Chapter 112 Black Gold
After the dry heaves had finally subsided, Simon had directed the Centurions to escort Kara to their 'cleansing facilities' so she could shower and change. He'd been gone by the time she had returned to find that the gruel had been swapped out for a bowl of thick broth. On finding it waiting, she'd been initially tempted to toss the broth aside, but the pragmatic voice in her head warned that if she had any hopes of resisting her captors, she needed to garner her strength rather than waste it on a futile gesture. She had finally succumbed to the tempting aroma and, lifting the bowl, had cautiously sampled the still steaming soup.
It had tasted like chicken.
Now, as she swallowed the last of it, Kara felt guilty as her thoughts had skittered off to Galactica and she prayed that they'd made it back to the algae planet. With thoughts of the fleet had also returned the one she'd tried to ignore.
Abruptly restless, Kara rose from the bed and approached an open portion of wall near the corner. Reaching forward with the blade of her hand, she pressed and felt the warmth and slight give then watched as amber haloed the outline of her tilted palm.
The Old Man lied…again.
Kara slashed downward and stared at the deep line of light she'd left in its wake. Lightly touching it, she could feel where she'd created a ridge that looked like the banks of a river.
No. The line was too straight. More like the path of a comet through a night's sky. Or maybe one that had gone to ground, leaving a trail of fire as it plowed a row of destruction. That made more sense. Leoben, with all his talk of streams, didn't understand that Kara Thrace didn't bend or flow, she set a course and took out anything—or anyone—that had the misfortune to wander into her path.
Both Adamas knew this. It was why they hadn't confided in her.
Using the back of her knuckles this time, she dragged new streaks diagonally across the first. Hadn't she always bulled ahead, making the crossing of lines a way of life? There was a reason she had so many disciplinary action reports in her permanent file. Extending just one knuckle, she created several jagged marks, each going off onto their own tangent.
Don't want a squalling brat anyways.
Both fists pressed and violently pulled in opposite directions.
Her breathing had gone shallow and rapid as she laid her palm against her lower abdomen. She didn't need to see the scar to know exactly where the visible one was on her body. The other…the invisible mark the Cylons had given her at the same time now had a matching one bestowed by her 'father'.
Both arms were wrapped around herself as Kara dipped her chin to her chest and tried to breath through the constriction of all the scars. Lee never understood this. Tissue that had been damaged lost its flexibility, grew tight and ugly. Standing before the slowly fading wall of light, Kara felt like one massive scar.
One thing Kara had never mastered was the ability to remain still. Despite all the times she'd been locked in a closet as a child, despite the hours spent in the cockpit of a Viper, even despite the months confined on New Caprica, Kara had always been moved to action.
With a hoarse yell, she attacked the wall, pounding fist imprints into the surface. The mechanical sound behind her didn't slow the flurry of her blows. A part of her was distantly surprised not to be grabbed by metal arms. Probably they figured she couldn't do any harm so it wasn't in their 'programming' to interfere.
Her fury finally spent, Kara stepped back and stood gasping to catch her breath. She raised her hands and turned them over to survey the damage. Reddened and swollen, but not bloody this time. She started to laugh and it still had a hint of hysteria in it as she thought that maybe her self-destructive tendencies were mellowing. As her guffaws broke off on a half-choked sob, Kara clamped down, refusing to give in to them in front of the Centurions. It was one thing to try to claw her way through a solid wall, it was another to let the enemy see her curl up into a wet mess.
She was done with that.
Kara resolutely shook out her hands and stepped sideways to a new spot of bare wall. This time her touch was lighter as she used fingers and thumbs to form images. She concentrated on geometrical shapes at first, doodling different types of triangles that eventually meshed with trapezoids and rectangles to become an interlocked wall of lines. Moving on to a clean area, she finally felt the internal shift as her fingers moved now in swoops and curves that reminded her of flying. With each stroke, Kara became more immersed in the canvas before her.
She drifted on to the next section.
In the flow now, she worked with different amounts of pressure to vary the intensity of the resulting glow. Her hands ached, but she ignored it and used the tips of two fingers to created a swish before standing back to critically examine her creation. Her latest 'fingerpainting' had fewer hard angles and edges, but it still looked fettered and she put her hands to hips and tried to discern why. Frustrated, she decided to just let the images fade back to black and moved on.
She figured she'd been at this for hours now.
Before starting on the clear space before her, Kara looked back along the wall at the clear progression of her earlier efforts. The jagged lines of the first one had nearly resumed the matt-black of the natural surface. Each additional creation was lighter and softer as her strokes eased with the release painting always provided. Most were abstract. Their contorted shapes and design only holding significance in her mind.
But the last…
Again she scrutinized it, wondering from where she'd pulled the image of a ringed planetary body with a comet streaking across its plane. At a loss why it had formed beneath her fingers, Kara shrugged and turned to face the clean space before her. Reaching out, she used the heel of her hand to mark a tight circle, then eased the pressure and let it spiral outward. Splayed fingers created a path of lighter streaks along the swirl of the black outline until the image that remained was a circle of mixed hues of warmth set against the cold of the surrounding black.
As her hand lightly rested at the center of the mandala, images of stars and planets sparked before her vision. They were confused, as if multiple layers were laid atop one another. Kara shut her eyes, fighting the feeling of vertigo. Once the dizziness passed, she opened them and horror choked her throat as she realized what she'd done. With frantic swipes of her hands, she attempted to erase the image of the portal to Earth.
A furtive look over her shoulder assured her that the Centurions' view of the mural had been mostly blocked by her body and she let her breath out on a silent curse.
Idiot! Stupid frakking… Gods! If he sees…
Furious at herself, Kara continued to use the sides of her fists to alter the planes of the image and distort the too recognizable sketch. Panting from her frenzied efforts and fear, she took a step back and anxiously scrutinized the results. Adding a quick line and a smudge along one edge was enough to calm the panic that had gripped her that she could have actually forgotten where she was. Here she'd been purposefully trying not to think about the coordinates she had saved into the Raptor's NAV system, afraid that if she remembered, the Cylons would eventually have them from her. And then, she'd gone and traced out the path for everyone to see. Kara relatively confident that she was the only one that could find the mandala in the cosmic storm—but what if she was wrong?
She wet her lips at the reckless slip. She had to stay sharp. Not let the frakkers get to her this time, Kara told herself as she shut her eyes again.
That was another mistake.
The golden wall before her was replaced in her mind's eye with one smeared with white paint. Viewed over the shoulder of a man who covered her body with his, the colors of her destiny were bleeding through her splashed denial. A hand was caressing her side as the other trapped one of her wrists above her head. Her other was free, but she didn't strike out at Leoben. Didn't try to gouge a thumb into his eye. No. Her hand held his head pressed to her neck where his mouth did things that sent waves of need straight down to her thighs. She gave a gave a low moan as the heat spread.
A jolt jerked Kara's head up as her palm struck flat against the wall as she lost her balance. Blinking to focus on where her fingers were splayed out in the exact center of the destroyed mural, Kara reeled from the cacophony of emotions and sensory impressions that threatened to drop her to her knees.
Gods!
Gulping air, she pushed off and, with hands pressed to her head, tried to reconcile the loathing and desire her dream had roused again. What was wrong with her? The thought of Leoben touching her made her want to claw her skin off…
…and yet.
Revulsion brought bile to the back of her throat; the taste a too familiar reaction, but infinitely better than the lingering arousal. She swallowed convulsively.
Kara knew what the bastard had done to her on New Caprica. Laura had insisted they continue to discuss what had happened and her feelings during her sessions. She had hated it. Not so much because of the actual act with Leoben, those memories were still blurred flashes. No. Laura had painfully pulled from her the self-loathing that had come after, once she'd realized what had been done to her—what she'd let happen.
It was one thing for Laura to insist that the Cylons had Kara so screwed up physically, emotionally and mentally by that point that she wasn't responsible for her actions. But it was another to truly believe it. A part of her even knew that Laura was right. And the internal voice that jeered otherwise had slowly been receding over the past weeks—that is until the mandala dreams had started in the days just before they'd found the radiation field. The dream had given her self-disgust new life and the only thing that made sense was that there had to be something twistedly wrong with her.
The sound of the Centurions moving spun Kara around and her eyes widened as Leoben entered the room. Kara retreated a step, still overwhelmed by the wild roil of emotions within her.
How did the motherfrakker know just when to show up, she bitterly wondered. She clasped her arms across her chest, not wanting the skin-job to see how her hands still shook with reaction.
He had halted when she'd swung around and now he just stood staring, his expression inscrutable. His gaze finally shifted from her and he regarded the marked wall with interest. Slow strides carried him to the first image, now just shadowed lines nearly faded completely back to black. She watched him reach out, hand held just short of touching as he then moved from one image to the next with measured steps. Halting before the ringed planet he studied it for a moment before turning just his head to catch her perplexed frown.
Kara hadn't questioned her abrupt change from the abstract, she'd just been letting her hands freeflow by that point. She didn't know why she'd chosen that image and still couldn't believe that she'd become so immersed in the process that she'd actually let the tracings of her fingers recreate the mesmeric storm on the next.
As Leoben moved towards the last mural, Kara instinctively blocked him, hands clenched now at her side with less than two handbreadths separating them. Her heart ramped up, fueled by the knowledge that if he got this, if he saw through her distractedly drawn lines to the truth of what it was, then everything was lost.
She couldn't let him see.
This was for the fleet. For humanity. Her family. And Gods knew, despite everything, she desperately wanted to be back there with them; needed to be free of Leoben and all the intensely disturbing feelings he evoked. What she wouldn't give to be landing right now on the flight deck, charging forward to take Lee's hand and then thrust the fantastic wonder of what she'd found at the Old Man. To triumphantly show them the way and leave this Cylon and all the misery he and his race had caused far behind
"What are you trying to hide, Kara?"
His words, barely a whisper, heightened her fear of once again failing those that she loved. As easy as breathing, she distilled it into rage. She wanted to scream at him. Wanted to pummel her fists into his face over and over until the look he was giving her was smashed into nothing more than pulped flesh. Hot hate ignited her veins with the need to rend the Cylon from her existence.
But as Leoben stared at her as if dissecting her thoughts, Kara found the strength to pull back from a flashover into a berserker's rage. She'd already lost control earlier and decided that she was done surrendering that control to the motherfrakker. Done letting him breach her defenses with his goads and drivel. Whatever her destiny might be, she didn't need a Toaster for a guide…and she certainly wasn't about to lay out a map to Earth for him either.
"Not a frakkin' thing," Kara said, moving back a pace to give him a clear view of the gold-hued wall. She collared the adrenalin rush and ached with the willpower it took to keep it leashed as Leoben shifted his discerning gaze from her to the indecipherable mess of amber.
The corners of his mouth twitched up as he glanced her way.
"I don't need to see," a nod of his head towards the obliterated mural, "this to know that you've followed the path God's set before you. It's in your eyes, Kara. You glow now, too. God-touched. I'm surprised that everyone can't see it."
She shook her head, refusing to rise to his rambling.
At her silence, his expression tightened and weariness replaced the intensity in his eyes.
"I won't push." He took two steps back as if to prove his words. "Tried that before and just managed to hurt you. Never my intent to hurt you, Kara." At her incredulous sneer, "It's true. What I did on New Cap—"
"What you did was frak with my head…a-and then my body," she snapped. Jabbing a finger towards him, "What you did…" Her tightening chest choked off her words. She took a shaky breath and tried again. "What you did to me…w-with Sam and…Kacey. I just—" she broke off again, biting her lower lip to contain the turmoil the memories kept churning to the surface.
"Kara, I—"
"Shut up! You don't get to speak!"
At his nod, she flexed her sore hands, trying to find some way to unknot the complex tangle of her feelings.
"Kidnapping a little girl. Passing her off as yours," she swallowed hard, "…as ours. Some short circuit told you that'd be a good idea? What? You thought we'd just settle down as one big happy family in that crappy dollhouse?" she demanded, bitterness drenching her words.
"It was working. You were—"
"I said shut up," she hissed as she took a step forward, refusing to listen to his pathetic attempts to justify genocide, abduction, murder… rape. She didn't want to hear him prattle on that it was all done in the cause of some frakking greater plan. His God's plan? No! The motherfrakker did not have the right to explain, she thought furiously.
When he turned his palms out in acquiesce, she spun away, hand surreptitiously wiping the blood from her lip and off on the underside of the sweatjacket's hem. Her head was pounding and she pinched at the bridge of her nose. Gods, she hated feeling this weak. Too many emotional blows while she was still recovering from the radiation poisoning meant her stamina was shit.
Squaring her shoulders she turned again.
"I've got nothing to say to you."
Kara didn't expect it to have any effect and blinked in surprised relief when Leoben turned away, thinking that he was leaving. Instead, he wandered back down her row of murals and stopped again before the space where the first that had finally resumed the matt-black of the surrounding wall. He reached out and laid his palm on its surface. She couldn't tell if Leoben had his eyes closed, but it almost looked like he was trying to 'see' what she'd drawn.
A fear grew in Kara. What if the Cylon could see? Could somehow communicate with this freakish ship of theirs and 'read' all the thoughts and feelings she had instilled in each of the sketches? As the rising panic grew that she might have already given Leoben all the answers he needed, Kara ground her teeth, working to loosen her locked jaw.
"What the hell are you doing?" The words still came out harsh and thin.
He didn't respond except to lift his hand and stare at the imprint left behind. Then finally, "I like this," he said. Extending a forefinger, he lightly traced a squiggle in amber above his print. "I see now why you do this."
"You see nothing. You know absolutely nothing about me, frakker!" she shouted, her fear of his uncanny knowledge of her past breaking her resolve to not let him get to her again.
Still without looking her way, "You're right," he ruefully admitted. "I'm sorry, Kara. I thought that I understood. That with my access to the stream I grasped who you were and what you needed to fulfill your destiny." Lowering his hand to his side, he shook his head. "I didn't know. I thought I was protecting you, Kara, but I didn't know what it—what I—did to you until Caprica explained it to me."
Kara's eyes widened even as her lips pressed into a thin line. Did the frakker think his apology meant anything to her? She couldn't give a damn what he knew or dreamed.
The bastard can take his apology and frak himself sideways with it!
Her emotions blazing, Kara was two steps closer to him with a raised fist before she could stem the tide and get a hold on her reaction to his apology. Telling herself to keep calm, hold it together, she lowered her bruised hand and clamped her jaw shut against a string of curses. The blood from her lip smeared onto her tongue as she ground her teeth together. The coppery taste stirring pictures of the sadistic Six on New Caprica. Steeling herself, Kara forcefully blocked that line of thought and, recalling another tall blonde, she latched on to what he'd said before and used it like a lifeline.
"Caprica. That's the skin-job on Galactica, right?" she sullenly asked, and this time Leoben did look over his shoulder, eyebrows raising as she added, "The Six that helped Athena?"
"Yes," he said, his gaze shifting back to the wall. "My sister and I had many discussions about you after our attempt at co-existence failed. Sh—"
"Co-existence?" she snapped out.
"We tried." Ignoring her harsh laugh, he continued to explain. "Caprica and Boomer were sure that Cylons and humans could live together in peace. They convinced the majority of us to give the New Caprica plan a try.
"And this grand plan of your included torturing and killing people," she mocked derisively, voice rising once more despite her determination to hold it in check. "You frakkers got a twisted way of going about peace."
Turning now, "If the Colonists hadn't resist—" he broke off as he saw her contemptuous expression. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he dropped his eyes before continuing. "But humans resist. It's in your nature. Caprica spoke of this. Her original plan hadn't been to occupy the settlement, but to set up one of our own nearby and show that our intentions had changed. The others though, especially the Ones, insisted that we had to control the situation. Centurion patrols. Curfews. Expand the detention center and," his gaze slid to hers and away, "remove potential troublemakers from the populace."
"Didn't think machines could be delusional. Guess I was wrong on that one, huh?" She gave him a mirthless smirk before her expression hardened. "You and the others just…what? Thought we'd forget the billions you murdered. That you've hounded us, picking off our friends, our family. Your old geezers were right. We," her finger waved from him to her, "can't just 'get along'. Not after everything. Not after…" she trailed off, too much loss strangling any further words. Instead, her eyes sought an open spot of wall and she reached out to rake sore knuckles across the black surface. She stared at the golden path and blinked rapidly to clear her eyes.
"On New Caprica I should have thought of paints," murmured Leoben from just behind her.
Kara spun around and thrust out with both palm, sending the Cylon staggering back. She was breathing rapidly again as his nearness triggered all the discordant feelings that threatened to shatter the self-control she was clinging to.
"Keep the hell away from me!"
Glaring at him, she caught the flicker of frustration before he wiped his expression clear.
"I won't hurt you." At the disbelief in her eyes, he sighed. "We out-voted the Ones and Fours. You're not to be harmed. No experiments. No interrogations. Officially you're under Simon's guardianship," his dissatisfaction at that was reflected in his eyes, "but my brother has other responsibilities over the next couple of days, so we have time to talk."
"More of your drivel about destinies? No thanks, I'll take the thumb screws."
"You mock, Kara, but you can't mask the truth."
"What would you know of truth?" her harsh accusation lay between them like an gaping wound.
The flash of remorse that crossed his face surprised Kara. She had never considered that he might regret any of his lies. Not that it made a frakking bit of difference. He was still the bastard that had played mind games with her until she couldn't tell reality from a hallucination.
Whatever his issues were, her words had the effect of putting him on the defensive for a change. He turned towards the Centurions and Kara could see the muscles of his jaw twitch. As Leoben wiped a hand down his face, she critically studied him, trying to discern what angle he was working at with this mournful display. He could pretend to be sorry as much as he wanted, but she wasn't going to fall for his act a second time. Though, there might be a way to use this to her advantage. Considering his profile, she tried to devise a plan to play on this 'remorse' he was projecting. If she could convince him to give her some freedom of movement she might spot an opportunity to escape. For it was damned certain she wasn't getting by the Centurions on her own.
Moments passed as Leoben silently stared at her guards, his expression more troubled than she would have expected in response to her furious refusal of his apology. Because, frak, let's face it, she wasn't ever going to accept it. He must have known that.
Her gaze flicked towards the unmoving pair and back to Leoben, and then her eyes widened. Leoben's reactions were only in part about her. He was staring too damned intently at the chrome-jobs and whatever was frying his circuits had something to do with them, too. Perplexed, she watched as he held his hand up to one as if to reach out to it, but then, with a shake of his head, let it drop weakly back to his side.
What the hell was going on?
"Something my boys do to piss you off?" she asked and watched as Leoben gave her a confused look. Hitching a thumb towards the metal pair, "Or do you have a hard-on for them." Kara got a modicum of satisfaction from his revulsion at her crude remark.
"Starbuck," his voice held a hint of warning.
"Oh, that's right. You only frak those that can't fight back." He physically recoiled this time. "I bet you could turn them off and then play with 'em as much as you liked. Worked with me."
"It was never like that," he protested.
"In that playhouse of yours, when I was…was out of it, say you never frakked me," her voice ominous as she demanded the truth. Leoben flinched and Kara read the guilt in his face before he looked away. A part of her had been holding onto the belief that he hadn't violated her during that still blank space of time in her memory.
His reaction proved otherwise.
"Frakking pervert," she growled.
"It wasn't like that, Kara," he fervently said. His words rushed forth, "We were together. It was what you wanted." She shook her head violently, but he ignored her and continued. "The way you clung to me. I was there for you, Kar—"
"I didn't even know it was you, you bastard!"
"Stop den—"
"It wasn't you!" she shouted. "I thought I'd been rescued. Thought it was L—someone else. It was never you!"
"No. You said you loved me."
"Did your programming go haywire? I lied. I would've said—done—anything to get us the frak outta there. A few words and a kiss was nothing."
"You meant it, Kara. I can tell the difference."
"Gotta lot of girls proclaiming their endless love for you, do you?"
"I know you. I can te—"
"Thought we already covered this here. You know frak."
"It was real."
"It was a frakkin' charade," she shouted back, then lowered her tone and said, "I wanted out. You wanted me to fulfill your vision of streams and puppy dogs." Giving him a contemptuous glare, "Get over yourself and accept that I didn't…couldn't ever love a frakkin' machine," she jeered.
As Leoben's expression turned thunderous, he closed the distance between them in a rush. Kara braced herself for the blow, ready to unleash all of her roiling emotions in retaliation, all thoughts of restraint wiped away by her need to flaying out her rancor upon Leoben's flesh.
He jerked to a halt a foot away, his own anger visible in the twitch of his one eyelid. They faced each other with the tension whirling around, with them at its cyclonic eye. The supercharged moment dragged out until Leoben finally blinked first. His eyes were hooded as he withdrew a half pace. A grim smirk lifted one corner of Kara's lips at his retreat.
"Bastard."
"Maybe," he replied flatly. As he again wiped a hand across his face, Leoben's expression settling into weary resignation and he added. "Technically I am." At her confused look, "I have no parents. A true bastard, right?" He took another step back and his gaze dropped from hers. "Caprica called me that once." A pause. "I miss her."
Nonplussed at this abrupt change in him, Kara sought for balance as her own rage drained away. She surprised herself by saying, "We haven't harmed her," and shifted uncomfortably when he gave her a grateful look.
"Most of the other models don't understand. They don't see—don't feel what we few do. Some of the Eights and Caprica are the only ones that know the seductive heat of human love. Even most of my brother Twos have only glimpsed this wonder at a step removed."
"All your talk of love," she mocked. When he failed to rise to her taunting, "When you love something, you protect it—" her words sharply broke off as all the times she'd failed to do just that threatened to tear the scabs from her still healing wounds. Wetting her lips, Kara forced her attention back to the Cylon before her as he responded.
"I did… I am."
"Right. Protected me did you? I've got the scars that say otherwise," she snapped back.
"They would've made an example of you on New Caprica if not for my protection,Kara." At her disbelieving laugh, "The only reason you were spared was that I had convinced them of your special purpose. But since then most of my siblings have decided that you're not the Chosen One of which the hybrid speaks. We've had you in our hands, what…three times now and they've seen nothing that…impresses them."
"Good for them. You should take some lessons."
"If I did, you'd be dead," his cold reply.
"So, your so-called love's based on my," using finger-quotes, "special destiny? And here I thought it was my sunny personality," she jeered.
"You do scorch my soul, Kara Thrace. And like a sun goes nova, I was worried that you would flame out, too." He tilted his head to study her. "Perhaps you finally have. You're incandescent."
"And you're out of your frakkin' head," she said, feeling that she'd come full circle with him.
He smiled. "To know the face of God is to know madness. So, perhaps now we both are. Regardless, the flow has diverged from its set path. And more changes are splitting the future along new channels. It remains to be seen if perhaps a course winds along one that it has never followed before."
She pursed her lips at his too familiar rambling. He might have added a new twist, but it was still just the spoutings of an insane machine. It meant nothing. It couldn't, she told herself.
"You are Catalyst. The Harbinger of Death and Change. You will guide us to the end of this reoccurring cycle of destruction. The Hybrid has spoken it. Now it's in your hands, Kara, to reveal the way."
His words sent a shiver along her spine and she wheeled away, arms wrapping about herself for warmth against the sudden chill. She stared at the strobing red conduit until she heard the Centurions' motion signal Leoben's departure. Only then did Kara turn and slowly slide down the wall.
She had never wanted this responsibility.
Then again, the Gods had never asked what she wanted.
It was her CAP to fly and no amount of bitching was going to change that now.
Kara closed her eyes and sent frantic prayers out to the Lords of Kobol.
Please don't let me frak this up.
Please don't let me frak this up.
Please don't let me frak this up…