AN: This comes from a place of anger known as "Dammit, one hit and you are OUT THE DOOR, sister!"
Spoilers: Up to LDYB II
Pairing: Cally/Tyrol
Disclaimer: So very much not mine.
Summary: Cally wasn't born big, and power never came easy.
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Power Play
Cally's first taste of power came hot and red in a jail cell. He'd come at her and she'd just bit and hoped for the best. What she got was a bullet to the stomach, but all things considered, it could have been worse. Some things are better than dying, and some are infinitely worse.
Spitting blood and worse, she'd held her guts inside her and realized that, for the first time in her life, she had power. It wasn't much, but it was enough.
Cally wasn't born big, and power never came easy. Growing up it was all being smart and finding money, and then finding a place to make money when she realized she'd never find enough. She had the brains for dental school, but not the bank account, and fixing teeth was a bit like fixing engines. She would see the worlds before she settled, and that was enough for her.
When he comes into sick bay to beg for forgiveness, she finds a new kind of power. All she has to do is forgive him without a moment's hesitation and he will spend the rest of his life making it up to her. She will never want for anything again, and in these times, that is as important as it gets. So she does, and when her stomach curls up, she tells herself it's just from sitting up after being laid out for so long.
Every time he touches her, she remembers. Ears and fists and cells and hanger bays - they all become one hell in her mind. But hell is all around her on this rock they've been forced to settle on, and at least her hell is warm and fed. As the baby grows inside of her, she finds herself too tired to hate anything at all. She yells at the strikers, not to support her husband, but to make them shut the frak up.
She is the firecracker, the one that puts the spine into the Boss. She is reasonably sure he hates her as much as she hates him, but he owes her too much and he'll never leave her.
She has all the power.
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fin