In the Presence of Mine Enemy
The grey dress uniform rubbed against her skin, a sensation that was at once familiar and unfamiliar to Sharon. Boomer's memories led her to expect the scratching discomfort, but it was the first time she had experienced it herself, like so many other things. As she fastened the last button and examined herself in the mirror, Sharon tried to push Boomer's memories out of her mind. It was bad enough to be wearing the other Cylon's uniform, carefully hoarded due to scarcity aboard the ship and now freshly brought out of storage; she didn't need the other woman's memories intruding on a day that she had earned with her own blood, sweat, and tears as Sharon Agathon.
Her husband, already dressed, waited patiently at the door, a serenity she had never seen before on his face. "Come on, we can't be late," he reminded her gently. She nodded, a nervous smile touching her lips, as she followed him out.
The corridors of Galactica felt empty, but Sharon was glad of it. It reminded her of a similar emptiness, one caused by eagerness to settle on New Caprica, that had allowed her the chance to prove her loyalty to this crew. Even though the emptiness now spoke of the thousands marooned, Sharon knew that without it, she may very well still be locked in a cage of glass and steel. As she walked through the corridors, her dress shoes clicking faintly down the hall, only then did Sharon realize she did not need to project onto her surroundings. She was exactly where she wanted to be, seeing exactly what she wanted to see.
Karl slowed, catching her hand in his as she caught up to him, and smiled at her, his entire body radiating the shared pride they felt, and Sharon couldn't help but smile back, for a moment losing herself in those eyes. "Thank you," he said as they came within sight of Adama's study and he dropped her hand, slipping temporarily out of his role as proud husband and into his role as XO. She said nothing; they both know this day meant as much to him as it did to her.
Entering the inner sanctum of the heart and soul of Galactica, Sharon's eyes were drawn, not to her husband, but to the man standing in the middle of the room. The man who, through sheer presence and courage, had led the remnants of the human race through horror unimaginable. The man who had been gunned down by a woman who looked exactly like her, but who had still learned to trust Sharon despite what she was for who she is. Admiral William Adama.
Coming to a stop in front of the admiral, Sharon raised her hand in salute as she recalled the long, torturous road she'd taken to this place.
She hadn't seen it then, having been too bitter, too frustrated, too consumed by the tiny thing growing in her womb to open her eyes and see. Though confined and shackled, the Admiral had begun ordering her into his presence, allowing her a change of scenery from the dreary cage of steel and glass she called home. During those meetings, he had offered her a seat at his table, waiting until she settled in before speaking.
His opening question had always been the same. "Boomer told us there were eight Cylons in the fleet. Who are they?"
She always refused to answer, and, at the beginning, he had pressed her. But slowly, as the days passed, he'd stopped demanding, but never stopped opening with that question. It became a sort of ritual between them, a greeting and offering of concern couched in terms acceptable for bridging the chasm of bloodshed and history between their peoples.
Still, even in those days, Adama had been kind. He had accepted her for what she was, a dangerous prisoner, and used the intelligence she gave. Looking back, Sharon suspected a part of him understood her, understood what she'd given up and why. Boomer's memories of Commander Adama had been few, mostly of admiration for the formidable man in blue, but interspersed were scraps of gossip about the Old Man and his wives, the intensity of his capacity for love and hate. Sharon liked to think that Adama remembered his own loves and that those memories had helped him understand why she had stayed with Helo.
But in those days she had been blind, still too full of hatred for humanity as a whole to understand, to appreciate, his little kindnesses. She had been too busy pouring her frustration into words, telling him that humanity was a flawed creation that didn't deserve to survive, to notice that he paused and looked on her with concern when the baby kicked, or when she felt nauseous in the middle of one of their meetings.
She had been too wrapped up in herself to realize Adama had tried his best to shield her from the Fleet when she was a prisoner. Only now, staring into his eyes, did Sharon realize just how hard it must have been for William Adama to see, day after day, his attempted killer's face, the face of a woman he'd cared for as one of his own.
The weekly visits to Adama's study had stopped after Hera's birth, after her death and Sharon's subsequent spiral into the abyss. Even now, Sharon found it hard to remember anything from that point in her life; she could only see darkness, flashes of anger so white hot and grief so all-consuming that she shrank away from them in fear. Looking back, she wondered if for a time she had truly lost her mind, and was amazed by the fact that Adama had not ordered her airlocked. It would have been much easier to dispose of an insane Cylon like any broken machine. But William Adama had stayed his hand, preferring instead to wait it out, to will his prisoner back into her right mind, as if she had been human.
And one day, her mindhad cleared. There came a point when she could remember more than just swirls of emotion, that she remembered her name was Sharon. And she had been angry then too, angry at Helo, at Adama, at Roslin, at herself, at God. At the entire universe for making her capable of love and all the cruelties it entailed. Looking back, Sharon had to laugh. For being a Number Eight Model, renowned for their compassion and empathic nature, she spent the vast majority of her life angry.
Even after she had reemerged from her grief, she had very little contact with the Admiral. Perhaps he had been afraid of her then, or perhaps he'd felt guilty for supporting Roslin's attempt to forcibly abort her child, or perhaps he thought the loss of Hera had made her less likely to help humans. Whatever his reasons, Sharon didn't see William Adama for months. The only contact she'd had then had been Helo and the Marines keeping watch over her. Helo and the Marines had all been wary too, back then, as if her descent into madness had reminded them just how different she was from them. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they had been wary because it showed them just how much she was like them, how loss and grief affected Cylons just as deeply as they affected humans.
But one day, she had lost count of how long it had been, the Marines had come again, the familiar shackles in their hands, telling her that the Admiral wanted to see her.
When she stepped into William Adama's study, the Admiral had merely gestured to a chair in front of his desk, waiting until she'd seated herself before speaking.
"Boomer told us there were eight Cylons in the fleet. Who are they?"
And they had slipped again back into their routine. The Fleet discovered New Caprica not too long afterwards, and the intelligence Adama sough became less about evading the Cylons and more about keeping their people safe should they settle on New Caprica. Still, every meeting, he would open with the same question. And still, Sharon refused to answer it.
It must have been a month, maybe two, after Gaius Baltar won the election when it happened. From Helo's visits, Sharon had heard whispers of vote tampering by Laura Roslin, though she said nothing of them to Adama, Sharon had seen that something was affecting the admiral. Perhaps it was that crack in the great Adama façade that triggered her sympathy, the look in his eyes as he asked the familiar question that said he didn't expect an answer and didn't care, that made her answer differently for the first time.
"Boomer told us there were eight Cylons in the fleet. Who are they?"
"Admiral, what do you see when you look at me?"
The deviation from their script had shocked Adama, and he had stared at her, uncomprehending, for a minute. She'd returned his stare steadily, showing no deception in her eyes. She still remembered his words.
"You're a prisoner of war," he had said, "who has been surprisingly cooperative with providing intelligence."
The memory of his words still made her smile. He had been neutral in his response, neither calling her a person, nor a machine, a toaster. It had been the omission of the latter that made her smile, and her response had been careful, mindful of the fact that she had only one chance to make him understand.
"Do you ever wonder why I won't tell you who the other Cylons in the Fleet are?" He had said nothing, merely taking a seat next to her, waiting patiently. "Admiral, I've told you what I am, why I was sent to Helo on Caprica. I've also told you why I stayed with Helo, not just for my child, but because I loved him. And I think you believe me, though you won't admit it to anyone else, certainly not Laura Roslin."
"I'm not Boomer. I've always known I was Cylon. But from Helo I learned that I was capable of love. I believe in God more strongly than ever because of it. And it was love that made me see that maybe humanity isn't worth destroying, that maybe it does deserve to survive." She still remembered the way her eyes had dropped to her hands, unable to face Adama's piercing gaze as she confessed her greatest hope.
"I want my people to learn that, Admiral. Not only that they're capable of love, but that they're capable of loving humans. That knowledge changed me, changed who I am. I just want them to have that chance. I don't think a handful of Cylons finding out that they can love humans would change the war you're fighting, that's why I'm helping you against them. But I can't deny those of them that are already here that chance at enlightenment, that measure of salvation."
Her explanation had stunned Adama, and Sharon had turned away from him, allowing him the privacy to digest his shock. She had reached for the charts laid out on his table, and begun discussing strategy, the best places to place warning beacons, the contingency plan most likely to be successful should the Cylons find New Caprica.
It was a week after that conversation that Adama had poured tea for her, and had begun slowly extending her privileges. She was never without an armed escort, but she was allowed into the mess, the pilots' rec room, the gym. Sensitive of the crew's less enthusiastic response to her presence, Sharon had not taken full advantages of those new privileges, but she had understood the spirit in which they had been given, and had been grateful.
She stood in front of the man now, seeing the pride in his eyes, a pride that was no less fierce than that she knew was mirrored in her own face as well as Helo's. "Raise your right hand and repeat after me." Sharon did as he bade and intoned the words, feeling that as she spoke them, they were etched into her very soul.
"I, Sharon Agathon, do now pledge my faith and my loyalty to the protection of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and will carry out the lawful orders of my superiors as an officer in the Colonial Fleet."