I dream about it and that bastard Leoben every Godsdamned night. I feel like I’m losing my mind here. –Kara Thrace, Maelstrom.

The first night she dreams about Leoben, it’s a blur of images that tease at sharpness, that hint at the vividness to come. The dreamscape is confused; a mix of places both familiar and unknown–the house (prison) where he kept her on New Caprica, her bunk on Galactica, places she’s sure she’s never been and landscapes she knows she’s never seen. It’s not her apartment, not yet, not the first night. Behind it all the mandala taunts her with colors that bleed and burn. The shape is indistinct and almost watery, twisting and undulating as if caught by the wind.

Leoben has her pressed against what might be a wall, but it’s too formless for her to be sure. All she is aware of is his hand on her throat, and it feels like some kind of sick benediction, some twisted promise. Kara knows he could kill her in a second, knows he could tighten his fingers and snap her neck like something fragile, something easily broken.

But I’m not fragile. I’m not easily broken.

“You’re not,” he says, answering a thought unspoken (this must be a dream, it must, how could he do that?) and there’s that small smile, the one that made her put a knife in his side on New Caprica, that made her pierce his flesh with sharp metal and watch him bleed to death on the floor by her feet.

She doesn’t do that, not here, not now. She doesn’t do anything but watch him, wary, the mandala never entirely out of sight. It sharpens the longer she looks at, so she resolutely turns her face away, unwilling to see.

Leoben’s fingers slide down her throat, ghosting softly against her racing pulse. Kara meets his eyes and her breath feels caught and desperate; she feels like some kind of trapped thing, an animal staring up at a predator, and she hates it. “Don’t you want to stop fighting?” Leoben asks her, leaning closer. She can feel him breathing against her skin, his mouth a hairsbreadth from her ear. “Just give in? It would be so much easier, Kara. Kara…”

Her voice, when he says her name, sounds like a prayer. His other hand slides across her lips and for a moment she can taste his skin. “Just give in. You want to. I know you do. Don’t you?” His words are an unceasing mantra, tempting her, and there’s a wall against her back and his voice is warm as sin against her ear.

She wakes up with the word yes unspoken on her lips, and finds it hard to look in the mirror–she’s afraid of what she’ll see.

* * *

She’s walking through a darkened room, taking slow steps, uncertain where she’s going or what sort of obstacle she can’t see that will eventually trip her. Even in sleep, Kara chastises her subconscious for its literalness, as if anything too subtle will be completely missed.

And maybe it will. Kara Thrace is not known for her subtlety, even she can admit that.

“Kara.”

She knows his voice, especially in the thick veil of sleep. It’s not next to her (no silky threats whispered against her ear, no, not here, not yet) but she feels it like a caress, feels something dance up her spine that feels like dread and desire and disdain all at once.

Kara is quick to react in her waking life; quick to respond, quick to fight. There is no room for indecision in a pilot’s life; the smallest hesitation can end in death. Space is not forgiving, and Cylon Raiders are even less so. In her dream, however, surrounded in the depths of shadows that press against her like something alive, she finds herself suspended and unable to act.

“I can’t see,” she says instead, speaking the obvious because it is a comfort when she doesn’t know what else to do. I like fighting things I can see. There is a sudden glow and she sees the shape of the mandala, rising like a terrible sun in the darkness of her dream-vision, glowing in a way that makes her want to avert her eyes. The shape is blurry at first, shrouded in a soft haze, and then it sharpens into something rigid and bright and inescapable.

Leoben is sitting in front of it in a chair, watching her intently. His eyes burn like ice lit from within, some strange cold-fire she doesn’t understand, and he looks other and malevolent in a way that makes her heart race and her hands fist at her sides. “You’re too afraid to see what you must,” he says.

Kara is breathing fast. Her body tenses as if for battle, ready to fight, ready to hit. She’s still strangely loath to speak, and all her words are a whirl in her head and she can’t straighten them out, can’t give them voice no matter how hard she tries.

The glow from the mandala is too much. She tries to turn away, to shield her eyes, to put him and the frakking symbol behind her entirely. He’s there in a second, grabbing at her hand, fingers wrapping like vines against her wrist. He pulls her hand away from her eyes, forces her to look at him. Kara glares at him, trapped, and the mandala rises behind him like some sick halo of blue and yellow and red.

“You can see. You can. Look, Kara. Stop turning away. Look.”

Kara looks at him. Up close, his eyes look like they might burn. She tilts her head up a little, exposing her throat. If it’s a conscious gesture, she doesn’t want to know about it.

“My Kara,” Leoben says, softly, and his voice is wistful. “Stop fighting. Stop.” He reaches out to trace his fingers across her neck. Kara can still see the mandala, ominous in the distance. Leoben’s thumb rubs against her pulse, his fingers trace against the delicate bones of her neck.

No. Not yours. Never. But she doesn’t say it. She closes her eyes, and when she wakes up, her hand is on her neck, but it doesn’t feel the same.

* * *

The next time she dreams about him, Kara decides she’s had enough. Enough of the creepy mysticism and his fathomless eyes, enough of the frakking mandala and his portentous whispers about destiny and giving in.

This time, she’s on Galactica’s CIC, and outside she sees the mandala cradled in the darkness of space, drifting amidst stars like a planet. She ignores it. Leoben is standing in the center of the room, and they are alone where there should be many.

“I’m frakking tired of this,” she tells him, and her hands are on her hips as she glares at him. He’s staring at her impassively. She walks up and shoves at him, pushes hard against his chest. He lets her, but he doesn’t move. Leoben is not a physically imposing man, not really. But he’s a Cylon, and there is strength there beneath what she can see.

“There is much more here than you can see,” Leoben says, and grabs her hands again. He yanks her against him, grabs both of her wrists in one hand (shouldn’t be able to do that not fair too strong) and puts his hand on the back of her neck. He’s trying to turn her head, trying to make her look at the mandala.

Kara fights him this time. “Frak you. Let me go.” It feels good to fight, and Kara can see he’s annoyed; there’s a flash of something in his inscrutable expression, and his mouth twists as he restrains her again. He is not looking at the mandala. He is looking at her, and the otherness about him has been subsumed by plain human annoyance, and for some reason, that makes her viciously happy to see.

“I know what you want, Kara Thrace,” he says, and he’s breathing hard, she notices that–for the first time, she sees the sheen of sweat on his brow and the tension in his body as he holds her immobile. Around them gleams the muted lights of the instruments in the CIC; soft reds, gentle blues. Outside, the mandala gleams like a promise.

Leoben pulls her closer and his hand tightens around her wrist. Kara feels a slight sting of pain, and it thrums her body like a drug, dances joyfully over nerves that have too long felt numb and deadened. That he should make her feel this way is unthinkable, but she cannot deny the response of her body; the indrawn breath, the tensing of her muscles, the sudden heat in her veins.

“Yeah? And what the frak is that, you frakking toaster?” Kara’s not nice to him when she’s awake. He shouldn’t expect anything else here.

Leoben puts one hand on her waist. She can feel his touch through the thin material of her tank top, can feel it burn against her skin. He lets her wrists go and puts his hand in her hair and pulls her head back. She can’t stop her gasp, can’t stop the shudder as he forces her to meet his gaze.

His hand moves up her back, and every second, every moment of that slow finger-drag up her spine, it feels like electricity, like lightning, like things that strike quick and fast and hot. He smiles at her, and there’s always been something wrong with his smile. Sam smiles at her and it looks like the sun rising, warm and bright. Leoben’s looks like something dark that lurks behind stars to swallow them whole.

She doesn’t want to think about why she’s breathing so fast, why her body is responding with shivers to his touch, why she won’t fight, won’t try to push him away. Why she wants his hands to be tighter in her hair, why she can’t look away.

“You know,” he says softly. “The same thing I do. Our desires are not opposed. They are the same. You just haven’t admitted it, yet.” His look is almost a palpable caress; he doesn’t look impassive anymore, he looks like he wants to devour her whole. “God, Kara. Stop fighting me.”

“No,” Kara says, but her words sound like a lie, and she knows he can tell. “I can’t,” she whispers, and she closes her eyes. “I have to fight. I have to.”

Leoben drags her over to the wall and throws her against it. She catches herself with her palms, they smack against something sharp but she doesn’t care. He’s behind her, she can feel him, all of him, every muscle and sinew and the hardness that is pressing against her back making it quite clear what his desire is.

“But you want to give in. I know you do.” Leoben’s hands move down her back, to her hips. Kara’s hands start a slow slide up the wall to rest above her head. He’s pushing against her, insistent and wanting, pulling her back with fingers tight against her hipbones. “I know it, Kara. Go in. Stop fighting. Give in to me.”

She wakes up before it’s over, and she’s angry when she should be relieved. yes yes nice. Her blood is pounding and she’s flushed, feverish, her sheets are twisted around her body like some devious serpent made of cotton. Kara lies in her bunk and stares at the wall, teeth clenched against the want that burns hotter than fire through her body. She could do something about it, if she wanted. It’s still early, she can be quiet. No one would know.

But she knows what she’d be thinking about, who she’d be thinking about, and she refuses. Instead, she goes and takes a shower, the water as cold as she can make it.

It doesn’t really help.

* * *

She’s in her apartment in Caprica, dressed in a man’s shirt and a pair of panties, and there is the mandala on the wall. It’s not glowing, it’s not a halo, it’s not a star or a planet trapped in space. It’s just a picture she drew, years ago, with walls of half-thought poetry scribbled beside it.

There is no sign of Leoben, but she’s waiting for his inevitable appearance. She can feel a buzz of anticipation in her body, and she knows it’s only a matter of time before he appears.

This is the last dream.

Amidst the clutter of her apartment, Kara finds a gallon of white paint with a brush. She stares at the wall, determined. Grim. There is a certainty that drives her, makes her pick up the brush and cover the wall with long, determined strokes, covering the brilliant colors of the mandala with thick white paint.

She feels him behind her when the wall is mostly covered. Her hair is sticky with the paint she can feel it drying on her skin in patches. Leoben spins her around, catches her wrist and pushes her against the wall while whispering in her ear. Kara stares at him, panting, and her skin feels raw, exposed. She can feel wet paint against her back and his body against hers, hard and strong and sure, and the fabric of his pants against her bare legs feels like a torment.

“Don’t fight it,” he tells her, smiling a little, and it’s the same smile it always is; affectionate but with some sinister intent she sees but doesn’t fully understand. His thumbs rub against her wrist even as he hurts her. His body burns against hers like a brand. Kara doesn’t want to say no. Not this time. She wonders if he knows.

This is the last dream.

That it will be good between them, she has no doubt; she’ll fight him for control and he’ll let her have just enough and take the rest of it away, and his hands are under her shirt now, and her skin feels hot and his hands feel cold but good, so good, and if this is how giving in feels…maybe she should have done it a long time ago.

I found God and all His devils inside her/In my bed she cast the blizzard out
A mock sun blazed upon her head/So completely filled with light she was
Her shadow fanged and hairy and mad.

~

Kara is stretched on the bed, half-dressed, her arms above her head. Leoben is straddling her, one hand around her throat, the other pinning her wrists where they are crossed at the head of the bed. The room is a bit of a mess–she’d certainly not let him get to this point without making him work for it. He’s hard against her and she’s breathing fast, staring up at his cold eyes and pulling slightly against his hold on her wrists without any real desire to escape.

She blinks in confusion when Leoben stills, cocking his head slightly to the side as if listening to something; she knows him well enough by now to know when his attention is divided, when it’s not entirely on her when it should be. “What?” Her voice is a slightly put out, a bit breathless but also concerned. He hears things she doesn’t, sometimes.

“Hey, Kara.”

Oh.

Sam is standing in the doorway, leaning against it, his posture deceptively easy and casual. Kara knows better; she can see the tenseness of his shoulders, the unhappy set of his mouth as he watches them. Sam has always known she’s not cut out for monogamy; he knew it before she went missing, before he found out he was a Cylon. There’s a difference, though, between knowing it and seeing your admittedly-estranged wife sprawled topless with a Cylon’s hand around her throat.

Leoben looks at Sam and then back at her, his expression inscrutable. Kara still doesn’t understand him half of the time. He doesn’t move a single muscle, doesn’t even seem to be breathing though she knows he must be. His entire body is still in a way that doesn’t seem human.

He’s not human.

Kara looks at Sam. He’s not human, either.

It’s Leoben who finally breaks the tension, his voice quiet in the silence of the room. He sits back, but he puts one hand on Kara’s stomach, fingers splayed against her skin. She’s wearing her green cargo pants and panties, but she’s naked from the waist up. Her tank is torn in half, her sports bra with it, the fabric carelessly tossed in the corner. Leoben is not careful with her clothes, and occasionally he forgets his own strength. “Sam. Come in. Close the door.”

“I don’t take orders from you,” Sam says immediately, and his eyes are narrowed and fixed on Leoben. Kara remembers him on the Demetrius, the way he’d gone after Leoben with angry words and fists because Leoben had his hand on her hip.

She remembers what Leoben had said to him after Sam had knocked Leoben to the ground. I can see why she’s so fond of you.

“Sam,” Kara says, and sits up. She doesn’t cover herself–Sam’s seen her naked often enough–but she feels a bit like she ought to, and that makes her angry. She has nothing to hide. She and Sam have barely spoken, not since she almost watched him get airlocked, not since they found Earth a barren wasteland full of broken and tarnished things.

“Kara.” He surprises her by walking in and closing the door behind him, obeying Leoben’s directive despite his earlier words. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” His voice is harsh, rough with suppressed anger. “Here I thought maybe you had a problem with Cylons, and that’s why you’d barely spoken to me. Guess I was wrong.” He laughs bitterly, and the sound makes Kara wince in response. “If you wanted to frak a Cylon, honey, you could have frakked the one you married.”

Kara wants to tell him that he’s got it all wrong, that he always has–love isn’t about sex, not to her, but then he’ll ask her if she loves Leoben and she won’t know what to say. “Sam. It’s not–you don’t have to–I told you I was like this. You knew all along.” That’s low and she knows it–I told you I can’t be faithful, so you should just have to put up with it–but it’s not the right time to say anything else.

“But him? Kara, you hate him, and he scares you–I was there, remember, I was the one who was there when you had all those frakking nightmares!”

Leoben slants a look down at her. There’s a small smile on his face because he likes knowing how he affects her, even in ways that make Kara want to kill him again. Leoben still scares her, honestly. The look he’s giving her right now, in fact, makes Kara both aroused and uneasy, which is something she’s never been able to figure out about her attraction to him.

“And I trusted you, and you’re a Cylon, Sam–”

“He’s a frakking Cylon!” Sam shouts, raking a hand through his hair, his eyes darting between them as if he doesn’t know which of them infuriates him more.

“Yeah, he never lied about that,” Kara snaps, angry now, body leaning forward as if she’s going to stand up. Leoben pushes on her stomach and forces her back down. It’s not a hard push, he’s barely expending any effort, but she can’t move away–at least not without a fight.

Kara thinks about Sam, about how they used to fight, spar, and how it always ended with him on top of her and pinning her down with his weight. Sam is strong, too, but he’s not Cylon-strong; he would have hurt her by now, wouldn’t he, if he was the same as Leoben? They were never gentle in bed, Kara and Sam, not really. That’s never been anything Kara’s enjoyed. Sex is like flying; she likes it fast, dangerous, likes it to take her breath and leave her feeling terrified and alive afterwards.

“Fine.” Sam turns away, headed towards the door again. Kara can tell by the set of his shoulders that he’s going to leave. For some reason, that infuriates her more than anything, though logically she understands that it shouldn’t.

“Don’t you dare walk out on me,” Kara says before she can stop herself, and her voice is thick with betrayal and sorrow at the inevitability of his leaving. It was only a matter of time before she found something to push him away for good, wasn’t it?

“Why not, Kara? You did. You walked out on me a long time ago. I don’t even know why I keep trying. Maybe it’s time I do what you’ve been waiting for all along. I’d hate to disappoint you.”

“You keep trying because you love her.” Leoben says, interrupting at last. His voice is calm, a marked contrast to Sam’s anger and Kara’s obvious defensiveness. “And you don’t want him to walk away because you love him,” he says to Kara, his hand still warm on her stomach. He actually pats her, like a dog, and Kara hits him hard on his arm in immediate response.

“Yeah?” Sam turns around, his fists clenched, tension screaming from every line of his body. “Then why the frak is she here with you?”

Leoben shrugs. “What you fail to understand is that the universe is infinite. You struggle to place her, yourself, in some configuration that excludes others. You seek to contain her, yourself, even me; there is no need for that.”

“What the frak does that mean?” Sam asks, and the look on his face is so annoyed it almost, almost makes Kara laugh.

Leoben sighs. Kara feels his thumb rub against her, and knows the caress is supposed to gentle her, which only makes her angrier. Leoben seems to think his part in her destiny is to calm her down, but Kara doesn’t want to be calm. She grabs his hand and tries to push it away, but as before, he won’t let her. He is still staring at Sam, a look on his face that Kara knows as his I have some sort of thought that will irritate you when I open my mouth and tell you it look. “It means that you think, Sam, that love is something to be rationed, that there is some finite amount of it that will eventually run out if it is given freely. God is infinite. Love is from God. There is no reason to limit that which is limitless.”

“This isn’t about love,” Sam’s voice sounds like something broken into pieces. He looks at Kara, and says, completely without irony, “Doesn’t this drive you crazy? All this frakking nonsense about god and destinies and infinite universes?”

Kara does laugh at that, she can’t help it. Sam has always been able to make her laugh, even when he doesn’t want to, even when she doesn’t think it’s possible. “Yeah. It does. A lot.”

Leoben doesn’t look particularly bothered. He stands up, stretches, hands above his head and fingers criss-crossed together while he rises up on his toes. Kara watches him, she can’t help it; the way he moves fascinates her. Sam moves with energy, sleek and playful like a puppy. Leoben is still, deliberate, his movements flow like water. He reaches down and pulls Kara to her feet, puts her in front of him so she’s facing Sam and he’s behind her.

“Kara is here, with me.” Leoben brushes back Kara’s hair, settles her against the front of his body. Kara can feel him, pressed against her, still hard from their earlier play. His hands rest on her waist, and he leans forward and murmurs against her throat, words Kara can’t hear.

“I see that,” Sam says, and the look on his face makes Kara want to cry, or hit something, or possibly both. “I’ll just leave you to it, then.”

I told you, I told you I wasn’t faithful, I told you I would be too much for you in the end–

Leoben sighs again, flexing his fingers on her hips, the sharp pain distracting Kara from the downward spiral of her thoughts. “And yet, you are here. And Kara, unless I am mistaken, wants to be here.” Leoben moves forward, pushing Kara along with him.

“Leoben,” Kara says, her voice a warning.

“And you don’t ever think you’re wrong, do you,” Sam says, and Kara notices he’s looking past her, looking at Leoben. “God’s destiny, and all that. Frak your God, and frak you.”

“Mmm.” Leoben pushes Kara again, gently this time, towards Sam. Kara puts her hands up and catches herself on Sam’s chest. She takes a moment to trace her hands down Sam’s shirt; she can feel his heart pounding wildly, racing frantically beneath her palm. It’s been a long time since they’ve been together; not since the Demetrius, and Kara was too lost in her head to remember much about that.

Sam reaches up, trying to knock her hands away. Kara realizes belatedly that Leoben has still been moving inexorably forward, and now she is trapped; between the Cylon who is her lover and the one who is her husband. “I’m not wrong, Anders, because I see truth. And I know that Kara wants you. Loves you. And yet, here I am. Because, Sam, her universe–it encompass us both. We are infinite, us three. Do you understand?”

“Kara.” Sam looks down at her, and he looks so human–warm eyes, his mouth that she knows so well, and his hands are on hers now, resting against his chest, and their touch is achingly familiar. Leoben is still behind her, still kissing her neck with the lightest of touches. “I–you–” he falls quiet and concentrates on touching her instead. Words are always a problem with them; they speak too much, or not enough or,lately, not at all.

Sam raises his hands and touches her face, traces his fingers over her cheekbones, her jaw. Leoben’s mouth is light as a whisper on sensitized skin. Sam traces his fingers against her lips and Kara opens her mouth, then nips sharply at Sam’s fingers.

“I don’t know if you both frakking remember who I am, here,” she says, jerking away from Leoben’s mouth (or trying, he doesn’t actually move, gods damn him) and watching with a fierce grin as Sam pulls his hand away from her mouth. “Maybe you’d rather frak each other.”

“No,” Sam says, shaking his head. He reaches down and lightly smacks her breasts, like she’s always liked, exactly in the right spot. “Definitely not that.” She can’t tell anything from his voice, which is strange; Sam has never been hard for her to read. But then he smacks her again, harder, the sound loud in the close confines of their quarters.

Kara moans. Leoben pauses, his mouth on the spot where the curve of her neck meets her shoulder. “I didn’t know you liked that,” he says, his voice as insufferably calm as ever. The skin on her breasts turns red from the impact.

“You don’t know a lot of things about me,” Kara says. “That goes for both of you,” she adds, when she sees Sam’s smirk. There’s tension in the room–sexual, certainly–but there’s plenty of resentment, too, and it remains to be seen which way the balance will tip.

Leoben’s hand moves around and catches her beneath her neck, fingers tightening against her throat. Kara goes still as he squeezes his hand, choking off her air. She can hear the air in the room turn into a roar, like Earth’s long-forgotten ocean, pounding like the surf in her ears.

Leoben laughs against her ear, the only sound that gets through the haze, and pulls her up so she’s on her toes. He’s still choking her; Kara’s eyes drift closed from the pressure, it’s too hard to keep them open any longer. Behind her eyelids drift snowflakes of white with black edges as her consciousness wanes, a slow spiral down, the world fading into nothing. Her breathing slows as the dark edges overtake the white, and then, she can suddenly find air as she finds herself unceremoniously dropped to the floor and gasping for breath.

Sam has gone after Leoben, obviously. He’s shoved the other man away against the far wall by the bed, because he thought Kara was in danger. Kara clears her throat, blinking, her palms stinging from where she’d caught herself on the floor when she fell.

He’s done that before, Leoben. He made it last a long time, once, the constant pressure-and-release of his hand around her neck. By the time he’d finished she’d been nearly insensate, completely disoriented. And wet, too. Kara likes (in the sense that she likes it after she hates it) to have her control taken away, and Leoben likes things that are deliberate, likes to watch the way her eyes glaze and her body goes easy and languid for him. It’s so nice when you finally stop fighting me, Kara.

“Sam,” she says, her throat sore from Leoben’s grasp. Leoben must have been showing off. Sam has Leoben pinned against the wall and he stops, looking back down at her. Leoben’s eyes are narrowed but he looks calculating, as if he’s thinking six steps ahead of what’s happening right now.

“Was I supposed to just let him kill you?”

“No. He wasn’t–let him go, Sam.”

Leoben laughs again, and this time it sounds menacing. Leoben reminds her of a bird of prey with his light eyes and his sharp smile, and he’s looking at Sam in a way that makes Kara nervous beneath the anger and lingering desire. “You’re a Cylon, but we’re not the same. I have abilities beyond seeing the truth you fight so hard to ignore.” Leoben does something that looks like he’s barely moving, something with his shoulder and hands that look effortless, but it sends Sam sprawling halfway across the room and landing on his back on the floor.

Kara realized belatedly what had happened; she’d pissed Leoben off by suggesting he can’t get out of Sam’s hold without her interference. Frakking power dynamics, frakking men, when they don’t realize the person in charge here is her.

“Bunch of gods-damned cowboys,” she mutters, standing up. She doesn’t offer to help Sam stand. She won’t make the same mistake twice. Kara walks over to Leoben and slaps him across the face. He takes her blow without a word, his head barely moving. It stings her palm but she doesn’t care. “Don’t do that again.”

Frakking Cylon show-off. He doesn’t say anything but nods slightly in concession.

Kara crosses to Sam, who’s standing now, looking warily at them both. “I don’t frakking need you to protect me,” she hisses, and slaps him, too. Kara feels defiant and crazed and too hot; the temperature in the room is rising exponentially with everyone’s temper.

Sam’s head does snap back a bit from her blow. “Next time, I’ll just let him snap your neck, then–”

“Your husband labors under certain illusions about you, Starbuck,” Leoben says from across the room. There is something in his tone that Kara recognizes as annoyance; she would say it was because Sam interrupted them, but she doesn’t think that’s it. The things that annoy Leoben make no sense to her, and things that should piss him off seem to phase him not at all. “And you, Anders–do you think, after all this time, I would kill her now?”

When I finally have her in bed remains unsaid but obvious.

“Who the frak knows what goes through that Cylon head of yours?” Sam responds angrily, and honestly, Kara can’t argue with that. He’s leaning back against the door, glaring hotly at her, then at Leoben, as if he can’t tell which one of the two of them he’d rather hit. Kara almost wishes he’d try it. She could fight as easily as she could frak at the moment.

“The same thing that goes through yours, brother,” Leoben hisses. “We are both Cylon. We are both men. We are more alike than you want to think.”

“Enough!” Kara raises her hands, looking at the two of them. No one’s stormed out yet, which is a surprise. She doesn’t know why they’re all still here, but she does know that they’re either going to frak or kill each other before they leave this room, and at the moment, she has no idea which way it’s going to go. There is a wild elation in that; it reminds her of being in her Viper, chasing Raiders with the constant threat that this might be it, that the last thing she’ll ever see is an explosion of light amidst the vast darkness of space.

It’s also pissing her the hell off.

Strangely, Leoben and Sam have both fallen silent and are staring at her, as if waiting for some further clue about what they should do. Maybe they finally realize this isn’t about them. Kara doesn’t know what else to do besides the obvious. She puts her hands on the buttons of her pants and works them quickly, pushing them down her hips and kicking them aside. She’s naked save a pair of plain white cotton panties cut like men’s boxers and tight across her hips and thighs–they don’t have a lot of luxury left, at least in they way of undergarments.

She’s surprised because it’s Sam that moves first, tearing off his shirt and crossing to her in two quick strides. “You’re mine,” he says, and he’s angry, so angry, his hands are on her hips now and it hurts. He yanks her against him and kisses her, mouth hot and frantic, hands moving to press against her naked back and push her even closer. “Baby,” Sam whispers against her lips, the sound agonized and raw. He tastes like sunlight, familiar and sweet, and Kara has forgotten how much she’s missed him.

Kara kisses back instead of answering, her hands on his shoulders. Sam walks her backwards, and she half-expects him to ignore Leoben and shove her on the bed, but he doesn’t. He pushes her so that they’re standing like they were a few moments before, Kara trapped between them both.

“I don’t want to lose you again. If this is the only way, then fine.” Sam catches her face between his hands and stares at her. “I don’t care. Do you hear me? I don’t care.”

But he does. He might not care now, with the tension so dangerously high, but Kara knows this isn’t a quick-solution fix to the problem. But she doesn’t care, either. She just wants them all to shut up, to stop talking, to stop looking at her as if she’s some frakking priceless jewel that’s worth any of this.

It’s not decided in words, no one says anything–what is there to say? Now we’ll stop talking and everyone take their clothes off. Kara feels Leoben behind her, his hands on stroking down her back while Sam is kissing her like the world’s ending (again), and she knows that no one is leaving.

Leoben is saying something, some pedantic muttering about currents flowing into one sea, and Sam actually pauses, sighing against her mouth. “Do you know how to make him stop that?” Kara, half-drugged by his mouth and the roughness of his touch, blinks at him owlishly. “Stop talking,” Sam clarifies, because Leoben is touching her, breathing against the back of her neck, and she doesn’t want him to stop that. “If so, could you try it? This is frakked up enough as it is, and he’s not making it any easier with the godsdamned Oracle-speak.”

“I have an idea, yeah.” She’s surprised when Sam turns her around so she’s facing Leoben, Sam’s hands now on her shoulders. Leoben is staring down at her, and his hunger is quieter, less obvious than Sam’s, but still apparent in the brightness of his pale eyes and the flush high on his cheekbones.

“Nothing worth having is easy,” Leoben says in response, and Kara wonders if he’s trying to concede to Sam’s wishes by saying that succinctly and without any metaphors, of if maybe he’s too distracted to think of one at the moment.

Her pride would like to think it’s the latter. Kara moves closer to Leoben–touching him still makes her heart race, it’s too new, and he’s still a mystery to her, something unknown–and thinks that they are both going to learn, Leoben and Sam both, that she’s not worth any of this. But for the moment, just for now, she wants to be–so she says nothing at all.

Sam makes a sound behind her. He’s hard, she can feel him, and he’s pushing his hips against hers intently, his hands moving around to cup her breasts. His fingers pull on her nipples, just like she likes, and Kara sees Leoben watching Sam’s hands intently. “Taking notes?” she asks, her voice edged with challenge.

“Yes,” Leoben says in that way he sometimes has, that disarming sudden truthfulness that catches her off guard amidst all his prophetic mysticism. Kara reaches down and takes the hem of Leoben’s shirt in her hands, pulling sharply on the fabric. Leoben raises his arms so she can remove it, and Kara knows he’s placating her, letting her have what she wants for the moment.

She’s learned that he likes to play games of control with her, whereas Sam is happy enough to shove her down and go for it fast and hard. Leoben likes to give her a little and then take it away; it’s a different game, but she likes them both. One of Sam’s hands moves lower, rubbing over her sex through the thin cotton of her panties. Kara spreads her legs and lets him touch her, leaning her head back, watching Leoben through half-slitted eyes.

She reaches out and rakes her nails down Leoben’s chest, digging in hard because they’re short. Leoben sucks in a sharp breath as her fingers drag down his chest and across the corded muscles of his stomach–Kara has also learned he has masochistic tendencies, that he likes things that are sharp, things that sting.

That must be some kind of prerequisite for being in love with me.

Sam slips his hand inside her panties, rubbing at her, two fingers sliding against her clit in a way that makes her gasp and moan. Leoben’s chest and stomach are marked with the tracks from her nails, and he’s watching the way the fabric pulls against Sam’s knuckles as he rubs at her. Sam pulls his hand out abruptly and rubs his fingers against Kara’s mouth.

Kara, half-dazed into submission by pleasure and Sam’s touch after so many weeks, knows in an instant what he’s doing. She tilts her head and looks up at him; he’s still rubbing his fingers against her lips, staring intently at Leoben as if declaring some kind of challenge. Marking her, maybe. The gesture should piss her off, but it’s inevitable.

Frakking men.

Leoben smiles and leans forward in answer to Sam’s unspoken challenge, kissing her, licking at her lips and biting the bottom one with a suddenness that makes her gasp. Kissing him is still strange; the unfamiliarity of it makes it somewhat awkward at first. Kara shifts the angle of her mouth and rakes her nails down his back. Leoben puts a hand in her hair and pulls her head back, nips at her throat.

“Hey,” Sam says, and his hands rub teasingly at her breasts. His voice is husky now with desire, it’s a timbre she knows well. They’ve never been ones for foreplay, Kara’s quick to readiness and she’s not fond of waiting for what she wants. No doubt Sam is ready to go, ready to bend her over something–her mind supplies Leoben and Kara has to hold back an inappropriate laugh–and frak her until she can’t breathe.

Leoben is looking down at her, his eyes unblinking. He looks calculating again, and she wants him to stop. It’s not impossible to make him lose control, but she’s not sure she’s with it enough in her head at the moment to engage in his preferred brand of mental foreplay.

“What?” Kara asks, looking over at Sam, and his eyes are bright with need. She’s so hot, her body is sweat-slicked and she is pressed against Leoben so tight she can feel him everywhere, and she’s rubbing against his cock and trying to push back against Sam, trying to make the burn stop and find something, anything, to make her–

Leoben leans down and puts his mouth next to her ear, breathing out a long, slow tendril of breath against her. “Kara,” he says, and the sensation of his voice tickling the sensitive inner whorls of her ear makes her want to scream, “I love you.” The way Leoben says that never sounds sweet, but it always sounds honest. Before she can say anything–if you love me, stop breathing on my neck, shut up and frak me–he turns her around and shoves her to her knees in front of Sam.

It’s a painful fall and she looks up at Leoben angrily. “I hate you,” she says, and she means it; maybe not as much as she used to, but it’s not entirely a lie. His smile slides into a smirk and he puts his hand on her head, in her hair, and turns her head around.

She’s eye-level with Sam’s groin, and she can see the outline of his erection clearly through his pants. Sam’s breathing hard and he looks good half-dressed, and her hands are on the waist band of his pants before she can take time to work out how she got here. She makes a sound of irritation because her fingers are too slick with sweat to get the buttons undone as fast as they both want.

She finally has them all unbuttoned and pushes his pants down, then stares up at him for several long seconds, panting, and then she grabs his cock and takes it in her mouth. Sam groans, his hand resting lightly on the top of her head. Leoben’s hands are still there, too, and she feels like she’s kneeling for some kind of absurd blessing, and then Leoben laughs and shoves her forward and Kara almost chokes as Sam’s cock hits the back of her throat.

The shape and feel of Sam’s cock in her mouth is familiar, and after a few awkward moments Kara breathes him in, inhales the musky scent of him, tightens her throat. Sam’s head is thrown back and his mouth is parted, he’s making sounds and Kara likes hearing them so she does it harder, faster, and Leoben is still laughing in some kind of sick delight, but it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t care why, all she cares about is feeling Sam come in her mouth, down her throat. She’s good at this, with him, she’s learned how he likes it and she’s not forgotten.

He chokes her at the end, drives his hips forward, and Kara can’t move back, can’t get away because Leoben is still holding her. Sam finishes and stumbles backwards, and Kara stares up at him while she presses a shaking hand to her mouth. Sam doesn’t look angry, but he doesn’t look completely satisfied, either. It takes her a moment to work it out, and she half-turns from her sprawl on the floor and looks at Leoben with a speculative expression.

“I know why you did that, you frakking bastard,” she snaps, prepared to meet his cool, disdainful gaze, but she’s surprised–he’s breathing hard, face flushed, and maybe she doesn’t know why he did it after all. She’d thought it was so he could frak her instead of Sam, that it was some frakking power struggle and he was trying to win it, but maybe it wasn’t.

“No. You don’t. Stand up.” Leoben reaches down and grabs her by the shoulder. Kara looks over at Sam, who has buttoned his pants except for the top button, and he’s still sweaty and trying to catch his breath. Leoben yanks her to her feet–not gently–holding her idly with a hand on the back of her neck, thumb rubbing against her pulse. “Come here, Sam.”

Kara’s surprised when Sam obeys, walking over to where they’re standing. Leoben reaches out and presses gently on Sam’s shoulder, pushing him back against the wall. Sam stiffens at the contact, hands coming up in a defensive gesture. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I–”

Leoben’s mouth tightens and he shakes his head slightly. “Not that.” He draws Kara back towards him and kisses her pulse, lightly, making her shake with need.

Leoben lifts her up and pushing her against Sam, flattening her hands on the wall next to Sam’s head. Leoben doesn’t speak, doesn’t say a word, but Kara feels him rip at her thin cotton panties and then the cool air touches her skin as he tosses them aside. Leoben shifts, holding her easily with his Cylon-strength, and she hears his rough breathing as he unbuttons his pants.

Sam is looking at her the whole time. “Baby,” he whispers, and reaches up, tracing her cheeks, her lips. Kara whimpers because she’s wet and so ready, and Leoben is taking forever, so she sucks hard on Sam’s fingers but that’s not enough, not what she wants.

Growling, she looks over her shoulder at Leoben. “What the frak is taking you so long? If you’re waiting for my destiny or whatever the hell you babble on about, look the frak outside. Earth’s down there. I’m up here.”

Sam actually laughs, and she glares at him and says hotly, “Don’t you frakking laugh at me, Anders, you–” Kara cries out sharply as Leoben enters her without warning, hard and fast, pulling her hips back as he goes as deep as he can.

Leoben is silent during sex, which Kara never expected, considering he never usually shuts up. He keeps one hand around her neck and one holds her hip, and with every thrust he pushes her against Sam, pushes her breasts against Sam’s chest, and Sam stares down at her as Leoben takes her from behind.

Kara notices dimly that he doesn’t look angry; he looks intent, interested–maybe he thinks this is how she looks when it’s me behind her–and his hands rest lightly on her shoulders. The angle of Leoben’s cock is sharply painful; it draws cries from her with every thrust. She’s close, getting closer, and she can’t stop staring at Sam, her Sam, and he’s watcing her and murmuring something under his breath that she can’t hear.

“Kara. Say it.” Leoben’s voice surprises her, it sounds like broken glass, and it makes Kara shudder and shove hard back against him.

“Leoben,” she gasps, shaking her head; Kara is lucky she can form a sentence at all, she’s so close, her body burns and she–

He stills, stopping the movements of his hips, and leans forward to speak against her neck again. “Kara.”

“I don’t frakking need you, you know, I could get myself–”

“That’s not what I want you to say.” Leoben licks at the drops of sweat on her skin and lets go of her neck to smack her breasts, just like Sam had done earlier, in exactly the way she liked.

Taking notes, indeed.

Kara makes a frustrated sound and pushes back again, but despite the fact Leoben is hard inside of her, despite the fact she can feel his thighs shaking with the effort of holding himself back, he doesn’t move.

“I love you,” she says to Leoben, looking away, because she can’t bear to look at Sam when she says it. She could have, maybe, if saying it was a lie.

“Yes,” Leoben says, and the son of a bitch sounds amused, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t give her what she needs to finish. He traces his fingers down her spine, and even that small touch makes her shiver and buck against him, unsuccessfully seeking fulfillment. “But that is not the only truth here.”

“Leoben, I swear to the Lords of Kobol if you say one more frakking word about truth or–”

“Kara.” Leoben pulls out slowly and thrusts back in, forcing her against Sam’s body, and she is having a hard time keeping her palms against the wall since they keep slipping from the sweat. Leobnen stills again. “Say it again. Not to me, this time. To him.”

Kara looks up at Sam, her husband. He looks a little confused, wounded–she’s just confessed her love to another man, and while sex has never meant love to Kara Thrace, this just became about something other than sex–but he hasn’t looked away, hasn’t turned his gaze away from the sight of her pleasure-flushed face.

“I love you,” Kara says again, and she feels like she might cry. She hates Leoben a little for making her say it, but only because it’s true.

“Oh, Kara.” Sam sighs, and touches her gently, tracing the line of her shoulder. “I know. I know, baby.”

Leoben sighs behind her, the sound satisfied. And then he grabs her throat again and gives a low growl, moving his hips and Kara stops breathing, stops thinking, and her eyes shut under the intensity of it, the pleasure. She comes in seconds with a loud cry, too much at last, the harsh thrust of Leoben’s cock and Sam’s hands curled tight now around her shoulders.

Leoben finishes silently, but his fingers flex against her hips hard enough that she knows there will be bruises. Her hands slide down the wall at last and she rests her head on Sam’s shoulder while Leoben rests his on her back, his breath cool on her skin. They stay like that for a moment, stars moving together, cirlcing a common sun. Kara sees the mandala in her head for the first time in weeks and shudders, not wanting to think about what it means.

Finally, cramped from the uncomfortable position, Kara shifts and groans as her body protests movement. Predictably, her first words are accusatory, defensive.

“Put me the frak down.”

Leoben complies, and Kara finds it hard to stand on knees not quite recovered. They all three step away from each other–Leoben to one side, Sam to the other, and Kara sits on the bed and looks at them both in turn.

“So,” she says, looking at Sam. Kara feels good, as she always does after a good workout or a good frak, and she feels like something’s been cleared from her mind; some doubt, some worry.

“So,” Sam says back, running a hand through his hair. He is obviously at a loss for what to say.

Kara looks at Leoben. Despite looking a bit disheveled, he looks mostly the same as he always does; some cross between arrogant and crazy. He picks up Sam’s shirt and tosses it to him; Sam catches it easily and tugs it on with a muttered word of thanks.

Sam comes over to the bed and sits next to her. He draws her into his arms and holds her, speaking quietly next to her ear. “Come find me later, okay? We have…maybe we could talk.” Sam tightens his arms, so much that Kara can’t breathe, but it’s all right. “I missed you so much,” he says quietly, but Leoben can probably hear him with his enhanced senses; Kara is pretty sure Sam doesn’t care.

“Okay,” is all she says in response, but it’s enough for Sam. He kisses her forehead and stands up, heading towards the door; he looks briefly at Leoben before leaving. Uncertain, questioning.

Leoben smiles at him, infuriatingly calm. “Now you see,” he says, sounding pleased. “Love is indeed infinite, brother. The universe, it is ever-expanding. Ours, yours. Hers.”

Sam raises his eyebrows at his wife before he leaves. “You have fun with that,” he says, and Kara laughs, really laughs, for the first time in days. Sam leaves them alone, closing the door behind him. Kara stands up, reaches for her pants without bothering with her panties. They’re a lost cause, anyway.

She pulls her tank over her head and crosses to Leoben, who stands in the center of the room, possessed once more of that eerie Cylon stillness. “Why did you do that?” she asks simply, meaning a host of things. Why did you frak me with him here, why did you make me tell him I loved him?

“I see the love that binds all living things together,” Leoben says simply. “I’ve told you that before.”

“You say a lot of stuff, Leoben. I don’t listen to most of it.”

“That’s why I keep saying it.” He makes no move to touch her, to caress her, despite the fact he is standing right in front of her and she would allow it. For all his admitted obsession with her, Leoben is surprisingly unaffectionate outside of sex. “I have eternal hope that one day you will start listening.”

Kara smirks. “Good luck with that.”

“My patience with you has paid off in other things,” Leoben says dryly, and Kara decides it is a good time to leave before she tries to kill him again. There are no more resurrection ships, after all. It would be a shame to knife him in the ribs just for the satisfcation of shutting him up.

Kara leaves and goes to find Sam. She feels–good. Yeah. Very good. Which, when she thinks about it, is kind of stupid, isn’t it?

How the frak more complicated did I just make everything?

Leoben doesn’t sleep often. It’s not that he can’t, or that something keeps him lying awake at night, afraid to sleep–he understands the value of dreams–it’s simply that he likes to walk, likes to be aware and awake when he’s thinking.

The basestar is quiet and dark; it’s late, most of the others are sleeping. They sleep at night and work during the day because it is what they have learned is expected, though time is a relative concept and there is no night or day in the vastness of space. They are not humans, but they have had have to learn human things; hunger, exhaustion, want, fear. They have had to adapt.

As Leoben walks through the hallways, he nods at the Centurions as he passes. They acknowledge him in a way that Leoben is sure his brethren would probably not notice; a slight shifting movement, a change in their light-patterns. It is simple, subtle. The Centurions have not had to adapt. They simply have to be. Leoben sometimes envies them for that.

He touched a Centurion, once, just to see what would happen. The Centurion gave no outward sign of noticing, and it didn’t react—Leoben certainly didn’t mean it any harm–but he could feel it respond, deep within, an answering metallic hum in his veins that said we are Cylons all. The other humanoid models, they have begun to feel themselves superior to the Centurions, to the Raiders. Leoben is not sure this is wise, but he has seen it is not the time to speak of it. It will happen one day. Not soon. But it will happen. They will know the folly of this.

Leoben notices things, knows things, that the other models do not. The Sixes seduce, the Threes are cunning, the Eights loyal. The Twos look into the darkness and know. It makes him strange, even to his own kind. It does not bother Leoben. He is as God made him, and his soul knows no sorrow for the gifts he has been given.

Leoben stands in the center of the control room, feeling the thrum of the ship beneath his feet, echoing through his body. There is a sentience here, an awareness, and he closes his eyes and hears it singing to him, feels the pulse of it in that part of him that is Cylon. It is a welcome respite from so much time trying to feel human. He is not human. He will have to pretend, but he does not want to forget what he is.

Cylon. Chosen of God.

And when the time is right, humanity will learn of their existence, and Leoben will be the one to tell them. He has seen it in his visions, ringed in death and blood. His own, perhaps. That is all right. He is not afraid of death. To be reborn is a gift from God, and Leoben will embrace it when the time comes.

His consciousness expands, reaching outwards beyond the basestar, touching against the blackness of space, cold and endless. Out where humanity sleeps in false comfort, unaware of their children’s imminent return. We will put an end to your false gods, your imperfections. We will deliver you from the darkness into which you have sunken. Leoben does not hate humanity. He feel sadness for the genocide to come, he is no monster without a soul. But he cannot stand against God’s plan.

No one can, Cylon nor human alike. Their paths will merge together through violence and bloodshed, and through it, something far more perfect, far more beautiful, shall be forged. Just as the universe formed from dust , so shall the future come forth from ruin. Before creation, one must destroy.

Leoben thinks about her, the one he has seen in his visions, the one who burns the brightest of all the stars in the universe of what will be. She is still unknown to him, just a name, a vision of fierceness and fury and love. In the darkness, Leoben whispers her name like a prayer. “Kara.”

He hopes she is sleeping tonight, dreaming of simple things. There will be enough nightmares in the days to come.

“You know,” Leoben says, and it shouldn’t be surprising he’s the first one to speak, “Nothing worth having ever starts without blood. It is the beginning of all things, it is Life.” He has his hand pressed to his mouth, which is bleeding from where his lip was cut by his teeth. Kara can’t remember if she hit him, or if it was Sam, or if the injury wasn’t even intentional. He touches his fingers to his lips like a blessing. Kara looks at the blood staining his fingers, but it doesn’t look like anything strange or alien; it just looks like blood. Leoben’s blood. This is not the first time she’s seen him bleed, and she doesn’t think it will be the last.

They are in the gym on Galactica, and things have gotten out of hand. Kara likes to spar Sam, it’s what they do when they want to talk but can’t make themselves say the words they need to say, and it usually ends in torn clothes and bruised flesh and satisfaction, even if everything else remains unresolved. This time, Leoben had shown up and for some reason they’d not sent him away (that kept happening, didn’t it, whatever that some reason was), and then there was the three of them; Kara’s defensive jabs and Sam’s offensive punches, and Leoben saying one too many times how symbolic it all was before Sam hooked an arm around his waist and threw him bodily to the floor.

Leoben had just looked up, prone, and grinned his sharp smile at them both. He’d said something about the beauty of the many becoming whole, some convoluted nonsense about patterns of light converging, and Kara had kicked him in the side and he’d caught her foot and flipped her on her back. The rest of it was lost in a tangle of limbs that started angry and turned desperate faster than it should have. Clothes half-off and Sam on his knees behind Kara on all fours, hand in her hair, the act possessive and fierce. Leoben still mostly dressed, his eyes half-slitted as Kara yanked him close by his belt, muttering we’ll see what this makes you babble about when she took him in her mouth, sucking hard, staring up at him the whole time with a challenge in her eyes. Kara on her back, Leoben pinning her arms above her head while Sam’s hand worked between her legs, the way she’d come and arched up to kiss Leoben at the end of it.

In fact, she’s pretty sure when it’s over that kiss is why his mouth is bleeding; she must have bit him, there’s too much history between them for their kisses to be anything close to sweet. She’s warm and sticky between her thighs, and she can taste Leoben on her lips, in her throat, and her body is covered in sweat. Sam is on one side of her, in boots and boxers and his socks–hurried sex ends in ridiculous attire–and Leoben is on the other, his hair mussed, lip bloody, wearing no shirt and with his pants unbuttoned.

Kara has her hands behind her head and she feels good, frak it all, she doesn’t care that if anyone walked in right now it’d be the only thing anyone had to talk about. Not Kara finding Earth but Kara being frakked by two Cylons in the rec facility, and it makes her want to laugh because that seems like a much better destiny to her than being some frakking harbinger of death. And she doesn’t care if anyone comes in, not really, not with Sam grinning at her with that smile that makes her stomach flip, and Leoben watching her in a way that makes her shiver in all the right places.

“Baby,” Sam says, laughing, smoothing her hair out of her face with hands that are not quite steady, “I’m not going to say anything that profound, don’t worry. You okay?”

Kara stretches, nodding in answer to Sam’s question, feeling the pull in her muscles and relishing the ache between her thighs. “This was a frakking stupid place to do this,” she says, looking at them both in turn, Sam’s warm smile a marked contrast to Leoben’s pale-eyed watchfulness. This was frakking stupid to do in the first place. Second place. Frak.

“Is there a good place?” Leoben asks, his hand resting warm on her stomach. His mouth is slightly smeared with blood; Kara raises her fingers and feels him breathe against her skin. He sounds interested in her answer, as if he is going to catalogue it and save it for future reference. Maybe he is. Leoben is just strange enough to do it.

There are answers she could give–the racks, your room, Sam’s, the showers–but she just shrugs, unconcerned with trivial details, and sits up. Sam touches her shoulders, her collarbones, runs his fingers over her breasts in a caress he’d been too frantic to do before. It’s warm like silk, though his hand is calloused against her skin. Leoben’s hand runs down her back, and his touch is cool like water flowing down her spine.

Leoben leans forward and kisses her neck, lips cool, his stubble rubbing against her in a way that’s both annoying and pleasurable. “This starts with you, and you alone,” he murmurs, his hands trailing ice-cool, slick down her arm. Kara has no idea what he’s talking about, and she hears Sam snort in derision.

“Think it started with us,” Sam says, voice a little touchy, maybe angry–Kara feels his fingers on her body again; rougher, his touch more insistent. “Kara and I didn’t exactly invite you, you know.”

Leoben laughs against her skin, and it makes her shiver when he does it. “Didn’t you.” Kara is quiet, doesn’t say a word as Leoben draws his fingers up the bones in her spine like he’s counting, cataloguing her body. “This is the beginning, marked in blood. Mine. Kara’s. Yours.”

“Death,” Kara mutters, because she can’t help it, the words of the Hybrid echo like a bell in her mind; ringing in clarion warning, taunting her from the shadows of her momentary peace.

You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end.

“No,” Leoben says, and his voice is insistent, his mouth tracing up her neck with tormenting slowness. “No. Not death, Kara. Life. Life.” His mouth touches her pulse, tastes her racing heartbeat.

“Yeah? You’re the only one bleeding here, buddy,” Sam drawls, and his hand is warm on her breast, fingertips pressed against the thrum of her heart against her chest. Kara shudders, trapped between the two of them, Leoben’s voice a dark promise against her throbbing pulse and Sam’s hand resting possessively over her heart.

“You can feel it,” Leoben murmurs, and his tongue touches the inner whorls of her ear before moving back down. Kara feels her blood pulse in her neck and her chest and, now, between her legs, a slow shiver starting in her toes and wracking her body. “Can’t you, Kara.” Each beat of her heart slams against Sam’s hand, throbs against Leoben’s mouth. There’s a current of some indefinable electricity stretching between them, she can feel it, and she’s breathing fast, almost light-headed.

Kara sees Sam’s face, the sudden widening of his eyes, the way his body tenses in a way that’s not from pleasure.. She looks over and notices Leoben’s free hand is on Sam’s shoulder, fingers curved tight around the muscles of Sam’s upper arm. She would pull away but the current strengthens and jolts through her like electricity, and Sam feel it too; he stills and his head tilts as if he’s listening to something indistinct in the distance. She can hear something, too, beneath the sound of their breathing; a quiet hum almost like music, if stars were born in sound, if they died in a symphony instead of in light.

Kara remembers Leoben on the way to the basestar, when she’d gone to see the Hybrid. The unstruck music vibrates in all of us. Few can hear it. Kara is one of the few.

For one single moment she feels connected; to the floor beneath her, the darkness of space beyond Galactica’s metal walls, the promise of Earth below, the two men beside her. Leoben sighs against her, and she feels dizzy as she lets the connection between them flow from him to Sam and back again, dancing, the strange sound of it vibrating inside of her body. Sam pulls away first, breathing hard, eyeing Leoben warily but without any particular rancor.

“What the frak was that?” he asks, his voice husky.

Leoben smiles and pulls away; Kara is bereft of both their touch, and the air in the room is suddenly cool against her damp skin. She takes a deep breath, trying to make the dizziness abate. “What does that mean?” she asks Leoben, standing and searching for her clothes. “What was that?”

Leoben buttons up his pants, puts his shirt back on, smiling in that way he has; the mystic that sees patterns in symbols, prophecy in chaos. “It means that this is the beginning. You are the center, you have brought us here. Planetary bodies gravitating around a common sun.” He stretches, his body shifting and moving in a way that looks human but doesn’t, somehow. Sam is standing off to the side, pulling on his boots; he looks human, entirely human, bereft of Leoben’s odd Cylon grace.

Kara yanks on her tanks, feeling the caress of material as they settle against her skin. The sensation feels good, if not a little too much; her skin is sensitized, almost vibrating. “This is one of those times I’m not getting a straight frakking answer out of you, isn’t it.” She’s mostly teasing.

Leoben just smiles and runs his hand through his hair. He moves towards her and puts his hands on her shoulders, staring at her. She thinks he might kiss her, but he doesn’t. His hands rest heavy on her shoulders for a long moment before he turns to Sam, raising a hand as if to wave goodbye. Then he’s gone, vanishing into the halls of the ship beyond the rec facility, closing the door behind him.

Kara turns to Sam and says, her voice relaxed and easy, “You want to go to dinner?”

“Kara,” Sam asks, solemn, ignoring her question entirely. “Did I feel that because–” Sam stops, unwilling to say it, and Kara feels the slightest pinch of irritation at his refusal to speak the truth and say what he is.

“Because you’re a Cylon? Probably. Did you want to get dinner, or not?”

“But you–” Sam stops, looking away. “You’re not. And you heard it. Didn’t you?”

Kara shrugs. “I’ve heard it before. I’m not a Cylon, Sam. But I see stupid visions and I hear weird frakking music, and if you want to talk about it later, fine, but can we please go get some dinner, first? I’m starving.”

“I didn’t think I was a Cylon, either,” Sam mutters, walking over to her. He puts his hand on her, pressing his fingers against the small of her back. “Kara, I–is this how it’s going to be, now?” He sounds not angry but curious, and she wonders what she’s ever done to Samuel Anders to make him fight so hard to stand at her side, to make him accept what would make any other man balk and run.

Kara remembers the hum between the three of them, the groundedness, the centered feeling as she sat suspended between them both. Maybe he wants that, too. “I guess,” she says, then nods decisively, but Kara makes all her decisions in seconds and this is no different. “Yeah. It is.”

“Okay,” Sam says, and pats her on the back. She can’t tell from his voice what he’s thinking, if he’s upset or angry or just curious, or maybe resigned. He knows she’s been sleeping with Leoben and him both, it’s not like this is a surprise. Hell, it’s not even the first time they’ve done it with the three of them together, though maybe everyone but Leoben thought that was just a one-time thing, some strange aberration born on the tides of war. “Let’s go to dinner.”

Kara doesn’t hear anything but the sound of chatter on the ship, the clack of she and Sam’s boots against the metal floor, the usual hum of the ship moving through space. She doesn’t hear the ominous voice of the Hybrid in her head, not for several hours, and she’s grateful for that. Whatever is between the three of them is as fragile as spiderwebs and just as easily broken, and it will be hard for her not to fight it, not to struggle against bonds no matter how sweetly they embrace her. She hopes they both know that. She thinks they probably do.

In the darkness that surrounds me/I see my own special hell/Comfort in my suffering/Feeling warm inside this pain/Before I was coming down on me/I come on down again.

Leoben asks her, every night without fail, to go to bed with him. Kara’s not sure if he means to sleep or frak or both, but every night, she turns her face away and refuses to answer. She listens to his footsteps as he climbs the stairs, thump thump thump, but he never closes the door. Maybe he thinks she’ll change her mind, maybe he’s taunting her with the fact that he can fall asleep and she can kill him and he’ll just be back in the morning. Whatever it is, she sleeps downstairs and prays to the Gods that the next time she kills him will be the last. But the Gods of Kobol seem far away, a distant memory of a temple shrouded in mist and rain, and Kara is scared that they’ve stopped listening to anyone’s prayers at all.

As the days drag interminably onward, Kara begins to think of other ways to escape her dollhouse prison. She’s not a good enough actress to pretend obedience, and he doesn’t believe her when she tries. As strong as she is, she can’t get break her way out–the walls are steel, the bars too thick to bend. Her voice already went hoarse once from screaming–she doesn’t know where it is he’s taken her, precisely, but wherever it is there’s no one around to hear her. Kara sleeps tangled in sheets and recriminations, cursing herself even in dreams for moving planet-side, for marrying Sam, for ever leaving Galactica. Every morning he makes her breakfast and she eats it without a word in his direction, and the days stretch out in endless boredom broken only by her (sometimes successful, sometimes not) attempts to kill him.

One night, when the self-loathing is too thick for her to sleep, Kara stands up and strips, folding her clothes neatly on the chair. She wraps the sheet around her like some twisted wedding gown, climbing the stairs like a ghost in the darkness, all paleness and white. She stands in his doorway and stares into the shadows of his bedroom, just making out his form in the bed, her fingers clenched around the top of the sheet.

“I don’t have to love you to frak you, you know,” Kara says. Her voice is dull, deadened.

“What is sex without love?” Leoben asks, his voice calm. Kara wonders if he’d been asleep, or if he just lay there, night after night, waiting to hear her footsteps in the hall.

“You’ve never frakked a woman, before, is that it?” Kara asks snidely, and she can feel her fingers shaking, but her body feels strange–disconnected, maybe, as if she is a ghost and she’s watching herself in horror for what she’s about to do. She’s going to hate herself in the morning for this, but it doesn’t matter; she hates herself already, doesn’t she? What’s one more invocation in the litany of all her sins?

“That’s not it at all,” Leoben says, and he sits, rising in the darkness like some monster from the depths. “I’m not inexperienced with sex, Kara. My brethren and I, we of course experimented with physical affection. We have the same desires as–”

“Shut up.” Kara’s breathing is too light, shallow, and it makes her dizzy. “I didn’t come up here to hear about machines having sex.” Her mouth is dry; Kara licks her lips, takes a step into the room as the shadows shift to embrace her.

“Do you need something?” Leoben asks, and she hears him move, watches him sit on the edge of the bed. “To kill me again, is that it? It’s late, Kara.”

The way he treats death like a joke makes her angry when she thinks of the countless dead, the souls lost to genocide by a race that will never understand what it truly means to die. “Maybe.” Kara looks down at the sheet, feels the caress of fabric against her bare feet. “I don’t love you. I hate you. I just want you to know that.”

Leoben sighs, the sound soft; to Kara it’s almost sibilant, like a serpent hissing in warning. “I know,” he says, and he sounds sad–sad that the woman he kidnapped just doesn’t understand they are supposed to be together. It makes Kara want to kill him again, which is nothing extraordinary, but she shoves the feeling aside and focuses on why she’s there. It’s a mission, Starbuck. Like anything else. “I am hopeful that one day soon, you will understand that our destinies are woven together, the tapestry of your journey and mine are–”

Kara has no idea if Cylons can see better in the dark than humans, but he stops talking when she drops the sheet and stands naked bathed in the faintest of light. “I’m never going to love you. But if you just want to frak me, then fine.” Kara takes the steps that carries her into the room, right in front of him. His feet are on the floor, his palms resting on the bed beside him. She puts her hands on his shoulders, and she can feel him flinch when she touches him. His skin is warm, which pisses her off–he should be cold, like the metal of her Viper, like the walls of Galactica. Not warm, not soft, not human. Kara refuses to let herself think of Sam, of his body pressing her down, his mouth warm against the crook of her neck.

No.

Kara shoves hard, pushing Leoben back, and before he can stop her she’s straddling his waist. He’s bare-chested but wearing some kind of soft cotton pajama bottoms–Cylons wear pajamas? Who knew.–and Kara settles herself over him, naked, her hands still on his shoulders. She stares down at him, her hair falling around them like a curtain. He’s still lying half-off the bed, his feet on the floor. She feels his hands come up and settle on her waist, fingers digging in tight against her hips.

She hates the small shudder that goes through her, hates that she’s so touched-starved that even this machine with his fake-human skin is making her feel something, making her feel anything save loathing. Kara makes a sound of impotent rage and shoves against him again. “Frak me, then. Get it over with.”

“Kara,” Leoben breathes, and she can feel it against her skin as he lifts one hand and draws it across her cheek. “This isn’t about sex. It’s about love.”

Kara turns her head and snaps at his finger, like a wild animal that doesn’t want to be gentled. “No, it isn’t. Let me explain something about humans to you, you frakking toaster.” She starts moving her hips, and she can tell he’s conflicted and interested because he’s slowly getting hard beneath her even as his hand on her hip tightens as if he’s going to push her away. “You want to frak me. You don’t love me because you don’t know anything about me. I know what you want, and I’ll give it to you, and then you’ll let me go in the morning after you get it.” She can’t make herself kiss him, so she moves to the side and presses her mouth against his neck. His pulse is racing. She has to admit their design is flawless; his skin just tastes like skin, and his pulse feels just like anyone else’s against her tongue.

Leoben’s hands run up her back and it makes Kara shiver, her skin drinking up touch like a parched plant devours rain. “Why would you do this if you don’t love me?”

“Leoben, most of the men I frak I don’t love,” Kara says, and bites his shoulder, feeling an intense satisfaction when she feels the sink of her teeth into his muscle. She bites him harder than she would any other lover, but Kara can’t think about Sam so she rakes her nails down Leoben’s chest and feels a wild elation when he hisses, when his cock throbs between them. “But you’re not a man. You’re a machine. Like a vibrator, only I don’t need batteries,” Kara says cruelly, sitting up and staring down at him with narrowed eyes. She pushes her hips against him again and he groans.

Leoben moves one of his hands up, over her stomach and up towards her breasts. “This isn’t how it is supposed to be,” he says, but his voice is husky and his hand against her breast is shaking slightly, fingers trembling as he rubs them over her nipple.

Kara’s head goes back and she puts her hands on his shoulders, rolling her hips, pushing herself against his cock through the cotton of his pajamas. “Frak you. This is all you’re ever getting. So lie back and enjoy it, or not. I don’t frakking care either way.” She’s breathing fast now, panting, and she likes the way she can feel his thigh muscles tighten, his body tense beneath her as she rubs against him.

Leoben’s hand on her breast moves slowly up towards her neck. “If you don’t stop,” he says as his fingers tighten on her throat, “I’ll snap your neck in half.” He sounds angry now, like he did on the Gemenon, and she can hear the sneer she’s not able to see. Fear races up her spine but she ignores it, moving faster, shaking her head as she feels the growing tension in her stomach, the slick ache between her thighs.

“No, you won’t. You love me,” she says breathily, laughing, because for the first time since he kidnapped her she’s in control, she has the power and he doesn’t. It’s obvious he wants to stop her; he’s tense beneath her in a way that has nothing to do with pleasure, but she’s not imagining the slight thrust upwards of his hips, not imagining his harsh breathing and the slight sounds he’s making beneath her. “If I were you, I’d take what I could frakking get.” She puts her mouth near his ear and he lets her, drops his hand from around her throat just like she knew he would. Kara braces her hands on either side of his head, twisting her fingers in the sheets. “You want me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Leoben bites out, turning his head so his mouth is against her cheek. “But not like this.”

“Shut up,” Kara snaps, voice tight and angry, and she sits back up again and they’re staring at each other in the darkness as the tension mounts, grows thick enough to taste in the air between them. “This is all you’re getting.” The fabric beneath her is wet, her clit is swollen, she’s going to come like this and she doesn’t care that it’s wrong because it’s her, her choice, and he’s not pushing her away.

Leoben has both of his hands on her hips, and he’s helping her, moving her tight and fast against him. They’re both breathing loud and harsh and broken, and she slams her palms down on his chest and throws her head back in anticipation, and right when she’s about to come she’s lifted and the friction stops, is gone completely, and there’s a moment of disorientation as she’s thrown to the ground.

Kara looks up at him from where she’s fallen, rubbing her wrist where she caught her weight. He’s half-sprawled on the bed, his hair mussed, panting as he reclines on his elbows. She can feel the weight of his stare like a hand around her neck. “What the frak is your problem?” she growls, and it’s a growl, throaty and low, her body thrumming and dissatisfied and denied what it wants.

“I told you,” Leoben pants out, and her eyes have adjusted enough that she can see the press of his cock against his pants, the way his hands are fisted in the sheets, the rapid fall of his chest as he struggles to breathe. “This is not how it is supposed to be.”

Kara’s face is covered in sweat, tendrils of her too-long hair clinging to her face. Slowly, she rises to her feet and faces him, unconcerned that she’s naked, still trembling from pleasure so cruelly denied. Kara searches for something to say, some way to gain back the control she lost when he threw her off his lap. “This is how I know you’re a machine and not a man, Leoben,” Kara says, touching the tip of her tongue to her upper lip. She smiles at him, empty and cold, which is exactly how she’ll feel when her body calms and quiets. “A man wouldn’t have stopped.”

She turns and heads towards the door, waiting for the self-loathing to rise up like some sick tide to choke her. She doesn’t hear him come up behind her. He shoves her face-first towards the wall, his forearm slamming against her collarbone. Kara struggles, kicking and twisting in the shackle of his embrace to no avail.

“Kara,” Leoben hisses, and his voice is right next to her ear and she can feel him everywhere, pressed up against her back, the furious beat of his heart and the hardness of his cock pressed tight against her ass. “You will love me. I’ve seen it.” His other hand is between her and the wall, and despite her struggles he gets it between her legs, fingers pressing now against flesh still swollen and wet. “You’ll give in.” His breath his hot against her ear as he rubs her with two fingers pressed against her clit. It takes him a moment to get it right, and she tries to twist out of his grip, but he just tightens his hold until it’s hard for her to breathe. “Just like you’re going to do for me right now.”

His voice is a silken threat and Kara can’t stand it, can’t stop it, her body was too close before and he’s got the rhythm down now because she showed him earlier, godsdamn it, rubbing against him and giving him everything he needed to know to make her come. Kara’s knees buckle and she refuses to cry out, but it feels so good when it happens, all the tension released in a warm rush of sensation that drives everything out of her mind for a few glorious seconds of utter forgetfulness. Her palms are pressed flat against the wall and she ignores how she’s pressed against him, ignores the feeling of him kissing her neck, and watches lights break behind her eyes and swallow the darkness.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” The fingers on his free hand trail lightly down her arm and back up again, over and over, and she’s still sensitized enough that it makes her want to scream. He kisses her just below her ear, making shushing noises he must think are comforting instead of frakking creepy, but his arm is still braced hard across her collarbone and she can’t move away. “If you would just admit it, just say it, I can make it even better.”

Arrogant frakking bastard. In answer, she goes limp in his arms and waits until he straightens, until he’s holding both her arms and standing directly behind her. Without warning, she jerks her head back so she can feel her skull connect with his nose, feels the delicate bones break beneath the impact. He stumbles backwards and releases her, and Kara turns around to see him pressing his palm against his nose, face covered in blood.

“That’s a good look for you,” Kara hisses, moving towards the door, nearly tripping over the sheet she doesn’t bother to pick up. It’s not like she’s going to get any sleep tonight, anyway. “I’ll make sure to make you bleed a lot the next time I kill you. Us blonds look good in red.”

“It won’t matter,” Leoben says, his voice muffled by his hand. “I’ll always come back for you. Always” He takes a step towards her and moves his hand; there’s enough light to see the drop of blood land on the sheet, some twisted mockery of virgin’s blood spilled on pure white. He’s smiling at her with a blood-stained mouth, and Kara can still feel the echoes of her orgasm in her body, ebbing like the tide through her blood.

“I know it won’t frakking matter,” Kara says softly, hands curling into fists at her sides. “I’ll still do it, though.” To keep her sanity, she can’t do anything else.

“One day you’re going to stop fighting me,” Leoben says quietly. “I look forward to that very much. Good night, Kara. Sleep well.”

She doesn’t bother to answer before she leaves, slamming the door behind her. If he opens it again, she doesn’t notice.

Two days later, she shoves a pair of chopsticks in his neck and smiles as he dies. There is some intense satisfaction she gets from sinking something piercing and sharp into his body. In fact, the intensity of her enjoyment is almost sexual; she can’t stop herself from getting up and straddling him, just like she had the other night, violating his body just as he’d violated hers. When she touches herself that night, furtively beneath the sheet he’s so thoughtfully replaced, she’s not sure what memory makes her come; his hand between her legs, or how it had felt to kill him.

She’s not sure there’s a difference, and that makes her desperate to escape. Kara does not like the person she is becoming in this prison he calls a home.

That first night, when Kara lay in her bunk in the pilots’ rack, she could feel Earth.

She could feel it beneath her, anchored in space, a weight heavy with disappointment and desperate promise. When she closed her eyes she saw the ocean behind her eyes, heard the roar of the waves breaking on the shore. She saw the blackened ruins of civilization dotting the horizon like some kind of monolithic warning.

You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end.

No one had said anything to her; there had been no recriminations. Did you know it was like this? Did you know everyone was dead? Do you know what happened? Radiation levels were nonhazardous. Life could be sustained here, the scans said. Life had been sustained here, and whatever had ended it remained a mystery. Despite everything, there was still the hope that the fleet had found a home.

There had been gulls, soaring over the ocean. Kara had heard their cries — low, mournful wails. When she closed her eyes, she thought she could still hear them. For some reason, that sound was driving her nuts when she tried to sleep; it was like they were there in her bunk, even though she knew it was impossible.

Kara had remained mostly silent while they were on the surface. She’d ignored anyone’s attempts to talk to her and had been one of the first back to the ship, muttering only that there was a lot to do. And that was true. The fleet had to be notified, preparations for landing needed to be made. There was still elation amongst the Colonials, though it was tempered with thoughts of the battle to come, and sadness for what Earth might have been.

People wanted to talk, to theorize. — to be together and make plans for the future, to assure themselves that their long exile was over at last. All Kara had wanted to do was sleep.

Not like you’re not going to get your chance soon enough, she’d thought as she stood in the shower, watching as the water sluiced dirt off her hands. Kara watched it swirl down the drain and wondered when the last time was she’d washed dirt off her body. New Caprica, probably. She stared at the sight of it, seeing nothing but Earth’s fabled promise swirling down the drain, going down, like a spiral, washed away–

Stop it.

There was no one in the rack when she went to bed; most of her fellow pilots were getting soused in celebration. And why not? Earth was still a reason to celebrate for most everyone else. They didn’t feel the heaviness of it, didn’t have the terrible certainty that their purpose had been served and all that awaiting them on the surface was death.

Kara did not expect to live much beyond the inevitable final stand against the Cylons. She’d done what she was supposed to do, fulfilled her purpose. What else was left? Her marriage was in tatters, and her career was a jumbled mass of failures and mutinies around the one thing she’d done right; which was to find a planet with more questions than answers, the scene of an imminent war.

I’m sure I’m in line for some kind of frakking medal, she thought, and shoved the side of her hand hard inside her mouth. Her teeth sank into her flesh and she tried to breathe, tried to push past the hysteria.

All for nothing they’ll all die my fault the Cylons will kill us all and Earth and I did this I did this and better to be in space on a ship and alive than dead on Earth and Gods what have I done why did I make them listen dead dead all–

Kara sat up, shoving the curtain away from her bed in one violent motion, putting her feet on the ground. She was barefoot and dressed only in a tank and panties; most of her fatigues were still being laundered, as threadbare as they were . When she’d returned from the Demetrius she’d been shocked at how she looked — her fair hair mottled with dirt and blood, her clothes rank and stained.

The deck was cool against her feet. Not like Earth, like warm Earth, maybe they’ll bury me there and it will choke me and I won’t be able to breathe–

Kara shook herself and pressed her hands against her face. Her skin was hot, and her hands weren’t cool enough to offer any relief. She left the pilot’s barracks and headed down the corridors, her fingers brushing against the metal walls as she walked.

She thought about going to work out, about hitting something over and over with bare fists, but she bypassed the gym without entering. She didn’t realize where she was going until she was there, standing in front of the closed door. There was a truce now, and the Cylons on Galactica were no longer enemies. But the Admiral had ordered the Cylons from the basestar to be housed away from the crew, just in case.

Kara pressed her fingers against the door, fingers splayed, but she couldn’t make herself knock. She leaned forward, touching her forehead to the metal, feeling the slickness of it like a kiss against her heated skin.

Harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. All to their end.

Dead in the storm. Saw your Viper explode. Thought you were dead, Kara.

She felt the door open and pitched forward in surprise, catching herself with effort with both hands on either side of the door.

“Kara.”

She swallowed hard, staring at his face—the man who she had tortured, who had tortured her. She could still remember the dream she’d had, the last one before she’d flown into the storm. His mouth on hers, her hands frantic on his back, his body hard and heavy above hers. She could still remember killing him on the New Caprica, the way the knife had slid between his ribs, and the way he’d looked when she’d kissed him and he’d realized that she was lying.

Of course it was a lie. I don’t love him. I can’t.

“Your hair is wet,” she said. She heard the roughness of her voice and winced inwardly, both at the sound and the inanity of what she’d just said. But it was, his hair was damp as if he’d just showered, and he was wearing a shirt and a pair of pants that fit him well–where did the Cylons get clothes from when they re-downloaded, anyway?

Leoben just inclined his head, his light eyes fixed on hers, and his expression inscrutable. “Yes. I took a shower.”

The conversation was bordering on absurd. Kara stepped back, intending to leave, but the rush of thoughts hit her all at once; it was too much, and over everything she heard the gulls wail and the incessant sound of Earth’s ocean.

All to their end end end suffer he knows you better than you know yourself life is to suffer Kara Thrace harbinger of death–

Kara closed her eyes. Behind her lids she saw the mandala, and it was turning end over end, the colors mixed until they lost focus and it all swirled together and became nothing but blackness. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and dug in hard, just to see the light.

“I can’t make it stop,” she whispered. “My frakking brain.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

Kara opened her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m here,” she said, and the words were honest and raw, somewhere just between laughter and hysteria. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

The roar in her head was louder. This was a mistake. Leoben was dangerous, he was a Cylon, and just because there was a truce didn’t make this a good idea. Kara turned blindly and she nearly gasped out loud when she felt his fingers against the fine bones of her wrist. His touch felt cool, his fingers like a balm against her burning skin. He pulled sharply and turned her around. She tried to fight it but she couldn’t — he was too strong.

“Why aren’t you celebrating? Even Cylons can get drunk,” she said, breathing hard, staring at his fingers on her arm. She’d touched him before, in her dream and on New Caprica, but all of that seemed hazy and distant and very far away — like the mandala, like the promise of Earth.

“Because I don’t see the point in celebrating the inevitable. One doesn’t look into the heavens and celebrate that there are stars, Kara. I’ve always known this day would come.” His mouth curved fleetingly into something that might have been a smile. “Besides, I’m not entirely sure how welcome we Cylons would be at such a celebration. “

“Probably not very. There’s a lot of silverware on this ship.” Kara said, and laughed. The sound was as far from amused as it was possible to be, and she tried once more to pull out of his grasp. “Let me go.”

To her surprise, he did. “Why are you here, Kara? To threaten me with cutlery and make sure I was staying in my room like a good boy?” He cocked his head, studying her. He had a way of doing that that made Kara feel like she was being scanned.

You are. He’s a machine.

But Kara wasn’t sure what that really meant anymore. “Yeah,” she muttered, raking a hand through her hair, taking a step backwards. “That’s it.” She would go back to her bunk. Maybe join the others if she couldn’t sleep. If everyone was destined to end up dead in some epic battle for Earth, she might as well have a few drinks first. What the hell. She had a reputation to maintain, and everyone already thought she was a Cylon–she wasn’t doing herself any favors by staying away.

“I don’t think that’s it. You sought me out for some reason. I’m not going to keep you here by force—”

“–That’d be a change,” Kara interjected waspishly. She was digging her nails into her arm, but she couldn’t really feel it.

Leoben continued as if she’d not spoken a word. “–But it seems rather pointless to come and find me and then leave without whatever it was you wanted.”

Kara’s eyes narrowed, and she rushed at him without further thought. She slapped him across the face, pushed hard against his chest. “You frakking son of a bitch, how dare you ask me what I want!” Kara hit him again, and the impact reverberated through her body, but it didn’t do anything at all to stop the roar in her ears. “I want there to be people down there, places to live. Somewhere we can stop running–”

“The universe does not–”

“Shut up!” Kara shouted at him, trembling, her hands fisted now as she beat them against his chest, over and over. “It’s not what it was supposed to be. I failed.”

“You didn’t,” Leoben said, and he was just standing there, letting her hit him as he had before, like he’d let her submerge his head in water and kill him and make him bleed. “Kara, you found Earth. And–”

“–And what? There’s nothing there. The Cylons will be back. I found us all a place to die.” Kara stared up at him, breathing hard, her hands falling motionless at her sides. Instead of thinking about Kasey and lies and the way it had felt to slide those chopsticks into his neck, she was thinking about her dream and paint and the way his hands hand felt on her body.

“Life. Death. The universe is the cradle of both,” Leoben said simply, and he put his hands on top of hers. “The burden of what will happen from here does not fall on your shoulders alone, Kara Thrace. You have led humanity and its children here. It is up to God to decide what will be, and us to walk the path of righteousness towards our inevitable end.”

You will lead them all to their end.

She hated him for the absolute certainty she heard in his voice. Even his eyes shone down beatifically at her, radiating some inner calmness that she despised simply for existing. Why should he have that, of all people? Why did he say towards our inevitable end and make it sound like a blessing instead of the curse she knew it to be?

“Don’t you care? Don’t you care that the rest of your frakking toasters are coming to kill us all? Don’t you care that my great destiny was to find the place where it’s all going to end? I didn’t find Earth, I found a graveyard.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “Our graveyard. Ours and yours, too. That’s all I did. That’s all I ever do.”

Harbinger of death.

Leoben grabbed her face between his hands. “You found Earth. That’s all I care about, Kara. That you did what it was your fate to do. The rest will unfold as it will. You brought the rest of us so that we may bear it with you, and we will, all of us. You’re not alone anymore.”

“Frak you,” Kara hissed, and reached to push him away. “I’m always alone.” He moved back and she turned away, heading towards the door. “I don’t even know why I’m still here.”

“Yes, you do. You want something from me. You’ve come this far, Kara. Why not ask me for it?”

Eyes narrowed, she glared at him over her shoulder, her hand on the doorknob. “Because what I want, Leoben, you can’t give me.”

“I can’t change the past, or the future, no. I can’t change what is and what must be.”

“Well, then. There you go.” Kara turned around again.

“But the present, Kara, the here and now…what do you want, now?”

“To sleep,” she said honestly. Why wasn’t she leaving? She should have known he would only talk to her riddles of God and destinies, should have known all he had were metaphors and words. “I haven’t slept in days.”

“Why?”

“Are you frakking kidding me? Why do you think?”

“What happens when you try?”

Kara stared out in the hallway, and the shadows that moved and breathed. She dropped her hand from the doorknob. She turned and looked at him, standing in the center of the small room, his hands clasped behind his back as if he were standing at attention. “Can you make my brain shut up?” she asked, wary, wondering why the frak she wasn’t already halfway back to her bunk.

Leoben held his hand out to her. “Come here,” he said simply. “Come here and see.”

The moment stretched between them, pregnant with promise and tension. What the hell. Everyone else was lost to her, weren’t they? Her husband was a Cylon, and she didn’t even know where he was–frak, him being a Cylon wasn’t even their biggest problem, anyway. Lee, well—that had been a colossal mistake, hadn’t it? She’d pulled a gun on Roslin, had severely shaken Admiral Adama’s faith in her time and time again.

Every frakking thing I do is a mistake in the end. I might as well make one more. Maybe I’ll at least get a frakking nap afterwards. Kara shut the door and walked over to him. She took his hand, watching to see if he looked smug, or triumphant, that she was finally giving in as he always said she would.

I guess he was right about this, too.

He didn’t look smug. He just looked intense, serious, much the same as he always looked. He pulled her closer, and she closed her eyes, waiting. She thought it would play out between them like it had in her dream; he’d shove her against a wall and they’d go at it fast, just the way she liked it, and there was some relief in knowing this strange tension between them would finally be sated.

When he didn’t do anything, she opened her eyes and glared up at him. “Leoben.”

“Kara,” he responded, and lifted one hand. He touched it lightly to her cheek and she flinched and turned her head away. She wasn’t expecting anything gentle. It wasn’t what she wanted, either, and certainly not from him.

“Are you going to get on with it? I do have to report for duty in the morning,” she snapped, tense. His touch was strange, familiar and yet not. As always, she was both drawn to him and yet strangely repelled, and her muscles were tense as if she were about to turn and run.

His fingers went under her chin and he gently moved her face towards his. “Open your eyes,” he said, and there was a catch in his voice, some low huskiness she’d not heard from him outside of dreams.

Kara did so, and then she was suddenly frightened—she saw him and she thought now of being captive and held against her will, of the terrifying ordeal he’d put her through for months, of killing him over and over again just to watch him come back hours later with that same patient voice, that same benign smile–

Kara scrambled away, moving until her she felt her back hit the wall. He followed her, and she didn’t want him to, but she didn’t want him not to, precisely, and they were standing face-to-face, too close. He sighed, and she could feel his breath against her skin.

“You’re still afraid of me. Kara.” Leoben reached out and traced his fingers over neck, the caress deliberate. He smiled at her. “I know you are. It’s all right.”

“Stop–” she said, but bit her lip, because she didn’t really want him to stop.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I love you. You know that.” He leaned closer and exerted the smallest bit of pressure with his fingers, turning her head to the side. His mouth touched her neck and she gave an involuntary gasp, and then she realized it wasn’t a kiss as much as he was simply breathing against her skin. His hands captured her wrists and he put her arms above her head, and once again, he had her trapped.

Fear ran through her, cold-sharp darts like ice pricking up her spine, but she wasn’t trying to get away. What the frak is wrong with me? Kara tilted her head and she felt his mouth touch her pulse, felt him taste where her blood throbbed and beat like a mad thing against her skin.

“Oh, Gods,” she panted, pulling against his restraining grip, but this time he didn’t let her go and she was glad. He was holding himself away from her, their only point of contact his fingers on her wrists and his mouth on her neck. He was barely touching her, but she could feel it down to her toes, a low heat curled in her stomach. The shift from fear to desire was so fast it made her head spin.

“Don’t fight it,” he said, his low voice reverberating against her skin., Kara tried to turn towards him and kiss him, tried to do something, to take back some sense of control.

He didn’t let her. He laughed at her frustrated growl, and the sound of his laugh was decidedly menacing, and fear broke through her haze of desire and made her tense again. He moved closer so that his body was pressed flush against hers, and she flexed her fingers and whimpered. “I’m not fighting.” Yet.

“Yes you are.” Leoben lifted his head, watched her with hooded eyes. “You’re fighting me. Here,” he said, touching the side of her head. “Your body might not be resisting, but that’s not all I want you to give me.”

Kara stared at him warily, breathing lightly, her body shifting restlessly against the wall. “If you want to see me really fight, you frakking bastard, keep talking.” His words made her somewhat uneasy. That’s not all I want you to give me. What the frak did he mean by that?

Leoben started hard at her, his fingers tracing over her neck as if he were petting her. “I’ve seen you fight, Starbuck. I want to see you give in. All of you, not just your body.” Without warning, he caught her around the neck with one hand, shackling her throat in his grasp. The movement freed one of her hands, of course, but that did her absolutely no good.

Do you realize I could kill you before they came back in the room? Leoben, smiling pleasantly across the table from her, the first time they’d met.

He tightened his hand and Kara thought about New Caprica, about killing him, about how easy it would be now for him to have his revenge; she was compliant and she’d come to him of her own free will, finally, just like he’d always wanted. His fingers pressed against her pulse and she felt her heartbeat everywhere in her body as she tried hard to inhale through her nose. His eyes stayed locked on hers, pale blue and predatory like a hawk, and just when her eyes started to drift closed he released his grip so she could breathe.

The moment she tried to speak he did it again, watching as she struggled, as she kicked her heels against the hard metal wall in protest. Her free hand came up and lightly touched his shoulder, and he stopped immediately when he felt her touch. “Oh, Kara,” he breathed, and she saw that his pupils had dilated, the black inexorably consuming the light of his eyes. “I’ve been waiting a long time. Such a long time.” He tightened his fingers again, harder this time, tilting her head up and watching while she continued to struggle.

“What the hell do you want?” she panted, when she could find breath enough to speak.

“You,” Leoben said simply, and moved closer to her again, so she could feel the truth of his words pressed against her hip. His fingers stroked her neck again.

Kara breathed air into her lungs in preparation for his tightening grip, and she let her eyes close and watched as colors flared to life behind her eyes. She saw the mandala again, but it was no longer melted into darkness; the colors were vivid, the lines distinct. Kara touched her hand to his arm, and he released his grasp and let her breathe.

“I see it,” she said, and her throat hurt, but she opened her eyes and met Leoben’s, saw the flush on his cheekbones and the anticipatory look on his face, and she knew then what he wanted, knew how she was supposed to give in. Kara leaned against the wall and tilted her neck, body going limp, showing him her throat. She heard Leoben suck in a breath, and when his hand tightened, she remained still, eyes closed. When the roar inside her head became too loud she simply fell downward into light as the mandala grew and grew, until all she saw were the spirals of colors like galactic arms spread out wide and she knew herself to be the center.

Leoben released her throat and the other hand he’d still been holding, and she felt his hands on her hips as he lifted her slightly, and she was still trying fill her starved lungs when he kissed her. Kara wrapped her legs around his waist, gratified when he shuddered and gasped against her mouth. She shoved her hands in his hair and held him still, kissing him frantically. His teeth nipped her bottom lip and the angle was decidedly awkward; this was the first time it was real.

She didn’t think about New Caprica. That had been a lie, too.

His hands moved roughly over her body as he kissed her, and Kara was half-convinced this was it, that he was going to take her against the wall just like he had in her dreams, in the fantasies she would never admit to having. To her frustration, he pulled back and Kara actually hit him on the shoulder. He raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re impatient? Do you know how long I’ve waited for this? You couldn’t possibly know what it was like — knowing it was going to happen despite how hard you fought.”

Kara realized her back was no longer against the wall, and that he was holding her up with one arm while his other hand slipped beneath her tank and pushed it up over her breasts. It dawned on her belatedly that she’d walked the entire way to his quarters in a tank top and panties, and was glad no one had seen her.

“If you’re so impatient, you could frakking get on with it,” Kara told him, trying to grab at his shirt to pull it off, and his fingers caressed the side of her breast and she stilled, panting, wriggling a bit in his grasp.

“I am,” he said, tilting her, his arm still braced beneath the small of her back so she was splayed out before him. It was not something a human man could have done. He leaned down and his mouth touched the valley between her breasts. Kara half-sat, her stomach muscles protesting the position, and gave up with pulling at his shirt, unbuttoning it instead. When she had uncovered enough space she put her hands flat on his chest and then, when his mouth finally closed over her nipple, she gave a small shriek and raked her nails down his chest.

Leoben made a sound at that and moved, shoving her back against the wall, and things happened in quick succession; he tore her shirt off of her and tossed it aside, then helped her get him out of his, all the while kissing her like he was trying to devour her whole. He lifted her again and her breasts pressed against his naked chest. Her arms were around his shoulders and her legs around his waist, and she was rocking against him and pressing herself hard against his cock.

He pulled his mouth away from hers and pressed their foreheads together, looking down at her, with hands at her waist. Kara wasn’t thinking about Earth, wasn’t thinking about anything but him driving into her, hard and fast, and she reached down to unbutton his pants because she wanted him, now.

She should have known it wouldn’t be so easy.

Leoben caught her wrists, pulling her hands away, and turned again, taking her over to the small bed. His quarters were Spartan, but serviceable; a single bed, a chair. Like the brig but without the bars, she thought hazily, and then stopped thinking as he spread her on the bed and lay down on top of her.

Kara put her hands on his back as he kissed her again, and she used her nails as she stroked him, because he’d liked that before. She liked the heaviness of his body on top of her, liked being pressed down into the bed.

She was surprised at how quiet he was. The only sound in the room was their breathing as he put his hands on her hips and pulled at her panties. She canted upwards, helping him take them off. He settled back on top of her and Kara put her hands on his face, looking at him for a long moment. “I still hate what you did to me on New Caprica,” she said. “I still have nightmares.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

Kara put one hand on his shoulder, and the fingers of her other hand rubbed lightly against his mouth. “Don’t you dare lie to me and say you’re frakking sorry when I know you’re not.”

Leoben’s mouth opened, and he sucked lightly on her fingers. The touch of his tongue made her arch up hard into him. “I’m only sorry it didn’t work,” he said, when she’d pulled her hand away.

Kara nodded and put her other hand on his shoulder. She spread her legs beneath him and hooked her ankles around his calves. Leoben kissed her again and she sighed against his mouth. He reached down between them and stroked her stomach, her thighs, and then touched her between her legs. She was wet, and she felt him smile against her mouth when he felt it.

Kara pulled back a little, and this time, he did look smug. “Getting me wet wasn’t your problem.”

“Yes. It was getting you here in the first place,” Leoben agreed, and Kara actually smiled; a small smile, to be sure, and ridged with tiredness despite her eagerness for what they were doing, but it was an honest smile, like the one she’d given him when they’d found the Cylon basestar.

Maybe the time for them to lie to each other was over.

He put two fingers inside of her and it was painful enough that she writhed and gasped when he did it, but it felt good, so good, and she wanted more. She bit his lip when he kept at it, because she wanted something else between her legs and it wasn’t his hand. “Godsdamn you,” she muttered against his mouth. She kicked at him with the heel of her foot. If he thought she was all sunshine and languid limbs in bed, he hadn’t been paying attention.

He took her arms and put them above her head again, her wrists crossed together with one of his hands, and reached down to unbutton his pants with the other. He lay back against her and she felt his cock, hot and hard and ready, and she didn’t need his encouragement to put her legs back around his waist. Still he teased her, rubbing at her lazily but not actually entering her.

“This is making me want to kill you again,” Kara told him petulantly, and he grinned. She’d never seen him smile like that before.

“I know,” he said, and tightened his hand around her wrist when she tried to pull away. “Kara.” He looked down at her, his expression suddenly serious, all traces of his previous amusement having vanished.

She knew what he wanted, of course; it was what he’d always wanted from her. She closed her eyes. “Do you want me to say it even if it’s a lie, like I did before?”

“No,” Leoben said, and leaned down, kissing her neck. “But it’s not a lie, is it?”

“No,” Kara said, and turned her face away. “It isn’t.” She didn’t know how to explain to Leoben that her love for him was tenuous and edged in fear, that it was a thing born of darkness instead of light. Maybe she didn’t need to explain. Maybe he already knew.

Maybe it was the same for him, too. “I love you.”

He kissed her pulse again. “You’re mine, Kara. You always have been. And I’m yours.” With that, he thrust hard into her, and she cried out and he let her wrists go and she grabbed at his shoulders while he took her, rough just like she wanted, and there was nothing in her mind now but him and his body above hers, inside hers, his mouth still pressed against her pulse.

He was stronger than a human man and she could tell; he was hurting her just enough to make the pleasure feel sharper, and she crossed her ankles low against his back and was pleased when she heard him groan as the angle changed and forced him deeper. It didn’t take her long to come, and when she did, she tightened her thighs and cried out, digging her nails so hard into his shoulders she was dimly aware of drawing blood.

She remained tight around him, arms and legs both, and saw something as he thrust harder, as the movement of his hips become more erratic–a soft red glow that came from his spine. She stilled, her hands on his shoulders, and hesitantly touched him, wondering if he could feel it.

He made a sound and his body went tense everywhere, and he thrust one last time into her, so hard Kara cried out in half-pleasure, half-pain as he did so. Leoben came silently, without words, mouth still pressed hard against her neck. The glow on his spine eventually faded and Kara remained quiet beneath him as he caught his breath, then leaned up and took his weight off her.

“What was that?” she asked, curious. The room was dark again, and she looked up at him, unaware she was idly stroking his back.

“I’m a Cylon, Kara,” he said, and leaned down to press a kiss on her forehead. “I’m not a human. I don’t want you to forget.”

Kara’s hand moved down to his side, to the place where she’d jabbed the knife between his ribs that last time on New Caprica, to the place where he should have had scars. “I won’t forget, Leoben.”

“Good,” he said, and she knew the gesture was not lost on him. “Do you think you can sleep, now?”

She nodded–her head was blissfully, beautifully silent–and he moved away from her. She was suddenly suffused with an exhaustion that went bone-deep, and she sat on the edge of the bed and watched as he crossed the small room to a box on the floor. He pulled a shirt out and tossed it to her. Kara didn’t catch it–her reflexes were tired, she felt like she was moving through water–but she managed to lean down and pick it up.

“Thanks,” she said, pulling it on clumsily. He wasn’t that much taller than her but the shirt was long enough to cover her down to her thighs. She found her panties and pulled them on, then ran a hand through her hair and looked at him. He was still half-dressed, his pants unbuttoned, shirtless, and his hair mussed from her hands.

She would have made some snide remark about how smug he looked, but she was too tired. The walls seemed to be moving, breathing, as if the ship were something alive. “I can’t–” she said, shaking her head, and she had to sit back down on his bed. “Frak.”

“I can take you back to your room,” Leoben said, pulling on a shirt. He came and sat next to her on the bed, but he didn’t touch her. “Or you can sleep here, if you want.”

“Can’t,” Kara muttered, but she lay on her side on his bed, curling up on her side. “Have call in the morning,” she mumbled. Sleep was all around her, trying to drag her under. She closed her eyes, just for a moment, intending to stand up and make it back to her bunk on her own.

The next thing she knew, the alarm was going off and she was jolted awake by the sound, hearing the groans of her fellow pilots as they came awake. She had no idea how she’d made it back, or if it had all been a dream and she’d fallen asleep after all.

Kara sat up, and winced at the soreness in her thighs. She looked down and saw she was still wearing Leoben’s shirt. Not a dream, then.

“Starbuck! You better hurry up, we have call in fifteen minutes,” someone, Racetrack maybe, called to her. “Don’t think finding Earth gets you some kind of special treatment, now.”

Kara smiled briefly and ran a hand through her hair. “Yeah. I’m up.” She pushed the curtain away and stood up, momentarily savoring the pull of her muscles and the quiet in her brain.

Racetrack raised an eyebrow at her appearance, standing half-dressed in a shirt that obviously wasn’t her own. “Nice outfit, Starbuck. Guess we know why you weren’t at the party last night,” she said, and then winced. “That was probably a better idea than having a drinking contest with Hot Dog. Frakking Viper pilots, are you all a bunch of frakking drunks?”

Kara grinned a little. “We gotta do something stupid when we’re not flying,” she said lightly. She needed a shower. And maybe breakfast. When was the last time she’d eaten anything substantial? She could barely remember.

Kara took off Leoben’s shirt, tossing it on her bed, going to change into her uniform and wash her face. She had a lot to do, a lot to think about. But for the first time in days, maybe months, she could think clearly. Kara stood in the center of the rack, breathing deeply, savoring the quiet.

It wouldn’t last, she knew it. She knew herself. But just for now, this was enough.

I want to strangle the stars for all they promised me.

When the marines brought Leoben to her quarters, Kara knew that they didn’t have much time. They’d never leave him alone with her, not for long–someone would protest. Sam, probably, with his righteous indignation and his stupid belief that she was worth following, worth loving, worth anything at all. Leoben is in shackles and she has them taken off, barely noticing the marines’ slight hesitation as they comply. They leave her alone and she faces Leoben across the cramped confines of her cabin, this man–this thing–who has been her victim and her tormentor both.

The last time she saw him, he’d been dying of radiation poisoning in Galactica’s hold. She remembers the red of his shirt, how bright it had seemed amongst all that dimness and death. His fair skin, pale and sweaty when he’d smiled so painfully at her. I’m happy to see you.

She remembers New Caprica, vaguely; she thinks of it in colors like she does everything else, red for his blood spilled over and over, blue for the little girl’s eyes, yellow for the fear sick like death in her mouth. But Kara has other things to think about, other colors that burst like dying stars behind her eyes, and she doesn’t think about Leoben’s lies or a little girl’s voice saying Kara, Kara for more than a moment.

When she closes her eyes she hears the signal humming, fainter now than it was at first, dancing tantalizingly close and then dashing away when she tries too hard to listen. She started painting because she thought it might help to distract herself, might make the sound come back loud and strong and sure. But she can’t paint anything but the planet and the star and the comet, over and over, and if the way to Earth is somehow hidden in the thick paint she can’t find it. The colors stain the bulkhead of her cabin, smeared across the dirty grey walls in reds and blues and white.

Leoben is staring at her like she’s some kind of avenging angel, some kind of prophet. He’s talking but Kara can’t concentrate on words, only hears the timber of his voice, drenched in the assurances she’s losing by the hour. He could be giving her the way to Earth and she wouldn’t know what the frak he’s saying. Her skin feels tight, slow; it feels like her body is moving two seconds behind her mind, has felt that way for days now. Kara knows somewhere deep down it’s because she’s not sleeping or eating, but she doesn’t take a break, doesn’t bother to eat with her crew.

My crew. They want to put me out of the airlock or leave me here, crazy Starbuck, doesn’t know what she’s doing, it’s a trap, she’s a Cylon, we should kill her–

Kara crosses to Leoben and slaps him hard across the face. It takes a few seconds to feel the sting in her hand. “I don’t know how to find it,” she says, and her voice is a rough, torn thing. “I can’t see it anymore. I can’t.” She puts her hands on him, touches him, feels the warmth of his skin against her fingertips. She feels like she’s spinning out of control, crazy, and his eyes are calm and green, green, and has she used green, is anything green, does she know what’s green other than Earth’s forests and the promise of life?

There is no life here. Kara grabs him and pulls him to her, kisses him hungrily. “No one believes me,” she growls against his mouth. “No one frakking believes me.” She can taste certainty in his kiss, can drink it like ambrosia from his lips, and she thinks she could devour him just for that.

“I believe you,” he says, his hands coming up to grasp her face. “I’ve always believed in you. You are the light in the darkness, you are the angel God has sent to us.” He stares at her, intent, and his voice is almost desperate. “You must find your center, your axis, on which the world inside you spins.”

“I’m not an angel. I’m nothing. I’m frakking crazy.” She’s heard this from the crew, in the whispers they’re no longer bothering to hide. She can’t meet Leoben’s eyes, hers shift and touch around the room; the painting, her bed, the charts scattered around her desk. Nothing holds her interest for longer than a few seconds at a time, and the music sings soft and sinister in her head. Kara twines her hands in his hair and yanks his head down to her. “Make it stop. Make it stop.” She pauses, her mouth so close to his that she can taste his breath. “Make me see.”

Leoben moves and shoves her back against the wall, his hands going beneath her tanks, sliding against her stomach and up towards her breasts. Kara needs a bath, she’s filthy, but she doesn’t care about anything except for his hands on her body, his thigh between her legs as he anchors her to the wall. She’s trying to take his shirt off but she gives up when her fingers are too clumsy to get the buttons off, digging her nails in his neck and settling for letting him undress her instead.

He tries to take his time, to explore her body and memorize the curves of her breasts with his fingertips. Kara allows it for a few seconds, before her nerves oversensitize and she can’t stand it anymore; the touch against her skin feels like needles pricking a thousand places all at once. She grabs at him again by the hair and snarls, “They’ll be back soon. Hurry,” her hands going to his belt. There’s a half-remembered dream in there somewhere (hands battling hers away, Leoben’s body above hers, paint smeared on his temples) but she doesn’t pay attention, she just pulls at the thick leather strap and struggles to get his pants off. It takes a few seconds before they’re out of the way, and then her hand closes around his cock, hard and ready.

Leoben is pulling at her clothes but he stops when she touches him, gasping, his head thrown back as he’s lost in momentary pleasure. Kara kicks her heel against his spine and hisses “hurry the frak up,” barely recognizing the sound of her own voice. Leoben touches his fingers to her lips, saying “find your center and you will see God’s plan,” before he deftly unbuttons her pants and pushes them down her hips. He hooks his arm under her leg and yanks it upwards, throwing her off-balance. She feels him pressed against her for half a second and then he’s inside of her, the angle all wrong and painful and the wall cold against her naked back.

She doesn’t care. She closes her eyes and the colors swirl together, the music is louder and softer in turn, and he’s kissing her like he’s dying. She feels all of it, the drive of his body, his hands grasping roughly at her shoulders. She opens her eyes when she hears something in the hallway; footsteps, a low murmur of voices. She stares at Leoben, who is watching her, all bright-eyed intensity like a hawk. She watches the way his eyes constrict, the green of his irises narrowing into a thin band circling the black. She’s whimpering from the roughness and the urgency of this, the thing she swore would never happen, the thing she always thought she’d die before she’d allow.

I did die. Never say never, Thrace.

The pleasure of it swirls together behind her eyes and she can’t see shapes, just the pulsating shift of light as the red turns to blue turns to yellow turns to white. She’s surprised when she comes, when her body tenses and shudders and finally breaks. Kara pulls him against her and buries her head in the space between his neck and shoulder, and puts her hand on his waist, the place where she’d shoved a knife deep inside. She rubs her thumb over the spot and Leoben shudders against her in response. Kara kisses his neck, sucks at skin once pierced by the blunt edge of smooth wood, and murmurs something against his skin that might be I love you or I hate you or thank you, or some convoluted amalgamation of all three, which is exactly how she feels. He puts his hand in her hair and pulls her head away from his neck, and Kara watches him come with an expression torn between agony and joy on his face.

When it’s over she rests against him for a moment, breathing deep, as the image of the stars and the comet resettle itself into the familiar pattern, as the music fades and tickles at her memory like a dream. Kara puts her hands on his arms and feels strangely like she’s going to cry. “I feel like I’m going crazy,” she whispers against his shirt, which is half-unbuttoned and streaked with dirt and dried blood.

Leoben tips her face up to his and smiles at her, his fingers tracing soothing patters against the curve of her cheek. “Now you understand what I mean, when I say to know the face of God is to know madness,” he says, and kisses her temple. “It is a hard burden to bear, Kara. I know, believe me. And you are carrying the hopes of all of us within you, trapped in the tides of what must come. Let the righteousness of your path fill you, let it wash away doubt.”

“You never did make any frakking sense,” Kara mutters, pulling back, running a hand through her sweaty hair. They dress in silence, and she does feel better; more centered, maybe, more connected to things that are real. She picks up the paintbrush and crosses the room, staring at the colors on the wall with renewed determination. “I know I can find it. I know it. Come over here. Help me.”

“I believe you,” Leoben says quietly. “I always have. You just have to look deeper into the void, and you will find what you seek.” He stands next to her, puts his arm around her waist, steady and sure. Kara raises the paintbrush to the wall and he reaches up and wraps his fingers around her wrist, guiding her, anchoring her to the present. Kara takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, and paints, seeking the future in shapes, seeking Earth in the chaos.

But Kara, in her usual fashion, can’t ever leave well enough alone. It’s not enough that it’s the three of them–Kara, Sam, and Leoben–and that Sam knows, knows Leoben is frakking his wife even if no one’s actually told him so. No, Kara has to do something stupid like she always does, has to up the stakes another frakking million points. “If I win this round,” she purrs, smiling, and her expression makes him want to frak her or smack her or maybe both, “You two have to make out. Until I say stop.”

“No,” Sam says immediately, glaring at her. He looks over at Leoben, who is quiet and staring at the two of them with his usual infuriatingly unfathomable expression. “We’re frakking you, not each other, Kara.” It’s the first time he’s acknowledged it, that he knows, and part of him wants someone to deny it.

But of course, no one does. Leoben just stares at him for a long second and shrugs. “Sure,” he says, eying Sam in a way that makes Sam want to smack him instead of Kara.

Kara touches the tip of her tongue to her lip. Sam’s had too much to drink, and he can feel Leoben’s amused eyes on him and Kara’s certainty that he’s going to back down and refuse. “Fine,” he says, snatching up his cards. “You’re not going to win anyway, Thrace. Your hand is crap.” His voice is filled with the confidence only liquor and false bravado can provide. He staunchly refuses to look at Leoben.

Kara wins, of course, pulls it out of her ass at the last second and tosses her cards down with a laugh of victory, throwing her arms up in celebration. “I’ve been playing cards with pilots while you’ve been running laps with dumb jocks, Anders,” she crows nonsensically, her words a little slurred from the piss-poor liquor they’re drinking. “Go on, boys. Entertain me.” She leans back in her chair, hands behind her head, a self-satisfied smirk spreading across her face. “Wish I had a frakking cigar.”

Sam stands up, angry, moving without any of his athlete’s grace. The chair clatters to the floor behind him and he shakes his head, staring at his wife with narrowed eyes. “This isn’t…you cheated. You had to have cheated.”

“Maybe,” Kara says, and laughs–the sound a little wild and more than a little soused. “But you still lost, soldier. Go on,” she said, waving a hand towards Leoben’s direction. “He’s a good kisser, Sam. Trust me.”

Sam can feel his body tense up at that, feel the flush in his cheeks. Anger. That’s it. He turns, muttering something, intending to get out of there, away from Kara and her frakking stupid games, and then Leoben says quietly, “You didn’t really think he’d do it, did you, Kara?” He sounds like he always does; sly, like he knows something everyone else doesn’t.

And that’s enough to make Sam lose it.

He spins, fast, and grabs Leoben by the collar of his shirt. He barely catches the flash of surprise on the other man’s face before Sam shoves him backwards, towards the wall, pressing his mouth to Leoben’s before he can think about what he’s doing. Leoben’s body is hard; it’s not like kissing a girl, there’s nothing soft about it. Even Kara, with her body toned and muscled, has curves a man just doesn’t have, has a softness to her kiss even when she’s angry, like she so often is.

Sam feels something zing up his spine and rush over his body, breaking over him in shivers–he wants to blame it on that godsdamned Cylon thing he shares with Leoben, because the alternative is not something he wants to consider. But Leoben’s kissing him back, his mouth open and hot, and suddenly Sam doesn’t care what makes it feel good, it just does. Sam’s hands are on Leoben’s shoulders and he shoves Leoben back against the wall again, just for good measure, and Leoben makes a sound that Sam likes, so he does it again. Sam is dimly aware of Kara saying something behind him–maybe it’s stop, maybe it’s don’t stop, but Sam doesn’t really give a frak what it is. He keeps going, grateful his anger has some outlet, pretending he doesn’t feel the hardness pressed against his hip.

He’ll stop when he’s godsdamned good and ready.

Eventually he pulls away and looks over at Kara. Her face is flushed and her eyes look a little glazed. “That what you wanted?” he asks, voice roughened, breathing like he’s just run a frakking mile. Kara gives a slight nod and looks like she’s going to say something but can’t; a rarity for her, maybe he’s found some way to make her shut up. Sam turns and looks back at Leoben–his hair is mussed (had Sam done that? He dimly remembers maybe that he did, fingers twining through Leoben’s fair hair, grasping tight at the short strands). He’s breathing fast, too, and Sam realizes Leoben’s hand is on his shoulder and they’re still pressed against the wall, both of them, and Sam suddenly isn’t sure what to do.

Walk away doesn’t occur to him. It’s too late for that.

Kara finds her voice–of course she does, it’s Kara, and Sam knows her well enough to know she’ll have to say something. “Please, don’t stop on my account.”

Sam looks back at Leoben, uncertain, and then Leoben smiles at him; slow, amused. He leans forward and puts his mouth next to Sam’s ear. “My turn, don’t you think?”

Sam doesn’t think it’s the Cylon thing that is making him shiver this time; it’s Leoben’s breath, warm against the sensitive whorls of his ear. He should say frak you or why the hell would you think that or anything other than what he does say. “Try it and see,” Sam answers. Leoben has him backed up against the metal wall so fast it makes Sam’s head spin. He hears Kara laugh delightedly, hears a sound that might actually be her clapping, and then Leoben braces one arm against his collarbone and kisses him, and Sam doesn’t hear anything but the roar of his blood in his ears. He struggles and Leoben just pins him harder with his arm and his body, doesn’t let him get away, and maybe Sam likes that, too. He keeps struggling just so Leoben will keep doing it, because it’s pretty frakking obvious that Sam doesn’t want to get away.

When Leoben pulls back, they’re both hard and Sam knows it’s not going to stop here, not going to stop with kissing, and he can see Kara get up and pull off her boots. She’s clumsy in her haste, and even from his distance across the room Sam can tell her hands are shaking. She gets up and puts her boots outside the door to the pilot’s rack and closes it tight.

Maybe losing that hand wasn’t so bad, after all.

These versions of violence, sometimes subtle, sometimes clear.

That first night, some of the crew want to stay on Earth. It might be desolate, destroyed by some unknown war, but it’s still Earth. Sam is somewhat surprised when Kara goes back to Galactica, but he’s not surprised when Leoben follows her. Sam goes back with them, but he doesn’t think his wife is paying him any attention whatsoever. In the hangar, he watches as Kara drags Leoben into a corner, arguing in hushed voices. He can’t hear what they’re saying. At the end, before Kara storms off (he’s gratified to see that’s the same with Leoben as it is with everyone else), Leoben says something and touches her cheek. Kara flinches, but she doesn’t pull away–in fact, she turns her face slightly towards Leoben’s hand, her eyes closing briefly before she pulls away with an angry glare. Sam feels it like a punch to the gut, Kara taking comfort from that–that thing, where she refuses it from him.

You’re one of those things, too, his inner voice says tauntingly, but Sam quiets it with effort. He’s not a Cylon like Leoben.

Frak. Maybe if I was, she’d want me again.

Sam waits in the shadows, watching as Kara walks right by him without saying a word. She doesn’t even see him. Sam is starting to wonder if she ever will again.

Leoben sees him, though. Sam can feel it, a small tickle in the back of his mind, a zing like electricity against his spine. He looks over and the two men stare at each other amidst the commotion and confusion, the disappointment and elation Earth has brought to them all. It’s a moment of poignant recognition, but Sam feels the stirrings of anger. He hates Leoben for what the other man did to Kara, sure, but he hates even more that Leoben is so supremely confident in his Cylon-ness, his otherness.

Leoben starts walking towards him, intent, and Sam pauses for a moment before he turns away. There’s too much to do to land in the brig, and if Leoben opens his mouth and says anything, that’s exactly where Sam is going to end up.

* * *

Sam stands in the shower, thinking about Earth strewn with the charred remains of some by-gone civilization. It reminds him of Kara, his marriage, and the frakking mess his entire life has become. The images are burned in his mind, a testament of failure, and he’d give anything for them just to go away. Despite the desolation of the planet below, people are still celebrating. He can hear them pass by occasionally; a rousing chorus of some military drinking song he wasn’t a soldier long enough to learn, cheerful shouts, drunken laughter. He doesn’t know where to go. He’s not a human, he’s not a soldier, he’s not welcome anywhere. Even the other Cylons, while they regard him with some kind of odd reverence, don’t necessarily want him around. Besides, it’s not like Sam’s eager to be all buddy-buddy with the architects of the human genocide, now, is he?

So where is he supposed to go, exactly?

The water is hot, almost too hot, but he can barely feel it against his naked back. Sam puts his hands on the tile and closes his eyes, intending to stand a few more minutes beneath the spray before going to bed. He’s not tired, but there’s very little else that sounds appealing at the moment, and he refuses to go and find Kara. Let her come to him if she wants to.

He knows, of course, that she won’t. Wherever she is tonight, whoever she’s spending it with, Sam Anders is the last thing on her mind.

His hand reaches for the faucet when he feels it, that same electric rush, and Sam stiffens when he realizes what it means. It’s a Cylon, and he doesn’t even need to turn around to know which one it is. “What the frak are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” Leoben asks, his voice quiet. When Sam turns his head, he notices Leoben’s standing at the entrance to the showers (which are empty, save for Sam–everyone else has somewhere to be, some place they belong), and is still fully dressed.

“You’re not here to shower, unless Cylons don’t need towels,” Sam snaps. “Go away, Leoben. Go find Kara.” His mouth twists. “That’s who you really want to see, isn’t it? What, did you think she was in here? You’d probably have better luck with that than I would.” Sam has no idea why he’s saying these things, not when the truth of the words hit him like a punch to the gut.

“I doubt that,” Leoben mutters, and rakes a hand through his hair. There is flash of irritation on his face, gone in a second, and then he fixes his gaze on Sam. “She’s not too pleased with me at the moment. She thinks I lied to her about Earth.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time you lied to her, would it?” Sam takes a threatening step towards Leoben, not caring that he’s naked, not caring that the shower is still running full-steam. “You’ve lied to her about everything else, haven’t you?”

Leoben cocks his head, watching Sam’s approach. He doesn’t back up. “Of course not. I told her it was her destiny to find Earth. Everything I’ve ever done was to see that she did what God intended her to do. And she did,” he finishes simply, his hands splayed in front of him, looking oddly like a priest giving a benediction.

“Yeah?” Sam feels the anger flare up, as hot as the water still steaming around him. “And New Caprica? What the frak was that about, huh? Finding Earth?” Sam moves before he can think it through, shoving hard against Leoben’s chest, pushing the other man backwards. “Or was that to get her to love you,” he sneered, all his anger focusing on the man in front of him, the impotent rage simmering beneath the surface finally rising to head. I can take it out on him. Who the frak cares? We don’t need him anymore.

Leoben moves fluidly, absorbing the blow, looking as if he doesn’t even feel it. “I did that to keep her alive,” he says, his voice still very calm. Droplets from the shower are peppering his shirt, and when he rakes his hair back, the blond strands turn dark from the water. “I had to give her something to live for.”

“She had me,” Sam shouts, his words bouncing off the walls of the shower in an angry echo. “Until you took her away, she had me. A life. Our marriage.”

“I really don’t think that would have been enough for her, do you?”

Sam makes a choked sound, a wordless exclamation of a rage so thick he can’t voice it, and grabs Leoben around the neck. He turns and slams Leoben against the metal wall of the shower. “I don’t know,” he answers, voice whisper-quiet. “I never got the frakking chance to find out, did I?” Sam crowds against Leoben’s back, completely forgetting he’s still naked.

“The resistance. You fought, Anders. You think she wouldn’t have?” One side of Leoben’s face is pressed against the wall, the water soaking through his clothes. “They might have killed her. I couldn’t take that chance. The others, they didn’t understand about Kara, that without her we were hanging motionless, threads without a pattern, that her death would unravel the tapestry of our destinies–”

Sam reaches out and turns on the water as far to scalding as it will go, feeling the burn and watching with vicious satisfaction as Leoben twists and hisses in reaction. Sam shoves him against the wall harder, growling, “Maybe she would have died. Or maybe we would have kicked your asses off that frakking rock. I won’t know, will I, because you took her away when I was sick and left me to die.”

Leoben is breathing hard, obviously in pain from the scalding water, but he laughs, looking up at Sam with glittering eyes. “It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? Before you lost her, I mean. Maybe you should be grateful.”

Sam’s body goes still. “Is that so? Or, you know, maybe I should kill you. For what you did to her. To me.” He reaches out again and turns the water to freezing cold. He’s so angry, he barely notices the shock of the temperature change.

“You’re so alike, you and Kara.” Leoben is actually laughing, though his body is shivering from the cold of the suddenly icy water. “All of this has happened before…” Leoben moves before Sam can stop him, in some twisting gesture that puts Sam against the wall where Leoben had been moments before. Leoben is not as tall as Sam, but Sam can’t dislodge the other man no matter how hard he tries–and he is most certainly trying, shoving against Leoben’s body to no avail. “I did what I had to do. Surely you understand that, don’t you? Brother,” Leoben murmurs. The way he says the word sounds like a cross between a curse and endearment.

“I’m not your brother,” Sam bites out, the water sliding over his skin and raising goosebumps on his body. Leoben is warm against him, his skin warm like a human’s would be warm, nothing cold or mechanical in the slightest. “Don’t call me that.”

“But you are,” Leoben murmurs. “You are my brother. You are Cylon, like me. Aren’t you tired of fighting what you are, Anders? You fight against your path as hard as she does. God knows I will need all the patience in the universe to deal with the both of you.”

Sam pushes against Leoben’s shoulders, fingers tangling in the wet material of Leoben’s shirt. “Get off me. I have no path. I have nothing.” He blinks, the water from the shower running down his hair and into his face, stinging his eyes. “You don’t have to deal with me at all. Me or Kara, for that matter. Leave us both the frak alone.”

Leoben reaches out and turns off the shower. “Of course you have a path. God gives us all a destiny, Sam. And you, yours–you are one the final five. Exalted among us.” Leoben pulls away, runs his hand down Sam’s chest, his other still anchoring Sam to the wall. “We would welcome you with open arms.” Leoben leans forward, his mouth a breath away from Sam’s skin. “Brother,” he says again, and touches his mouth to Sam’s neck.

The current that connects them, that strange hum he feels around Leoben, is amplified a thousand times when Leoben’s mouth touches against him. Sam gasps, he can’t help it. It feels good, Gods, like the first time he scored a goal in Pyramid, the roar of the crowd, being with Kara, flying a Viper for the first time. It’s exhilarating and terrifying and his hands are on Leoben’s shoulders, but he’s not trying to push him away at the moment.

“See? This isn’t about Kara, Sam. This is about you. I can help you.” Leoben’s body is pressed fully to his now, and Sam realizes with some shock that he’s hard, that his body is responding in a way he would have never thought possible. “I set Kara on the path of righteousness, to be a beacon in the darkness. I can help you. Let me help you.” Leoben’s voice is hypnotic, his breath warm against Sam’s skin. “You could burn as brightly as she does, if you would just let yourself be who–and what–you are.”

“Frak you,” Sam mutters, and pushes Leoben again. “Get away from me.” There is a hardness pressing against his hip, and when Sam notices it, he grabs Leoben’s head by his hair and snarls, “I thought you loved Kara.”

“I do,” Leoben says, sounding unconcerned, unresisting in Sam’s grasp. “As do you. But I keep telling you, this isn’t about her. Besides, you cannot contain that which is infinite.” Before Sam can react to that, Leoben shifts again and Sam is turned around, finds himself chest-first against the wall, which is uncomfortably hard, water-slicked but still cold. Leoben is pressed up against his back. The water stops, and Leoben holds Sam immobile with one hand in the center of his back. “I watch you, Sam, do you know that? I saw the way you looked at Kara today, the way you were on the Demetrius when we were together in her cabin. You are not jealous of any affection she has for me–”

“Yeah, because there isn’t any,” Sam snaps, looking over his shoulder. Leoben is stripping off his sodden shirt, tossing it to the floor of the shower in a wet heap.

“–You are jealous because you have no place to belong,” Leoben finishes, as if Sam hasn’t spoken, pushing up against him again. His chest is warm against Sam’s back. Sam takes a deep breath, feeling Leoben’s cock hard against his ass. “You seek acceptance, a place in the continuity of things which are greater than yourself. And you can have that.” Leoben leans forward, mouth against Sam’s neck again. “Eventually.” Leoben sinks his teeth in lightly, biting at Sam’s neck, and his hand goes around between Sam and the wall, fingers resting light on Sam’s stomach. “There is anger in you. Rage, because you are not what you think you should be. You cannot see the light of truth when you are shrouded in such darkness and doubt. Fight it. Fight me. Go on. Through this will come the clarity you seek.” Leoben bites his neck again, harder this time. “Go on, Sam. I can take it.”

Sam fights because he doesn’t know what else to do, because there’s nothing else to do; Leoben has him pinned and there’s no escape. He is twisting, angry, saying things that don’t make sense–cursing Kara, Leoben, the Cylon race, the Gods, this stupid frakking war, Earth for being nothing but a barren wasteland, everything he can think of. Leoben’s hand goes between them and wraps around his cock, and the hum between them sounds like music, like the music he can still sometimes hear when he closes his eyes and tries to sleep. Sam realizes he’s moving his hips, thrusting into Leoben’s fingers wrapped tight around his cock. Leoben’s fingers are calloused and the friction is perfect, but Sam is still fighting, smacking his palms against the wall, the stinging pain rushing into the pleasure and confusing his senses until he’s finding it hard to breathe. He’s close, very close, and he knows he’s not going to get away, that no matter how hard he tries to fight, tries to run, it won’t matter. Leoben’s touch is rough, he’s not gentle in the slightest, but it’s perfect, just what Sam wants, exactly how he does it himself when he’s too angry to sleep and needs some kind of release.

“Gods,” Sam moans, leaning his head back, and Leoben kisses him, open-mouthed and hot. He can feel Leoben rubbing rhythmically against him and Sam kisses him back finally. Leoben tastes slick like water and kissing him is not like anything Sam’s ever felt before, but it’s not bad, not at all. The air is almost lit up with static, the connection electric between them.

“See?” Leoben pants, fingers tightening, hand moving in a way that makes Sam moan and nearly drives him to his knees. “You do burn. So bright I can barely see. Just like Kara.” He sounds pleased beneath the breathlessness. Leoben’s thumb rubs over the head of his cock–once, twice, three times–and that’s it, it’s over, Sam presses his face against the wall and shudders as he comes. The tension and the anger are washed away by his orgasm, and when it is over he rests against the wall, shaking slightly from the release.

Leoben is still tight against him when Sam comes back to himself, and he looks over his shoulder; Leoben’s dressed in a pair of soaking wet black pants and a belt, barefoot, his hair in disarray. There’s something odd about Leoben’s eyes. For a brief moment it looks like something red has been trapped in his predatory gaze, escaping as light. Sam blinks and it’s gone, and he doesn’t think anything else about it. Leoben steps back and lets him move. Sam is still breathing hard, and he rakes a hand through his wet hair and grabs Leoben by the shoulders, turning and shoving him against the wall in exactly the same place where Sam had been before.

Sam touches Leoben, runs his hands over the back of his spine and watches as Leoben shivers in response. They don’t speak, because Sam doesn’t know what to say. Sam reaches around and presses the heel of his hand to Leoben’s erection, rubbing up and down the length of him through Leoben’s soaked pants. He leans down, bites Leoben’s neck just as Leoben did to him earlier. His gestures are clumsy, not as assured as Leoben’s, but his hand applies steady hard pressure and Leoben is panting and shifting beneath him in a way that seems as if Sam’s doing all right.

“I don’t like this,” Sam says, and it’s too awkward to try and bite Leoben’s neck and keep rubbing his cock, so Sam pulls back and grabs the back of his neck instead. It’s not an angry grip, not like before; it’s almost like Sam is holding him in place, keeping him still. “I mean, I don’t like being a Cylon.” Oddly, he’s not as angry, though he can still feel the tendrils of his quieted rage licking at him, trying to draw him back in. “I want to be who I was.”

“I know,” Leoben says, raising his hands and placing his palms on the wall. “But you’re something else, now. Embrace it, Sam. Be one of us. It is your destiny.”

“Can you just be quiet for two seconds?” Sam asks, almost huffily, and Leoben gives a husky laugh and closes his eyes, nodding slightly. Sam concentrates, moving his palm up and down, pressing hard because that’s what he’d like if it were him. There is a sudden red glow from Leoben’s back, unexpected, and Sam pauses for a moment in surprise, stilling the motion of his hand as he watches. “What’s–”

“Sam,” Leoben gasps, clearly meaning don’t stop, and Sam rubs his palm against Leoben’s cock again, but he moves his hand from around Leoben’s neck and mimics the motion of his palm on the small of Leoben’s back, right in the center, where the glow is emanating from.

Leoben’s head falls back, and Sam can feel Leoben’s cock pulse against his hand as Leoben comes with a sharp breath. His back arches and the muscles in his shoulders and arm tense as he holds himself rigid for a few seconds, relaxing when the glow of his spine finally recedes and disappears altogether. Leoben straightens and turns, leaning back against the shower wall. He looks sated, sleepy, almost like a cat.

Neither of them say anything for a long time. Sam realizes he’s naked, and grabs a towel from the rack and wraps it around his waist. Leoben reaches down and picks up his shirt, still dripping wet from his impromptu shower. There is really nothing they need to say to each other, but Sam puts his hand on Leoben’s shoulder. He tries to say something, but he doesn’t know what that should be. The bond between them is a tangible thing. Sam hates that he can feel the weight of it, but he can, stretched between them like something alive.

Sam drops his hand. He wants to say stay away from me but he doesn’t know if he means it. He wants to say stay away from Kara, but he doesn’t know if he means that, either.

In the end, he says nothing at all.

It’s hard for three people to try and get undressed in the close confines of the bunk. Especially because Sam and Kara are drunk (Leoben’s not but he’s acting weird–weirder than normal, even–and Sam thinks maybe he’s drunk on something that’s not liquor) so that makes it even harder to move around and make fingers work on buttons and tanks and shoes. Kara (the first of them to strip naked, which is predictable but Sam isn’t complaining) is being her usual self–impossible–kissing him and murmuring that was hot, baby in his ear and keeping him from taking his clothes off because she’s pressing herself against him and sucking on his neck. Leoben is pulling his own shirt off and looking at Sam like he thinks Sam is going to bolt at any second.

Sam thinks about bolting, that’s not a lie. But Kara’s body is sleek and muscled and naked, and she’s pressing it against him and Leoben is behind him suddenly, and the hands pulling at Sam’s tanks are not Sam’s and they’re not Kara’s — sure, Sam thinks for a second about leaving when Leoben slides his hands up Sam’s back.

He only thinks about it for a second, though.

Kara’s laughing, her eyes shining, and she looks for a second like the hotshot pilot he remembers when they first met. Gone is the crazed light in her eyes, the tension, the almost frightening intensity he remembers from the Demetrius. He sees a shadow in her smile of the girl he remembers from Caprica, the girl who pointed a gun at him and played Pyramid in the waning light of a radiation-soaked sun. It’s been so long since he’s seen that girl that he doesn’t care if it’s the liquor or Leoben or whatever the frak, he just wants her to stick around.

Which must be why, when Leoben’s hands slide around his chest and rest on his hips, when Leoben yanks him back with a gesture that’s a little too rough and starts biting his neck, Sam throws his head back and moves so Leoben can keep doing it. He doesn’t mean to moan, though, not out loud. He’ll blame the liquor when he thinks about it later. Kara laughs again and wriggles against him, and the contrast of her soft body in front of him and Leoben’s behind him is making Sam crazy.

“You like that, baby?” Kara asks, licking his collarbone, her hands light on his stomach. It’s a stupid question because she has to be able to tell that he likes it, she’s not an idiot, and she’s standing close enough that it’s not like it takes a frakking genius to figure out yes, yes he likes it.

“Sam,” she says, warm breath tickling his skin and Leoben is still biting him, on the back of the neck, and Sam pulls and struggles just enough to make Leoben yank him back into place. “I want you to say it,” she murmurs, and he’s got his hands on her back and her skin is warm, hot almost, maybe as hot as his. Leoben’s hands are hot, too, and dear Gods his mouth–

Sam puts his hand in Kara’s hair, pulled back in her customary messy ponytail (not wild, hanging in deadened eyes that haven’t seen sleep in days) and pulls her head back, a little harder than he would have done sober. “Shut up, Thrace,” Sam growls. “I don’t care what you want right now.” She sucks in a breath at that and Sam leans down and kisses her, and she tries to bite his lip but Sam knows she likes aggression, especially in bed. Sam wonders if she’s like that with Leoben, too, and then wonders why the frak the thought makes his cock harder, which he really hadn’t thought was possible.

Leoben gives a low laugh, and it feathers out against Sam’s skin, over the bite marks Leoben left on his shoulder. The sensation is strange, pleasure spiked with pain, like the edge of a knife running over a bruise. Sam keeps kissing Kara, her tongue tangling with his, and Leoben’s hands are moving down Sam’s hips and then they’re all moving–Leoben is pushing them, he has to be, or maybe they have some frakking hive-mind because they’re all moving so that Kara’s back hits the bunk and then they stop moving because there isn’t anywhere else to go.

Kara pulls her mouth away and looks over Sam’s shoulder at Leoben. She’s touching Sam, touching him everywhere, and it’s a change because the handful of times they’ve been together it’s been fast as hell and over before there was time for anything resembling this. Part of him would be pissed it took Leoben to get what he wanted from Kara, but frak it, there’s no time and they all might end up dead anyway.

“What are you laughing at?” Kara asks, her voice honey-sweet, a tone Sam knows means nothing of the kind. “Hey, Sam. You wanna know something about Leoben?” Kara wriggles free of him, gets out from the trap of Sam’s body and the bunk behind her in a way that means she rubs a lot against Sam’s cock, and that disorients him enough that he doesn’t stop her from getting away. Sam turns around so that it’s his back against the bunk now, and takes a moment to look at Leoben–barefoot, dressed in a pair of pants and nothing else–and Kara, naked and climbing over a chair while giggling (so completely not graceful that he has to laugh), going to stand behind Leoben. “Leoben’s a bit of a–what do you call that, when you like pain?” she asks, maniacally cheerful, putting her hands on Leoben’s shoulders and rubbing slightly.

“Masochist,” Leoben answers, the only one of them who’s not drunk, but he still looks a little crazed–then again, when doesn’t he?–and then Sam watches as his eyes close and his body shudders as Kara pulls her nails down his back. Kara’s got short nails but she’s strong, she’s scratched Sam before enough that it hurt for days afterward in the shower. “Only for you,” Leoben whispers, almost reverently.

“Just for her?” Sam asks, his voice husky. He reaches out and rests his hand on the skin between Leoben’s neck and shoulder.

Leoben’s smiles at him, actually grins, and echoes Sam’s own words back at him. “Try it and see.”

Sam leans forward and puts his mouth right where his hand had been. He feels Leoben’s sweat-slick skin between his teeth and bites, harder than he’s ever bitten anyone before. Suddenly there are things happening that go too fast to keep up with; Leoben grabs Sam’s shoulders and shoves Sam back against the bunk, kissing him hot and hard and insistent. “Maybe not just for her,” Leoben murmurs against his mouth before pulling away.

“Play nice, boys.” Kara sounds amused, and Sam watches as she kisses Leoben’s back, presumably over the scratches she left with her nails.

“You don’t want us to do that,” Leoben says, not taking his gaze from Sam’s, reaching out and undoing the belt on Sam’s pants. “There’s nothing you want that’s peaceful.” Which is an extremely accurate statement about his wife. Whatever else Leoben has done, he definitely gets Kara.

“Oh,” Kara says, shrugging, peeking at Sam over Leoben’s shoulder. “I guess not.” She bites her lip, watching as Leoben works at the fastening of Sam’s pants. “Gods. This is–Gods. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner.”

Leoben looks up and meets Sam’s gaze, and then rolls his eyes–which is unexpected enough to surprise a laugh out of Sam. He stops laughing, though, when Leoben finishes what he’s doing (which happens to be unzipping Sam’s pants) and goes to his knees. Kara says something but Sam doesn’t know what it is, because Leoben is pushing Sam’s pants down and then he’s breathingagainst Sam’s cock and taking it in his mouth. Sam tangles his hands in Leoben’s short hair and groans, and the only thing he can hear is the rush of his blood in his ears.

Sam is grateful for the bunk behind him because he’d fall down if it weren’t there. This is not something he would have ever said he’d be into, but there’s no denying he’s really really into it and Leoben’s got his hand on the base of Sam’s cock and is holding it steady, his tongue rubbing rough against the tip, and how the hell does he know how to do this, anyway? Maybe he’ll ask when it’s over, but probably not. Sam can feel the wet heat of Leoben’s mouth and their thrice-damned Cylon connection actually feels nice for once, humming with enough voltage that Sam feels like he might die, but doesn’t care as long as Leoben doesn’t stop.

Kara has one hand on Leoben’s shoulder and the other Sam can’t see, but he can imagine what she’s doing; she’s making those panting little sounds like she does when she’s about to come, and that makes Sam’s cock swell and he tightens his fingers in Leoben’s hair and thrusts his hips, fucking Leoben’s mouth harder, and Leoben puts one hand on Sam’s thigh and keeps the other on his cock and takes it, which also pushes Sam closer to the edge. Sam looks at his wife and says, “You like that, baby?” in a growl, just like she’d said to him, and Kara bites her lip and whimpers. She’s supporting herself by digging the nails of her free hand into Leoben’s shoulder, her free hand working between her legs; Sam almost tells her to move so he can see, but the sight will push him over and he wants her to come first. So he says “I want to hear you say it,” in a harsh voice and that’s it, Kara comes with a sharp cry, still bracing herself against Leoben as her body shudders. Sam had no idea a woman could come like that, standing up, but leave it to Kara to surprise him.

She sits on the floor, face flushed and sweaty, and watches as Leoben takes Sam deeper, sucks harder and harder, then lies back on the floor naked and hot and wet. “You want to see how much I like it, baby?” she asks him, voice sly and taunting, and she puts her hand between her legs so he can see it, and Sam watches while Leoben does something–Gods–with his tongue and then his hand and Kara comes again, like a house on fire just like always, and Sam can’t help it, can’t stop it, and he tries to tell Leoben what’s about to happen but it doesn’t matter, he’s coming hard, and Leoben doesn’t move away.

Sam sits on the bunk when it’s over (though it’s really more of a well-coordinated stumble), tucking himself in but leaving his pants undone because he doesn’t have the coordination to do them up again. He’s breathing hard as he watches Leoben press a hand to the back of his mouth and stand up in a single, graceful movement. They both look at Kara, appreciating the sight of her sprawled in obvious satisfaction on the metal floor. Leoben reaches down and hauls her up without asking, pulling her to him and kissing her. Kara kisses him back and says, “Mmm,” as she licks at him, and it’s a good thing Sam already came because that might have killed him. She grins over at Sam, her eyes still bright, and he wants to take her in his arms and hold her and never let her go.

But there’s something else they have to do, first.

Sam watches as Leoben backs Kara up, pushes her towards a wall. Kara laughs and moves away and Leoben follows, and they stare at each other but don’t actually touch as they circle each other. It’s like a dance, like watching sharks, or something else he saw on a nature show back on Caprica when he couldn’t sleep. Leoben is smiling but there’s an edge to it, and Kara’s laugh is a little less easy and a little more manic. Whatever lies between them cuts deep, and Sam isn’t sure he understands it but he’s not really in a position to say anything.

Kara comes to a halt next to the bunk where Sam is sitting. “Let’s see how you like it, not being in control for once.” Her eyes narrow and she gives Leoben a challenging stare, waiting, and he just stares back and waits.

Sam realizes as he watches them that he better be okay with this, and fast, because the bond they share is frakked up as anything could ever be but it’s there, and there’s probably nothing that is ever going to change that. “You know I am always happy to please you, Kara,” Leoben says disarmingly, and Kara actually snorts and looks over at Sam.

“Stalk me obsessively, he means,” she says, and for a moment there’s a darkness in her eyes and Sam wonders if this will be it, if the shadow of New Caprica will rise up and put a stop to this. But she blinks and smiles, and the shadows are pushed away, though Sam doesn’t think they’ll ever really be gone. “Sam, help me out, here.” Sam would be perfectly content to watch whatever it is they’re going to do, but Kara makes a motion for him to stand so he does so, trying to be accommodating, because he thinks maybe you should be after your wife’s lover sucks you off.

The logistics of that are too weird, so Sam stops thinking about them and instead watches as Kara kisses Leoben and then pushes him back towards Sam. “Hold him for me.”

Sam blinks, but Leoben moves willingly enough and puts his back to Sam’s chest. Sam takes Leoben’s upper arms in his hands and holds him still. “I can’t hold him if he wants to get out of this, you know,” he says, masculine pride momentarily overshadowed by sexual gratification.

“He won’t want to,” Kara says smugly, and she’s in front of Leoben now, kissing him, and then she steps back and starts stroking his neck, just on one side, which Sam thinks is weird but it makes Leoben shudder against him. Sam tightens his fingers on Leoben’s arms and that makes Leoben shudder, too. “Isn’t this nice, Sam? He’s always Mr. Perfectly In Control…” There is a predatory expression on her face as she reaches down and rubs her hand over Leoben’s cock through his pants. Leoben hisses and his head falls back, resting against Sam’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Sam says, because he feels like he should say something, and because there is something strangely compelling about Leoben–who could kill them both in seconds with his bare hands–completely at their mercy. Kara unzips Leoben’s pants and goes down on her knees but she doesn’t do what Sam thinks she’s going to, she’s pressing her mouth to Leoben’s ribcage instead of his cock.

Leoben’s eyes are closed and Kara’s either biting him or else Leoben really has a thing for that spot because his breathing is labored and he’s pushing back against Sam and twisting hard in Sam’s hold. Kara stops and looks up, laughing, and there’s no red mark on Leoben’s skin, no imprint of teeth. Sam belatedly remembers that’s where she killed him, on New Caprica, but he is not going to bring that up right now. Kara licks that spot one last time and stands up again, reaching into Leoben’s pants and starts fisting his cock, watching Leoben with half-slitted eyes as she does it.

“Sam,” she says, and Sam knows what she wants, so he braces one arm on Leoben’s chest and reaches down, covering Kara’s hand with one of his own. Leoben moans at that, and Kara steps closer and starts licking his neck again. Kara eventually drops her hand and Sam’s a guy so he knows what to do, even if he’s only ever done it to himself. Leoben’s cock is hot in his hand and there is a sudden heat from Leoben’s back, which Sam feels because his pants are still unbuttoned, which should probably weird him out more than it does. Leoben is almost frighteningly silent while Sam jerks him strong and sure, and Kara is murmuring something in his ear, something Sam can’t really make out and might not want to hear anyway. But whatever it is Leoben likes hearing it because his entire body tenses and he comes on Sam’s hand, hips thrusting hard, breath escaping in a long, drawn-out hiss.

There is an awkward moment when it’s over and everyone is satisfied (and, as it were, sticky), and they all look at each other. Sam can feel his connection to Leoben as strong as ever, and Kara is looking at them both with a very smug smirk. “So,” she says, and then laughs. “Wow. Some card game, huh?”

“I need a shower,” Sam says, clearing his throat. “And then maybe some water.” And then he wants to go to sleep, holding Kara, and if Leoben is there–maybe that’s all right. Except he has no idea how the three of them will fit in Kara’s bunk, so they should probably go somewhere else to sleep.

“Yes,” Leoben says, and rises up on his toes, yawning as he stretches. It’s an incredibly human gesture. “Me, too.” He looks over at Sam and raises a brow. “Now I can really see why she’s so fond of you,” he says, deadpan, and Kara giggles, and Sam kisses her soundly while Leoben watches and smiles his mystic’s smile at the both of them. Tomorrow there will still be imminent war, mistrust, and the ghost of New Caprica–never quite exorcised–lingering like a phantom. But there’s this, too. And just for tonight, it’s enough.