DISCLAIMER: Battlestar Galactica is the property of Glen A. Larson, Sci-Fi Channel, R & D TV, Sky and NBC Universal.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
SPOILERS: Up to episode 3x02
We are collapsed in the act of just being here
By sheepfairy
1.
After they kill Three, the first thing they do is hide. The humanoid Cylons only take up a small section of the city, and they end up seeking refuge in one of the thousands of apartments buildings that have been deserted.
The electricity in the apartment doesn't work but the water is still running, and Sharon is glad for the chance to wash off the dirt and blood from the explosion. Six is still weak from the explosion, and Sharon has to help her stand in the shower and bandage her up. She thinks that with anyone else it would have been horribly awkward, but some how Six makes everything seem comfortable and right, even gently scrubbing down a naked woman that she's only known for a very short time.
Sharon thinks that crawling into the long unwashed sheets of a person killed months ago is more than a little creepy, and so once they're clean they go to sleep curled together on the floor. Tomorrow, they will have to go back out and start preaching the message.
But for now, they will find some comfort away from the others.
2.
Among the Cylons prayer is usually performed alone, in the sanctity of one's own mind. In the vast Cylon collective, it is the closest thing to experiencing individuality that most of them will ever get.
The humans had done it differently - they had held elaborate ceremonies on the holy days, and religion had always seemed like more of a communal thing. There had been solitary prayer when people really needed it, but Sharon still wonders where the Cylon temples are, why they don't have holidays, and how do they all know who to believe when both sides are claiming the support of God? It's not as if they have a religious hierarchy to clear things up.
It is these things that bother her about the Cylon faith, even more so than the drop from twelve gods to just the one.
One day, when Six leaves the rest of cadre of supporters for the privacy of her own room, Sharon follows her and asks if she would mind any company. Six shakes her head and smiles at her, and together they go to her room and kneel on the cold hard floor.
Six starts to say her prayer, out loud but in soft low voice, with her hands tightly clasped around Sharon's. Sharon does her best to memorize the words, but when she stumbles in her own attempt at a recitation Six tells her that the words don't really matter anyway. It's the act of belief that has meaning.
So Sharon kneels in a comfortable silence with Caprica, and she hopes and prays and waits for the love of God to wash over her.
3.
The first few months of the revolution were frantic, but once their power base was secured Sharon and Six had found themselves a lot more free time. Now, as they drift in space searching for their chance at absolution, all it takes is a simple excuse to the centurions and the Cylon fleet can run itself.
This leaves time for the things that Sharon has missed since the frantic, desperate early days of their relationship, like the feel of along Six's hip bone under her fingers and the surge of pleasure that washes over her when Six uses her tongue on her labia.
It's not exactly like it was in the beginning, which is probably for the best. It's slower and more relaxed now that they don't have the fear of a violent and permanent death hanging over them. Sharon worries some about how her world is going to change if they find the human fleet, when they will have to deal with Gaius and Tyrol and Helo and all the other baggage from their pasts.
For now, she will focus on the life she is living in the here and now, and it's own particular charms.
4.
The leadership committee of the New Caprican Occupation Force is beginning to drive Sharon mad. There are always people hanging about, getting under foot and asking her endless questions. The Two who runs the military operations is always demanding more relaxed rules of engagement, the Ten in charge of agriculture seems to think that asking about the new fertilizer shipments every five seconds is going to make them come faster, and the Three in charge of social relations wants to know when she can start forcibly converting the pagans.
Sharon had known that running an occupation would take a lot of work - she just hadn't realized quite how much work, and how frakking mind-numbing it would be. She couldn't care less about average monthly wheat yields or the wording of the new curfew announcement, but it seems absolutely vital that she knows. People are always in an out, and she knows that it must be even worse for Six and it makes her wonder how the other woman even gets up in the morning.
Until one day, when she doesn't wake up to some assistant demanding her attention, but simply because she is no longer tired. And then she discovers that it's just her and Caprica Six.
"Where did everybody go?"
"It's unfortunate," says Six, "but they were in an early meeting, and the humans managed to sneak a bomb in. They'll be reborn, of course, but we're going to be running things alone for a few hours."
Sharon could ask why the entire cabinet was in the same place at the same time, and how the humans managed to find out when and where they were, and a whole host of other questions that are going to have to be resolved before they're all re-born and demanding answers. But right now Six is giving her a wicked little smile, and Sharon decides that she has better things to do with her time.
5.
It's the tenth week of the occupation when she feels the explosion rip through her like a tornado, and after a second of scorching heat her body is nothing but ash in the wind.
She is still screaming when she wakes up.
And then there are soft, familiar hands running down her hair, calming and comforting.
"Hush," says Six, "It's just me. It's all going to fine."
Sharon rests her head on Six's chest and lets herself cry from the shock of it all. She remembers the last time she was reborn, and the shock and the horror of finding strangers with her face. Waking to see someone familiar and loving makes all the difference in the world.
"Shhhh," whispers Six, and Sharon feels her breathing start to return to normal as her sobbing subsides.
"You know I wouldn't let you go through this alone."
The End