FIC TITLE: Instrument of the Gods

WIP

Author- PTBvisiongrrl

Part- 13/?

Date- 08 09 08

Rating – R, just to be safe

Pairings/Characters- Lee/Kara, of course!!

Word Count-

Category- Short Story

Genre- Angst

Archiving- The Fallout Shelter, Apollo/Starbuck Fan Fic, . All others please ask!

Warnings- Not really- just language…

Spoilers- THROUGH FINALE OF SEASON THREE; AU after that

Disclaimers- Unfortunately, I don’t own any of these characters, and make absolutely no profit from taking them out to play…

Summary- As we know, Kara didn’t die in the mandela. But we don’t know what happened to her yet- so here’s my version. A sequel to my Malestorm Fill-Ins.

Kara looked out into the field of stars visible from the aft observation lounge, leaning her forehead against the thick glass with a sigh. Her eyes had dark smudges beneath them, and her body ached with lack of sleep. It had been almost a fortnight since she had slept the night through; a week since she even had managed a semi-passable four or five hours of tossing and dozing; days since she had managed to fall into deeper REM sleep at all, for any period of time.

Unlike the old Kara, she had not attempted to hide her state from Lee. She didn’t whine about it, or point it out, or complain. But when Lee finally realized something was wrong and asked her if she was sleeping well, she answered with an honest no. No elaboration.

By the third day of laying next to a sleepless Starbuck, Lee tried to help her. Amazing, mind blowing sex left her exhausted and allowed a few hours of rest. The next night, as her movement roused him from his own slumber again, he tried making a tea to help her sleep and gave her a massage. Bleary eyed and late for his own shift the next morning, Kara decided that at least one of them needed rest in order to keep up with their duties, and that night took herself off for a long run around Galactica’s echoing, empty corridors.

The next night, Starbuck went for the old tried and true method of her younger officer days- booze, and lots of it. Other than a stellar streak of Triad, resulting in enough losses by the junior officers that she started taking IOUs for shift coverage, it got her nothing but a hang over so severe that Lee could only shake his head at her.

And that was why, tonight, she was spending hours staring at the stars and wondering what distant one was the Earth’s sun. It had been slow progress towards Earth, given the President’s restrictions, but they had completed almost sixty jumps. That was almost- she did the math in her head- a jump every two and one-half days. Tierra was feeding Kara coordinates almost faster than Kara could remember them to pass them on to Gaeta to calculate the actual jumps, creating a bit of a back-log. There were three jumps’ worth of information in Kara’s quick scribble still on the Admiral’s desk right now; good thing, too, as her lack of sleep was affecting her ability to spend time with Tierra.

Not only was she not sleeping to dream her way to Tierra, but meditation wasn’t viable, either. Trying to focus her mind enough to meditate these days was almost impossible. She couldn’t keep her thoughts on anything for more than a few minutes. She swore that if she didn’t sleep soon, any bright and shiny object would turn her attention from the task at hand.

That task at hand was reaching Tierra.

Since her problems sleeping began, she had met with Tierra only a handful of times, briefly amid fitful sleep, barely able to exchange a word before she woke again, all traces of Tierra washed away by consciousness. What had begun as mildly troubling was becoming an immense issue. As much as her sleeplessness was somehow physical, it was quickly becoming mental. The need to speak to Tierra simply made all attempts to sleep or meditate futile. She knew she would fail, she would screw it up. That’s what she was, after all, and everyone knew it. She was a first class screw up.

Everyone has a skill, Lee, she could hear in her own hardened sarcasm ripping through her head. She had become her own self-fulfilling prophecy, with no clue how to undo the mental damage she had done to herself. After hours of attempts in the lounge, barely able to stand and get back to their quarters for the fatigue, Kara knew that she had to ask for help. The question was, Lee or Cottle?

Arriving before Lee had left for his early shift, Kara spun the wheel to open the hatchway, catching him mid-button on his uniform shirt. “Kara! Early morning run, or just couldn’t sleep again?” His voice held concern.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Kara answered, voice slightly hoarse and weighed down.

Lee suggested going to see Cottle. “Maybe you should see about getting something to help you sleep.”

He waited for an explosion. Kara HATED stimulants, hated downers, hated fiddling with her internal reaction systems in any way, other than a few drinks on down time. Anything that interfered with her ability to fly when she had to was anathema. When Kara agreed easily, Lee knew something was wrong beyond the mere loss of rest. Probing, trying to get some sort of handle on what was plaguing Kara, he asked the question that let loose a flood of frame-wracking tears. “What does Tierra say about this?”

Kara immediately welled up, biting her lip hard, and wrapping both her arms around herself. “I don’t know, Lee.”

“You haven’t talked to her?” he asked, his mind racing. He spoke with Tierra every night, almost; only those nights that sheer, immense exhaustion claimed him did he not manage to reach her. Tierra had given him no indication that Kara had not been in touch recently.

“No,” she shuddered out, sinking to the floor. “Not in weeks, now.”

Lee was immediately at her side, holding her. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Kara shook her head. “I didn’t know what to think; I was worried that I couldn’t talk to her, but I couldn’t sleep. If I can’t sleep, I can’t reach her.”

“And you didn’t ask for help sooner,” Lee sighed. Trust Starbuck to try and go it alone. “You couldn’t contact the link for Earth, who is also our daughter, and you didn’t think it was important enough to talk to me about?” His voice was not full of blame or even angry. It was just- concerned.

Kara couldn’t look him in the eye. “I thought if I could just sleep-“

“Go to Cottle. Now.” Lee pulled her up, still embracing her, and wiped tears from her eyes. “Get something to sleep. You are off the roster until he says you can go back on.” Kara felt so downtrodden that she couldn’t even put up a token defense. Nodding, she headed to the tiny bathroom afforded to private quarters on Galactica to make herself more presentable for the trip to Life Station.

“You want something to help you sleep?” Cottle asked, puffing the cigarette gripped between his teeth as he flipped through her chart.

“Yes,” Kara stated, refusing to look him in the eye.

“Having nightmares?” he asked, one gray brow arched.

“No. Just can’t sleep.” Her hands gripped the sides of the gurney so tightly her bloodless knuckles turned white.

Cottle took note of the behavior. She was far too subdued for the Starbuck he knew, and he wanted to elicit some kind of reaction other than the soft monotone answers he was getting. Contrary to his gruff exterior, he did care about his patients, and this one in particular. Aside from the fact she was their salvation, leading them to Earth, she wasn’t a bad kid, other than some rough edges. Having access to her medical files, he had an idea what had made her this way, and he tried to cut her some slack in the interpersonal skills department because of it. “Any unusual stress?,” he asked, still puffing away and directing the smoke as near Thrace as possible.

She gave him a dark look of disbelief through the foul cloud of smoke lingering between them. “Unusual? No, not at all.”

He conceded. “Not the best question, no.” Shifting the cigarette to the side of his mouth, he pulled out his stethoscope and laid it on her chest. “Take a deep breath.” Barely pausing to listen as he moved the cold metal disk around, he began the litany of questions every doctor asks a patient troublesome to diagnose. When he got to the last time she had had her cycle, the fear that crossed her eyes made him sigh.

“I don’t remember-“ she said, slowly. “I don’t know. Oh, gods-“ she sagged her head into her hands as Cottle pocketed the stethoscope in favor of a blood-drawing needle.

Looking at top-gun Starbuck deflate like an old balloon, Cottle said a quick prayer to whichever deity might be listening that it wasn’t what he thought it was.

Leaving Life Station and off duty, Kara wandered adrift around the Galactica. It would take a day to get the blood results back that would confirm the piss test Cottle had made her take before she left, but she already knew the answer. Counting back carefully in her head, she was no more than two months along; her trouble sleeping roughly corresponded with the time visions had begun to haunt her while she was pregnant with Tierra.

Frak, she thought to herself. Frak, frak, frak.

She longed for The Place Between, for Hestia’s soothing hand on her brow during labor, for a child as perfectly behaved and easy to care for as Tierra had been. She wished for a shortened infancy, a goddess-nanny-

For Cottle to have made a mistake.

She couldn’t do this again.

Without realizing that she had done so, Kara found herself in front of the Temple of Hera in Dogsville, down in the lower berths, deep in the belly of the Galactica. Making the decision to go in wasn’t conscious, but kneeling and begin the Mother’s Prayer was. O, great Hera, Mother of the Gods, Mother to mankind; You who are Daughter of the earth and skies, Foster-child of the oceans. She who is Blessed by the Fates and Praised by all, Hear my prayer...

Kara was suddenly- elsewhere. She felt strongly that it was not The Place Between, but similar. There was a long hallway, edged with immense carved, gilt doors; lyre music, such as she recalled hearing at the Great Temple in Delphi on feast days, filled her ears. Following the sound, she emerged onto a familiar white beach, with brilliant turquoise water lapping the edges. “Earth,” she sighed.

“Yes, my child,” Hera’s voice made her sigh with relief. “I thought that Earth might be a good place to have our conversation.”

As the Goddess drew even with Kara, taking the time to admire the view of endless ocean dotted with tiny islands, the sounds of sea gulls distant, Kara felt foreboding. “So the news is bad enough that you need to bribe me with a visit to Earth?” she asked, turning to face Hera.

Hera sighed, looking like a tired schoolteacher faced with her burden-student of the year. “Kara, my child. How can the news of impending motherhood ever be bad?”

“Frak,” Kara hissed. “I could almost, almost, keep from believing it was true.” She closed her eyes, feeling a tear try to squeeze past, and bit her lip.

Hera pulled Kara’s chin up, forcing Kara to look at her. “It will be alright, my dear. Your worst fears are just that- fears. You are not Socrata Thrace, and could never be. Your children will grow up strong and healthy, physically and mentally.”

“Not from my doing,” Kara protested, only to be shushed by the goddess.

“I am the Wife of Zeus, Queen of the Gods, and Foster-Child of the Three Fates, yet you don’t believe my words?” Hera almost smiled. “Why do I still like you, you who claim to be reverent but question everything I say?”

The almost humor in her tone softened Kara a bit; and Kara had, after all, prayed for this. “Why me? Why again? How can I do this in the real world, with a real child?”

“You have almost limitless fortitude, my daughter.” Hera gripped Kara’s hand and pulled her along the edge of the water. “And you have love. The bravery to accept the love of Lee Adama, to trust in it, was far more difficult to find than the love you will need to mother a child.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” Kara almost pleaded.

“You didn’t know how to fly vipers before you went to the Academy, yet you are the best viper pilot in the fleet,” Tierra chimed in from the water’s edge where Kara had not seen her a moment ago.

“Tierra!” Kara cried out as she ran to her child. “I was so worried that I couldn’t talk to you-“

“My little brother is interfering.” Tierra smiled and embraced her mother. “I have missed you, Mother.”

“Little brother?” Kara asked, almost amused. Trust Tierra to know. “How?”

“She can sense his thoughts,” Hera stated as she made her way to the family reunion. “As small as he is, there are thoughts there-“

“Just very weird, hard to understand thoughts,” Tierra continued. “He makes it difficult to talk with you.”

Kara held Tierra’s hand, while her other hand settled over her stomach. “What happens as he get bigger?” she asked, wanting to confirm her suspicions.

“It will be more and more difficult to communicate,” Tierra said sadly. “Until he is born.”

“Will you still be able to talk to Lee?” Kara wanted to know. “The journey to Earth-“

“Will continue, Kara,” Hera stated. “That is why I brought you here, when you called to me. I wanted Tierra to explain to you what would happen while you were- indisposed.”

Kara let out a sigh of relief. “So this pregnancy won’t interfere.”

“We can work around it, Mother,” Tierra patted Kara’s arm. “My baby brother is far too important to let him go."

“I wasn’t going to-“ Kara was shocked, as she realized that the one future she had not considered, in her wandering through Galactica’s corridors, was to terminate this child. “Tierra- after being so wrong about you-“

Hera regally snorted. “That is not what we meant, Kara. We know that you would never do that, now that you have a better understanding of motherhood.” Tierra pulled Kara down onto a shaded, rocky outcropping, Hera deigning to settle herself down demurely as well before continuing. “This one will be needed as well, Kara Thrace. His life is not an accident. All things have a higher purpose, if everyone could but see it, unselfishly and intelligently.”

Kara was reeling inside from so much information, and the lack of sleep back on Galactica seemed to feed into how she felt here as well. “Will any of my children be free of this duty to the gods?”

Hera rested her hand on Kara’s forehead. “That I cannot tell yet. But if it is possible, I promise it will be. But for now, I give you what I can. Sleep, Hero, and awake refreshed.”

Kara barely heard a murmured “I love you, Mother,” before falling into the deepest sleep of her life.