of a girl."
Kara lowered her head and reluctantly began to try and test his memory of the last night's events. "I wonder if anyone's told Doctor Baltar that Laura's been released."
"Yeah, I wonder." He sighed, trying to test what she remembered too. He walked over to the counter and looked at the plate of food that she had laid out for him. "Did you cook this?"
She immediately looked up at his question. "No. I got it from the mess." She smiled slightly at him as she sat up straighter in her chair. "What a dumb question, Lee, you know that I can't cook."
He grabbed the plate and sat down at the table across from her, he then took a bite while trying to seem non-chalant. "So……… have any interesting dreams last night?"
With that, she groaned and dropped her head down to the table with a loud thud. "FRAK."
He sighed heavily. "Yeah, I feel the same way."
"I cannot believe that I almost—" She lifted her head again, but leaned it into her palm. "I've always had a little voice in my head telling me that I'd eventually screw everything up, but of all the mistakes that I might've made……….that would've been the one that I could've never forgiven myself for."
"We almost made the mistake together," He corrected her. "It wasn't just you."
"I practically had to twist your arm off, Lee!" She hissed at him, shivering and wrapping her arms around herself. "Baltar had me so confused, so unsure of myself that I almost convinced us to give Laura to him! Gods, just the idea of that makes me sick to my stomach."
"And how do you think I feel?" He responded gently. "I know what it used to take for the both of us to trust people, to believe in them—and ourselves. And I now see what a wondrous thing it is for us to be this open and love someone so much that we'd do anything for them." His finger had been steadily pounding the table as he spoke. "Baltar took the thing that I love most about our family and made it perverse. But he's the bastard here, Kara. Not us. We almost made a mistake, but it was a mistake that we almost made out of love………..not just general frak-uppery." He smiled sadly. "Does that ease the sting a little?"
"The sting will be eased plenty when I put a bullet through the good doctor's brain." She told him, clenching her hand against the table.
"We can't do that, Kara."
"Why the frak not?" She shouted, slamming her hand down on the table. They both looked behind them as Laura stirred in her bed, but didn't wake up.
"What exactly would we say?" He calmed her. "That we had a dream where we helped my long-dead mother make dinner in her long-obliterated kitchen, and she told us that there were two kinds of evil people in the world? And because of that, we want Dr. Gaius Baltar—genius of our time and savior of the fleet—to be executed?" He snorted to himself. "Even I have a hard time believing it, and I know that it's true."
"Baltar is still under the impression that we're gonna sign those papers!"
He chuckled ruefully. "Well, at least we're not under that impression anymore."
"So what do we do?" Kara pleaded.
"What do you do about what?" Laura interjected groggily as she sat up in bed.
"Hey, little girl." Kara turned around to face her. "Dad and I were just talking, but go back to sleep. We'll go into the bedroom."
"No, its okay, I'm up now." Laura assured them as got out of bed, came over to the table and took a seat in the chair between them. Yawning, she reached over onto Lee's plate and grabbed a slice of his bacon. "What were you guys talking about?"
"You." Lee answered simply.
"My favorite topic." She put the food in her mouth and smiled. "What specifically?"
Kara took a trembling breath and put her elbows on the table. "Do you remember anything about when you got sick—or about why you got sick?"
Laura swallowed with a gulp. "No." She replied in a whisper. "I don't remember anything at all."
"There has to be something." Lee pleaded with Cottle as he and Kara stood in sickbay, looking over Laura's test results.
"But there isn't." The Doc told him. "I never let a single test slip by, I was constantly checking her blood work to see if there was any kind of toxin or hallucinogen or drug in her system that would cause the kind of psychotic break that she had. And there never was, only the medications that we gave her. There is also nothing in her blood work now that would tell me why she has come out of her psychosis."
"But Baltar gave her some of those medications, didn't he?" Kara asked.
Cottle sighed heavily. "I'm still having a very hard time with your accusation." He informed them. "Why would Baltar want to do anything to hurt Laura?"
"Because he's a bastard that wants control of her life?" Kara shot back harshly.
"I still just……..you didn't see him when she was sick. You were too worried about her and caught up in your own grief, and I don't blame you for that." Cottle responded gently. "Now, he's never been my favorite person—squirrelly little son of a bitch if you ask me—but he worked diligently, obsessively, and around the clock to try and find a way to help your daughter."
"Which just might prove that he's more of an evil genius than we'd ever imagined." Lee muttered. "Just answer our question: Did Baltar give her any of her medications?"
"Yes, you know he did, you saw him give them to her." Cottle answered. "But they were approved medications from my sickbay, and there was always a nurse that took note of those medications and logged them in Laura's chart."
"Which nurse?" Kara asked softly.
Cottle looked down at the file in his hands. "Nurse Watson, and before that………..Nurse Coaker." He paused for a moment and looked back up at them. "That is, before she—."
"We know what she did to herself, Doc." Kara whispered sadly.
"I trusted them both implicitly." Cottle said bluntly. "Neither one would do anything to hurt Laura." He saw Lee rubbing his eyes in frustration and softened slightly. "What does Laura say happened to her?"
"She doesn't." Kara replied quietly. "She says she just got sick."
Cottle gave them both a sympathetic look. "Laura is different from us, we've always known that. But because of that, we don't always know what's going on in that body and mind of hers. I also gotta tell you, I know I'm just a nuts-and-bolts army doc, but what Baltar was saying in terms of her diagnosis makes a lot of sense."
Lee looked up at him. "We can't get over how we feel, Doc. I know it doesn't seem logical—."
Cottle cut him off. "Not a whole lot of things about this have ever seemed logical." He exhaled loudly. "I'll keep looking for anything that will give us any clues."
Kara and Lee nodded in gratitude and began to make their way out of sickbay. But then Kara glanced over at a nearby desk, to something that was taped up on the wall next to it. She grabbed Lee's hand and stopped his exit, pointing to the object that had caught her attention.
It was a familiar drawing of a cat, and on the bottom, in Laura's handwriting, she had written the word BOY.
"Doc?" Lee shouted, calling him back to where they stood. "Where did you get that?"
Cottle looked at the picture he was pointing to and then back to Lee and Kara. "It was Kathryn's—I'm sorry—Nurse Coaker's. Laura gave it to her a long time ago. And when I went to her quarters to pronounce her death, I saw it there, so I brought it back here to sickbay."
"So this picture was Nurse Coaker's?" Kara whispered, repeating what he had said. "And Laura gave it to her?"
"Yes." Cottle replied, looking at her with concern. "Is something wrong?"
"No." Lee answered, looking to Kara as well. "As a matter of fact, things might be falling into place."
Four hours later, Baltar walked down the hall to the conference room and entered to find Lee, Kara and the Admiral already there and seated at the table.
"Good afternoon." He said to them, causing Lee to stop whispering in Kara's ear and lean back from her, and causing the Admiral to go rigid in his chair. He made his way into the room and stood at the head of the table. "Before we go any further, I just want you to know that I took some time last night, went off on my own for a bit, and thought about the situation that we are all in." He nodded to himself and looked at them with compassion. "My heart would absolutely be breaking if I was in your position, but I also want you to know that my position is heartbreaking as well. I never wished to see Laura in the condition that she is in now—."
"Well," Kara cut him off, gesturing to the other door that Baltar had not entered through. "She's outside, if you wanna see her condition now."
"Outside?" Baltar gulped, his blood turning to ice water in his veins. "Are you sure that's wise?"
"My granddaughter's made a miraculous recovery," The Admiral smiled coldly at him as he watched Baltar struggle to breathe. "Isn't that wonderful?"
Lee took the small stack of forms on the table in front of him and moved them down to where they were in front of Baltar. "We have your medical forms for you."
With trembling hands, Baltar picked up the papers and lifted the cover page, glancing down at the bottom of the next page. "They're not signed."
"Wow. Can't get anything past you, can we?" Kara chuckled before her face grew harsh. "You're right, they're not signed."
"And they never will be." Lee finished.
"You know, there are a lot of words that I've used to describe you over the years, Doc." Kara told Baltar, staring at her hands where they rested in her lap. "Ninety percent of them were not-very-nice words. But there is one word that I never thought I'd ever be able to use in regards to you: stupid." She looked back up at Baltar. "If you ever thought that you would get away with this? If you ever thought that something or somebody wouldn't catch on to what you did or what you were trying to do? If you ever thought that you would actually get a hold of our daughter? Well then, stupid is the only word I can use to describe you."
"I haven't done anything, nothing except try to help your daughter." Baltar told them firmly, regaining his deceptive nature, placing his palms on the table and leaning forward. "The hysterical ramblings of a sick child are not enough—."
"Hysterical ramblings?" Lee repeated, stopping Baltar. "You mean Laura? Laura hasn't told us anything about you."
Baltar paused and stuttered for a moment. "Well, of course she hasn't. There is nothing to tell." He shook his head and got an indignant look on his face. "Then what might I ask has got you on this insane tangent of accusing me of………….what exactly are you accusing me of?"
"Of making Laura sick so that you could manipulate us in our vulnerable state into giving you control over her life." Lee answered simply.
"Why would I do that?"
"Maybe you're a Cylon." Adama rasped. "Who knows? It's not like that frakking Cylon detector's ever been of any use to anyone while it was in your hands."
"Or maybe you're just evil, we don't really know that either." Lee added. "But we do know that we trusted you to help us, and that was our mistake. But now you need to trust us when we tell you………….one way or another, we will find a way to correct our mistake. And when that happens, you'll pay for every wrong you've ever done in your entire pathetic life."
Baltar stepped back from the table. "You have absolutely no proof."
"No, we don't have proof……….yet." Adama confirmed as he stood from his chair. "Which is why you aren't going out the airlock…………yet."
"But there is something that you can do to help Laura." Kara informed Baltar. "You can stay the hell away from her, as far away as you can possibly get."
Adama came to stand in front of him. "But just in case you don't feel that you can comply with that request, we'll make it easy for you." His voice changed to a low growl. "Get the hell off my ship."
"You're throwing me off Galactica?" Baltar whispered in disbelief.
"Well, throwing is such a strong word." Lee snorted. "You're still a quite popular man, and it might not go over so well if we put you in our brig. So that means the only place we'll be throwing you is into a luxury suite on Cloud Nine." Lee's eyes then twinkled. "But we do hope you enjoy the suite………..because we'll have armed marines guarding the door, making sure that you never leave it."
Baltar walked out of the conference room with a burly marine trailing behind him, but then he saw Laura sitting in a chair against the wall about twenty feet down the hallway.
She looked up and saw him too. She then rose from her chair and started to walk to him, he walked toward her and met her halfway until they stood in front of each other.
"Hello, Doc." Laura smiled sweetly.
"Hello, Laura." He replied cautiously. "It's good to see that you're feeling better."
"Yeah, that is amazing, isn't it?" She chuckled softly, lowering her head to look at the floor. "Doesn't look like I'll be having any more lessons with you, though."
"No, it certainly doesn't seem that way." Baltar snorted. "Your parents seem to think—."
"This has nothing to do with my parents." She interrupted him, shaking her head. "I'm the one that never wants to set foot in your lab again."
He froze for a moment before giving her a forced smile. "Any particular reason?"
"Yes." She answered quite simply. She looked over to the side of the hallway. "You know, maybe that whole 'low-latent inhibition' thing that you diagnosed me with wasn't complete bullshit designed to manipulate my family……… because I really do think I have some of the symptoms. I do view the world differently now." She looked back to him. "You see, my whole life, I've always known that there were things that I unconsciously ignored because I couldn't really make them out, couldn't really see them clearly. Blurred images and distorted voices floating around the edges of my existence. But I guess something in my head must've got knocked into place with all that you did to me, and suddenly…………… everything has come into focus."
"Laura, you were very sick, whatever you think you—."
"Do you think I didn't see the blond woman standing next to you all those times?" She asked him harshly. "Do you think that I don't now hear the words she spoke to you as clearly as you heard them?"
"My gods." Baltar uttered in fear under his breath.
"Gods? As in plural? I thought you believed in the one true God." She mocked him. Her eyes glinted and she grew determined. "I want you to know that I am not yours. I never have been, and I never will be." She gestured to the conference room. "I'm theirs. And they gave me the strength to fight this, to fight you."
He smirked arrogantly at her. "You couldn't possibly have enough strength to fight this, Laura."
She chuckled at him. "That's the great thing about family, Doc. I won't be doing it alone." Her face then fell and she grew thoughtful. "But I actually want to thank you, Doc. I was very confused and very uncertain about the choices I would have to make. But as it turns out, you actually made the choice that will lead to yourdestruction very easy for me to make."
He remained silent for a moment as the beads of sweat formed on his forehead and he looked to the conference room. "What are you going to tell them about me?"
She shrugged. "Nothing."
He nearly choked. "Why nothing?"
"Because if I tell them what you did to me, they'll kill you." Laura answered, coming very close to him. "And as lovely as that would be, that justice isn't nearly as poetic as what you have coming to you." She reached up to straighten his tie. "Go tell your girlfriend that her God screwed up. I'm making a change in his plan."
Kara, Lee and the Admiral all walked out of the conference room and saw them talking.
"Laura?" Kara called out to her, nervous at her close proximity to Baltar. "Come on, let's go."
Before she turned and walked to her family, she spoke to him again. "And one last thing…………. you shouldn't be proud, because you had absolutely nothing to do with me being amazing."
Three days later, Six walked down the hallway to the Cloud Nine suite that Baltar had been put in. The guard looked her up and down, noting her scant and provocative attire, but he did not speak.
"I've come to see Dr. Baltar. I've been sent from the fifth level." Six smiled at him, referring to the section of the ship that the prostitutes operated out of.
"Another one?" The guard responded gruffly. "He already had one of you in there yesterday."
Six took a deep breath to try and control her rage. "Did he?" She seethed.
The guard snorted. "Well, it's not like he's got anything better to do." He knocked on the door and waited for a reply.
"YES!" Baltar voice shouted through.
The guard opened the door, Six walked in cautiously and saw him.
He sat in a chair, clothes in disarray—both on his body and flung across the room, body unwashed and unshaven, and a half-empty bottle of liquor in his hand. He looked up at her and exhaled loudly. "Oh, just lovely."
"I haven't heard from you in three days, Gaius." She went to kneel in front of him. "I thought that I would've at least heard from you, seeing as how we're on the same ship now."
"Oh!" He hissed at her, getting up and stumbling from his chair. "So you've noticed that I've been exiled and locked in a guarded room!"
"Of course I've noticed." She hissed back. "I was informed. Not by you of course……" She added through clenched teeth. "But by someone else."
"Who?"
"Another agent aboard Galactica." She told him, finally standing up again and looking at him. "Another model who was there in case you……..in case you—."
"Failed?" He shouted at her, throwing the bottle against the wall, shattering it. "I didn't fail, your God did! Your God and his frakked up plan for universal domination!"
"Shhhh, now is not the time for this, Gaius." She came over to him, soothing him. "It will still happen, there is another way to retrieve our daughter. The back-up plan has already been implemented, but you and I must be there when she is led to us." She ran a gentle hand down his face. "I know you feel discouraged by what the Adamas did to you, but they cannot stifle your destiny. We are in this together. Forever."
He grabbed her hand from his face and yanked it away. "It wasn't the Adamas. It was 'OUR' daughter, she is the one that has 'stifled my destiny'!" He laughed maniacally. "She knows everything, remembers everything—." He pointed at Six in accusation. "Sees everything."
Six's face and body trembled in fear. "How is that possible? She can't possibly—."
"Nothing is impossible in the presence of God, darling!" He mocked her, throwing her past words back in her face. "And the impossible has happened. She is gone from you. Gone from us, I guess—since I now have no hope of ever extracting myself from your poisonous clutches."
"No, Gaius." She cried to him. "That's not true. Surely you must feel—."
"Oh, I felt it alright." He interrupted her again. "For the first time in my life, I truly felt that there was something strong enough to finally give me the comeuppance that I've had coming to me for a long time. And I felt it radiating from Laura when she was telling me that she had never belonged to us." He lowered his head. "I believed her, and you should believe her too."
"There is a way." Six repeated desperately as she moved away from him. "God's plan can still be carried out, it has to be."
He strode over to her and grabbed her fiercely by the upper arms. "This is my life! And your frakking God's plan has frakked it up beyond repair! It. Is. Over."
She numbly shook her head. "No, it can't be. It was promised to us by God. And that promise must be kept, Gaius!" Her voice broke as she held her head in her hands.
He looked at the woman that he had loved for over four years and was overcome by sympathy and compassion. He came over to her and wrapped her in his arms. "You have the Colonies under Cylon control. They're yours and humanity is never going back to them. You've won, take your victory and move on."
"Humanity is a cancer infecting the universe." She mumbled to herself despondently. "It can always come back. There is no victory unless you eradicate it completely."
He pulled back from her in disgust. "I've heard all of this before, and I don't think its any more true than when you told me that your God is infallible. Clearly, your God CAN be wrong, since not much of this has happened the way he said it would." He shook his head in defeat. "The Cylons can move on from this. What difference would it make to them if a fugitive fleet of humans were to find a new home thousands and thousands of light years from where you are?"
"You don't understand, you've never understood, Gaius! How could you ever really understand anything…….. if it doesn't directly affect you!" She sneered at him. "Our entire existence—all that we have been given—rests on the fundamental principle that God is love, that he is perfection. That everything he's ever promised us will come to pass!" Her eyes were frantic as she continued. "If his will is not carried out in this instance, it will prove that he is not perfect. And everything will fall apart. Cylons will begin to rebel against order, question their new lives, question what we've done, and question whether our past acts were righteous or not. Cylon culture is based upon total obedience, if we don't have it, life as we know it will cease and we will disintegrate into chaos."
"I know you don't see it now." He kissed her forehead softly. "But perhaps that is a good thing."
She wept openly. "Gaius, NO. There is still a way."
"I'm sorry." He whispered to her, his lips ghosting over her hairline. "I can't do it. It would be different if you and I actually did have some sort of noble destiny, but we don't. You're just a broken machine, and I'm just the broken man that loves it." He looked into her eyes. "And I really must be broken, because I do love you."
"Your family will suffer if you don't help them." She whispered.
"The Cylons are not my family." He answered honestly. "I only let myself believe, only let you lie to me all these years. I belong to no one. I'm nothing but a bastard that betrayed his own race and caused the death of billions of people. And I know that I can never be forgiven for that." He closed his eyes and a tear fell out the side. "But I won't do it again. No matter how much I love you."
She raised her hands and placed them in his hair. "Oh, Gaius. I love you so much. My whole life has been about you, and I've never once regretted that." She kissed his lips and smiled adoringly. "But you're right…….. it is over. You've lost faith." She pressed her hands further into his hair and grasped the sides of his head. "And you've broken my heart."
She snapped his neck in one swift move and let him fall to the floor like she was freeing a dead weight that had been hanging around her neck. She looked down at him for a moment, then stepped over his lifeless body and walked to the door.
She opened it and pressed her finger to her lips in a silent gesture when she saw the guard. "He's asleep. And he told me that he doesn't want to be disturbed." She giggled, closing the door behind her. "He didn't last very long, guess my friend yesterday must've wiped him out. Either that or he's just not cut out for this kind of thing, which is funny based on everything that I've heard about him."
The guard laughed too and shook his head. "Yeah, he never seemed like much to me. I've always wondered what all the fuss over him is about."
She smiled thoughtfully. "You know, I'm starting to wonder about that myself."
TBC
