Chapter one
Pain of Sanity
Disclaimer: The characters of Battlestar Galactica are the property of their respective owners. I have written this story for entertainment purposes only and no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original situations and plot are the property of the author. Not to be archived without permission.
Author's notes: Au story takes place after the cylon occupation of New Caprica.
Pain was not new to Kara Thrace, she cultivated misery and invited it into her life like a welcome guest. If things were too mundane or comfortable Kara didn't know how to nourish her edge. As a pilot, she was sure that edge kept her alive, so the solution was simple...Create pain. Physical pain would suffice but Kara learnt a long time ago that emotional pain pushed her to top gear for longer.
When the viper pilots were grounded on New Caprica there was nothing to distract Kara from the discomfort of normality. For the ex-officer staying alive was too easy in their new home.
She hid her inner conflict behind a careless smile and a husband who didn't mind taking centre stage. Anders was an effective buffer to the outside world. If he noticed her lack of commitment to anything real he never challenged her on it or tried to look behind her mask.
That was before the Cylons discovered New Caprica. Now Kara had no buffer and no control. She was trapped playing sadistic games with the enemy. She didn't even have a chance to fight. When the enemy invaded Kara assumed she could fade into the background and come out fighting when she had a plan. Just another faceless conquered human watching as the Cylons marched through New Caprica.
She should have known plan A wouldn't work, it never did. She had only taken a step back from Chief Tyrol when three centurions stepped out of formation and grabbed her from the crowd.
There were no punches, no kicking, just a sharp intake of breath as her hands were swiftly bound behind her back. Her feet barely touched the ground as she was roughly dragged away. All she could see were flashes of steel and dust.
Thrown into a tiny concrete cell, Kara believed the prison would be her grave. The quip she prepared died on her lips when a centurion entered caring a long spike. Her face was slammed against the unrelenting wall. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the spike had a small metal disc at one end. Kara felt the tip pressed against her temple.
Skewered through the head was not one of the many ways Kara imagined herself dying. She couldn't hold back the scream as the spike pierced her skull. Mercifully she passed out. When she awoke she had no restraints and was lying of the floor of what looked like one of New Caprica's apartments. Her headache worse than any she had inflicted upon herself with too much Ambrosia. Reaching up to her temple she felt the foreign metal disc compressed against her skin.
Kara preferred the cold, dirty cell to her new cage. It was too familiar and far too human. Just like her captor with his musty smell and casual swagger. Leoben's presence made her feel like spiders where crawling under her skin. His eyes pierced through every defence she had and she hated herself for the weakness he easily brought out.
From the moment of their first encounter on Galactica, Kara hated Leoben for his patience and the certainty of his beliefs. He had faith that he was not alone. He was not pretending to have no fear and he was not pretending to know who he was. He, unlike everyone else Kara knew had faith in his future.
As far as Kara was concerned faith was easy when you rewarded yourself with eternal existence. No matter how you behaved, you got the right to download and go again. No consequences, no questions asked. Kara had faith, but hers was born out of desperation. Profound all consuming desperation that there had to be something better, something more than she was being offered.
The problem was she didn't believe she would ever be good enough to earn a better life. She took a perverse pleasure in self sabotage, it proved she was right. Except when she was in her viper, there was no room for doubt or self pity, there was just survival. That was her true religion.
Kara Thrace often wondered why the Cylons bothered with the easily conquered residents of New Caprica. What was left of their civilisation only survived the original Cylon attack because they ran. They were the remnants of a defeated race. What was to be gained by creating a mirror image of your former oppressors, making machine indiscriminate from flesh, revenge indiscriminate from endurance?
For a non-human she had to give Leoben credit he had manipulation covered. But the human survival instinct was something the Cylons had not grasped, despite years of trying to squash their creators. The flipside to being so familiar with pain was that it was easy to underestimate Kara's resistance.
When he left the apartment she heard the clicking of the bolts back into place and clanging of the metal bars closing again. But she never heard him enter the room. Her only warning was the chill that spread up her spine. It was so acute she had to stop herself from shivering. That would give him too much pleasure. As he got closer she could smell sweat, like he had been running, she had to remind herself he should not smell, he should not sweat, he was a machine.
"Are you going to make this stop today Kara?" Leoben asked as he sat down in the lounge chair as if he was a friend dropping by for a visit. Kara remained silent, she needed a minute to steel herself against what was coming next.
Leoben took out a small rod from his jacket pocket. It looked like a thin crystal tube with tiny buttons along the bottom. Kara preferred to think of it as a pen rather than a remote control.
She reached up to scratch the small metal disc that had been plunged into her temple, the pain seemed less now. Last night she dreamt of pulling it out in her sleep. In the dream Leoben had come in and found her dead in a pool of her own blood. She liked the idea of depriving Leoben of the pleasure of torturing her but the blood had been vivid enough that she had been unable to bring herself to do more than scratch at the disc…Yet.
She felt the dried blood from her scratching and lowered the offending hand to her lap. She knew he was about to press one of the buttons on his pen and she would be lost in the abyss of his creation. But right now she would project all the defiance she could muster.
"You know what I want Kara," Leoben said, leaning forward.
"Actually I haven't really been listening," she said, equally casually.
"I'm very pleased with what I have programmed for you today but I would rather not have to use it. I would rather you admitted what you know to be true." Kara remained silent, the only sign of her discomfort was the clenching of her fist. "Just tell me that you know you are different to them. Tell me you're better than they are Kara Thrace. That you are special."
There was a slight twitch of Kara's lip before she lifted her chin to look at Leoben directly for the first time since he came in. "Of course I'm fraking special. I told you that yesterday Leoben. I take great pride in being a special kind of pain in everyone's butt."
Leoben moved to kneel beside Kara, he reached for her hand, she darted to the far end of the coach. Every instinct was screaming at her to fight. Leoben ignored her snub and sat on the couch just out of her reach.
"You have to believe it Kara. You have to believe you are more like us than them."
Kara lost her resolve, she lunged for Leoben. As he had done each time before, he saw it coming and pressed a tiny button on the device.
Kara instantly crumpled to the floor hitting the side of her head on the coffee table on the way down. At least this time she knew what to expect, there would be pain, like being struck with a bolt of electricity. Then blackness before she would be in Leoben's world.
He called it a simulation generated from the truth she needed to see. It was more like a nightmare but that knowledge didn't stop Kara from feeling and responding. He kept telling her that her memories created the simulation, he just prompted the setting and the characters through the neural link inserted into her brain. Leoben said she had to let the scene play out.
Yesterday's simulation featured Kara's mother in the lead role. When she opened her eyes Leoben was standing in the corner of the room. Sitting at the small kitchen table was Kara's mother. At first Kara thought she had fallen asleep and was stuck in a nightmare. She assumed it was to be expected given her circumstances. Kara observed her mother trying to gauge her mood. She needed to know what would annoy her today. What behaviour that was acceptable yesterday would be punished today. Kara always waited for her mother to make the first move, it was marginally safer that way.
"So they call you Starbuck. What kind of name is that?"
"It's a call sign mum, you know you have to earn it."
"You think you have earned your right to humanity by flying above us? Pretending to care about those below you?"
This was not their usual argument. The dishevelled woman at the table was unusually focussed. Her words were direct rather than flippant, she normally berated her daughter as if it was just one more chore in her sorry existence. Her eyes were more piecing than usual, they weren't clouded by anger. Kara had no instinctual response to the observation. She sat as still as she could hoping her mother would be distracted by something she considered more important than her daughter.
"I raised you. So I know you don't care about anything or anyone. You won't protect humanity with your life. You will give your life to protect yourself. You take risks hoping to get lucky, hoping you can end the suffering of knowing you don't belong."
Don't belong. At last there was something familiar about the conversation, her mother had said that many times. This time though Kara had proof her mother was wrong.
"I'm a Captain now," Kara said, pulling out her dog tags to prove her identity, her membership to something.
Her mother laughed. Kara would had have preferred a punch in the stomach, she would rather be left bleeding and battered than have to listen to her mother's cackle. Kara tried to move, to get to her feet and walk towards the door but they were not cooperating. All she managed to do was stand up and look towards the door as if she could will it to come to her. She saw a figure step out from behind the shadows into the sunlight beaming through the window. It was Dualla but not the Galactica crewmember Kara knew, this figure was more like a stranger. She was wearing a long flowing white dress, her hair was cascading around her shoulders, long and sleek. Kara thought this version of Dee looked so confident, so free, everything Kara wished should could be in that moment.
Dee glided silently towards Kara's chuckling mother. Her mother didn't react or show any signs of alarm as Dee reached out to her. She didn't even flinch as Dee's hand passed right through her. The slight distortion of her mother's image was like a key snapping in a lock.
This is not real, this is not my mother.
Kara saw Leoben nod his head and then the searing pain returned. When she opened her eyes her mother and Dee were gone, there was no sunlight, there was just Leoben sitting across from her looking satisfied.
"She knew Kara. She always knew. What you go great lengths to deny." He left her without another word.
She was brought a meal and even managed to get some sleep. Blocking everything else out with military precision, forcing herself to conserve her strength for the battles ahead.
Now here she was again waiting for Leoben's new creation. The pain was not unexpected but just as blinding. She opened her eyes and gasped, all Kara's senses where telling her she was standing in the corridors of the Galactica. The smell, the slight hum beneath her feet and the echoes of activity further down the corridor.
Kara felt a little more of her sanity draining away. This was her home, her real home. Except on Leoben's Galactica there was a table and three chairs in the middle of the corridor. Sitting at one of the chairs was Colonel Tigh and standing across from Kara was Admiral Adama. Kara didn't even consider that it wasn't her Admiral all she knew was she needed to reduce the space between them. She didn't notice that he wasn't hugging her back until he pushed her away.
"You can't replace my son Starbuck," Adama said, as he pulled off her dog tags. "There's no punishment you can give yourself that will bring him back."
Kara hadn't noticed she was in dress uniform until Colonel Tigh walked over and unceremoniously pulled the wings off her lapel and placed them on the table. Sitting down he poured himself a drink. He poured a second glass and held it out to Kara. She automatically reached for it but he pulled his hand back and drank it himself, followed by the first glass he poured.
"You know what I think Starbuck," Tigh said, slouching back in his seat. "I think the old man's son needed to die. He wasn't what you really wanted anyway. Everyone on this whole fraking ship knows that. We need you to keep screwing up so we all feel better about ourselves." Kara could feel her legs start to buckle, she learnt back against the wall for support.
Barely above a whisper she said, "I was going to fail him."
"You only fail yourself by clinging to these," Adama said, holding up her dog tags.
Kara let out a long breath at the sight of Dee gliding towards the table. She was in regulation uniform except for a long black coat that billowed out behind her. Dee picked up the pilots wings and placed them in Kara's hand, gently closing Kara's fingers into a fist.
Tigh poured two more drinks and again handed one out to Kara. This time she was too quick for him and in one swift motion Kara grabbed the mug and smashed it against the wall.
Then the pain hit again, the fake version of Galactica fell away. Kara realised it was getting harder to recover from the delusion. Every time the pain was greater and she felt drowsier and more confused when she returned to consciousness. Seeing the slight tremble in her hands Kara couldn't help but feel like she was losing to Leoben. If not for Dee she would lose her mind completely. She would rather any other torture than the people she cared about tormenting her.
Kara woke up on the couch and looked down to find that she was not in the same clothes as before. She had no recollection of leaving the couch, a shiver ran down her spine, her hair was clean and her clothes were fresh. She prayed to the gods she had not let Leoben do this. No, she told herself she would remember, she would fight back.
Leoben strolled back into the apartment as if nothing out the ordinary had happened. Kara had no idea how much time had passed since their last session.
I have to fight harder, he can't win. Kara thought trying to pretend she wasn't horrified that she was losing track of time.
"Don't fight it Kara," Leoben said, seeming to read her mind, as he pressed the button.
Kara found herself sitting on a bunk in the pilot's quarters opposite Sam Anders. He was lying on his back throwing his pyramid ball in the air and nonchalantly catching it in the other hand. Sharon Valerii snatched the ball mid flight and jumped down to the floor from her position at the other end of the bunk. Helo closed the locker door and casually draped his arms around Sharon's waist.
"You thought he was a new toy to play with didn't you Kara," Sharon said, circling Kara like a hunter herding its prey into a trap.
"You really should answer her," Anders said, rolling onto his side to rest on his elbow.
"You were not... Are not a toy," Kara said, attempting to step closer to Anders but Sharon blocked her.
"Fraking lie Kara. Everyone is a toy to you until you decide you are sick of the game. You got sick of him a long time ago but he's the only toy left," Sharon said, handing Anders back his ball. He rolled over and began throwing it in the air again.
"He knows it and you know it but you don't care enough to let him go." Sharon returned to her end of the bunk just watching Anders and shaking her head.
Kara looked around the cramped quarters hoping to find her only ally. "Are you here. Please be here."
Dee stepped out from behind Helo. She looked beautiful, almost glowing. Kara thought of Dee as determined and proficient at her job, though she had never said as much in the time they had served together. Kara wondered how she could have possibly missed Dee's unmistakable intensity and the courage shinning from her eyes.
"I'm here Kara." It felt so intimate for Dee to use her first name instead of her call sign or rank. This was how it should be back on Galactica, the real Galactica, if it still existed. Kara questioned why she didn't know this beautiful woman standing in front of her. How could she have dismissed her as unworthy of attention. As the communications NCO on Galactica, Dee was the lifeline back to home. She had often been the only voice of calm in the middle of a dogfight yet Kara had given her little credit for her unwavering strength in a crisis. Even when she had been promoted to Lieutenant and assigned to the Pegasus Kara still considered her little more than a convenient distraction for Lee.
"Please tell me how to get out of here. I have to get out," Kara pleaded.
"I know," Dee said, stepping closer to Kara.
Kara reached out to touch her only lifeline. But Sharon walked through the image of Dee and slammed Kara against the wall placing one foot between Kara's to keep her pinned. Kara could feel her former friend's breath against her ear and she was vaguely aware that Anders was clapping in the background. Sharon's other hand moved around Kara's throat, pressing her harder against the cold steel of the lockers.
"You are the prize Starbuck. You are the prize everyone wants to win. But I know you can put up more of a fight than this." Kara could feel the pressure at her neck starting to make the corners of the room fade. She knew she wasn't getting enough oxygen but instead of fighting back Kara closed her eyes. It felt so good to think she could end this by giving in to the blackness.
Dee was by her side. "They can't take anything from you," Dee whispered.
Kara pushed Sharon off with all her strength, sending the Cylon crashing into the table between the bunks. Kara pounced and roughly brought Sharon to a standing position placing her in a chokehold. It was Kara's turn to breathe in her ear.
"This work better for you toaster?" She could feel the life draining out of her captive.
Again Dee was at her side. "No Kara. Not this way." Kara let Sharon drop to the floor strangely missing the intimate contact. Anders stopped clapping and Helo was saying something but Kara didn't hear a word. She leant back against the wall and closed her eyes pre-empting the blackness she knew was coming.