Dreams in Cycle (for deborah_judge)
Title: Dreams in Cycle
Author: rirenec
Remix of: deborah_judge’s Her Broken Hands
Characters: Kara, Leoben, Caprica
Setting: 4.5
Rating: PG13
Words: 1,907
Caprica comes to her brother as he hides aboard the basestar. In her womb, she can feel her child growing - growing because of how they have given themselves over to the cycle. They’ve found a place in God’s plan just as he had imparted to her sister Six to translate. Caprica remembers how Sharon once said that it was love that joined her and Helo in creating Hera. And Caprica believes in this, while also now believing that one can only make life if one is willing to value it. Accept it. Sharon had done the same by her rejection of the cylon world of resurrection. By her embrace of a life that would eventually end in death. It is as Leoben said Kara revealed and showed him: only through mortality can they ever truly understand life and the preciousness of new life.
She comes now because she wants to show him her child. She wants him to understand that what he encouraged them to do was the right thing, that God was working through Kara Thrace when she reached out to him to show him the path as they joined in dreams. Caprica has believed from the end of the beginning that their role, purpose, and fate is to be with the humans. She believes it now more than ever with the child in her belly: a child by another cylon, but one who has grown old and one who shows no comprehension of download and resurrection. Saul understanding only what it is to be human, that it is a journey, a passage from birth to death. And beyond this, perhaps as Leoben envisaged, the chance to become part of a larger cycle.
All of this runs through her head as she approaches the Two’s wretched form. His pale body is thin where he lays unshaven and twitching in the depths of a ruined ship. Outside, one of his brother Twos kissed her and thanked her for coming. They’ve struggled to get through to him, he said. The sight of the ruined Earth, the devastation they found there has changed him and he won’t join with them or the stream to show them why it has affected him so. And as the days and the tensions have drawn on, everything depresses him - the human word for his state of mind is the only one that seems to express how he appears.
Caprica nodded at the Two’s words, sympathetic. She still feels the melancholy song of that world in her heart after standing upon it. The planet, her hope for a green land for her and Saul’s child, was ravaged. But still, as the life quickens within her, she feels there must be a future. There has to be. If Kara and Leoben can find love and peace with death, then so can she with its reward of life.
She settles down on the bed by his side. The Eight already there is trying to coax him into to eating. She gives Caprica a soft smile which is sad beneath, then takes his one hand and Caprica his other.
“Leoben? Brother?” He doesn’t stir. His blue eyes are shut and he’s panting a little. “I want to show you something. Something which has happened because my sisters believed in you. Believed in the message that you shared.” He still doesn’t stir. Caprica moves his hand into a cupping position and places it against the slight curve of her belly. Opposite her, the Eight holds his other to the same curve. “Death is nothing to fear when you embrace it… for death allows others to be born. This is my son. His name is Liam, Leoben. And he’s going to be so beautiful. A light from the darkness.”
Leoben swivels his eyes around to contemplate her belly. She can see the interest stir there for a moment. He wets cracked lips before speaking. “I wanted a child. I’ve always wanted one with her since the moment we met. A child to bring up differently. One cared for and cherished. One with her features and temper and my understanding. The one created from the love in our dreams.”
Caprica smiles warmly and touches his troubled brow. “That may happen yet. Maybe not with Kara, but with someone. I thought I would only ever love Gaius, but I love Saul now too. There’s time for you, brother.”
He flinches away from her, his face flushing. Naked, he scrambles away from both the Eight and her, falling back into the wall across the room. “No. No. She lied. Death is scary and death is frightening. I followed her. I cut myself and followed her to the door, thinking it would be fine, but I was pulled back by resurrection. I assumed it was God’s will and I knew that she would come back… and she did. But for what purpose? For what? Earth is dead and she… she’s…” He stops, looking at them both with a wild expression. There is something amiss here, and something missing within him, Caprica realises.
“She’s what? What is Kara? What have your dreams together shown you now?” Caprica asks him, keeping her tone calm. His eyes snap to hers.
“There are no more dreams, sister. There is only the end - whatever that may be.”
In her stomach, Caprica feels a chill of fear that feels like the promise of pain.
“No, brother. I refuse to believe that. I will not lose my faith that this is all there is. I can’t. My child will have a future. God will provide him with one, a future which has worked through her and you both.”
Leoben looks at her stomach a long moment, before something shifts in his gaze that she cannot read. Puzzled, she takes a step towards him but he backs off further.
“Keep away. Leave me. All of you. You keep your dreams and your promises. For there is no more from me. This is my end,” he states and then laughs high pitched and sardonically. Caprica, the Eight and the Two outside try to reach him, but once more he shuts down and refuses to speak, refuses to even look at Caprica. In pain and sorrow, she leaves, troubled when no more sense can be gotten from him.
Weeks later Caprica bleeds out a life so small it’s not really a life in its own right, but to her it was the world. To Saul too, but Saul has other worlds and other memories since Ellen’s return. He’s aching but the death is nothing compared to what it means to her. It means that she is broken. That she is unworthy to make life. That Caprica has caused too much death to have the rewards of becoming a mother. In pain, she goes back to her brother, sobbing, wondering if her child has paid the price for all their sins.
Leoben looks worse than before. At the door behind her comes the woman Caprica asked to pilot the shuttle. Kara watches him with dark eyes, neither pitying nor judgmental. On the floor of his room Caprica shares her tears with Leoben and her fears. His arms are around her but his eyes are fixed behind her in the shadows. From that space, Caprica hears Kara whisper, “I never meant to be what I am.” Leoben shakes as he holds Caprica and then he melts. He wraps his arms around her tighter and gives a sob; consumed by his sister’s grief and sorrow and also his own. In Caprica’s ear, he asks if she sees Kara behind her, almost like he doesn’t trust his dreams to not follow him into waking. Caprica replies that she asked Kara to carry her here. Leoben looks back to the doorway, and Caprica turns with him but there is now no one there. He doesn’t let go, and after a pause whispers that he is sorry, so sorry that they must feel death, that so many of them have died. Caprica burrows into his warmth, murmuring,“I can’t bear the pain.”
Leoben takes a shaking breath at her words. “You must. We must. Grief is as much a part of what it is to be human as death. It’s taken me time, but she’s shown me this too.”
Caprica blinks. She’s lost sisters, but she’d shut herself off from them a long time ago. On New Caprica when they were willing to shoot Gaius, just the mere threat of it had hurt. But losing Liam... it is something totally different. Pain like she’s never known. The loss of a future and a sense of being. It’s as though a physical part of herself has died with him. Here, in her brother’s arms, she looks up into his eyes for comfort and direction. They appear red with unshed tears, but as she clings to him, clings with him, she feels coming from him a balance she’s not seen within him since Earth. It makes no difference. His steady look and words don’t stop her pain and she begs him for more of a comforting answer but he has none to give. Instead he tells her “I’ve seen that there are many ways of dying, sister. Death comes in many guises. This I learned from Kara. I also learned that the same death can be seen a multitude of ways, but in the end, death is all the same. A body is alive and then it is not. A soul is here and then it is somewhere else.”
“But... can one find that soul again?” She asks. Something inside of her tells her that Kara has returned and is back by the door.
He doesn’t reply but picks up her shuddering body and carries her over to his bed, holding her until the storm of her tears pass. Her throat ravaged, she has no voice left and it is Kara who poses the question which lingers in her mind. “So what is death then?”
Leoben looks to her and swallows before replying. Caprica also turns to watch Kara where she remains in the shade. She witnesses Kara’s expression when her brother answers, “Death is a loss. But through it, you realise how much you do really love.” Kara pales, her eyes closing, a bruised hand of hers reaching out, before it drops and she nods.
“Mama’s fear. Her lesson. Mine,” Kara whispers.
Caprica touches a hand to her stomach, feeling again how it aches with emptiness and a lack of promise. Leoben sees her gesture and kisses her fingers and the now flat plane beneath. Caprica looks to them both hoping for more, only to realise then that there are no more answers to her questions coming. Reading her, her brother nods in affirmation, then brushes his lips over her brow before suggesting that Kara take her back to the battlestar and her lover. As he stands, Kara comes closer to help the still tender Caprica up. It also brings her closer to him. She pauses and looks into Leoben’s face lingeringly. Caprica watches, sees their connection there, and feels his grief and love. And when they touch fingers then palms, she thinks she finally understands what it is that they dream of.
At the door, her brother’s soft words reach her ears. “I trust her to your embrace.” It sounds like a prayer.
Author: rirenec
Remix of: deborah_judge’s Her Broken Hands
Characters: Kara, Leoben, Caprica
Setting: 4.5
Rating: PG13
Words: 1,907
Caprica comes to her brother as he hides aboard the basestar. In her womb, she can feel her child growing - growing because of how they have given themselves over to the cycle. They’ve found a place in God’s plan just as he had imparted to her sister Six to translate. Caprica remembers how Sharon once said that it was love that joined her and Helo in creating Hera. And Caprica believes in this, while also now believing that one can only make life if one is willing to value it. Accept it. Sharon had done the same by her rejection of the cylon world of resurrection. By her embrace of a life that would eventually end in death. It is as Leoben said Kara revealed and showed him: only through mortality can they ever truly understand life and the preciousness of new life.
She comes now because she wants to show him her child. She wants him to understand that what he encouraged them to do was the right thing, that God was working through Kara Thrace when she reached out to him to show him the path as they joined in dreams. Caprica has believed from the end of the beginning that their role, purpose, and fate is to be with the humans. She believes it now more than ever with the child in her belly: a child by another cylon, but one who has grown old and one who shows no comprehension of download and resurrection. Saul understanding only what it is to be human, that it is a journey, a passage from birth to death. And beyond this, perhaps as Leoben envisaged, the chance to become part of a larger cycle.
All of this runs through her head as she approaches the Two’s wretched form. His pale body is thin where he lays unshaven and twitching in the depths of a ruined ship. Outside, one of his brother Twos kissed her and thanked her for coming. They’ve struggled to get through to him, he said. The sight of the ruined Earth, the devastation they found there has changed him and he won’t join with them or the stream to show them why it has affected him so. And as the days and the tensions have drawn on, everything depresses him - the human word for his state of mind is the only one that seems to express how he appears.
Caprica nodded at the Two’s words, sympathetic. She still feels the melancholy song of that world in her heart after standing upon it. The planet, her hope for a green land for her and Saul’s child, was ravaged. But still, as the life quickens within her, she feels there must be a future. There has to be. If Kara and Leoben can find love and peace with death, then so can she with its reward of life.
She settles down on the bed by his side. The Eight already there is trying to coax him into to eating. She gives Caprica a soft smile which is sad beneath, then takes his one hand and Caprica his other.
“Leoben? Brother?” He doesn’t stir. His blue eyes are shut and he’s panting a little. “I want to show you something. Something which has happened because my sisters believed in you. Believed in the message that you shared.” He still doesn’t stir. Caprica moves his hand into a cupping position and places it against the slight curve of her belly. Opposite her, the Eight holds his other to the same curve. “Death is nothing to fear when you embrace it… for death allows others to be born. This is my son. His name is Liam, Leoben. And he’s going to be so beautiful. A light from the darkness.”
Leoben swivels his eyes around to contemplate her belly. She can see the interest stir there for a moment. He wets cracked lips before speaking. “I wanted a child. I’ve always wanted one with her since the moment we met. A child to bring up differently. One cared for and cherished. One with her features and temper and my understanding. The one created from the love in our dreams.”
Caprica smiles warmly and touches his troubled brow. “That may happen yet. Maybe not with Kara, but with someone. I thought I would only ever love Gaius, but I love Saul now too. There’s time for you, brother.”
He flinches away from her, his face flushing. Naked, he scrambles away from both the Eight and her, falling back into the wall across the room. “No. No. She lied. Death is scary and death is frightening. I followed her. I cut myself and followed her to the door, thinking it would be fine, but I was pulled back by resurrection. I assumed it was God’s will and I knew that she would come back… and she did. But for what purpose? For what? Earth is dead and she… she’s…” He stops, looking at them both with a wild expression. There is something amiss here, and something missing within him, Caprica realises.
“She’s what? What is Kara? What have your dreams together shown you now?” Caprica asks him, keeping her tone calm. His eyes snap to hers.
“There are no more dreams, sister. There is only the end - whatever that may be.”
In her stomach, Caprica feels a chill of fear that feels like the promise of pain.
“No, brother. I refuse to believe that. I will not lose my faith that this is all there is. I can’t. My child will have a future. God will provide him with one, a future which has worked through her and you both.”
Leoben looks at her stomach a long moment, before something shifts in his gaze that she cannot read. Puzzled, she takes a step towards him but he backs off further.
“Keep away. Leave me. All of you. You keep your dreams and your promises. For there is no more from me. This is my end,” he states and then laughs high pitched and sardonically. Caprica, the Eight and the Two outside try to reach him, but once more he shuts down and refuses to speak, refuses to even look at Caprica. In pain and sorrow, she leaves, troubled when no more sense can be gotten from him.
Weeks later Caprica bleeds out a life so small it’s not really a life in its own right, but to her it was the world. To Saul too, but Saul has other worlds and other memories since Ellen’s return. He’s aching but the death is nothing compared to what it means to her. It means that she is broken. That she is unworthy to make life. That Caprica has caused too much death to have the rewards of becoming a mother. In pain, she goes back to her brother, sobbing, wondering if her child has paid the price for all their sins.
Leoben looks worse than before. At the door behind her comes the woman Caprica asked to pilot the shuttle. Kara watches him with dark eyes, neither pitying nor judgmental. On the floor of his room Caprica shares her tears with Leoben and her fears. His arms are around her but his eyes are fixed behind her in the shadows. From that space, Caprica hears Kara whisper, “I never meant to be what I am.” Leoben shakes as he holds Caprica and then he melts. He wraps his arms around her tighter and gives a sob; consumed by his sister’s grief and sorrow and also his own. In Caprica’s ear, he asks if she sees Kara behind her, almost like he doesn’t trust his dreams to not follow him into waking. Caprica replies that she asked Kara to carry her here. Leoben looks back to the doorway, and Caprica turns with him but there is now no one there. He doesn’t let go, and after a pause whispers that he is sorry, so sorry that they must feel death, that so many of them have died. Caprica burrows into his warmth, murmuring,“I can’t bear the pain.”
Leoben takes a shaking breath at her words. “You must. We must. Grief is as much a part of what it is to be human as death. It’s taken me time, but she’s shown me this too.”
Caprica blinks. She’s lost sisters, but she’d shut herself off from them a long time ago. On New Caprica when they were willing to shoot Gaius, just the mere threat of it had hurt. But losing Liam... it is something totally different. Pain like she’s never known. The loss of a future and a sense of being. It’s as though a physical part of herself has died with him. Here, in her brother’s arms, she looks up into his eyes for comfort and direction. They appear red with unshed tears, but as she clings to him, clings with him, she feels coming from him a balance she’s not seen within him since Earth. It makes no difference. His steady look and words don’t stop her pain and she begs him for more of a comforting answer but he has none to give. Instead he tells her “I’ve seen that there are many ways of dying, sister. Death comes in many guises. This I learned from Kara. I also learned that the same death can be seen a multitude of ways, but in the end, death is all the same. A body is alive and then it is not. A soul is here and then it is somewhere else.”
“But... can one find that soul again?” She asks. Something inside of her tells her that Kara has returned and is back by the door.
He doesn’t reply but picks up her shuddering body and carries her over to his bed, holding her until the storm of her tears pass. Her throat ravaged, she has no voice left and it is Kara who poses the question which lingers in her mind. “So what is death then?”
Leoben looks to her and swallows before replying. Caprica also turns to watch Kara where she remains in the shade. She witnesses Kara’s expression when her brother answers, “Death is a loss. But through it, you realise how much you do really love.” Kara pales, her eyes closing, a bruised hand of hers reaching out, before it drops and she nods.
“Mama’s fear. Her lesson. Mine,” Kara whispers.
Caprica touches a hand to her stomach, feeling again how it aches with emptiness and a lack of promise. Leoben sees her gesture and kisses her fingers and the now flat plane beneath. Caprica looks to them both hoping for more, only to realise then that there are no more answers to her questions coming. Reading her, her brother nods in affirmation, then brushes his lips over her brow before suggesting that Kara take her back to the battlestar and her lover. As he stands, Kara comes closer to help the still tender Caprica up. It also brings her closer to him. She pauses and looks into Leoben’s face lingeringly. Caprica watches, sees their connection there, and feels his grief and love. And when they touch fingers then palms, she thinks she finally understands what it is that they dream of.
At the door, her brother’s soft words reach her ears. “I trust her to your embrace.” It sounds like a prayer.