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Belief
by makesmewannadie
She doesn't realize it's him at first. It's raining and she's been crawling through the mud for
what feels like days, since the gods-damned toasters took her Viper. Since she lost Helo and
Boomer-or-whatever-she-is and fell down that hill and lost her gun and frakked up her leg.
The pain in her knee is excruciating.
He's just a shape leaning over her out of the rain and she lashes out with the stick that's all
she's got left to defend herself with. But he catches her hand easily, and says "Starbuck?"
His voice, she recognizes his voice and she looks up out of the mud and it's him and
he knows her.
She says, "Oh my God, you made it back," just blurts it out first thing, without thinking. He
smiles that crooked smile and says "God favors us, Starbuck," and gathers her up in his
arms, so frakking strong. She strikes out at him, but he lets her, focused on carrying her
through the dark and the rain. She's too weak to hurt him anyway.
He takes her back to a cabin, a cabin with beds and a kitchen and working electricity and
heat. Here at the end of her world, the hot water still runs. He cleans her up and splints her
leg but he won't stop preaching. God this, and God that, and he sounds so frakking
earnest and she doesn't believe a thing he says. She believes he believes it,
though. There's no question of that.
She heals, slowly. It takes weeks and she feels like she's going to go crazy, alone in this
cabin with nothing but Leoben-or-whatever-he-is and his endless, earnest sermonizing. He
cooks for both of them and checks the splint and carves her a crutch out of birch from
outside the cabin when he's not nattering on about God. She eats the soup he makes her and
listens to him and thinks about how he looked wet and bloody and frightened. And even
though he's being kind to her she snarls at him and tells him he's nothing but a thing.
She doesn't let him touch her.
And that's what she says to him at night, too, whispers "just a thing" in her mind while she
thinks of his eyes on her and his mouth all cut and the way he just let her do that to
him. She touches herself and thinks about him, his blood and his sweat and his gods-
damned pain until she comes, wet and slippery over her fingers and she can go to
sleep again.
And when she's finally well enough to move and walk again, she doesn't leave. She's using
him for her safety; she knows any of the other models would kill her on sight. She's well
enough to run, and she does, in the woods around the cabin, but she always comes back.
She's got no way to get back to the fleet anyway. She doesn't even know where the fleet
are by now, they'll have jumped so many times. But she's using Leoben to buy her
time, to get her information, just like he used her. That's what she tells herself.
That's what she tells herself the night she finally fucks him, too, that she's just using him,
using him to get what she needs. But the things she tells herself are getting stretched thin,
thin enough to break when she looks down at him, neck bruised and lips maybe bleeding a
little from where she bit too hard. She's riding him and he's got his eyes closed; he looks
like a man in ecstasy, a man praying, and there are tears leaking out from beneath his
eyelids, running down into the grey at his temples.
It's enough to make her come, shaking and panting on top of him, and when he hears the
little noises she makes he shoves his hips up hard into her and comes too. His face contorts
and he gasps, "Kara," and it's frakking amazing, it's one of the best orgasms she's ever had.
But neither of them is surprised when the first thing she does once she's come down a bit is
to slap him, hard, so his head rocks to the side.
"Don't call me that," she hisses, and she swings her leg over him, grabs her clothes, and
stalks off into the bathroom. She tells herself she'll leave tomorrow, she must be going mad
to have done this, even if she is using him, even if he is just a thing. She'll leave at first light.
But she doesn't believe it.
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