The Lioness, Witch, and the Black Widow
A/N: This was written for the AO3 exchange Crossovering 2017 for tielan. This is largely a gen fic, but there is mention of Athena/Helo and minor implication of Roslin/Adama.
When the Cylons attacked, Laura Roslin's life had already been falling apart at the seams. She'd just been privately asked to resign from her position in the fourth circle of Queen Adar's governing court and notified her consort was done with her in one devastating meeting. A few hours later, the healer she'd consulted had informed her even the most advanced medicines, talented healers, and largest healing webs available on Caprica together could do nothing to halt the spread of her cancer. Before she'd even had a chance to begin to process any of that, the Twelve Colonies were lost in a wash of nuclear destruction and she found herself in charge of the tiny contingent of survivors. Tiny in comparison to all those they'd lost, but an even more massive weight on her shoulders and conscience for their devastatingly low numbers.
When the dust had mostly settled and they were past those first horrible days of near-paralyzing shock, though, Laura was an Opal-jeweled Queen and she did not allow herself to crumble. Not when she had to rebuild almost her entire personal court and add wider circles to govern what was left of the Twelve Colonies besides. She had to choose people more for expediency than affinity, but she was hardly the only one. Only five large ships out of the whole fleet, ships constantly crewed by a live-in court, hadn't lost at least one member from their circles in the attack and exodus. So much of the darker jeweled Blood was lost in the cataclysm, and as hard as it was to bring together a functioning court that didn't get torn apart by intrigue and politics, it was so much harder when you had little choice in the members.
She had done it, though. Through strength of will and standing by her decisions, even some she'll forever regret, the fleet has continued to survive and if the Darkness is merciful, they will find and settle on Earth. Laura even managed to find a decent balance of power with Bill Adama, the cranky Warlord Prince that held onto the reins of the remaining military without being beholden directly to any Queen. In another life where keeping the government and the military separate wasn't so vital – but there was no point dwelling on impossibilities. Galactica was one of the many places in the fleet few courts fully reformed. Whether their society as a whole would change into a less centralized system or whether things would settle back when they finally found Earth, Laura looked forward to finding out.
Unfortunately, now, as she stands at the podium of the second debate, doodling with a pen to keep her hands from shaking, she tries to deny the sensation of everything falling apart again. Listening to Baltar's voice promising the people of the fleet an easy out? She feels that same swooping, sinking feeling in her gut she'd felt that first awful day when the world fell apart. She struggles not to let it show in her expression. The Priestess had convinced her they needed to go to Earth, and she feels a pull towards that distant, unknown place deep in her bones, singing in her blood. She's never had any training in the Widow's craft, and yet she feels it with an undeniable certainty; Earth must be their ultimate destination.
When that errant raptor had accidentally stumbled over a habitable planet, she hadn't intended to give it a second thought. Yes, the planet had breathable atmosphere, potable water, and reasonably arable land with plant and animal life. Still, those qualities were only true for a small percentage of the planet's surface area. It was nothing more in her eyes than a decent place to replenish their stores and refuel.
Then she'd gotten the reports back from the survey teams. The planet also has a solid, terrestrial web of power. The lines of power connecting planets within a system, or running between the distant stars themselves? The strands of those webs are thin, temperamental, highly variant, and just plain strange in comparison to those of a planet. By the time anyone in the fleet from the lightest Jewels to the darkest had begun to get a feel for how to reach into the Abyss in any one location, the fleet was jumping and they had to start all over again. Ultimately, it has meant that working more than the most basic of basic Craft has been simply impractical since they fled the Twelve Colonies, even for those used to living largely ship-board.
As Tori told her, the people in the fleet miss the open sky, non-recycled food and air, and their own homes. They miss not being in constant fear of a Cylon attack. It would be hard enough to fight the irrationality of hoping for those things on this planet. Coupled with the ability of the Blood to use their powers again? For the Queens to connect to the land again, and feed that link back through the Blood, grounding them all? Even she can feel the empty space where that need has been denied for too long.
Laura listens to Baltar sell the lie of a safe home where they can regain all of those things right now to the people of the fleet, and knows she's going to lose the election. After it's over, she finally goes down to the surface of the newly christened New Caprica herself. Even when she feels the connection between a Queen and the land zing through her the instant her feet make contact with the surface, it still feels fundamentally wrong somehow. Having lost the election because she couldn't bring herself to lie, she can only fear what else they will all ultimately lose.
A year later when the Cylon ships scream through the atmosphere overhead, part of her is actually relieved the shoe has finally dropped.
...
The early models, the Centurions, they felt no call to the Darkness. They had no access to the webs, no ability to reach into the depths of the Abyss. They were essentially metal landens, lacking even basic Craft.
The Ones always said this was obviously deliberate on the part of the humans that made them. Even their hubris, Cavil said, would not have reached far enough as to so empower those they saw as naught but servants. The inability of even newly produced models to reach into the Abyss is an unfortunate flaw of their underlying design. Of course, Sharon had noticed Cavil always seemed to dislike the humans even more than the rest of them and his opinions were not always as logic based as he liked to claim.
If you asked the Sixes, they would say it was because humanity had never been comfortable with the true darkness of the Abyss in the empty reaches of deep space. How could those early models created by human hands compare to those of them born among the stars? There was a plan, the Cylons had been created by the Darkness to use the delicate webs of the universe. The Sixes insisted that if they were patient the Darkness would show all Cylons, even the Centurions, the way to a deeper connection to the Abyss in due time. Sharon had never been sure if their opinions on the subject came from something they had seen in their tangled webs, or if poetical mysticism was just something built into the model's basic personality.
Whether it was poor human engineering or the greater plans of the universe is irrelevant. The Centurions and Raiders remain landen, despite it having been forty years now since the Cylons have been reliant of humanity to evolve, but all of the human-form models are Blood. As of yet, none of them have earned Jewels from the darker ranks available to humanity. It's one of the few things that the Ones and Sixes agree on, that it will simply take time for them to develop the ability to handle such dark power.
The Ones don't visibly wear Jewels at all; Cavil thinks that the Darkness as a thinking entity is a silly fairy tale. While he agrees the powers of the Blood are useful, he claims no patience for personally learning to use them. Sharon isn't even entirely sure he ever made the Offering, that's how well he keeps himself shielded from the rest of them. Unsurprisingly, Cavil also doesn't believe in Witch, which has long been a minor point of contention between them and the Sixes. If the Ones didn't generally view the beliefs of the rest of them with an almost paternal indulgence, it would no doubt cause more conflict.
The Sixes are Black Widows all, and have been speaking for years of seeing Witch coming in their webs. It's something they've been saying almost as long as Sharon can remember. At first they'd claimed she would be the first Cylon Witch, but after the attack on the colonies, her visions had apparently changed. The newest incarnation of Witch, who hadn't appeared in the colonies for three generations, would be a combined dream. Witch had come in the past from smaller dreams of just Picon or just Caprica City, or larger dreams made flesh for the colonies as a whole. This time, Caprica Six said with certainty, the dreams would be from human and Cylon dreamers together.
The Ones had scoffed loudly, before deferring and changing the subject. Her model, the Eights, they've always been conciliators. Telling the other models one-on-one - or the majority when they're all together - what they want to hear. She's always changed allegiances easily, never truly committed to any one thing. What did it matter to her where their connection to the Abyss came from? Or how it might change in the future? What did it matter if Witch was coming or if Witch was just a myth? It didn't even matter to her when the other models found her erratic and naïve.
None of it really mattered to her as an Eight or as a Sharon. Not until she'd become Sharon Agathon. When Helo had turned up alive on the irradiated wasteland of Caprica, his feelings for Boomer had been their opportunity to try a different tack in their ongoing quest to create offspring. It was easy enough to get him to fall in love during the experiment, but she hadn't expected the effect it had on her in return. It's the first time she, as a separate entity, had ever really wanted something for herself alone. Somehow love had struck down to the core of her inner self and made her an individual. It becomes only that much more true when she suddenly realizes the Sixes haven't just been talking about some hypothetical future witch-child, but her child. Their daughter.
Eights weren't Black Widows like the Sixes. They weren't Queens like the Threes. They certainly aren't Warlord Princes like the Fives, nor do they wear Jewels as dark as Opal like the Fours. She may be just another witch from a line of Eights, but Hera is hers alone. She's found something that makes her stronger than any power of the Blood.
That doesn't make it easy. Through their escape, through the mistrust when she and Helo return to the fleet, she struggles but stays the course. Through Roslin's threat of aborting their baby and the devastating loss when she believes Hera dead, she wobbles but doesn't backtrack. In some ways, returning to the Cylon fleet to retrieve her daughter is both the easiest and the hardest trial of all.
Afterwards, when all those hurdles have been overcome, watching Hera's curly-haired head bent industriously over a selection of scrap paper with crayons, she knows she'd do it all again. Burning her bridges with the Cylons was worth it. If, going forward, she has to burn bridges with the Colonials too, she will, if that's what it takes - though she has more faith in Adama than that. She'll burn out her Tiger Eye Jewel and her mind, too, if it will keep her daughter safe, Witch or not. She is the one who chooses how to define herself, and she is Sharon Agathon, callsign Athena, wife of Helo, mother of Hera. No more, no less.
...
Starbuck taps a short, slightly ragged fingernail against the Red Jewel chip placed as a focus at the center of the tangled web in front of her. The fleet has been in this part of space collecting water for almost a week now, and she'd spent her boundless free time getting a feel for the Abyss in this part of space. A few hours ago she'd had enough with her own procrastination and finally started weaving. Now it's done. All the anchor threads are in place, and for the moment, the intense need to do something that's been building in her for weeks is finally mostly quiet.
Ever since she returned to Galactica from her near death chasing a phantom Raider and was grounded from flying indefinitely, Starbuck has been desperately trying to keep everything from spiraling further out of control. The speculative looks from the other pilots, that stupid pitying expression on Lee's dumb face, the thrumming in her head – it's driving her sideways so hard the Twisted Kingdom is calling, and it's only getting louder. Her crystal chalice isn't busted, but when she'd looked there had been a new thinness to it she feared the implications of. Nothing to be done for it, there aren't any healers powerful enough in the fleet to reach it, even if she was willing to ask. Something is wrong with her, but who knew what the frak a cylon's chalice looked like? She takes a deep breath to push aside the irritation, and sinks her awareness into the web and hopes it can give her something to work with.
Kara Thrace was born a natural Black Widow and came away from her Birthright Ceremony with a Sapphire Jewel. Her mother, also a Black Widow, but whose Jewel of rank was Summer-sky had placed very high expectations on her. The resentment Socrata had never been any good at hiding had turned her against exploring her power from an early age. She'd done the bare minimum of training in both general Craft and with the Hourglass coven. Just enough to work basic spells, just enough to keep her natural poisons from killing her – that much and no more. She believes in the responsibilities of the Blood and properly honoring the Darkness, she just doesn't see herself playing any major role.
She was born with a snake tooth, but she'd wanted to play pyramid. When her knee gave out, she'd discovered that her spirit had wings and the space between the stars sang to her in a way the tangled webs never had. Of course if anyone had asked, she'd have said she just didn't have the frakking discipline for any of it. Her mother's harsh words after she'd shown up drunk on the evening she was meant to make the Offering to the Darkness and come away with a Jewel only one rank darker than her Birthright would agree. She knows because they still ring in her ears sometimes, even all these years later.
In truth, locked away in the privacy of her own head where she'll never have to admit it, she had been afraid of the power. Working in the flight school and then becoming a Viper jock in the Colonial fleet had allowed her to put it all aside; her so-called potential was irrelevant to her prowess in the cockpit. As much as the loss of the Twelve Colonies was a horror, in some ways the best, most truly alive she'd ever felt was shooting Cylons out of the frakking sky for the Galactica. She should have known it wasn't going to last, not for someone like her.
Leoben had creeped her out with his serene insistence they were destined to be together. The only thing that had bothered her more was his insistence that she was special. He was so certain her recurring half-formed dreams were signs and she needed to take up the Hourglass craft again. Even after he's dead again and she's free, his words and the conviction with which he'd said them haunt her. They haunt her just as much as the dreams themselves do. It's been a very long time since she's felt the pressure of building events like this.
She knows she's a coward in some ways, and she lets it convince her to ignore all of it anyway. Ignore it until she can't anymore. When she finds herself almost flying her bird into the crushing doom of an atmospheric disturbance that is uncannily reminiscent of the fragments of her dreams she can recall, she knows it's gone beyond choice. Mother Night, the fact that she almost killed herself chasing a half-formed vision!
Kara went years without once touching a tangled web, without ever yielding to the temptation to try to bring her dreams and the pressure of premonition into solid knowledge. The only time her resolution had wavered since her time with the coven had been over Zak, and the vision she'd had then had been so vague as to be completely useless to prevent what happened. Since then, she's never even worn her Hourglass pendant. It was pure chance she still had it after the destruction of the Colonies, since she'd tossed it into the bottom of her locker on Galactica and forgotten about it. She mostly doesn't even wear her Jewels openly, unless regulations or Protocol require it.
She doesn't want to think about the fact she's wearing both openly right now. What's important is that she knows there's a future out there for humanity, and someone has to help lead their people towards it. The Priestess who helped President Roslin find the lost Realm on Kobol is dead, and the signposts found there have only gotten them so far. There are a few other Black Widows in the fleet, but their numbers are small and most of them can't reach deep enough into the Abyss to see clearly very far ahead. What choice did she really have but to use her Craft, when all those lives depended on her getting over her frakking hangups? When something is pushing her so hard she has to give in or crack?
The vision of the tangled web shows her a choice, with two branching pathways going forward from this moment in time. Only one of them leads back to the Thirteenth Tribe, but that path is dark and cruel. It ends with everything her people are and have ever been swallowed back up into the Darkness, lost and forgotten. The other path will not lead them to Earth.
It's tricky, that's clear. Beyond that, she can't see all the details but there are aspects of timing and choices to be made that will take a lot of skill and even more luck and there are flashes of Cylons in it that make her uncomfortable – but at the end of that path is light. A chance to move forward rather than circle back. If she is willing to step up and lead the way, embrace her power and admit she does have a destiny. It's not how she'd choose to protect the fleet, but Starbuck is Blood, she'll do what's needed.