A Rush of Blood to the Head


"Oh, what is this, I cannot see.
Who's icy hand takes hold on me.
Oh, I am Death, that none can excel
I open the door to Heaven and Hell."
-Conversation with Death


DISCLAIMER: Not mine.

REVIEWS: Yes, thank you.

NOTES: I apologize profusely for the slow update. I just started summer classes. And can someone tell me why I signed up for summer classes because I have no idea. Oh, wait, now I remember. My silly silly advisor told me I should. So instead of taking out my annoyance on my advisor, I decided to give it to Starbuck and Co. Oops.


Four months ago: Day 62 of the Cylon Occupation

"Sam, you idiot, you should be in bed," Kara hissed through the night in the direction of her still ill husband after hearing his fit of suppressed coughing. "Tell me why I let you come again?"

Starbuck, Sam, and assorted other members of the resistance were concealed in the dark behind some foliage and rocks around a rather innocuous appearing building. According to Gaeta this was the facility the Cylons were taking all the kidnapped people to. It had taken Gaeta weeks just to find the location and he still couldn't come up with security plans or more importantly, in Starbuck's mind, a purpose. While planning the rescue mission the viper pilot had been plagued with visions of women infested by tubes and machinery. But despite the setbacks, the resistance relying heavily on Starbuck's out-of-the-box- thinking came up with a viable rescue mission.

It was all short term of course. It was an unspoken fear of everyone that if the Fleet didn't return, they'd all end up permanently kidnapped. No matter how frugal they were with food and ammo, their supplies would run out. If that happened…But no matter the long-term outcome, they were determined to do what they could.

Sam despite being recently deathly ill had insisted on participating in the rescue mission. Kara despite her worry about his health wanted to keep him close. He'd almost coughed himself to death, she wanted to stay with him.

"Hmm, and here I thought I was the key part of the plan…"

Under the guise of staying disguised, they scouted closer to each other behind their shared cover.

"Is that right? And what exactly is the key part of the plan, again?"

Sam leaned in even farther. The couple's lips almost touching, the couple's hands definitely roaming.

"I'm under strict presidential orders…" Sam grinned, clearly enjoying their time together despite the situation, "to watch your ass."

Starbuck snorted. "She did not say that."

"She told me to make sure you got home but I like my way better."

Just as the two, now grinning foolishly at each other, went in for the kiss, the signal went off.

All teams were in place and ready. Starbuck gave the answering signal, checked her weapon, and sprinted to the building using the landscape as cover with Sam at her back. Each resistance team on different entrances of the building responded to Starbuck's signal and made similar runs for their doors. If everything went as planned the teams would retrieve the missing people, set explosives, and escape in less than fifteen minutes.

Ten minutes in, all hell broke loose. Most of the detainees had made it out of the facility and were on their way to several different hidden locations where they'd theoretically be safe when the cylon backup arrived.


Current Day: Six months after the Cylon Invasion of New Caprica

Starbuck couldn't tell how many were with him…maybe…two or three, yeah, at least two. The others with him didn't matter though. He was there. She knew he was there. She always knew when he came for her. He kept telling her they had a bond, a connection, some kind of twisted destiny. Well, maybe the frakker was right but, by the gods, he wasn't gonna like being right this time. She was waiting for him, ready this time. She'd wait until he was close, until she felt his breath on her skin.

A fast hand yanked the prone pilot's head up by her roots. It was one of the frakking blondes. The blonde cylon model seemed to take some sort of special delight in tormenting and taunting her, breaking her skin and bruising her bones. This particular cylon's eyes always zealously burned with conviction as she burned and bruised and broke. The blonde cylon's hatred for humans seemed only to be overshadowed by her fanatical devotion to God. Kara's sessions with the blonde were a strange mix of torture and the cylon God. The blonde was responsible for most of Kara's physical wounds. But in truth, Starbuck almost preferred the physical attacks over the other two. She understood the pain. She could work through the pain. It was these other two though…

With her head forced up and twisted at an angle, Kara got a glimpse of the rooms other occupants.

Unfeeling, almost disinterested, eyes stared out of a friend's face. Actually, Starbuck wasn't sure she could count Boomer as a friend. Could they have been friends if that relationship was built on a lie? Could she have been friends with Boomer if Boomer had never been Boomer? She wasn't sure. Kara tried to keep it simple; she tried to hate Boomer, Sharon, and all the other toasters sharing that face. But sometimes sitting and bleeding, barely breathing in this damned place, being interrogated and worn down piece by piece, Kara didn't see the unfeeling eyes…only a friend's face.

The blonde cylon used her handhold to force her into a painful kneeling position. Starbuck made sure to keep her body limp, pretend to be unable to protect herself much less go on the offensive. This of course wasn't far from the truth. Weeks of cold and abuse had done their job well. Kara was fading. But the day she stopped fighting would be the day they shot her into space dressed in a cold flag and black coffin. She would never give them what they wanted. She would hold on and fight as long she could but if the time came for her, if no one came for her, if she felt herself start to give…Kara would kill herself.

A hand, gentle in contrast with the one vigorously twisting her hair, found her chin and softly lifted Kara's eyes to his. His eyes were the most confusing of the three cylons in the room. Where there was hate and apathy in the others', love was the only occupant of his eyes. Even months ago when their circumstances had been reversed, she the torturer, he the tortured, his eyes never held anything but this strange tenderness and absurd affection.

Was it real? Was any of it real? At this point in her little vacation with the toasters, Kara wasn't up to telling the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. Sometimes she was sure she was still kneeling in Sam's blood, holding his dead body while brain matter soaked through her skin. Sometimes she was sure she was back on the Galactica and all this was just a nightmare induced by that viper oil swill the Chief passed off as alcohol. Sometimes…sometimes when it was especially hopeless and she was especially dark, Kara was sure none of it--the attacks, Galactica, the Adamas, Flight school--was real and she was actually once again lying unconscious in her own aching body after her drunken mother got a hold of her.

Was Leoben's love real? She knew something was wrong when on the one hand, he professed his love and with the other he held her head under water. But she didn't have the energy to continue that thought.

At this moment, her body suspended in air and held in place by the blonde and the empty eyes, Leoben's soft touch and words slinking around her exhausted defenses, Kara was only sure of three things.

One, she could feel his warm breathe on her face as he spoke. He was close enough.

Two, she could feel the sharp length of splintered wood she'd pried from her sleeping pallet concealed in her hand. She had enough strength.

Three, cylons bleed too.