Fandom/Characters: BSG; Leoben/Kara
Rating: PG-13
Length: 300 words
Challenge: Written for ds_snippets challenge #53, prompt: anniversary, awake
Spoilers: Up to 3x01
Notes: Thanks to my beta, llassah.
Disclaimer: The characters and scenario are not mine. I own nothing but a murmuring Muse.
Summary: Leoben celebrates his time with Kara.

Time is fluid. Time is a river, its flow measured in love and pain. Time is a circle. We mark our place on the circle by counting back to the events that define Us.

The other models measure their time from the destruction of the colonies, to the exact moment of the first human death, out in the reaches of space.

But We Leobens always count time from when I first met Kara Thrace. Not a prophecy or dream; her true face, hard eyes, hobbling walk, ring-decked hand slamming down on the table beside me. The moment when I called her Starbuck, her warrior-name, and she turned. Then I knew that it was all true, that Our vision of God's plan would be fulfilled.

I gave her a glimpse of the future, and she gave me pain. Pain raised doubt. Doubt brought fear. I was pinned, weaknesses exposed before her bronze laugh. A moment of connection across glass, and then I was flung away into the void.

That was five hundred days ago, and now I see Kara every day. Sometimes she rails; sometimes she pretends complaisance. Always she plots to kill me, passionate rage in her heart. Passion can be turned. I know that. We've seen it. And the deaths … they're not so bad.

Cavil complains that the downloads have become more difficult, but for Us they are easier each time. I barely resist now, when Kara harms me. Piercing pain in my throat, a gush of metallic-hot blood, and I slip into death like a warm bath. I greet the moments between death and awakening with the eagerness of a man going to his marriage bed. The death of fear - this is Kara's secret gift to Us. And one day We will share it with her.