FIC: Prayer

[embolalia]

Title: Prayer

Rating: R
Pairing: Kara/Leoben

Word Count: 2,000

Disclaimer: This really, really, probably wouldn't have happened on the show :)

Author's Notes:

1) This is not my ship-swap fic! It is my swap pairing though.

2) I had no idea it was Deborah's birthday today until today, so this wasn't deliberately a present, but happy birthday anyway!

3) Leoben made me do it.

Prayer

Kara                                                                                    Leoben

I
He knows later, after his mother has told him, that he saw the stream of time, the past and the future and their myriad connections in one turbulent flow. But when he first emerges from it, naked and new, words not yet discovered, all he knows with certainty is her face. It fades at once, along with the certainty, along with almost every detail.
He is a universe in four dimensions condensed to a point.
Somewhere in that universe she still exists.
His mother prays over him, thanks God for giving him life. Wordlessly, he gives thanks to God, too.

I
It’s too dark to see in here, and she’s sitting on something lumpy, but Kara can feel the icon in her hands. Athena, who Sister Frances said is a goddess of war and wisdom together. She smiled then, knowingly, said that Kara would need both.
When the Sisters pray at school, they pray for knowledge and peace. When the other children pray, they pray for candy, for their mothers not to scold them for getting dirty.
Kara clutches Athena hard and prays for strength. “Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer,” she whispers. “Please--”
It’s too loud. The door flies open.

II
He hears her voice and the rest falls away. The plan, the war, the humans--all are suddenly inconsequential compared to her. He can see her clearly, as clearly as the day he was born. Huddled in his make-shift tent in a forgotten storage locker, Leoben listens to her, catches glimpses of her in the stream: past, present, future, more and more clearly now that he has found her.
God has given him Kara Thrace and he whispers his gratitude.
God has also given him a promise that he will see her, will know her. He prays it will be soon.

II
After the rest of the pilots are asleep, Kara takes her idols out. Rubs her finger over Artemis’ face. How did he know?
“Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer,” Kara whispers in the dimness of her bunk. She frowns uncertainly. “Your daughter, Sister Frances, used to say that the soul is the part of you that is most yourself, that thinks and feels. And he felt like a person to me. So if Leoben has one, take it home to you.” She thinks, but doesn’t say aloud, that if her mother’s soul deserved to continue, then Leoben’s might as well.

III
Leoben stares at his new face in the mirror, seeing again the visions he had while pinning Kara against the wall. The stream has little to show him by now that is new, but today he saw for the first time the way she’ll love him. His reflection grins wildly back.
He slams his head into the glass. Blood runs warm down his cheek, like when she hit him. He sees Kara thrashing beneath him, covered in paint, crying out. He sees her lying beside him, whispering words of love. He sees her right this moment, praying, beginning to believe.

III
Kara stands frozen in front of the cell. Walking here, wondering who the cylon prisoner would end up being, she said a dozen half-formed prayers that Leoben wasn’t the victim of the malice in Stinger’s eyes as he described what his men had done to it. She could not have imagined this.
“Lords--” she begins, and then the woman’s eyes flutter open. Kara can’t breathe. “Lords of Kobol,” she finally manages. “Take her life and give her peace.”
The woman nods, very faintly.
Kara reaches for her holster.
“Captain Thrace?” Gaius interrupts, entering.
And then it’s too late.


IV
There was no time while she was in battle, or bracing herself to kill Cain, or comforting Lee, but the images haunt her later. When Kara closes her eyes to sleep, she sees them: thousands of Leobens, perfectly formed, eyes asleep, minds blank, tumbling out of the exploding resurrection ship and into space.
They are her enemies; Kara doesn’t question their destruction. Still, on the third night she rises from her bunk, walks through the empty corridors to the temple and murmurs one of the oldest prayers, to Ares, to take up the souls of fallen enemies lost in war.

IV
Caprica laughs at him in his eagerness, at the way he has taken her plan to heart. We’ll provide for them and earn their appreciation, she told them all. Leoben is ready. He hangs curtains, makes the bed, sets out silverware.
He can give her this and she’ll understand, will see the truth of his love as clearly as he’s always seen hers. And then she will allow him to guide her.
He prays softly as he finishes preparing their home, the prayer Caprica spoke as they landed.
Oh God, let her know my true heart.

V
“Lords of Kobol,” Kara pleads, fingers clenched around the sharpest blade she could find, “hear my prayer.” She remembers being young, asking them for strength. Her strength is no good against Leoben, against the determination of his love. “I can’t live like this,” she whimpers. “I won’t need him. I won’t love him. Whatever his false god wants from me, my life is in your hands alone. Please...”
Sister Frances would say it’s no use waiting for the gods to answer; they don’t answer in words. But just this once she wishes they would. She presses down against her wrist.

V
In all the years he’s lived, he has never known failure like this. Leoben drags Kara frantically out of the bathroom, the full strength of his arms overwhelming any resistance.
He deposits her on the couch, kneels in front of her, his face creased in fear, his hands clutching hers.
“Kara,” he pleads.
She turns her face away.
“God,” he begs, his heart shattering. “How can I show Kara the love she deserves? How can I guide her to the wonders she will achieve?”
The stream flows through him but gives no answer.
Leoben rests his head against her knees.

VI
His fingers are warm as he holds her hand and it’s strange: even though they’ve been living together, she has forgotten how human he is, how he sweats, how his heart pumps blood through his veins and arteries just like hers.
“Asclepius,” Kara murmurs, stroking Kacey’s temple with her other hand, “protect this child and heal her from harm. Only through your divine will can she be made whole.”
Leoben leans closer, watching Kacey over her shoulder, his chest pressed to her back. “I like that one,” he says, and his voice vibrates through her. “May God make us all whole.”

VI
He opens his eyes, born anew, smiling as crazily as that first time. He knows not just her face now but her name, her voice, the way she professes her love, the soft heat of her mouth opening beneath his.
God. He closes his eyes. So many times Leoben has reached out to the farthest reaches of the stream, searching for truth, searching for the way. For this moment he stops time, ignores the present, his mind focused on one instant of perfection.
She didn’t mean it, he knows that, but he feels the greater truth: in time, she will.

VII
When the pain becomes too great, when it is clear that not one of them will survive this, he takes hands with his brothers and sisters as they lie helpless.
He wrote the prayer to the cloud of unknowing for Six, when she was first born, when he saw in a vision how they would use her beauty, her strength. He gave it to her the first time they sent her to die, before they were sure what came next.
She leads them now and he smiles at her strength, thinks of Kara, readies himself to return to the stream.

VII
She doesn’t realize her own grief until Helo tells her that the prisoners were already dead, that the cylon race will survive.
When he leaves she moves purposefully through the halls, slips discretely into the brig. Their bodies are still there, blue-lipped, untouched.
Kara cradles him, an embrace she denied him earlier and so many times before that. Dead but not gone, his love for her continues elsewhere.
This seems suddenly to have been foreshadowed in every moment since they met.
She prays to her gods to take his soul, and just this once she prays to his god, too.


VIII
Something is changing. Kara doesn’t know what it is but she feels like a static charge about to spark. She whispers to Aurora as they hurtle through the night. Come on, come on. She can’t express what she’s asking for. It’s more than Earth, it’s more than food or fuel--what she needs is clarity, just a taste of what she understood in the mandala.
With a snap of recognition she sees him falling toward her; the energy within her flares. He speaks her name, his voice washing over her, and she knows what she’s been waiting for. “Leoben.”

VIII
Kara is changed, radiant, the stream flowing around her and through her though she doesn’t seem to see it herself. She is connected to the universe in a way he has only seen in visions. And he suddenly understands--Kara looked so human before not because of the difference between the stream and the shore but because she had not yet been transformed.
This is the woman he was always waiting for her to be, the woman who will love him. Leoben trembles with awe, with love. He rests his hands on her, and she lets him, and he guides her.


IX
Screams fill his mind, his throat, as Leoben throws himself into a run, tearing away from this thing he never dreamed of.
He is not himself without his certainty, but it deserts him now. Why has the stream not shown him this? Why has God blinded him to this moment, to the horror of Kara’s body dead here on this dead planet?
Miles pass before he slows, collapses on hands and knees, crying the questions aloud to God.
When God fails to guide him, he turns to her, steers by her light.
He heads back into the night, toward Kara.

IX
She doesn’t know what she is anymore, but she knows what that girl deserves, that girl who suffered and loved and fought and hardly ever knew the difference.
So Kara gathers enough wood to build a pyre, then carries her body, that lost girl, and lays her atop it. Sets her alight, glorious as night descends on them both.
Alone in the darkness, she doesn’t have the strength to say the words, to send Kara Thrace to the gods. To be dead. To bring death.
Then he reappears, settling beside her, holding her tightly, lending her strength enough to pray.

XX
There’s sweetness in his eyes as Leoben bends over Kara where she lies, sprawled in the grass staring up at the clouds. He reaches out to take her hand as he settles beside her, savoring the fresh air, the sight of sky.
“We made it,” she whispers, awed.
“Thank God,” his voice rumbles quietly.
“Thank the Gods,” Kara adds, more prayerful than teasing. She leans up on one elbow, smiling down at him. “The hybrid was wrong. The oracle was wrong.”
“No,” he murmurs. “The pattern was just too big to see.”
Kara smiles brilliantly. “I love you.”
He wipes away her tears with the ball of his thumb.
She kisses him.
Her lips are soft and warm and he has always remembered her this way; his body is eager and strong against hers and completely familiar. The passion that has always risen between them is transmuted now into something new and they reach for each other, kissing long and deep with the yearning of every living thing in the spring sunshine.
If other cycles can be broken, so can theirs, and there in the tall grass they make love, their long struggle resolving into joy.
The world begins again.

Comments

[hazelwho.livejournal.com]

This is just gorgeous, and very them. This is one of the most beautifully written things I've read in ages. This image will stick with me for a long time:

When Kara closes her eyes to sleep, she sees them: thousands of Leobens, perfectly formed, eyes asleep, minds blank, tumbling out of the exploding resurrection ship and into space.

[embolalia.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much, that's really lovely to hear :)

Yeah, if Kara was first to believe in the cylon soul, she was also the first to know that battle was a massacre. And I think she'd feel it.