To Fake You
Shouldn't be too hard to convince him to stay and start a life
together. If not, kill him. Can you handle that?
-Six, Flesh and Bone
The cabin is exactly where she says it is. Helo can't believe their luck as he roots through the tin cans in the kitchen, and you sit quietly on the edge of the bed.
There's enough stuff here to last at least a few more months, he laughs as he pulls out med kits from underneath the kitchen sink. You think that it was much too easy bringing him here, and getting him to stay will be easier still. He'll find the well out back and start to think that you could really live in this cabin. Galactica will become a distant memory, and when he sees you peel off the last layer of your uniform, he'll forget what it means to go back home.
His body is a terrain stretched out in front of you, dips and curves that resemble the hills of Caprica before all this destruction. A part of you yearns for that kind of peace, but you know that feeling is not really yours. You're full of memories that were downloaded from the other Sharon, the one that doesn't know who she really is. You're jealous of her, because when it comes time for her to betray the people that she loves, she won't feel a thing. Helo's hands stray past the boundaries of your back, your breaths come out in gasps, and you hate that you won't be allowed the same oblivion.
The doubling of your past is strangely unsettling in its openness. You have new memories that run parallel to your own, and sometimes you have to remind yourself which ones are yours and which ones aren't. It's becoming much too easy to slip into that other Sharon, especially with Helo's scent all around you. When you go through her memories, you find it almost laughable that she never noticed Helo's sidelong glances, his tentative touches, his constant nearness. It seems almost impossible that the man so in love with Sharon was the one to end up stranded on Caprica, and you're forced to think of all the infinite factors in the universe that had to line up for Helo to arrive at this moment, here, with you. God works in mysterious ways, but it was Helo's choice to stay behind, and you begin to wonder if this is fate or love or both.
Helo chooses love, touches you in a way that leaves no room for doubt -- this is human. You kiss him because you can't stand the way he looks at you, with those wide, careless eyes. Eyes that could never hide anything, which you think is a dangerous trait for a soldier to have. When he's inside of you and staring at you like that -- like you could never be the one to hurt him -- you have to turn away. You have to shut your eyes and instead memorize his body with your hands.
Because when he looks at you that way, you see everything. You see the universe spread out before you, you see all the seemingly random events that had to unfold to lead him here to you, and you know -- with the same kind of certainty you have in God -- that you could never betray him.