For notes, warnings and disclaimers see part 1

Part 4: The Fire

Kara was looking at the clothes folded by the head of the bed as she always did when Leoben wasn't around, not quite daring to reach for them, knowing that once she touched them she would never be able to force herself to let them go.

Was she ready to take that step? That was a question she asked herself almost every day.

She knew that by taking the clothes she would not only be accepting Leoben's control but she would also be giving him something he could take away. As long as she remained naked that was one power he didn't have. Sure, he could still hurt her and do whatever he wanted with her body --she had come to accept that a long time before-- but she didn't owe him anything... her acceptance of those clothes was bound to change that. She craved them, desperately, but at the same time she was all too aware of what those clothes stood for: they were meant to be a sign of ownership, of the fact that she acknowledged Leoben to be her master. That was what he had been unable to get her to do up to that point.

Up to that point he had been able to take whatever he wanted, there was no denying that, but at the same time she hadn't given him anything.

The problem was that even though she was reluctant to accept what those clothes entailed, she couldn't help but to acknowledge that so far her pride and her defiance hadn't done her much good. Sure, up to that point she had managed to keep herself going by telling herself that sooner or later the Old Man would come back, by trying to convince herself that someday, somehow, she would escape Leoben's clutches and when that day came she wanted to be able to look at herself in the mirror and know that --in spite of everything he had done to her body-- Leoben had not managed to break her but at the same time with each and every passing day it became harder for her to quell the little voice in the back of her mind that kept whispering that she had no hope when it came to freeing herself and that her dreams of being rescued by a knight in shining armor --or battlestar as the case might be-- were nothing but dreams, that the Old Man was never coming back, that chances were that both the Galactica and the Pegasus had already been destroyed and were nothing but clusters of debris floating among the stars and that this time around there would be no way out of the hellhole she not-so-lovingly called home. She knew that if that was the case then one way or another she was bound to spend the rest of her life pushing out half-cylon bastards... and that if that was what was in store for her then life with Leoben was bound to be preferable to being hooked to one of those machines she had seen back on Caprica.

In fact she had barely dared to contemplate the possibility that there could be farms on New Caprica already, that other women could have been taken and that as bad as things were for her, they were probably a lot worse for them... and that she couldn't run the risk that Simon and the others would grow frustrated by Leoben's lack of progress and take her away from him.

That was a terrifying alternative but she knew it wasn't one she could afford to ignore, not completely.

When those thoughts got to be too much, Kara tried to convince herself that if the Galactica and the Pegasus had been destroyed Leoben would almost certainly have said something, that he would probably have gloated about it for days on end but at the same time she knew --and he knew-- that no matter what he said she would never have believed him so the fact that he hadn't said anything didn't really mean all that much.

That brought her back to the question of whether or not keeping up her defiance made sense, especially because the answer to that question depended largely on whether or not there would ever be a way out of her current predicament. In that regard she knew that accepting the clothes would be akin to giving up hope and she wasn't sure she was ready to do that... or maybe she just wasn't ready to accept that she already had.

The bottom line was that even though the idea of spending a lifetime playing house with Leoben was almost more than she could stand, she knew she couldn't allow herself to forget that it was still far from a worst case scenario. At times her despair had gotten so bad that she had actually considered the possibility of ending it all, of killing herself even if it went against everything she believed in but she hadn't reached that point yet and deep down she suspected that she never would. As much as people had always told her that she had a death wish the truth was that her survival instinct was too strong and in spite of everything she still wanted to live.

That was what the whole thing boiled down to.

Realizing that in the end the outcome was inevitable, Kara reached for those clothes, covering her body for the first time in more than three months and then, with her choice made, she sat down to wait for her 'husband' to come home.

THE END?

Author's notes: Hi guys, okay I suspect that last week's chapter scared most of my reviewers --and probably quite a few of my readers-- away. Sorry about that but I did say that this was going to be dark and I also warned you that it was going to be hurt without comfort (unless I happen to change my mind about writing a sequel at some point, of course). Anyway, this was my twisted little take on what could have happened in the four months between LDYB and 'Occupation'. It was also an attempt to write a sort of 'stage one' story that would explain why Leoben took so long before bringing Kacey into the picture (other than to make the timing work for the producers, of course).

I would also like to thank you for taking the time to read this. I know this was not exactly the easiest of fics but it was something I wanted to see if I could pull off. As always, reviews are deeply appreciated,

Alec