"Starbuck."
It is a statement not a question; said quietly, he is telling me to prepare. He knows he doesn't have to ask.
His hands trace my buttocks, his fingers part my cheeks. Maybe this time?
I stiffen as he enters me and try my best not to cry out. I won't give him the satisfaction of knowing just how much he's hurt me.
How much he always hurts me.
I grit my teeth as he begins to move inside me, no lubrication, no nothing. I tell myself just a little longer, just a little more, then it will get better. The pain will disappear and?
His lips move on my neck, hot searing kisses to tell me that my body belongs to him, no-one else.
His hands move forward, gripping me tightly as slowly he begins to stroke. Harder and harder until I need to come.
But he won't let me.
Once before, I made that mistake, now I am paying the price.
He continues for perhaps a centon before he becomes more gentle; more careful. Slowly, I feel loved, the shame and humiliation of what I am disappearing as he holds me in his arms.
"Enjoying yourself?" He whispers. His tone is soft, hypnotic, spoken like a lover, and it fools me.
I nod, and that's when I realise my mistake.
He begins to squeeze, as he pumps me harder from behind, all care gone now that I have admitted my pleasure.
I have done wrong.
Letting me go, he pushes forward and I find myself flat on the floor. I do not struggle as he pulls my arms up behind my back and positions himself to enter me once again.
I begin to tremble.
He is worse tonight than any other time; my lover; my tormentor.
But it wasn't always like this.
In the beginning, before the Pegasus, he was always gentle. Tender and loving, caring and considerate. Not any more.
Now there is only pain.
The pleasure doesn't count. How can it when it is stolen, never meant to be?
I wait for the inevitable with tears coursing down my cheeks. How could I think he loved me? How could I think I meant any more to him than sex?
Almost as if he can read my thoughts, he pauses, his hand stroking my hair as he whispers into my ear. But I will not be fooled again.
"I love you, Starbuck."
I don't listen.
His hold on my hair tightens and he pulls my face around to his. His deep blue eyes study me intently. They take in the fear, the submission; I know I must be punished.
I know the truth.
"I have always loved you."
He moves back, his cheek grazing mine, his lips brushing my earlobe. Hot breath?
"But you don't love me."
Yes, I do, my mind screams as he slams into me again. Please?
"You love him, just like she does. Don't you?" He demands.
This time it is too much for me. I beg, I plead, but still he won't stop.
"Don't you?" He shouts.
I can't take any more. "Yes!" I howl through the pain. "Yes!"
He stops.
Sobs wrack my tortured body.
He did not expect that.
Neither did I.
"What?"
This time, his voice is barely even a whisper. I have never said it out loud before, to him or myself, even though we both knew it was true. He threatened me with it but somehow, in some way, he still thought I was his.
I feel the darkness coming now that he has stopped his assault. Unconsciousness threatens to overtake me; silence reigns.
I am slipping, yet still I feel his rage. My sub-conscious tells me to get ready; this is not over yet.
"Liar!"
"Bojay," I whimper. "Please?"
Violence rules; pain and anger.
The darkness takes me?
PART 2 - Heidi M
There's something on his mind.
I can tell from here, way across the room. In the OC, he very quickly greeted me, then excused himself, saying he was committed to a Pyramid game, and he sat down with his back to me. There's tension in those shoulders, and absentmindedly, his hand keeps rubbing the back of his neck, like there's an ache that won't go away.
"Mind if I join you, Captain?"
It's Bojay, drink in his hand, serious expression on his face.
"No, have a seat."
"Long day," he says, making small talk.
"Yeah, but quiet, so I don't really mind."
I knew Bojay a long time ago. We all did, as he was stationed here before Cain requested him for the Pegasus. His personality was better suited to Cain's; aggression sometimes clouded his judgement, made him a bit reckless so that I had to reign him in a few times. If Bojay hadn't been transferred, I think there might have been some real trouble between us. Now, however, he seems to have accepted his place here, accepts my orders without comment. The strangest part about his reappearance on the Galactica is in how he deals with Starbuck. Before, they were great friends, seemingly cut from the same cloth. Now, they avoid each other. Starbuck never wants to be in the same room with him, demanded that his shift not coincide with Bojay's.
"You know, Captain," Bojay says, "I've been thinking about when I was first posted to the Galactica, yahrens ago. For a long time, I thought of this place as one of my homes, even while I was on the Pegasus. I always thought I could come back here, and everything would be the same."
Well, naturally he'd be a bit traumatized, losing his baseship and beloved Commander.
"Nothing's the same, Bojay. Anywhere. Too much has happened."
"But I thought the people here, the ones left that I used to know, I thought they'd be the same."
He looks at me, and I see pain in his eyes. This worries me. Is he having some sort of a breakdown?
"I mean," he continues, "I don't feel like I belong here anymore. Sometimes I wish I'd died with Cain. It's not your fault, Captain, the way things are. But some of the other officers aren't so accepting of my presence."
"Who?" I ask.
He glances over his shoulder at Starbuck, then back at me.
"Maybe you could talk to him, Captain," Bojay says. "For some reason he's got a problem with me, and I don't know why. I've tried to get along with him, but…" He ends with a shrug.
This is not a role I relish. Playing counsellor, dealing with interpersonal problems, but sometimes it is unavoidable.
"All right, I'll talk to him," I say.
Bojay grins at me suddenly, and it's such a radical change from his dour expression, I'm startled. Then he seems to get control of himself again, tones it down.
"Maybe Starbuck and I should work together," Bojay suggests. "A few duty shifts might make the difference."
"Yeah, maybe," I say non-commitally.
"You do what you think is best, Captain," Bojay says, getting up. "You always make the right decisions."
As he walks away, I see Starbuck watching. He gives me an indeciferable look; could be annoyed, could be… concerned? Then he turns back to his Pyramid game, seemingly intent on ignoring me. Hopefully later he'll tell me what I've done to tick him off. He's been so jumpy lately, not like him at all. Sometimes I think he has someone else, and that makes me angry, but I will control myself until I know for sure.
PART 3 - Rita G Mac Auslan
Now Apollo knows. Not who. Never who. He didn't hurt me much, wouldn't have hurt me at all if I'd told him who. But who would have led to why and he must never know why. And I promised myself I would never lie to Apollo. I kept that promise - the only one made to myself I've ever kept -and lost Apollo. How ironic!
I thought I could keep it from him by keeping away when I was bruised and stretched. It worked until tonight, when he showed up unannounced. All the evidence from last night was still there. And I wouldn't tell him who. He'd have left to kill Bojay if I did. This way he just left.
I couldn't let him kill Bojay. He has too much going for him: family, career, Sheba. He'll get over me. Now I could kill Bojay. It'll cost me my career, probably my life, but those don't matter to anyone, least of all me. So what's stopping me? If I kill Bojay, he'll have won. Succeeded in destroying me. As if he hasn't already.
"Starbuck."
Frak! He must have seen Apollo return to the Officers' Club. He's admiring the new bruises.
"Dildos."
I roll off the bed and reach all the way underneath for the box, fully aware of what his next move will be. As soon as my shoulders are past, he pins me against the bedframe, kicks the back of my knees to make me more accessible, and enters me in one thrust. My back arches with each thrust and the bed springs rake it. He takes his time, as always, and the space under the bed echoes with my howls of pain. Blood drips along my vertebrae and starts to pool on the floor. For some reason I can't pass out this time.
Finally he pulls out. I'm caught on some of the bed springs and don't move. I think, 'Maybe he'll leave now.' No such luck. Instead, he grabs my hips and pulls me out as I scream.
When my screams trail off into gasping sobs, he speaks again. "Dildos."
Shit. I had come out empty handed. I start to crawl back under, but not fast enough for him. A booted foot pushes me under the bed, the heel carefully aimed to catch on my sac. I cry out again, but grab the box at the same time. My torn back scrapes against the bedframe as I back out, and I bite down on my bottom lip to keep from screaming yet again, forgetting that the lip is split courtesy of Apollo. I manage to merely whimper and crawl to him, presenting the box.
He opens it and selects the longest, thickest dildo. It scarcely matters, I'm so wide open. "Fuck yourself."
I obey. He watches my groin carefully and as I tighten to cum, lifts his boot again to push my cock down. I cum anyway, in agony, straight onto the floor.
"Clean it."
I leave the dildo in and support myself on my hands and knees as I lick my cum from the floor. Then I feel him again. Oh, Lords, let me pass out now, please! He's fist fucking the dildo deep into me. I can almost hear myself tearing inside. I can't scream, I'm too busy vomiting. My arms won't hold me and my face sinks into the filthy puddle that I'm still adding to. I'm going to die this way, drowning in my own vomit while being ripped open from the inside by a dildo. Idly, I wonder which will be the actual cause of death.
PART 4 - Laura Anne Kincaid
It was Sheba that found him, lying on the floor of his quarters. Where I'd left him, crying into the disgusting pile of his own vomit, a pool of blood forming at his rear. He hadn't made a sound the whole way through, hadn't even begged me to stop; accepting of his punishment and his fate. Until the end?
His cries hurt me; he wasn't supposed to cry. He wasn't ever supposed to cry.
I don't mean to hurt him. I never meant to hurt him, but when he looks at me and I see the love that's there, the love that's not for me, I can't help it.
And now Sheba knows. I can tell from her eyes. Those dark embers, the window to the soul, have always been the thing that gave away her emotions. Anger, disbelief, shock? and fear. Somehow, she knows that I'm capable of this.
Did *he* tell her? Was my name the only thing he could say before the pain and the humiliation overcame him? Or did she work it out on her own? And if she did, could others now?
Will she tell Apollo?
Starbuck is in the life centre now, under Cassiopeia's care. She still thinks of him as 'hers'. If only she knew?
Adama has called for an investigation, of course, but they won't find anything. A brutal assault, he called it. Not one word of the rape. Not a mention of the way he was found.
No one outside knows the real truth.
And they won't.
Starbuck belonged to me a long time ago. Before Apollo; before Sheba. And no matter what happens I'll make sure that he'll always be mine. No matter what?
It was in the Academy that we first met. In Starbuck's world, love had been something that was never certain. Everyone he'd ever loved, anyone who had ever loved him, had left. He wouldn't let it happen again; he wouldn't let anyone get close.
Until I met him.
Up until then, he had been out with a woman almost every night. I knew it was only for sex. He could fool them with the sweet little nothings he murmured in their ears. He could even fool himself into thinking he was looking for love.
But he couldn't fool me.
He wasn't happy, and the pleasure he got from those women would only last so long. It was an escape from reality; an escape from all he'd had to go through in his life.
An escape from himself?
But he couldn't escape me.
I was the one that gave him love. *I* was the one that *he* could love. I was the only one?
But he lied. He promised me that he would always be mine and he lied. He said he could never love anyone as much as he loved me.
And he lied.
Now his love is for Apollo. He couldn't help it, he said; it wasn't his fault. No one chooses who they fall in love with.
He has betrayed me, and now he has paid the price. His love was for me, no one else, and I will make sure it stays that way.
He will be mine again.
But first I have to deal with Sheba?
PART 5 - Kamikaze
I stand in the Life Center corridor, the still form on the bed knows nothing of my presence. I don't know how he can lie on his back, not the way Cassiopea described his condition. Starbuck looks so peaceful in his sleep. The only visible marring is his split lip, thanks I know to me. Just by looking you'd wonder why he was here, but I know.
My father reported it as a 'brutal assault', but I know. Father has called for an investigation of who did this, but I know.
I had seen Starbuck in his quarters, going there to talk. I saw what he looked like then, and I knew. I still remember his words as his pain filled eyes met mine. "'Pollo, my love. You are not my only." I couldn't believe it, even looking at his bruised, battered body. I demanded the name of his other lover, but he remained loyal; against me. Enraged, I slugged him and stormed out.
Seeing him here, now, I can't help wonder how differently things would have turned out if I'd stayed. Would his attacker have stayed away? Could I have protected him? They all question who could have done this, but I know. Starbuck told me. Oh, not in so many words, but I know. His attacker is his other lover. He must have told the boray about me, and he wasn't so kind.
I don't have a name yet, but when I do . . . I don't care who it is, rank and regulations be damned! He will pay. No one deserves this, least of all my beloved Starbuck. He has always been insecure in his emotions. Sagan, why did I leave him? He'd be on duty now, complaining about yet another patrol. Oh, how I miss those frustrating whines. I give him a hard time about it, but he knows I'm only joking.
The daggit will pay! I just hope I find him before Father's security teams. They'll lock him away without so much justice. Excessive force be damned! When I'm finished with him even Starbuck won't be able to identify him.
. . . The sounds of the monitors are changing; he is coming around. I know if he sees my eyes his own torment will increase. I'm hopeless at hiding my emotions. I see his blue eyes begin to flutter and I turn away.
*****
tbc...