Out of the Box
Takes place between Lay Down Your Burdens: Part 2 and Occupation. Kara trains herself to turn off in a very Cylon-like way while living with Leoben after Baltar's surrender to the Cylons on New Caprica. Non-consensual pairing. Constructive criticism welcome.
Inwardly she marvels at how easy it's become to take herself out of the box, to turn her mind off the way the Cylons turn off theirs. She's only succeeded in killing Leoben a handful of times out of the dozens of attempts she's made, and it's become increasingly and painfully obvious that there are just too many frakking copies. He'll keep coming back. She doesn't care why he does it or what his motives are. Caring keeps her trapped in the box, and she needs to live outside of it if she's going to live.
And so she shuts down as he brushes soft fingers through wheat-colored hair that has grown longer than she's ever kept it before, as they trail down her neck and across her silky skin, reaching further than she'd ever have let them go if she was still insistent on battling it out every single second rather than biding her time and saving her strength. This will happen whether she fights it or not, so why stay tuned in when she could be praying and plotting?
His hands creep spider-like across the cool sheets as he reaches towards her, sealing the gap between them by pulling her close in the bed she's learned to share with him. He fraks her in the dead of night, and sometimes in the morning, too. Usually he's sweet and gentle and loving, but sometimes he drives into her hard and fast, battering her body with his Cylon strength and ripping her raw in exasperation. It is then, when she aches and stings and bleeds afterwards, that she knows her inattention has succeeded in frustrating him. It is with a grim and grotesque sense of amusement that she searches out the marks of his angry desperation like points on a tattered map.
He knows she doesn't enjoy it, knows that his actions barely register anymore in her mind, but he still finishes inside every time, rocking against her towards his completion with a sweaty, grunting frenzy that eludes her understanding. As time goes on (how much time? she occasionally wonders) he becomes more aggressive in his attempts to rouse her from her machine-like waking slumber, sometimes taking her four or five times a day, sometimes forcing himself into her mouth or bending her over odd pieces of furniture. Her body is scored with the spoils of his useless campaign, and still she fails to respond.
After a while he realizes that he's only succeeding in making it easier for her to hate him. His furor quiets and he returns to gentler, kinder tactics. She knows he hopes his benevolent compassion will win her over. He wants her to love him, but doesn't realize yet that not even the will of his "God" can make that happen.
And hell, maybe Sharon and Helo were right all along and there done need to be love involved for these frakking machines to procreate. That might explain why Leoben keeps frakking her, and why he tries so hard to force her feelings. Either way, procreation sure as hell isn't going to happen with her. She's more certain of this than anything else. And so she doesn't worry anymore that she'll get pregnant. Instead she just keeps hitting the switch whenever he draws her to him, whispering tender words or angry oaths while he caresses every inch of her as though she were a living doll. He can't hurt her, can't break her, when she's living out of the box.
– fin –