Note: Life has been busy and my beta is to so this if self edited so there are probably more than a couple mistakes, all of which are mine and I apologize for. As always thanks for reading and I'd love it if you reviewed.

Chapter 15-

Kara-

When she woke up, Leoben was nowhere to be found. At least where she was anyways, which meant he might have gotten the clue to leave her alone. The cylon knew so much about her, her history, her mom, it made her shiver. Just how long had they been watching her? How long had Leoben known about her before she knew about his existence? Had he ever been in her apartment before the nuclear holocaust? And why was she so special anyways?

Her mother had told her she was special, that she had a destiny, a fate, and that she had a gift. Kind of odd considering Kara had also been told she was a screw up. A gifted screw-up, who couldn't learn how to use her Gods given talents and hurt everything she touched.

The hands on the clock said ten in the morning, and Kara grudgingly pulled herself off the couch, which was uncomfortable enough to give her back aches that reminded her of days spent sleeping on the floor of her closet. She wished desperately she was still in her cot, with the warm body of Sam next to her. She hadn't known how much she missed it, sleeping with someone else, until she was forced to be alone again. But this time it was more of a choice, because she'd promised herself she would never betray humanity like that.

Raising her arms above her head, Kara gently stretched out her muscles, pulling them tauter and tauter until she can feel the pull of the stretch. It felt good, it felt alive. Rolling her neck to work out the kinks for the first time in the past few days she fully assesses her situation. Before she had been in shock, anger, and unable to think clearly due to hunger. Now she was hungry, but her body had more energy to burn towards a totally-nutts-out-of-the-box-plan-that-would-make-perfect-Lee-Adama-throw-a-hissy-fit idea.

She knew she had been captured by cylons. She knew they wanted her for something. She knew they were playing mind games with her, the fact this apartment and her own were mirror copies was not a coincidence by any means. She knew Leoben seemed to have an obsession with her.

So than, she thought, to escaping. She'd have to use the door, windows were three stories up and she didn't have a nice soft cylon to land on this time. Besides, there was no way dead or alive she could shatter that glass, something they had obviously gone to great lengths to produce. How special she felt.

After a few minutes of contemplating the bedroom door opens, and Leoben exits, for one of the first times since she had been dunking his head in a bucket of water, he looks disheveled, tired, and completely frazzled. He must have come straight home from his nice comfy downloading tank and straight to bed so he could go to sleep. Good to know, extra tiredness after a download.

Neither of them say anything, something for which she is grateful. She just used anything she could to kill him, and if she had to use his apparent infatuation with her, so be it. It was only surviving; she had refused to feel guilty about anything she'd done in the past, except maybe Baltar, she wouldn't feel guilty about it now. Just because she was married, held by a psycho cylon who didn't actually have feelings, just thought he did, and was stuck in an apartment while cylons slowly got rid of the last of her people, might have put a damper on some people's mood. Not her's. It was something that had to be done, as a soldier she understood that. Do whatever you need to do to get your mission accomplished.

Didn't mean it wouldn't haunt her for days to come, her mother's voice echoed in her head, laughing at her while confirming her suspicions about Kara, claiming that she'd been right from the start. That she is a nothing, a slut, the worst of the worst, and should have never been born.

She notices he is watching her out of the corner of his eyes, caution marking his every movement. He silently makes his way to the kitchen, looking like he would prefer to be asleep another couple hours. Well it wasn't as though she had forced him to come out and make food to eat. He could sleep till he died, again, for all she cared. She could feed herself thank you very much.

Not wanting to remain in the room with him, Kara prowled into the bathroom and sank onto the floor while he worked, not wanting to admit she was hungry, and wanted to get back into the regular habit of eating. If she was going to escape the habit of not eating would have to go, she needed her strength, and since if she didn't eat she would get dizzy when she did push-ups.

She doesn't really know what to do except bide her time and wait, certainly not encourage it. Her thoughts drift again to Sam, what he is doing, where's he's at, if he's feeling okay. She really should be up in the running for the worst wife award or something, get yourself kidnapped and unable to get out of this prison apartment while your husband may be stuck in a tent dying of pneumonia.

After fifteen minutes she decided there's nothing left to do here, and exits the room. The dull monotony of sitting around and her inability to sit still work against her, forcing her to move about. As she stood in the bathroom door-way, she took in the scene, all the while trying to appear like she's not really looking. Leoben's flipping pancakes on the oven burner, and the sun is shining through the windows. A nice day, they were rarities on this planet. Once again she wishes, if futilely, that she could be outside, running races with Sam again, kicking up sand and driving people nuts. It seemed like the last time it had happened it had been ages ago. Gods please let me escape and see Samuel again.

Kara has made herself promise not to spend so much time looking, to do nothing to let this machine know how desperately she wants outside. The Galactica made up for being such an inclosing space by letting her fly, the planet made up for her loss of wings by being open and free. This apartment made up nothing; it was a prison, a nice one, but nevertheless a gilded cage. Now she didn't have her wings or her freedom and was closed in. Put in a box, left on the side to be forgotten about. Except by Leoben, and she wasn't sure which was worse.

The second she had graduated the academy, she had vowed to herself nothing would ever close her in again. She would only be somewhere she wanted to be, Zak had understood that, calling her a force of nature, something like the wind. Zak had been on her mind so much more lately, maybe it was because in this prison she had nothing better to do than think. It forced her to confront things, things she had run away from so long through a variety of means. Her methods of coping cut off, and she was only left with her ghosts and the thoughts they brought.

And her thoughts were loud. Deafening in fact, sometimes, when she was alone in the apartment, she could hear things she had tried to forget. A little girl's tears as the door broke her fingers, a viper crashing onto the tarmac, a gun-shot echoing around a bar. They came back full force, ready to tear her apart again, just like the actual sounds had the first time.

Leoben's voice breaks her out of her musing, "Eat." it's short and simple and yet the words convey more than they seem. He's trying to make sure she doesn't go on a hunger strike again. She knows, somewhere, instinctively, that he's upset she killed him last night. She can't bring herself to care. She sits at her designated spot at the table, wondering why in the 12 colonies she's already started thinking of it as her spot, she's going to escape and get out of here after all.

He's tired, very tired in fact. She can see it in the way he moves, the circles around his eyes and hunch posture. She knows she shouldn't do what she's planning. But if Starbuck didn't do anything she shouldn't than she certainly wouldn't be Starbuck.

"Thank you." she keeps her voice soft, delicate, something she's managed to perfect over the years. The cylon looks at her, searching for falsehood but she's become a very good bluffer. This game has a purpose, it's to push him and see how far she can make him go until he snaps. And of course, what kind of reaction she gets. It's playing with fire, but she doesn't mind the burns.

As he turns back around she queries. "Why do you put up with me?" It's a question, perfectly legitimate to ask. A part of her is curious, to see if his silly answer has changed. And than keep on making fun of him for it if it hasn't.

"I told you Kara. I love you." The words are softly spoken, full of tenderness and affection. And for a moment she believes he could have feelings. Almost that they could really be for her. But she dismisses it, what had she ever done to warrant such feelings, she was a screw-up, she wasn't loved. Except by a few lucky strokes of love, they came in the form of Zak, her best friend Helo, the man she considered a father, at one time maybe Lee, and than Sam. But they didn't come in the form of cylons with apartments who held her people under a strict occupation.

With that sweet and quiet Kara was erased and Starbuck took her place, in all her fighting glory. "Right. Of course you do, because you know, it's perfectly normal in a relationship to lock the other up in a fancy dollhouse. So stupid of me, please tell me where this is found in the healthy relationship handbook. I must have missed it my first read-through"

"Don't do that."

"Do what? Demand references?"

"No, put yourself down. You're more than what they've made you believe, made you think. You're not any of those things at all. And I'm trying to protect you."

"I can protect myself just fine" they both know this isn't easy banter but they're pretending it is. Because she certainly doesn't want to concede him any ground, by admitting to him that maybe she can't be protected by the resistance. That maybe the Great Starbuck had to fall someday, and when she was taken was the day.

"There are things that go beyond your own or Sam's control and ability to deal with." he said simply, not getting that much annoyed in the slightest. His words are spoken carefully though, and with a start she realizes it is the first time he has acknowledged the existence of Sam and the fact she is married, or at least connected with him, out loud.

"Like what?" She can handle herself; she doesn't need a cylon guardian to watch over her. She doesn't need anyone to protect her, because she's Kara Thrace and no matter what Kara Thrace always makes it out alive. Scarred and a little broken, sure, but beaten, never, killed, never, she has been close but she'll pull through.

"There are cylons who would kill you." He answers and she rolls her green eyes and makes a snorting noise.

"Really, how interesting. I never would have guessed."

"You don't understand." Leoben turned back around and gripped the edge of the counter, trying to keep up the facade that he was calm but she had seen it break enough in Lee to see it coming. So she pressed on.

"Don't I? Everything in my life, I've been fighting the odds-"

She was abruptly cut off. "But why keep fighting them? Let someone else protect you, someone who loves you more than Sam ever can, more than Lee ever has. And trust me Kara, There are things that are only kept at bay because I am a barrier between them."

"Yeah right." She snapped, it was unwise, he was clearly trying to reign in his temper and she wasn't helping him do so. But nevertheless.

Leoben is at this point very upset, and lets the pancake on the griddle burn as he rants at her, in an unusual long stream of words. He's normally so quiet, watching, not very verbally confronting, or loud. The silent dangerous type.

"I've defended you the second the cylons figured out who the Galactican top gun was. I was ordered to kill you before you saw me on the Gemininon Traveler but I didn't. I was supposed to kill you if I saw you afterwards but I didn't. The cylons at the farm wanted to put you in the machines right away but I wouldn't let them. The cylons in the fleet wanted to kidnap you and torture you to destroy morale, or even kill you and be a figurehead on what happens to humanity. I didn't let them. I was a part of the group that convinced the cylons not to destroy you on this rock. Without me you'd be alone and forgotten in a prison cell, waiting to be torn apart at some of my more violent familys' entertainment or dead.

"So don't you dare say there are things that I don't shield you from or that I'm not needed to protect you. There are cylons who would like nothing more than to mount your head on a pole. I don't let them, do you think you could stop them if you tried? You would fail Kara. I'm the only one who stands in their way. You really think a human can protect you? You're wrong. You'd be in too far deep to overcome the odds, I'm sorry but it's the truth.

"I've let them think I was crazy, insane, all in order to protect you. Cashed in on every favor I can, traded countless more, to keep you alive and keep you breathing, even though I know you could get yourself blown away by a Raider, which I was not allowed to tinker with, any day. Even so, without me you'd be dead right now, admit it like it or not."

How dare him. How dare he, what, keep you alive? But there was nothing she could think of that supported his claims. Nothing to disprove them either, which was something that bothered her. The cylons were evil; they were against her and had tried to kill her on many occasions. It was just another lie, him trying to frack with her head, there was no way he would go to those lengths to protected her.

She gave him another hooded scowl before dropping back to her breakfast. He had a boiling point, and now she knew how to reach it. Even if the way to get there was laying out the truth that she was worthless out infront of him.

Leoben-

He should have not gone off like that. Still, some part of him couldn't help it, he had faced so much anger, ridicule, and the last person he needed to hear it from was her. Why can't she just accept that I love her? His mind demanded, even though he knew it wasn't that easy.

She was sullenly eating her breakfast and he silently composed himself as he turned off the burner. He was just under a lot of stress lately, and the added pressure wasn't helping. He had simply been pushed and some steam had been let off.

Leoben had always held a small amount of pride that unlike some of the other models, he could think clearly and objectively at all times. He had a cool head on his shoulders, and it never wavered. Until he was baited by her, she brought out his very best he realized, and caused things hidden deep to creep up. His anger at being made to look ridiculous at his love for her for instance.

Sitting down at the table across from her, he took a fork and began to cut up his meal for breakfast and than maybe go back to sleep, or spend sometime awake. He simply enjoyed her presence around him, it surrounded him like a bubble, inside the bubble, some things didn't seem to matter so much anymore, it was a feeling he liked, but the second he stepped away things got complicated again.

A rumble of a bomb went off in the distance, he can see her head snap up, silent fear it was someone she cared about. He could see the war in her features, despite her prowess at triad sometimes her game face slipped and he could see her emotions. He never let her know, in fear she would pull her mask tighter around herself. Her features showed two sides warring for control, to look at the bomb, the location, anything she could see, and the other told her not to give in, not to let him know she missed the sky, the open world.

He briefly wondered if Caprica was right, and if the advice given to the Eight named Boomer about Galen Tyrol was any good. If you love something, let it go. He dismissed the idea, he had seen she would be his, now he had to make her realize her place was by his side. It still haunted him, she was clearly unhappy and he wanted to make her smile, but only through him. Maybe he was being selfish, but this was for her protection God-dammit. Out there, as he had eloquently said earlier, Sam couldn't protect her, not even the former Colonial Fleet in all it's glory could have stood a chance.

But he could.

Sam-

The burning in his lungs as he ran away felt good. The dam that he had been forced to work on was now set back a few days, which was sure to irritate the cylons. The blonde bitch had repeatedly told the Two in charge to get it done, something about a deadline. Pity about that.

That's for you Kara. He added silently in his mind. There had been no word of her, he had moved frantically among the people who had been released from the prisons asking about her, but no one had seen anything. It didn't bode well, it left him uneasy. He refused to believe she was dead, and no one else did either. She was Starbuck, and his wife was a stubborn woman. She wouldn't die so easy, and it was hard to explain. He could feel she was alive. Just like he could feel when to make the perfect shot, or the perfect pass, or pull the trigger at a toaster. It was almost a sixth sense, and he knew she was out there somewhere.

Now just to find her.

Pulling his jacket around himself tighter, his C Buck's jacket a memory of an old time that was long gone, he headed to the chapel. Kara had gone everyday, and he'd sometimes joined her, never as devout as she was, but he knew her faith had been very important to her. He had learned why about four months into their marriage, and accepted it without hesitation.

Kara had just returned from the tent and he looked at her, taking in the soft morning light that circled her, her blonde hair growing long brightened against the sky from the sun, and her jacket pulled around her slim, muscular frame tightly. She had a certain peace around her after she had left the place, it was close to what he felt after being on the court.

"Kara" he starts out tentatively, knowing one wrong move would scare her away. She senses it, and her walls come up, surrounding her like a bubble. He can rarely see what's behind them, and now even less so. She's getting ready to bolt his mind piped up.

"Yes?" She demands, almost impatiently. He gets up, and pulls her tightly against his body. At first she tries to pull away but he holds her there, hanging onto her as if he didn't she would go. She probably would. Slowly she relaxed into his embrace, accepting it.

"I love you." he whispers softly, and her whole body tenses. At first he'd been confused as to why she couldn't say it. Each time he had said it, she gave him a look, her green eyes unreadable, and moved along, back to what she been doing on before, as if trying to push it under the carpet. But over time he'd understood, that she simply couldn't. For whatever reason it was, she couldn't say it, and he wouldn't force her to. Kara choose to be with him, and he would let her know, everyday, how much he loved her presence. Loved her.

"Will you tell me something?" He asks and she nods her head, looking more than a little weary. He knows this is the part he has to be careful with, one misstep and she's gone for good. "Why are you so religious?"

"What? Tough viper pilots can't be religious?" She tries to joke, a half-hearted smile reaching both of their lips, and she realizes she can't get out of it that easy. He can see her indecision, to trust him, not to trust him. Take a chance.

"I was raised that way I guess. Always taught to show the proper respect," Her voice is quiet and he knows she's getting very careful in what she says. He looks back down at her, his arms still wrapped around her, though the grip is loose and she could pull away whenever she choose. He wouldn't stop her. Couldn't stop her if he tried.

"But why?" He pushes and she tries to pull away and he only hangs on tighter now. He wants to understand. After a few moments and muffled 'frack' she stops and looks up at him with her lids hiding most of her eyes, her bright hair a tangle around her face. Something registers in his mind that she's scared, but of what he doesn't understand. "Tell me Kara." he asks her gently, "Tell me."

Her hands are playing a certain spot on her fingers, the spot is being rubbed absently, she's almost not aware of it. He's noticed she does that when things get serious, or she gets nervous. He wonders where the habit came from. "Are you sure you really want to know?" she asks him softly, small, like she's five instead of twenty-five. He rubs small circles on her back, muscles tensed and coiled, he notices, in a way of answering, keep her here, with him. Not with Apollo his mind silently adds but he ignores it. Whatever it was they had, it wasn't here, on this planet, with them. It was just him and her, Kara ans Sam, Sam and Kara.

The silence is long, but he knows she needs it. He understands her, that she needs time and space, and not to push her into telling him something when she isn't ready. He's almost ready to say they can do this another day, that they don't have to talk about it now, when she starts to speak. "Once, things weren't bad. I was little and the worst I would get was a hour or so in the closet and a smack. Nothing bad, it never happened when my Dad was home. He was a musician, traveled alot so that wasn't much. I remember my mom would always get so anxious for those days he was there. I was five when he left one day and never came back.

"It was worse than, she got angry, she'd always drunk more than she should but now it was a constant state. I kept hoping my Dad would come back, he never did. No letters, no phone calls, it was like we didn't exist anymore. She said it was my fault, if I had never been born he never would have left. I believed her, there had never been another reason for him to leave.

"I remember once, she got angry at me because I didn't make my bed. Cracked my head open with a broomstick handle. Said there'd be neat and order in her house. I got back at her though, She used to be in the marines and was stained on Meadra. Fracken jungles you wouldn't believe, she hated the damn bugs. So I go out and I buy a whole bunch of these plastic bugs and spread them all over her closet." She abruptedly stops and he gently has to prod her to keep going.

"What did she do?"

"She screamed her fracking head off." Kara said, with no small amount of satisfaction. It all vanishes with her next words. "She stuck my hands in the door jam, and slammed the door on them. Broke all my fingers on both hands, same spot. Said I deserved it, it was my punishment for being a whore and a slut and something no one would love." She's looking at the floor and Sam isn't sure what he should do. In all his dreams and musings he had never imagined this. But somewhere, she has to know it's not her fault, that she's not damaged, and he thinks she is far from broken.

"I love you Kara." It's all he can think of to say, and he keeps her pulled into him, as if just by holding her he can keep the ghosts from her past from sneaking up on her. "And I can tell you right now, you're not worthless. I wouldn't even be here without you. No one would. You're the strongest person I know" She doesn't answer him, and that's okay. He knows it is something very personal, and something she hasn't told very many people.

"Don't tell." She begged, her voice normally so loud barely audible.

"I won't."

Stepping under the scarlet tent flap, with the notes he had been receiving or the last few days in his pocket he went towards the back and stopped at one of the statues on the shelf, the dark stone from the beaches of Aquarion having caught his eye. Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon, and one of those Kara held most dearly. A warrior he remembered her saying, just like I'm supposed to be. His finger gently touched the cold stone, again feeling like it was made ages ago, in another life, and for sure on a different world. One without the ever present fear that cylons were going to come any moment now and kill you, those you care about. When things like pyramid tournaments and how many passes you threw mattered.

"You coming?" Cally softly asks, in a way the young deck chief understands, her hands on her stomach, her birth date fast arriving. He nods mutely, and removes his fingers from the gilded statue his wife had had a special place for. He has a job to do.

Sam follows the smaller woman into the center of the tent, ducking at times to avoid the tent roof. Cally never had to worry about that, but Sam, it was almost constant. Kara'd always laugh at him if he hit his head on something. His heart pangs in sadness as each time the memory of his wife brings the reminder she isn't next to him anymore. She's somewhere in that labyrinth of a prison complex. For now. He silently adds, but I'll get her out. Somehow.

People mummer their congrats on a job well done and he shrugs it off. He'd blown up bigger things in his day, and he notices the Colonel is back. He looks a little worse for the wear, but other than he's the same man. White hair, glare, straight and to the point.

"I figured they'd go for her but had no idea she'd be held this long. And before you can ask," He took a drag on the cigarette he had in his mouth "I didn't see her." Sam's heart sinks, if they had a scrap of information then they could make some kind of plan, even if it was recon, and then he remembers the note.

"I've been getting these lately. They hint at knowing where Kara is, and which fracker took her" He pulls them from his pocket and spreads the three pieces of paper over the table-top. The people are curious, and peer over each other's shoulders to look them over. Before they can get too close the Colonel snatches them from the table and looks them over himself. Some things never change, maybe that's one of them.

"I know where Kara is. I know which model took her. He's closer to you than you think. I can help you find him. What the frack is this? Someone's obviously pretty full of information and not feeling like sharing. Or they're pretty damn confident they won't get caught enough to play this game" He looks over the people in the room, brooding over what it could possibly mean. "How you getting these Samuel?"

"I come home and there on my table, all folded up, not footprints, no one sees anything, nothing. They've just appeared" On the inside his heart is thumping, hope that maybe the Colonel knows where these are coming from. Hoping it's a friendly source who can help him get Kara back.

"Hold it back up to the light," Jammer instructs "I see something." Tigh holds it back up to the light and they room looks at the paper looking for whatever it was the deckhand thought he had seen. "There." He points "In the corner."

In the corner is the piece of the cylon seal, made for their dealings with the joke of a president's administration, hidden in a watermark. The intimidating seal is less than half-way there, but it is enough to send the room's temperature down a few degrees. Everyone is considering the ramifications of this new information, either someone is toying with Sam or they have a friend on the inside. But questions burn through the room, is someone they know a cylon? Is someone a double agent?Why would the cylons be nice and help him?

"Hmph." the Colonel grunts, mulling over the possibilities in his mind. "Write back, ask them some general questions and see if you can find out more, met them if you can and for frack's sake bring one of us with you. But don't say anything to them, you know better. And if they do give you a location. You know better than charge in like a hot-head." Sam nods and folds the papers back in his pocket. Hope swells up again, maybe it's a step towards getting her back, towards getting the cylons off the planet.

But if that's true, why does he suddenly feel uneasy?