Selling Souls – Part II

"At the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth."

"And Eros, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them."

Leoben watches in silence as Caprica reads from the scroll that had been taken from him on Kobol. Her lips barely moving as she covered the last sentence over again. "…who overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods…"

Sharon Valerii watched from the opposite side of the cell with dark and untrusting eyes. "Why did you call for us?"

"Hope." He answered softly. It all came down to this room, just touched with dawn, and whether these women would believe him. "Because I have someone to return to. And the only ones who might believe me are those who also lived among them."

The two Cylon women looked at him. Sharon's face aghast with disbelief. Six fumbled with the scroll as she set it down.

"What makes you think we are sympathetic?"

"You lived with them. Worked with them. Thought that you were one of them." The last is directed at Sharon. "I did too. Over two years on board the Journey."

"You told them that you had no feelings for the humans you worked with." Sharon spits out angrily. "I've seen the transcript of your questioning."

"I lied."

-------

Nya does the last zipper on her flight suit and when she looks up, Zarek is at the edge of their cabin looking back at her. His face is lined with seriousness and worry. Not from Fisk, he's told the Pegasus' new CO to wait, and came down to see Nya. She won't be back for almost three weeks. An eternity.

"When are you going to tell them?"

"In a few more weeks."

"But the flying…."

Nya shakes her head. "I'm not in combat anymore. There's really no reason to stop flying until I start showing. And that won't be for another few months."

"But…" He takes her by the waist tenderly and places his hands over her stomach as though he could someone feel the new life inside. She smiles at the gesture and leans into his embrace.

"I'm fine."

"I just worry about you."

She pulls away to grab her small ditty bag of gear. "Fisk is waiting on you." Her reminder is said without intonation, but Zarek knows that she's hiding her distaste of the man.

He never told her about Caine's fateful offer on the Pegasus, the one that Fisk knows about and is trying to use against him. It was all moot the second the Cylon blew Caine's brains out. He hadn't even given Caine his answer, Nya's return to the landing bay had interrupted his trip to the bridge. But it pulled at him slightly. The Presidency had been so close again, to just slip through his fingers.

These lies weigh between them even though she is unaware. He forces himself to quit worrying at the issue. The baby is coming and they are starting a new life, a different path than he ever thought he'd take. Power shouldn't mean as much to him anymore. But it does. It nags at him, especially since he knows exactly why Fisk is here.

"I love you." She kisses him on the mouth and Tom snaps back into the present.

Her grey eyes are intent on him and he wonders whether the baby will have grey eyes or brown.

"You'll be late." He chides her gently.

She nods and moves to step past him when he draws her back.

------

"You're speaking of treason." Caprica Six says softly. She looks nothing like the vision of Six that haunts Baltar although Leoben does not know this. She wears a demure suit made of pale green fabric that buttons high above her collar bone. Her voice seems familiar but he cannot tell if that is because he is a Cylon or for another reason.

"Treason, yes. If I were betraying something that I believed in." Leoben's voice strengthens and a vitality returns to his cheeks that was not there before.

"You loved her?" Sharon asks from the corner.

He fixes on that comment. Love. The things he has done for love.

"I died for her." He answers. "Knowing that I might not resurrect. Hoping that I would, so that I could find her again. Her name is Nya Reece and she is with the Fleet, out there."

"You could be boxed for that alone."

But the way she says it makes Leoben realize that he has made the right choice. He is not alone anymore amidst the Cylons. These two are beside him.

"I love her."

"You've turned your back on God?" Six asks him.

But there is something there that makes him pause. The love they understand but his conversion to the human religion, the things he saw on Kobol, they will not understand that. His elation dampens as he steps back onto the precipice.

"No." The answer echoes out onto the air. Leoben marvels at his ability to step immediately back into the lies. It seems like they will never end. Breaking the Cylon bonds should have brought him honesty but Leoben doesn't feel it. The lies just heap, one on top of another, in different patterns as he tries to navigate behind enemy lines.

"But I cannot turn my back on her. I…" He pauses to order his thoughts. "Humanity may be flawed, but destruction is so brutal. Why can't we guide them? Lead them to the truth? Why must we annihilate them?"

"That's it." Sharon jumps up from her position. "That's how we can change things."

-----

"Mr. Zarek." Fisk greets him as he enters the small conference room of the Astral Queen. The CO is florid faced even though he was sitting at the table bereft of exertion. "We need to talk."

Zarek pulls his politician mask on, the one that doesn't give anything away. "What do you want to talk about?"

Fisk smiles and his eyes glitter menacingly as outside, Nya's RAPTOR pulls away from the Queen.

"I'm here to talk about power."

To be continued...but you knew that.

The quote at the beginning is Hesiod's Theogeny, a different translation from the one I used earlier. The action is going to pick up again in the next two chapters on Caprica and in the Fleet.