The scream rose in pitch, the words, "Frack, frack frack," repeated until it was unintelligible howling. It lowered in volume and he craned his head to the door, testing the restraints holding his wrist again. The flashing lights of the IL grew brighter as it leaned over him. He felt a sharp pain in his chest. He gathered his strength and pulled again. He could feel the metal cutting into the skin, blood dripping, but the cuff held him. With a whir, the cuff moved, tightening and pulling his arm up higher, he groaned at the pain as the muscles and his shoulders were stretched to their limit. Moving his arms was out of the question, but that didn't mean he didn't try to move his body away from the IL, his feet kicking as he attempted to twist away.
"Hold still!" The voice was oddly human and less mechanical than before but that had to be a trick.
"Fracking let me go!" He uttered his own scream, and found himself gasping in pain, trying to draw in enough air, and when he did, it left him in a soft sob as he heard Rene cry out again in pain, "You're killing her. Please, you're killing my baby."
He pulled at the restraints again using all his weight as her cries turned into an insistent wail that rose in volume. Her voice was joined by another voice, and another. It wasn't just Rene that was being tortured, it was the kids too. He struggled again. He had to get free! He shook his head and the drumming of his heart exploded in his temple. He tried to not scream again at the pain.
"STARBUCK!"
His eyes flew open, and he grit his teeth at the pain of the light lancing into him. The whiteness of the walls and the harsh lights burned hotter than the sun. "Frack!" He tried to move away as his legs seemed to be free, but then he felt a weight pressing down on him.
"HOLD HIM!" He could swear it was the sound of a voice that had smoked one fumarello too many. Since when did Cylon's smoke, that is other than when they were toasting them with our lasers? It was an odd thought that rammed into the side of his skull as he tried to move again, feeling that his feet had some give. He kicked out at the hands holding him.
"That's a good sign," a calm voice answered his cursing.
"STARBUCK! You need to stop!" That voice was so familiar, so feminine. "Starbuck, please." It was the please that did it, as the word shivered down his spine.
"Rene?" No, that wasn't right. It was someone else. "Cassie?" He opened his eyes, but the scene was unchanged, far too many instruments, all there to cause pain. "No…no….no…NO!" His own voice rose in tone as he scanned the room, still searching for a way out of this situation.
"Starbuck, look at me!" A face was in front of his own, obscured by a mask, but there were no dancing lights, just soft blue eyes and blonde hair covered in a surgical cap.
"Cassie?" He heard the wail of voices again, high pitched screaming, but not in pain exactly. It took him a moment to recognize that it was singing, the sound he was hearing was music. He wished he could say it was pleasant, but it was far from it. Loud and pounding, matching up to the throb of his pulse drumming at his temples. It still did not make sense. Why would there be loud music in the Life Center? Had the enemy done something to his mind? He groaned and tried to reach a hand up to rub at his head, but his arms felt dead. Was he still restrained? It was a trick the enemy was using, conjuring up familiar faces to get him through the pain. He flinched as a gloved hand made contact with his face, but it didn't cut or stab, it stroked softly.
"Starbuck, you're on the Galactica."
Her voice said the words he longed to hear, but was it true? He felt hands pushing him back down, telling him to stay still. Too many hands, but despite their strength, they weren't metallic. Despite the unnatural feel of the gloves and protective coverings, the hands were warm, not cold. He opened his eyes, praying he wasn't dreaming. Cassie's face peered down upon him, the familiar blue eyes behind the mask. The image did not match the sounds assaulting his ears and he looked around in confusion, another groan escaping at the effort it took just for him to move his head.
"You're on the Galactica. We're here to help you," she said to him softly. "Don't try to move. You'll harm yourself."
"I can't take the torture," he groused as the music rose in tempo. "What the frack is that?"
"Turn it down, Lieutenant," the doctor ordered and the volume dropped to where it wasn't painful, just irritating. The Doctor was soon leaning over him and he grumbled at the sight.
"Oh lords, I think I prefer the ILs to this."
"What was that, Starbuck?" Cassiopeia asked, taking a cloth to wipe down his face. He wanted to bat her hands away, but he couldn't get his arms to move. He tried again with no result. Panic washed over him like the wave of fire that had jolted down his nerves when the IL flipped the switch.
"What the frack?! I can't move! I thought you were going to get it out!"
"Calm down, son," Salik placed a firm hand on his shoulder, an unnecessary precaution as he couldn't have gotten up had he wanted to. "It's temporary we think. The technology is out of you, but there was some swelling and scarring. You should be fine in time."
"Should be? How big a bet you going to lay on that doc?" Movement out of the corner of his eye reminded him of the full situation he'd been in when he was last awake. "Rene?" He could see only part of his wife, her hair was in her eyes again, but he could see the curve of her shoulder and her chest rise with a breath. "Rene?" He croaked it out again through a raw throat and she turned her head towards him. Her eyes were open but glazed and almost iridescent from the harsh lights. "Thank the lords," he sighed as he tried to reach out to her. His limbs refused to move. "Doc?" The word was a cry of anguish.
"Give it time. Can you feel my hand?"
He felt a light tapping on his collar bone where it met the hollow of his neck and nodded. He felt the hand slide down his shoulder, but then the sensation faded. He pulled his eyes away from Rene to see that the doctor's hand was on his bicep. He thought he felt it but wasn't sure if that was his eyes telling him to, or the actual sensation.
"I don't know."
"It's alright, Lieutenant," Dr. Paye spoke to him. "That's better than we had hoped. It was deeply enmeshed in your brachial plexus."
Starbuck looked from the doctors to Cassie. She always explained things so he could understand. She smiled at him. "It provides sensation and control to your shoulders, arms and hands. Can you move your legs?"
The words were chilling as he didn't know what he would do if he was paralyzed, but instinctively he kicked his feet, forgetting for a moment he wasn't in his boots, he'd worn them for so many days in a row.
"Good, that's good," Dr. Salik responded to his movement. "So, it's localized. Give it time Lieutenant. Paye, I think you may be right though, the sooner we get that felgercarb out of Lt. Rene, the better the recovery. The infection seems to have stabilized, but I'm concerned about that valve. Now is as good a time as any to begin making some repairs."
"Still risky," Paye responded.
Starbuck followed the conversation with his eyes, still confused about his surroundings, before looking to Cassie. He felt her hand on his arm as a feathery tickle. "We should let him speak to her before you put her under, just in case," Cassie said.
"Yes, yes, of course, but not for long," Salik answered, turning to begin prepping for the surgery, indicating both doctors would be involved in the task.
Starbuck looked to Cassie and then to Rene. "In case? She may not …not make it? But..."
Cassie smiled at him and he knew that look. It was the one she would cast him when she thought he should be hopeful despite the odds, but the odds were bad. He felt the desire to run his hands through his hair, forgetting that he couldn't.
"If we don't we may lose her. They know what they are doing."
"Yeah, because they practiced on me? And look at how well that turned out," he mumbled as he shut his eyes tightly, cursing before quickly switching to praying to the Lords. He took only a moment, then opened them again, making sure he mimicked Cassie's confidence. "Can you…get me closer…close enough to touch?"
"Of course," Cassie said as she reached down to help him to extend his arm. Rene bridged the distance reaching for him as his heart leapt. She was here. She was alive. She grasped his hand and he shivered at the realization that at least he could feel her touch even if he couldn't get his own hand to respond. He wasn't in command, that was the message he received from Rene squeezing his hand twice. He'd lost control of his life the moment he sat down to play cards with her in the Blue Squadron bunkroom. Sometimes he liked that feeling, knowing that something else had taken over and nothing was really his fault. It was beyond his control and fate was the pilot of his viper.
But he was too jaded for that line of thinking now. Fate didn't rule his life. He could have done something back on the Galactica to prevent Rene from flying a viper and kept her from bringing them to Caprica. He'd made the decision, trusted her abilities and her desire to do something to save the people there. He'd been overconfident in his own abilities. He could have told Avery no, that they were not going to attempt to rescue the kids. He could have avoided the torture and the pain. Maybe he should have let Rene stay dead under all that dirt and debris. If she was just destined to die on him, shouldn't it be on Caprica by the hand of the cylons rather than here under the hands of those who cared for her? Maybe, but then again here at least here she was surrounded by her family. There were worse ways to go than passed out in surgery. He wasn't in control of this.
He shoved the thoughts aside as he fixed a grin on his face. Now was not the time to quit when they had made it so far.
"They're going to fix you up, better than me. I'm going to be waiting right here and then, you and me, we're going to walk out of here. I've got a night of dancing planned for us, just you and me under the stars, and a real honeymoon." He swallowed hard forcing down the lump in his throat and the need to cough. He tried to pull in a breath slow and steady.
She nodded, but she didn't mimic his smile. Instead she looked more miserable and her head lolled away. He tried to grip her hand to pull her attention back, but his fingers refused the command and he had to settle for calling her name, "Rene?"
Her eyes were deep blue, almost black when she looked to him. "It…it w..w..was my fault," she shook her head turning away as she mumbled, "I'm sorry."
He felt her drop his hand, his arm falling like dead weight. "Rene? Sorry for what? We made it and you're going to be fine. I love you, dammit!"
He heard what he thought was her chuckle, but it was followed by alarms pinging on her pod and the doctor's flying into action. Rene was whisked away while he just watched, unable to do anything. He looked to Cassie in concern as Salik told her to remain.
He could feel Cassie's arm on his shoulder, but it was still a light touch that tingled. "They're good doctors," she said to him in reassurance.
He wanted to grouse back, "then why can't I move my arms," but he knew sometimes there wasn't much you could do but hope for a miracle.
Another voice spoke out, "They aren't done with her yet."
Someone else was in the room besides himself and Cassiopeia and he didn't recognize the MedTech until the man stepped closer to him. The face became clear behind the medical garb. It was one of Rene's family. One of his family.
"Nik?"
"Starbuck," he replied as he came over and picked up Starbuck's arm, laying it back beside his body where it belonged.
"What are you doing here?"
Nik laughed, an odd sound in such a strange place. He wasn't sure if he'd heard the man laugh before. "I could ask you the same thing. Jake let me in."
Starbuck lifted up his head, looking around for the young warrior, but Nik moved closer blocking his view. "He's fine. Getting some sleep. I've got watch."
Starbuck nodded, accepting the fact that he need not worry about being alone for a while. The family would look out for him. The thought helped to make the next breath easier. If Rene didn't make it, the family might need him more than ever. He wasn't going to be alone in his grief.
"So," Nik started before looking to Cassie, "Is he up for some conversation or…?" Nik's words trailed off to a mumble, something that Starbuck was now beginning to understand might be a lingering defect from his time on Caprica in the hands of the enemy.
"He should be resting, but this is Starbuck. I think he might like some distraction until Rene is out of surgery." Cassie cast him a sympathetic smile that sent another shiver down his spine. She indicated the stool near the workstation and he slid it over to Starbuck's pod.
"Hey," Nik said.
Starbuck tried not to roll his eyes. Rene's quietest friend wasn't up to the task of distraction if that's all he had to offer, but then again, he wasn't sure if he wanted to talk. His head still hurt and worry plus a lot of mucus was making it hard to breathe. But he was coherent enough to realize he had never enjoyed being contained to a medical bed, and the worry for his wife and for himself was going to make the situation worse. he decided to play along. "Hey, yourself."
"So, I hear we might have something in common now besides our taste in music. They tinker inside your head too?"
A shiver ran up his spine and down his arms, stopping half way. It earned him some attention from Cassie as she adjusted the settings on his pod and he felt a bit of warmth creep into his body. This was not a conversation he wanted to have, not now, maybe not ever. He grasped the hypocrisy of that thought as he had often pushed Rene and the Rats to talk about what had happened to them, and he'd met the same resistance. Seemed he'd have to follow his own course of treatment. He swallowed down his own bitter pill, almost choking before replying.
"No. They saved that for Rene. I was next though."
Nik nodded like an old sage, his eyes looking far away before he seemed to come back to the present. "That's good. She's talking so," he trailed off again looking to Cassie, making sure she was busy elsewhere before he began to speak again. "Not many understand maybe because not many live through it and you sometimes will wonder why you did, what made you special enough, or what roll of the dice made it so you survived and others didn't. It's so much more than just making it through the destruction or through a battle. It's different. You'll always be different." He shrugged what Starbuck knew to be the Rat's answer to many questions but was often so much more than the admitting ignorance. It was a final answer that fate was fickle he was beginning to comprehend.
Even through the haze of the medications he was on, Starbuck realized that was the longest sentence he'd heard Nik utter, and he tried to remember what Rene had said about her friend. "He was once the life of the party, able to charm anyone with his words." This was not a conversation you would have at a party and the words were not charming.
Nik shrugged again and he thought the young man would leave it at that, a fatalistic reply, but he began speaking again, his voice gaining some strength, changing in tempo and tone.
"It makes you more, I don't know, logical about things I guess, when you realize how truly we do matter to them even while at the same time you realize you don't matter. We are important to them for some reason, and not just the information on military matters. It's not even about what we can do for them. I mean, machines work faster and longer than we do and they could easily kill us all. I think that's what you realize in their care. We are so fragile compared to them. They could eliminate us without even really trying hard. And yet..." Nik hesitated and fixed Starbuck with an intense stare. "They could really get rid of all of us, but they don't. That's the key to the human survival I think. We are important in the grand scheme of things. They need us and maybe they don't even know why, but they do. So they study us just like we study them. Only you and I, and a few others, we now know things that others don't."
Starbuck snorted at that. "Yeah, like how much pain the body can take."
"Yeah," Nik nodded, "you know that now. And that pain ends. Physical pain anyways. Changes things, doesn't it?"
Starbuck nodded, remembering the mantra the Rene often called upon. He had his answer as to who taught it to her. He let Nik continue. The man was onto something.
The young warrior actually smiled at him, a coy, almost flirtatious grin, something he knew he'd never seen Nik do. The man transformed in that smile and he could see why women might call Nik handsome. The smile was definitely up there with his own caliber of winning grin. There it was, the charmer that Rene had spoken about. "You know what's important now. You thought you did before, but...you were wrong."
He found himself snorting at that one as he remembered back to just a few sectars ago when he thought his future would be with Cassiopeia. His thoughts as he proposed had been about a send-off party and a sealing reception, new quarters and a new position, maybe even a promotion. He didn't care about any of that right now. Sure, the quarters he had were nicer than he could have expected sealed to Cassie, but they were nothing without Rene there. He'd take a corner of a corridor as long as he was there with his wife and the kids. The only reason why he wanted a promotion now was to see if he could change up duty rosters and details to keep those he loved together and safe from harm. Nik was right, he'd been wrong all those sectars ago about what was important. But that wasn't because of the Cylons. It was because of Rene.
He physically winced as he recalled how easily he could have lost her, actually did lose her under that ridge. As much as it killed him to hear her cries of pain as the enemy used and abused them, it had also been a relief to hear her. At least he had known she was alive. In the quiet of this room of the life center, he felt the same despair that had set in when her screams had faded and he was afraid he'd really lost her. Would he lose her now? His breath caught and he struggled to pull in more air.
"Easy," Nik said softly. "It's over. You're here and safe." The young man reached a hand for his shoulder, the touch strengthening their bond. Starbuck wasn't sure who was reassuring who as Nik shuddered and tried to turn it into a shrug.
"No fair. That's my speech," Starbuck reminded him trying to laugh off the moment as he harkened back to the Rat's first nights on the Galactica, but Nik was not be thrown off his course.
"You'll have dreams about it, everyone does. They get inside your head whether they tinker with it or not, but that's okay. You'll wake up screaming, and that's okay too because you'll know it's just your soul reminding you what's important. You've been to the edge and you've seen where it goes. You know now. We have something they don't and even if they capture us and torture us and drill into our heads and rip out our hearts…they won't find it."
Nik grew silent and Starbuck thought he knew where he was going with the conversation, but Nik didn't continue. He had to ask, "What is it?"
"You tell me. What did they want from you that they couldn't get?"
He craned his head towards the door where Rene had disappeared. "They almost got it."
"Almost only counts in Equine shoes and hand grenades." Nik laughed uttering a phrase as old as the invention of weapons. "They can take the people, the body, but…" Nik paused again, looking over his shoulder out to the rest of the Life Center to his friends clustered around the room, before he looked back down to Starbuck. "They can't take the love. It stays with you. We love you, man."
Starbuck found himself chuckling at the way Nik delivered the line with a quirky grin. Unfortunately, the laughter turned into a cough as he hacked up a lung past his raw throat. Cassie was there placing a mask back over his face, but he didn't fight it as a cool mist soothed the cough and coated his throat. Nik didn't move away, keeping his hand on him even when Cassie said softly, "He may be contagious." He just shrugged. Starbuck wanted to reach up to pat that hand, tried to move his arm before he remembered he couldn't. He sighed deeply as he mumbled to himself, "Give it time."
He and Nik sat in silence, but it wasn't uncomfortable, just quiet. He thought about shutting his eyes and taking a nap. It did make him feel better knowing that Rene's friend would watch out for him. He didn't need to tell Nik to wake him when Rene came back, he knew he would. The thought of Rene had him wondering, if Nik was so much more different now than he had been before, what about Rene?
"Hey, what was Rene like before…before the destruction I mean?" He wasn't sure if Nik heard him as it took a moment or two before he answered, drawing in a deep breath, letting it out before he spoke.
"She was a lot like she is with you, that's why we like you so much. She'd laugh and sing and tell really good sarcastic jokes. She'd bust your balls and keep score. I don't miss that, but she was always up for an adventure. She'd make us do things just because we'd never done them before. She could toy with people, you know, but as a joke, for fun. Now, it's for revenge and that's not because of the Cylons."
Starbuck didn't want to know about the Zakar or Dante, not while he wasn't able to punch something. He turned the conversation to another topic. "And Jake?"
About the time Nik got to either Jonas or Alex, Starbuck was drifting off to the man's soft voice. The last words he thought he heard were a quiet, "I'll be here."