Chapter 5 Slipping

Inaction and boredom.

Who would've thought they would be a form of torture perfectly designed to slowly drive her insane. After a full month locked away in the apartment with only a skin-job for company, Kara was sure it was a form of purgatory constructed just for her. Sure, she had spent time in hack. A lot of time, in fact. But never for more than a few days at a stretch. And she'd always known that she'd be released soon enough.

This waiting was different. Her belief that the battlestars—and the Adamas—would return for those left behind had been absolute during the first couple of weeks of her captivity. As the days started to blur into each other, her certainty began to waver. Had the fleet—and their protectors—been destroyed? Had the Admiral been killed?

Or Lee…

Kara's out-of-the-box thinking came from an active imagination; now that same strength was turned against her. She had far too much time to think of all the scenarios that could explain Pegasus and Galactica's continued absence, each more distressing than the last. Those thoughts inevitably brought her around to the commander of each battlestar.

Recalling all the times she'd frakked-up her relationship with Lee, Kara berated herself for the cowardice that landed her in this current situation. If she hadn't gone with the safe bet Sam represented, she would've been on the Pegasus with Lee when the Cylons returned.

Just one more screw-up to add to her long list of them.

Her isolation fed into her growing belief that the others were better off without her. After a month in captivity, she decided that Sam had obviously reached the same conclusion when no attempt was made to rescue her. The other possibility, that he was dead, she flatly refused to even acknowledge.

In the long hours alone each day spent staring out the window at the same gray sky and dark rooftops, Kara replayed her life. All the grim memories she had shoved aside of the childhood filled with physical and emotional abuse came back to her now in exquisitely painful detail. Her mother's hurtful words reached across the years to mesh with the consequences of Kara's actions; and all her frakked-up choices seemed to loop over and over within her mind. How many times through the years has she proved that her mother was right, that Kara was a quitter and a coward?

Too afraid to tell him the truth, her cowardice had killed Zak. Then the Old Man had been shot because she had run away to Caprica. As her thoughts turned to each of her relationships, examining them in minuet detail, she recalled every little mistake and failure on her part. It was no wonder Lee had turned away from her after his near-death experience with the Blackbird. She was a black hole that sucked everything down with her. By now he'd probably realized how lucky he'd been to escape the destruction she caused to those that got too near. He was better off with Dee. Miss Perfect would fit into his little 'rulebook world' so much better than either insubordinate Starbuck or cursed Kara ever could have.

And then there was Samuel T Anders.

Gods…she wasn't even sure what she felt for him. His unconditional love soothed a place that only Zak had ever touched before. He was willing to accept her without pushing for more than she felt able to give. Yet, her feelings for him were conflicted by those she had for Lee. She couldn't love two men at the same time; it was a sacrilege against the gods' gift. Still, she'd chosen Sam; made vows that bound them together for life.

Not that that had kept her from straying.

Over the past year, when thoughts of Lee grew to an ache she could no longer ignore, and one that she couldn't—wouldn't—satisfy with Sam, she'd find some nameless guy and frak him senseless while pretending it was Lee. Way she saw it, a meaningless frak was a lesser betrayal then being with her husband and pretending it was Lee.

It just went to prove that her mom and Lee were right; she was a whore. Which thought led her back to Leoben and what he wanted from her. Was she 'destined' to drop her pants for the Cylon next? He'd continued to proposition her every night, yet impassively continued to accept her refusals. His restraint should have eased her fears. Instead, each time it just tightened the coil of anxiety she pretended didn't exist until she released the tension with yet another attempt to slay him.

As she entered the second month of her captivity, Kara fell into a pattern of days filled with self-loathing contemplation, punctuated at least once a week by frantic anger that drove her to attack her Cylon captor, sometimes killing him, but usually not. Leoben had learned that if he could avoid her first strike, a short jab to the solar plexus would give him time to wrap his arms around her and hold on until she'd thrashed and cursed herself into exhaustion. Each time, once the rage had passed, Kara was filled with a listlessness that would last a couple of days before the restless anger began building again.

Kara knew she was losing herself…could feel the slippage of hope as despair cleaved it from her soul, another sliver pared away with each passing day. She also started losing time, coming to with a start as she realized that she'd sat so long in one position that her limbs had stiffened. At first she'd suspected that Leoben was drugging her. Yet it had still happened even when she'd purposely avoided consuming anything for over a day. It hadn't made a difference, and she'd found herself jerking to her feet as the click of the latch of the apartment's door had pulled her out of one such blackout. She had looked over at Leoben as he'd descended the staircase, confusion trailing across her expression as she tried to figure how most of an afternoon could have passed while she'd sat transfixed by the window.

Energy and motion were integral parts of who Starbuck was. And, even though she'd always held herself a little apart, she craved the friction of people around her, and had made damn sure that nobody ignored Starbuck. Not as they had the child Kara.

Yet, in the isolation and confinement of the small flat, that fire was siphoned away, and with it, her sense of self. The cocky Viper jock was all about passion and impulse. Denied both now, except for her frenzied attacks on Leoben, Kara was facing an internal dissolution she didn't know how to combat.

As the sixth week of the Occupation limped by with no outside contact, the part of her that had been sure of a quick rescue finally succumbed to the growing despondency.

Maybe, she mused, some day she'd come out of one of her fogs and the Admiral would be there to take her home. And, while the lapses of memory were chilling, the silence and stillness were a preferable change to the scathing voices of her past that had been flaying her mind in the weeks prior. So, as Kara listlessly marked a groove on the wall indicating the seventh week since the appearance of the Cylons, she let go of the concern that some how she'd 'lose' Starbuck. The vibrant insubordinate officer was a liability in her current situation, and Kara had learned long ago how to adapt to survive.

Her mother had seen to that.