Helo stood in shock outside the cell, the receiver hanging from his hand at his side as he just stared through the plexi glass. Disbelief washed over him as he focused on the three most important words Sharon had uttered, "Hera is alive." But how could that be? He'd seen her tiny little body himself, so still, so unbearably lifeless.
On the other side of the glass Sharon was motioning for him to put the receiver to his ear again, but he still hesitated. Would the old man have really conspired to steal his daughter from him? He'd always thought that the whole crew was like family to the Admiral, but maybe that was all just an illusion. A clever ruse to garner 100 percent loyalty from his crew, perhaps.
He focused his attention on Sharon once more, finally lifting the receiver. "Helo!" her voice called out. "Do you understand what I said?"
What she said. His mind worked to try and remember what else she'd been saying to him, something about the former president, Laura Roslin. And something about the Admiral and blackmail, he thought, but his mind had sort of lost focus after she'd made her outrageous claims about Hera.
"We both saw her body…..how can she be alive, Sharon?"
"I don't know what they did to her, but she was so small….they never even let us touch her. They could have done anything and we would never have known. The babe they showed us may not even have been her."
"And I should just believe you, after everything…."
"Ask the old man yourself if you don't believe me," she cut him off angrily. "Adama is the one who swore to me that she's still alive. He came to me!"
"But why? What purpose could it serve?" he argued still, not ready to believe, to hope, but doing it anyway.
"For one thing how about as punishment, Helo. Take the child away from her Cylon mother, and the traitor human who fathered her."
There was no mistaking the bitterness and anger in her voice, but at the same time, her words made some kind of sense to him. It had taken him a long time after the escape from Caprica to earn the trust of his comrades again, after they'd found out about Sharon and her pregnancy, the way he defended her. Even now, there were still those on board both war ships that hated him for what he'd done.
"They didn't have to pretend she was dead to punish us," he whispered.
"Adama himself asked me if I'd seriously thought they'd let me keep her and raise her. A prisoner, just like her mother." When he didn't respond, she added, "Think about it Helo, a child that's half-Cylon, half-human, she was living proof that our two species really aren't all that different after all. That we're capable of joining our species at a genetic level. It kind of makes it hard to hate and war against something so like yourselves, doesn't it?"
"But you've already managed to make yourselves look and act like us," Helo responded softly. "And it hasn't kept us from hating each other. We're at war, I don't think it's even possible for us not to hate."
"We managed not to."
"And how long that last?"
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"All right, I'm here, now what?" Kara asked. It'd been two days since she'd last been in this clearing. Two long days since Cally had lost her baby. Amazingly, the girl was still clinging to life.
Leobon pushed himself away from the tree that he'd been leaning against. "You're late; I was beginning to think you'd changed your mind."
"Some of us are being forced to work against our wills," she retorted angrily. "So excuse me if I don't have the freedom to come and go as I please."
"And yet you still managed to slip away," he pointed out; smiling that same enigmatic smile he'd had at their last meeting.
Every time she saw him, and she could pick this particular Leobon out of the sea of them that seemed to populate the planet now, he was always smiling. And it unnerved her more than she cared to admit, so much so she'd seen it in her dreams the last two nights. So she tried her damnedest to keep him from knowing how much it affected her. Anger helped, and fortunately Leobon was very skilled at making her angry.
"Just quit with the games and tell me what was done to me," she demanded.
"Lieutenant….Captain Thrace," he corrected himself before she could do it for him. "That's not how this works. I ask the questions, you answer. Your reward for complying will be the information you seek. All in good time of course."
She fumed silently, the rage building inside of her. She wanted to attack, to send a roundhouse kick at him and knock the smile from his face. If they'd been in the Galactica's gym, he'd be picking his ass up from the mat by now.
But they weren't on the Galactica, and Leobon was quite possibly her one and only chance for finding out what had happened to her. It was hard to live with, a whole section of your memory wiped out. The knowledge that something had been done to her body, but not what that something could be.
"Tell me about your childhood," he said, taking her by surprise. "What were your parents like? Loving? Strict? Maybe a little on the wild side like their daughter?" he surmised.
"What the frak does my childhood have to do with anything?"
"You're defensive. Don't tell me that the great Starbuck is embarrassed about her past."
"I'm not embarrassed; I just don't see that my childhood has any relevance….."
"I'll be the judge of that," he broke in. "Now, the deal was, you answer my questions, I'll give you the information you want. Don't tell me you've changed your mind," he goaded. He was enjoying himself now, the knowledge that she wouldn't do anything to jeopardize learning about what had happened to her during her time in captivity on Caprica. It was the one lure he knew she couldn't resist.
Starbuck's mind reeled. What was his game now? She wished she knew; that there was some other way of finding out what she so desperately wanted to know. But the only choice she saw before her was to play along, whatever the game may be. With a sigh, she started talking.
"My mother was an alcoholic. I don't know who my father was; apparently she was too drunk to remember his name. I think most of the fleet was on leave that week, so there's really no telling how many possible candidates there were. Satisfied?"
"Hardly, but it's a start." He paced around her once, twice, considering. "So your mother had a bit of a wild streak to her, he surmised. "Like mother like daughter. Tell me about her. You say she didn't know who your father was, but did she ever even try to find out?"
"Why would she? As long as she had a drink in her hand and I stayed out of her way she was a happy woman. Of course when I was around to yell at and blame for all the problems in her life she was pretty happy too." As she spoke, Kara realized that she hadn't spared her mother a single thought in a long time, she couldn't even remember if she'd thought about her at all after the attack on the colonies. While everyone else was mourning the loss of their families, it was more or less business as usual for her. Except for the lingering fears for what fate may have befallen Lee, before they'd been reunited of course.
"What about you, Lieutenant? Did you ever try to find him?" Leobon asked, breaking into her thoughts and returning her to the present.
"Captain," she automatically corrected.
Leobon smiled again. "All right, Captain. Did you ever try to find him, Captain?"
"What for?"
"Maybe he would have wanted you."
"I was just fine without him," she assured him. Too bad she didn't really believe her own words. When she was a kid, enduring the laughter of her peers over her torn clothes and the makeshift lunches she'd scraped together herself, she'd dreamed that one day her father would show up and her life would suddenly be normal.
But no father ever showed up to take her away from her miserable life. So she endured the taunts until she taught herself how to fight back. She endured her mother's rants over how Kara's very existence had ruined the elder Thrace's life.
"Really? No doubts at all? No questions about what your life could have been like if he'd been around?" He circled around her as he spoke, as though a predator looking for some sign of weakness in his prey.
She refused to give him what he wanted though. With her trademark sarcastic smirk plastered to her face, she decided to turn the tables on him.
"What about you Leobon? What was the last thought in your mind before the airlock opened?" she countered. "Were you terrified that it really would be the end for you? That none of your little resurrection ships were floating around close enough for you to be downloaded? Were you afraid to die? I mean, really die…… no chance at all of returning."
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"What a beautiful child," a voice said softly.
Laura Roslin turned swiftly towards the sound, seeing that long-legged, blonde Cylon looking down into Hera's makeshift crib that still occupied one corner of the classroom. The woman slowly reached out her hand, extending it towards the sleeping child.
"Don't touch her!" Laura's voice came out much more harshly than she'd intended. She didn't want to anger the Cylon and draw undue attention to the child, but at the same time she was terrified of what the creature might do to the baby. "What I mean is that I just got her down for a nap. She's colicky, she needs her rest," she quickly added.
Six's hand had already hesitated though, a moment of déjà vu taking her back to another time and an infant, much smaller than the child before her. That baby had lay sleeping inside of a stroller. And its neck had snapped so easily under her fingers. She drew her hand back.
"If the child is ill why are you exposing the rest of your young ones to it?"
"Oh she's not contagious. It's just something that many little ones go through. Sometimes I think that it's harder on their parents than anything," Laura explained. She was surreptitiously trying to position herself between the crib and the Cylon. Six smiled, stepping back and allowing Laura to do so, as though she'd been aware all along of the older woman's plan.
"Aren't you old to be her mother?" the Cylon asked, rather callously.
"She's not my child. Her mother isn't here right now."
"But she lives here, with you, right?"
"Yes. Yes, that's right. She assists me with the children's education."
"And the father?"
"He's dead."
"Such a pity."
"I thought your kind wanted us all dead. Don't tell me your plans have changed for us?" Laura couldn't keep herself from asking.
It was at that moment that Hera's eyes opened, looking up clearly at Six, distracting her from Laura's question. The Cylon's harshly drawn in breath was her only giveaway that there was something amiss.
"Is something wrong?" Laura asked, turning her attention away from the blonde to look down into the crib. "You've woke her up. Just please, tell me what you're doing here? I…. I have work to do and now I need to get her back to sleep," she rambled, terrified at the Cylon's sudden fascination with little Hera.
Six, however, was not about to be distracted, her attention fixated solely on the girl, as if Laura had suddenly ceased being present in the tent. The child was staring up at Six with a very familiar pair of brown eyes. They were eyes that Six saw everyday, all over the planet. They were the eyes of Sharon Valerii. It seemed that God's will had been done after all.
"How many know the child's true parentage?" Six asked, meeting Laura's eyes at last.
"I don't know what you mean. I told you already, her mother is my assistant, her father perished in one of the attacks."
"Her mother is one of the Sharon Valerii models," Six countered.
"Don't be absurd."
"Your willingness to deny the truth is commendable, but very, very foolish. I can see it in your face that you know I speak the truth. You need to understand, my people are very eager to get their hands on this child. I can help you protect her."
Laura's already pale complexion drained of the last remnants of color. "She's not who you think she is," she argued almost pleadingly.
"I can help you," Six said again, her gaze returning briefly to the child. "But I need to know, how many more are privy to the truth about her?"
Laura, too, glanced down at Hera, as though the answer to this new threat lay somewhere in the innocent child's small face.
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