Five Leobens Starbuck didn't love (and one she did)
Title: Five Leobens Starbuck didn't love (and one she did)
Author: subtilior
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Character: Kara Thrace, Kara/Leoben
Rating: R
Warnings: canon death, angst, drinking, swearing, sex
Length: 5K words, give or take.
Notes: Takes place toward the end of season 4.5. Unbeta'd - my earlier plea was for another fic. Think of this as a trial run. I'd have waited, but I really wanted to get it out of my head before I watched the series finale. I don't know if the "boots outside the pilot's rack = getting busy" is from the show; I may have missed the episode in which it appears. In any case, I got it from sionnain 's super-hot fic "Trump." Which also has a game of Triad in it. Go read!
Disclaimer: None of this is mine. (However much one puts into an OMC!Leoben, he's still the same number, right? Right.)
Now with awesome banner, courtesy of surya74 !! See it after the cut ...
Five Leobens Starbuck didn't love (and one she did)
(All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again)
The Prophet
She doesn’t hear him, doesn’t even notice him until her gaze slowly moves away from the wall and over to him, where he stands, hands in his pockets.
Starbuck stares. Black pants, which isn’t usual, and a red shirt. This one has a goatee, and rather more lines etched in his face than - and a look of -
Sympathy? Kindness?
She turns back, to stare at the pictures on the wall again.
“It’s really something.” She hardly recognizes her own voice.
“What’s that?”
And Starbuck half-laughs, half-chokes, because his voice is the same. The voice that she remembers.
“I can’t -” She waves one hand at the wall. “Even now, after all of - what happened with us …” Her eyes are stinging, she doesn’t know why.
Or she does, and she won’t admit it.
(you just won’t admit it)
She crosses her arms over her chest, and takes a deep breath. Exhales. “After all this time, I still don’t know which one -”
A noncommittal hm from behind her.
Starbuck hears her own laughter. It’s loud, in the silence of the memorial hall. “After all of this, I can’t tell you apart. I mean, frak.” Both her hands hit the wall; some of the photos flutter. “He’s here, somewhere. And I don’t know which - one - he - is! Gods damn it. Gods damn him. Gods -”
“Kara,” and the voice is the same - gentle, full of frakking love, but it’s not him, and it never will be him again.
“Yeah, well.” She straightens. “I never saw you here on Galactica. I thought you guys were just avoiding me, after what happened on Earth -”
“We still don’t know what happened on Earth.”
Starbuck jerks her head around, stares into his eyes. He stares back, serious, then quirks a smile.
“Don’t suppose you’d care to tell us?”
She shakes her head. “Not really - no.”
“He kept your secret, Kara - whatever it was. He took it with him.” The Leoben model’s smile turns wry. “And that’s the truth.”
The words seem to echo, in the silence between them.
Slowly, Starbuck turns her head back. The Cylon pictures are a jumble, much like everyone else’s, on all the other walls.
There are Eights, and Sixes, and - she blinks, hard - the occasional Two …
She says, harshly, “It’s frakking ridiculous, that I can’t tell you apart, even now. It’s a joke.”
“You can,” he corrects. “All you have to do is look more closely.”
Can I?
She takes one step closer, then another. Squints at the wall. Tries not to think about why the pictures are blurring, clearing, blurring …
“Some say it was an accident,” he says, softly. “But some say that he had fulfilled his purpose here - and that God reached out, in mercy, and in love, and took his soul unto Him.”
Starbuck does not answer. Instead, she reaches out, and plucks at the corner of one photo of a Two.
Then at another. “He’s here - right here in front of me. And I can’t see him.”
“Well,” the Leoben says. “There're in that order for a reason, Kara. Though the pattern is hidden, at the last you will -”
“Oh, not that,” Starbuck sighs, because she does not want to get any model of the line started on the whole patterns spiel.
This one, it seems, can take a hint, because he falls silent.
She swallows, and lets the picture go.
There is no sound, for a long moment, but then Starbuck hears a sigh.
“Be well, Kara,” he says, and then his footsteps echo down the hallway, and she knows that the Leoben is going - but that the Leoben - my Leoben? - is already gone.
The Trickster
The days drag on, and on, and Starbuck doesn’t know if the Lords of Kobol have a sick sense of humor or what - actually, she’s pretty sure that they do - because whenever she turns her head, she senses a flicker in the corner of her eye. Sometimes she’ll turn again, fast enough to catch a glimpse of a bad haircut, or some frakkin’ ugly shirts.
Most times, though, she isn’t fast enough.
One time in particular, though, she doesn’t need to be fast. She sees him - a Two - right there in front of her, in the hangar, talking to Chief - and to Romo, of all people. The Two gestures at the innards of a Raptor, metal and wire strewn across the deck. The topmost (and ugliest) shirt flutters with the movements of his hands.
She’s debating whether or not to walk up to them when a child runs from the other end of the hangar bay.
Curly black hair, and all bones - the wan look of a Dogsville kid. He - and it’s a he, she’s pretty sure - is jogging as fast as he can while carrying a toolbox almost half as big as himself.
Starbuck hears Chief begin to call out, stern - but then the child trips. Stumbles, and goes sprawling, the contents of the toolbox clattering across the metal. She almost takes a step forward -
- and then she freezes. Goes still, where she stands, and looks on in disbelief as the Two beats Chief to the spot, and helps the kid up. From a distance, she can see the long angle of his neck, as he grins up at the kid from a crouch on the deck, talking, gesticulating while he gathers the tools.
The boy isn’t crying - she could have told him that Dogsville kids are tough - but he does look woebegone, as the Leoben model latches the toolbox shut and stands, in one smooth movement. He shifts the box to one hand, and extends another.
The kid takes it. They walk back to the Raptor together, Chief ambling behind them. Romo calls out something, Leoben retorts, with a laugh -
And Starbuck finds herself running, running out of the hangar bay.
She remembers Leoben, and a child with curly hair - but blond, not black - and he had barred her way to the little girl -
(you know what I want)
And it had all been a lie, a trick, in the end.
The Warrior
That was one time. Another time, she’s in Dogsville, ostensibly checking out a possible smuggler, but keeping half an eye out for that kid, all the same. Starbuck almost walks past the Oracle’s canopied tent before she recognizes it.
She remembers it, from so long ago …
Biting her lip, Starbuck walks over to the tent. She stands outside for a moment, debating, but then slips the door curtain to one side and steps in before she can turn tail and run.
Her eyes adjust to the dim, and then she realizes that running, running as fast as she frakking could, would have been a better idea.
The Oracle is the same woman - a little older, a little thinner, but with the same hair and opaque features. What’s different about this time is that there’s a man kneeling across the low table from her, and that she’s not holding his hand. Instead, she’s pressing down on the back of his head, holding his face submerged in the shallow bowl of water.
Starbuck can’t seem to move.
She hears a gurgle, then another, then sees a frantic twist of the head. The Oracle shoves down hard, but then yanks at the man’s hair, and he breaks free of the water, coughing and retching. Starbuck sees the angular face of a Two - this one’s eyes wide, glassy, as he pants and chokes - she bites down hard on one finger to keep from crying out -
“What did you see?”
More coughing, but then a gasp for breath, and: “Fire …” the Cylon whispers, staring. “Fire …”
It’s Leoben’s voice. And the Oracle almost sounds the same, as she clutches the sides of his head with both her hands, as she leans forward, eyes greedy. “What did you see in the fire?”
“I saw -” Leoben sucks in another breath, and rasps: “The glory of God, in the splendor of his purifying fire - the gold and silver host with their weapons drawn to the glory of God - the chariots of God, and their horsemen, burning to the glory of God - I saw an angel, blazing with the light of God -”
The Oracle’s eyes flash, and she shoves his head back down into the water.
Starbuck claps a hand over her mouth, turns, and runs.
(an angel, eager to lead her people home)
She runs away - far away, trying to outrun words and fear and a vision of fire, of white consuming fire -
The Mystic
After that, there’s nothing, nothing for weeks. Then something happens, and she could have predicted it, given the news.
The news updates had been easy enough to avoid. The headline story: a call was put out to the Cylons, to recruit anyone with hands-on experience in combat - because there’s only so much time a human can spend with an old-school Centurion before getting godsdamned nervous. So, the call went out, and the Six on the Quorum hemmed and hawed and finally volunteered that - whoops - turns out they’ve had the leader of the ‘forces on Leonis’ on the Basestar this whole time.
She had been in a bar, watching. One of the vid anchors had said: “You’ll recall that the Cylon campaign on Leonis, according to those refugees fortunate enough to escape, was a total war, rather than a war of attrition. Due to the newly designed, code-free shield on the Northern continent, standard nuclear weapons did not suffice to eradicate the population, and thus Cylon forces were placed on the ground. The brutal campaign ended with the siege of Leonidas, and that city’s fall, after a mere forty days. We go now to the representative of Leonis seated on the Council, attaché and aid to General Corton, who died when Leonidas was overrun -”
And then someone at the bar had flicked a channel, and Sonja, the Six from the Council, was looking earnestly into the camera. “- and that’s why the model has been confined to the Basestar. There’s just as much repair work and - training - to do there, and we were never sure whether the sight of him would traumatize any refugees from Leonis on Galactica -”
“You mean to say,” another anchor interrupted Sonja, “you just didn’t want him found out, this entire time. Tell me, Six, what other secrets are you hiding?”
The channel-hopper had flicked past that, and landed on Lee Adama - Starbuck had slammed back her drink in one gulp - Lee, tired about the eyes but still smooth, godsdamned smooth these days, all suit. “We asked the Cylons for capable individuals, and they complied. We’ve all had to get used to working with our former enemies, now our allies under truce. In any case, the matter is now being debated by the Quorum -”
The debate had gone on for two days. Starbuck hadn’t noticed; by then, she had gone back to watching over Sam. At one point, tired and sick at heart, she had been screening through the updates on a medical computer.
She had read: that the Quorum had decided to swear Leoben Leonis into the Colonial military, until “such time as any campaign against Cylon pursuit has ended.”
She had read: that, after that, if anyone that mattered was still alive, including him, then he would be put on trial for war crimes.
Starbuck had stared at the screen. Then she had tapped once, twice, and there - his picture. She had gazed at it, a long moment. He had looked the same - tufted hair, a small smile, and a far-off look in his eyes - those eyes - the eyes of a shaman, of a soothsayer, of a dreamer …
It only takes one glance for her to realize the lie of that, too, a few weeks later.
Because she’s in the Admiral’s quarters, talking quietly with Lee, the President seated, wan and sickly, on an armchair. Then the door opens, and Adama and Tigh walk in - walk in with a third person.
That person stops, stops and turns, with an economy of motion that makes her think, suddenly, horribly, of the vid special she’d once seen, in school - one of the mammoth mountain cats, all sharp teeth and yellow eyes, prowling through a zoo exhibit. “Should Animals Be Kept in Zoos for Us to Look At?” she had written, and she had penned an essay beneath that title in her fourth-form scrawl, but there’s the cat - there, there, it’s looking at her and baring its fangs -
Starbuck blinks, and realizes that Lee is gripping her arm. She feels herself trembling. “Kara?” Lee says, urgently, and what’s the problem? she thinks. Then Starbuck looks back at the Two - Leoben Leonis - and forces herself not to look away.
Everything’s different. Everything. The hair lies flat, and looks light brown; the uniform - uniform?! - is navy and tight across the shoulders where he’s muscular, not skinny; there are marked grooves around his mouth and a cleft between his eyebrows; a long white scar slices across his right cheekbone.
Leoben Leonis looks into her eyes. His own are blue, a very light blue - the color of winter, and twice as cold.
His lips tilt up in an even colder smile. “Captain Thrace.”
And Starbuck chokes back a swell of nausea, because the voice is the same - the same - the voice that she remembers - “Excuse me,” she says, and walks for the door, fast.
She hears him laugh a quiet laugh, and of all the differences, that laugh is the worst.
(I’m looking forward to spending more time with you, Starbuck - we have a lot to talk about)
Starbuck goes back to Medical - easy enough - and doesn’t explain anything to Lee on the phone - not anymore, not really - and doesn’t bother Sam when she screams herself awake from a nightmare, because Sam is singing to himself, singing, and seeing things only he can see.
The Friend
So, time passes. The bad times pass, and the good times too, with them, and the in-between times - the grey times - are all that’s left. The days blend into each other. One night, she skips the dance that Hotdog's thrown together, and makes like practically every other frakking night, in that: she goes to the bar and sucks down some drinks, trying to remember that pilot, once upon a time, who would laugh and cuss and just as soon start a bar fight as “pack up and leave quietly, Lieutenant Thrace.”
“Hey, Starbuck!”
She turns, and starts feeling better, because Helo’s there. Helo, who has always been there, from the beginning.
He’s at a table, with a few others, holding cards. “You want in?” he asks, with a smile.
“Frak, yeah,” she says, and drops into a chair.
It’s only after the first hand has been dealt that she realizes - one of the players is a Two.
This Two looks up at her, and winks.
Starbuck feels her jaw tighten, then forces herself to smile, bland, as she takes another card. Her gut is twisting, though - nervous. The memory of Leoben’s face - my Leoben - flashes before her: solemn, smiling, alight with love - love and madness.
He had never seemed the winking type.
“All right,” the Leoben drawls. “Ante up.”
Starbuck lays her bets, and raises the others, bluffing, until they fall out. All except Leoben, though. He calls it, and waits for her to lay her cards on the table.
She holds them to her chest, scowling, so he flips his down and crows, “Full colors! Read ‘em and weep - and fork it over.”
The other players groan and curse, and Starbuck stares down at her hand. Son of a -
“What’s the matter, Cap’n Starbuck?” Leoben grins. “Not used to getting played like that, huh?”
“Oh, it’s on, motherfrakker -” she growls, and the nervousness is gone, and she has to fight not to grin back. Maybe it’s the alcohol.
The alcohol certainly helps her relax, because she finds herself grinning at him - more of a baring of teeth, really, but it's there - after only two rounds.
“Wipe that look off your face, Cylon, or I’ll wipe it off for you.”
“Oh, I’m trembling where I sit,” he murmurs. Then he digs in one shirt pocket and another - those ugly shirts -
“Huh,” Leoben says, frowning, and Starbuck shuts her mouth hard as she realizes that she’s spoken aloud. “I always thought they didn’t look half bad.”
“Well, you also always thought I’d end up loving you. Moron.”
His eyes flicker. "And you never did, Starbuck? Are you sure? Because I heard from some brothers of a sister of another sister that you've been mooning around like Isilda for Tristam ever since finding out that he died."
They've been watching me? Frak. Starbuck glares at him, and sets her glass down, hard. "Didn't know you liked High Caprican tragedy."
"I don't. Too overwrought." A sharp grin. "Not enough exploding things."
Helo deals them in; they play another hand. He must think I'm frakked, for talking to some random Cylon like this. Starbuck darts a glance at him - and it's easy to see that he hasn't heard a single thing. Neither have the other players. She looks around the table, at glazed eyes and haggard faces. We're tired, she thinks. We're all so frakking tired.
She must have said that out loud, because Leoben snickers, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. "I'm not tired. I can work on the docks all day and fleece sheep all night. Survival of the fittest, you know."
Someone has refilled her drink. She takes a gulp and sneers at him. "You were damn easy to kill, for all that."
"He was, maybe," Leoben whispers to her. His eyes glitter from across the table. "He loved you so much, Starbuck, that he went to his death again, and again, and again. And now he's really dead, and now you'll never have him."
"Shut up," she grits out, staring blindly at her cards.
She hears him breathe out a laugh, as he eyes his hand. Then he looks back at her, sly. "That chap your ass, Starbuck? He's with us - and he always will be," Leoben taps his temple and the glitter of his eyes intensifies, "and you'll never have him, now ..."
"With you, huh?" She takes one card, tosses another, feels a heady rush - I win. "So you can tell me what happened on Earth, right? He must have let you know, once he made it to that big happy Basestar in the sky."
He grunts, looking at his cards. "It doesn't work that way."
"Which means you don't have a clue. Not so all-knowing, huh? Never have been. It's all a smokescreen, except now I know it. Bet that chaps your ass, doesn't it?"
Leoben narrows his eyes, sneers. "I fold."
Damn straight you do, motherfrakker. She smirks. "Deal."
Five rounds later and innumerable hands later, and she’s sure it’s the alcohol. It’s what has kept her at the table, doggedly playing, as she wins some, and loses, and wins a few, and loses more, until she hits a run of really bad luck and starts glowering at his smirk.
Leoben's searching his pockets again, but catches her expression. "What’s the matter, Starbuck - your lousy playin’ make you sad?” He flashes her a mocking smile, gives up the search. Gathers the cards and begins to shuffle. “You know, they say that loss is good for the soul. Builds character. Well, if you look at all the losing you’ve been doing here tonight,” he glances at the pile of cubits and ragged IOUs in front of him, and his grin shows teeth, “you’re on your way to becoming a completely new person.”
Starbuck takes another drink - spills a bit - getting sloppy - and growls, “Just deal the damn cards already.”
“Actually, count me out, Kara.” Helo's the only other player left, but now he lurches to his feet, swaying. “I’m off. Gotta run some early flights tomorrow - well, today, actually. Frak.”
“Later,” she says, and reaches up to squeeze his shoulder. He smiles back, tired, and walks off.
Starbuck blinks. Her eyelids feel heavy. The bar is clearing out, and they’re the last two people playing cards.
“What time is it?” she asks, yawning.
Leoben shrugs. “About oh three hundred.”
“Frak,” Starbuck grunts. Then she frowns. “You don’t have a watch.”
“Body clock,” he says, and twists a smile up at her.
He’s cutting the cards, in and out, in and out, in a complicated pattern. She watches his hands for a while. Then she lays her head on her arms, on the table, and watches some more.
The pattern should be predictable - it’s a pattern, after all - but it’s blurry. Leoben flicks his fingers and the cards flow like water between them.
“How do you do that?” Starbuck slurs, and he replies, “Gotta keep some secrets.”
So she watches, dreamily. Maybe she falls asleep at some point. In any case, the next thing she feels is a hand on her shoulder, shaking her, and she doesn’t flinch away. Like I did on Earth …
“C’mon, Starbuck - you’re tired. Get up.”
She stumbles to her feet. Leoben is bent over the table; he stacks the cards - clack clack - and slides them into a pocket. Then he frowns, and checks one last pocket - and brandishes a pack of cigs with a grin.
“Knew it - there the whole time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Just gotta know where to look.”
They’re walking companionably out the door - it must be the alcohol, because she doesn’t mind him being close. She doesn’t feel her skin prickle, or her mouth dry up, even when she gets a good whiff of his scent - familiar from hours in a stale prison cell, days, weeks, months in a beautiful prison cell.
Starbuck inhales, deeply, and then coughs, because she just took in a lungful of cig smoke. She hacks and coughs some more, leaning against a metal wall. They seem to have made it out of Dogsville; they’re in some hallway somewhere, and it’s dark. She takes in a deep breath and opens her eyes to glare at him.
Leoben’s just standing there, the bastard, and smirking, a cig balanced in his fingers. He takes a long drag, and exhales in her direction.
“Frakker,” she grunts, waving at the air, and, “Is that Virgon ‘bac?”
“Right in one.” He takes another drag and blows a smoke ring, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You have good taste, Captain Starbuck.”
“Yeah, well, you have bad habits, Leoben.”
A pause.
Then he says, softly: “I can think of a worse one.”
And Starbuck feels her skin prickle, and her eyes go wide. Something about the way he said that …
She looks back at Leoben. He is leaning against the wall, but the cig is burning away in his hand, and his eyes are intent on her.
Something sparks in her gut. She remembers that look.
“A worse habit, huh?” She keeps her voice low.
Then she reaches out and plucks the cig from his fingers. Closes her lips around it, takes a long drag, and exhales smoke into his face.
The motherfrakker closes his eyes and breathes - it - in, she swears to the Gods - or she would be swearing, if her throat hadn’t dried up. There’s something - something burning, beneath her heart or around it, and she has to clench her teeth tight to keep them from starting to chatter.
Leoben’s eyes flick open. He gazes at her, and murmurs: “A horrible habit, Starbuck.”
Then he leans in, closer, and takes the cig. “And I keep coming back for more.”
He watches her, eyes narrowed, as he bites down on the cig and inhales. Then he eases it out from between his teeth and just looks at her.
She stares back. There’s smoke licking around his canines, and eddying out from his nostrils, but he’s holding most of it back - oh.
And before she can tell herself not to, Starbuck kisses him.
Just lips on lips, but then she feels his mouth move, and there’s cig smoke sliding over her palate and curling down her throat - and there’s a click of teeth together and then his tongue in her mouth, and she gasps in through her nose and grabs at him, like she hadn’t before -
(I’ll never forget this moment)
And that must have set off something, because she feels a rasp in his throat, his chest - words? a growl? - and he must have thrown the cig to the ground because his hands are around her waist, holding her - like painting on the Demetrius - and then she’s shifted forward and then, oh Gods, she’s backed him against the wall and she’s pressing herself into his body -
Leoben breaks the kiss and stares at her. “Kara,” he says, and his voice is awestruck. Reverent.
She doesn’t want to hear that tone from him - never again. So she fists her hands in his shirt and snarls, “You like to lie, don’t you, Leoben?”
He blinks, fast. “What?”
“You. You’re a liar.”
Then he tips his head to one side; raises his eyebrows - trying to control the situation - “Why do you ask?” - but it’s out of his control, he knows nothing, and he hasn’t since Earth.
“I’m not asking: I’m telling. You’re a liar, but I’m not. I tell the truth -”
Starbuck pauses to suck in a deep breath. “And the truth is -”
Leoben waits. Then: “The truth is …” he prompts.
“I think your shirts are the motherfrakking ugliest pieces of shit I’ve ever seen.”
His jaw half-drops, but then he plasters on a sneer - oh, we can be petty, sure - and rolls his eyes. “Frak, that’s it? That's your great truth? In case it escaped your memory, Starbuck, you told me that not even an hour ago, when you -”
But then he gasps, because she’s just taken the second layer of shirt, beneath the open top, and yanked. Cloth tears, and Starbuck grins a sharp grin at his dumbfounded expression. “Top quality Cylon workmanship, huh?”
She grabs and rips and tears some more, until she’s sliding both of her palms on his chest, relishing the strangled sound he makes in the back of his throat. “Yeah.” Starbuck keeps her voice throaty. “Top workmanship.”
“Frak,” Leoben hisses, as she digs in her nails and draws some blood over his ribs. “God - Kara -”
In one lightning-fast move, he’s thrown their weight off balance, spun, and slammed her against the wall. “Kara, do you always tell the truth?”
Her heart racing, Starbuck looks straight into his eyes and bares her teeth in challenge. “I sure as frak do.”
“Then tell me,” he grates, and leaves off, cursing, as she raises her hips and grinds against him. “Tell me the truth.” He wedges his body even closer, and now he’s between her legs, and frak frak frak it’s like that dream -
“Kara,” Leoben’s voice is hoarse, in her ear. “Are you going to take me back to your bunk and frak me all night?” He nips at her earlobe, and she hisses. He soothes the bite with a lick, and whispers, “Or is that just wishful thinking?”
Starbuck twists her head and captures his mouth; kisses him forcefully, putting everything in - ante up - all of it, on the table. All the desire she has ever felt, and has ever been shamed to feel - all of her fear and pain (Sam) and loss (Lee) - all of the acts and dreams, the nightmares and the visions. She kisses him until she sees stars - fire - flames glowing in their concentric rings and burgeoning out to burn her alive -
She breaks the kiss, and he leans against her, gasping for breath. Starbuck lets him rest his head on her shoulder for a moment. Then she bends, traces her tongue around his ear - he groans - and she murmurs, “Wishful thinking?”
A pause, then his voice, rasping: “Is it?”
Starbuck smiles, and trails her lips down one plane of cheekbone. Then to the bridge of his nose, then down. She speaks against his lips, quiet, soft. “More like a prophecy, I’d say.”
His eyes flare, even in the dim hallway light, and she swallows hard.
Then Leoben slides his hands to the small of her back, angles up with his hips, and she has to choke and thump her head back against the wall. When Starbuck looks down at him, through slitted eyes, she sees him grinning, all teeth.
“So, you always tell the truth?”
“Yeah,” she husks.
“You’re going to take me back to your bunk and frak me - all - night?” He punctuates his words with a few thrusts of his hips, and she feels that through three - four? who knows - layers all right; and damn -
“Yeah.” Her voice grates in her throat and she rocks against him. “Sure am.”
“And you hate my shirts.”
Starbuck squeezes her eyes shut. Opens them. “What?” At his head tilt, she continues, “Well yeah, but what does that -”
Leoben doesn’t wait for her to finish. Instead, he presses her against the wall, and there’s his chest, frak frak yes - “You started with ripping them apart. So finish it.”
“Finish it?”
“My shirts.” He gives her an arrogant smirk. “Take them all off.”
Starbuck runs her hands beneath the cloth; squeezes the lines of muscle and bone in his shoulders. She remembers one briefing, a long time ago, and murmurs, “By your command,” before smirking back at him - and his eyes go dark, but somehow hot at the same time, and his hands are on her even as they’re moving, somehow, in the direction of the bunks - and the others are at the dance, she remembers, wildly, and thank the Gods, because she'll want her bunk - her bunk - a long ways away, frak.
The endless hallways fly by, though, and they keep to the shadows. It’s the alcohol, or the adrenaline, or the flood washing away all the gates she had in place for so long, that keeps her kissing him, touching him, kissing him again and again as though he might disappear. They stay in the dark, on the way there, so she can hardly see as she tears off her boots and leaves them at the door. They keep the lights off when they finally finally reach her bunk - so when there’s the feeling of cloth being torn from her body even as she yanks the rest of his clothes away; when there’s a hot tangle of limbs and finally finally - from her dream - what she wanted but was ashamed to want and frak frak Gods - “Lords of Kobol,” she gasps, and he hisses, “Blasphemy,” and tongues down her belly - when there’s all of this, and what follows, it’s all in the dark. Dark enough to be memory, dark enough to be the past - so dark that she can’t see where he is right in front of her - can only feel -
The Father
(I do love you, Kara Thrace)
Starbuck wakes up groggy, and disoriented, in darkness. She groans, shifts; tries to move.
But then she freezes, as something rustles and moves behind her - she hears the crack of a jaw as that same something yawns.
Leoben.
Shit. I did frak him all night.
A card-playing Leoben; weird. But fine, in the end. More than fine. And that’s curiosity, and that’s it, and that’s all there is to it - She breaks off in a yawn; it’s catching.
Starbuck stretches, luxuriously, and arches back into the warmth behind her. Then she digs in one elbow, and turns all the way over.
It’s dark in her bunk. So dark, that she can’t see him, although she’s sure he’s right there in front of her.
“Kara …” He brushes a kiss over her ear, and takes her in his arms, and she shivers - from the sensation, and from I was right, because he was still there, and she had always known that he would be -
“Rise and shine.”
Her thoughts stop.
Starbuck swallows, hard, against the sudden roughness in her throat.
“What - what did you say?”
“Hm?”
“What did you just say?”
She can’t see Leoben in the dark. But she can almost hear his smile, as he holds her close, as he kisses her brow, and speaks again, softly - in the same voice - in the voice that she remembers:
“I think you heard me the first time.”
(It’s just something Leoben said once.
That I had a destiny.
That it had already been written.)
the end
Author: subtilior
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Character: Kara Thrace, Kara/Leoben
Rating: R
Warnings: canon death, angst, drinking, swearing, sex
Length: 5K words, give or take.
Notes: Takes place toward the end of season 4.5. Unbeta'd - my earlier plea was for another fic. Think of this as a trial run. I'd have waited, but I really wanted to get it out of my head before I watched the series finale. I don't know if the "boots outside the pilot's rack = getting busy" is from the show; I may have missed the episode in which it appears. In any case, I got it from sionnain 's super-hot fic "Trump." Which also has a game of Triad in it. Go read!
Disclaimer: None of this is mine. (However much one puts into an OMC!Leoben, he's still the same number, right? Right.)
Now with awesome banner, courtesy of surya74 !! See it after the cut ...
Five Leobens Starbuck didn't love (and one she did)
(All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again)
The Prophet
She doesn’t hear him, doesn’t even notice him until her gaze slowly moves away from the wall and over to him, where he stands, hands in his pockets.
Starbuck stares. Black pants, which isn’t usual, and a red shirt. This one has a goatee, and rather more lines etched in his face than - and a look of -
Sympathy? Kindness?
She turns back, to stare at the pictures on the wall again.
“It’s really something.” She hardly recognizes her own voice.
“What’s that?”
And Starbuck half-laughs, half-chokes, because his voice is the same. The voice that she remembers.
“I can’t -” She waves one hand at the wall. “Even now, after all of - what happened with us …” Her eyes are stinging, she doesn’t know why.
Or she does, and she won’t admit it.
(you just won’t admit it)
She crosses her arms over her chest, and takes a deep breath. Exhales. “After all this time, I still don’t know which one -”
A noncommittal hm from behind her.
Starbuck hears her own laughter. It’s loud, in the silence of the memorial hall. “After all of this, I can’t tell you apart. I mean, frak.” Both her hands hit the wall; some of the photos flutter. “He’s here, somewhere. And I don’t know which - one - he - is! Gods damn it. Gods damn him. Gods -”
“Kara,” and the voice is the same - gentle, full of frakking love, but it’s not him, and it never will be him again.
“Yeah, well.” She straightens. “I never saw you here on Galactica. I thought you guys were just avoiding me, after what happened on Earth -”
“We still don’t know what happened on Earth.”
Starbuck jerks her head around, stares into his eyes. He stares back, serious, then quirks a smile.
“Don’t suppose you’d care to tell us?”
She shakes her head. “Not really - no.”
“He kept your secret, Kara - whatever it was. He took it with him.” The Leoben model’s smile turns wry. “And that’s the truth.”
The words seem to echo, in the silence between them.
Slowly, Starbuck turns her head back. The Cylon pictures are a jumble, much like everyone else’s, on all the other walls.
There are Eights, and Sixes, and - she blinks, hard - the occasional Two …
She says, harshly, “It’s frakking ridiculous, that I can’t tell you apart, even now. It’s a joke.”
“You can,” he corrects. “All you have to do is look more closely.”
Can I?
She takes one step closer, then another. Squints at the wall. Tries not to think about why the pictures are blurring, clearing, blurring …
“Some say it was an accident,” he says, softly. “But some say that he had fulfilled his purpose here - and that God reached out, in mercy, and in love, and took his soul unto Him.”
Starbuck does not answer. Instead, she reaches out, and plucks at the corner of one photo of a Two.
Then at another. “He’s here - right here in front of me. And I can’t see him.”
“Well,” the Leoben says. “There're in that order for a reason, Kara. Though the pattern is hidden, at the last you will -”
“Oh, not that,” Starbuck sighs, because she does not want to get any model of the line started on the whole patterns spiel.
This one, it seems, can take a hint, because he falls silent.
She swallows, and lets the picture go.
There is no sound, for a long moment, but then Starbuck hears a sigh.
“Be well, Kara,” he says, and then his footsteps echo down the hallway, and she knows that the Leoben is going - but that the Leoben - my Leoben? - is already gone.
The Trickster
The days drag on, and on, and Starbuck doesn’t know if the Lords of Kobol have a sick sense of humor or what - actually, she’s pretty sure that they do - because whenever she turns her head, she senses a flicker in the corner of her eye. Sometimes she’ll turn again, fast enough to catch a glimpse of a bad haircut, or some frakkin’ ugly shirts.
Most times, though, she isn’t fast enough.
One time in particular, though, she doesn’t need to be fast. She sees him - a Two - right there in front of her, in the hangar, talking to Chief - and to Romo, of all people. The Two gestures at the innards of a Raptor, metal and wire strewn across the deck. The topmost (and ugliest) shirt flutters with the movements of his hands.
She’s debating whether or not to walk up to them when a child runs from the other end of the hangar bay.
Curly black hair, and all bones - the wan look of a Dogsville kid. He - and it’s a he, she’s pretty sure - is jogging as fast as he can while carrying a toolbox almost half as big as himself.
Starbuck hears Chief begin to call out, stern - but then the child trips. Stumbles, and goes sprawling, the contents of the toolbox clattering across the metal. She almost takes a step forward -
- and then she freezes. Goes still, where she stands, and looks on in disbelief as the Two beats Chief to the spot, and helps the kid up. From a distance, she can see the long angle of his neck, as he grins up at the kid from a crouch on the deck, talking, gesticulating while he gathers the tools.
The boy isn’t crying - she could have told him that Dogsville kids are tough - but he does look woebegone, as the Leoben model latches the toolbox shut and stands, in one smooth movement. He shifts the box to one hand, and extends another.
The kid takes it. They walk back to the Raptor together, Chief ambling behind them. Romo calls out something, Leoben retorts, with a laugh -
And Starbuck finds herself running, running out of the hangar bay.
She remembers Leoben, and a child with curly hair - but blond, not black - and he had barred her way to the little girl -
(you know what I want)
And it had all been a lie, a trick, in the end.
The Warrior
That was one time. Another time, she’s in Dogsville, ostensibly checking out a possible smuggler, but keeping half an eye out for that kid, all the same. Starbuck almost walks past the Oracle’s canopied tent before she recognizes it.
She remembers it, from so long ago …
Biting her lip, Starbuck walks over to the tent. She stands outside for a moment, debating, but then slips the door curtain to one side and steps in before she can turn tail and run.
Her eyes adjust to the dim, and then she realizes that running, running as fast as she frakking could, would have been a better idea.
The Oracle is the same woman - a little older, a little thinner, but with the same hair and opaque features. What’s different about this time is that there’s a man kneeling across the low table from her, and that she’s not holding his hand. Instead, she’s pressing down on the back of his head, holding his face submerged in the shallow bowl of water.
Starbuck can’t seem to move.
She hears a gurgle, then another, then sees a frantic twist of the head. The Oracle shoves down hard, but then yanks at the man’s hair, and he breaks free of the water, coughing and retching. Starbuck sees the angular face of a Two - this one’s eyes wide, glassy, as he pants and chokes - she bites down hard on one finger to keep from crying out -
“What did you see?”
More coughing, but then a gasp for breath, and: “Fire …” the Cylon whispers, staring. “Fire …”
It’s Leoben’s voice. And the Oracle almost sounds the same, as she clutches the sides of his head with both her hands, as she leans forward, eyes greedy. “What did you see in the fire?”
“I saw -” Leoben sucks in another breath, and rasps: “The glory of God, in the splendor of his purifying fire - the gold and silver host with their weapons drawn to the glory of God - the chariots of God, and their horsemen, burning to the glory of God - I saw an angel, blazing with the light of God -”
The Oracle’s eyes flash, and she shoves his head back down into the water.
Starbuck claps a hand over her mouth, turns, and runs.
(an angel, eager to lead her people home)
She runs away - far away, trying to outrun words and fear and a vision of fire, of white consuming fire -
The Mystic
After that, there’s nothing, nothing for weeks. Then something happens, and she could have predicted it, given the news.
The news updates had been easy enough to avoid. The headline story: a call was put out to the Cylons, to recruit anyone with hands-on experience in combat - because there’s only so much time a human can spend with an old-school Centurion before getting godsdamned nervous. So, the call went out, and the Six on the Quorum hemmed and hawed and finally volunteered that - whoops - turns out they’ve had the leader of the ‘forces on Leonis’ on the Basestar this whole time.
She had been in a bar, watching. One of the vid anchors had said: “You’ll recall that the Cylon campaign on Leonis, according to those refugees fortunate enough to escape, was a total war, rather than a war of attrition. Due to the newly designed, code-free shield on the Northern continent, standard nuclear weapons did not suffice to eradicate the population, and thus Cylon forces were placed on the ground. The brutal campaign ended with the siege of Leonidas, and that city’s fall, after a mere forty days. We go now to the representative of Leonis seated on the Council, attaché and aid to General Corton, who died when Leonidas was overrun -”
And then someone at the bar had flicked a channel, and Sonja, the Six from the Council, was looking earnestly into the camera. “- and that’s why the model has been confined to the Basestar. There’s just as much repair work and - training - to do there, and we were never sure whether the sight of him would traumatize any refugees from Leonis on Galactica -”
“You mean to say,” another anchor interrupted Sonja, “you just didn’t want him found out, this entire time. Tell me, Six, what other secrets are you hiding?”
The channel-hopper had flicked past that, and landed on Lee Adama - Starbuck had slammed back her drink in one gulp - Lee, tired about the eyes but still smooth, godsdamned smooth these days, all suit. “We asked the Cylons for capable individuals, and they complied. We’ve all had to get used to working with our former enemies, now our allies under truce. In any case, the matter is now being debated by the Quorum -”
The debate had gone on for two days. Starbuck hadn’t noticed; by then, she had gone back to watching over Sam. At one point, tired and sick at heart, she had been screening through the updates on a medical computer.
She had read: that the Quorum had decided to swear Leoben Leonis into the Colonial military, until “such time as any campaign against Cylon pursuit has ended.”
She had read: that, after that, if anyone that mattered was still alive, including him, then he would be put on trial for war crimes.
Starbuck had stared at the screen. Then she had tapped once, twice, and there - his picture. She had gazed at it, a long moment. He had looked the same - tufted hair, a small smile, and a far-off look in his eyes - those eyes - the eyes of a shaman, of a soothsayer, of a dreamer …
It only takes one glance for her to realize the lie of that, too, a few weeks later.
Because she’s in the Admiral’s quarters, talking quietly with Lee, the President seated, wan and sickly, on an armchair. Then the door opens, and Adama and Tigh walk in - walk in with a third person.
That person stops, stops and turns, with an economy of motion that makes her think, suddenly, horribly, of the vid special she’d once seen, in school - one of the mammoth mountain cats, all sharp teeth and yellow eyes, prowling through a zoo exhibit. “Should Animals Be Kept in Zoos for Us to Look At?” she had written, and she had penned an essay beneath that title in her fourth-form scrawl, but there’s the cat - there, there, it’s looking at her and baring its fangs -
Starbuck blinks, and realizes that Lee is gripping her arm. She feels herself trembling. “Kara?” Lee says, urgently, and what’s the problem? she thinks. Then Starbuck looks back at the Two - Leoben Leonis - and forces herself not to look away.
Everything’s different. Everything. The hair lies flat, and looks light brown; the uniform - uniform?! - is navy and tight across the shoulders where he’s muscular, not skinny; there are marked grooves around his mouth and a cleft between his eyebrows; a long white scar slices across his right cheekbone.
Leoben Leonis looks into her eyes. His own are blue, a very light blue - the color of winter, and twice as cold.
His lips tilt up in an even colder smile. “Captain Thrace.”
And Starbuck chokes back a swell of nausea, because the voice is the same - the same - the voice that she remembers - “Excuse me,” she says, and walks for the door, fast.
She hears him laugh a quiet laugh, and of all the differences, that laugh is the worst.
(I’m looking forward to spending more time with you, Starbuck - we have a lot to talk about)
Starbuck goes back to Medical - easy enough - and doesn’t explain anything to Lee on the phone - not anymore, not really - and doesn’t bother Sam when she screams herself awake from a nightmare, because Sam is singing to himself, singing, and seeing things only he can see.
The Friend
So, time passes. The bad times pass, and the good times too, with them, and the in-between times - the grey times - are all that’s left. The days blend into each other. One night, she skips the dance that Hotdog's thrown together, and makes like practically every other frakking night, in that: she goes to the bar and sucks down some drinks, trying to remember that pilot, once upon a time, who would laugh and cuss and just as soon start a bar fight as “pack up and leave quietly, Lieutenant Thrace.”
“Hey, Starbuck!”
She turns, and starts feeling better, because Helo’s there. Helo, who has always been there, from the beginning.
He’s at a table, with a few others, holding cards. “You want in?” he asks, with a smile.
“Frak, yeah,” she says, and drops into a chair.
It’s only after the first hand has been dealt that she realizes - one of the players is a Two.
This Two looks up at her, and winks.
Starbuck feels her jaw tighten, then forces herself to smile, bland, as she takes another card. Her gut is twisting, though - nervous. The memory of Leoben’s face - my Leoben - flashes before her: solemn, smiling, alight with love - love and madness.
He had never seemed the winking type.
“All right,” the Leoben drawls. “Ante up.”
Starbuck lays her bets, and raises the others, bluffing, until they fall out. All except Leoben, though. He calls it, and waits for her to lay her cards on the table.
She holds them to her chest, scowling, so he flips his down and crows, “Full colors! Read ‘em and weep - and fork it over.”
The other players groan and curse, and Starbuck stares down at her hand. Son of a -
“What’s the matter, Cap’n Starbuck?” Leoben grins. “Not used to getting played like that, huh?”
“Oh, it’s on, motherfrakker -” she growls, and the nervousness is gone, and she has to fight not to grin back. Maybe it’s the alcohol.
The alcohol certainly helps her relax, because she finds herself grinning at him - more of a baring of teeth, really, but it's there - after only two rounds.
“Wipe that look off your face, Cylon, or I’ll wipe it off for you.”
“Oh, I’m trembling where I sit,” he murmurs. Then he digs in one shirt pocket and another - those ugly shirts -
“Huh,” Leoben says, frowning, and Starbuck shuts her mouth hard as she realizes that she’s spoken aloud. “I always thought they didn’t look half bad.”
“Well, you also always thought I’d end up loving you. Moron.”
His eyes flicker. "And you never did, Starbuck? Are you sure? Because I heard from some brothers of a sister of another sister that you've been mooning around like Isilda for Tristam ever since finding out that he died."
They've been watching me? Frak. Starbuck glares at him, and sets her glass down, hard. "Didn't know you liked High Caprican tragedy."
"I don't. Too overwrought." A sharp grin. "Not enough exploding things."
Helo deals them in; they play another hand. He must think I'm frakked, for talking to some random Cylon like this. Starbuck darts a glance at him - and it's easy to see that he hasn't heard a single thing. Neither have the other players. She looks around the table, at glazed eyes and haggard faces. We're tired, she thinks. We're all so frakking tired.
She must have said that out loud, because Leoben snickers, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. "I'm not tired. I can work on the docks all day and fleece sheep all night. Survival of the fittest, you know."
Someone has refilled her drink. She takes a gulp and sneers at him. "You were damn easy to kill, for all that."
"He was, maybe," Leoben whispers to her. His eyes glitter from across the table. "He loved you so much, Starbuck, that he went to his death again, and again, and again. And now he's really dead, and now you'll never have him."
"Shut up," she grits out, staring blindly at her cards.
She hears him breathe out a laugh, as he eyes his hand. Then he looks back at her, sly. "That chap your ass, Starbuck? He's with us - and he always will be," Leoben taps his temple and the glitter of his eyes intensifies, "and you'll never have him, now ..."
"With you, huh?" She takes one card, tosses another, feels a heady rush - I win. "So you can tell me what happened on Earth, right? He must have let you know, once he made it to that big happy Basestar in the sky."
He grunts, looking at his cards. "It doesn't work that way."
"Which means you don't have a clue. Not so all-knowing, huh? Never have been. It's all a smokescreen, except now I know it. Bet that chaps your ass, doesn't it?"
Leoben narrows his eyes, sneers. "I fold."
Damn straight you do, motherfrakker. She smirks. "Deal."
Five rounds later and innumerable hands later, and she’s sure it’s the alcohol. It’s what has kept her at the table, doggedly playing, as she wins some, and loses, and wins a few, and loses more, until she hits a run of really bad luck and starts glowering at his smirk.
Leoben's searching his pockets again, but catches her expression. "What’s the matter, Starbuck - your lousy playin’ make you sad?” He flashes her a mocking smile, gives up the search. Gathers the cards and begins to shuffle. “You know, they say that loss is good for the soul. Builds character. Well, if you look at all the losing you’ve been doing here tonight,” he glances at the pile of cubits and ragged IOUs in front of him, and his grin shows teeth, “you’re on your way to becoming a completely new person.”
Starbuck takes another drink - spills a bit - getting sloppy - and growls, “Just deal the damn cards already.”
“Actually, count me out, Kara.” Helo's the only other player left, but now he lurches to his feet, swaying. “I’m off. Gotta run some early flights tomorrow - well, today, actually. Frak.”
“Later,” she says, and reaches up to squeeze his shoulder. He smiles back, tired, and walks off.
Starbuck blinks. Her eyelids feel heavy. The bar is clearing out, and they’re the last two people playing cards.
“What time is it?” she asks, yawning.
Leoben shrugs. “About oh three hundred.”
“Frak,” Starbuck grunts. Then she frowns. “You don’t have a watch.”
“Body clock,” he says, and twists a smile up at her.
He’s cutting the cards, in and out, in and out, in a complicated pattern. She watches his hands for a while. Then she lays her head on her arms, on the table, and watches some more.
The pattern should be predictable - it’s a pattern, after all - but it’s blurry. Leoben flicks his fingers and the cards flow like water between them.
“How do you do that?” Starbuck slurs, and he replies, “Gotta keep some secrets.”
So she watches, dreamily. Maybe she falls asleep at some point. In any case, the next thing she feels is a hand on her shoulder, shaking her, and she doesn’t flinch away. Like I did on Earth …
“C’mon, Starbuck - you’re tired. Get up.”
She stumbles to her feet. Leoben is bent over the table; he stacks the cards - clack clack - and slides them into a pocket. Then he frowns, and checks one last pocket - and brandishes a pack of cigs with a grin.
“Knew it - there the whole time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Just gotta know where to look.”
They’re walking companionably out the door - it must be the alcohol, because she doesn’t mind him being close. She doesn’t feel her skin prickle, or her mouth dry up, even when she gets a good whiff of his scent - familiar from hours in a stale prison cell, days, weeks, months in a beautiful prison cell.
Starbuck inhales, deeply, and then coughs, because she just took in a lungful of cig smoke. She hacks and coughs some more, leaning against a metal wall. They seem to have made it out of Dogsville; they’re in some hallway somewhere, and it’s dark. She takes in a deep breath and opens her eyes to glare at him.
Leoben’s just standing there, the bastard, and smirking, a cig balanced in his fingers. He takes a long drag, and exhales in her direction.
“Frakker,” she grunts, waving at the air, and, “Is that Virgon ‘bac?”
“Right in one.” He takes another drag and blows a smoke ring, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You have good taste, Captain Starbuck.”
“Yeah, well, you have bad habits, Leoben.”
A pause.
Then he says, softly: “I can think of a worse one.”
And Starbuck feels her skin prickle, and her eyes go wide. Something about the way he said that …
She looks back at Leoben. He is leaning against the wall, but the cig is burning away in his hand, and his eyes are intent on her.
Something sparks in her gut. She remembers that look.
“A worse habit, huh?” She keeps her voice low.
Then she reaches out and plucks the cig from his fingers. Closes her lips around it, takes a long drag, and exhales smoke into his face.
The motherfrakker closes his eyes and breathes - it - in, she swears to the Gods - or she would be swearing, if her throat hadn’t dried up. There’s something - something burning, beneath her heart or around it, and she has to clench her teeth tight to keep them from starting to chatter.
Leoben’s eyes flick open. He gazes at her, and murmurs: “A horrible habit, Starbuck.”
Then he leans in, closer, and takes the cig. “And I keep coming back for more.”
He watches her, eyes narrowed, as he bites down on the cig and inhales. Then he eases it out from between his teeth and just looks at her.
She stares back. There’s smoke licking around his canines, and eddying out from his nostrils, but he’s holding most of it back - oh.
And before she can tell herself not to, Starbuck kisses him.
Just lips on lips, but then she feels his mouth move, and there’s cig smoke sliding over her palate and curling down her throat - and there’s a click of teeth together and then his tongue in her mouth, and she gasps in through her nose and grabs at him, like she hadn’t before -
(I’ll never forget this moment)
And that must have set off something, because she feels a rasp in his throat, his chest - words? a growl? - and he must have thrown the cig to the ground because his hands are around her waist, holding her - like painting on the Demetrius - and then she’s shifted forward and then, oh Gods, she’s backed him against the wall and she’s pressing herself into his body -
Leoben breaks the kiss and stares at her. “Kara,” he says, and his voice is awestruck. Reverent.
She doesn’t want to hear that tone from him - never again. So she fists her hands in his shirt and snarls, “You like to lie, don’t you, Leoben?”
He blinks, fast. “What?”
“You. You’re a liar.”
Then he tips his head to one side; raises his eyebrows - trying to control the situation - “Why do you ask?” - but it’s out of his control, he knows nothing, and he hasn’t since Earth.
“I’m not asking: I’m telling. You’re a liar, but I’m not. I tell the truth -”
Starbuck pauses to suck in a deep breath. “And the truth is -”
Leoben waits. Then: “The truth is …” he prompts.
“I think your shirts are the motherfrakking ugliest pieces of shit I’ve ever seen.”
His jaw half-drops, but then he plasters on a sneer - oh, we can be petty, sure - and rolls his eyes. “Frak, that’s it? That's your great truth? In case it escaped your memory, Starbuck, you told me that not even an hour ago, when you -”
But then he gasps, because she’s just taken the second layer of shirt, beneath the open top, and yanked. Cloth tears, and Starbuck grins a sharp grin at his dumbfounded expression. “Top quality Cylon workmanship, huh?”
She grabs and rips and tears some more, until she’s sliding both of her palms on his chest, relishing the strangled sound he makes in the back of his throat. “Yeah.” Starbuck keeps her voice throaty. “Top workmanship.”
“Frak,” Leoben hisses, as she digs in her nails and draws some blood over his ribs. “God - Kara -”
In one lightning-fast move, he’s thrown their weight off balance, spun, and slammed her against the wall. “Kara, do you always tell the truth?”
Her heart racing, Starbuck looks straight into his eyes and bares her teeth in challenge. “I sure as frak do.”
“Then tell me,” he grates, and leaves off, cursing, as she raises her hips and grinds against him. “Tell me the truth.” He wedges his body even closer, and now he’s between her legs, and frak frak frak it’s like that dream -
“Kara,” Leoben’s voice is hoarse, in her ear. “Are you going to take me back to your bunk and frak me all night?” He nips at her earlobe, and she hisses. He soothes the bite with a lick, and whispers, “Or is that just wishful thinking?”
Starbuck twists her head and captures his mouth; kisses him forcefully, putting everything in - ante up - all of it, on the table. All the desire she has ever felt, and has ever been shamed to feel - all of her fear and pain (Sam) and loss (Lee) - all of the acts and dreams, the nightmares and the visions. She kisses him until she sees stars - fire - flames glowing in their concentric rings and burgeoning out to burn her alive -
She breaks the kiss, and he leans against her, gasping for breath. Starbuck lets him rest his head on her shoulder for a moment. Then she bends, traces her tongue around his ear - he groans - and she murmurs, “Wishful thinking?”
A pause, then his voice, rasping: “Is it?”
Starbuck smiles, and trails her lips down one plane of cheekbone. Then to the bridge of his nose, then down. She speaks against his lips, quiet, soft. “More like a prophecy, I’d say.”
His eyes flare, even in the dim hallway light, and she swallows hard.
Then Leoben slides his hands to the small of her back, angles up with his hips, and she has to choke and thump her head back against the wall. When Starbuck looks down at him, through slitted eyes, she sees him grinning, all teeth.
“So, you always tell the truth?”
“Yeah,” she husks.
“You’re going to take me back to your bunk and frak me - all - night?” He punctuates his words with a few thrusts of his hips, and she feels that through three - four? who knows - layers all right; and damn -
“Yeah.” Her voice grates in her throat and she rocks against him. “Sure am.”
“And you hate my shirts.”
Starbuck squeezes her eyes shut. Opens them. “What?” At his head tilt, she continues, “Well yeah, but what does that -”
Leoben doesn’t wait for her to finish. Instead, he presses her against the wall, and there’s his chest, frak frak yes - “You started with ripping them apart. So finish it.”
“Finish it?”
“My shirts.” He gives her an arrogant smirk. “Take them all off.”
Starbuck runs her hands beneath the cloth; squeezes the lines of muscle and bone in his shoulders. She remembers one briefing, a long time ago, and murmurs, “By your command,” before smirking back at him - and his eyes go dark, but somehow hot at the same time, and his hands are on her even as they’re moving, somehow, in the direction of the bunks - and the others are at the dance, she remembers, wildly, and thank the Gods, because she'll want her bunk - her bunk - a long ways away, frak.
The endless hallways fly by, though, and they keep to the shadows. It’s the alcohol, or the adrenaline, or the flood washing away all the gates she had in place for so long, that keeps her kissing him, touching him, kissing him again and again as though he might disappear. They stay in the dark, on the way there, so she can hardly see as she tears off her boots and leaves them at the door. They keep the lights off when they finally finally reach her bunk - so when there’s the feeling of cloth being torn from her body even as she yanks the rest of his clothes away; when there’s a hot tangle of limbs and finally finally - from her dream - what she wanted but was ashamed to want and frak frak Gods - “Lords of Kobol,” she gasps, and he hisses, “Blasphemy,” and tongues down her belly - when there’s all of this, and what follows, it’s all in the dark. Dark enough to be memory, dark enough to be the past - so dark that she can’t see where he is right in front of her - can only feel -
The Father
(I do love you, Kara Thrace)
Starbuck wakes up groggy, and disoriented, in darkness. She groans, shifts; tries to move.
But then she freezes, as something rustles and moves behind her - she hears the crack of a jaw as that same something yawns.
Leoben.
Shit. I did frak him all night.
A card-playing Leoben; weird. But fine, in the end. More than fine. And that’s curiosity, and that’s it, and that’s all there is to it - She breaks off in a yawn; it’s catching.
Starbuck stretches, luxuriously, and arches back into the warmth behind her. Then she digs in one elbow, and turns all the way over.
It’s dark in her bunk. So dark, that she can’t see him, although she’s sure he’s right there in front of her.
“Kara …” He brushes a kiss over her ear, and takes her in his arms, and she shivers - from the sensation, and from I was right, because he was still there, and she had always known that he would be -
“Rise and shine.”
Her thoughts stop.
Starbuck swallows, hard, against the sudden roughness in her throat.
“What - what did you say?”
“Hm?”
“What did you just say?”
She can’t see Leoben in the dark. But she can almost hear his smile, as he holds her close, as he kisses her brow, and speaks again, softly - in the same voice - in the voice that she remembers:
“I think you heard me the first time.”
(It’s just something Leoben said once.
That I had a destiny.
That it had already been written.)
the end