Fic: Five Times Kara Thrace Didn't Kill the Cylon Model Known As Leoben Conoy (BSG) PG
Title: Five Times Kara Thrace Didn't Kill the Cylon Model Known As Leoben Conoy
Author: boyfriendincoma
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Word Count: ~1,000
Rating: PG
Summary: Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.
Spoilers/Warnings: AU for everything up to Exodus Part 2.
Notes: Thanks to eolivet for looking this over despite never having seen BSG. All mistakes are obviously mine.
Five Times Kara Thrace Didn't Kill the Cylon Model Known As Leoben Conoy
The first time she killed him, it was by accident.
"Life is a testament to pain, injuries, accidents," he said.
She just forgot to say "stop."
"You're bad luck."
She had told the marines to start again. They pushed his head into the bucket while his words echoed in her mind. He had struggled for a while before going completely still. Laughing at her humiliation, she imagines.
"Life is a testament to pain, injuries, accidents. Some inflicted upon others, some inflicted upon yourself."
When the marines finally let go of him, it wasn't because she had told them to. It was because he was dead.
Roslin asked for her suspension and an extended stay in the brig, even when the toaster's nuke didn't explode. Commander Adama complied, an attack on a Cylon base went awry and everybody died. Or so she tells herself.
The second time wasn't an accident. She sees him beaten, abused, unconscious, locked in a cell on the Pegasus. He isn't moving, and angry red lines criss-cross over the skin of his naked back, his arms, his feet, his face.
Admiral Cain is easily impressed by her vastly made-up record of her previous Leoben interrogation and makes her Baltar's successor. She goes into the brightly lit cell and starts talking to him. First she talks about the things she figures he wants to hear: about her faith, about his. He doesn't move a muscle. Then she tells him about himself, about fingers and hands on glass, about gifts received and how she prayed for his soul. He doesn't move, but for the first time since she entered the cell, she feels like he's listening.
She talks about Kobol, about the rain falling down in sheets, about Caprica and the sun streaming through the window of an apartment of a dead city.
She talks about her father. She sings to him the melody of a song her father wrote for her when she was little. Her voice is scratchy, she's off-key.
And then, in the end, she talks about her mother and the pain of broken bones, broken toys, broken childhoods. He opens his eyes and now she knows he listens.
She reaches out her left hand and tells him how it was broken over and over again, until she couldn't play pyramid anymore, until she was fit to become a pilot. He moves his hand slowly towards hers, their fingertips touch, then the badly-healed, scarred joints of his fingers move slowly over hers, his palm finally connecting to hers.
"You have to deliver my soul unto god," he says.
She shakes when she leaves the cell. She is calm when she enters it again, the gun hidden, burning, at her side.
He looks up to her and the way his bruises and scars contrast with the whiteness of his skin is strangely beautiful. "You have to deliver my soul unto god," he says again, and his eyes, looking at her, are the only splash of color in the room. She lifts her gun and does as he says.
Five hours later, she's in the brig, the entire Cylon army is out for the Fleet's blood and everybody dies. Or so she tells herself.
The third time didn't really happen. They would have been on Caprica, again.
If she had seen him in the woods, she would have aimed and shot. Something might have fallen in the distance but it could have been anything, even another human being. Before she could have figured out what she'd done the others would have dragged her to safety.
This time no one would have died. Or so she tells herself.
The fourth time shouldn't have really mattered. She shoots him when she sees him in her tent after the Cylon invasion.
Centurions drag her out of the tent and when her husband tries to stop them, they shoot him, and leave him wounded. The last thing she sees, really sees, of him is a slowly growing pool of red underneath his body.
Months of boredom and loneliness turn into years of an ever increasing silence outside - once she believes she hears vipers and what she always imagined to be the sounds of a battlestar overhead, but nothing ever changes and Adama will never come back and the Cylons will never leave again. Captivity becomes freedom from pain, love is hate, and life is death.
As the time goes on, the corpses of people she knew, she loved, she hated, line the road ahead: Tyrol, Roslin, Gaeta, Tigh, Jammer, Cally, Zarek, Barolay, even Baltar in the end, and little Kacey is joined by other little Kaceys, as if she could multiply all on her own. Finally, the prison door opens and she doesn't escape, because there is nothing left to escape to, because there is nothing left of Kara Thrace to escape - and that's when she figures that she hates this one the most.
Or so she tells herself.
The last time she won't kill him. She will look into his eyes; break the pattern; tell him that she forgives him and mean it. She will leave her scars behind with him and they'll both live. It'll hurt and it will never come to pass as long as she's still breathing, the blood still flows through her veins, the bones of her hands still hurt on a cold day. Or so she tells herself.
Author: boyfriendincoma
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Word Count: ~1,000
Rating: PG
Summary: Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.
Spoilers/Warnings: AU for everything up to Exodus Part 2.
Notes: Thanks to eolivet for looking this over despite never having seen BSG. All mistakes are obviously mine.
Five Times Kara Thrace Didn't Kill the Cylon Model Known As Leoben Conoy
The first time she killed him, it was by accident.
"Life is a testament to pain, injuries, accidents," he said.
She just forgot to say "stop."
"You're bad luck."
She had told the marines to start again. They pushed his head into the bucket while his words echoed in her mind. He had struggled for a while before going completely still. Laughing at her humiliation, she imagines.
"Life is a testament to pain, injuries, accidents. Some inflicted upon others, some inflicted upon yourself."
When the marines finally let go of him, it wasn't because she had told them to. It was because he was dead.
Roslin asked for her suspension and an extended stay in the brig, even when the toaster's nuke didn't explode. Commander Adama complied, an attack on a Cylon base went awry and everybody died. Or so she tells herself.
The second time wasn't an accident. She sees him beaten, abused, unconscious, locked in a cell on the Pegasus. He isn't moving, and angry red lines criss-cross over the skin of his naked back, his arms, his feet, his face.
Admiral Cain is easily impressed by her vastly made-up record of her previous Leoben interrogation and makes her Baltar's successor. She goes into the brightly lit cell and starts talking to him. First she talks about the things she figures he wants to hear: about her faith, about his. He doesn't move a muscle. Then she tells him about himself, about fingers and hands on glass, about gifts received and how she prayed for his soul. He doesn't move, but for the first time since she entered the cell, she feels like he's listening.
She talks about Kobol, about the rain falling down in sheets, about Caprica and the sun streaming through the window of an apartment of a dead city.
She talks about her father. She sings to him the melody of a song her father wrote for her when she was little. Her voice is scratchy, she's off-key.
And then, in the end, she talks about her mother and the pain of broken bones, broken toys, broken childhoods. He opens his eyes and now she knows he listens.
She reaches out her left hand and tells him how it was broken over and over again, until she couldn't play pyramid anymore, until she was fit to become a pilot. He moves his hand slowly towards hers, their fingertips touch, then the badly-healed, scarred joints of his fingers move slowly over hers, his palm finally connecting to hers.
"You have to deliver my soul unto god," he says.
She shakes when she leaves the cell. She is calm when she enters it again, the gun hidden, burning, at her side.
He looks up to her and the way his bruises and scars contrast with the whiteness of his skin is strangely beautiful. "You have to deliver my soul unto god," he says again, and his eyes, looking at her, are the only splash of color in the room. She lifts her gun and does as he says.
Five hours later, she's in the brig, the entire Cylon army is out for the Fleet's blood and everybody dies. Or so she tells herself.
The third time didn't really happen. They would have been on Caprica, again.
If she had seen him in the woods, she would have aimed and shot. Something might have fallen in the distance but it could have been anything, even another human being. Before she could have figured out what she'd done the others would have dragged her to safety.
This time no one would have died. Or so she tells herself.
The fourth time shouldn't have really mattered. She shoots him when she sees him in her tent after the Cylon invasion.
Centurions drag her out of the tent and when her husband tries to stop them, they shoot him, and leave him wounded. The last thing she sees, really sees, of him is a slowly growing pool of red underneath his body.
Months of boredom and loneliness turn into years of an ever increasing silence outside - once she believes she hears vipers and what she always imagined to be the sounds of a battlestar overhead, but nothing ever changes and Adama will never come back and the Cylons will never leave again. Captivity becomes freedom from pain, love is hate, and life is death.
As the time goes on, the corpses of people she knew, she loved, she hated, line the road ahead: Tyrol, Roslin, Gaeta, Tigh, Jammer, Cally, Zarek, Barolay, even Baltar in the end, and little Kacey is joined by other little Kaceys, as if she could multiply all on her own. Finally, the prison door opens and she doesn't escape, because there is nothing left to escape to, because there is nothing left of Kara Thrace to escape - and that's when she figures that she hates this one the most.
Or so she tells herself.
The last time she won't kill him. She will look into his eyes; break the pattern; tell him that she forgives him and mean it. She will leave her scars behind with him and they'll both live. It'll hurt and it will never come to pass as long as she's still breathing, the blood still flows through her veins, the bones of her hands still hurt on a cold day. Or so she tells herself.