12 Days of Ficmas - Day Three: Breaking

[cybermathwitch]

Title: Breaking

Author: Koren M.

Rating: R (for disturbing imagery)

'Ship:  Kara/Lee

Disclaimer: Not mine.  They're Ron Moore, David Eick, and the SciFi Channel's

Warnings: violence

Spoilers:  through the first half of season 3

Summary:  Kara's life is continually breaking her apart.

Notes: Thanks to ez_as_pi  for the beta.

 

Breaking

 

sluts

In her life, Kara's been compared to all different types of sluts.  First, by her mother, the first time that she saw Kara - however innocently - talking to a boy.  She called her a slut and backhanded her across the mouth which split her lip. 

She learned firsthand that kids could be cruel after she went on a date with Todd Larkson in high school and he decided that he would win big points with the other guys if he told them he'd frakked her.  The quote, unquote "popular" girls turned against her and called her a slut.  They made a point of spreading nasty rumors all over school about it.

Kara ended up with three weeks suspension for beating up the ringleaders. She didn't mind.

In the Academy, the only person who ever called her a slut was Lee.  She knew, both at the time and in retrospect, that frakking the visiting Major had been a stupid idea.  By the time she was at the Academy, Kara was the queen of the stupid idea.  And she'd been drunk.  She usually was when she pulled a stunt like that. 

She still had no idea why Lee'd reacted as strongly as he did when he'd stopped by to deliver some papers to the major and seen her trying to drag her clothes on.  He'd blown up at her, called her a slut and a whore, and stormed back out again.  The only reason the Major hadn't done anything about it was that he would've had to admit that Kara was with him when Lee went off.

Lee'd never told her, not even later after the worlds ended, that he'd been jealous.  Pissed, furious that she'd give herself over drunkenly to a one-night stand and he had to wait around knowing that he'd never have a chance.  That he'd wished he'd been the one that had taken her to bed every time she went off with some guy - that it ate at him that they'd always arrive together and he'd leave alone, or with some girl who was always going to be second best.  That, ultimately, the reason he was pissed with her was because of the feelings she made him feel, feelings she was completely oblivious to and could have cared less about.

That he'd never be able to get the image out of his mind of her writhing for all those virtually nameless men, when all he wanted to hear was her calling out his name as she came.

But he'd never tell her all that.

 

taut

She waits to cross the hall into CIC and her nerves are stretched taut.  She feels like they're about to break, to snap under the strain and she wonders for the forty-third time where the hell Lee is.  If he's alright.  She knew from the moment that the Blackbird broke up he wouldn't be coming back to help her with this, that's not the problem.  The problem is not knowing if he's made it out alright.

On the one hand, she feels like if he were dead, she'd know.  Like there'd be a feeling in the pit of her stomach that would tell her yes, he's really gone.  The feeling that she hadn't realized she didn't have until after he'd turned back up alive in those first few hours after the attacks.  So she's pretty sure that he's still alive out there.  Unless he's not and she's not feeling it because really, she's dead too and just hasn't acknowledged that yet.  It's a suicide mission after all.  Perhaps the Fates are hiding him from her as one last kindness (but when have the Fates ever been kind to her?) before she does this one last thing and her own death.

But if he's not really dead, and she dies, will she ultimately still take him with her, like she was supposed to?

 

ice

There's ice in her blood when she thinks about what she's just done.  She sits against the wall and she can feel it, tiny crystals hardening, sharpening, cutting into her skin from the inside out.  She's going to freeze all the way through before this is over, and she wishes she'd hurry up and just die.

He's lying on the floor, bleeding out.  She can see the pool of blood growing larger by the second - each second that seems interminably long.

My fault, my fault, my fault, my fault...

Over and over again in her head.  Her fault he's dying, her fault Zak's dead.  She's killing the Adamas off one by one, this time by her own hand.  At the rate she's going, she can see herself standing over the Old Man with her hands wrapped around his neck, each victim getting closer, more personal, more deliberate.

She shakes her head to try to clear the images, the nightmares too close to the surface of her mind.  They've always been too close, too vivid, too real for her to just disregard.  Her mother told her it was because she was cursed.  Her father had told her it was because she was special, but look how all that turned out for him in the end.

Leoben tells her she's special too.  That's just its own kind of creepy.  But she's holding a gun in her hand, the one she's just used to shoot Lee, and she wonders not for the first time if it wouldn't be better to just turn it on herself.  So easy.  So quick.  Then over.

Unfortunately the ice has spread from her blood and she's too numb to move.

 

throat

Alcohol burns her throat.  She doesn't really care, and she knows the nerves will be deadened soon enough, but until then the little bit of pain is a self-inflicted wound she's happy to make.  She's on her third, or is it fourth? bottle of the stuff.  She should've stopped at two.  It's been a long, long time since she's overdone it this badly, and the voice in her head (the one that sounds remarkably like Lee's) is telling her to stop already, for frak's sake, but she won't.

Because Lee's not coming back.  No one's coming back.  They saw those ships, the basestars that jumped into orbit, and they ran, and she doesn't blame them at all, she just blames herself for not being up there with them.  For not being where she belongs, in a Viper, kicking Cylon ass.  She's going to try to take all the skin-jobs she can with her when she goes down in a blaze of glory, because she knows they'll never win down here, not as sick and tired and cold as they are.  But she's going to find some weapons, she thinks, and fight them until she can't.

She never sees the syringe that presses against the pulse point on her neck, never feels the chemicals that invade her blood stream and knock her unconscious.

When she wakes up she's far too sober, too weak, and too scared to feel real.  Then Leoben walks in and she realizes she's not real anymore.

She's just in hell.

 

blindfold

The first day and a half - she thinks - Leoben keeps her blindfolded.  He tries to convince her, through touch and scent (and it scares and bewilders her that he's figured out Lee's scent) that he's someone he's not.  That he's Lee, come to rescue her from the Cylons.  It's so terribly obvious that he's not, the situation is so patently ridiculous that she can't understand why he ever thinks that it would work.

When he removes the blindfold, when he's being himself and not trying to convince her he's someone else, he starts telling her about her past, her present, and her future.  Her role in the coming conflict, her role in the Cylon's view of the future.  But many of the things ring some kind of a bell deep down inside her.  Especially the things that he says about her past.  And not just her past now, but lives and lives she's supposedly lived before.

Months - almost a year - later, Kara sits against a bulkhead on the Galactica, her knees drawn up against her chest.  She remembers what he told her, the elaborate stories he spun and realizes that some of them are eerily similar to the dreams and visions.  She'd assume that it was all because of what he'd said if Lee weren't having them too.  If he weren't filling in the blanks, finishing her recollections, and carrying the same haunted look in his eyes that she knows is in her own, she'd believe that this was all just a residual effect of Leoben's mind games.  But if that's not the case, and this is all real, it makes her even more scared that Leoben ever knew about it in the first place.

Kara's tired of being scared, and it's her perpetual state since the liberation of New Caprica.  Fear and shame, and the dreams aren't helping.  Because the things she's done there, in those dreams scare and shame her too.

 

slick

The floor is slick with Leoben - the most recent Leoben's - blood.  Kara stumbles in it, not realizing at first how far out the puddle has spread.  She thinks absently that she hasn't ever really appreciated just how much blood the human - or non-human - body can hold until she's looking at it tracing across the linoleum floor of the creepy little "house" he's tried to build for them.

There's blood on her shoes now, so she takes them off calmly, setting them in the bathroom sink so she can wash them later.  She's already figured out that she'll have to sit with the body for several hours until the next one downloads.  She's guessing she'll have a good four or five hours - at the earliest - before she has to worry about him coming back "home". 

She skirts around the blood pool more deftly than last time - this time she's prepared - and walks calmly into the kitchen, taking stock of what she has available for her lunch.  Sandwiches, she thinks absently, and starts hunting up the loaf of bread.

Somewhere deep down inside, there's a woman's voice, screaming, crying, and probably losing her mind one giant leap at a time.  But Kara tries not to listen to her anymore.

 

Comments

[cybermathwitch.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :) I ♥ broken Kara (and she's one of my best muses.)