Title: Better With You Here
Rating: M for potentially disturbing imagery
Length: ~1550 words
Warnings: Potentially disturbing imagery. Spoilers through 2x04.
Disclaimer: BSG 2003 and all of the situations and characters that it encompasses are the property of Ronald Moore and the Sci-Fi Channel. They are very definitely not mine.
Notes: This fic would not exist had it not been for the amazing patience and support of cricketk, cupidsbow, maharetr, and oxoniensis. (See, this is why I don't write more: Because it takes an entire army of support staff.) Despite various types of helpful, beta-y comments that they've made, all mistakes are mine, because god forbid that I post something with no last minute changes.
Summary: Breathing. She is not dead.



There are twenty-three bars between her cell and the next cell; There are seventeen across the front, and another twenty-three down the opposite side. The back wall is solid. The ceiling has a metal beam with forty-three screws in it, and one divot where a screw is missing. Her blanket is five feet long, which is just long enough to either cover her feet and not her shoulders or her shoulders and not her feet. The cot is eight handswidths wide and 20 bars long. She can close her eyes and describe the exact dimensions and contents of the cell.

She sees Boomer, sometimes, and she can never tell if it's her Boomer or Cylon-Boomer. She's not sure that there's a difference anymore. Did she know Boomer before she was a Cylon? Was it a Cylon who had greeted her the first day on Galactica?

She counts screws on the ceiling; she counts bars between the cells. It is better than thinking.

*

Cally is dreaming. The moon is full, and the stars are heavy in the night sky. She knows the constellations that hang low, knows them from childhood on the flags of the colonies, knows that this is Earth. She is surrounded by a circle of monoliths, high on a hill, and far below there are lights flickering like candles, like home. And she moves, she leaves the circle and its protection and starts to head for the lights, and the closer she gets the dimmer the lights are, and she is running, is breathless, is almost there, is alone in the dark and the lights are gone, and the stars still hang low and she looks up and sees that they mean nothing, nothing at all.

*

When she wakes up, Boomer is in the cell with her, looking irate.

"You have work to do, Specialist. Starbuck's Viper needs the fuel line replaced; all of Hotdog's controls are offline. You're supposed to be on duty now. Who's in the bay if you're here?"

Cally shakes her head, and Boomer comes and sits next to her.

"You shouldn't be here, you know. The Chief will have to cover for you."

Cally doesn't know what to say, because no, she shouldn't be here, and it's not like she'd never covered for Chief, and Valerii was a Cylon -- a dead Cylon -- and why is she in the cell with Cally anyhow?

"Why are you here?" Cally asks, and she doesn't think that it's what she was trying to say.

Boomer looks at her oddly, "Is it better when I'm not?"

Cally starts to shake her head but Boomer has disappeared.

"No," Cally says to no one. "No, it's better with you here."

*

Every time Cally closes her eyes, she is back on Kobol. The home of the Gods, and it twists her stomach and makes her want to laugh, because she knows now that there are no Gods, not on Kobol, not anymore. There is nothing sacred there anymore, and she wonders if that's why the Gods left.


On Kobol, the sky is flickering red and it is raining. Cally closes her eyes; she doesn't want to see this. There are people, people everywhere, and they are frantic, they are dying. There is a -- a what? A temple, she thinks, knowing that she is right. There is a temple, and an altar, and people are dying. The red on her shoes is not mud.

Cally shakes her head. It wasn't like this. It wasn't like this.

It was just like this.


Cally is seeing red and she can't move. She is frozen with her back to the tree and Crashdown has his gun at her head and she is breathing breathing breathing and she can't see and she has never killed anyone before, not even a toaster, and she is still breathing and she wishes that he would just do it and she would be done with all this, and she would die here in the land of the Gods and maybe this would be over.

She recoils from the shot and thinks ‘this isn't so bad', and gasps relief. Breathing. She is not dead. Crashdown has slumped against the tree and his eyes have gone blank, and her shoes are sticky with something that is not mud, and Balthar -- why is the vice president here? she thinks wildly -- looks shocked and stunned and Chief is already moving and Cally is just breathing and she doesn't know why.

*

The Chief comes to see her. He stands near the door, next to Venner's desk, and puts his hands in his pockets, and Cally can't meet his eyes.

"You're out in thirty days, Specialist."

His voice is comforting, and she waits, eyes squinched tight, for him to say something else.

"Don't do me any more favours."

Before she has opened her eyes, she hears the snick of the door closing and she is alone again.

"It was her fault," she whispers to the air. "Her fault."

*

...the blaze pursued them, and the people of Kobol had a choice: to board the great ship or take the high road through the rocky ridge where the body of each tribe's leader would be offered to the Gods in the tomb of Athena.

From the dry meadow and the cracked ground sprang forth a wide river, upon which rode a great ship. From those who had not yet perished in the scourges that plagued the earth there formed two groups. The founders of the colonies boarded the ship, and were swept with it downriver to their destiny. Those who did not board the galleon took the rocky ridge that led to the tomb, away from the seas of fire and death that overtook the plains, and the price of passage was exacted from them in blood.

The ground is shifting, revealing its bones. She doesn't want to look; she already knows what will be revealed. She knows -- knows -- that the price of mankind's return to Kobol is more than they will be able to pay.

*

She's not allowed visitors, technically, but they let Starbuck in, and Cally is sort of surprised to see her because it's not like they'd ever been particularly close. Starbuck walks up to the bars and reaches through and laces her hands together behind Cally's head, pulls Cally's head up against the bars so that their foreheads are resting together, and Starbuck rests her palms against Cally's sphenoid and lets her fingers splay.

Cally realises that Starbuck is shaking.

"I did it, too," Starbuck says quietly. "Shot her, I mean. Tried to, anyhow. On Caprica. It was all --"

And Cally knows what Kara is trying to say and she nods minutely, the skin of their foreheads dragging together, pushing against the bars.

"On Kobol," she says, "on Kobol it was --"

And she meant to say "wrong," maybe, but the words are escaping her. Kara seems to know somehow, though, and is nodding and Cally's face is wet but she's not sure that they're her tears. It's not allowed, but she weaves her arms through the bars and cradles Kara's head as best as she can from the awkward angle.

They stand like that a long time, until the guard changes and one of the security detail jostles at Kara with the butt of his rifle. Starbuck looks at him a long time, then turns to go.

"Seventeen days down, Specialist," and she is gone.

*

There are bodies stacked like cordwood near the altar, skin pulled tight over skeletal faces; fleshy protuberances rent open, spilling viscera and blood across the white stone; mortified flesh mottled with circular stains; filthy, naked corpses. A tall blonde woman stands near them, her mouth moving silently and her nose leaking red-tinged foam. The woman sets fire to the bodies and collapses in the smoke, coughing.

Finally Cally is able to look away, but she can hear the woman's coughing increase and turn to gagging, to vomiting, and then go quiet.

The ground shudders under her feet and there is a great rumbling sound. She stumbles to her knees and watches in horror as the land falls away from itself not far from her, splitting wide and taking anyone in its path. She shoves herself up and away, and she runs.

*

"You want to get pissed at someone, you get pissed at Boomer. She's the o­ne who put the Chief in the cell here, not us."

Jammer's words echo in her head, and she is furious, furious. "Boomer did this", she thinks, "Boomer did this; Boomer did this".

Cally sits in her bunk and practises, going through the motions over and over again. "Okay. Cock the rifle, click the safety, open the scope. Cock the rifle, click the safety, and open the scope." She can do this; she can do this for the Chief, she can do this for all of them, for Tarn and Socinus and even for Crashdown.

Cock the rifle, click the safety, open the scope, and shoot.

Watching Sharon fall, she doesn't hear a sound.

*

"It's better with you here," she says to the air.

Venner looks at her. "What?"

Cally shakes her head and looks around the empty cell. "It's nothing," she says. "Nothing."