What's all this stuff again? It's been so long… oh, yeah:
Title: Kara Thrace Doesn't Sleep
Pairing: Kara/Leoben (kinda)
Summary: The real vulnerability comes at night…
Spoilers/Warnings: Some dark/sexual stuff. Up to 3.01/3.02
Kara Thrace doesn't sleep.
Back when she was Starbuck -- back when she was a hot shot pilot, and ruled the skies, and could kick the shit out of almost anyone, even some cylons -- back then, Kara Thrace slept. After a long bout of winging through the air, of shooting, of arguing with Lee, tension crackling… of letting go of another dead pilot… Kara Thrace nee Starbuck, slept soundly.
But now Starbuck is gone. There are no Vipers. Lee is somewhere in the sky, far away, and besides, after what she did to him, she doubts he wants to save her. Starbuck is not strong, and she is not burying anyone, not even the man she kills again and again and again. No, Starbuck is gone, and in her place is this long haired, pale blonde ghost named Kara Thrace who hasn't seen her husband in about 6 months and is the slave of a man who cannot die. No, Kara Thrace is no longer Starbuck, and Kara Thrace does not sleep.
Instead, Kara sits in the comfortable couch of her well-decorated prison cell and stares out the window and tries not to scream. Tries not to use up all of the remaining oxygen while her captor sleeps quietly, calmly, soundly, in the bed upstairs. He breathes easily, because he never has to worry that the next breath may be his last. Kara knows that there is enough air, but she also knows that there are bars holding her in Leoben's little domestic utopia, and those bars are closing in on her and blocking out the oxygen late at night, so that all she can do is gasp in the suffocating helplessness. Kara Thrace is not in control, so Kara Thrace cannot sleep.
Sometimes – when Kara is feeling so, so desperate, she thinks of the man thing in the bed upstairs and almost finds herself rising off the chair to pad quietly up and up, to surrender. Her feet grasp the carpet, and her body begins to lift itself sighingly, almost giving in, giving up, so that she has to force it and herself to sit back down and grab onto the chair arms so tight that her knuckles whiten from exertion, locking herself back to freedom. But still, she thinks. She thinks, instead of dreaming – what it would be like to lie down, to let him take her in his arms… the quiet that would come with surrender, and maybe, she figures, the passion. It would be a passionate, living death, she assumes, passion on his part, death on hers, death every day she lives, but what's the point? She dies a little more every day she lives, every piece of silverware used to set a farce, every bite of jail rations, every time she futilely kills him. It's exhausting, this endless dying, and she just wants it to be over with.
Once, when the not sleeping is so bad she can't see straight, Kara rises, and tiptoes up the stairs, knife hidden underneath a sleeve. She figures that she can kill him; she can push his body out of bed, she can take comfort in knowing that he (probably) won't return till morning. She doesn't think of what could happen if he returned when she was sleeping, doesn't think at all, just lets her sight swim in dots in front of her eyes as she climbs quietly up the stairs and into the bedroom.
He snores, his face barely illuminated by the closet (she refuses to notice how beautiful his eyelashes are as they make a shadowed pattern against his rugged face; the grace of his jawline, the darkened wisp of hair over an uncovered, naked torso). She takes a few steps forward, and reaches out with the knife…
…only to find herself pinned underneath him in a time so short her head spins. Her arms are raised above her head, knife in her hand, him on top of her, breathing hard, staring deep into her eyes. He lowers his body onto hers, a test, hers responds traitoriously, he smiles behind the seriousness.
"You'd kill a sleeping man? Is that fair?"
"You. Can't. Die," she hisses at him, trying to lash out, but failing. She is not this weak. Starbuck would pull her knife back and stab him anyway. Starbuck would take the chance that he might take her out in the process, but would welcome it, would welcome a real death in the place of this quiet, caged one. But Starbuck is gone, left somewhere up in a sky with a rotting viper, and all that is left is this shaking, wooden woman with clipped wings.
For a moment, she wonders just how traitorous her body will be, and how much it would matter anyway – if he would be rough with her, if he would force her, than maybe her head wouldn't be so fucked up. The lines would be clear, he would fit in the same evil box as her mother, and she could get some sleep. Just sleep, and let him do what he wants, because it wouldn't matter, because she would've lost and all of her fears would be answered. The worst would happen, and she could sleep.
But instead, he releases her, taking the knife as he rolled off of her and leaving her to the suffocating air. As she stumbles blindly out of the bed, he calls after her, mockingly, "pleasant dreams." She thinks he's more evil this way, that he knows he could have taken what he wanted instead of slowly pulling her down this slope, sticky with blood and humid air, until she gives it to him herself. That's what he wants, to finally break her, and he knows that rape won't do it, that the real snap will come in another dreamless night when she won't even be able to tell which way is up.
So she sits, night after night, sometimes on the deceptively soft sofa, sometimes knees tucked into her chest, back against the wall, sometimes curled up on the rug in the bathroom. She sits, refusing to blink, refusing to see the scene he's predicted ("you'll hold me in your arms, and you'll tell me you love me"), etched in the dots of an afterimage so revolting that she holds her eyes open until they burn with tears, and she's forced to let them close. She dreads every moment she blinks, so sleep is out of the question. Instead, she blocks out the thoughts, and tries not to scream, tries to ration out the remaining air in the apartment, the remains of her own will. She wills her eyes to stay open, holding her breath, dreading the moment that her eyes will close, until the moment where she sleepwalks to him and suffocates in his arms.