Fragile Pieces Chapter 23
Chapter 23-
Leoben-
These last days had been nothing but worse, not better. Nothing indicated she was recovering, or even beginning to start the process. With every day passing, he felt as though he was losing more and more ground. The few words she had spoken afterwards had turned to silence. Each day she ate less and when he went to comfort her he could tell she had lost weight. He could even see it in her eyes, whatever light Jared had been unable to extinguish in his initial attack had flickered to nothingness, the green eyes once so full of expression turned to blank, emotionless orbs. Beyond the grave the cylon was still laughing at him and his inability to help this woman. Leoben was more than sure of that.
His tired body moved on automatic from the couch to the bedroom, her cries making him move faster without even giving it any thought. Tonight seemed like every night that had preceded it after she had been discharged from Simon's care. He would spend a good half hour to a full two hours comforting her to fall back asleep, and then the day would start again. After she woke up, she would take a shower, and then maybe she would go to eating area and pick at her food, maybe even eat a little bit. The rest of the time she spent staring out a window, completely silent until the next meal she could pick at. He had asked her multiple times if she wanted to go outside, maybe to go visit Sam's grave even. She had not answered him and after long time he had stopped asking her such things. She didn't even really acknowledge him anymore, just silently accepting the fact he was there and was not going away. He didn't know what was worse, her fighting him ever second of the way her complete lack of fire. She hadn't even tried to kill him or hurt him in some way, and if that hadn't been a big indicator something was wrong, he didn't know what was.
A part of him wondered if she been this way after Zak had died and his mind just as quickly had answered his own question. Of course not, she had gone to work on the Galactica, and one thing he had learned from Boomer was that even during peacetime, everyone on a Battlestar worked. Here he had nothing to occupy her, no job for her to get up to. He knew what she had gone through also played a very large role in her reactions. He just didn't know what to do. He had brought her various things to hopefully get her away from just listly staring out that damned window. He brought her all kinds of things, puzzles, books that were not in his library, models to assemble. Nothing had worked. Each time he brought it to her, the small hope that, maybe this time she would come out of her mind's dark recesses, was diminished as she accepted his gift, set it next to her, and never touched it again. A small pile of them had accumulated on his coffee table until he added the books to his alphabetized library and put the puzzles and things on a shelf. He told her where they were. She had never once gone looking for them.
Once he entered the bedroom, he scooped the figure in the bed up; a trick he had learned for calming her down, once she awoke was it helpful for her to be in someone's embrace. She had called out for multiple people in the last weeks. The list grew, Lee, Sam, Zak, her best friend Helo, The Admiral who served as her father figure, even her own father who had left her all those years ago to suffer her mother's rage. Not once was his name ever called, a fact Leoben had only recently come to accept. Kara did not love him the way he loved her. And now because of Jared maybe she never would. They were biologically identical, despite all the physical changes Jared had done to himself, a fact he knew was not lost on her. Sometimes out of the corner of his eyes, he thought he saw her watching him with hate. He never quite caught it, but it would not surprise him. As far as she was concerned, he had effectively killed her husband, every single cylon had. They were no different in her mind. They were all the enemy to her, all to be hated and all to be killed.
And yet, in a way he had. He had chosen not to shot the cylon monster the second he arrived, able to take him by surprise and kill him instantly. He had instead wasted time, valuable time that could have made the difference between Samuel's life or death. It was something he didn't think he would forgive himself for. And the whole business of making him choose. He felt as though he had as good as ordered his death: because in the end, Kara was more important to him. He knew deep down his choice and it was Kara all the way. Leoben's own nightmares never let him forget that, maybe not on purpose, but his actions had helped lead to the former Pyramid Player's demise. There was no denying that, and it was something Leoben would have to learn to live with, for he refused to erase memories that were unappealing to remember. It was his pence he decided, his punishment for his death.
Kara stirred in his arms from the nightmare and he gently rocked her back and forth, shhing her to provide comfort in any way he can. He loves her even if she doesn't love him. He knows she is all he has, nothing holds the same attraction as before, and he only goes out of his apartment for council meetings. He doesn't want to leave her alone, the action feeling a little bit like abandonment to him. She reminds him of a lost kitten he had once rescued when he lived on Caprica and given to someone on his street. The kitten had been scared, lost and left all alone with no one to take care of it, to love it and to give it meaning in the world. In more than one way, Kara was like that little kitten.
She stirs in his arms again and he holds her tight. Sometimes, during these nights, he entertains the notion that things are different, a fantasy for his mind to hold onto. Kara loved him in these dreams, and it was him, not Lee, she said I love you to and asked not to leave her alone. He knew what it was. It was pathetic and he knew that little fact very well. But he couldn't quite stop himself for pretending for a half an hour each night while comforting her that this woman in his arms loved him too. That she said it to him, and the times she had sought affection from one of the men she loved instead of refusing her because it was another man she was thinking of, she had wanted his affection and his alone. It would lead to nothing but heartache in the end, but he simply couldn't help himself.
Her head moves from his shoulder to peer up at him and he wonders who he is tonight. Perhaps he is Lee Adama again, he had been yesterday. Her eyes quickly close themselves again and she returns to her original position in his arms and goes still. And he knows something is different this time.
Kara-
Not much topped a disappointment of thinking you were in one man's arms and then realizing you were in another's. That had happened. More than once. With multiple different men. Not that any of that really mattered anymore. In fact not much really did matter anymore. If she was being honest with herself, she had only lasted this long because for some reason she thought things would change, things would get better, a resistance member would come for her.
But they hadn't. They probably thought her dead with Sam or they simply realized that they were better off without Kara screwup Thrace. Sammy's name brings another wave of pain just as sharp as the last ones. She had been hoping it was his arms she was waking up in. The fact they were Leoben's just made it worse. Scrambling away from him she gets to the other side of the bed and closes herself off from Leoben. The nightmare is still fresh in her mind. The pictures refuse to go away, the images burned in her brain. They will never leave her, just like seeing Zak's viper hit the tarmac and burst into flame will never leave her. Just like trying to get to Sam and the cylon standing above him with her knife smirking will never leave her. Everything replays in her mind again and again. Maybe it is the Gods punishment for her role in their deaths, forced to watch them die over and over again.
"Get away from me." Anger colors her every word and she feels more alive then she had in days. "Don't touch me. Gods what you must have been doing all this time and I never found out." The anger feels good, it brings a tiny spark of life back into her body, and it gives the lost woman a purpose. For now at least.
"Kara I'd never do that." he interjects in her sentence loudly, desperately trying to move by her side and take her hand but she snatches it away and pulls her arms around herself. "I would never ever hurt you that way. Do you understand. Ever. I was only trying to give comfort to you from your nightmares." Yeah, right. The same people who caused them wanted to make it all better? Because that made a whole bunch of fracking sense. Then again, nothing made sense to her anymore. She wondered daily if she was losing it, and decided she might be. Things that used to be a simple accepted truths were now thrown up in the air for controversy.
"Right." She doesn't know she is arguing. Her tired body just wants to sleep and the comfort of someone, anyone to cling to. She instantly dismisses the idea, pushing it away in her mind as to not think about it. Leoben is not someone to take comfort in. She should never accept help or anything like it from a cylon. Liars, traitors, and monsters every single one of them.
But the anger she now feels is good, she feels a bit more alive then she had been. Though when her anger is spent she knows it will come back. At the end of the day Sam is still dead along with their barely formed child who had been six weeks old. The fleet is still gone, and her life is still controlled by a cylon who is convinced he has feelings and no one cares enough to even try and see what happened to a former viper pilot who had held the top gun title.
"Kara please, listen to me. I just want to help you-"
"Help me?" Fury reigns and anger is the only thing she can feel. In a way she is glad, it numbs her pain sos he can't feel it. "Can you bring me back the unborn baby I lost? Can you bring me back Sam? Can you make the cylons stop hurting us and let us all be? Because if you can't JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!" She hates that her voice quivers, hates that the words bring back memories attached and she just wants to cry. She only lets herself cry in the shower where he can't hear her, where only she can hear her weakness.
Silence follows her outburst then his voice, quieter "I had no idea you lost a child." He genuinely sounds sad and pained. He had no right, they were the ones that killed them. Him, them, all of them. A part of her was angry he should act like he cared, another was simply too tired to argue.
"It's not like you care."
"I care very much. I know you don't think so but I do. I always will care. That baby was innocent. Sam was innocent. Their deaths did not go unpunished."
She turns around to face him, still sitting on the bed, a rumpled white tee shirt and a pair of shorts. His face is earnest and she can't help but wonder again if maybe Karl was right and these things did heave feelings. Disgust welled up inside. Bonding with your captors? How weak of you Kara. Her mother's voice sneered and she turned back around, away from him and everything he said. He mixes lies with truths. His hand gently reached for her shoulder and he moved so he was next to her.
She didn't look at him, didn't want to either. She couldn't comprehend what it all meant anymore. She was tired of fighting and wanted it all to go away. He slowly wrapped his arms around her and she didn't stop him, the anger drained and the pain inside her back. The never ending, soul crushing agony that came when you lost the people you loved. The kind that came with having everything that makes you weak exposed. The kind that came with those weakness exploited. A pain no cylon would ever know. What did they care about such things? They couldn't care at all. They couldn't care less that she had lost her husband, a man she loved, and his son or daughter all in the same day. They didn't have the nightmare of each night believing you were back in that cell, experiencing pain to the point you begged for the mercy of death. But they acted like it.
Scratching at her eyes, she couldn't stop the tears that formed there as thoughts of those she had loved and lost came to the front of her mind and stayed there. Her gentle loving husband who never doubted her and never wavered in his loyalty, he had been a far better man then she deserved, and now he was dead. The tears turned to sobs and Leoben wrapped his arms around her and held her close. She tells herself it is only because she doesn't have the strength to push him away anymore. Stroking her hair and letting her cry on his shoulder. No words she could say could even express how utterly wrong this was, he was the enemy, he was to be killed not used as a fracking shoulder to cry on and yet, "Please don't leave." Her voice wavers through the sobs and she hates it. She hates that she is needy, hates that he knows it and is here to hear her, hates that they've reduced her to this and hates most of all that her entire soul feels on display for him.
"I'll never leave you Kara. You know that" He said and he gently laid her down tucking her in the bed. Her sobs are not as violent but she is still shaking and he lays down next to her, wrapping his body around hers, the comfort of warmth passed from one body to another. He strokes her hair from her face, the other arm wrapped around her torso keeping her body spooned with his and she falls asleep this way, her sobs quieting as she cried herself to sleep.
It didn't make sense, none of it did. Everything hurt still. But she felt safe curled up where she was. She would analyze what it all meant when she woke up, but for now, it felt good to feel protected and cared for. Even if it was just a fantasy that wasn't going to last.
Leoben-
The first thing he notices upon waking up is that he is waking up alone. Not that he didn't expect it, he knew Kara would not be interested in being around him for a while, a man can dream though right? He still had not realistically expected her to still be with him after last night, but he felt that maybe she was finally starting to heal. She had opened up to him; at least a little bit abut her lost child and let him seen a piece of her pain. The pain she must be in after everything, even things he had not known about. She had even let him stay with her, even asking him not to leave like he normally did in the nights when he.
He pulled his body to his feet, he would have to tread carefully now, mistakes could be deadly. Did she regret letting him see that side of her? Would she block him out? Was there any part of her grateful he comforted her, providing a function that few were allowed the privilege of. There was only one way to find out the answers he was looking for, he quietly searched the apartment. He was unable to find her on his first look through, and a quick peek through revealed she was not in the hall way. Nor was she in any of the closets. At first he had thought she had escaped.
Relief filled him at the sight of the bathroom light on. She was probably just in the shower, he could hear water running after all. Just as he was about to turn away and go back to sleep, water began to leak from the bottom of the door. And he knew, almost instinctively, that something was very very wrong here.
"Kara?" He called out, fear layering every letter. He is greeted with silence. Banging on the door receives no answer and fear creeps up in him, close to the one he had while searching the prisons for Kara in a race against time. No God, please no He tries to open the door but he can't, she has managed to block it somehow. His imagination takes over providing his head with images while panic puts his body on overdrive in trying to reach her.
Ice grips his veins and he pushes on the door with all the strength he has, hoping and praying he isn't too late. He can only think of one reason that she wouldn't answer him, and it isn't pretty. Was what he had done not enough? Finally throwing his weight in for what must be the fifth time the door opens and he splashes in the water trying to get to her. The scene that greets him isn't what he expected. Water ran from the faucet down over the vanity pooling in the floor and at first he couldn't see her figure from her hiding place until his second scan of the bathroom.
A metal object hits the ground, blood splashing from it and he can see Kara, pressed up against a corner in the area created between the sink and the toilet. Her head is down, and she won't meet his eyes. Whether it is because of fear or shame, or some mix of the two he doesn't know. He turns off the water and reaches down to be on her level. She still averts her eyes, refusing to look at him. Refusing to acknowledge what she had tried to do to herself.
He reaches forward for her arm and she offers no resistance. The cut, not even fully formed still has blood leaking from it. His heart aches and pounds, how can he do this? How can he make a woman who so obviously wants to die want to live again instead, let alone love him? God had told him they would be together but not even Leoben could have seen this many challenges on that road. He has to forcefully remind himself that can't think of that now, Kara is soaked to the bone and has started to shiver and he needs to get a bandage on her cut and have Simon look at it later when the rest of the world is awake.
He silently reaches under the sink for a first aid kit and takes out everything he needs to bandage her wrist. Throughout the entire process she offers no explanations and neither does he. In a way, he somehow thinks he should have been expecting this a long time ago and was surprised it had not come sooner. He had made no process and she had only been getting worse. Maybe he had not seen this coming because he simply hadn't wanted to.
"We will got to Simon and have him look at this later today so that it doesn't get infected." He starts unable to think of what else to say, at her nod he can't help but adding "I love you" almost impulsively. The need for her to know that she is loved and valued by him almost overwhelming. She ignores him as usual and he pretends it doesn't hurt. Maybe she can play pretend but he can't, he can't stand to see her this way. He reaches out to cradle the side of her face, gently pulling her eyes to his. He can't see anything in them, nothing beyond a pain in them that makes him want to get a copy of Jared again and completely destroy him. How one of his own, could even have agreed to cause this amount of pain reflected back at him, let alone had delighted in causing it, he would never know. "I do love you Kara. I love you very much." he tries to get her to realize this, get her to realize that without her he is nothing, but she ignores him. She had retreated back into her own little world and there is nothing he can do to pull her out of it.
He picks up the bloody object, part of the toilet, cleans it, and fixes the piece back into the toilet. Another thing he will have to modify to keep her from hurting herself. He pulls out some spare towels and begins to mop up the water, while Kara gets to her feet.
She goes out of the bathroom, her wet feet leaving behind footprints on his floor and has gone over to her window again, her fingers idly playing at the bandage on her wrist, her green eyes just staring out the window and onto the landscape. She doesn't say anything, and he knows that despite what happened last night, with the exception of the visit to Simon, today will be like all the other days since he got her back.
He knows he has failed her spectacularly. If he hadn't, then she wouldn't have tried to kill herself. He had to give her a reason to live, but for now until he thought of something eh was simply out of options.
Leoben knew of an Oracle that a Three had gone to see about something. Maybe the Oracle could help him. He didn't believe in the human religion, yet meeting someone else who had foresight could maybe point out to him where he had gone wrong. It was the only thing he could do. He had simply exhausted all other options.