"I'd say congratulations are in order, as far as I can tell your lungs sound clear. You should still take it easy and get plenty of bed rest for the next couple of weeks, but the worst of it is over," Doc Cottle declared after listening to Sam's chest.
"Another couple of weeks! Come on Doc, I feel fine," his patient protested.
"You shouldn't rush it Sam, pneumoniawith no antibiotics around to speak of. That can be a lethal combination."
"Don't worry Doc, he'll listen," Starbuck cut in wearily. "If I have to tie him down to that bed he'll follow your instructions."
Doc Cottle stifled the grin that threatened to break out on his face as he glanced between the couple. The look on Sam's face was positively mutinous, Starbuck's furious. The old physician seriously doubted life was ever dull in the Anders household. Sam was the first to look away, the grin splitting his face giving away his intentions. "Well I suppose that it'll be okay, as long as you're tied in here with me," he said. Starbuck rolled her eyes, her cheeks pinkening slightly as addressed the doctor, changing the subject completely.
"Have you checked in on Cally lately, Doc? I saw her the other day, poor kid looks like she's ready to pop."
The Doc nodded. "I figure she's a good two weeks past due. I just hope she goes soon, the longer she takes the more I'm worried about complications. The way things are looking with our med supplies…..well, let's just say I can't guarantee anything should the worst happen."
"How about the Chief? How's he holding up?"
"About as well as can be expected, he's throwing all his frustration, anger and fear into plotting against the Cylons. Normally I wouldn't encourage that, but it seems to keep him from worrying about Cally and the baby."
"Anger and frustration serve no point, it'll just make him weaker, more susceptible," a new voice added quietly from the vicinity of the tent's entrance. The three of them turned swiftly towards the sound. Stepping fully into the tent was a figure familiar to them all.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Starbuck demanded. Sharon Valerii or at least a Sharon Valerii stepped closer.
"I came to help."
"Help?" Kara was incredulous at the very idea.
"Kara, it's all right," Sam said, disobeying the Doctor's orders by climbing out of bed to stand beside his wife.
"She's a fracking Cylon Sam, in case that little tidbit of information skipped your notice. You remember them, right? The ones who took over our world….again," she said in a voice that fairly dripped in sarcasm. Sam sighed, looking towards the ceiling as if he was going to ask some higher power for help.
"She's not like the others."
"Right."
"You used to trust her," he pointed out.
"That's right, I did. Not the first mistake I've ever made in my life, probably not the last either. She fracked us over back on Caprica, or did you forget about that?"
"Starbuck, you need to understand…..that wasn't me on Caprica," Sharon said pointedly.
"Funny, seems like I've heard that line before."
Sharon was quickly becoming frustrated by the direction this conversation was taking. She'd known it was going to be hard task to convince Starbuck of her sincerity about helping the human cause, but knowing it didn't make it any easier to handle.
"She saved all our asses back when we rescued you from that farm on Caprica, you trusted her then," Sam said, gently reaching out and turning Kara so that she faced him and he could look into her eyes.
"Yeah, that was a long time ago too. And if I remember correctly I was still flying pretty high on whatever it was that they'd drugged me up with, so I may not have been using my better judgment that day. But you should also remember somethin'; she's already pointed out that that wasn't her."
"She still saved both of our asses that day, whether it's the one here in this tent or not I don't really care. What I do know about this one right here, she's saved my life twice now, so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt."
"Is that right? Keeping secrets from your wife now are you? So thrill me. Tell me all about how our great savior over here saved your life," Kara finished, mockingly tilting her head in Sharon's direction to indicate she was talking about her. If looks could kill, the one Sharon sent towards the back of Kara's blonde head would have been lethal.
"For one thing, she's been bringing me antibiotics for the last week or so, that's the real reason behind my sudden recovery," Sam began.
For the first time in over a year Helo missed one of his weekly visits to Sharon. It was after their big blow up, when he'd finally had it with her self pity and anger. At first, she just thought he'd been unable to get away from whateverduties he'dbeen dealing with since the jump away from New Caprica. Although he had never said anything about it, she'd noticed the new rank on his uniform, he was a Captain now. The rumor she'd heard from the guards was that he'd been made CAG of the Pegasus. She'd been surprised at first, he wasn't really a pilot, he sat second seat on Raptors. But then the rumors persisted and got more detailed. Starbuck had shown him the ropes flying Vipers. The Old Man had allowed the promotion to go through because there just weren't enough qualified pilots left filling the ranks on the two battlestars.
As one week stretched into two with still no sign of Helo she began to worry. What if he ran into trouble out patrolling in a Viper? She knew it was SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for the Old Man to instigate regular fighter patrols of the fleet when under alert. And they were definitely under alert now. Would anyone even bother telling her if he was injured, or worse yet, killed?
And if it wasn't trouble on a patrol, what if he'd finally given up on her? It wasn't something she'd ever honestly considered would happen, and that shook her all the way to the center of her programming. She'd come to rely on his unwavering faith and love in the face of the certain knowledge that the rest of the human fleet would never trust her. Most of the humans that made up the fleet would love to see her killed.If it wasn't for the fact that the Admiral still considered her a military asset, she probably would be dead by now.
Near the end of her second week without Helo visiting, she finally spoke to a guard when he warily entered her cell bearing a tray of food. "I need to speak with Captain Agathon."
He sneered, sullenly responding, "All visitors must have the Admiral's authorization."
"Is that why he hasn't been here? Did the Admiral order him not to visit me anymore?" she demanded, almost relieved at the thought that maybe Helo's visits hadn't come to an end of his own free will.
"Negative on any change in standing orders. I guess your little boyfriend finally wised up and got sick of his little Cylon whore."
"I need to speak with Captain Agathon," Sharon demanded more forcefully.
"You need what we tell you you need. I lost my family back on Geminon when your kind attacked. And I just lost a lot of really good friends back on New Caprica to your kind too. You ask me we oughta just frag your ass and dump it out the airlock," the guard retorted angrily before exiting the cell. Sharon followed him to the door, pounding viciously on it as it closed behind him, still hollering her request.
"I need to speak with Captain Agathon! I need to speak with Captain Agathon!" Her cries expectedly went unanswered and she eventually slid down until she was seated on the floor, her back to the door. Despondently, she sat there, pondering her next move.
"Gaius? Gaius?" Caprica Six asked, standing before her former lover. After all those months of his haunting presence lingering with her on Caprica, it was hard to see him this way. He seemed to be losing his grasp on his sanity right before her eyes.
"I….I have to know. Are you…are you really here? I mean, of course you're here, but are you here here?"
She reached out, running a hand lovingly across his cheek.
"Of course I'm here. You feel that don't you?"
"Well that…that's the, uh, that's the problem. You see, I've felt you here, a thousand times, but no one else could see you. For awhile I even thought that you….that you, uh, might have put some sort of, uh, chip, a Cylon chip in my head. I figured that you were….that your people were using it to control me. With thoughts of you. That somehow they knew that you were my weakness." He smiled and gave a little self-deprecating laugh. "And that probably makes me sound as crazy as I feel."
"It's okay Gaius," she told him soothingly. As he'd rambled on about Cylon chips and seeing her when nobody else could she realized he'd been suffering just the same as he had. She smiled. "You're not crazy."
"I..I..I wouldn't be so sure about that. What I mean…what I'm saying is that it's just not sane to be seeing a woman who isn't there. To be talking to her, touching her and being touched by her. And knowing all that time that nobody else can see her, that's she's all in my mind." He pulled away from her, collapsing back on the sofa he'd had added to his office area on Colonial One. Six sat beside him. "It was actually a comfort thinking that there was a Cylon chip in my head that was making me have visions of you."
"What made you decide there wasn't a chip in your head?" she asked, seeing that slowly their conversation seemed to slowly be having a calming affect on him.
"I had the bloody doctor run every test he had on my head. And after every test result came back it was the same thing, nothing. I think the doctor thought I was a little mad by the time we finished. But you, well, not you really, my imaginary you had told me I wouldn't find any kind of chip."
"I need to tell you something Gaius."
"What? Am I a Cylon?" he asked, his face going pale at the thought. "Was I programmed to see you like I did? Was that how I kept in contact?"
"You're not a Cylon, Gaius."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
"Well, it was a comforting thought while it lasted," he said sadly. It would have explained so much had he been a Cylon. She smiled at his irrational rationale. One moment he'd been looking like the thought of being a Cylon was going to make him physically ill, the next he sounded depressed that he wasn't.
"After my body was destroyed during the nuclear attack, my consciousness was downloaded into the main consciousness. I don't know how long it sat there in limbo until being uploaded into a new body, but when I was reborn, my first thoughts were of you. In that first instance of renewed consciousness, I was back in your house, overlooking the lake and it was like not a moment had passed."
"I can't even imagine…."
"No, you can't," she said cutting him off before he could start ranting once more. "I started seeing you."
"You what?" Baltar couldn't keep the surprise and amazement from his voice.
"You weren't alone in seeing someone that no one else could see Gaius."
"I noticed you haven't visited the Galactica since you and Kat hammered out the patrol schedules," Dee said, sitting down across from Helo in the Pegasus' chow hall. She'd spotted him sitting alone in a corner, listlessly pushing his food around his plate.
"I've been busy," he responded absently.
"I noticed you've been flying extra patrols, there's no reason for you to be pulling double duties Helo, all you're gonna end up doing is burning yourself out and losing your edge."
"I need the extra flight time Dee. I'm supposed to be the CAG and at least half of my pilots can fly circles around me."
Silently she debated whether or not she should broach the topic of Sharon. She peered closely at his face, taking in the distracted look in his eyes, the way he was pushing his food around and not eating. It wasn't the Helo she knew, and having a CAG distracted by personal issues could get someone killed.
"What about Sharon?"
"What about her?"
"Don't play games with me Helo. This is Dee. I'm the one who makes sure you have orders that take you to the Galactica at least once a week. You always take twice as long to procure supplies then it would if I sent someone else, so don't pretend you don't visit her. At least you were up until the last couple weeks. What gives? Lover's quarrel?" she asked, trying to lighten his mood.
"Lover's quarrel. You have to have two people in love in order to have a lover's quarrel," he responded despondently.
"I know you're still in love with her," she prompted.
"Love on my side was never the issue."
"What about her?" Dee was genuinely curious about their relationship. It just didn't seem right that a man could fall in love with a machine. But machines weren't supposed to have feelings, but watching the behaviors of the Sharon Valerii Cylons since the colonies were attacked, she wasn't entirely sure that it was impossible. There was definitely something different about them, at least compared to that little rat Doral.
"I don't know. She used to tell me she loved me, now I'm not even sure it's possible for her to love. She's just a machine."
"You really believe that?"
"No. But it'd be so much easier if I could.