Part 2: The Stick

Being held by Leoben turned out to be a completely different experience as far as Kara was concerned. Unlike Simon, who had inflicted pain with the cold indifference of a scientist, seeing her suffering as nothing more than a negligible byproduct of his research, Leoben relished it. He delighted in making her scream and then taunted her for her weakness, reminding her of their first encounter on the Geminon Carrier. Back then their positions had been reversed and he had refused to give into her and beg for mercy.

On the other hand she had to admit that out of those constant reminders of that first encounter had come at least one good thing: she had finally been allowed to shower, to wash herself... even if Leoben had been watching her the whole time. In fact, unlike Simon, Leoben was almost obsessive about her cleanliness. She remembered that too from their time on the Geminon Carrier, she remembered how even back then he had claimed to find body odors offensive. For a moment she had almost been tempted to refuse his order to get clean, just to see what he would do about it, but in the end the mere thought of being able to wash herself, of being able to get rid of the gods knew how many weeks worth of sweat, fear and filth, had turned out to be too tempting. Yes, by walking straight into the shower the moment he had told her to do so she had played straight into Leoben's hands and she knew it but she was a prisoner and that meant that there would be plenty of chances for her to at least try to fight back. She knew she had to pick her battles and the bottom line was that there was no point in turning her personal hygiene into one.

Of course, their attitudes toward her cleanliness --or even her suffering-- had not been the extent of the differences between the two cylons. Another, far more relevant one, had to do with the fact that --unlike Simon, who had never even acknowledged her questions about what was being done to her in the first place-- Leoben had been only too happy to fill her in on what was being done to her.

She hadn't even had to ask, not really, because he had told her exactly what it was that his fellow cylon had been injecting her with all along: fertility drugs.

He had told her that on the first day they had been together, right after he had raped her for the first time. At the time he had mockingly pointed out that if she was ever going to fulfill her destiny as the mother of the new race, the drugs alone were not going to cut it.

That had sent a chill down her spine, especially because she knew that, having been married and out of the military for almost a year --and with repopulation being one of the new colony's top priorities-- it had also been almost a year since she had been allowed anywhere near a contraceptive. That meant that physically it was impossible for her to fight Leoben and that from a physiological perspective there was nothing to keep her from conceiving so chances were that sooner or later Simon's drugs would do what they were meant to... especially because he still came almost every day, keeping up the regular injections, ultrasounds and blood-tests. In other words, she had no control whatsoever over the situation and no real hope of that changing any time soon.

That was one of the things she had found hardest to cope with: the total loss of control. It reminded her too much of being at her mother's mercy when she was a child, unable to defend herself. The truth was that --as much as she wanted to deny it-- powerlessness was not a new experience for her, far from it, but in a way that familiarity had only served to make matters worse. She had fought so hard to leave that part of her past behind, to become Starbuck. When she had gone off to flight school she had promised herself that she would never give anyone that kind of power over her again but over the years she had allowed herself to forget that that power wasn't necessarily hers to give... she had become complacent and allowed herself to forget just how easily it could be wrestled from her.

The problem was that --to make matters worse-- Leoben was not content just wrestling that power away from her, no, that would have been too easy. He wanted to do a lot more than that: he wanted her to become an active, 'willing' participant in her own debasement, he wanted her to be the one to hand that control over to him.

To him it was all a game, one she soon realized she had no choice but to play.

Oh, she had tried to keep herself under control, she had tried to keep herself from giving him the satisfaction of hearing her scream. She had even gone so far as to force herself to allow him to do whatever he wanted without fighting him, just lying there motionless and unresponsive, trying desperately not to feel but in the end he had managed to break her and that had only added to his satisfaction... and he hadn't been shy when the time had come to let her know that.

From the very first day Leoben had left her no doubt about it: she could choose the carrot or she could choose the stick but what she couldn't do was to refuse to choose at all... and while up to that point Kara had managed to force herself to choose the stick, she knew that by doing so she was still playing straight into his hands, that whether she chose to endure the pain or to escape it, in the end it made no difference because either way he was still the one in control.

That was something that had become apparent to her from the first time Leoben had pushed her against that wall: she could make things easier or harder for herself, those were her only choices, and while up to that point she had chosen pain over compliance, as far as Leoben was concerned that changed nothing... and the idea of being granted a reprieve was becoming more and more appealing with each and every passing second.

After all, as Leoben kept reminding her --especially when the pain became almost unbearable, when his gaze and his touch became more intrusive than she could stand-- she had the power to make it stop, she could escape it all... and all she had to do to make it so was to say the word, all she had to do was to give in, to stop fighting.