Fic: "A Simple Desultory Philippic" (Baltar - PG)

[millarific]

Title: A Simple Desultory Phillipic
Author: millari
Characters: Gaius Baltar
Words: 417
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
A/N: Exactly what the title says it is. A desultory little thing written for a recent challenge on bsg_epics prompted by the word "fear".

Please, just let it stop. Please, God. Gods. Any variant thereof. Please, just end this. End me, if you have to, but no more of this please, I can't.

I don't know what they want me to know. I never did. I don't know anything. I just wanted to be left in peace with my secrets, with my test tubes and my research.

All right, no. Fine, I admit it. Is that what you want to hear? Yes, I wanted to be special, wanted, admired. I've always wanted that. Since I was a boy. I wanted them all to know, for frak's sake, that I'm someone to take seriously.

But I never wanted to harm anyone. I didn't. I swear! Billions of souls murdered? I could never. Who could ever?

God?

Gods?

Whatever the frak you are.

Are you there?

I don't even know why I'm writing this. I don't believe in you. You don't exist, and I'm just going to tear this paper up into a million pieces once I'm finished, burn it if I can, because if anyone ever found it...

Gaeta is just sitting there, oblivious, swotting away over that asinine task I gave him that won't certainly won't be resulting in a functioning Cylon detector anytime soon. Does he know? No, he can't know; that earnest spaniel would say something.

But he'll ask one day, why the tasks don't add up. Then they'll start asking questions. And then what the frak am I going to do?

I can't take another day of feeling like this anymore, feeling afraid all the time. The waiting for the ax to drop, it's far, far worse, I think sometimes, than just going up to Roslin and blurting out the truth - that I ... that I am responsible ... that I betrayed ...

Am I in Tartarus, God? Am I your vanquished foe, thrown in here to endlessly be tantalized with another day of freedom that might be snatched away at any second, at the wrong word, the wrong result, the wrong bit of luck?

Because please, God, or whatever you are, if you have any pity at all in your heart, just end this, all right? I know that If you actually take me up on this offer, to kill me, I'll probably fight you when you try. But pay me no mind, all right? Just do the deed, and we'll consider ourselves evened out.

Just only please, whatever you do, please make it stop.

Comments

[lorrainemarker.livejournal.com]

Mood most assuredly accomplished. Baltar is one of the most frustrating characters in BSG (at least for me). I want to sympathize with him, I really do, but mostly he irritates me. Then you go and write this and I remember why I want to sympathize with him. Because he really is humanities best and worst traits writ large.

[millari.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reading this! I'm pleased that I can overcome your Baltar irritation. ;O) That's a great way to put it - writ large. He's very irritating at times, too, even I do see that. Weirdly, I think I would be less interested in the character if he weren't so irritating. It's the back and forth of seeing a vulnerable, sympathetic person shifting in and out of total jackassery that I find oddly fascinating. Not in real life though. I think that's the difference. From what you've told me, you've kind of met real Baltars at your job. I would probably find Gaius a lot more irritating if he constantly reminded me of real people I'd known.