Experiment #6 (Absent-Minded Transgression Remix)
Remix Author: Tahlia
Original Story: Experiment #6 by Jengrrrl
Summary: "Without me, Gaius, she wouldn't matter."
Rating: G
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Spoilers: Resurrection Ship
("I had a dream about you, Gaius."
"Not now, darling. Please."
It's a lie. A machine does not dream.)
*
God loves you, Gaius. I love you.
She is warm and trembling, and you can feel the dirt that has been caked into her skin for weeks and weeks and weeks. Her hands around your neck are rough – rough from her brief life as a Colonial officer, rough from the days filled with unspeakable things – and her hands, you are sensing, are not like mine. Not me. There – see? -- I can sense that flicker of memory in your cerebellum, Gaius; I can sense it just as you do, before you toss it carelessly aside. I am that memory.
And you create more and more new memories – new catalogues of perceptions and sensations (the curve of her spine, the bold pattern of crisscrossing scars), with my name pushed neatly aside to make room for hers. 'Gina,' you decide; there is the trigger of a memory, too - of the first woman (you thought) you loved, when you were thirteen. But you cannot suppress me, Gaius; you don't have that kind of control over me. Without me, she wouldn't matter.
Yet you cling selfishly to this belief, this fantastic idea that you've managed to delude yourself into believing – that somehow, in some deeper part of her, this model is different. I have decided not to stop you, because in the end you will only stop yourself. You are such a child sometimes. When she touches your arm and you, for a second, remember our last moments together (perhaps you were not aware that you remembered this at all), that is not my subtle manipulation, or worse, my jealousy.
I don't have that kind of control over you.
*
(Your lie comes from him. "I had a dream about you, Gaius."
His lie comes from within him, as well. "Not now, darling. Please.")
*
God loves you, Gaius. I love you.
When we are apart, this is the place where I go - into this neglected space of your unconscious, repressed out of fear or guilt or some other human emotion. I am myself and I am also you, clinging to my (her) rigid body; I am the floor and the blinding white light and the sound of my own voice saying, "Get. Down." And I am the dull weight on top of you that shields you, is cut to pieces for you by shattered glass from the window; the dull weight that presses into your ribcage and makes it harder for you to breathe. I am that rush of adrenaline and feeling of horror, which together push aside the fallen ceiling beams and force you to runrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrun—
This is where I go, because I know that you are not ready to find me here.
"I am ready to die," she is saying to you, "Send my soul to God. Please." For a moment, you are outside the door of my hiding place, but I know that you will not come in. "Suicide is a sin, but I need to die."
God forgives all.
*
("I had a dream about you, Gaius." You are half-naked, with a flight to Geminon in an hour. You are a loyal soldier, so you allow yourself this one, final indulgence.
He flips over the newspaper, reading below the fold. "Not now, darling. Please."
Everything is about to change.)
*
God loves you, Gaius. I love you.
Lately at night, if you dream at all, it is always the same: a suite on Cloud Nine, dimmed lights, the faint traces of an old-fashioned perfume. You like to believe that I am not there, but I am, silently watching the unconscious neurons in your brain firing sequentially to create this fantasy. I am as much the powerless observer as you, taking in the way that she flinches when you lightly caress her skin, or how she twists painfully away from you when you beg her to stay. Somehow, you believe, this makes her real.
You think that she smells of desperation and need, but even these feelings she cannot take from me. (I need you. I desperately want you to believe in us.) In the end, it is always the curve of my waist and my skin and my smile and my smooth skin that begins the comparisons you are inclined to make as declarations. Humans have a strong inclination for this kind of behavior; I should think your past experience would have led you to this conclusion by now (although I am also reminded of your capacity for self-deception). You love her, Gaius, only because you love me.
And she'll never be able to love you like I do.
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