Chapter 11-

Leoben-

She spoke to him. At first he wondered if it was his mind playing tricks on him but there is no mistaking her voice, the tone, and the music of its sound. He wants to never stop hearing it, talk with her till the day they die. He can never get enough of Kara Thrace; no matter what part of Kara Thrace that is, he stopped trying.

He goes back to his book and scribbles down another note on the pad of paper. The book is usually used for study because Leoben found the volume fascinating, and because he wanted to use its knowledge to better understand how Kara Thrace really worked. The best knowledge could come from books; unlike most of his siblings, Leoben understood that, spending a large amount of time at libraries and book stores. Before the cylons left the colonies of course. After that he had whatever he had brought with him, a large collection of odds and ends. Poetry (he was a big Katariss fan) Psychology, Medicine, aerospace avionics, viper tech manuals, cookbooks, all kinds of books that could be useful, and the classics too.

He heard Kara speaking again and looked up at the figure who was steadily scrubbing a pot. The more he listened, the more he realized she was not talking, she was reciting. Colonial scripture, or at least that was what he thought it was. Leoben was very familiar with colonial scripture, but he didn't know some of the finer details. He just knew the main gist of it, not wanting to delve into the human religion very much, just the surface of it.

It was another goal of Leoben's to get her to know God. Bring her on her journey to knowing him and knowing his will than proceeding to go accomplish it. God brought him to her, and God had shown him that they would be together.

"Kara why do you believe so strongly in your Gods?" Leoben asked, some part of his mind from the thought of religion going into what Caprica had dubbed 'full sermon mode'. Kara predictably ignored him, continuing on with her words. "It makes me curious," he admitted "how you could have so much faith in them."

He honestly wanted to know what made her keep her faith, and it was part of another goal. He wanted to help her realize her false idols had done nothing for her, and that by coming to know God she would find the truth of her life. Of course he would use his love for her to help her do that, although converting her wasn't the only reason he had brought her here, away from her people. He loved her deeply with his entire body, mind, and soul and never wanted to be away from her. But part of the reason God brought him to her was to help bring her to know him.

"Did you ever wonder if they really existed? Because if they had, why would they let someone as devoted to them as you suffer for so long?" There was no response from her, she just kept scrubbing the dishes and saying scripture to herself, ignoring him and his sermons. Just like she had sat on the couch and ignored him the night before or done curl-ups by the window the day before last.

"It's because they aren't real Kara. There is only one true God," He hoped this would get him some kind of reaction, maybe she would speak again? But she was still ignoring him, saying the scriptures of her false Gods to herself, not looking up from the soapy water.

He sighed to himself and went back to his book; he would speak when she didn't have something to distract herself with. That was the reason she wasn't listening to him, her mind was simply on other things and preoccupied. Oh Leoben knew that was an excuse for himself, he simply didn't want to face the fact that this was harder than he had thought and he needed to change his strategy. He had not anticipated she would do things like refuse to eat, or stop talking altogether.

Leoben continued to take notes from the book, hoping that by pushing himself into his work, he would be able to get his mind off the depressing fact that he had no luck with Kara. If anything, he had lost ground because when she had pushed his head in a bucket of water, at least she was talking to him. He needed a new way to combat that because what he was doing now wasn't working, which was to get her into doing what he wanted, no needed her to do, one step at a time. He hated himself for thinking of manipulating her but it may have to be done. She wasn't herself and Kara Thrace was who he had fallen in love with. Now she was just silent, biding her time for something, he was sure, but what, Leoben didn't know. It was one of those love/hate things, he loved she was so unpredictable, not weighed down by other, normal or conventional, ideas of thinking and yet, it made getting her to fall in love with him that much harder.

When the hands of the clock read eight o'clock, Kara moved from the sink. The dishes were done, and now maybe he could talk to her. She still had on her clothing from when she'd been captured, not trusting him enough to take it off except in a small interval for the bathroom and only when he wasn't there.

She hated it, being so trapped and in the fear he might do something to her, he sensed it. But he didn't know what to do, if he continued to tell her she was fine and he respected the closed door of a bathroom and the right to not be personally violated while sleeping she still wouldn't believe him. And why should she, a voice in the back of his head taunted, you led her and her fleet on a wild goose chase for a mystical nuke that never existed, you mix lies and truth until no one is quite sure which is which.

He was careful to keep her within his sight when she was nearby or close to him. His mind could easily wander and not notice she had snuck up behind him until she was close enough to try and kill him. Just this evening she had done that exact thing. It saddened him that he had to stop the woman he loved from snapping his neck in two, and yet, there was tiny part of him that relished in the contact between them. Even if it was only his hands on her wrists, it was a small taste of what would one day be his if he played his cards right, and besides, her skin felt right under his fingertips. It was hard, for her to be so close and yet so far away. She was intoxicating and once he started anything, Leoben wasn't sure he'd be able to stop himself. He had to keep a clear head or he would make an unforgivable mistake, the reoccurring vision of her embracing him and saying 'I love you' or his dreams of the little girl with Kara's face kept him believing she would be his, Leoben couldn't take any risk of jeopardizing that.

She was sitting with her back against the wall in the corner by the table, the left side of her body flushed against the floor-to-ceiling window the curtain pushed out of her way allowing her to look onto the outside world. He knew she missed it, she was the kind of person who hated being trapped, it was regrettable he had to keep her here while she learned to love him and deprive her of the free open sky. But she would get hurt out there, maybe even killed, he had to protect her, it was God's will.

He decided to drop by and see Caprica; she'd still been in her heartbroken state last he knew, hiding in her apartment all the time. Leoben had no idea what she was actually doing in there, and he wanted to check up on her. He had no worries about her dying or anything, they were cylons and could resurrect after all, but he wanted to see if there was anything he could do for her, make her a nice cup of hot tea maybe? He didn't know why it would help but people in books did it when the character was heartbroken or someone died, they had a nightmare or something horrible happened.

Leoben was struck by a sudden idea, maybe if he gave Kara a time he would be out and a time to return she would finally feel relaxed enough and comfortable he would not barge in on her so she would get cleaned up. He wouldn't say 'you can take a shower now' to her directly, or hint that she needed to get clean because Caprica had told him women got easily offended at that kind of thing, but hint at it hopefully subtle enough to plant the idea and get it going.

"I know it's late, but I need to run some things over with Caprica Six, I'll be back around nine thirty." he stated, and she didn't look up or indicate she had heard him at all. He sighed inwardly, and tried to get her to at least look at him, "Kara." He said gently and she looked up in spite of herself. "I said I'll be back at nine thirty" No response, not that he expected one he just wanted to make sure she heard.

"If you're asleep by then good night." He called down the stairs softly and she didn't answer him again. But at least she had spoken today, that was an improvement over silence, it seemed she would get to the point where she would speak more and more. She had spent years building the persona of Starbuck, someone who was definitely not ignored, Starbuck couldn't just go away and be cut loose from her mindset, and Starbuck was a highly verbal person. Eventually Starbuck would speak, and than would follow Kara. He could talk with her, earn her trust, get close to her the way God meant for them to be.

He turned the deadbolt lock with a smile at the thought of what was to come.

Kara-

Her thoughts had been back over the day and she hated herself for giving in. To eating. But she had been hungry, she could go longer without food but she was not conditioned for starving herself or being starved a longer stretch of time. Her mother had forced her to go some days without food, getting her used to not being able to eat for much longer than her time in this cell.

How long had it been anyways, Three days awake? Four days, they were starting to blur already, with the sheer lack of anything to do around this apartment. She did menial house chores to alleviate the boredom but there was only so much you could do before you either got sick of the work or ran out of things to clean. She'd done exercises, running up and down the stairs, curl-ups, push-ups, planks, pull-ups. But it was hopeless, she wanted to run around in a big circle outside with the sand beneath her toes or play pyramid with Sam, neither of which she was able to do.

The clothes stuck to her body and she wished she could take them off and get new ones. But she didn't trust him, but if he was back at nine thirty...

But when she did start trusting a cylon's word, especially this cylon? Did he mean nine thirty in the morning or tonight or even nine thirty at all? The urge to go and get clean, getting stronger by every minute she remained seated at the wall, told her it would be okay. The urge to go get clean was even stronger however, whenever he looked at her. When that happened all she wanted to do was scrub her skin until the feel of his gaze was cleaned off and down the drain with the soap and grime.

Even now when she had heard the lock click, she thought she could feel it on her back. Ice blue eyes always watching, calculating, Starbuck wondered what he was going to do to her, he said he wanted her to love him, that he loved her already but it couldn't be true. She had put his head in a bucket of water again and again threatening to drown him each time. She had him physically abused. He was a cylon, he couldn't love anyway, never mind the reasons why otherwise.

She was off the floor before her mind could catch up, moving on autopilot and entering the bedroom before she stopped. Was she going to play right into his hands, would he come back and invade her privacy? She had lived on a battlestar for years; it wasn't as though she hadn't been seen naked by people around her before. But Leoben suddenly being that person made her nervous, edgy and feeling a little out of control. Which she hated, she was Starbuck, she was always in control, of her viper, the card game, she hated following orders for that exact reason.

But she didn't care anymore, she needed to wash it off, wash off the sweat, the silent tears that had fallen at night as the reality of her situation had crashed in on her, and Leoben's watchful sight. It needed to come off. Grabbing clothes at a hurried pace from the closet, not really caring if they fit or not, and she darted into the bathroom.

There were clean towels under the sink and she pulled one out and turned on the water. Then she set each piece of clothing along with her boots off to the side. She ran her hands over the walls and shower for a good fifteen minutes, determined to find any kind of monitoring device. Damned frackers were good at machines, spy ware, mechanical stuff, and could hide their toys really well. She couldn't find one.

She decided she didn't care anymore, she had a small reprieve, she should take it. Un-doing the zipper on her pants and yanking up her tanks she pulled the garments off and away from her skin. Her mind screamed it was a trick but she went for getting clean anyways, if something bad happened to her she would get through it, she had gotten through before, and she would get through again. It was far from comforting, but she was Starbuck for frack's sake, she could do anything right?

Stepping into the shower cubicle, she jumped back suddenly and almost fell down as the blast of hot water hit her unexpectedly and was much warmer than she had anticipated. Reaching through the spray to get the temperature down, she wondered how the hell he'd gotten hot water. She didn't know how this stuff worked; She knew vipers like the back of her hand but plumbing, no way. She could always ask Tyrol, if she ever saw Tyrol again. She sure as hell wasn't going to ask the cylon about it.

She hated herself on a level for it, but the water felt good to her skin. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a decent shower, with hot water, and could take longer than five minutes in it. She scrubbed the dirt off until her skin was a slight pink color. The soap smelled like strawberries, the kind she had back on Caprica before the worlds' end.

Wrapped in the towel she wondered about how he knew this stuff, the soap scent, the layout of her apartment, the paintings. It seemed too close to just be coincidence. Stuff that had been hers- had he gone to her apartment and gotten it? It felt violating, the idea of him going through her stuff. But there was no other explanation for it, right? Not like he could go 'poof' and her stuff was there, he had to have gone to her apartment, broken in, and taken it. It had been stuff that wasn't in her apartment when she visited it with Helo.

So it had to have been earlier than when she and Helo made a stop when he went for her stuff. How long had he been watching her, known about her? How had he really found out about her mom and the things Socrata had said to her? It was only logical; his God didn't exist so there was no way for him to be told things from that like an Oracle of some kind. He must have been watching her for a long time, the thought is enough to make her sick, her stomach threatening to throw up the contents of her stomach.

As she pulled the tank top over her head, she looked in the mirror, having avoided it for the most part and she was struck by how different she looked. Just a week or so ago Sam had been coughing (but not too seriously) and she was mulling over the possibilities of a family. Now look at her: her green eyes aren't bright, but dull and blank with dark circles underneath as proof as her unwillingness to go to sleep beyond a doze, her wet hair is darker than normal and hangs in strings down the sides of her face, her face is ghastly, alabaster skin paler than normal. All in all I look like death Kara concluded.

Her mind pangs back to Sam as she left the bathroom and went back to her perch at the window, leaving her old clothes on the floor and the towel along with them, since she would not place it on the rack next to the thing's towel. Off in the far distance she can vaguely make out where the pyramid court is and the shapes playing on it. Is one of them Sam's?

The door unlocks and the cylon returns, not saying anything to the pile of clothes left on the bathroom floor or the towel that covers them. He didn't say anything to her sitting at the window again, now freshly clean and still staring, hoping, praying for a way out of her prison. Her fingers reach in the edge of her boot and proceed to curl around the comforting blade of a knife hidden in her boot still, waiting to be used, should the need arise.

It's nine thirty, right on time, machines like routine, Leoben is no different. His shirt is still the same stupid green one he wore when she tortured him; he must have multiples and multiples of them.

He doesn't look at her, she watches from the corners of her eyes keeping him in range and he seems almost distracted, unsettled. For once he isn't the calm exterior of who she always knew him as, a wall and something unknown, inhuman, he seems rattled by something. She doesn't know if she cares or not.

"It's getting late." he says simply, and she resists the Starbuck urge to roll her eyes. "I'm going to sleep, would you like to join me?" Every night it's the same question in some form or another and every night so far she has shaken her head no. She always will shake her head no. No matter what he thinks or his stupid mind games, that answer won't change, she is married, she loves Sam and she won't do that to him. She can't, it's wrong and marriage is sacred, no matter what ridiculous garbage this cylon believes.

Kara shook her head back and forth a bit, not looking from her perch on the window. He leaves the living area and retreats to his bedroom without another word. The glass is cold against her face and damp hair, her left hand remains clenched around the handle of the knife, not trusting the cylon at all. She naps during the day, short little naps, waking up continually as to not be caught off guard. She spends the nights awake, not daring to sleep.

Leoben claims he wouldn't violate her when she is asleep, he would never hurt her in any way. He respects her privacy and will not disturb her while asleep. But the day Starbuck believes a cylon is the day when she can't believe anything anymore because she's dead, and last she checked, she was still breathing.