oOo
Athena lay on her bunk, eyes closed, lips curled in a half-smile. She was dreaming of home, home before the Cylon attack, when her mother and Zach were still alive, when she and Starbuck were still happy.
There was a noise, and when she opened her eyes Starbuck was standing there, just as she'd imagined so many other times. Her smile turned to a frown as she regarded him. He'd appeared without her consciously willing him to, which had never happened before. If the fantasies were taking on a life of their own, was she closer to the edge than she'd believed?
Her frown deepened as she lowered her legs over the edge of the bunk, never removing her eyes from him, drinking in the details. Never before had she envisioned him with such a look of stunned, horrified pity on his face. Never before had she allowed herself to picture his reaction to her condition as well as her presence.
To her obvious pregnancy.
She lowered her eyes for a moment, willing this particular vision to vanish. It was too disturbing, too close to the reality she didn't want to face. Not yet, not until she had to, and in facing it, banish it forever. She was practically screaming at her subconscious as she looked back up, but all it did was send the vision closer, bring Starbuck forward a single, stumbling step…
…and then she knew.
It wasn't a dream, or a fantasy, or a persistent vision. Not even a hallucination. It was real, he was real. "Starbuck." She mouthed his name but couldn't summon the energy to actually speak. Instead, she looked at him, wondering, still only half-convinced of his reality. She tried again. "Starbuck."
She spoke that time, her voice raspy with disuse, but it was as if the sound of his name broke the spell he'd fallen under as soon as he recognized her condition. "Athena," he whispered, then licked his lips and tried a smile. "I've come to take you away from all this."
She stood up, awkwardly, one hand braced against the wall to support her, then took a halting step forward. And stopped, as suddenly as she'd moved. Remembering why she'd never continued her fantasies of rescue past this moment. "I can't."
Starbuck frowned; this was not the reaction he'd expected, even in light of her "interesting" condition. Judging by the roundness of her abdomen, she must have been pregnant before they brought her here. He swallowed his disappointment that she'd found someone else before vanishing. "Sure you can," he encouraged, stretching out a hand. "I'll help. We'll get you and your baby back to his father…"
She jerked away from his touch, burning with shame. "Starbuck, you don't understand," she whispered. "I wasn't pregnant when they took me, they accelerated it so I'm six months along instead of three." She allowed herself a quick glance at his face, only to be caught and held by the rage in his eyes.
"It's Baltar, isn't it, that bastard raped you-"
She shook her head, cutting off the rant before it began. That had even been one of her fantasies, once she realized exactly what had been done to her and why. Even that had been preferable to the horrific reality she was about to share with Starbuck. Because he had to understand, to know why he had to sneak back out of here and leave. Without her. "No. It's worse than that. So much worse…"
She'd backed into the corner again, slipping down to her knees, cowering away, unable to stand the thought of his eyes on her body as she told him the rest. Told him what had been done to her as her hair slipped over her face, hiding her features, clouding herself in the illusion of anonymity; if he couldn't see her, it wasn't her she was talking about, the immediacy of the situation could be pretended away. She wanted it that way, it was bad enough he had to hear what she was about to tell him. Especially after what Baltar had so casually revealed to her on his last, gloating visit. He knew what she was doing, how she was escaping, and took especial delight in reminding her of the grim realities of her situation.
Starbuck just stood there, waiting, watching her, seeing the shame in her posture that she hid from him as she covered her face. He knew he wasn't going to like what she was working herself up to tell him, but he had to hear it, was willing to take the time to find out what it was now rather than fight with her, because whatever they'd done to her, he had to know.
So he'd know exactly who to kill first.
"It's an experiment." She finally spoke, finally found the words and the courage to use them, her voice harsh from months of barely speaking, but taking on its normal cadences as the words came pouring out. "I'm part of it. There are half a dozen other women, some human and some others that were prisoners before we were kidnapped. I was the last one Baltar took from the convoy; he couldn't resist taking me once the Cylons formed an alliance with the Bresch, the aliens who made the wormholes."
"Is that who built the cities on the other side of the planet? Did they hide this place somehow? Because I sure don't remember passing it when we came this way before."
She nodded. "We're on a Bresch colony world, one settled by scientists. This place is only reachable through the wormholes, but don't ask me how. No one bothered explaining the science to me. They're a race of telepaths, and they made some sort of deal with the Cylons. Baltar and Lucifer—" She shuddered as she said the name, her breath clogging her throat in a moment of panic, but it passed and she forced herself to continue, grateful that Starbuck neither spoke nor attempted to comfort her. She didn't think she could go on, if he touched her right now. And he had to know the whole story, every grisly, demented detail. "Baltar and Lucifer traded certain technologies to the Bresch in exchange for their help in abducting us and setting this up." Her hand waved vaguely at the room surrounding them. "Baltar negotiated everything through Lucifer, because the Bresch can't read Cylons. Not that it would have mattered if they read his intentions," she added bitterly, "since the Bresch are as amoral as he is, willing to trade their abilities to anyone willing to fund their 'research'."
"That's how they erased you from our memories," Starbuck said. It made sense. "None of us even remembered that you existed, much less that you were missing. That's why it took me so long to find you."
"When you hear the rest, you'll wish you hadn't."
Starbuck braced himself; whatever Athena was about to tell him was going to be bad. Very bad.
She took a deep breath. "Starbuck, they did this to me, Baltar and Lu—"
"Lieutenant Starbuck, how good of you to rejoin us. Memories returned, did they? Right on time."
His weapon was out at the first word, but Starbuck didn't need the admonishing look on Baltar's face to drop his hand back to his side. The presence of two armed Cylon guards flanking the traitor was more than enough to convince him to lower the weapon, slowly, and hand it over when Baltar reached for it. He stepped back in front of Athena protectively as she levered herself to her feet, her face white with apprehension.
"What a lovely family portrait," Baltar said mockingly as he strolled further into the room. The two guards remained by the door, unmoving. "I'm touched by your return, Lt. Starbuck, as I'm sure Athena is. Of course, we expected you." He smiled as Starbuck stared at him incredulously. "Oh yes, we expected you. At my request, the Bresch keyed one of their wormholes to open if anyone from the fleet backtracked. We were hoping to catch the Galactica, but we're happy enough to have you as witness to the next stage of Cylon evolution."
"The only thing I want to witness, Baltar, is your death," Starbuck spat out defiantly.
Baltar's grin widened. "How sad, since that will never happen. But perhaps I can offer you something else instead, a consolation prize, as it were. Perhaps you'd be interested in some memories?" Before Starbuck could react, he spoke again. "Let me tell you a secret, my friend/About an empire that will never end."
Starbuck went rigid at those words, at the sudden rush of memories the two lines of ancient poetry produced. The doc was wrong, he thought dimly, before the memories overwhelmed him. They hadn't been erased, just cleverly hidden.
Until now.
Cylon ships, a pack of them, literally appearing from nowhere, jamming their communications, surrounding them, him and Athena, forcing them into a wormhole that opened up and vanished behind them. Herding their patrol ships to the planet at the other end of the wormhole, crowding around them, forcing them to land. Ordering them out of their ships, marching them into a Cylon facility on the continent opposite one on which Starbuck glimpsed several large cities.
A jumble of images. Flashes of blank corridor walls, a door, a medical lab. A bright flash of light. Restraints, a pair of tables in the middle of the room. A struggle, Athena's voice calling out to him, Cylons forcing him onto the table, a glimpse of Athena's pale face as she too was strapped down, her clothing stripped away and discarded with brutal efficiency.
He cried out, demanding to know what was happening, sensing a different goal than mere interrogation or torture. Baltar's gloating face looming over him, a slender, pointy-headed silhouette behind him…the Cylon Lucifer? Terror and outrage as he was injected with something, the feeling of his clothing being loosened and a cry from Athena, then…nothing. Darkness. And no memories between then and when he suddenly found himself back on his ship, back on patrol as if nothing had happened. Alone, with nothing to tell him that something had happened to him. To Athena.
She'd simply ceased to exist. And now he knew why.
"This is all part of some sort of sick experiment, that baby…" His tongue froze, but he forced himself to go on. "You took me, you used me, did something to me before you let me go…"
"We used you, yes. As the genetic father," Baltar agreed, sounding amused. "Your DNA and Cylon technology, delivered to a human host mother via artificial insemination. The Bresch then wiped your memories and returned you to your pathetic little convoy."
"Why…" Starbuck could barely find the breath to ask, and wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Baltar smiled at his obvious discomfort. "To see if Cylon superiority can be joined to human tenacity to create a new breed of Cylon warriors. A noble experiment."
Athena was trembling now, her teeth chattering, her head moving in violent denial, but Starbuck knew, to the core of his very being, that the traitor wasn't lying. Athena knew it too, better than he did, but he could understand her desire for none of it to be true. It was sickening, heart-breaking, and his arms encircled her trembling form as he sought to comfort her even in the midst of his own rage. Baltar wasn't lying, not this time. He was too busy gloating, savoring the fury and revulsion Starbuck was feeling, the shame and self-loathing Athena all too obviously felt. She'd spent months like this, knowing what was growing inside her, and yet her first thoughts had been for him, urging him to leave. It was amazing, that she'd had that kind of self-control left after months in virtual isolation.
"Lucifer found it quite intriguing," Baltar continued relentlessly, his eyes boring into Starbuck's. "I allowed him to perform the procedure after you lost consciousness. It's a shame you couldn't see; he had quite perfected the technique by then."
Whether it was the open smirk on the traitor's face or Athena's anguished moan as she sank once more to her knees, Starbuck never knew. He was only aware of a rage so all-consuming that his vision disappeared in a haze of red as a roaring sound filled his ears.
When he came back to himself, he was holding the gun. Baltar was dead, his neck snapped, and the two Cylons were destroyed. Athena stared at him apprehensively, the violence of what she'd just witnessed forcing its way past the defensive fog she'd fallen into as the full extent of her shame was revealed to the man standing before her.
"Athena?"
She started at the sound of her name, pulled away as he reached for her. "Come on, we have to get out of here." His voice rasped in his throat, and he was dimly aware that he'd been screaming, but remembered nothing else of what he presumed to be his attack on their captors. He wet his lips. "No matter what they did to you, to us, we'll fix it. We'll make it better, but you have to come with me now. We have to get out of here." He held out his hand beseechingly.
"What about the others?" There was a whimper in her voice; Athena hated herself for it. "Can you get the rest of them out, can you help them?"
Starbuck shrugged wearily. "Your father has to be told about this so he can stop it, so he can help them. And there's no way in hell I'm leaving here without bringing you back with me."
"I don't want him to see me like this. I don't want anyone to see me like this!" Her voice rose in growing hysteria, and Starbuck closed the distance between them, grasping her arms gently, before pulling her into his embrace.
She stilled, holding herself stiff in the circle of his arms, eyes wide with shame and terror. She'd been so afraid no one would come for her…and terrified that they would. That they would see her, what she'd allowed to happen to her, what she'd been helpless to prevent. She was ashamed to the core of her soul, filled with self-loathing, but Starbuck wasn't looking at her like the monster she felt herself to be, wasn't speaking of the thing growing inside her body as a monster, either. Yes there was pity and loathing, but she'd seen first-hand that his hatred was for the ones who'd done this to her. But she wasn't quite ready to forgive herself as he appeared to.
"How can you take me back to them after what I allowed them to do to me?" she whispered, eyes wide and fearful. "How can I face my family with this…thing…growing inside me?" There, she'd said it, said the words she'd been afraid to voice, even to herself.
"Athena, we—your family loves you," Starbuck corrected himself. What had he been about to say? Surely not what she was thinking..."No matter what they did to you. And that baby," he touched her stomach delicately, ignoring her involuntary flinch, "that baby is a part of you and a part of me. That's all I care about. That, and getting you home." His hands went to her arms again. "Will you come with me? Please?"
He wasn't going to force her, that much was obvious; but he wasn't going to leave without her, either. And if she wanted to save him, she would have to allow him to save her. They couldn't stay where they were for much longer. As isolated as her prison was, it was still patrolled. Besides, Baltar would be missed, the bodies would be discovered, and Starbuck would be killed. She nodded, allowing herself to relax just a little, bringing one hand up to cover his, hesitant, shaky, but determined. If he could look at her without blame, if he could claim what grew inside her as his, then perhaps she could stop hating it and all it represented as well.
Maybe. For now, she was content to let him take her hand, stooping to pick up one of the weapons from the floor and heading for the door.
There was a sound, and he thrust her behind him, bringing the heavy gun up and only barely stopping himself from firing as he recognized the figure striding anxiously toward them.
"Boomer! What are you doing here? How did you find this place?!"
"Hey, you didn't really think the Commander trusted you to pull this one off without some back-up, did you?" Boomer tried for a light tone, but failed, not bothering to keep the relief at finding his friend alive from his eyes and voice. "When that wormhole opened up and you just dived on in, I thought you'd lost your mind. But we had our orders, so we followed. Once we got into the inner system we had to take care of the Cylon welcoming committee." His off-hand tone belied the pitched battle that had taken place, but both Athena and Starbuck understood. "Took us a while, but we found you."
"You followed me?" Starbuck was dazed, still unsure if this was reality or not. "Commander Adama knew I'd go after Athena myself," he murmured, finally comprehending. "He made sure we'd both make it back."
Boomer nodded. "You had us worried for a while." He carefully kept his eyes away from Athena; it was obvious from the way she shrank behind Starbuck that she didn't want to be seen. What they'd learned from the Bresch had sickened him, but he was as determined as Starbuck that this mission end successfully. For all the captives. "Come on, we have a ship waiting that can hold everyone. Rachela and the others already released them."
Starbuck turned to Athena. "We'll let the doc take a look at you once we get back to the ship," he said quietly. "Whatever it takes, we'll fix this. Do you trust me?"
She nodded tremulously. "Absolutely." But there was fear in her eyes, a flinching quality to her that nearly broke Starbuck's heart.
"After we get home, we'll come back and get those bastards," he muttered to Boomer. Who looked as if he wanted to say something, but held his tongue.
Because he felt the same way.