1. Chapter 1

**A Rush of Blood to the Head**

"So I'm gonna buy a gun and start a war,  
If you can tell me something worth fighting for."  
-Coldplay

**DISCLAIMER:** Not mine. None of it. Blast. The title and the quote are from the Coldplay song of the same name.

**SUMMARY**: Basically an AU season three.

**WARNINGS**: Contents may be hot. Some cursing, violence, disturbing imagery, maybe even a character death or two if I'm feeling frisky. And I am feeling frisky.

**NOTES**: Just FYI, my favorite character is Starbuck, of course. So if you don't like Starbuck just go jump off a bridge, I mean, don't read this story.

**REVIEWS**: Yes, thank you.

* * *

_**Current Day: Six months after the Cylon Invasion on New Caprica**_

Starbuck knew she should be more worried about her current situation than she was. She should be worried about the steady streams of blood slipping out of her body or her broken arm only attached by an odd angle or the troubling numbness in her toes or the whistle in her lungs or that constant fuzzy buzzing starting at the back of her swollen eyeballs lancing through her skull. She knew she should crawl over to the fledgling escape tunnel in the cement wall hidden under the bare wood pallet and resume her scratching. She'd started the tunnel almost immediately upon her capture out of boredom rather than out of any real hope to escape. She thought maybe she should bind her wounds and skewed limbs. She wondered briefly if her bones weren't the only things broken. She knew she should…She knew she should… get up, fight back…scream until her voice abandoned her…crawl over to the pallet, gather her strength…sleep…dream of sky, dream of stars … hope, live…she should, she should. But she was distracted. As she lay in pieces on the bare concrete floor, Starbuck was frozen into inaction by the paralyzing feeling that she could still feel the steaming brains of her now deceased husband slide across her face and settle on her skin.

* * *

**_Six Months Earlier: Day One of the Cylon Occupation  
_**

"Fight until we can't anymore."

With that said Cally, Starbuck, and the Chief inconspicuously slip into an empty tent. All the settlers too preoccupied by the cruel parody of a parade to notice their retreat. Cally and the Chief fold into each other, taking comfort from each other without the need for unwieldy words or cumbersome gazes. Almost as one, they both rest a hand on Cally's swollen belly. Both aware that this cylon invasion threatens not just them, but their baby. Both aware that they would do whatever it takes to ensure the life and the freedom of their child. They wouldn't be taken in by the promises of peace, the possibility of living in harmony.

The cylons could only live with the humans if they were in absolute control. But cylons are machines, limited by their programing. They breath rules, structure, and order. And humans? Well, humans are the antithesis to order. There could be no peace, there could never be peace between man and cylon.

"Frak. Frak. Frak."

Starbuck didn't have the comfort of her other. She had more worries. Sam was sick. Really sick. The cylons had most definitely arrived in force. That meant the fleet, and the medicine Sam needed, had either been destroyed or jumped away. Either way out of reach. First things first, resistance.

"Can you two spread the word, only to people we can absolutely trust, see who's wants to kick toaster ass?"

Cally chipped in. "We'll need to stow away weapons, food, and medicine."

"Let's keep this thing quiet. Have people stockpile supplies. And for now, no one makes a move against the cylons until we know what the frak the toasters want." Starbuck visibly annoyed at the though of waiting finished.

Tyrol no longer just a grease monkey but a well respected and connected public figure, who understands the workings of the crowd, the mind of the people, pulls his wife into a tighter embrace.

"We'll need Cottle. With Baltar working with the cylons, the people will need a new leader…no…not a new leader, a trusted leader. "

Starbuck nods.

"Get Roslin. And find Tigh, I just saw him and Ellen in the market. A hell of day to move down. Meet back here as soon as you can. I have to check on Sam. Pass the word to the troops.Just be care…Good hunting."

"Good Hunting, Captain."

Starbuck grins maniacally at her long unused rank and exits the tent.

Cally and the Chief stand silently held by each other's arms in the middle of the vacant tent, a tiny oasis of quiet and peace. Their hands caress her stomach; their thoughts rest on their child. A flutter of motion, the baby kicks.

* * *

_**  
**_


	2. Chapter 2

**A Rush of Blood to the Head**

"My city's still breathing but barely its true,

Through buildings gone missing like teeth."

-The Weakerthans

* * *

DISCLAIMER: Not mine. None of it. Blast. The title is from the Coldplay song of the same name.

SUMMARY: Basically an AU season three. Deals with the Resistance, Kara's capture by the Cylons, and the aftermath.

WARNINGS: Contents may be hot. Some cursing, violence, disturbing imagery, maybe even a character death or two if I'm feeling frisky. And I am feeling frisky.

NOTES: My favorite character is Starbuck, of course. So if you don't like Starbuck just go jump off a bridge, I mean, don't read this story.

REVIEWS: Yes, thank you.

* * *

_**Five months ago: Day 37 of the Cylon Occupation**_

"Twelve more settlers were 'taken into custody' by the toasters this morning. The frakking president gave the usual reason… treason, terrorism, conspiring to destroy the fragile relations between our benevolent benefactors and peace-loving settler bla, bla, bla. Meanwhile thirty-two others just vanish into thin air. Baltar still isn't even acknowledging the other disappearances."

"The count's up to almost three hundred now!"

"Did you hear Baltar at the press conference today? He actually suggested they just got up and wandered off all on their own!"

"Baltar's the frakking toaster's talking monkey. Jumps when they frakking say frog."

"Taken into custody my ass. They're all dead or wish they were."

Grim and worried faces littered the inside of the crowded tent listening to the even more grim and worrying news. Though the occupants of the gloomy tent were arranged in a loose circle with no physical position of power, the unconscious focus of the group was an auburn-haired woman sitting cross-legged on a cot. The woman carried an aura of authority and calm that labeled her leader. Throughout the discussion almost everyone at one time or another stole a glance at the leader, checking almost as a small child for reassurance from a beloved parent.

Laura Roslin, prophesied dying leader, mother of none, mother of all, the true president of the twelve colonies, raised one small hand for quiet.

"Any of the missing actually involved in the resistance?"

"Yes. Two of them were ours. They were new, they didn't have any dangerous information."

"_They__are all_ _ours_," the President paused to let that sink in, to remind them all they weren't just fighting for the resistance, for the military, for their families…they were fighting for the human race, what was left of it anyway.

Roslin continued, "These arrests and disappearances are becoming more frequent. The people are starting to panic; some are starting to believe cylon propaganda. We must have the support of the public."

Galen Tyrol nodded in agreement. Seeing where Roslin was going, the Chief asked, "Do we have any intel on what's happening to those taken?"

Roslin turned to the person beside her, "Mr. Gaeta, if you would?"

The former military officer turned president's aide turned spy and informer kept his head high but avoided eye contact with anyone. He knew his position here was tenuous. Most saw him as little more than flunky for the hated traitor president. It would take little reason for the people in the room or the cylons to make him disappear. But he was determined. He'd just wanted to make a difference. He hadn't seen what Baltar really was until New Caprica. He'd been in a position to see the real Gauis Baltar and it wasn't pleasant. Now he knew. Now he could make a difference, that is if he didn't disappear first.

As Mr. Gaeta began, a blonde figure slipped into the tent and at a gesture by Roslin joined the President on the cot. Though the Occupation had taken its toil everyone, Starbuck appeared to be especially worn. Kara and Sam had from the first day of the occupation gone into hiding. The cylons, Leoben, had shown an unhealthy amount of interest in the former viper hotshot. The weeks of hiding on top of Sam's condition and the resistance was taking its toil. Her husband's illness hadn't worsened any in the month since Doc Cottle had seen him, in fact, the troubling clamminess of skin and dizzy spells had passed. But the cough, the cough was still there. There was a certain desperation around her mouth, a hollowed hungry look to her checks, and a whipcord tenseness in her shoulders. But it was Starbuck's eyes, filled with a wild determination and constant fire, which were most disturbing.

During the past month, Roslin and Starbuck had had the opportunity to work closely together. Planning and fighting and worrying, they'd gotten to know each other a little, each able to see what others, namely the Adamas, so admired. Laura took in Kara's countenance, briefly squeezed her hand, and returned to Gaeta's briefing.

"Two days ago I overhead Baltar talking to a six. The detainees are being taken to a facility about twenty miles from here. I don't know what sort of defenses it has. And I don't know the exact location."

"Can you get the location?" Starbuck pierced Gaeta with an unwavering gaze. She already had the beginnings of a mad plan stewing in her brain, if he could find the facility.

"I will get it."

* * *

_**Current Day: Six months after the Cylon Invasion of New Caprica**_

Breathe. All she had to do was breathe. Breathe in quickly, deeply the cold, blood-dyed water and she could be free. She could choose to be free, to die. She could choose nothing else in this place; she could control nothing else. Not her supposed destiny. Not her life or death. Not even her body. But breathe now and she could control her death. As if aware of Starbuck's thoughts, the cylon yanked her hair up, pulling her head out of the red water and her control.

Breathe. Just Breathe.

"All this has happened before, all this will happen again," Leoben crouched down until he was almost eye level to the gasping woman. The cylon almost tenderly brushed the hair out of Starbuck's face, courtesy of his earlier attentions blood from several cuts on her face stained his fingertips.

"Why do you make me do this, Kara? You know I don't want to have to hurt you. Why do you make me punish you? I love you so much but even my love pales in comparison to God's love. You will accept our love, Kara, you will accept your destiny," the cylon now sitting on the floor, pulled her limp body close to his, and rocked the woman to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**A Rush of Blood to the Head**

* * *

"Oh, what is this, I cannot see.  
Who's icy hand takes hold on me.  
Oh, I am Death, that none can excel  
I open the door to Heaven and Hell."  
-Conversation with Death

* * *

**DISCLAIMER**: Not mine.

**REVIEWS**: Yes, thank you.

**NOTES:** I apologize profusely for the slow update. I just started summer classes. And can someone tell me why I signed up for summer classes because I have no idea. Oh, wait, now I remember. My silly silly advisor told me I should. So instead of taking out my annoyance on my advisor, I decided to give it to Starbuck and Co. Oops.

* * *

_**Four months ago: Day 62 of the Cylon Occupation**_

"Sam, you idiot, you should be in bed," Kara hissed through the night in the direction of her still ill husband after hearing his fit of suppressed coughing. "Tell me why I let you come again?"

Starbuck, Sam, and assorted other members of the resistance were concealed in the dark behind some foliage and rocks around a rather innocuous appearing building. According to Gaeta this was the facility the Cylons were taking all the kidnapped people to. It had taken Gaeta weeks just to find the location and he still couldn't come up with security plans or more importantly, in Starbuck's mind, a purpose. While planning the rescue mission the viper pilot had been plagued with visions of women infested by tubes and machinery. But despite the setbacks, the resistance relying heavily on Starbuck's out-of-the-box- thinking came up with a viable rescue mission.

It was all short term of course. It was an unspoken fear of everyone that if the Fleet didn't return, they'd all end up permanently kidnapped. No matter how frugal they were with food and ammo, their supplies would run out. If that happened…But no matter the long-term outcome, they were determined to do what they could.

Sam despite being recently deathly ill had insisted on participating in the rescue mission. Kara despite her worry about his health wanted to keep him close. He'd almost coughed himself to death, she wanted to stay with him.

"Hmm, and here I thought I was the key part of the plan…"

Under the guise of staying disguised, they scouted closer to each other behind their shared cover.

"Is that right? And what exactly is the key part of the plan, again?"

Sam leaned in even farther. The couple's lips almost touching, the couple's hands definitely roaming.

"I'm under strict presidential orders…" Sam grinned, clearly enjoying their time together despite the situation, "to watch your ass."

Starbuck snorted. "She did not say that."

"She told me to make sure you got home but I like my way better."

Just as the two, now grinning foolishly at each other, went in for the kiss, the signal went off.

All teams were in place and ready. Starbuck gave the answering signal, checked her weapon, and sprinted to the building using the landscape as cover with Sam at her back. Each resistance team on different entrances of the building responded to Starbuck's signal and made similar runs for their doors. If everything went as planned the teams would retrieve the missing people, set explosives, and escape in less than fifteen minutes.

Ten minutes in, all hell broke loose. Most of the detainees had made it out of the facility and were on their way to several different hidden locations where they'd theoretically be safe when the cylon backup arrived.

* * *

_**Current Day: Six months after the Cylon Invasion of New Caprica**_

Starbuck couldn't tell how many were with him…maybe…two or three, yeah, at least two. The others with him didn't matter though. He was there. She knew he was there. She always knew when he came for her. He kept telling her they had a bond, a connection, some kind of twisted destiny. Well, maybe the frakker was right but, by the gods, he wasn't gonna like being right this time. She was waiting for him, ready this time. She'd wait until he was close, until she felt his breath on her skin.

A fast hand yanked the prone pilot's head up by her roots. It was one of the frakking blondes. The blonde cylon model seemed to take some sort of special delight in tormenting and taunting her, breaking her skin and bruising her bones. This particular cylon's eyes always zealously burned with conviction as she burned and bruised and broke. The blonde cylon's hatred for humans seemed only to be overshadowed by her fanatical devotion to God. Kara's sessions with the blonde were a strange mix of torture and the cylon God. The blonde was responsible for most of Kara's physical wounds. But in truth, Starbuck almost preferred the physical attacks over the other two. She understood the pain. She could work through the pain. It was these other two though…

With her head forced up and twisted at an angle, Kara got a glimpse of the rooms other occupants.

Unfeeling, almost disinterested, eyes stared out of a friend's face. Actually, Starbuck wasn't sure she could count Boomer as a friend. Could they have been friends if that relationship was built on a lie? Could she have been friends with Boomer if Boomer had never been Boomer? She wasn't sure. Kara tried to keep it simple; she tried to hate Boomer, Sharon, and all the other toasters sharing that face. But sometimes sitting and bleeding, barely breathing in this damned place, being interrogated and worn down piece by piece, Kara didn't see the unfeeling eyes…only a friend's face.

The blonde cylon used her handhold to force her into a painful kneeling position. Starbuck made sure to keep her body limp, pretend to be unable to protect herself much less go on the offensive. This of course wasn't far from the truth. Weeks of cold and abuse had done their job well. Kara was fading. But the day she stopped fighting would be the day they shot her into space dressed in a cold flag and black coffin. She would never give them what they wanted. She would hold on and fight as long she could but if the time came for her, if no one came for her, if she felt herself start to give…Kara would kill herself.

A hand, gentle in contrast with the one vigorously twisting her hair, found her chin and softly lifted Kara's eyes to his. His eyes were the most confusing of the three cylons in the room. Where there was hate and apathy in the others', love was the only occupant of his eyes. Even months ago when their circumstances had been reversed, she the torturer, he the tortured, his eyes never held anything but this strange tenderness and absurd affection.

Was it real? Was any of it real? At this point in her little vacation with the toasters, Kara wasn't up to telling the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. Sometimes she was sure she was still kneeling in Sam's blood, holding his dead body while brain matter soaked through her skin. Sometimes she was sure she was back on the Galactica and all this was just a nightmare induced by that viper oil swill the Chief passed off as alcohol. Sometimes…sometimes when it was especially hopeless and she was especially dark, Kara was sure none of it--the attacks, Galactica, the Adamas, Flight school--was real and she was actually once again lying unconscious in her own aching body after her drunken mother got a hold of her.

Was Leoben's love real? She knew something was wrong when on the one hand, he professed his love and with the other he held her head under water. But she didn't have the energy to continue that thought.

At this moment, her body suspended in air and held in place by the blonde and the empty eyes, Leoben's soft touch and words slinking around her exhausted defenses, Kara was only sure of three things.

One, she could feel his warm breathe on her face as he spoke. He was close enough.

Two, she could feel the sharp length of splintered wood she'd pried from her sleeping pallet concealed in her hand. She had enough strength.

Three, cylons bleed too.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

**A Rush of Blood to the Head**

* * *

"People like us know how to survive,

There's no point in living, if you can't feel alive.

We know when to kiss and we know when to kill

If we can't have it all then nobody will."

--Garbage "The World Is Not Enough"

* * *

**DISCLAIMER**: Not mine.

**REVIEWS**: How are my commas?

* * *

_**Four months ago: Day 62 of the Cylon Occupation or the Rescue of Many Hijacked Civilians from the Toasters**_

Well-laid plans often go astray. This is one of the almost completely infallible laws of the natural world, like what goes up must come down and we ain't nothing but mammals. This law certainly held true during the rescue of the purloined human settlers.

Members of the resistance had freed more than half the colonists from their crammed holding cells by the time the cylon backup arrived. A lot of backup. A whole frakkin' lot of backup. What started out a simple rescue attempt was about to very quickly turn into a lovely teatime firefight. Retreat was the only option. Well the only other option besides die looking like Swiss cheese and smelling just as bad besides.

While freshly liberated civilians and most of the resistance fighters scattered into the woods like startled pigeons in a park, Starbuck, Sam, and a couple other gun-touting rebels took up defensive positions and gleefully opened fire on the advancing metal heads. The cylon ranks returned the favor, lobbing bullets and artillery shells right back.

There's nothing like mortar explosions blowing walls of the building you're taking cover in to make you loose track of your fellow fighters. The rearguard, separated from each other by eager bullets and flying chunks of concrete, weaved slowly through the smoke and ruin of the building firing away all the time.

Starbuck couldn't see Sam through all the dust and chaos. She couldn't find her frakkin' husband anywhere, she couldn't see five feet in front of her face, she was pinned down, and to top it all off the toaster's were surrounding the building. Wait…scratch that. The real topper to the whole situation was the skin jobs including one of those frakking Leoben models leading the regular metal heads.

Starbuck shot a few more rounds and dove into the hallway where she'd last heard Sam. Hunks of debris flew around threatening to shave off limbs as Kara crept down the corridor. She could hear one of the other resistance fighters screaming in pain, not her husband though, thank the Gods. She figured if Sam heard the wounded combatant he'd try to help. So Starbuck headed that way. Unfortunately, the cylons had the same idea.

The screams of the wounded faded to nothing as Starbuck neared where she guessed the injured fighter was. As screams died so to did the screamer. Through the interior of the building polluted with darkness and gun smoke, Kara finally spotted Sam. Her husband was kneeling head bowed next to what Kara presumed was the newly dead body of one of her resistance fighters. Sam seemed to be stricken with nothing but a grim countenance, safe as houses. Or well safe as a house in the middle of a war zone. They had to get out of there fast.

Three things happened almost simultaneously. Kara reached out to her kneeling husband. Sam looked up, relief that Kara was still alive and unhurt evident on his face. The Leoben model leading the attack silently stepped out from the shadowed hallway, gun already raised and aimed. In one of those overly dramatic silver screen moments, time froze as if to say this can't end well. Sam unaware of the cylon at his back had eyes only for his wife. Starbuck, stopped mid motion, watched powerlessly, transfixed by the lethal movements of machine. Leoben never took his eyes off Kara as if the gun in his hand and who it was pointed at was of little consequence. A small smile played peacefully on his lips.

Time resumed to flow. Kara still moving forward reached Sam just as Leoben's finger hugged the trigger. Hot metal quickly evacuated the smooth barrel, penetrated air, and flew through skull. Scalp and bone and fleshy brain continued onward only to come to rest on Starbuck's face. Sam now clear eyed saw nothing and slumped over the cooling body of the resistance fighter into Kara's just arrived arms.

Leoben never took his eyes off Kara. A small smile lay peacefully on his lips as he watched her futilely attempt to keep Sam's bodily fluids from vacating his head, as she tried to scrape brain matter off her skin, as she violently sobbed and sweetly screamed.

* * *

Current Day: Six months after the Cylon Invasion of New Caprica 

The blonde and the Boomer had been furious of course. Well the blonde more than Boomer. The former raptor pilot never seemed to get her feathers ruffled. After kicking Starbuck around for a while calling her a murderer and just generally letting their displeasure be known, the soft-shelled cylon bitches left.

Starbuck was a little surprised at the brevity of the punishment. Normally after killing one of the cylons the rest thought up some really cutting-edge new way to make her scream. And does it really count as killing somebody if they'll just be back in an hour?

The blonde cleared up the matter of Kara's reprieve with lovely parting words, "Don't worry. He'll be back in a short while. He said he had something special for you next time you pulled a stunt. God doesn't enjoy suffering..."

And with that little open-ended statement Kara was alone again. While the cylon God might not get off on pain, the cylons sure seemed fond of it.

Half the time Kara couldn't figure out what the frakkers wanted with her. Simon was easy. He wanted her to have a baby but he settled for an ovary. The blonde seemed intent on converting Starbuck…the hard way. As a kid, Kara thought Sunday school had been agony but this method was the real deal. Nothing like a little grueling torture to make pagans renounce their beliefs. Not that Starbuck would ever denounce the Gods. Leoben frakked with her head on that ship, knowing things no one should know and giving away nothing. Judging from some of the looks he gave her Kara thought Leoben wanted to her to have a baby too…his baby. Starbuck couldn't tell if he wanted to frak her over or just plain frak her up.

A disturbing wet whistling sound disturbed Kara from her equally disturbing thoughts. She glanced around at what she could see of the bleak room, pathetically only able to lift her head a few centimeters off the floor. It was several tense minutes before Kara realized it wasn't some unseen cylon creature but her own breathing. The comparatively mild beating must have broken some ribs and sent them careening into a lung. Funny she didn't feel it before.

With this newest injury in a long, long, long line of injuries, Kara decided to take stock of her situation. She was being held by an unknown number of enemy forces in an unspecified location for an unidentified reason. There was a good chance anybody that might have tried to free her thought she was dead and the one person that wouldn't have let her supposed demise stand in his way was dead himself. Sam was dead; she still wiped her face reflexively every time she remembered it. The fleet was jumps away by now. And the resistance could barely keep itself afloat. Rescue wasn't likely.

She was severely dehydrated and malnourished. She had numerous broken bones, cuts, bruises, burns, lesions, scrapes, scratches, contusions, and now a punctured lung undoubtedly filling up with blood making it a real bitch for her to breathe. Of course it could be worse. The blood loss must really be catching up with her 'cause Kara didn't remember ever being an optimist before.

And then it got worse, proving once again that Starbuck is never wrong.

Leoben stormed into the room like, well, a storm. And for the first time since entering this Gods forsaken hellhole, Kara was glad. That smile, that superior little smile Leoben kept plastered on his frakking face all the time was gone and she was the one that scratched it out. She'd been close, she knew. Close to turning that little sliver of wood on her own veins and putting an end to it all but not anymore. Now Starbuck just laughed and laughed and laughed. Well, with the lung thing going on the laugh was really more of a bubbling wheeze sound but the sentiment was the same.

Leoben recognized Starbuck's rasping laugh for what it was…unrepentant defiance and quite possibly a skosh of cabin fever. In all the weeks the viper pilot had been locked up here, Leoben had never once got upset even after the countless times Starbuck had fought, attacked, and killed. He'd never shown even a little bit of anger when he hurt her or she hurt him. The cylon just smiled and accepted sure in the end that he would win. She was only human; she couldn't fight forever. Or so he thought.

The laughter seemed to inflame the normally serene cylon beyond all reason or perhaps beyond all programming. Leoben hurtled further into the room not even bothering to shut the door. And really what was the point of keeping the door locked anyway? Starbuck could barely lift her head much less make a getaway.

Rage oozed off him in waves, polluting the room, pooling in his eyes and on his twisted lips and flared nostrils. When he reached her drained form on the floor, Leoben gripped her painfully by the arms and easily lifted her into the air. With him literally holding her up, they were now face to face.

"We've been very patient, Starbuck, I've been very patient," Leoben stated coldly and quietly, "but you just don't learn. You and your quick little hands keep getting into trouble. Well, now we'll have to do something about that won't we."

As he said this Leoben slipped one heavy hand down her arm and pulled her own hand up between them to eye level. He softly stroked her fingers and instead of that stupid little smile put on a rabid smirk. Kara couldn't help it, she started to panic a little.

"We'll take care of those troublesome hands. And maybe then you'll learn. I can't be stopped. We won't be stopped. Not even by you."

With the last word, Leoben let go of her other arm keeping her hand trapped in his own and allowed her aching body to hit the unforgiving floor. Using the hand he'd been caressing, the cylon jerked her across the cement to the open door.

Kara didn't know why she was surprised. Of course, he knew this. He knew everything else about her, why wouldn't he know this? The inkling of panic converted quickly into unadulterated terror. But as feeble as her body was Kara wasn't going to go like the lamb. She twisted and bucked, dragged and pulled to no avail. Leoben carefully held her fingers in the doorway and in one swift motion slammed the door shut.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

**A Rush of Blood to the Head**

"All I wanted was a chance to say,

I would like to see you in the morning."

-Travis

* * *

**DISCLAIMER**: Not mine.

**AUTHOR'S PROFUSE APOLOGY FOR INDECENT TARDINESS: **Okay, so funny story about why I haven't updated in like a really super ridiculously long time. And here it is...right so no funny story. Though I did just transfer to a new school far far away from my home and left all my motivation to continue this story behind as well. My bad? Yes, my bad. Also incredibly short.

**REVIEWS**: Yes, thank you.

* * *

**Current Day: Six months after the Cylon Invasion of New Caprica **

There it was again. Kara was sure she'd heard familiar voices whispering a few minutes ago but couldn't figure out whether it was in her head or in real life. She'd been doing that a lot more often recently. Ever since that, that thing had turned her hand into a doorstop, Kara had been mixing up dreams with reality. Or maybe it was all the drugs they started shooting her up with. They'd even given her a new bed. It was vaguely reminiscent of a sterile hospital bed. The cylons must have been really worried about her condition. Whatever the source of the dreams or hallucinations or whatever, they were so real, so convincing that the other day she'd been sure she'd been rescued.

She'd heard bursts of gunfire. It sounded like a firefight. There were several detonations in a row followed by shouts joy and running feet. Then an explosion outside her door. The sturdy metal shivered with force and the locked handle burst. The door swung open revealing uniformed marines wielding heavy weaponry and explosive charges. One of the marines immediately went to her side checked her vitals and called for a stretcher. It seemed so real Starbuck could even smell the gunpowder on his hands. They'd carried her away, carried her to safety. Then things went black.

But she woke up still here. Locked away with only cylons for company.

* * *

"How's she doing?" A deep male voice whispered to the other occupant, a doctor judging by the coat and stethoscope hanging off his shoulders.

Both male figures kept their voices down as they were only a few feet away from the sleeping Captain Thrace. The man who initially spoke lifted his hand as if to reach out and touch the almost skeletal frame of the woman known as Starbuck but was prevented by a sterile plastic sheet hanging from the ceiling. The clear curtain the only thing stopping infection from assaulting the pilot's devastated immune system and in this state, the slightest cold would probably kill her.

Soft murmurs fell out of Kara's bruised lips and limply traveled to the worried watchers. The muttering though slurred and indecipherable seemed to injure the speaker, an ache pooled in his eyes spread across his face.

The doctor shook his head, whether at the condition of his patient or the other man was unclear.

"She's the same. Still in and out of consciousness. She alternates calling for her husband, cursing all 'frakking sadistic metal-headed toasters,' and muttering about the lovely place she's going to stick her destiny…I don't believe she knows where she is."

* * *

No, this time she was sure someone was talking. It wasn't in her head. They were close, so close. If only she could open her eyes…it was just so hard, they were so heavy. And why bother? Opening her eyes and seeing who was talking would just lead to disappointment. She recognized those voices...she recognized those voices.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

**A Rush of Blood to the Head**

"So long ago I don't remember when,

That's when they say I lost my only friend.

Well, they said she died easy of a broken heart disease,

As I listened through the cemetery trees."

--The Wallflowers

**DISCLAIMER**: Characters not mine.

**AN:**Sorry for long, long, long, long. long delay. College is kicking my butt. I'm writing my senior thesis right now. Erg.

She dreams of flying...go figure. Always of flying. Flying among the stars, weaving around space rocks, drifting through clouds of brightly colored free-floating gases and vapors or maybe, in a more mundane atmosphere. skimming the tops off waves of grass and water. Her machine, sleek and pale, marked up and scratched with years of close calls, was sensitive to her every brief touch. Flying close to the waves and clouds like this made her feel whole, untouchable and powerful, like a god once again.

To stay here cushioned in space, wrapped in dim cold and smooth black, forever...oh, gods to stay.

But here inside this dream, the viper, a machine tangible only in her unconscious, even here, Starbuck could feel the ties that held her in reality. She felt the tubes down her throat and the needles piercing her veins. The less literal ties, the incessant voices constantly whispering sweetly in her ears. They pleaded and they prayed and they drove her deeper into these imagined skies.

There is a beauty in fighting, it's true, in struggling on to the curled and burnt edges of endurance against all reason, against all odds. There is grace in defiance embraced by body and soul. But it is a beauty only truly appreciated by those safe and untouchable on the sidelines. Both glory and regret are concepts belonging to hindsight, neither much use to those people stuck in the moment. And Starbuck was very much in the moment or at least aware enough of the moment to not want to be.

Why couldn't she fly in these fair skies forever? No one could blame her if she slipped away finally into the peaceful stars. Not after the months of captivity and torture at the hands of the cylons. Not after her ruined bones and burnt flesh. Not after the years of struggle. And yes, it had been years since Starbuck had first started her endeavor. What had her life been but a battle since that first night her father left her alone with her drunken raging mother? She'd grown up surrounded by maelstroms of conflict. It formed her earliest memories. It toughened her spirit and hardened her soul. It created in her a simultaneously fearful and an unflinching heart. Starbuck learned the many languages of blood and anger prematurely and it was one lesson that was constantly consistent through her life.

The gods in all their mercy and wisdom had blessed her with plenty of chances to give up. There were a thousand times Kara could have gone free. One wrong turn in combat. One hesitation. One time she didn't get back up. One moment of inaction. Just one time in the thousands when it seemed the gods and cylons and her fellow humans were telling her to stay down and she could have flown forever. Mostly, though, she was stubborn. Mostly, she spit out blood and a frak that and kept breathing. Mostly, she was Starbuck. There were times, especially lately, when giving up sounded fraking good even to Kara's unconquerable soul. But something always stopped her. There was some barrier that she couldn't cross. There were always insistent hands that gently held her back. Every time there was no conceivable way or reason for Starbuck to live, when even she herself could see no way or no reason to stay, these hands softly pulled her quietly back from whatever lay beyond death.

And such was the way of things this time. So for a time, a short time, Starbuck rested, cradled in gentle hands.

And then Starbuck opened her eyes.

"Years later on his deathbed Aureliano Segundo would remember the rainy afternoon in June when he went into the bedroom to meet his first son. Even though the child..."

"Bill."

For these long several weeks since the rescue of the settlers on New Caprica, Starbuck had been all but dead. But finally the infections began to clear and her wounds heal. Cottle was still cautious of course. Any stress on her system or slight illness would be tantamount to a death sentence, even now after weeks of healing. And regardless of how her body healed, Cottle warned that no amount of medicine could heal the psyche and they all knew Kara hadn't exactly started off with a full set of marbles anyway.

So they planned as if she would one day wake and prayed for it and tried to combat their guilt as best they could. Weeks ago, Laura and other resistance leaders had been debriefed. Afterward, after the stories of all the courageous dead, after officially filing reports that know one would read, Laura told Bill and Lee what she knew of Starbuck's fate. With the continued support of Gaeta's inside information, the resistance had learned that Starbuck was being kept under close guard and that Leoben continued to take an unhealthy interest in her. They couldn't learn exactly where she was being kept or why the cylons had such an elevated interest in her. They couldn't find her. They didn't save her.

Laura and Bill often stayed up nights together, neither able to sleep or to be alone with their dark thoughts. Thoughts of all the children lost and scarred, and how they selfishly prayed for this one to make it. They lay awake together at night, reading their own guilt in the other's eyes. If only...if only.

Laura Roslin interrupted Admiral Adama with a hand on his arm as he patiently read through the words on the page. When they first got her back and saw the condition Kara was in, Doctor Cottle said that familiar voices sometimes helped pull coma patients back to the world. So Adama and Roslin, Helo and Sharon, Lee and others flitted in and out of sickbay visiting, bringing news and gossip, trying to nudge Kara back to consciousness. Admiral Adama started showing up and reading to both Starbuck and Laura in sickbay as Kara lay barely alive and Laura received her weekly treatments.

Bill and Laura watched with baited breath, briefly stunned by what they'd hoped for all these weeks. Starbuck's eyelids flickered open, the eyes unfocused and slow as the blue orbs tried to make sense of the ceiling.

"Kara, can you hear me? You're safe. You're on the Galactica. You're home."


End file.
