Writing Colonies XXV: Gaius Frakking Baltar

 Since I'm writing about Aerilon now and I do those "interview" chapters between the Messengers and various characters, it seemed only right to check in with Gaius Baltar, the only regular character from the show from Aerilon.  

If you want to read his chapter (which includes a glimpse of his life with Caprica Six on Earth II), click the JUMP.

I
BALTAR
Unknown Years Before Activation

 

"Hello, Gaius."

He opened his eyes and turned to see a familiar face, and yet one he hadn't seen in decades.  "My God.  It's you."  Six smiled and he nervously looked in the darkness around himself and stammered, "Why, why are you here?  You said …"

"Don't worry.  I'm not back in your life."

"Oh.  Good."  The platinum blonde moved around him in her red dress.  "Not that it isn't nice to see you again, you understand."

"You're dead."

His faint smile faded and he blinked once.  "What?"

"You were seventy-three on a primitive world," Six said, "and that's no small feat."

"Seventy-three."  Baltar reached up to his face and didn't feel the wrinkles he had gotten used to.  His fingers probed toward his scalp and around to the nape of his neck where he felt plenty of hair, unlike his most recent memories.  "I'm afraid you've caught me rather off guard."

He heard a cackling laugh.  An old laugh.  A shiver raced over his skin and he turned to see his father, sitting in that damned old chair, waving the end of his cane at him.

"There he is!  The boy who ran away, ashamed of his family, ashamed of his home!"  Julius laughed again and nearly fell from the chair, "And what happened?  He became everything he ran away from!  He got his hands dirty, doin' a hard days' work," Gaius moved closer to the old man, "he got old and wrinkled, like his father!"

Baltar reached toward him to try and snatch that cane for once and he saw the spots on his hand and the knuckles bent by arthritis.  Gaius withdrew and brought it closer to his face and his father laughed again.

"Frakkin' awful thing, that!  Turnin' into the thing what you hate most?"

Baltar closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  He turned in a circle and looked at Six again.  "Why is he here?"

She ignored the question and looked around him to Julius.  "Why do you hate him?"

"Aye, Gaius," he mocked with an exaggerated version of his Aerilan accent, "why do ye hate me so?"

He ignored Julius and looked into the woman's eyes.  "You really aren't her, are you?  Because she and I, we had this conversation many times."

Six smiled.  "I never said I was her."

"Really?"  Baltar squinted.  "If you did not explicitly say so, you most certainly implied it."

"Mm," she said.  "The question remains."

"Ah."

Julius called out, "Answer the girl, Gaius."

Baltar rolled his eyes and closed them quickly but he did not face his father.  After he took a breath, he looked at Six and said, "You know about Aerilon.  Stubborn and self-reliant to the point of madness.  Perfectly happy to suffer so long as they may do so alone.  I heard a great deal of that working-class hero nonsense growing up and I also knew, at an early age, that I wanted … desperately … to leave."

"Tell her about your accent, boy," Julius said.

Gaius ignored him.  "So I worked.  I worked on myself and I worked to earn money so I could leave and be educated, unlike so many of those around me."

His father tried to interrupt, "He started to talk like a damned Virgan when he was just ten.  Ten!"

Still, Baltar ignored him.  "When one is raised and taught about relying on one's self and one's own accomplishments, I think it fairly natural for that sense to evolve into a kind of selfishness."  Six smiled and he continued, "I built everything I had.  Three Magnate prizes, academic and corporate positions, multiple appearances in media across all the worlds, and no small amount of money …"  He realized he was beaming as he listed his achievements, so he tempered his smile and looked at Six from the side.  "Regardless.  Everything I had, I earned.  I built myself up and therefore was overprotective."

"You sought to preserve what you had, even though it was all lost after the attack."

"Yes.  Though I still had my name.  And my prestige."  The wry grin crept back onto his face.

"Is that why your sense of self-preservation manifested itself so," Six paused as she searched for the word, "flagrantly?"

Gaius chuckled and said, "Yes."  Just as quickly, his demeanor shifted and he looked toward the floor.  "That and no small amount of fear for the consequences of my actions."

Julius shook his head and loudly tsked in the background.  Six looked around Gaius and stared at the old man.  "Why do you hate your father?"

"I don't hate him," he said and Julius laughed again, "I hate everything he represents.  I don't like being reminded of where I came from," he paused and let his shoulders drop, "or who I used to be.  Everything I did for … twenty years was to get away from that place and those people.  Everything I built was a shield, and yet, there were breaches."

Six took his hand in hers.  "Like when your mother died and Julius had nowhere to go."

Baltar sighed.  "Yes."

"In all of your years living on Earth, with her," Six said, "did you reflect on this part of your past often?"

"Of course I did.  We had nothing but time in between maintaining our home or tending our crops or what have you."

She stepped aside and gestured toward Julius.  "He's here.  Is there anything you'd like to say?"

Gaius only glanced at him before looking at her again.  "He's not here."

"What do you mean?"

"I know how you work.  I mean, I can guess at it."  Using his fingers to point, he continued, "If you're you, and he's not some construct of yours, then he's the other one.  The one who looked like me."

His father said, "Gaius, we are imbued with the memories and emotions of those we represent.  I am as much Julius Baltar as she is your Six."

"Yeah, but," he shrugged, "you're not.  And she's not."

"Fine, Gaius," Six said.  "Consider this therapy for yourself.  Your father died at The Regency rest home, right?" 

He nodded.  "In the attack, I presume."

"And how many times did you visit him before that?"

"Once."

"That didn't go well, did it?"  He shook his head and finally looked at his father fully.  "This is your chance to say goodbye and unburden yourself."

"'Unburden,'" he scoffed.  "It's been …"  He looked around the black room.  "I don't know how long it's been."

"You lived another thirty-nine years after he died," she said.  "Did you ever wish you had one more moment with him?  A chance to either fully embrace your past or fully separate yourself from it?"

Gaius' head was tilted downward and he looked up at her through his eyebrows.  He sighed long and hard and slowly walked toward the ratty pea-green recliner that had been in their home on a dairy farm just outside of Cuffle's Breath Wash.  Remembering the details and the smells with each step, his lips twisted and his nostrils flared.  Finally, he knelt before the old man and his eye was drawn to the cane.

"Dad …"

"There he is," Julius said, "using his fancy accent 'cause he's ashamed of us."

Gaius huffed and said, "Can't you make this a little easier for me?"

The elder Baltar leaned forward and said, "Wouldn't be real if it were easy."

The son nodded and said, "Da."  Julius smiled and reclined.  "I've given a lot of thought to my childhood, and how you treated me."

"Mmm," the old man said, "here we go."

Gaius spoke softly and haltingly.  "You may be expecting me to say that I forgive you.  I do not.  I cannot."

"I didn't ask you to forgive me."

"You wouldn't.  Because you were as stubborn as anyone back home."  He straightened and suddenly found it difficult to gather the words that he had occasionally rehearsed in his head so long ago.  "You abused me."  It didn't surprise Gaius when his father began to chuckle.  "That cane.  That image of a cane.  Do you remember when you broke it?"

Julius raised it and looked at it more closely.  "Aye."

"You broke it over my back when I was fourteen.  Fourteen!"  His voice broke at the end and he paused to gather himself.  "I wouldn't dare guess at how many times you raised your hand to me but that was an easy one to remember.  The snap of that wood and the pain shooting through me.  Me, lying on the floor wondering if that was the sound of my spine, and all that fear …"

Julius appeared smug with his lower jaw jutted out and his lip folded up.  "Fear o' what?  Fear that I'd do you in proper?"

"No.  Fear that I was crippled and that I'd be stuck there, with you, for the rest of my life."  Baltar stood up and sniffed before he continued.  "I won't forgive you, but I will ask that you forgive me."  Julius' eyes widened.  "You see, you were who you were.  Shaped and molded by your world and the people around you.  You were raised how you were raised and you tried to raise me the same.  It was all you knew.  That and cows.  So, I can't forgive what you did but I at least can understand it.  I, on the other hand, got away.  I sought to better myself in every manner possible, and by most accounts, I did.  Yet when the time came for me to care for you, I fell into your patterns.  I abused you.  I took out my frustrations on you, both through violence and neglect.  For that, I am sorry."

Julius shook his head.  "'Abuse,'" he mocked.  "I might be old but I can take a swatting with a paper or a broom.  If you want to have a go in the yard for old time's sake, I'm game.  I can still do you in with me hands.  Maybe have a go at your spine again."

"I'm sure."

Six stepped to Gaius' side and asked Julius, "Were you proud of him?"  Gaius scoffed.

"Of course I was."

Baltar's eyes widened and he stepped forward.  "What?"

"You were an ungrateful bastard for everything you did and leavin' home in a rush, changin' yerself, ignoring us, but I saw you on the telly, and you had enough to help when the bank took the farm.  You really made somethin' of yerself."

"You never said you were proud of me," Gaius said as he knelt in front of him again.  "You never thanked me for bringing you to Caprica."

Julius shrugged.  "Why should I have to say it?  I feel it."

Batlar's head wobbled in frustration and he stood again, "Because, sometimes, people need to hear it!"

"You were a selfish git!" his father said.  "And you wanted no part of us anymore, so why should I?"

Gaius inhaled deeply and then nodded.  "You're right.  I was selfish."

"Not always."  Six tilted her head and studied him.  Her fingers brushed over his shoulders and he tensed.  "On Earth, you demonstrated on more than a few occasions a real sense of community.  Perhaps with a disregard for your own well-being.  Especially in the flood nine years after you settled …" 

"Yes," he looked away as if the memory pained him, "I had to help.  I had to do something.  I wouldn't be able to look my wife in the eye if I did nothing."

Six shook her head.  "There was more to it than that."

"Perhaps."

"It was a sense of community, wasn't it?"  She smiled and said, "For once, Gaius Baltar thought about more than himself."

He rolled his eyes.  "More than just the once."

"You changed on Earth.  Really changed."  Six raised her chin and grinned with pride.  "You were molded by your world and the people around you, and made better for it."

Baltar looked up at her and said, "Those four years or so after the attack – aboard Galactica, on New Caprica – were the loneliest years of my life."  Her eyebrows flicked upward and he added, "Save your presence, naturally.  I was profoundly alone and wracked with fear and guilt.  Once that was gone and once I accepted God, fully, into my life," Julius groaned behind him, "I began to feel more at ease, yet still not satisfied.  Once she and I were reunited, and we lived on Earth, …" 

He turned and looked into the blackness.  He closed his eyes and imagined himself there, on that knoll that looked over the fields down toward their house between the two mountains.  The creek shone like silver and the green plants waved in the light breeze before him.  Grass and flowers covered the long roofs of the house which touched the ground, revealing only peeks at the light wood of their walls or the dark metal of a recycled Raptor conduit that was their stovepipe.  When the door opened and she stepped into the sunlight, Gaius' throat clenched and he watched as the breeze caught some of her long, blond hair.

"I was home.  Truly home.  And I was never alone again."

Thanks for reading.