Chapter 46 Disowned

When the Admiral stood beside the table at which Starbuck and Tigh had just started their card game, she felt the constant anger quail slightly in his presence. Kara had risen to leave when he'd instructed the room to clear, thinking he wanted to speak with the Colonel, but at his cold command to stay, she'd slouched back into her chair and kept her eyes averted. His order to give him her sidearm had pulled her gaze briefly to his, but she hadn't been able to read anything in his expression.

Kara's anger and shame had vied with each other when the Admiral had called them on their behavior. She was surprised he cared enough to bother. But then again—she mentally corrected herself—he cared about the smooth running of his ship, not about her.

The bitter hurt had stoked her anger and she had started to tell him off, only to have her world physically fall away as her surrogate father shoved her to the floor. His words, harsh and cold, had made it clear how he felt about her now.

He had dismissed her.

Dismissed her from the room, from his heart—from Galactica itself.

Kara fled.

Even as the seething bitterness and hurt that pushed her pace slowly ebbed with each stride, his words still pounded within her skull; knelling their message deep within her mind where they resonated with other words that echoed from both her distant and more recent past.

Her hurried flight dropped to a shuffle as she entered the officer's head. It was busy with crew members cleaning up after the latest shift change. Kara was blind to them as she approached an empty sink. Staring at the stranger's image in the mirror, she slowly drew forth the blade she kept strapped to her ankle.

Others began to take note of the way she held herself apart within the crowded area. She distantly noted that many nervously exited the washroom as she wielded the knife, while others shifted away, creating a bubble around her as they cast anxious glances at each other. She ignored them, pulling her hair around to the side in a bunch and began sawing at its length.

When the knife sliced through the last of the blonde strands, Kara saw a flicker in the glass. Where before only her own taut face had stared back at her, now another was lurking just behind her shoulder, his knowing smile locking with hers via the reflection.

She felt the breath against her ear as Leoben whispered, "You can't run from destiny, Kara. You belong to me," his voice husky and assured.

Kara was afraid to turn around.

She didn't know what scared her more, that the skin-job might really be there…or that he wasn't. With eyes squeezed shut, she took a slow breath, then reluctantly opened them again. Leoben was gone, replaced by another, an older woman whose drawn features and cruel mouth Kara knew from a childhood steeped in pain. Socrates Thrace was scowling at her, the usual sneer of disapproval fixed onto her hard face.

Eyes helplessly drawn to her mother's, Kara was transported back to the dingy apartment she'd spent so many years fleeing. Her mother's harsh voice rasped at her, repeating the words of the Admiral; a malcontent and a cancer, and no daughter of mine.

With a shaking hand, she slipped the knife back into its sheath and turned. She wasn't surprised to find no one behind her. Numb legs carried her from the washroom and out into Galactica's corridors.

As she made her way along the long hallway, her thoughts circled and she accepted a truth more damning than all her past sins.

They were right.

She was a malignancy that left death and decay in its wake, and she'd been doing it long before the Cylons ever came on the scene.

—No daughter of mine—

—Malcontent and cancer—

—A screw-up that can't keep her pants on—

She was all that and more. Who was she kidding, a haircut wasn't going to change who she was. The Admiral was right, cut out the bad to save the rest. Better to quarantine herself then risk exposing others to the blight that was Kara Thrace.

Along that stretch of hall, an essential link in Kara's chain of identity snapped. Already warped by a childhood of abuse, then further weakened by the four months of her imprisonment and the revelation of Kacey's true parentage, the Admiral's words gave the damaged coupling a last twist and it finally parted.

Even as her feet carried her forward, Kara was lost to herself.

She wasn't a Viper pilot, Lee had seen to that; Sam's death had severed the bonds that made her a wife; Kacey had been swept away in the arms of her real mother.

And the Admiral… 'You were like a daughter to me once. No more.'

No more.

She was nothing now. Just like her mom warned her she'd end up if she didn't do better, be better. But she wasn't good enough. Never good enough.

She was nothing…

Had she ever been anything else?

Kara stumbled and she bumped into someone, jerking away from the hand that reached out to steady her. Couldn't risk tainting anyone else. She didn't even look up to see who it was, just veered off down a side corridor, her steps carrying her onward.

When she entered the cavernous bay, it was well into the late shift and few people were in the area. She felt the pull of the Vipers and longed to jump into one and flee from all her failures. She even took a couple of steps in that direction before noticing the two orange-clad forms moving among the sleek shapes, instead she shuffled off in the opposite direction, towards the little bit of sanctuary she had found on a ship crowded with demands and defeat.

Jerky steps that mirrored her chaotic thoughts moved her along the line of piled boxes until she came to the row she sought. Going to ground in the dark cave of crates she'd made for herself, Kara huddled into herself, the disintegration that had started in the gray apartment escalating as the darkness closed in on her. With forehead to knees and hands clasped about her head, Kara started to slowly rock back and forth, humming tunelessly as reality and nightmare images blended into a swirl of ash.

There were no colors left on her palate, only the dried remains of burnt umber and charred hopes.