So sorry.:( I had to move, well the move was optional but it took up a ton of my time and delayed the second chapter. Baaad fanfic writer. I will accept my twenty lashings.

The Reeducation of Nya Reece – Part 1

Nya blinks and the explosion flares, so bright, it burns the tears from her eyes.

-----

"Hail, children of Zeus! Tell of the everlasting gods. Tell how, in the beginning, gods and earth came to be, and rivers, and the boundless sea with its raging swell, and the gleaming stars, and the wide heaven above, and the gods who were born of them…"

"You're quiet today."

Leoben slides the book shut but the copy of D'anna Bries has already seen the inside of it. One eyebrow quirks as she slides in across from him and waits for an explanation.

He is sitting alone at one of the café tables, waiting and hoping to catch a glimpse of Caprica Six and Sharon Valerii. So far the women haven't shown up and Leoben desperately needs them to, but he can't tell that to her, he can't trust this backstabbing Cylon model anymore than he could trust the humans to do the right thing on Journey. As he is now, a machine gone native, he doesn't have anyone except himself.

"I was trying to understand."

"Understand?" She asks in that harsh Virgon accent.

"Why they believe in the old stories." He answers smoothly, aware of how easily the lies come to him, and wondering which part of his ancestry it hails from. "You must study your enemy to know their weaknesses. You must know how to exploit their beliefs."

"An interesting theory."

"One I hope to test and see if it bears fruit." But something in his voice betrays him slightly and D'anna stares at him with her eyes crinkled sharply.

"Test personally?" She asks.

"If God permits." Leoben answers sharply.

"Of course," she looks away as though gauging something, his nervousness perhaps. "We all await God's approval of our actions and our lives."

Leoben doesn't answer. He waits and eventually D'anna tires of him and excuses herself. When she is gone he unclenches his fingers from the book. Each tip has bent deep grooves into the leather cover and will not unmark despite his every effort.

"Zeus, hear my prayer." Says the voice of a creature no longer Cylon and yet not human either. "Know my piety and keep me safe long enough to see her again."

His hand drops and he tucks the book deep into his jacket pocket. Then, his eyes turn skyward.

Toward the gods.

Toward her.

-----

There is a sharp rap at the airlock of the Astral Queen. Tom and his second, Davis, acknowledge the rap and spin the hatch to equalize both sides. He isn't anxious, but its been over two weeks since Nya last left. He hates to realize how attached he has become to her and every time he feels the loss he is reminded that she is a political weakness. There is no easy solution.

She is wearing the dark silver Fleet uniform but her eyes crinkle sharply when she sees him.

He embraces her. "How long can you stay?"

The question makes her freeze and they disengage carefully. Her face is now dreadfully serious with concern.

"Nya?"

"I've been assigned to the Pegasus."

"The Pegasus?" Tom rolls the thought over in his mind. "Why?"

"Commander Cain has ultimate authority over the Fleet." Nya grips his arm as they walk from the flight deck. "She is changing the way things work around here."

"But Adama and Roslin won't allow that."

Nya shakes her head almost sorrowfully. "From the way Apollo explained it, they don't have any choice. Military protocol is uncompromising."

"Why you?"

She looks away. Nya won't ever admit to him what she has heard about the Pegasus or the history that the ship carries with her. For all that they have experienced and overcome, there is still some part of Nya that withholds herself from loving another man. She does love Tom; as friends do, as compatriots do, as family does, but she does not yet love him the way that she loved Leoben. And part of her doesn't want him to worry. There are no guarantees about what the Pegasus might hold for her, good or evil.

"Normal personnel transfer." She answers finally. "I guess we'll be seeing a lot of crew move between ships to integrate the Fleet."

"I see."

"Come on." She teases him lightly. "I thought you'd be happy that someone besides Adama was in command."

"We'll see." Tom halts as he sees where Nya has brought him. "Why are we here?"

"It might be awhile." Nya releases her hold on him and starts to gather up the bows laying along the floor. "You could use the space for…"

"Stop."

She looks up at him startled.

"It will wait for you."

She can't answer to that statement, can't find the words inside of her racing heart.

-----

"T-minus fifteen seconds. Bravo team assume position."

Nya pivots the VIPER towards the wingman position.

"On my mark, begin strafing run."

-----

"You still come here often."

"Yes." Leoben offers no other explanation as his copy comes to stand along side of him. He decides to call this one Blue in his mind for the mismatched blue trousers and shirt that his doppelganger is wearing.

They stand in the darkness that surrounds the birthing chamber looking down at the innocuous vat that sees them reborn. This tank is empty, awaiting a new blank body and the death of the Cylon that will fill it.

Blue leaves his side and stalks around the edge of the tank so that the two men can look directly at each other. "Do you ever wonder why you came here? And not somewhere else?"

"What do you mean?" Leoben doesn't understand.

"We know where the Fleet is….roughly." Blue grins. "You could have downloaded out there. Instead we brought you here."

Leoben weighs his options and goes for the honest answer, the one that rings truest. "I was important for some reason."

"You were an anomaly."

This makes sense. If Leoben had destroyed the crew of the Journey he would never have come to anyone's attention. No one would have noticed him amoung all the other resurrections. But he had done something special and attention-worthy. He had not died when he was supposed to.

"D'anna thinks I went native."

"Did you?"

"The humans," he sneers. "Stopped me from destroying the ship. I had no choice but to blend in. God commands but he does not waste lives unnecessarily. I was biding my time until I had the chance again."

"So bringing you all the way back to Caprica wasn't necessary? The use of power to boost your consciousness through four relay stations was wasted?"

Leoben shrugs. "I am one of the many."

"And the woman you spoke of? Nya?" You don't find yourself with any latent feelings towards her?"

Leoben shakes his head, not trusting his voice to sustain the lie. "We don't leave a single one of them alive. That is God's will. Not one. Not the babies in their mothers' wombs – not even they must live. The whole people must be wiped out of existence , and none be left to think of them and shed a tear."

"Ah…scripture." Blue sounds elated that Leoben can quote it to him so well. "God's word is what sustains us and keeps us going. We will triumph."

"Of course. You'd doubt God's word?" Leoben turns the tables back on his copy who looks at him with veiled anger.

"Never."

"Nor I." But he looks back at the birthing chamber and wishes that he'd been given a choice of which race to belong to. Lately he believes that the Cylons have just deluded themselves with dreams of righteousness and were committing the same atrocities that they blamed the humans for. Yet this was where it all began for them – here – machines made by other machines.

"You miss her." Blue tries one last time to trip up Leoben.

"No." But even as Leoben says the lie he promises to himself that no matter what happens…he will never betray Nya again.

-----

Nya collapses to the deck, her stomach screaming in pain but unbruised as she spits the first gobbet of blood onto the metal flooring. Every part of her aches, even the spots that they haven't hit.

"What have we here?" Says a new voice but she can't even find the strength to find out who this new tormentor might be. "Another frakking Cylon lover?"

"Nah, Lt. This one refuses to fly a VIPER."

"Is she qualified?"

"Moral…" The first voice hesitates as he pulls her octagon shaped personnel file toward him. "Moral objections that restrict her from fragging toasters."

Nya gulps as another blow hits her kidneys and smashes her into the floor. A hand threads itself through her hair and yanks her head back so hard that she sees stars. A leering face enters her shaky field of vision and spits full force into her eyes. She blinks fiercely to clear it as he takes a broad thumb and rubs it into her sensitive corneas.

"There are no 'moral objections' on the Pegasus. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir." She answers softly.

"No, I don't think you do." He shoves her head away from him and reaches for the towel to wrap around his knuckles. "Drake, you and Heaverly are going to help me with this one. I think she's lying. And I think she'll need a bit more reeducation before she understands how things really work on Pegasus.

"Ready, boys?"

Nya bites her lip as the blows descend. She can't speak and the words to the prayers she holds so dear flit in and out of her mind as the pain overwhelms everything else.

To be continued…..

The book quote Leoben was reading is from Michael Grant's "Myths of the Greeks and Romans" and is paraphrased from Hesiod's "Theogeny". Leoben's quote on genocide is from "The Iliad" by Homer.