Kara closed her eyes to the concerned faces of her family, and...somehow she knew that more time than she was aware of passed before she opened them again.
When she did, a grey ceiling high above her met her gaze.
There was something soft beneath her, and within the same instant as that realization, she was moving.
Lurching upright and to the side, lunging away from the danger before it had even fully registered in her mind, hearts hammering in her chest before her body had even properly moved.
Her outstretched hands collided with the floor quicker than she'd thought they would, and her fingers clawed into the metal grating as though it were the only thing stopping gravity from reversing.
Metal grating.
It wasn't tile beneath her feet, beneath her desperate hands, it was dark metal grating, and her sharp eyes quickly caught the sight of more metal flooring a few inches below her.
Her head snapped around in all directions as she struggled to take in as much information about her surroundings as she could, her legs drawing up automatically beneath her so that she was in a kneeling, almost-crouch, her lips pulling away from her teeth without thought.
She recognized where she was, but it didn't make any sense.
It was Athena's cell. The metal and glass cage they had built for her, to protect them from her, and her from them.
Why had the Cylons put her in here? Why had they gone through all the trouble of building this place for her?
All of the details were exactly as she remembered them, even the little chip in the metal of the door.
Why had they done all of this? As another one of Leoben's frakked up plans to mess with her? Put her in the same cage they'd put Sharon in, as some twisted way of trying to alienate her from her own people?
Why had they put her in here and why-
She spun around, a snarl on her lips, towards the spot she had awoken in-
Only to relax a moment later, when she realized what it was that she had been lying on.
It wasn't a bed, not even close. It was a pile of blankets, hand-woven and scruffy but as clean as they could possibly get, and exactly like the ones she'd had back in the room that liked to pretend it wasn't a cage.
Staying in place one moment more, she peered around suspiciously before moving in an almost crawl back toward the blankets, suddenly feeling a rush of relief and possessiveness wash through her.
She grabbed onto the edge of the topmost blanket-there were at least four of them, and another one rolled up to form a pillow-and pulled it closer to her, bringing it to her face to smell.
But disappointment and unease quickly washed away the relief that had been so short lived. These weren't her blankets, these weren't the ones Sunny had traded Leoben's furniture for. They were similar, almost exactly the same, and they were even all the exact same shades of off-blue and orange that she remembered, but they weren't hers.
She had spent so many nights with those blankets wrapped around her as the only thing keeping her sane, the only things that could hide her where Leoben couldn't see her, the only things untouched by his blood on her hands, or his gaze on her.
He hadn't given her those blankets, he'd had nothing to do with them. Sunny had gotten them for her, and he'd made sure Leoben never went near them, because they were hers.
Kara edged away from the blankets, her heart keeping up an unsteady beat in her ears.
It was the only sound in the room, she realized mutely. Her new cage was barely fifteen feet across long ways, and a hell of a lot shorter than that wide. If she stood in a corner it would only take a few steps to reach the other side.
And she was alone.
Even past the shield of metal and glass that separated her from the larger room around her, she was alone. Sunny was gone, Leoben was gone, Cerberus was gone, and there weren't even any other Centurions standing with their backs turned toward her, or visions of Cottle or Adama or Sam.
The room was silent, and she was alone.
Kara sat back on her heels, letting her mouth close over her teeth again as some of the fear dissipated, giving her space to think.
But except for the pile of blankets that weren't hers, that Leoben had probably gotten to replace the other ones hoping she wouldn't notice just so he could control everything she owned, the cage was empty.
There were no tables, no chairs, no shelves, no nothing.
Athena had been given books to read.
The Cylons had taken away her daughter, they'd taken away Sunny, they'd taken away Cerberus, and now it seemed that even Leoben had been removed from her presence. She didn't know how long it had been since she'd left seen him, but his absence wasn't as much of a blessing as she wished it were.
He'd always told her how he was the only one keeping her safe from the rest of the Cylons, that he was the only one keeping the Fours away. Leoben might have been madder than Dionysus drunk on Ambrosia, but Kara had seen first hand what the other Cylons were capable of.
Her shoulders twitched spasmodically before she shoved the offending thoughts away, gritting her teeth as she instead focused on her hands, which trembled in her lap despite her efforts to still them.
There was no way she could get out of this place, not by herself. Cylons were far stronger than humans, and this cage had been built to contain one. If the Cylons had followed the original design to the T, the walls and glass would be impervious to any attempts by her to damage them.
But that didn't mean she couldn't try.
Kara slid to her feet, and noticed for the first time that her clothes had changed again. Now she wore an unfamiliar white button-up shirt that seemed to be at least two sizes too big, and plain black sweatpants. Her shoes were nowhere in sight, and a pair of mismatched white and off-white socks kept her feet from touching the cold metal of the floor.
She wanted her green sweatshirt back, but anything was better than a hospital gown.
She wasn't going to think about how she had gotten these new clothes or who had changed her into them, so she strode over to the closest wall, fists clenched at her sides.
She had just lifted one to strike the glass when a chill ran down her spine, and a curious voice asked, "What are you doing?"
Kara spun around without even commanding her feet to move, too shocked to stop the fist that was still moving through the air, now aimed, not at glass, but at a face.
Cerberus yelped loudly at the sight of her fist flying towards his head, and real fear replaced the startlement that had forced her to turn in the first place.
Cerberus ducked, his hands flying up to shield his face, and Kara desperately tried to abort her swing, her feet stumbling over one another as the momentum of her punch threw her off balance.
Moving too quickly to stop entirely, Kara managed to redirect her arm away from Cerberus, but her feet were going in a completely different direction, and before she knew it, she was on the ground, pain erupting in her elbows and arms where they connected with the metal floor with a shaking clang.
Feeling like all the air had been torn from her lungs even though she'd managed to halt her fall on her arms, Kara's wide eyes quickly sought out the young Two, terrified that she'd hurt him.
But he was still crouched where he was, peering out from below his hands at her with cautious, worried eyes.
"Are you-are you okay?" Her voice came out as a rasp, and she cleared her throat, suddenly realizing how thirsty she was. "Did I hurt you?"
She wanted to say, I didn't mean it, but the words caught in her throat, refusing to meet the air. She wasn't allowed to say those words, not when she'd hurt him before.
To her relief he shook his head, and slowly got to his feet.
She stayed where she was, doubled over on her hands and knees with her forearms pressed into the grating, trying to calm the frantic surging in her chest that was making her feel too light, like gravity really was going to release her from its grasp and let her float away, unchained.
"Please-please don't sneak up on me like that." Her voice was shaking more than she liked, but that didn't matter. They were alone.
Slowly, carefully, she pushed herself into a sitting position, staring around the small cell, another question pushing at her for attention.
"How...did you get in here?" She looked toward the door, but it was as firmly sealed as it had been before.
Cerberus shrugged, looking nervous as he offered her a hand to help her up. "I...I don't know. I just am. In here, I mean. I opened my eyes, and I was here." He frowned. "How did you get in here? Why aren't you in the infirmary anymore? Aren't you still sick?"
She didn't know how she'd gotten in here, so she couldn't answer that question any more than he apparently could. She lifted one shoulder in a weak shrug, taking the hand he offered her, and using it to pull herself to her feet. "I was trying to get out." She admitted.
A moment after the words left her mouth, she wondered if she should have said them at all. Cerberus might be friendly, and he might be innocent, but he was still a Cylon.
He didn't seem to realize any of this, and just frowned in confusion for a few moments, his eyes shifting over the small cage as though seeing it for the first time. His eyes widened. "You're trapped in here?" He asked, voice rising in worry as he took a few steps closer to her, peering around at the corners of the cell as though monsters were lurking just out of sight. "Why did they put you in here? I thought they were your friends? They're supposed to help you."
His voice trailed off into an uneasy whine, and as though he didn't even realize what he was doing, he wrapped his hands around her arm and pressed himself to her side like a frightened child, leaving her standing stock-still, unable to think of a proper reaction.
But Cerberus was moving again before she even had to, pulling away slightly and tugging her by the hand so that she would follow him as he led her towards the door. "They shouldn't be keeping you in here." He said firmly, "If they don't have you in the infirmary anymore, then that means you're well enough to move around, so there's no reason for them to keep you in here. This is your home too, and they should celebrating your return, not locking you up again."
He released her hand so he could press both of his to the door, and braced his feet against the floor.
Kara barely had time to register what he was trying to do before the metal around the door frame groaned loudly, like some deep sea behemoth creature in pain.
Hearts pounding, Kara backed away as Cerberus gritted his teeth, forcing all of his strength into the door and its ever-weakening frame.
The metallic groan turned abruptly into a screech, something shifted, like a bone being jerked out of place, and Kara flinched, hands clutching her arms, even as the impossibly strong door fell to the ground, leaving a gaping wound in the metal where it had been.
Apparently this Two was stronger than most Cylons.
Cerberus looked from her to the door and back, and seemed to deflate slightly when it registered with him that her breathing had gone heavy, the pride he'd worn at his accomplishment quickly fading as he hurried to her side.
Kara could barely breathe. She felt the wound in the metal like it was a gaping hole in her side that had punched straight through her ribcage and into her lungs.
Cerberus was apologizing, over and over and over again, looking frightened, even as she moved with shaking, stilted steps towards the hole in the wall, and past it out into freedom.
The socks she wore didn't stop the jagged edges of the metal frame from cutting into her feet, and she flinched away from the new source of pain, feeling suddenly and inexplicably exhausted.
Put it back.
Cerberus hesitated, pausing half-way through the motion of moving to her side, and took a step backward.
"I...I don't think I can fix it." He said anxiously, twisting his hands behind his back in guilt, "I broke it already, I can't fix it. I'm sorry!"
He lowered his head, his back bending slightly as though he were bowing in submission.
I will fix it. Put it back.
Kara could feel the air around her, and the metal around her, and the humans and Cylons and animals around her, and the vacuum of space around her, and the stars blazing around her, and it all came circling back, and circling back, and circling back, and circling back. Infinite. Never ending.
Cerberus bowed before her.
The world lay at her feet.
Her blood formed beads on the cold metal floor.
Cerberus moved to lift the fallen door back into place, and she felt it move the air around her, felt it move through the entire world.
Cerberus lifted the wounded door back into its place, and she lifted a hand toward it, moving the air and everything with it.
The metal moulded back into place, shreds and splinters twisting and twining around one another and climbing through the web of the cage, expanding and growing, forming a new barrier infront of the door so that no one would be able to open it again.
She was tired of being locked away, and tired of watching innocent souls getting captured in the dark web of the world.
All of this had happened before, and she wasn't going to let it happen again.
The circle had gone on too long. She didn't want to be locked away in darkness anymore.
She was going to nurture the spark that Ced had started, and together they would set the world on fire.
…
Lee clenched his hands, once, twice, three times, at his sides, trying to get feeling back into his numb fingers.
Nerves glittered like steel through his veins, making his chest feel tight and forcing his heart to race.
They'd moved Kara out of the infirmary, and they'd put her in the Cylon holding room.
He'd argued with his father until it felt like he was going to explode with anger and frustration, but the Admiral hadn't bothered wasting a breath on him more than necessary. The only words his father spoke were quiet, and grim. "If it were up to you, Lee, she'd still be down on that rock. She's spent the last five months in a Cylon prison camp. If Cottle says being in the infirmary is causing her too much stress, then she won't be in the infirmary."
He'd wanted to demand to know why she was being locked up in a cage like an animal, but everyone had heard about how she'd almost opened fire on refugees in the hanger. She'd shouted and raved like a woman gone mad.
And then she'd even attacked Helo, and Lee knew how close they'd been. Agathon was the only friend he'd ever known her to have. She had acquaintances, and comrades, and enemies, and lovers, and she had fans.
But friends?
Kara didn't trust anyone enough to have friends.
Except for Karl, and except for Sam.
Lee didn't know what she was to him anymore.
He couldn't call her a friend. You didn't leave a friend to die in a Cylon prison camp. Everyone knew what the Cylons had done to their captives during the last war. He'd known Kara was down there, he'd known they were all down there.
But he had responsibility, and it went beyond his own personal wants and needs. Kara had her gods and her scriptures, but the only thing that existed for Lee was the here and now, and while she'd been down on New Caprica, the here and now had been the few thousand people left aboard the Galactica and the few other ships that had been in the air when the Cylons attacked.
It was no different from when the colonies had fallen. They'd gotten lucky, they could escape, and there was no point in going back when all it would be accomplishing was their deaths. They had to flee, had to get to safety, and had to stay there.
The human race was on the brink of extinction, and if Lee had to be the one to make the hard decisions, then he would do that.
He'd chosen to keep the remnants of the fleet away from New Caprica, even as his father was gathering volunteers to return. They couldn't risk their entire species just for the chance to save a few more lives.
Whatever decisions he'd made afterward, whatever decisions he made now, that was one he would never regret.
But still…
Would Kara be able to understand that?
After everything she'd gone through-the kidnapping, the mind games, the torture, and the terrible, terrible thing he'd heard whispers of that he didn't even want to contemplate.
The very thought was...it was just horrible. Kara Thrace-Starbuck, the Queen of the Vipers who would never need or want a king-the woman who wanted nothing to do with children, who'd made it painfully clear to Zak that if he was looking for kids he'd have to marry someone else...it was impossible.
But Kara had been seen holding a child in her arms during the escape, and though most people argued that they hadn't seen anything of the sort, some swore that the child had been taken away from her by another woman, and that that was the cause of her meltdown in the hanger, not the sudden crowd of people after months of isolation, like others suggested.
No one who hadn't seen it themselves could figure out what had actually happened, but since those who said they'd seen a child could actually agree on what they'd seen, while the rest of the theorists were constantly in argument, Lee had chosen to believe the unbelievable truth.
He didn't know how, and he didn't know why, but he knew that that child people had seen was important to her.
And he also knew that no one had seen the child since, or the woman who had taken her from Kara. They'd disappeared into the crowd, and then they never reappeared.
The Admiral had sent search teams all over the ship once he was told what had happened, but they'd turned up nothing. Even when President Roslin sent out a mandatory census of every ship still in the fleet, still nothing.
Children were hard to miss these days. And none of them were the one Kara had called "Kacey".
Now Lee had to know.
He lifted one hand toward the metal of the door to knock.
Something shifted in the air, and sound far beyond his range of hearing caused Lee to look over his shoulder.
For a moment, he blinked, trying to clear his vision as a wave of dizziness washed over him.
Then he blinked again, and his vision was clear.
For a moment, his shadow as it lay on the floor seemed to grow darker, and Lee could have sworn he saw stars shimmering in his silhouette, as though he were seeing clear through the entire ship into the outside world.
Then a lioness stepped out of his shadow as though it were an open door, as though his shadow stood upright on the wall instead of on the floor, and she sat down and curled her tail around herself, and looked up at him with curious amber eyes.
For a moment, Lee didn't move, barely even breathed.
Then the moment passed, and he blinked again, and his shadow went back to normal, and he shook his head, and turned away from the lion, and raised his hand again to knock.
He hadn't even noticed putting it down in the first place.
"Atia…" The name came to his mind without thought, as simple as knowing without a single doubt, just as he would know how to answer his own name if someone asked. "Wait out here."
He didn't turn to see how she reacted, because he knew that she wouldn't argue. She might not agree, but she wouldn't argue. Not after everything that had happened.
Lee knocked on the metal door, and had to wait only a few moments for it to be opened.
The marine waiting on the other side was one that he had seen before. It was the same marine that had been the first to run to Kara's aid when she returned from Styx with her stolen Raider, barely alive from oxygen deprivation, dehydration, and hypothermia.
Altair had fallen out of the bottom of the ship first, his little wings useless with exhaustion as he slammed hard into the hangar deck. Then Kara tumbled out after him, and for one horrifying moment Lee had thought she was going to crush him.
But she'd landed a few inches away, leaving him safe from further harm.
That was when the marine had run forward, and the shocked spell over the hanger had broken, and people got their heads screwed on straight enough to help her.
Lee couldn't remember his name, but he recognized Lee immediately.
He was the one responsible for the destruction of the Pegasus. Everyone knew who he was.
Lee could see the man's gorilla standing behind him as he blocked the door, looking apologetic. "I'm sorry, sirs, but no one is allowed in without Doc. Cottle's express permission."
Lee didn't know how to react at first, but he heard Atia start growling behind him.
The marine-Lee knew his name, he knew he did. It was something with an H, right?-shook his head and held up his hands. "I'm sorry, sirs, but my orders were clear. I can't-I'm not even allowed to let the Admiral in without the Doc's permission." He made to close the door, and Lee was half tempted to get in his way.
But at the last moment he thought better of it, and stepped backwards, his mouth pursed in aggravation.
The marine visibly relaxed, and with only a single nod to acknowledge his cooperation, the door was shut very firmly in Lee's face.
He took another step backward, and another, and another, until he was at Atia's side again, staring at the door just as he had been five minutes before.
Nothing had changed.
He had come all the way down here, and for what?
To know nothing more than he had before.
With anger rising like fire in his chest, Lee clenched his hands firmly at his side and started back the way he'd come, Atia stalking at his side, her head lowered dangerously and her tail flicking in warning for others to stay away.
Nothing had changed.
But now they had a new destination in mind.
It was time they talked to Cottle, and got their answers.