One Flesh - BSG, Kara/Leoben
Title: One Flesh
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Pairing: Kara/Leoben
Rating: Oh, way up there in the creepy.
Spoilers: For the premiere of the third season.
Author's note: Thanks to the ever-inspiring romanticalgirl for beta.
Kacey stirs and mumbles and Kara can see in her eyes that she’s fine. She’s still there, alive and looking back at her. Kacey lets out a little bubble of laughter as Kara’s hair tickles her cheek when Kara leans down to kiss her. Kara squeezes Leoben’s hand tighter, because she’s been given a reprieve. This little girl won’t suffer because of her. It’s only when she turns to smile at him that she realizes what she’s doing, and she quickly drops the smile from her face, yanks her hand back, and fusses with Kacey’s bandage. Leoben stands and rests his hands on her shoulders, and she doesn’t twinge the way she expects to. He says, “Kacey, sweetie, Daddy’s going to go get the doctor and then he and Mommy are going to take you home.”
Kara can’t stop the tears running down her face almost the moment Leoben leaves the room, and she isn’t sure what they’re from - whether it’s the terror of going back “home” where there are bars on the doors and she’s always cold, or the fact that her neglect almost cost this child her life, that her fear made her frak up just like always. She covers her face in her hands for a moment, until Kacey reaches up and tugs on her wrist and says 'Mommy' and Kara can’t breathe.
Leoben lets her carry Kacey, who smells warm and like the laundry detergent Kara used to use back on Caprica and, disturbingly, like Leoben, who unlocks the gate as though it were a normal part of a door to a house, and then locks it behind them. The sound makes Kara feel sick and she turns away from the bars, turning Kacey’s head away, too.
“She doesn’t see this as a prison, Kara,” Leoben says “This is the only thing she’s known and she doesn’t wonder if there’s another way for things to be.”
Leoben is never straightforward. He talks as though every sentence is a prophesy and that if Kara would only understand, she’d see what he sees too, the patterns, the streams, destiny. Kara holds Kacey close against her chest as Leoben turns on the lights, and she thinks about what this place would be if it were all she had ever known. But she can’t get past the fact that there hasn’t ever been one thing that represents the past in her life. She’s had many pasts, many paths, and she keeps starting over again because she keeps getting everything wrong every time. There was before Zak, and then after. There was Galactica, and there was Lee, and after the attack, she thought she was watching the only future that would ever be real. But even then, her life changed again when she met Sam, when she married Sam, and then everything changed when Leoben found her and brought her here. For a moment, she sees the bars like they’re transposed over her vision, and Kacey stirs and yawns.
“She’s tired,” Kara says, and Leoben comes back around the corner from the kitchen.
“We can put her to bed.” Kara thinks of the blood on the stairs, the little girl’s eyes closed. “She’ll wake up again,” Leoben adds with too much certainty, and he’s much closer than he was a moment ago. He leans in to press a kiss against Kacey’s forehead and when he brings his head up to look at Kara, he’s inches away. Kara tries to stare him down, but it never works with him, and he only smiles, and tilts his head for her to follow.
Up the stairs. Kara has never been up those stairs. At the top is Leoben’s bedroom.
Kara freezes, and Leoben, with an expression of what seems like sympathy, holds out his arms to take Kacey from her. She tells herself that these are only the stairs up to her daughter’s bedroom, and not a path from which she can’t ever turn back. She doesn't want to let Kacey out of her sight. She takes a step, and then another, and then stops and calls out for Leoben to wait. It’s almost impossible for her to say his name, but she takes another step up before she falters. He waits until she’s just behind him to continue up the rest of the stairs. She feels as though she’s the only one left returning from a losing fight.
They stand side by side in the doorway until Kacey is asleep, and then Leoben closes the door and they step into the hall. He is watching her, the way he watched her when she was interrogating him, sensing her weaknesses, looking at her like he recognized her and was trying to assess what had changed since the last time. Kara squeezes her eyes shut and says, “You shouldn’t have left me with her. If you know me so well, you should have known she’d get hurt.” She wants to run, wants to take a swing at Leoben, but she thinks that driving the nearest sharp object into Leoben’s neck will wake Kacey. She chokes on a bitter laugh, and then looks away, down the hall, to the open door of Leoben’s bedroom.
“I do know you,” Leoben says, and she shakes her head and turns away, because sometimes arguing with him is worse than killing him over and over. Either way, he always wins.
“I’m tired,” she says, her eyes on the corner of the bed she can see from the dark doorway, the white blanket perfectly tucked in.
“Kara,” Leoben hesitates. It surprises her every time, his reactions to any small kindness she shows him, even if he knows it might be false.
“Can we sleep?” she says, because she is so very tired, and she doesn’t want to go back downstairs where there’s blood everywhere. Leoben’s. Kacey’s. Stains that disappear like they were never there, like Leoben coming back even when he’s lying dead in front of her. She’ll never get away from him, and there’s no other way.
She reaches out for his hand, brushing the fabric of his pants before her fingers twine in his. “If we already have a child, it’s time I at least sleep in your bed.”
She might as well have just told him how terrified she is, backed into a corner. Alone, with no one left to even wonder if she needs help.
“You don’t have to do this, Kara.”
And it’s his gentle refusal, his self-sacrificing manipulation that pushes her over the edge. She yanks his arm and crashes her lips against his, biting down hard, needing to forget and being completely unable to, because of him. Because she can never forget him, not even for a moment. The gods have linked them together, and even though she’s the one who sounds crazy now, it’s the only explanation she believes.
When he kisses her back, his lips pressing warm and soft against hers, his tongue darting out to touch her bottom lip, it feels good. Not just the touch, and Kara knows about how distracting and reviving and life-giving even the simplest touches can be. It’s his touch that feels good, this man who isn’t a man - his kiss that feels familiar. She realizes it and gasps and then kisses him harder, deeper, in panic, trying to make this new, to chase away the feeling that they’ve done this, exactly this, before. Leoben kisses her back, just as deeply and then pulls away, brushes her hair away from her face, and says, gently, with infinite kindness in his eyes, “Yes, it is familiar, Kara,” before he kisses her again, with such tenderness, just like the before that Kara doesn’t actually remember but knows like its written inside her.
--
Leoben knows it’s a moment of transcendence when Kara takes his hand, while they both look down at the miracle of their daughter. He almost can’t believe it, but he has never lingered long in doubt, and he looks up at Kara in awe. She is coming to understand.
“Mommy and Daddy love you,” he says to Kacey, just before Kara pulls her hand away.
Leoben loves Kara because it is their destiny, because he knows he is meant to love her. He is aware of her constantly. In every body, he felt her like a lingering touch, like her fingerprints were on his skin, glowing with light. Just the fact that she sat an arm’s reach away across the table from him was like every part of him being woken up from dormancy.
He knows true contentment when Kara carries Kacey, and he can see the gentleness in Kara’s touches, the protectiveness in the way she holds Kacey to her, and she shields Kacey’s eyes from the bars. He knows the bars are a terrible, painful symbol for Kara, but they are necessary, because it’s not her time to leave yet. Kacey carries different burdens, but fear of being trapped is not one of them, even though he has seen she will be trapped many times in her life.
“She’s home now,” he tells her. “She’s safe. With us.”
Despite his words, Kara is still afraid to even put Kacey down to sleep, and if he didn’t know how important it was for her to struggle, if he didn’t know how strong she already was, he couldn’t bear the thought of her pain. She was taught a way of sin, of violence, of cruelty, of loneliness and loss. She thought it was what she deserved and she continued to bring more of it on herself. He knew the only way to free her from the struggle first required more struggle. She had survived many trials, and he had faith for her where hers was still undiscovered.
“Her room’s been up here the whole time?” Kara asks.
“There are many things waiting for you to discover them,” he answers, and smiles at her.
He revels in the stillness of Kara at his side. He doesn’t think often about wanting her, because the pull of their destiny together is stronger, but God has commanded man and woman to become one flesh. So when he leans close to her, when he realizes she smells warm and like their daughter, he lets himself imagine what it will feel like when he tastes her skin. Watching her eat makes his mouth water, and the first moment he sees her when he comes down the stairs in the morning, especially the few times before she’s awake, stirs something deep inside of him, and he is grateful, even in his longing.
He closes the door to Kacey’s room and he sees Kara’s shoulders drop in exhaustion. He watches her gaze travel to his bedroom, their bedroom. He knows what she wants, a bed that’s a place of safety, where she can rest without planning her next move, where she isn’t alone, and there is no threat of her being left. There are bars even on the windows of the bedroom, but he knows that she doesn’t see them, doesn’t want to. She is too tired to be on guard and Leoben can feel the change in her, can feel the compassion flowing through her. She is ready, and he is only waiting for her to realize she is.
Their hands touch for the second time that day, and this touch is charged, the culmination of events started long ago. He has gotten used to looking into her eyes, to seeing what it is she’s trying to hide. He has always seen God in her, and now he sees what he has been waiting for, the look she gave him before he went out the airlock of the Gemenon Traveller, her soul’s recognition of his.
He squeezes his fingers around hers and pulls her close, and they walk into the bedroom for the first time, his lips already swollen from the harshness and panic in her kiss, the aggressiveness to cover the desperation. She has not let go of his hand. He leads her to the bed, and he lies down beside her, his hands stroking her bare arms. Her hair fans out across the pillow, and she says his name. It’s a question, one she’s never spoken before, not to a single person, and he can only answer yes.
His mouth on her collarbone undoes him, and he feels his pulse pounding in his temples and his throat. He whispers her name against her skin, licks the hollow of her neck and she tips her head back and moans and rests her fingers at the base of his scalp, stroking up through his hair. She is his, and he is hers, and God has brought them together for this moment. And he will make her moan again, and call out to God, and he will show her what he’s remembered this whole time.
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Pairing: Kara/Leoben
Rating: Oh, way up there in the creepy.
Spoilers: For the premiere of the third season.
Author's note: Thanks to the ever-inspiring romanticalgirl for beta.
Kacey stirs and mumbles and Kara can see in her eyes that she’s fine. She’s still there, alive and looking back at her. Kacey lets out a little bubble of laughter as Kara’s hair tickles her cheek when Kara leans down to kiss her. Kara squeezes Leoben’s hand tighter, because she’s been given a reprieve. This little girl won’t suffer because of her. It’s only when she turns to smile at him that she realizes what she’s doing, and she quickly drops the smile from her face, yanks her hand back, and fusses with Kacey’s bandage. Leoben stands and rests his hands on her shoulders, and she doesn’t twinge the way she expects to. He says, “Kacey, sweetie, Daddy’s going to go get the doctor and then he and Mommy are going to take you home.”
Kara can’t stop the tears running down her face almost the moment Leoben leaves the room, and she isn’t sure what they’re from - whether it’s the terror of going back “home” where there are bars on the doors and she’s always cold, or the fact that her neglect almost cost this child her life, that her fear made her frak up just like always. She covers her face in her hands for a moment, until Kacey reaches up and tugs on her wrist and says 'Mommy' and Kara can’t breathe.
Leoben lets her carry Kacey, who smells warm and like the laundry detergent Kara used to use back on Caprica and, disturbingly, like Leoben, who unlocks the gate as though it were a normal part of a door to a house, and then locks it behind them. The sound makes Kara feel sick and she turns away from the bars, turning Kacey’s head away, too.
“She doesn’t see this as a prison, Kara,” Leoben says “This is the only thing she’s known and she doesn’t wonder if there’s another way for things to be.”
Leoben is never straightforward. He talks as though every sentence is a prophesy and that if Kara would only understand, she’d see what he sees too, the patterns, the streams, destiny. Kara holds Kacey close against her chest as Leoben turns on the lights, and she thinks about what this place would be if it were all she had ever known. But she can’t get past the fact that there hasn’t ever been one thing that represents the past in her life. She’s had many pasts, many paths, and she keeps starting over again because she keeps getting everything wrong every time. There was before Zak, and then after. There was Galactica, and there was Lee, and after the attack, she thought she was watching the only future that would ever be real. But even then, her life changed again when she met Sam, when she married Sam, and then everything changed when Leoben found her and brought her here. For a moment, she sees the bars like they’re transposed over her vision, and Kacey stirs and yawns.
“She’s tired,” Kara says, and Leoben comes back around the corner from the kitchen.
“We can put her to bed.” Kara thinks of the blood on the stairs, the little girl’s eyes closed. “She’ll wake up again,” Leoben adds with too much certainty, and he’s much closer than he was a moment ago. He leans in to press a kiss against Kacey’s forehead and when he brings his head up to look at Kara, he’s inches away. Kara tries to stare him down, but it never works with him, and he only smiles, and tilts his head for her to follow.
Up the stairs. Kara has never been up those stairs. At the top is Leoben’s bedroom.
Kara freezes, and Leoben, with an expression of what seems like sympathy, holds out his arms to take Kacey from her. She tells herself that these are only the stairs up to her daughter’s bedroom, and not a path from which she can’t ever turn back. She doesn't want to let Kacey out of her sight. She takes a step, and then another, and then stops and calls out for Leoben to wait. It’s almost impossible for her to say his name, but she takes another step up before she falters. He waits until she’s just behind him to continue up the rest of the stairs. She feels as though she’s the only one left returning from a losing fight.
They stand side by side in the doorway until Kacey is asleep, and then Leoben closes the door and they step into the hall. He is watching her, the way he watched her when she was interrogating him, sensing her weaknesses, looking at her like he recognized her and was trying to assess what had changed since the last time. Kara squeezes her eyes shut and says, “You shouldn’t have left me with her. If you know me so well, you should have known she’d get hurt.” She wants to run, wants to take a swing at Leoben, but she thinks that driving the nearest sharp object into Leoben’s neck will wake Kacey. She chokes on a bitter laugh, and then looks away, down the hall, to the open door of Leoben’s bedroom.
“I do know you,” Leoben says, and she shakes her head and turns away, because sometimes arguing with him is worse than killing him over and over. Either way, he always wins.
“I’m tired,” she says, her eyes on the corner of the bed she can see from the dark doorway, the white blanket perfectly tucked in.
“Kara,” Leoben hesitates. It surprises her every time, his reactions to any small kindness she shows him, even if he knows it might be false.
“Can we sleep?” she says, because she is so very tired, and she doesn’t want to go back downstairs where there’s blood everywhere. Leoben’s. Kacey’s. Stains that disappear like they were never there, like Leoben coming back even when he’s lying dead in front of her. She’ll never get away from him, and there’s no other way.
She reaches out for his hand, brushing the fabric of his pants before her fingers twine in his. “If we already have a child, it’s time I at least sleep in your bed.”
She might as well have just told him how terrified she is, backed into a corner. Alone, with no one left to even wonder if she needs help.
“You don’t have to do this, Kara.”
And it’s his gentle refusal, his self-sacrificing manipulation that pushes her over the edge. She yanks his arm and crashes her lips against his, biting down hard, needing to forget and being completely unable to, because of him. Because she can never forget him, not even for a moment. The gods have linked them together, and even though she’s the one who sounds crazy now, it’s the only explanation she believes.
When he kisses her back, his lips pressing warm and soft against hers, his tongue darting out to touch her bottom lip, it feels good. Not just the touch, and Kara knows about how distracting and reviving and life-giving even the simplest touches can be. It’s his touch that feels good, this man who isn’t a man - his kiss that feels familiar. She realizes it and gasps and then kisses him harder, deeper, in panic, trying to make this new, to chase away the feeling that they’ve done this, exactly this, before. Leoben kisses her back, just as deeply and then pulls away, brushes her hair away from her face, and says, gently, with infinite kindness in his eyes, “Yes, it is familiar, Kara,” before he kisses her again, with such tenderness, just like the before that Kara doesn’t actually remember but knows like its written inside her.
--
Leoben knows it’s a moment of transcendence when Kara takes his hand, while they both look down at the miracle of their daughter. He almost can’t believe it, but he has never lingered long in doubt, and he looks up at Kara in awe. She is coming to understand.
“Mommy and Daddy love you,” he says to Kacey, just before Kara pulls her hand away.
Leoben loves Kara because it is their destiny, because he knows he is meant to love her. He is aware of her constantly. In every body, he felt her like a lingering touch, like her fingerprints were on his skin, glowing with light. Just the fact that she sat an arm’s reach away across the table from him was like every part of him being woken up from dormancy.
He knows true contentment when Kara carries Kacey, and he can see the gentleness in Kara’s touches, the protectiveness in the way she holds Kacey to her, and she shields Kacey’s eyes from the bars. He knows the bars are a terrible, painful symbol for Kara, but they are necessary, because it’s not her time to leave yet. Kacey carries different burdens, but fear of being trapped is not one of them, even though he has seen she will be trapped many times in her life.
“She’s home now,” he tells her. “She’s safe. With us.”
Despite his words, Kara is still afraid to even put Kacey down to sleep, and if he didn’t know how important it was for her to struggle, if he didn’t know how strong she already was, he couldn’t bear the thought of her pain. She was taught a way of sin, of violence, of cruelty, of loneliness and loss. She thought it was what she deserved and she continued to bring more of it on herself. He knew the only way to free her from the struggle first required more struggle. She had survived many trials, and he had faith for her where hers was still undiscovered.
“Her room’s been up here the whole time?” Kara asks.
“There are many things waiting for you to discover them,” he answers, and smiles at her.
He revels in the stillness of Kara at his side. He doesn’t think often about wanting her, because the pull of their destiny together is stronger, but God has commanded man and woman to become one flesh. So when he leans close to her, when he realizes she smells warm and like their daughter, he lets himself imagine what it will feel like when he tastes her skin. Watching her eat makes his mouth water, and the first moment he sees her when he comes down the stairs in the morning, especially the few times before she’s awake, stirs something deep inside of him, and he is grateful, even in his longing.
He closes the door to Kacey’s room and he sees Kara’s shoulders drop in exhaustion. He watches her gaze travel to his bedroom, their bedroom. He knows what she wants, a bed that’s a place of safety, where she can rest without planning her next move, where she isn’t alone, and there is no threat of her being left. There are bars even on the windows of the bedroom, but he knows that she doesn’t see them, doesn’t want to. She is too tired to be on guard and Leoben can feel the change in her, can feel the compassion flowing through her. She is ready, and he is only waiting for her to realize she is.
Their hands touch for the second time that day, and this touch is charged, the culmination of events started long ago. He has gotten used to looking into her eyes, to seeing what it is she’s trying to hide. He has always seen God in her, and now he sees what he has been waiting for, the look she gave him before he went out the airlock of the Gemenon Traveller, her soul’s recognition of his.
He squeezes his fingers around hers and pulls her close, and they walk into the bedroom for the first time, his lips already swollen from the harshness and panic in her kiss, the aggressiveness to cover the desperation. She has not let go of his hand. He leads her to the bed, and he lies down beside her, his hands stroking her bare arms. Her hair fans out across the pillow, and she says his name. It’s a question, one she’s never spoken before, not to a single person, and he can only answer yes.
His mouth on her collarbone undoes him, and he feels his pulse pounding in his temples and his throat. He whispers her name against her skin, licks the hollow of her neck and she tips her head back and moans and rests her fingers at the base of his scalp, stroking up through his hair. She is his, and he is hers, and God has brought them together for this moment. And he will make her moan again, and call out to God, and he will show her what he’s remembered this whole time.