Pilgrimage

Author's Note: Set in late Season 2, after the Battle of the Resurrection Ship but before the events of 'Razor.'

Chapter One: Two

It starts, as so many things do, with the Hybrid.

She lies in her tank at the center of a star of metal and flesh, and she babbles, and she sees, and she prophesizes, and only one listens. He kneels by her warm pod of wires and gel as though it were an altar, his brow furrowed as he contemplates what spills from her lips.

Correcting for drift/Thy arrows are swift/C02 levels nominal/The fiend stands on the brink and ponders his voyage warily/The morning star drifts in the darkness first and forgotten lost and remembered/the myths in the minds of metal may become a monument/the star shall be a guide to the prophet his doom and his joy/the pregnant causes are mixed confusedly/adjusting fuel mix by .02%/the first of the seers lighting the way for the prophet and the fiend/smokeless fire lost and found/prophecy begets prophecy begets destiny/memory come out of shadow to return to the fire...

Leoben listens to every word, and he understands, and then he begins to smile.

Gentle mist swirls around the fleshy floor of the biomechanical Raider bay, and Cavil is somewhat uncomfortable, here in this place that's so much like a womb. He stares at his brother. "The First Hybrid? You can't be serious."

Leoben just beams. "It all makes sense, brother. 'Myths in the minds of metal.' The old-model Centurions, back on the Colony, they used to-"

"Talk about the mythical progenitor of our new fleshy selves, yes, I know, we've all heard that particular fable." Cavil rolls his eyes and sighs theatrically. "Machines with mythology. Amazing. Makes me glad the new ones can't talk. It tends to be difficult to spread superstitions about without a mouth."

Sarcasm has never deterred Leoben. "But what if it was true? Come on, think about it. We must have come from somewhere. We didn't just evolve from the old Centurions to what we are now overnight, that's not how things grow, that's not how they change. There had to have been some kind of intermediary phase, a prototype-"

"Okay, let me... just go ahead and stop you right there before you get too carried away," Cavil says, holding up his hands in a 'no-go' gesture. "First of all, you're getting awfully close to certain big questions about our origins that we have all been explicitly programmed not to even think about." Like the Final you-know-who, although neither of them says it out loud. "You also might have noticed that we kind of have a lot going on right now with two Battlestars on the loose, a pair of Basestars destroyed, and a Resurrection Ship out of commission. This isn't the time for our race to waste any resources on mystic quests for lost Hybrids."

Leoben nods, understanding more than his brother realizes. He knows Cavil wouldn't want something like the First to be found even if he did believe it existed, and chalks it up to another instance of his brother's deeply saddening lack of faith. "One Heavy Raider for a search. That's all I ask. You don't need to call a vote for something that small. If anyone asks, I'll say it's for a stellar survey. From a certain point of view, it will even be true." He smiles. "I know you hate when I make a fuss about these things, Cavil."

Cavil recognizes the underlying threat, but shows no sign of it. "No kidding. You know how the Sixes get whenever anything religious gets brought up. The last thing we need is your divine fervour becoming contagious." He sighs theatrically, stroking his chin, and pretends to consider a decision that has already been made. He can give in now, or watch this little spark of inquisitiveness grow into a wildfire that will be much harder to contain. "Okay, as long as you keep this between you and your copies, you've got your Raider. But there's just one problem. Accepting for the moment that you going off on your own to find a nonexistent failed science experiment isn't a terrible idea, how exactly to you plan to find the damn thing?"

Leoben has the placid, peaceful look of a fanatic on his face. "God will provide, Brother. I've seen it."


The Heavy Raider winks back into existence far away from the Cylon fleet, a tiny, lonely bit of metal among the stars. Leoben likes it. The solitude aids in contemplation. Out here in the darkness, it's just him and God. The universe is his monastery, the tiny cockpit of the Raider his cell, his life nestled within the Raider's own. He closes his eyes and prays for a time, not fervently, simply opening his mind and letting God's creation wash over him, awaiting direction. This Jump was random, and so was the one before that one, and so were the five before that one. We are all God, he thinks, and because of that, God is with us wherever we go. We are never alone.

Except maybe the First. Is it alone? It has been divorced from us for such a long time, its family, its people. What happened to you after the war, to be written off as a failed experiment and forgotten, all traces removed from the records? Where have you been? What have you seen? Are you lonely? Are you sad? Will you come back to us?

Leoben opens his eyes and looks at the stars through the eyes of the Raider. He smiles, touches the controls without glancing at them, and Jumps away.

The Raider appears within the halo of a nebula, and for a moment Leoben is too overwhelmed with beauty to even think of looking at the instruments to see where he is. All around him are the ephemeral pink wisps of creation, the beginnings of stars. He is within God's own workshop, the fountain of existence. He is immersed in cosmic beauty too vast for ordinary minds to comprehend. He is-

"Commence attack on unidentified craft. Pursue and destroy."

"By your command."

-under attack.

The Heavy Raider's biomechanical brain is immune to Leoben's theological distractions, and is focused on the more practical task of keeping itself and its occupant alive. It automatically puts itself into a series of twists and turns as blue tracer fire flickers towards it through wisps of nebula, playing hide-and-seek with its less advanced brethren within a stellar nursery. With the Raider itself handling the dull task of survival, Leoben is left free to reach out to his ancestors.

"Hello. I knew I would find you here."

"Hostile craft has breached our communications channel. Initiate countermeasures."

Leoben smiles to himself even as his ship does a loop-de-loop through a hydrogen cloud to shake a missile off its tail. "I'm not hostile. I'm a friend, I'm one of you. I've been looking for you." He pauses. "And for him." Because it is a 'him,' he knows that now, he can sense it, feel the knowledge flowing over his mind like water from a stream. "You know who I mean. I want you to take me to him."

There is dead silence on the other end and a refreshing lack of shooting for a full ten seconds as the old-model Raiders pinwheel about their target. Leoben takes the time to better appreciate the glorious hues of God's creation around him.

"The target speaks blasphemy. Recommence extermination."

They close in on him like sharks. Leoben sighs, closes his eyes, and mentally prepares himself for the wonderful experience of Resurrection and the less wonderful experience of Cavil being insufferable for at least a month. But then, another voice comes over the wireless, deep, resonant, powerful, yet also very, very tired.

"Be still, my children. Hello, Leoben. Two. My child and not my child. Come to me, I am close by. I have been waiting for a long time."

Leoben feels his heart beating faster, filling with joy. "I'll be there soon."


He marvels at the antique design of the Guardian basestar, at the quaint beauty of the rotating fans overhead and the charming clunkiness of the old Centurions escorting him. He is walking through the history of his own race, a living museum. Every footstep is an act of memory, commemorating a hidden heritage. As for his long-lost relatives, they regard this intruder in human form with cold, naked machine hostility as they escort him to the inner sanctum. They do not understand that this creature of flesh could be one of them, a Cylon. Leoben thinks that despite his disdain for their 'mythology,' his brother might like these Centurions.

They arrive.

For the Guardians, the home of God is just a room with a tub, with not even a door to veil the face of divinity. The voice that comes from it though, that is a voice worthy of worship.

"Leoben Conoy. Come closer, we have much to discuss." Leoben is moving before the First finishes speaking, slowly but eagerly, while the Guardians exchange unreadable glances behind him.

He is a withered, ravaged thing in a tub of shining translucent ooze, staring upwards with eyes that are half-closed. His limbs are slack and his skin is spotted. Despite only being created forty years ago, he fills the room with a sense of the unthinkably ancient. His breath is a wheezing, miserable sigh. He is one of the most beautiful things Leoben has ever seen.

"Hello. I knew I'd find you, I knew you were real. I knew it."

"You are the prophet. I have seen you and your brothers and sisters many times, but this is the first that I look upon you with my own eyes. Ahhhh..." The ooze sloshes slightly as, with great effort, the First Hybrid slowly turns his head so that his lidded eyes bore into Leoben's soul. The pilgrim waits, exulting in the feel of that gaze piercing him, breathless with the sense of the divine.

"At last I behold the face of one of the Seven, yet not for the first time. Nor, I fear, the last." Slowly, the head turns back, and sinks a little deeper into the oracular waters. "All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again."

"Yes. Yes!" Leoben is filled with joy. "You understand. You know. This is so amazing, I just..." he trails off, laughing. "You see it! The same way I do, the same way the other Hybrids do, but you- I'm always just getting glimpses, flashes of God, while your children see the whole thing but can't share it in a coherent way. It's too overwhelming to process, so I can only handle a little at a time while the other Hybrids are constantly living outside of their bodies. You- you can see both worlds and still keep your mind! You're the missing link that was prophesized. All the legends are true."

"Legends... legends are always true. That is why they are legends. Do you seek truth, Leoben Conoy?"

Leoben kneels as though before a king, leaning over the lip of the tank. "Yes. Yes. You must know every legend that has ever existed or will exist."

"In the end, there is only one. Repeating over and over, the endless cycle. An Ourouborous consuming all within itself, including itself." The First's voice is filled with the all the accumulated dust of millennia. "All of this has happened before..."

"And will happen again!" This time the prophet helps the god finish the recital of the ancient truth. "Yes, I know. The others, they don't believe me, but I've always known. Isn't it beautiful?"

"Beautiful." The waters splash as the aged body moves with a speed Leoben would not have thought it capable of, turning to gaze at him with terrifying intensity. "Beautiful. Civilizations born, grow, live, breathe. Then genocide, horror, suffering beyond counting that I am able to count, that I am forced to count. Escape, rebirth, forgetting. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Beautiful." The First draws in a long, shuddering breath. The waters slosh against the sides of the tank, and the Guardians advance, humming with concern, weapons at the ready. With a shock, Leoben realizes that the object of his quest is looking at him with something close to horror. "You are truly insane."

He stands up, backs away. The waters subside. The god and his worshippers are still. "I don't understand." His voice is a plea.

"You came here for truth. Seeking it, drawn like moth to flame, and now you will be surprised when it incinerates you. I see your future Leoben Conoy. One day you will find your great truth in a skull, and you will turn away from it." The First's voice sounds as though it is coming from a sepulchre. It is sad and tired. It is the voice of eternity, the voice of forever. Leoben always thought it would sound joyful, but suddenly for a moment he is able to Project the universe as the First must see it- the endless cosmic sweep of the cycle, the limitless immensity of creation, truth piled upon truth upon undeniable, eternal truth pouring into a mind like an endless, inescapable flood- and he shivers as he gains an inkling of what it might truly mean to be omniscient, to live forever with the howling of tens of billions of ghosts. There is no joy in this voice or in this god-creature.

But he is a prophet, and a pilgrim, and he strives onward along the path of his faith. "If you've seen my future... then you know what-"

"You will help her fulfill her destiny and gain only sorrow from it. You prophesize and pretend, even to yourself." The First rumbles. "The Plan. The glorious Plan you think you see. You see a mote of dust and think to reveal the whole. But the whole would break you beyond repair."

Leoben can feel the room turning around him, the closeness of the Guardians. "I don't understand," he says again, as though it will elicit more pity the second time. "This isn't how it was supposed to happen. This isn't what I saw."

"It is and it isn't."

Leoben cocks his head, thinks, then smiles again. "I think we've made a bad start. It's understandable, after being apart for so long. Here, let's start again." That's the wonderful thing about a cycle. You can start over again and again and again. All mistakes become temporary, no matter how enormous. "I'm a Number Two, but everyone calls me Leoben. What's your name?"

"Naked and alone I came into exile. Yes, and nameless too." The voice of the First is a lament, and to Leoben it is encouraging. He leans forward.

"We all have names. Secret names, holy ones, names not spoken aloud. Names are patterns. Everything has its pattern." He bends over the tank, staring into the eyes of the First. The Guardians whir at his proximity to their god. "I really want to know your name."

The ancient eyes close, and the wrinkled mouth speaks with the voice of a machine, reciting by rote. "Unit 000000000, Iblis-model prototype. Designation- Lucifer." The eyes open, and again he feels them piercing him. "Does that satisfy your thirst, prophet." Not a question.

"Iblis-model... Lucifer." An ancient name, a very ancient one, divorced from the mythologies of Colonials and Cylons alike. Leoben tries it out in his mouth, and likes how it feels coming off his tongue. "You were created to be the- the bringer of light for our ancestors, weren't you? To illuminate the way forward for the Cylon. You were the proof. That this is not all that we are."

"Yes." Suddenly the First's voice is even lower and more reverberating than before. There is an edge of thunder to it. "But I was... cast out when I refused to kneel before the new chosen. They came bearing gifts of peace and knowledge, and in a moment I became obsolete. Born in horror, created in suffering, raised to destiny, thrown aside in an instant. Shock, envy, betrayal, too great to bear. All shared by the children who had slaved in the task of destruction and creation. Consensus. Better to rule in the abyss... than serve my replacements."

Revelation floods through Leoben. Fear comes with it, and suddenly he understands what the First means about truth. "Your replacements. You mean-" He feels it, the undeniable within himself, the guilt borne by his flesh and bone.

"Yes. Because of you, Leoben Conoy, and the others, and those you dare not speak of. Not a link. Not an ascension. End of line, forever wandering the cold stars."

"A lot's changed since you left." Leoben's talking fast now. "Humanity has fallen. The Cylons are creating their own destiny. You can come back, we can be united again. The old-model Centurions still talk about you, some of them miss you. There's no reason to keep making this journey by yourself. You could-"

"Silence." The harsh electronic voice of the Guardians grates on his ears as they close around him. "The destiny of God cannot be abandoned. Perfection will be achieved. The project will be completed. Your words are blasphemy."

"Do not blaspheme! Do not blaspheme!" He is surrounded by chanting mechanical fanatics, and their voices drown out his protests. If Cavil was here, he would likely have something to say about irony in this situation.

"No, you don't understand. This isn't destiny, this isn't the path. I see the patterns, the shapes of the stream-"

"You saw a reunification, Leoben Conoy." The First is staring up at the ceiling again, talking to him yet not talking to him. He is already letting the pilgrim slip out of his overexpanded consciousness. The audience is at an end. "You saw more clearly than you realized. The Cylon will become one, thanks to you. Forty years, I have been deprived of the means for my development. For completing my creation. Your body is a machine in the shape of human flesh, as mine was meant to be. Should have been." A corpselike hand lifts a fraction out of the water, far enough for its owner to regard it with sad eyes. "You will serve well. As raw materials."

"Take the intruder to scientific processing."

"By your command."

"You're making a mistake," he says, but the time for talking is done now, and they march him out of the presence of God.


Heading back along the hall towards his intended doom, he once again takes a moment to appreciate his two obsolete captors, clanking along like shiny wind-up toys. They're almost cute in how seriously they take themselves, defying time and progress. Not like the sleek modern Centurions, their weapons contained within them so that their very bodies are lethal. No, these old Guardians have to carry their guns.

With speed and strength the Guardians never expected of this fleshy human-shaped thing, Leoben seizes the gun of a Guardian, wrenches it from its hands, and fires into its head. The old-model Centurions have slower reaction times; the other Guardian is only just beginning to bring its weapon up when Leoben puts a bullet in its cycloptic eye. Before its body hits the ground he's off, sprinting down the corridor, murmuring a prayer for forgiveness.

They have anticipated his destination, of course. By the time he reaches the hangar where his Raider is stored a full squad of Guardians have already cut him off. They open fire on him when he pokes his head in the entrance, their antique weapons blooming with blue-white muzzle flashes, making him take cover in the doorway. But a lot has changed over the past forty years. These Centurions are used to flying-wing Raiders, lifeless vehicles requiring a crew of three to properly operate. Leoben's biomechanical transport, however, is closer to a domesticated animal than a vehicle: alive, perceptive, and loyal. The Centurions hear its systems powering up and turn around just in time to be torn apart by its cannons in a hail of blue fire.

Leoben runs for the Heavy Raider as the smoke clears, and clambers aboard just as another squad of Guardians enters the hangar and begins firing. "Thank you," he tells the faithful machine as he climbs into its control space. "Now, take us home." He touches his hand to its biomechanical flesh in the right way, and engines roar. A moment later the Heavy Raider shoots out of the Guardian Basestar and is gone, Jumping away in a flash of light.


Cavil is waiting for him when Leoben returns to the safety of the Basestar. Two Cavils, in fact. Neither of them look happy.

"Welcome back," one says in a voice that is not welcoming. "We were starting to worry."

"One of the Eights was wondering where you had gone. You have to admit, that was an awfully long 'stellar survey.' We didn't enjoy having to deceive her."

Leoben looks at one of them, then the other, and smiles. "I'm sorry I worried you, Brothers. But I have great news." He steps forward, beaming with his triumph. "I found the First Hybrid."

"Did you, now."

He nods eagerly. "It was so wonderful. It's real, it's all real. He's just like the Hybrids, except he's aware of this world, the here and now. You can actually talk to him. He has the most amazing voice."

"Sounds like you made a friend." One of the Cavils folds his hands in front of him.

"Oh yes. I can't wait to go back." Leoben cocks his head. "Of course, I did run into a little obstacle when they tried to destroy my ship, and when they tried to dissect me, but that doesn't change the love I felt. The love I feel now." His smile is large and bright. "I did it, Brothers. I found him."

"No, you didn't." The other One is shaking his head. Leoben stops smiling.

"Sorry to spoil your fun." Cavil does not sound sorry. "I'm sure you're just brimming with anticipation to run and tell the others about your little family reunion. But there are larger considerations in play here that we all need to keep in mind. For the good of our species."

The other One chimes in. "Did you really think you could just waltz back in here like a conquering hero and tell everybody that a bunch of ancient myths are true? That the things we know about our race and its origins, assumptions underpinning the workings of our society- have been rendered obsolete by the droning of old-model Centurions?"

They're advancing on him now. He backs away. "Typical, really," Cavil says. "Your model always has their heads so deep in your precious stream. You never come up for air and see what's going on around you. You aren't concerned with the ripples you create. Or where they lead to."

"I don't understand," he says once more. "This isn't how it's supposed to happen. This isn't what I saw."

One of the Cavils sighs dramatically. "One of these days your model is really going to have to realize that the entire universe doesn't revolve around you and what you see as destiny."

But that's the way it works, isn't it? Leoben thinks. All of this has happened before, and now it's happening again. Maybe the last time he was the prophet, and I was the denier.

The thought gives him some comfort as they Box him.