burning and turning
I dream about it and that bastard Leoben every Godsdamned night. I feel like I'm losing my mind here. --Kara Thrace, Maelstrom.
The first night she dreams about Leoben, it's a blur of images that tease at sharpness, that hint at the vividness to come. The dreamscape is confused; a mix of places both familiar and unknown--the house (prison) where he kept her on New Caprica, her bunk on Galactica, places she's sure she's never been and landscapes she knows she's never seen. It's not her apartment, not yet, not the first night. Behind it all the mandala taunts her with colors that bleed and burn. The shape is indistinct and almost watery, twisting and undulating as if caught by the wind.
Leoben has her pressed against what might be a wall, but it's too formless for her to be sure. All she is aware of is his hand on her throat, and it feels like some kind of sick benediction, some twisted promise. Kara knows he could kill her in a second, knows he could tighten his fingers and snap her neck like something fragile, something easily broken.
But I'm not fragile. I'm not easily broken.
"You're not," he says, answering a thought unspoken (this must be a dream, it must, how could he do that?) and there's that small smile, the one that made her put a knife in his side on New Caprica, that made her pierce his flesh with sharp metal and watch him bleed to death on the floor by her feet.
She doesn't do that, not here, not now. She doesn't do anything but watch him, wary, the mandala never entirely out of sight. It sharpens the longer she looks at, so she resolutely turns her face away, unwilling to see.
Leoben's fingers slide down her throat, ghosting softly against her racing pulse. Kara meets his eyes and her breath feels caught and desperate; she feels like some kind of trapped thing, an animal staring up at a predator, and she hates it. "Don't you want to stop fighting?" Leoben asks her, leaning closer. She can feel him breathing against her skin, his mouth a hairsbreadth from her ear. "Just give in? It would be so much easier, Kara. Kara..."
Her voice, when he says her name, sounds like a prayer. His other hand slides across her lips and for a moment she can taste his skin. "Just give in. You want to. I know you do. Don't you?" His words are an unceasing mantra, tempting her, and there's a wall against her back and his voice is warm as sin against her ear.
She wakes up with the word yes unspoken on her lips, and finds it hard to look in the mirror--she's afraid of what she'll see.
ooooooooOOOOoooooooo
She's walking through a darkened room, taking slow steps, uncertain where she's going or what sort of obstacle she can't see that will eventually trip her. Even in sleep, Kara chastises her subconscious for its literalness, as if anything too subtle will be completely missed.
And maybe it will. Kara Thrace is not known for her subtlety, even she can admit that.
"Kara."
She knows his voice, especially in the thick veil of sleep. It's not next to her (no silky threats whispered against her ear, no, not here, not yet) but she feels it like a caress, feels something dance up her spine that feels like dread and desire and disdain all at once.
Kara is quick to react in her waking life; quick to respond, quick to fight. There is no room for indecision in a pilot's life; the smallest hesitation can end in death. Space is not forgiving, and Cylon Raiders are even less so. In her dream, however, surrounded in the depths of shadows that press against her like something alive, she finds herself suspended and unable to act.
"I can't see," she says instead, speaking the obvious because it is a comfort when she doesn't know what else to do. I like fighting things I can see. There is a sudden glow and she sees the shape of the mandala, rising like a terrible sun in the darkness of her dream-vision, glowing in a way that makes her want to avert her eyes. The shape is blurry at first, shrouded in a soft haze, and then it sharpens into something rigid and bright and inescapable.
Leoben is sitting in front of it in a chair, watching her intently. His eyes burn like ice lit from within, some strange cold-fire she doesn't understand, and he looks other and malevolent in a way that makes her heart race and her hands fist at her sides. "You're too afraid to see what you must," he says.
Kara is breathing fast. Her body tenses as if for battle, ready to fight, ready to hit. She's still strangely loath to speak, and all her words are a whirl in her head and she can't straighten them out, can't give them voice no matter how hard she tries.
The glow from the mandala is too much. She tries to turn away, to shield her eyes, to put him and the frakking symbol behind her entirely. He's there in a second, grabbing at her hand, fingers wrapping like vines against her wrist. He pulls her hand away from her eyes, forces her to look at him. Kara glares at him, trapped, and the mandala rises behind him like some sick halo of blue and yellow and red.
"You can see. You can. Look, Kara. Stop turning away. Look."
Kara looks at him. Up close, his eyes look like they might burn. She tilts her head up a little, exposing her throat. If it's a conscious gesture, she doesn't want to know about it.
"My Kara," Leoben says, softly, and his voice is wistful. "Stop fighting. Stop." He reaches out to trace his fingers across her neck. Kara can still see the mandala, ominous in the distance. Leoben's thumb rubs against her pulse, his fingers trace against the delicate bones of her neck.
No. Not yours. Never. But she doesn't say it. She closes her eyes, and when she wakes up, her hand is on her neck, but it doesn't feel the same.
ooooooooOOOOoooooooo
The next time she dreams about him, Kara decides she's had enough. Enough of the creepy mysticism and his fathomless eyes, enough of the frakking mandala and his portentous whispers about destiny and giving in.
This time, she's on Galactica's CIC, and outside she sees the mandala cradled in the darkness of space, drifting amidst stars like a planet. She ignores it. Leoben is standing in the center of the room, and they are alone where there should be many.
"I'm frakking tired of this," she tells him, and her hands are on her hips as she glares at him. He's staring at her impassively. She walks up and shoves at him, pushes hard against his chest. He lets her, but he doesn't move. Leoben is not a physically imposing man, not really. But he's a Cylon, and there is strength there beneath what she can see.
"There is much more here than you can see," Leoben says, and grabs her hands again. He yanks her against him, grabs both of her wrists in one hand (shouldn't be able to do that not fair too strong) and puts his hand on the back of her neck. He's trying to turn her head, trying to make her look at the mandala.
Kara fights him this time. "Frak you. Let me go." It feels good to fight, and Kara can see he's annoyed; there's a flash of something in his inscrutable expression, and his mouth twists as he restrains her again. He is not looking at the mandala. He is looking at her, and the otherness about him has been subsumed by plain human annoyance, and for some reason, that makes her viciously happy to see.
"I know what you want, Kara Thrace," he says, and he's breathing hard, she notices that--for the first time, she sees the sheen of sweat on his brow and the tension in his body as he holds her immobile. Around them gleams the muted lights of the instruments in the CIC; soft reds, gentle blues. Outside, the mandala gleams like a promise.
Leoben pulls her closer and his hand tightens around her wrist. Kara feels a slight sting of pain, and it thrums her body like a drug, dances joyfully over nerves that have too long felt numb and deadened. That he should make her feel this way is unthinkable, but she cannot deny the response of her body; the indrawn breath, the tensing of her muscles, the sudden heat in her veins.
"Yeah? And what the frak is that, you frakking toaster?" Kara's not nice to him when she's awake. He shouldn't expect anything else here.
Leoben puts one hand on her waist. She can feel his touch through the thin material of her tank top, can feel it burn against her skin. He lets her wrists go and puts his hand in her hair and pulls her head back. She can't stop her gasp, can't stop the shudder as he forces her to meet his gaze.
His hand moves up her back, and every second, every moment of that slow finger-drag up her spine, it feels like electricity, like lightning, like things that strike quick and fast and hot. He smiles at her, and there's always been something wrong with his smile. Sam smiles at her and it looks like the sun rising, warm and bright. Leoben's looks like something dark that lurks behind stars to swallow them whole.
She doesn't want to think about why she's breathing so fast, why her body is responding with shivers to his touch, why she won't fight, won't try to push him away. Why she wants his hands to be tighter in her hair, why she can't look away.
"You know," he says softly. "The same thing I do. Our desires are not opposed. They are the same. You just haven't admitted it, yet." His look is almost a palpable caress; he doesn't look impassive anymore, he looks like he wants to devour her whole. "God, Kara. Stop fighting me."
"No," Kara says, but her words sound like a lie, and she knows he can tell. "I can't," she whispers, and she closes her eyes. "I have to fight. I have to."
Leoben drags her over to the wall and throws her against it. She catches herself with her palms, they smack against something sharp but she doesn't care. He's behind her, she can feel him, all of him, every muscle and sinew and the hardness that is pressing against her back making it quite clear what his desire is.
"But you want to give in. I know you do." Leoben's hands move down her back, to her hips. Kara's hands start a slow slide up the wall to rest above her head. He's pushing against her, insistent and wanting, pulling her back with fingers tight against her hipbones. "I know it, Kara. Go in. Stop fighting. Give in to me."
She wakes up before it's over, and she's angry when she should be relieved. yes yes nice. Her blood is pounding and she's flushed, feverish, her sheets are twisted around her body like some devious serpent made of cotton. Kara lies in her bunk and stares at the wall, teeth clenched against the want that burns hotter than fire through her body. She could do something about it, if she wanted. It's still early, she can be quiet. No one would know.
But she knows what she'd be thinking about, who she'd be thinking about, and she refuses. Instead, she goes and takes a shower, the water as cold as she can make it.
It doesn't really help.
ooooooooOOOOoooooooo
She's in her apartment in Caprica, dressed in a man's shirt and a pair of panties, and there is the mandala on the wall. It's not glowing, it's not a halo, it's not a star or a planet trapped in space. It's just a picture she drew, years ago, with walls of half-thought poetry scribbled beside it.
There is no sign of Leoben, but she's waiting for his inevitable appearance. She can feel a buzz of anticipation in her body, and she knows it's only a matter of time before he appears.
This is the last dream.
Amidst the clutter of her apartment, Kara finds a gallon of white paint with a brush. She stares at the wall, determined. Grim. There is a certainty that drives her, makes her pick up the brush and cover the wall with long, determined strokes, covering the brilliant colors of the mandala with thick white paint.
She feels him behind her when the wall is mostly covered. Her hair is sticky with the paint she can feel it drying on her skin in patches. Leoben spins her around, catches her wrist and pushes her against the wall while whispering in her ear. Kara stares at him, panting, and her skin feels raw, exposed. She can feel wet paint against her back and his body against hers, hard and strong and sure, and the fabric of his pants against her bare legs feels like a torment.
"Don't fight it," he tells her, smiling a little, and it's the same smile it always is; affectionate but with some sinister intent she sees but doesn't fully understand. His thumbs rub against her wrist even as he hurts her. His body burns against hers like a brand. Kara doesn't want to say no. Not this time. She wonders if he knows.
This is the last dream.
That it will be good between them, she has no doubt; she'll fight him for control and he'll let her have just enough and take the rest of it away, and his hands are under her shirt now, and her skin feels hot and his hands feel cold but good, so good, and if this is how giving in feels...maybe she should have done it a long time ago.