With props to James Callis, for being mesmerizing, pathetic, and
smackable in the remake of BSG. Sometimes all at once.
"Don't you think I would tell you?"
"As if you were ever forthcoming, darling. Your love doesn't
include honesty, does it? Just necessity."
She is hovering over him again. A fantasy, a phantasm, a
fantastic fascination, the untouchable essence of beauty and
devotion that lives in between the photons that others see. He
hates her more than he has ever loved anyone else, quite
possibly including himself. Gaius suspects that if he told her this,
it would either please or enrage her, and self-preservation and
self-loathing keep him from engendering either.
He can not think of her by her human name any more. Not
knowing what he knows. The sixth of twelve-- and if his mind
occasionally goes to luridly detailed imaginary meetings between
himself and all eleven surviving copies, it more often cringes
away at being relentlessly pursued by all the versions of his
Cylon stalker. Unless, of course, it's only memory. Random
associations firing and framing his guilt, the guilt he does not
feel, because-- because only small people feel guilt, of course.
Brilliant people cope with adversity, with reverses in fortune.
Geniuses adjust. Madmen do both at once, cope and break,
twist and persist. But he is not mad. Because he would
know if he were mad.
Unless he isn't a man. Which would explain so very much.
"You said, and I quote, 'we should record your brainwave
patterns.' How do I know you didn't? If you could inject me with
a chip that allows me to see you, then surely a simple
electroencephalogram reproduction isn't beyond your abilities."
"Of course. But why would we? We were about to destroy your
entire race. Creating a copy of Gaius Baltar-- while it would be
amusing-- wasn't necessary for our success. You'd already
served your purpose."
He smiles at her, watches her bend closer, all pale glowing skin,
scarlet lips, and white-gold hair, and thinks of lamias and blood-
drinking wraiths, of ghosts that steal into a man's bed and
appropriate his soul. He can almost believe that he smells her
perfume, and surely, surely a chip in his head could not recreate
that.
If he didn't know he was too strong to break, he would be happy
to be mad.
"Yes, we both know how very clever you were. One can't fault
your competence in serving your god. Or at least, your vision of
him." He tilts his head back, studies her through his eyelashes,
and she dips close, almost brushing her lips against his, pulling
back only as he whispers into a space that should be warm with
her breath. "There is no possible way I could have walked out of
my home alive, not when the bombs hit so close. I have a blank
space in my memory after the house collapsed. The first thing I
remember is running across the field to the Raptor. I don't know
how I got there; that could be your doing."
Her lips curve in a smile of absolute delight and awe. "Is that
what you're telling yourself? That I made a copy of your
consciousness? Created a body for you, as a Cylon? That you
feel no guilt because you're one of us?"
"You could have done it." He does not feel guilt. It would be
insane to take responsibility for all the events he could not
control, and he is not insane.
But he can, sometimes, wonder why he doesn't. Can fear that
his guilt has taken shape out of emotions he can't access or feel
properly, and that the shape it has taken is her. Then he
wonders if Cylons can feel such an emotion, if the deaths of four
billion people ever strike them as anything other than necessary.
Wonder if he is still in shock, in denial, or if he is simply
everything she said he was: selfish to the core. "If you can
create such-- perfect-- copies of humanity, copying any single
individual would be child's play."
"Could have. Maybe. But would have? Why?"
"Because you love me."
"That's true. I love you for your mind. So clear, so focused... If
that was preserved, the shell would hardly matter." She places
her hands on his shoulders, slides downward onto his lap. And
that can't be body heat he perceives, no chip ever built could
do so much (except, he realizes, it could; if sited correctly, it
could tune into his limbic system, make him believe anything it
wants, that cold is hot, that air is weight, that pain is love.) So
he doesn't move, doesn't touch the perfect body brushing
(illusion, all deception) against him, doesn't respond (even
though his body wants what it wants and he has never denied it
any desire).
"And to give the Cylons one more agent to control."
Six looks thoughtful, seduction held in abeyance the way it is
when she talks about souls and love and truth. If Baltar were
capable of love-- and he freely admits that he never
contemplated the concept as applied to himself-- and if she
were not who she is, he might have loved her for her occasional
gravity, the strange depths that offered more than a moment's
pleasure. Tantalizing thoughts went through her mind,
inexplicable in their illogic, offering the distracting solution to a
puzzle, the lazy entertainment of picking out order among their
chaos.
But she may have killed him, may have betrayed him even more
than he knew, and done it all for a possessive urge he has
always abhorred. So the potential for love will never be a factor
again.
"If I did, it doesn't seem to have worked, does it?" She smiles
gently at him, then strokes a ruby fingernail down his temple,
across his cheekbone, down to his chin, half-caress, half-threat.
"So I think you just disproved your hypothesis, Gaius. If you
were one of us, you certainly wouldn't be working against us so
vigorously. If not entirely efficiently."
"It proves nothing." Baltar holds himself rigid, does not lean into
her touch. Does not reach up to break a neck that isn't there,
or pull her down for a devouring kiss from ghost-lips.
"No?"
"No. I could be a sleeper, left to be activated later when most
useful. Or so you and your cohorts might think."
She gazes at him through half-lidded eyes, a lioness too sated
to attack. "And why would we be wrong?"
His smile is unfeigned, pure malicious joy. "Because, my dear,
sweet hallucination. My prerogatives are stronger than any
programming you might have implanted." He grabs her wrist, and
she almost flinches away as he brings the hand to his mouth for
a soft kiss. "Survival. Success. Self-determination." He lets go of
her fingers, which curl around his chin, lingering, seeking. "You
won't win. Not this time. I will."
The sunburst smile she bestows on him is indulgent. "I'm
counting on it. I love you, Gaius. That's why I wanted you to
survive. More than any minor plan or stratagem. Love is God.
And God wants you to live."
"So I can love you back. Someday."
"Someday," she agrees.
"And if someday never comes?"
"Never is a long time, Gaius. And I will never die." She brushes a
kiss across his earlobe, and whispers: "And maybe you won't,
either."
When he opens his eyes, she is gone, not even a lingering scent
or trace of warmth to tease his senses. No hint as to whether
she has any more substance than a day dream. He gets up from
the chair slowly, and paces his small cabin in even, measured
strides.
Mad. Or a Cylon. Possibly self-obsessed. Quite delusional. Or
artificially generated. Or simply egomaniacally narcissistic. All the
same, really. Human or Cylon, mad or sane, he feels no guilt.
Baltar stops in front of the small porthole in the wall, and smiles
cynically out at the stars. If she disappears some day in the far
future, he will face that the culpability is his and his alone. Take
responsibility. Privately, of course. No need to mention it to
anyone else, or jeopardize his work, the survival of thousands,
for what he truly couldn't control. Until then, he will cease
questioning himself, and work towards the preservation of the
Galactica and by extension, himself. She is responsible, not he,
and as long as she continues to torment him he won't have to
forget that.
If Six knows him as well as she thinks she does, she had to
know he'd come to this conclusion. It is perhaps the best
available proof that she loves him.
Baltar lies down on his narrow bed, closes his eyes, and begins
to construct the lies he will need to protect himself tomorrow
and the procedures he will need to out any other Cylons on the
battlestar, and ignores the warm weight that shifts next to him,
the arm that encircles his waist, and the blonde head that
droops against his shoulder.
