Battlestar Galactica Story
The next chapter in my Battlestar story. Hmm, I wonder where else I should post this or link to it, now that I've expanded it more? Anyone have suggestions?
Title: Day Fourteen-Catechism
Pairing: Not really a Pairing, but featuring Kara and Leoben
When: Set Between LDYB II and Occupation in the show's timeline
Rating: PG 13 or Possibly R, captivity and hints of non-con
Spoilers: For Season Two and Season Three, though not exactly revealing what will happen in the 3.01 or 3.02
Day Fourteen--Catechism
Kara was shaking from cold and furious. She was seated, half reclining, on a medical exam bench and her wrists were handcuffed separately to restraints built into the surface of the table. Despite all her struggles to prevent being placed here, which had broken several nearby objects, Leoben had little difficulty securing her in place. The fact that she had been refusing to eat or drink anything for over three days might have had something to do with how easily he’d defeated her this time. A hungry strike had seemed like a good tactic to try to negotiate with him when she’d started, but he hadn’t seemed bothered at all.
The only exception had been his insistence that she still drink the large glass of milk, or what seemed to be milk, that he had given her each night since she awoke to find herself a prisoner. The past two nights, he stood over her and held her nose closed until she passed out from the lack of oxygen. She’d refused to open her mouth for him either time to breath. It hadn’t done much good though, since she’d come around both times to find he’d gotten her to drink while she was still mostly out.
Now, she was very weak and dizzy, in addition to the bruises from their various struggles. She’d also started this because she’d been convinced that he was drugging the food. Even when he hadn’t given her shots during the proceeding week there had been times when she’d felt drugged. Was that the point when he still forced her to drink the milk? It must be laced with something.
She glared at him as he took a seat on a stool by the side of the exam table. “Why does it have to be so damn cold in here? Can’t you toasters get the heat to work? I’m not eating, forget that! So, what’s the point of bringing me in here?” she demanded. “Let me go and I’ll be fine. You won’t need to worry about my health.”
“I’ve told you over and over, Kara, you can never return to your old life. It isn’t there to go back to,” Leoben said calmly. “All of this hate and rage is only poisoning you. You’ll feel so much better when you let all that negative emotion go and embrace your new life, your place in the world. You can be happy now, loved. You don’t have to suffer or feel afraid. Eventually, you’ll accept that.”
As he spoke, he reached out and stroked her cheek, tucking her hair behind her ear. Kara snarled and tried to bite his hand, but wasn’t quick enough. “No, Kara” he said to her firmly, tapping her face with his hand in a very light smack. The same sort of pressure as one would use with a child or a dog, Kara thought, narrowing her eyes at him.
“I’m not a frakking baby, gonna spank me next?” she taunted him. “Cause that really makes me shake in fear, lemme tell you. Just how big a wuss do you think I am?”
He gave her a sad look in response. “I keep telling you, Kara. I know who you are. I have seen your soul many, many times. We have always been fated to be together, through all the cycles that have been and will be. Don’t you believe in the words of God, even as corrupted as they in your misinterpreted scrolls? No matter how much violence you offer me, I shall not harm you.”
“If you force me to with your misbehavior, I will punish you, as a child is punished. This is because it is my job to guide you to an adult understanding of your great purpose. Now, you are just a frightened child striking out in the dark, so you must be treated as a child and guided into the light.”
Speechless with rage, Kara put her head back against the bench and turned her face away from him to glare at the opposite wall. “What I get, talking to a nut case,” she muttered loudly. Grudgingly, she had to admit that he hadn’t harmed her any more than she’d forced him to while they struggled during the weeks she’d spent in that stupid fake apartment with him. Of course, that would mean defining not harming as including cuffing her, tying her to the bed, forcing her to do whatever he wanted, ignoring her wishes and not letting her go, she thought sarcastically. However, the dire physical retribution she’d expected when he’d returned after she killed him that first night had never happened. She kept waiting for him to torture her as she had him all those months ago and so far nothing. Perhaps this medical exam would be the start.
He hadn’t told her where they were going when he had put cuffs on her very early that morning before she was fully awake and then carried her out of the apartment for the first time since she’d been placed there. She’d tried to sleep as little as possible, but couldn’t manage to stay awake for longer than 30 hours or so at a stretch, which might also be due to the drugs. He’d answered none of her demands for information. She’d stopped struggling when he started up the stairs. Her prison ‘home’ seemed impossible to escape from and perhaps where ever he took her instead would be easier to get away from.
To her disappointment, they hadn’t gone far at all. Outside the door of the apartment, she was able to see a black metal gate in the hallway that was clearly locked. He carried her past the door that she thought lead to the cell she’d originally woken up in and the next room was this one, which appeared to be a hospital room. Her thoughts drifted to that farm on Caprica and what the Cylons probably wanted her for. How in the hells had she ended up here? She’d vowed to kill herself before she went back to a farm once before and made Sam promise as well. Where was he, she worried again, he had been so ill when she last saw him.
Since the first night, she hadn’t been yet been able to find anything she could use to harm herself or Leoben. He’d kept her chained to the couch while he searched the rooms once he returned until he found her hidden knife. Even if she wanted to kill herself, which she really didn’t, there was no way to do so. In any case, giving up wasn’t in her nature, at least not easily. The hunger strike had been as close as she could come. Though that had clearly backfired since she’d ended up strapped to this godsdammed medical table!
Unable to help herself, she jerked her body against the restraints and kicked against the table with her feet. “Let me go!” she screamed, frustration and anger stronger than hunger and exhaustion.
“I see she’s still very defiant,” a new voice said from the doorway. “Are you sure she requires medical treatment? Perhaps we should let her starve herself awhile longer.” Lifting her head, Kara saw that it was a Simon model standing in the doorway. He was looking at her as if she was a bug under a microscope.
“Come closer,” Kara said to him in a cold voice. “I’ll show you how defiant I still am, if you dare try to examine me. Just like I did to the last toaster who looked like you and touched me!”
“Kara, be quiet,” Leoben said, standing and pressing her head back down with a hand on her forehead. “Simon is going to look after you and make sure you are healing, ready for your purpose.”
She glared up at Leoben as he loomed over her. “I’ll kill you as many times as it takes,” she promised him wildly. “You’d better never unchain me, you bastard!” She screamed in fury as she felt Simon’s hands on her knees. “NOOO!” she shrieked, kicking blindly and grinning in savage satisfaction as she felt herself connect and heard him stumble back.
He appeared in her field of vision after a moment and he and Leoben seemed to be having some sort of silent conference. “I’m sorry, Kara, you need to be looked after. You must be examined internally, but we don’t want to harm you,” Leoben finally said to her, gripping her chin and forcing her to make eye contact with him.
“I’ll give you a choice. We will either give you the drug that forces you to obey now, a dose that will last only a few hours-I know how upsetting you have found that in the past- or you must give me your word to cooperate. If you lie to me and misbehave once Simon starts to examine you, then I’ll keep you on that drug for the next three days. Which is it to be?” he demanded.
“Drug me now, later, whatever, I’m not getting to choose anything,” Kara said, pulling so hard against the cuffs that she knew her wrists were starting to bleed. “I won’t cooperate in whatever sick plans you have!” Leoben looked up and nodded at Simon, who jabbed a needle in her arm with no hesitation at all. Kara couldn’t help crying out at the force of it, especially since her arms were very sore, from fingerprint bruises Leoben had given her when they had struggled and from other injections.
In a few moments, she felt the despised calm coming over her again and she went limp on the table, no longer remembering what she had been so upset about. “Good girl,” Leoben praised her, bending down to kiss her forehead. “This is the short term dose, Kara. I’ll let you return to yourself once you have been treated. Behave and obey Simon, I’ll be back soon.”
He turned and walked away, speaking to Simon briefly, but Kara found she couldn’t seem to understand what was said when she wasn’t addressed directly. To her shock, she heard herself whimpering when he went out the door, leaving her alone with the other Cylon. Frightened, she moved her eyes to follow him. He came over to her and put her feet in stirrups, moving her body further down the table.
“Don’t move, unless I tell you to,” he snapped at her, spreading her knees apart. Kara nodded repeatedly, eager to show him she would obey. Simon ignored her response as he untied her gown from about her waist and opened it, leaving her bare on the table. Anxiously, Kara shifted her hips slightly, an image forming in her mind of the sheet that was usually draped over her lap when she’d had an exam like this in the past. Even with the drug, she knew she didn’t want this and didn’t like being so exposed.
“Please,” she managed to whisper, as she felt the cold metal speculum spreading her open. The instrument was hurting her as he pushed it roughly inside her. She shifted her hips again, trying to cooperate and afraid of the pain.
“Relax your muscles if you don’t want it to hurt,” Simon said to her coldly, “and I told you not to move. Don’t expect any sympathy from me. I’m not in love with you like Leoben is--destiny or not. Do you think I’ve forgotten you killing me on Caprica last time we meet, Starbuck?” He glared at her and viciously pinched her inner thigh. “Look up at the ceiling, hold still, and don’t waste my time trying to get me to sympathize with you and your act, murderer.”
Kara did as she was told, though tears of pain and fear started to fall as soon as he pinched her. She tried to be quiet, biting her lower lip, and ignore what he was doing to her lower body. When she came back to herself later on, she had no idea what exactly he might have done, though she vaguely thought he had taken some samples from inside her, as well as drawn blood from her arm. The internal samples had been incredibly painful. Leoben had come back into the room about then and unfastened one of the restraints. He held her hand and murmured soothing words.
The two Cylons had conferred for several minutes off to one side and then Leoben came back to her. He removed her remaining restraint, helped her sit up and carefully wrapped her gown back around her. He had the milky drink for her again as well as another drink that tasted like a protein shake. Kara had eagerly drunk all of both of them at his urging as he held the containers for her. He turned away to throw them out and stepped out of the room. Simon approached her straight away. She shrank back against the table, shaking, and he laughed at her. Deep inside, Kara was furious at her reactions and flushed red, her stomach heaving.
Simon carefully cleaned and treated her scraped wrists with some sort of ointment before bandaging them with several layers of thick cloth. She held still and followed his directions exactly, not wanting to give him another reason to punish her. “Good,” he told her, giving her an unfriendly look. “You are learning. I’ll have your test results and be back to see you soon. You still seem healthy. I don’t think it will be long before you are a good little mother for us, Starbuck. We won’t let you get away again.”
As he spoke, one of his hands moved between her parted knees and pinched her thigh again in the same bruised spot. “It will be a long time before we are even, no matter how good you are. Don’t worry, I’ll keep score,” he said, before taking a step back.
Kara whimpered, her tears starting again, and her breathing becoming uneven. She would have been afraid even without the drug, but with it she was overwhelmed with fear. They were going to try to force her to have a baby. That was the plan! Was that the plan? Her thoughts spun in frantic circles. A million nightmares she’d had since the farm on Caprica about metal machine babies tearing her apart from the inside rose to the surface of her thoughts.
She thought she would vomit as the fear of rape that she’d been contemplating since she’d woken up in that first cell swept over her as well. Leoben hadn’t tried to harm her in that way yet, she hoped at least. There had been a couple of occasions when she’d woken up nude with him in the bed after being drugged, but she hadn’t found any trace of evidence that they’d had sex. There were very worrying gaps in her memories of the days however. Her only guess had been that he wanted her to be willing first. On the other hand, perhaps he’d only been waiting for medical clearance?
Either way, she’d never be willing to have sex with a machine. Helo had, but she wasn’t about to. They were murdering, genocidal, maniacs, stupid, stupid, TOASTERS, she managed to scream internally, despite all the cotton wool she felt was currently taking up space in her skull. Outwardly, all she could do was sob.
Leoben came back in the room and walked over to her. Without any conscious thought, Kara turned to him and put her arms around his waist, hiding her face against his chest. Shaking, she knew she wanted protection and that he was the best chance she had to find it. “No, no,” she sobbed, unable to explain that she was expressing her fear of Simon and whatever the Cylons had planned for her, but also bemoaning the reactions she knew the drug was creating, bonding her to Leoben.
In her hysteria, she missed any exchange the two machines had. Leoben did comfort her for a moment, before he forced her to let go of him and fastened handcuffs back on her wrists, over the bandages Simon had placed there. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself more, so you’ll have to wear these for awhile, until you decide to eat again,” he said calmly. “Just one more procedure, Kara, and then I’ll take you home and you can rest.”
“No, please don’t make me,” Kara found herself begging as she gripped his shirt with her fingers. Ignoring her, he turned her about and held her still. Simon quickly sank a port into the injection site on the back of her right hand. In just a few moments, Kara found herself with tubing running down her forearm and an IV bag clipped to a slender chain they fastened around her waist. Her hands were also fastened very tightly to the chain, to prevent her from tampering, she was told.
Leoben promised her punishment if she tried to remove the IV and gently stroked her hair. “If you want me to take this away, Kara, all you have to do is eat normally for a day. Show me you want to cooperate and Simon will remove the IV and you won’t have to be cuffed,” he told her. “Now, thank him for looking after you this morning.”
“NO,” Kara found the will to say, closing her eyes. Leoben’s hand came up to firmly hold her neck from behind and he squeezed firmly in warning. “Do as you are told, Kara, or you’ll regret your choice,” he said, sounding sad and regretful.
After a few moments of verbal struggling and another reproving swat, still under the drug’s influence, Kara was furious to hear herself saying thank you. She was able to say only those two words, but it was a close thing. Her whole body broke out in a sweat, as she struggled to assert her will power.
Simon lifted his eyebrows at her and gave her a mocking smile. “You’re welcome, Starbuck. I look forward to seeing you again very soon.”
Feeling limp and worn out, she barely noticed as Leoben picked her up and carried her back to the apartment. Once they were inside, with the door locked, he went over to the couch and sat down, cradling her next to him, as if they were a normal couple cuddling. “Since you are all ready drugged, it is time we worked on your catechism again, Kara, till you fall asleep,” he told her. “You need more practice. Tell me your name.”
Kara didn’t waste energy trying to resist this, even though she wasn’t sure what he was talking about, and calmly replied, “Captain Kara Thrace-Anders.”
He tipped her face up to his and shook his head, looking disappointed. “No, that isn’t the right answer, Kara. You aren’t remembering well today. What do I call you?”
“Kara,” she said blankly, blinking at him in confusion.
'That’s your name, isn’t it? You’re Kara,” he replied. Through a series of questions and repeated answers, praise and scolding, he made her say this many times until it seemed automatic to her to say only her first name. Anything else felt wrong and unnecessary.
Next, he asked who she was, what she did. “A Viper pilot,” she said, but she was all ready hesitant when she gave this answer, since that was something she’d decided to give up almost a year ago now. Thinking it over as he questioned her, she added some additional details, “An officer, a wife, a settler, a friend.” Her identity wasn’t too tied up in any of the jobs she’d done to help build the new colony and so they didn’t swim up from her subconscious while she was drugged.
He suggested new categories to her, gently rubbing her back and stroking her hair soothingly as he worked on implanting new thoughts in her undefended mind. She accepted saying a woman first easily and gradually stopped saying pilot or officer without too much of a struggle, reflecting the changes she’d all ready undergone in her year on the surface of the planet. She grew hysterical when he tried to add mother or daughter to her responses, crying and trying to get away from him. Finally, he gave up on those words for that day and moved on to other questions.
When she woke up in the bed alone hours later, Kara blinked and stared at the ceiling for several minutes. As always, after she’d been drugged, she was disoriented and had to struggle to work out where she was and what had happened while she was under the influence. Her memories of the medical exam and the threats from Simon were clear, but the conversation on the couch and what had come after was almost totally gone. Furious, she recognized how the two of them had played bad and good captors with her and groaned as she thought about how totally she had fallen for that while drugged.
The drug made her more vulnerable and she needed to avoid it whenever possible she thought grimly, but giving in to him and going along to prevent being drugged turned her stomach. She swore loudly and at length when she tried to get up and was reminded that her hands were totally useless. Being cuffed some of the time before hadn’t been so bad. With her hands bound to her waist as well, she was almost totally helpless.
With a great deal of struggle, she worked herself upright and sat back against the headboard. Leoben must have heard her, because he entered the bedroom and smiled at her. “Good afternoon, Kara, I see you are awake,” he said in a friendly tone.
“Good afternoon--frak you!” Kara snapped back at him. She strained to lift her hands at all. “Get me out of this!” she demanded. “I can’t even move. My arms are hurting.”
“I’m sorry; Kara, but I can’t do that. You have to learn there’s no point in starving yourself. It is God’s will that you remain healthy and take care of yourself. If you eat everything you are told for the next 24 hours, then I will remove the chain and the IV at this time tomorrow. However, if you try not eating again, you’ll be right back in the same situation. I think you’ll find there’s no point in not eating and you’ll want the use of your hands back, enough to earn the privilege,” Leoben instructed her calmly.
“Do you want me to help you take a bath or would you like to come and watch me make dinner? You know, you aren’t doing your share of the household chores, are you? Do you know how to cook, Kara? I could teach you, or is there something else you’d rather do to contribute?” he added, moving closer and helping her to stand up with a hand under her elbow.
“NO! I don’t want a bath while you help, in your dreams!” Kara said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not interested in cooking or doing any housework either. I’m a frakking prisoner here, toaster, keep that in mind. Not your maid or your wi-well whatever the hell you want me to be!” She angrily was aware that he was again trying to brainwash her, framing everything he was doing to her as if it was the consequence of some free choice she had made.
“I do want my OWN clothes, not all those stupid things you put in that closet. I’ve told you so every day since I woke up. Why can’t I at least have my own things, please?” she asked, putting a bit of a quiver into her voice. He wasn’t the only one who could play games, she thought triumphantly. “That’s the only thing I’ve asked for,” she added, as he settled her on the sofa with a view of the kitchen.
“We’ll see,” he told her neutrally as he started to work on preparing dinner for the two of them. “Perhaps once you show me you have learned your catechism, I’ll bring you that outfit. Though I don’t know why you want it. It was threadbare and dirty and everything in your closet is new, warm and clean.” He warmed some soup for her, fully prepared to force her to drink it and not expecting her to agree to eat anything else.
“Because they are MINE,” Kara said with a sigh. She really did want her own clothes back badly, especially her underwear. While in certain situations she would have found going without very sexy, this prison was about as far from that as was Sam, as she could imagine. “What learning are you talking about? I don’t know what you mean.”
She wondered if it was a good idea to talk to him, but shrugged internally. She’d tried not speaking to him for days along with not eating and it hadn’t done any good. Perhaps if she pretended to cooperate or at least be slightly friendlier, it would get these cuffs off and give her a better idea about how to get out of this trap.
Leoben looked up at her with a smile from his spot stirring the soup. “You have just forgotten, but I think you’ll know the right answers when I ask you. Shall we give it a try? What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Kara,” she answered simply before she thought at all, her brows drawing together in a frown. “Wait-what are you doing? Why-“
“Good, that was the right answer,” he praised her. “Who are you?”
“A woman, a wife,” she answered automatically again. “No-wait-that’s not-I didn’t mean that,” she gasped, frowning. “I’m a pilot, a Fleet Officer. Oww,” she gasped, her head starting to hurt. She tried to raise her hand to her forehead and swore when the cuffs prevented her.
“No, you used to be those things, but you aren’t now. You were always a woman and you have wanted to be a wife for a long time, haven’t you, Kara, underneath all your false masks of confidence and brashness?” He paused his work in the kitchen and walked over to her and took a seat beside her. “Ever since you lost your first love to that crash, you tried to pretend that wasn’t what you wanted. Even earlier, when your mother made you feel so unsafe, you worked at always hiding who you really are. You are safe now, you can stop that.”
“What is your name and who are you?” he asked her forcefully again, very close to her face.
“Kara, a woman, a wife,” she gasped in reply, the pain in her head easing slightly as she gave the answer. He smiled at her possessively, a very masculine expression of triumph on his machine face. “What have you frakking done to me?” she hissed, enraged, wanting to strike out at him so badly, and pulling her wrists painfully against the cuffs.
“I’m helping you hear God’s words, Kara,” he answered her gently. “I’m preparing you for your destiny. One more question for now. If you get it right, then I’ll reward you. I’ll have your own clothes brought here. Who do you belong to?” As he spoke, he slid his hand into the v neck of her wrap around gown. He gripped her breast and thumbed her nipple as he asked his final question.
With a sick shudder, Kara suddenly remembered that he had been touching her like that as he had ‘taught’ her earlier that day and other times that she could only remember in the vaguest most distant way, very like memories of dreams. She frantically tried to think what she would choose to say, but the answer wasn’t in her conscious mind at first. “Myself!” she snapped defiantly after a pause and moaned in pain as her headache increased. Leoben shook his head in a silent, reproving no and calmly repeated the question again.
Shaking, she bit her lip and pictured her husband. He was tall, so handsome, and he played Pyramid like one of the gods. Being with him was worry free. He didn’t know the worst of her and she felt happy and relaxed when she was with him. They laughed and made love and she felt safe in his arms. Kara closed her eyes in horror as she realized she couldn’t think of his name. “What have you done?” she snarled at Leoben, keeping her eyes tightly closed.
Frantic, she tried to move away, but Leoben held her pinned in place. “Who do you belong to, Kara?” he asked again patiently, still stroking her breast. Anxiously, she tried to clear her mind, filling her thoughts with memories of flying, hoping the happiness and stress release she always found there would help her resist what he was trying to do to her. As she thought of Galactica, memories of Lee and the Admiral filled her mind. She knew Lee was angry with her. She’d done something so hurtful to him, but they were still her family, weren’t they? Maybe Leoben hadn’t tried to force her memories of them away from her yet. Comforted, she recalled Adama telling her she was family and that she had done well, kissing her forehead when she was injured, Lee kissing her and saying he loved her, that she could always count on him.
Sighing in relief, she opened her eyes. He hadn’t been as clever as he intended, she thought, glaring at him. She opened her mouth, intending to say she belonged to her family and to her husband, and went white in shock when she heard herself say instead, “I belong to God and to you.”
“Good girl,” Leoben praised her, squeezing her breast one last time before slipping his hand free. “I knew you could do it, but you tried to resist, Kara. That wasn’t your best effort. You’ll have to try harder tomorrow, if you want to earn your own clothes back. Your soup should be warm now.” He got up and went to fetch it.
Even with her bound wrists, Kara managed to spill the soup all over both of them and the sofa and to leave two very deep bite marks as well as some burns on his forearms, before he knocked her out with a convenient needle. She screamed at him and swore she’d kill him again until the drug dragged her under. He shook his head and stripped the soaked and stained gown off her before putting her in the bed and going to doctor his wounds. She was a very stubborn and wild girl, but he had faith. He would show her the wisdom of God’s words in time.