(We're heading into some emotionally painful territory here; consider yourself warned. A 'cleaner' version may also be in the offing.)
Part Ten: Silence is not an Option.
Kara had decided, however unconsciously, to test Caroline's commitment to staying there with that ages-old method children have employed, the silent treatment. This proved spectacularly ineffective as Caroline simply filled the air with her careful reading Kobol, Volume One.
"The founding of the city of Aurorus is a convenient marking point for the start of the second major phase in Koboli development: the Era of Expansion." Caroline paused just long enough to glance up and ensure she had an attentive audience.
The much-celebrated historian Auric Thal then went on to detail how the Aurorans proceeded to sail hither and yon, founding other cities and villages along the Great Coast, and map their world. Kara had always found that piece of history uplifting somehow. It wasn't something she had dwelled on or examined too closely, mainly for fear it would wither away with any conscious attention.
Caroline reached the point where the fifth city, Saleek, was founded when she unexpectedly stopped. "We know about the baby, Kara," she stated smoothly.
"Huh?"
But Caroline simply took up reading again, telling how the sixth and seven cities were founded upon the Quell Peninsula, and soon after were wiped out by an earthquake that sank the peninsula itself. Caroline's steady voice and the familiar details of their ancestor's many rises and falls kept Kara from jumping out of the bed in another blind panic. By rights, she shouldn't have been able lay there and listen, but she did. Perhaps not serenely, but any urge to flee had itself long since fled.
Kara used the time, turning Caroline's words over and over in her head. She thought back over their smooth, casual delivery. She considered and analyzed the nuances and hitches in Caroline's voice, or imagined she did given the words themselves rather drowned out everything else. Besides, she didn't really have the training or experience to distinguish between stuff like that; her own mother had only one tone and her decibel level was permanently on 'high'.
The fact Caroline wasn't yelling, cursing or otherwise hammering on her was, in light of her words, infinitely more terrifying. At least it should have been. Her few monens at the Marshfields had instilled in her a mild anxiety over people getting an odd sort of quiet.
Right then Kara didn't feel any threat or anger directed her way. Caroline Adama's sole focus, it seemed, was reading fromthe volume in her hands and sneak a quick glance her way every ten or twenty pages. Despite herself, Kara actually felt herself start to relax a bit, timing her own glances towards her temporary roommate according to the rustle of the pages as they were turned.
If it was Caroline's intention to lull her into lowering her guard, it worked brilliantly. Kara was aware of this only in hindsight, once Caroline's next non-text statement registered. "We aren't angry at you about it, Kara."
It was three pages before it sunk in. Shock immobilized her completely once it did, leaving her helpless against the next such statement when it came half an hour later.
Caroline told her "We know about the baby, Kara. We aren't angry at you about it. And we're going to take you home." Once again, it was said so smoothly and casually it didn't register until long after the fact. This time Kara snapped her head around eyes wide, staring at Caroline directly, with both lungs and heart pounding hard against her chest.
It was the last bit that really broke her mental paralysis. "Whu...?" was all she could manage.
Caroline looked up, stopping mid-sentence as she read of the First Communal Council and its intrigues. "Hmm? What's that?"
"Whu...?"
"Kara," Caroline frowned. "Is something wrong with your medication?"
"I -- whu...?" What the frak had happened to her voice? To her head? What the frak was she trying to say? Or rather not say? Or -- what the frak?
"What the frak d'you mean?" Kara managed to ground out, wincing from the pain in her throat.
"Language, Kara." If anything, Caroline's completely calm and gentle manner only set Kara even further on edge.
"Answer me, godsdammit!"
"I mean exactly what I said." She put the volume aside and reached around, digging into the pocket of her jacket from where it hung over her chair. She pulled out a small photostat that Kara immediately identified as her single most prized possession, and the clearest evidence of her eternal damnation once Hades or the Furies got their metaphysical hands on her.
"We know about the baby," Caroline said in that same maddeningly calm and reasonable voice. "But we aren't angry about it."
"Who the frak is 'we'?" Kara suspected she already knew the answer, but was enough of an emotional masochist to ask anyway.
"Lee and myself."
"Frak."
"And that's more than enough of that language, Kara. Not that I don't understand, mind you."
"You don't know frak!" Kara spat this, completely with spittle flying across her covers.
"I know one thing, Kara," Caroline informed her in surprisingly flat voice. "I know that Zak is my third child."
Again, it took Kara several beats to register the words. It took longer still for her to even begin making a connection between that statement and all previous ones; she kept coming up short, which seemed to be the story of her life. Ultimately, curiosity overrode self-preservation and she dared a look directly to her left. "What?"
"Lee and Zak have -- had -- a sister between them." Now it was Caroline who looked down and away.
"Whu -- when?"
"A year after Lee was born. I was pregnant for two monens." Still the same flat tone, which Kara was rapidly finding frightening to hear.
"What -- what happened?" Kara winced at both the question and her own tone. Wasn't it obvious what happened, frakhead? Why else would she be telling you this if…
"I lost her, on the tenth of Pallasaid. A natural miscarriage." Caroline raised her eyes then and locked her gaze on Kara. "It was the god's mercy on us both." Kara sputtered in shock at this, only to go still at the next words she heard. "I was drinking at the time, Kara." She sighed. "I didn't even know I was pregnant until I was in the hospital."
"I -- gods..."
"Like I said, it was the god's mercy on us both." Another sigh. "Lee doesn't know. Zak doesn't know. Neither does Bill." A gentle hand was laid on her arm, an equally gentle squeeze following. "So, yes, Kara. I know what the frak I'm talking about."
There was nothing, literally nothing, Kara could even conceive of saying after all that. She felt what little confidence her anger had provided drain away, leaving her feeling not a little weak and ashamed for it.
Kara could only lay there, eyes staring at nothing, unwilling to allow herself the tears that prickled her eyes. Caroline's hand remained where it laid, her grip never slacking.
In time, Kara heard her voice as it worked independently of her will. "It was a truck," she murmured.
"A truck -- hit you?" Caroline question was barely above a whisper.
"Yeah. Right after -- right after I said good-bye to Momma."
"You went to see her alone?"
"Yeah. After I saw Doc Greystone." Now it was Kara's turn to sigh. "I -- I told Momma about Lee -- an' -- an' about the baby -- an' how Lee and I were getting married..."
Had she not only a hair less lost to the memories, Kara would have easily caught the tremors Caroline fought to quiet in her shoulders and voice and gaze. "Did she -- what did she say, Kara?"
"She said 'trash can't raise babies' and 'trash can't marry good men'."
"What did you say to that?"
"I said, 'gods rest your soul, Momma'. An' then I left her there." Kara closed her eyes, the tears starting to leak from between her lashes.
"And then?" Caroline prompted, gentle as a summer's breeze.
"Then I was crossing the street outside -- even waited for the signal to turn. An' then a truck hit me -- an' it killed -- it killed me..."
She didn't -- couldn't -- say anymore after that. And Caroline didn't press or resume reading Kobol..
Enough had been said.
Kara took the silence that resulted as Caroline's unspoken command she ponder, deeply, just how thoroughly she'd swallowed both feet. She calculated she'd made it up to her knees when Caroline dropped her little bombshell.
She couldn't immediately think what possessed Caroline to drop it on her in the first place. Oh, it was clearer in retrospect, but lying there like a log, apparently had a negative impact on her higher functions. As a defense mechanism, she re-tuned her mental dial to contemplate more sundry and familiar concerns, Lee's presence in the general area being foremost on that list.
To say she had been shocked to see him was a major understatement and it gave her the distraction she so desperately needed. Hades, just trying to imagine what his reaction to the pictures had been would keep her occupied straight up to when the suns went nova and their worlds ended in fire. It actually fortified her emotional walls: imagining the worst case, then conceiving something even worse, was reassuring that everything her mother had said was true. That kind of certainty gave her something to brace against when Caroline Adama decided to call her on her bullshit.
Maybe Lee had put her here in the hospital? Gods knew she had given him all the reason in all the worlds to beat the holy living shit out of her. She couldn't necessarily see him actually doing it, but who knew how much he'd changed after five years?
That thought left her so cold she couldn't move. Certainty of her worthlessness was one thing, but the possibility she had destroyed another's soul as completely as she'd murdered her own baby?
At some point, she couldn't tell when exactly, Kara gave up on the whole "living with it" thing and started thinking of ways onto the opposite track. She would have to be clever about it, of course. Maybe wait until after dark. She'd have to get a sense of the night staff and how their schedules worked…
She was completely unaware of how clearly these thoughts showed on her face. Caroline, in contrast, was anything but unaware, and enunciated her response in the clearest fashion humanly possible.
"Frak you."
This had the desired effect of getting Kara's attention, even if it took several seconds to register. "What?"
"I said 'frak you', Karissa Antigone Thrace." It was clear from her tone that Caroline wasn't actively pronouncing judgment upon her. There was something indefinable to the words however, and that something was enough to chill Kara to the bone.
"Um…"
"That's what suicide is, Kara," Caroline pressed on in the same tone, which hardened and sharpened with each word. "It's the ultimate 'frak you'. It you telling your family and everyone you love 'frak you, you aren't worth sticking around for'."
"I don't…" However, Caroline would brook no evasions or excuses.
"You don't what, Kara? Don't intend to kill yourself? Don't have any family? Don't have anyone you love?" The older woman leaned forward and speared her with a flint-hard gaze. "As Bill would say, I'm calling bullshit. And do not even try to deny what I know was running through your head just now."
"Which was?" Kara challenged, trying to cover how badly she was shaking right then.
"How quickly you could kill yourself. I'll even wager you'd come up with a couple really messy ways to accomplish that as well."
"What do…"
"What do I know?" A half-smile, utterly devoid of humor, was the first half of Caroline's answer. It was merely to ensure she had Kara's full attention. The second half was the bit that mattered more.
"I know because, for over a month after I lost little Athena, I would see the exact same look every godsbedamned time I would look in a frakking mirror!" Her nostrils flared hard and lips trembled. "That's how I know what going on in that beautiful, thick head of yours, girl. I was ready to slice my own wrists open every time I saw that look in my own eyes."
Kara literally had to gulp the air to gasp, "Stop. Please, just -- stop."
"Is that what you're going to do, Kara?" Caroline's voice dipped slightly, sounding almost taunting. "Are you going to say 'frak you' to Lee like that? Why'd you keep those photos and his ring if that's all you had in mind? Hmm?" She leaned closer still, almost breathing into her ear. "Did you ever mean it when you said you loved my son, who you wanted to spend your life with him?"
"Ah -- I..." Her tears flowed freely now, her hands bunching the bed sheet in a white-knuckle grip. Caroline leaned in closer, the words she spoke now a hurricane in her ears.
"I know you did, so don't you dare wreck our lives like that, Kara. We've been damaged enough. Lee won't survive it. I won't survive it. Don't you dare make me live out my days with the echo of a gunshot in my ears, or make me scared to see the color red. Don't make me think my daughter was a coward."
The word worked its usual magic, clearing Kara's mind and giving her a flare of anger that had her snarling "I -- I'm not..."
"Where's that fierce spirit I know and love?"
"I -- I..." Kara could only sigh as her eyes fell downwards once more. "I don't know," she whispered, something terrible unwinding in her chest. It was terrible because it had something to do with being vulnerable, as if she wasn't enough of that already...
"You didn't kill your baby, Kara. You didn't do that."
Every thing in creation, from philosophical conceit to the densest metal, has its breaking point. The hard shell of self-loathing and despair Kara Thrace had hidden in for five years was no different. Those ten words, delivered so gently they were barely above a whisper, were sufficient to crack it like an egg. With it went all conscious thought and impulse, and so she offered no resistance against Caroline's pulling her into a tight embrace.
She didn't scream or wail, but her tears became a flood and shoulders shook with such force it took all of Caroline's strength to hold onto her. How had this woman so easily demolished all her walls and shatter all the nice little lies she'd depended on for so long? What gave Caroline Adama the right to do that to her?
Kara wanted to curse her for it. She might as well have called Zeus down from his throne on high while she was at it, her tongue too heavy to move and her voice long gone. The most she could do was mutter "Oh gods oh gods oh gods..." over and over again.
It hurt to breathe, hurt to feel, hurt to live. Fear gets you killed; anger keeps you alive; that was the mantra pounded into her at Marshfields. But she was too tired to be angry anymore and too weak to be afraid of how good it felt to have Caroline hold her like this. So did this mean she didn't want to be alive anymore? Was she just too tired to care about how she really deserved all of Momma's anger?She didn't even believe that anymore because Caroline was there and Lee was there and Lee had found her and stayed with her and hadn't left her side and… oh gods! Oh gods! Oh gods! She remembered now how he told her… oh gods… he still loved her and he wouldn't leave her. But he wasn't there anymore. Caroline wouldn't let her go again. And why did baby have to die? She hates the gods now because they took baby away from her and it wasn't her fault. She hates them hates them hates them all. Please don't leave me, mom. Please don't leave me, Lee, please don't leave, please don't leave, please don't leave. I'll be better, I swear, I swear, I swear, I swear. Because I don't want you to leave me alone. I can't be alone because I'll die and have to face Hades, and I don't want to face him because I know I'm damned except when I'm with you. I'm better with you. I'll be better! Oh gods, please let me go! Don't let me go! Let me go and be with baby even though I didn't kill baby. I killed baby. I didn't kill baby. I didn't kill baby. It wasn't fair, wasn't fair, wasn't fair, we were happy, so happy, so happy! I can't live like this anymore, don't want to live like this anymore, don't want to live but I want to live and be with Lee and have a bright and shiny future because I want a bright and shiny future. Momma said I was trash and tried to throw me out with the trash; she beat and hurt me. Lee never hurt me; I hurt Lee. All I do is Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! Stop! Stop! Stop! STOP!
Something sharp poked her arm. Something that spread warmth through her arm and into the rest of her. Something that stopped all her racing thoughts and curses, but didn't stop her tears as they pooled when she felt herself lay back once more.
"Sleep now, Kara," someone said. It might have been Caroline, or Nurse Gorgo. It might have been Artemis herself.
Kara saw no reason to disobey the directive, and so let herself drift away. If this were a dream, well, perhaps she just wouldn't wake up from it. The thought wasn't all that displeasing, given circumstances.
TBC...
De Author Seez: I really have nothing to say right now; just trying to up the word count a bit. Please hit the review button so I know I'm keeping y'all interested.