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Helo sleeps well, most of the time, if Sharon is there with him. It’s when she’s not that he jerks awake, hands reaching urgently to the spot where he thinks she should be, must be. Ever since they fell in love, he’s lived with constant fear and sometimes exhilaration. If it weren’t for the occasional respite, he’d probably go mad. Or maybe he’s already mad, and in the rest of the overwhelming insanity that is every day on the run, every day cheated from the times he should have died, would have died, his own madness goes unnoticed.
He read somewhere once that if you can still wonder if you are crazy, you probably aren’t. Helo’s pretty sure he’s not quite sane. Sharon’s curled against him in a tight little ball, not at all the way she usually sleeps, which is sprawled on him in any way possible. He’s woken a few times in the past months to find her face down in his shoulder, over him like a blanket, hair in his mouth, hand in his face- and there’s nowhere else he’d ever be.
Tonight, she sleeps like she’s expecting a blow. She probably is. He is. He told her earlier that they were probably coming for him, or her, and they haven’t come yet. It’s crueller to let them sleep like this, or in his case pretend to sleep, waiting for the fist to come pounding on the door. It’ll be Apollo, maybe. That changed, hard, enraged, ugly Apollo, the one who wears black and directs assault teams on baseships. The one who wants to annihilate a race of people.
Helo’s never been afraid of anything, really, not spiders or bugs, or unpopularity, or death, or pain. The idea of being blind unnerves him a little, but he doesn’t fear it. That Apollo, the new one- he finds him frightening. It’s like Apollo’s been bent by something beyond his control and twisted into a new shape, unrecognizable. The same man who winces at the mention of his brother, or of the Olympic Carrier, now wants to kill, and kill, and kill.
Sharon would have allowed her people to die, because of a vow she took. For the same reason, Helo had to allow them to live. It wasn’t about himself, or Sharon, or even Hera, although without them he might have become as angry as Apollo. Maybe. Revenge wasn’t a real part of his nature, not as much as forgiveness. You couldn’t be friends with Kara Thrace without having a pretty heavy ability to forgive. Forgetting didn’t hurt, either.
He hadn’t killed the prisoners because of some misguided idea of fairness. Or even right or wrong, although he was utterly and completely against the idea of genocide. He’d done it because Adama had once said, “We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything we’ve done. You cannot play Gods and then wash your hands of the things you have created.” And because watching the Admiral with Sharon all those long months orbiting New Caprica had showed Helo that he wasn’t the only one who could understand that there were different Cylons, that they weren’t all homicidal machines. A Cylon had taken responsibility for the humans multiple times.
And he’d let the air out of the holding cell and he’d taken responsibility for an entire race’s survival. Two races, really, if Gaeta was right and the virus could never have wiped out all the Cylons. He looks at his wife, balled against his side, and sifts his fingers through her hair. The only thing he’s afraid of, has ever been afraid of, is losing her. If that’s the price the Gods ask of him to save them all, he might be able to pay it.
He’ll watch over her as she sleeps, for as long as it takes. Because this sin, at least, won’t be visited on the children.