Starbuck thought the eighteen days of his punishment detail were awful, but they were nothing compared to the three cycles he waited to hear from Rene. Maybe it was that while being on report, he had more than enough to keep him busy.
But for the three cycles, he couldn't find enough work to keep him busy, and when he ran out of things to do, there were the empty quarters to contend with. He spent a lot of time with the kids, trying to make some effort to fill Rene's conspicuous absence. He even considered going back to the barracks for the mindless banter that would keep him idly distracted, but with Rene being on the Zakar, and Jake drinking himself blind the night she left, the kids needed him.
He hadn't meant to get Jake drunk, certainly not that drunk, but they had both seriously misjudged the first batch from the kitchen scraps still. The Rat's math wasn't all that good, but their chemistry was quite potent. He'd convinced Jake to talk that night, alone in his and Rene's quarters. He thought he'd have more of a fight on his hands getting the young man to agree to talk with him, but it seemed Jake had decided it was time that maybe the two got to know each other since, in Jake's words, Starbuck wasn't going to go away anytime soon.
They had tossed back some drinks both choking on how much the stuff burned. It was Jake's idea to draw cards. The low card had to answer a question. Starbuck realized after four draws Jake had stacked the deck.
Starbuck ended up telling most of his life story, from the forests of Umbra, to foster parents, to academy days, and even spilled that he'd dated Athena and Aurora, as well as Cassiopeia. They'd gone through the deck and reshuffled before Jake started sharing. Crius was right, it was a hades of a story of abusive parents, drunk or on drugs. Neglect was the good parts of his childhood. An arrest of his mother, the abandonment by his father is what forced him into the orphanage system. His foster parents weren't much better. School was his haven, but he didn't get good grades, too preoccupied most of the day with trying to think up ways to survive his nights. He'd become a permanent resident of the orphanage by middle school. That's where he'd met Rene.
By the time they got to that part of the story, Jake was drunk. Starbuck took that into account when Jake made some of his comments, especially about how he had felt as a teenager about Rene. By the time they got to talking about the destruction, Jake was rambling incoherently. His memories of their capture were out of order and fragmented. What he could remember clearly was how Rene got them into the sewers, how she had been able to outrun the Cylons for almost a secton, and then when caught, had been able to convince the Cylons that they knew important things about the fleet of survivors. Starbuck learned that Kiff was named after Lara's little brother who they lost to starvation in the Cylon slave camp, and Kalea was a friend they had lost in the sewers to a nerve gas the Cylons used.
Jake didn't make it past the arrival of their savior Dante before he dissolved into tears, a fact that Starbuck would never tell anyone about, not even Jake who didn't remember it the next day. He'd have to wait for another night to learn about the Zakar and Dilmun as Jake puked on the floor, then passed out.
His conversation with Jake, and the subsequent intoxication, only killed one lonely night as Starbuck cleaned up the mess, hauled Jake to the couch and then tried to sleep in their bed that suddenly was far too large.
Jake had slunk out sometime in the night and Starbuck had to acknowledge he did sleep hard to have missed that. He found the man the next morning slumped over a Java, a data pad in his hand going over the chemistry of their still and yelling at the kids to be quiet, which just dissolved the toddlers into giggles as they pretended to whisper.
"You alright?" Starbuck asked placing some food in front of him encouraging him to eat.
"Don't worry, I threw it out. That batch would have killed someone, oh wait, I feel like death, so maybe it already did. You don't need to take care of it."
"Oh, I don't know, we could have used it to strip some grease off the engines." Starbuck clapped his hands to get the kids to start getting ready for the day, and tried not to laugh too hard when Jake groaned. "Oh, sorry about that."
That day was a long one with the kids not understanding why Rene wasn't there. Mornings were her ritual, getting them to eat and dress while chatting about their day and telling them stories. Kiff followed Starbuck around the chambers chatting non-stop. The kid's vocabulary had grown in the last three sectars and every other word was "why". Starbuck tried not to lose his patience, but both Kalea and Leia thought getting dressed was a good time to practice their wrestling moves and no one was listening when Starbuck yelled, "I'm serious. We have to get ready or we're going to be late." Jake shattered his skull with one good bark that seemed to settle down Leia and Kalea, while Lara came to Starbuck's rescue. Lizbet and Crius came to see what the holdup was, their kids all dressed, fed, hair brushed, ready to go while Starbuck was still trying to find where the hairbrush went, and could only find one shoe for each kid.
Crius ribbed him all day. Starbuck tried to take it, and just kept reminding Crius he had more experience with kids than he did, plus he only had three he had to deal with. Starbuck was there with all of them. "They ganged up on me! It wasn't fair."
"Well, at least you speak their language!"
Starbuck knew the banter was to distract them both from thinking too hard about Rene. Starbuck waited until their patrol before he asked about the incident Gage was referring to when he threw out that Gage had said something about taking Crius off the incident report. After uttering a few curses and threatening to kill Gage, Crius slipped into that country drawl.
"I know you want to kill a few people, Bucko, but don't do it. It's hard to get rid of bodies on a battlecruiser. I'm betting it's even harder on a Battlestar.
"Please tell me you're joking," Starbuck had replied.
"Wish I was, and not a conversation I'm having over a commline or on the Galactica with vid cams everywhere. Love him or hate him, Dante had some good advice sometimes. You don't have to beat all your enemies, just one really well. Fear is on your side then. Wish I could say I regret it, but I don't."
Starbuck was torn between lecturing him that we don't kill people, and asking him how he did it, remembering back to his comment about making it look like an accident. But then another more recent comment from Gage chilled him. "Was it just you because Gage said something about Rene and Lizbet?"
"Don't you fret, Starbuck. Gage isn't going to tell anyone. He just throws that chit out to force Rene's hand. He was right there with us, so she goes down, he'll be at that bottom to catch her because he's going down too."
"And you guys wouldn't let me shoot Dante, why is that when it would have solved a lot of problems?" Starbuck had thrown that one out a few times, but no one would ever respond. They'd just ignore his comment with a grumble and look away.
"I would have let ya. That was Jake's call, not mine. I just wanted out of that damn brig, didn't think to shoot him. Wish I had. Gage, he wouldn't do it, he's too soft. Not sure why Jake made the call other than he never could forget it was Dante that saved them. Despite all the bad things Dante did after, no denying he was the hero that day on Caprica. Jake just can't get over that. I'm thinking it was pretty dire down there when Dante showed up lasers blazing. They always felt they owed him a debt, I mean he didn't have to go back to Caprica. No one had to. But the hero worship turned into something else. Something twisted. I just don't know."
Crius trailed off and Starbuck tried to think up some reason why they needed to land on the Zakar. He needed to see Rene, needed to know she was alright, but Adama must have had his eyes on the scanner because on their return to the fleet when Starbuck headed for the Zakar with Crius not stopping him, Rigel issued the order that he was due back on the Galactica. Adama met him in the landing bay with a report that Rene was fine, everything was going well, she had even sent him a message.
It was short and sweet asking that he shine up his gold clusters as she owed him another night out in the simulators, followed by telling him not to worry as he was better as Warrior of the Centaur, not Worrier of the Centaur.
Starbuck combed the message for a code, meant to show it to Jake to ask him, but once off duty, Jake was nowhere to be found.
That night was a long one. Starbuck had the kids and Kiff asked at least twenty times where his mother was and wouldn't believe the lie that she was on duty. The kid was too sensitive to the emotions of the family as Lizbet explained. He just could feel a lie. Jason and Cain were frustrated over homework and both itching for some excitement so he sent them off to the triad court to work it out. Lara was heartbroken over some boy she liked, but he liked some other girl and before the evening was over she was messaging some other boy. Starbuck had to take the comm privileges from her and the little girl who had once worshipped the ground he walked on was telling him how awful he was.
By the time it was bedtime, Kalea, normally a happy toddler, was cranky and feverish. She clung to Starbuck crying and Jake hadn't turned up. Leia seemed to pick up on Kalea's crying and felt she had to join in. Lizbet was busy with a fussy Zac and Starbuck didn't know what to do.
He took the three younger kids to Rene and his chambers so Kalea didn't wake up all the other kids with her crying, and Starbuck walked the floor trying to soothe her, while trying to get Leia to take a bottle and fall asleep. He was able to get Leia and Kiff to bed, but Kalea just kept getting warmer and warmer.
He ended up calling Cassie hoping she wasn't out with Jake, just to make sure Kalea was alright. Rene would eviscerate him if anything happened to the kids. His guess had been right, Jake had taken off on his own and Cassie was alone. Much like Starbuck, when she came in and saw the walls, including the latest scene Starbuck hadn't removed yet from the floor, Cassie gasped. Her first question wasn't what Starbuck expected. She asked where Rene had found all the paint. Apparently, it was a commodity in high demand as many civilians also wanted to liven up the drab military gray of the ships. Gray paint you could find in abundance, but red, yellow, blue, green, was in short supply and when you could find it, extremely expensive. Starbuck honestly didn't know as that had not been his concern when he'd first found the quarters decorated. Plus he didn't know how to explain to Cassiopeia that Rene was independently wealthy due to her ability to steal the Dilmun payroll. He still had no idea just how much she had. He didn't need his friends to have one more reason he shouldn't get sealed. They had been given more than enough at the Commander's dinner.
Kalea wanted nothing to do with Cassie and Starbuck had to coax her into letting the medtech take a look. What was a bit shocking to Starbuck was Cassiopeia seemed just as uncomfortable with Kalea. Starbuck's heart broke a little as Kalea screamed as if she was dying. Cassie had to let Starbuck give the baby the dose of analgesic to bring down her temperature, which was apparently because she was just teething.
Once the ordeal was over and Kalea was starting to fall asleep in his arms, he couldn't help to ask his former lover, and now girlfriend of Rene's ex boyfriend, a few questions.
"I thought you were seeing Jake? Have you not been around the kids?"
Cassie's face turned a shade serious at the questions and Starbuck found himself backtracking. "I mean, if you don't want to talk to me, that's understandable, I mean…"
Cassie sighed in a very familiar gesture of exasperation with him. "It's okay Starbuck. He asks me out occasionally, but we aren't exclusive and that is part of the reason why. I don't want kids, Starbuck, and Jake has a lot of them. There's talk of more orphans coming to join the group. Are you ready for all that? To go from being the man with all the ladies on the side, to married with a dozen kids?"
It was a fair question as his first night alone with Rene's children he was calling medtech's frantically. But he hadn't really thought about it that way. He'd just fallen in with the family and it seemed natural now. They all helped each other and the kids even pitched in to help. For once in his life, he didn't feel lonely and abandoned. He was needed. Jason and Cain had jokingly taken to calling him Dad. He told them to stop, but secretly he loved it. He suspected they knew that too.
He could imagine his life without the kids, but he didn't want to. Yeah, maybe he would eventually miss the freedom to go play triad whenever he wanted or the ability to drink all night in the OC, but those activities lost their charm when compared to spending time with the family. Plus, no one in the family made him watch the kids or cook meals or any of the other tasks. If he wanted to go back to the barracks and forget it all, he could.
For a moment, he remembered what his life had been like after the destruction before Cassiopeia. He would never forget that horrible sensation when he'd been out in the battle and his home had just started to fly away with his girlfriend and his best friend on board. He'd felt more abandoned than he ever had before. When you were a pilot, your Commander and your Battlestar weren't supposed to just leave you in the middle of a battle.
In the days that followed he reached out to Athena, and she'd pushed him away. He'd tried to reach out to Apollo, but the man was mourning the death of his mother and his brother and soon after was getting sealed. Starbuck couldn't bear the guilt that it had been his patrol that Zac had taken. If Starbuck had gone that day, so many things would have been different. He wouldn't have died, he wasn't that maudlin. In his head, he had somehow reasoned that he would have saved the fleet, or at least a few less pilots would have died.
That guilt and the rejection by Athena had left him reaching for anyone and anything. Cassiopeia had been more than willing to let him hang on. Now he wondered if he had hung on too long just because there had been nothing else.
With Rene gone, everyone had just assumed he would help out with the kids. The kids had turned to him for answers and reassurances. They relied on him, and he liked that they could. Kalea's tears hadn't annoyed him. He hadn't wanted her to stop crying because it was loud and irritating. He knew her tears meant she was hurting and he wanted her to not be in pain. He looked down to the mess of blonde curls in his arms. The child had trusted him from the very first day to take care of her.
"Yeah, I am. I think I can figure it out with some help. Thanks. I know this is, well, awkward. I really didn't mean to…" he sighed and launched into an apology long overdue. "I didn't mean to just take up with someone else right away. It just happened. And I know, it's pointed out that a lot just happens with me, but life is just too damn short not to go with it. But I never meant to hurt you."
"Thanks for saying so, but it's really okay, Starbuck." She smiled at him. "You look happy."
Starbuck thanked her and tried to have her stay longer for a drink and a talk, but she declined and in hindsight that might have been for the best. The gossip mill of the Galactica would have had a field day with that information. Not what he needed with Rene right now.
But that left Starbuck in chambers that felt too big and lonely without Rene. He couldn't help but to wonder what would have become of him had Rene done more than just stare down that barrel of her weapon. Would he have left the family if she had killed herself? He didn't think he would, but it would have been hard to look at Kiff and see her eyes every time. But they would have needed him even more.
It was that thought that got him through the next day. Rene was still with them and the kids needed him. He wanted nothing more than to head to the Zakar and bring Rene back. But Adama kept assuring him that the Doctor had a good reputation. He'd apparently helped many others in the fleet without asking for more than the standard payment most civilian workers in the fleet were paid. He had an office on the Rising Star simply because the luxury liner had noticed that many individuals were booking themselves one last night of decadence before choosing to end it all in their despair. The doctor had begun training the wait staff, especially in the lounges, to look for the signs and he'd been instrumental in stopping several attempts.
Starbuck appreciated that the Commander had done his research on the Doctor. He appreciated more that Adama personally came to the duty office to give Starbuck the updates.
What he didn't appreciate was that his viper was suddenly pulled for maintenance, he was off the patrol roster per Commander's orders, and Jenny wouldn't let him have another viper. He had stormed off to the Commander's office to complain, and once there was met by Apollo.
"My father thought you might need a friend," Apollo said when Starbuck railed at him that he should be on the Zakar and watching over the progress with Rene.
"Actually, I need a Viper."
"She's fine, Starbuck. Yes, there was a problem on the first day and I'm still not pleased that Colonel Gage chose to get physical with her, but she didn't want to file a report and yes, I have made a point of talking to her alone. She's not liking the process, but she's not stopping it either."
"Physical? What?!" Starbuck had cut a glare at the Commander and Adama did his one and only tell that Starbuck could read as a lie.
"Well, she did balk at going into the Commander's office…"
Starbuck raised his voice. "Gee I wonder why? Because they had tea parties in there? No, she was tortured in there! Could that be it? You saw it!"
Adama and Apollo both allowed Starbuck to vent his rage. They had had their own concerns as well about Dr. Dixon's choice in location and method of this therapy. After the reports from Apollo, Adama felt like he had thrown the girl to the enemy. Apollo had contacted Adama immediately when they arrived as Rene had balked once on the Zakar. It had disturbed Apollo that Colonel Gage had physically picked up Rene and hauled her into Commander Dante's office. Apollo had tried to intervene, and complained voraciously to Adama that Dr. Dixon was a charlatan spouting nonsense about role playing and confronting your past.
Adama asked to speak to Dr. Dixon, and by that point, Rene had calmed down. The doctor claimed it was progress. He claimed that he needed Rene to confront her abuser in the place of the abuse. It was natural to want to avoid a difficult situation, Dixon had told him, but also necessary.
After Adama's first tour of the Zakar, he had made the decision to leave the office in its original condition. At the time, he had thought to save the room to show to the Council members what had occurred, to provide it as evidence in the event anyone questioned the termination of Commander Dante, but that proved to be unnecessary. Dante's death had been attributed to another casualty of the Cylons, and Adama had made no effort to correct the record other than an entry in his own personal log.
But his decision to leave the quarters in their condition had not been rescinded. He was unsure why at the time, but now he knew. Dr. Dixon had been adamant that being able to go through the events of the abuse in the place they occurred would help with recall and eventually healing. He claimed it would speed up the process and also to help provide a detailed report on all that occurred there. Adama felt that such a report could help to prevent such atrocities from occurring again in the future.
Plus, Adama didn't want to admit it to Starbuck, but he agreed with the Doctor. Rene needed to relive some of what happened, as she seemed to be reliving it daily in her mind. It affected how she dealt with Adama, now her current commander, and everyone who was above her in rank and below. Yes, it seemed cruel to have her relive it, but the doctor was clear that she already was doing so in her mind and in her dreams. The Doctor had been quite adamant that she needed to process it with someone who could help, and the doctor's reputation was impressive.
Plus Adama reasoned, it was Rene. While she didn't know how to ask for help, she did know how to fight to protect herself. If things went too far, Adama had no doubt in his mind that Rene would put a stop to it.
After speaking with the Doctor, Adama had asked to speak with the Colonel to ask that he refrain from any more physical confrontations with Rene or any of the other pilots he was a bit too close to. Adama was to discover that the Colonel was a stronger individual than he had assumed. As Commander of the fleet, Adama had chosen to have Gage serve under him because he was not sure how complicit the Colonel had been in Commander Dante's abuse or why he allowed it to go on. Since that decision, Adama had initiated many conversations with his second in command, and the man from what he could discern had withheld no information.
Colonel Gage had been dealing with his own demons when the abuse began, many of the same concerns that Adama wrestled with the first days after the destruction. Gage had felt an extreme amount of guilt at not having come to the rescue of the colonies, as well as a huge sense of inadequacy. Much like Adama, he had felt the burden of saving as many as he could, yet lamented it was so few. His grief over the loss of his family had been paralyzing. Added to that, he was but a Strike Wing Captain at the time on the Battlecruiser Shiva. Due to his rank, he could not convince his current Commander to go back for more survivors, or that he should not capitulate to Dante.
While losing his family and his world had been devastating, watching as his Commander and Colonel capitulated and killed themselves to save the crew of the Shiva had traumatized Gage. Once Gage was able to deal with those emotions, it was far too late to stop the rampant abuse. The abuse had begun on the Zakar before Gage's tenure there as Colonel, but once achieving the rank, he had slowed the assaults and protected those he could. Adama now believed that without Gage's intervention the hades that was the Zakar may have finished off the crew and Dante's fleet as they tore themselves apart.
After Apollo contacted Adama that first day with his concerns about Rene's treatment by the Doctor, Adama had demanded to speak with Colonel Gage. The Colonel has been bold and firm with Adama, stating clearly that Adama had not been there, did not have a full comprehension of what occurred, and that if he was so unsure in Gage as a Colonel, then he should strip Gage of all rank and kick him out of the service. Adama had a new respect for the man when he uttered, "And sir, even then, I will still stand up to you and demand that this course of action go forward. You will have to kill me to make me stop caring about my crew. You either trust me now, or you never will."
Adama gave the man the benefit of the doubt and the trust he deserved. Apollo reported that Gage had joined the Doctor and Rene in the old Commander's quarters after the conversation. Apollo had checked on the progress often. By the end of the first day, while Rene appeared exhausted, she was not harmed. She was calm and competent by dinner, asleep long before the beginning of the sleep cycle and not resisting the process by the next cycle.
Adama had chosen to hide all that information from Starbuck knowing that the young man would not have listened to reason. One of the qualities that made Starbuck a recipient of the gold clusters is that he put the lives of other before his own. For Sagan's sake, he and Apollo had flown a raider onto a Baseship sacrificing themselves just in the hope that one or two less pilots would die in battle. Adama knew that Starbuck would have disobeyed any order given if he thought Rene was being harmed. It was a sure sign of maturity that Starbuck had only tried twice to fly to the Zakar. Maybe he was ready for that promotion?
Apollo allowed Starbuck to vent for a few centons before he stopped him. "That's why I'm here, buddy. To explain what has been happening in Dante's office. She's okay. She's tired, comes out of there looking like she's ran a marathon. But she's okay, she's eating and sleeping and has gone back in on her own each time since the first time."
"You had to make her the first time though, didn't you?" Starbuck glared at his friend, the same hard cold look he'd given when Apollo had completed the background check on Chameleon.
"I objected to it. Gage forced her."
"Oh and that makes a difference? I swear by the Lords I am gonna…"
"Starbuck! She's fine. No harm was done and she's doing it for you." Apollo saw that his words cut off Starbuck's rant. Apollo didn't like the guilty look that crossed his friend's features. "No, you don't, Buddy. You didn't force her into it. No need to feel bad about it. She needed a motivation and much like you, she's more concerned about how everyone else is doing and her pain doesn't matter. You're her motivation, you and the family. You did a good thing here. Without you, I'm not sure she would have made it this far. I'm told it's not uncommon, once the crisis is over to then deal with all the stress. She feels safe here, that's what Dixon said, so that is why it's happening, the flashbacks the nightmares. She can finally process it because she knows it won't happen again. You did that. You made her feel safe."
Starbuck grumbled, "Doesn't feel that way," while Apollo clapped him on the shoulder.
"Well, how about a drink in the OC and we can talk about it, alright? I've missed out on a few changes in your life. What do you say?"
Starbuck had insisted on swinging by the family council chambers and helping put the little ones to bed before he joined Apollo for that drink. Apollo had joined him as Boxey was spending time there with Lara and the other preteens. Kiff exasperated Apollo within two centons with his constant questions, and as usual was the toughest kid to get to sleep. Starbuck actually gave up and left the boy in the care of Jason and Cain who promised to see that Kiff was ran like a daggit until he got tired in exchange for a trip to the Rising Star for the triad tourney. Starbuck was going to take them anyways, but they didn't need to know that.
The drink in the OC had worked at keeping Starbuck occupied for the night and not pacing with worry. Apollo reassured him ever few centons that everything was alright. They closed down the club and Starbuck couldn't convince Apollo to stay for the night. The quarters were even larger and lonelier than the previous nights. He had expected Rene back by now, and he kept checking the bridge to see if Colonel Gage was back. After the fourth time, Rigel told him to stop calling, she would let him know the moment he arrived. He didn't get a call. He hoped the delay meant good news but his mind kept imagining the worst. He tried to distract himself going over the squadron rosters. He must have passed out at some point as he woke to his alarm, datapad still in his hand. Still no word from Rene.