Title: Plenty
Author: scy
Feedback: scynneh@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Not mine
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Pairing: Sam/Kara/Leoben
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Up through all aired episodes
Summary: Sam knows there's a piece missing
Author's Notes: For the_grynne, sarkastic, liminaliz and anybody else who has chatted with me about this particular combination.
July 2008

Sam hadn't wanted to ask Leoben anything, but the Cylons and humans were barely recovered from the sight of Earth before there were arguments starting on how they should rebuild Earth and who was best for what kind of work.

Most of the time, he felt like a piece of furniture, shifted from one side to the other, and only asked his opinion when things got really bad.

The Admiral still wasn't talking very much in public, and people wondered what had happened when Colonel Tigh confessed that he was a Cylon. In the meantime, Roslin, the Admiral, Kara, and President Adama conferenced with the Cylons almost daily.

Kara and Lee stood on one side of the table, Tory and D'anna on the other, while Baltar and Leoben mirrored each other, in the middle. Baltar pleaded with D'anna for moderation, and with Laura behind him, proposed alternate plans.

Sam, Tigh, and Tyrol were there at the Cylons' insistence, but Sam and Tyrol hung back mostly, they didn't want to get into anything extreme. They let other speak up, and of them, Leoben seemed most able to take a middle road. He spoke less often, but directly to the Cylons, not yelling, but refusing to let them have their way completely.

When he wasn't observing and serving as the resident pragmatist, Leoben had taken to wandering away from the original landing site between negotiation sessions. So far, Sam had been the only one ordered to find him who had been able to, or who had bothered to try.

Usually, he didn't have to go further than the tide line, and Leoben would be sitting on a boulder or wading into the current.

He didn't call out, but did made a small effort to find something to say that wouldn't drive the other Cylon off before Sam could give him the latest message.

"I thought D'anna was going to tell you to shut your mouth today at the council."

Leoben glanced up quizzically, water lapping against his legs, pants rolled up out of the way, coat buttoned against the wind.

"You know what I mean, she was getting upset at the way you won't side with her all the time."

"What D'anna saw guided her to four Cylons among the Fleet," Leoben said. "She believes that she can do whatever is necessary in her mind and still have God's blessing."

"You don't think so?" Sam asked. He hadn't tried to know or understand the Cylons in the years before he found out he was one of them, and now he had to decide how much he wanted another family and what he should take from them.

"She was on the brink of forcing a man's hand by sacrificing innocent lives."

"So was the President." Sam wasn't sure what he thought of Lee's decision, but he had seen the man's face and known that if Kara hadn't run into the room, Tigh would be dead. He would concede that Lee was impressively stubborn about refusing to pushed around and he had a lot more to him than Sam had guessed or seen in the past. He'd already known that Lee could do more than handle himself well in a Viper, and apparently he knew what it took to play political games, and still came out of it with integrity.

"Yes, and he offered a choice," Leoben said.

"You approve of that? The Cylons didn't come out on top this time."

"When you name us, you don't acknowledge your place," Leoben said.

Sam blew into his cupped hands and rubbed them together. "Yeah." His issues weren't something he wanted to discuss and he changed the subject. "It's freezing out here, why are you sitting outside."

"How long have you been in space, Anders?"

"A couple of years."

"Never seeing clouds or land," Leoben said. "There are no seasons in space. Nothing to mark time's passage except the hands of a clock, and those are not true indicators of minutes and hours."

"They tell us the time," Sam said.

"But you have to trust that they haven't been reset. You live on faith that you are where you should be, but can never be completely sure of it." Leoben smiled. "Now you have proof that day follows night, here on this planet." He leaned back, hands braced on either side of him, resting in the sunshine.

"Why do the Cylons want Earth so badly?"

"Why does anyone want a home?"

"I've seen your ship, it's made of steel, metal and wires on top of each other, it's not like you couldn't make something like this," Sam said and motioned to the beach around them.

"Your ship as well, if you want a place on it."

"I belong here."

"Why?"

"Kara is here, and she needs me. What's your reason. You could be with the Cylon council, making decisions."

"They will decide on their own, it's only when they choose wrongly that I have to step in."

When Leoben said that, Sam remembered things his wife had told him about this particular Cylon. "Kara said you told her that you had visions."

Leoben didn't deny it.

"Why couldn't you see this coming?" Sam asked. "Of all the possibilities, this one got overlooked? The Earth being ground zero for a nuke attack?"

"Absolute destruction is by its very nature, the cessation of everything," Leoben said.

Sam frowned. "What does that even mean?" Do you ever just listen to what you're saying? What are we supposed to do now?"

"Did you think it would be easy? Earth may have been our destination, but it is not the conclusion. The work needing to be done is not just that of hands, but is not just that of hands, but souls."

"You think that the souls of the Cylons, if there are such things, deserve saving?"

"Even you cannot say what will happen if you try," Leoben said.

"The first time you were interrogated, you told Kara that you were sure that you had a soul," Sam said. "How do you know that's not just part of your programming?"

"Why give a machine the capacity to question?"

"To test you, make sure you were doing what you were supposed to."

"Then, by that standard, the entire human population should be repeating their subjugation under a second Cylon rule," Leoben said. "Yet they are not."

"A machine can't feel," Sam said.

"Are you sure?"

"It's not possible?"

"So you don't love your wife?" Leoben asked.

Sam stepped into Leoben, their bodies inches apart. "Say that again and I will knock you on your ass."

Leoben smiled. "How do you rationalize that righteous denial, Anders? What are you, if not merely a man?"

"What do you think I am? That the Cylons are?"

"The children of God, like humanity, formed of light, and promise, and destined for so much more than most are willing to imagine."

"You really believe that," Sam said.

"Yes."

"Have, from the second you crawled out of your tank, or wherever it is you came from."

"From the instant I drew breath, I knew the path, and I knew how many times it has been traveled, by you and everyone else," Leoben said.

Sam stepped back, uncomfortable with how close he was standing to the Cylon, even though the blond didn't seem bothered, even with the threat of violence still in Sam's body.

"How do we stop it from ending up like this," Sam waved at the devastation around them, "all over again?"

"Don't let sentiment be cut out of your decisions. One race cannot survive without the other, and true emotion is the best and surest way to unite both."

"You want us to love each other and hope that fixes everything?" Sam asked. "Please, go and tell the council that's your great plan, I want to see their faces when they realize you're just a nutjob."

"I am not crazy, Anders, and you are letting yourself only see the surface of things," Leoben said.

"Everyone is more than what they seem, than what shape they wear. It's what they do with their hands and minds that will determine the fate of us all."

"Love."

"You have experienced it."

"Right now I don't even know that Kara wants to be alone with me, let alone that she still loves me."

"It's not your role to be at odds," Leoben said.

"Yeah, you told me that before, but things have changed since then, and she won't even look at me during the council meetings for more than a couple seconds."

"She is reconciling actuality with perception," Leoben said.

"How does that help me?"

"It may not be the work of moments."

"Don't think I don't know that this is the perfect opening for you to go after her," Sam said. "You've always had thing for Kara, and now that I'm not in the way, you can take a shot at her."

Leoben reared back, lips pulled back, smiling, but ready to bite. "If you think so little of Kara's devotion, then you do not deserve what she has given you freely."

Sam threw his hands up. "I don't know what I should do, and she won't tell me."

"What do you expect me to do in your stead?" Leoben asked.

"She doesn't hate you."

"To you, that bodes well," Leoben said, dry as a desert.

"It's something."

"She is not my wife."

"But, she could have been, she still could be."

"What we were to each other was not the way to what you have shared, and what we have become is newly forged."

"You're saying you're scared," Sam said.

"I am telling you that you are married to Kara, and it is not me that has to explain a deception, no matter how necessary it was deemed at its inception."

"I was trying to stay alive," Sam said. "How come that isn't a good enough reason? You lied to her, screwed with her mind, where do you get off being her guide?"

"I have never pretended to be anyone but myself," Leoben said. "Kara knows this, now, and has accepted it."

"What do you call what you did to her?"

"I helped her see what she was meant to be," Leoben said. "I cleared the way of obstacles, and now she is what destiny intended her to be."

"That's a neat way of saying you're not responsible for what you did to her."

"I know what my role is, and I knew before all of this began," Leoben said. "If that explanation does not satisfy you, there is no other, Kara knows this, and her understanding is what matters."

"Now that she's got all that under control, what are you going to do?"

"See to what has to be done."

"Like what? And what are you doing, hanging out at the beach?"

Leoben smiled. "I have an affinity for water, and the currents make sense when one interacts directly with them."

"Yeah, that's just like you not to give me a straight answer," Sam said. He didn't know what he was supposed to be doing, or what would help anyone, even if he did have a suggestion that he thought they should listen to.

"I don't know where I should be," Sam said. He didn't mean for Leoben to hear, the blond did, and answered.

"With Kara, if that's what you want most." It felt strangely like a blessing, but from Leoben, something that made it almost a gospel that Sam could practice.

"So long as she'll have me, isn't that what you've said?"

"Even longer," Leoben said, and Sam heard a resolute devotion in his voice. Whatever else he felt about him, Leoben knew what his purpose was, and wouldn't let anybody tell him otherwise, and that was something that Sam couldn't help but admire. He left Leoben on the beach, and told the council that their missing member was meditating on a new strategy for purification of the elements. He figured it would be all right with everybody if Leoben was out of the way for a couple hours, and any damage done could be repaired in a matter of minutes. When he wasn't off daydreaming, Leoben was pretty damn sharp, and he would know what to do.

That done, Sam decided to follow the advice he'd been given. He knew that Kara never felt at home anyplace but on the Galactica. New Caprica had been a fresh start, but then it became a prison instead. Earth, as damaged as all reports made it out to be, was a chance for stability, or more.

Sam built a home, as soon as there was talk of settling the northern continent, he went to talk it over with Helo, who was in charge of land allocation.

"It'd be a good thing," Sam said. "There has to be military and civilians living together along with the Cylons, otherwise it's going to look like New Caprica all over again."

"Some of the colonists aren't willing to live with Cylons," Helo said. "A lot of them don't even care for mixed couples." He and Athena had been dealing with that for longer than Sam and Kara, but they refused to let it stop them from living like they wanted. "But if you're willing to settle one of the plots, that would give people an example to look to."

When Helo was done putting the paperwork through, he stamped it, handed it to Sam and paused before letting it go. "I won't tell you it's going to be easy out there, Anders, it's rough terrain, and we're not sure if the first harvest is going to be worth a damn."

"I knew that going in," Sam said and Helo nodded.

"Yeah, just don't expect everything to work out perfectly."

"Do they ever?"

He gave Kara someplace to sleep at night, if she even wanted to come down to the planet. She said there was still too much work for her to take a break.

"You have to rest sometime," Sam said. He still wasn't allowed much more than limited movement around the Fleet vessels. A truce with the Cylons didn't mean that anyone forgot that he had been posing as a human, and there were enough angry faces when he was aboard Galactica that he knew asking for more wasn't a good idea.

Kara nodded. "I know, and I will, but not right now." She smiled at him a little bit more warmly than if they had been just friends for awhile, but there was nothing in it that Sam could say was for him.

"I'll see you later," Kara said, and Sam had to wave and let her go again. She was getting skinny, living off rations and coffee, like all of them. For Sam, it was like being on the Demetrius all over again, Kara not listening as she wore herself out trying to prove a point.

He'd never been a great cook, and that wasn't helping with convincing Kara to sit back and enjoy at least one thing. Sometimes he thought that the only way to really get her to let up was if somebody made her stop and listen to them, and Sam knew he couldn't do both harshly enough to catch her off guard.

"I need a favor," Sam said. He was welcome on the baseship, and part of him felt comfortable near the consoles and panels, but he forced himself to focus on the reason he'd come. "It's about Kara."

Sam figured mentioning her name would get Leoben's attention, but it was still a shock when those eyes met his.

"How does she look to you?" Sam asked.

"Tired," Leoben said. "Earth is important to her."

"It's that way for everyone," Sam said. "Kara, though, makes it her mission to fix things."

Leoben didn't repeat the obvious, and let Sam continue.

"You said that she and I weren't supposed to be enemies. Did you see that?"

"Yes."

"What are we if we're not close anymore?" Sam asked.

"I told you that you needed to give her what she has never had."

"I tried. She does everything she can to stay away."

"Keep trying," Leoben said. "She can be rather determined to have her own way, even if it's not the best one."

"You've got that right," Sam said and ran his hand along the edge of a command console. "I don't have everything she needs," he added, like he was giving something up.

Leoben was still, eyes on Sam, quiet and patient.

"I don't like most of what you've done to Kara, but you know how to get through to her, and you don't want anything to happen to her, right?"

Leoben reared back, and Sam thought of animals, starved and ready to snap at anybody who kept them from what they wanted.

Sam shifted forward, and kept his eyes on Leoben's, and it was as if nothing else in the universe mattered, it was the two of them, with a couple things in common, but one that they would count as important above everything else.

"Yes," Leoben said.

Nodding convulsively, Sam breathed out, one goal scored, three points to him. "One other thing, do you know how to cook?"

It was almost a week between their meeting and when Sam was able to persuade Kara to have a meal at home.

"It's just food, Sam," she said, and he kept his cool.

"Yeah, but we'd be having it together."

She didn't speak for a moment, and he knew that she was trying to decide whether or not she should refuse, again.

"I haven't seen you in a few days, Kara, and you've been doing double shifts for four days, can't you take a break for one night?" Sam knew he was nearly begging her to listen to him, and didn't let himself say another word.

Kara gave him a long look and shrugged. "Fine, but you'd better put in for something better than standard rations."

"I'll take care of it," Sam said, waited until she left and made a call.

Sam wasn't surprised that Kara was late to dinner, but she did show up, which was better than he'd hoped, and when she saw came in, he knew that he'd have to talk fast when she realized there was someone else in the kitchen.

As she tossed her jacket on a chair, Kara turned around, and stood, rocked back by shock.

Leoben laid another plate on the table and carefully began chopping vegetable and tossing handfuls into a bowl. "Hello, Kara."

"What the frak is he doing here?" Kara asked, incredulously pointing a figure at the blond Cylon.

"I thought you were okay with him now," Sam said. He didn't bring up his confusion about that, and that it had bothered him at times, seeing Leoben accepted in Kara's space, but he didn't want to start a fight, and he'd accepted it as being the way things were.

"Yeah, but being okay with him and having dinner together is way different."

"I wanted to have something besides protein squares, and Leoben told me he knew how to make a few things," Sam said.

"Since when have you two been talking?" Kara asked.

Sam lifted his shoulders casually. "I've been keeping track of the Cylons on the council, doing errands, and this guy spends a lot of time at the beach."

"What are you doing there?" Kara asked, and it was like Sam hoped, she was curious about Leoben, always had been, and the anger slipped away as she let Sam pull out her chair.

"Reading the tides," Leoben said, and only glanced up when he'd set the knife aside. The two of them stared at the blade for a second, and Kara looked away as she spoke.

"What are you trying to find?"

Leoben added the bowl of vegetables to the dishes already out and then he and Sam took their seats. "The future."

"How do you even do that?" Sam asked. He had talked to some of the other models, but none of them were able to do what Leoben did. And when he'd brought up the Hybrid, Six admitted that of all of them, there wasn't anybody who was able to spend as much time with her, or sift through what she was saying until he found a message.

"It's a gift," Leoben said, and passed Sam a platter.

"What are you going to do with it now?" Kara asked. "Do you know if this all works out?"

"If I told you, either way, would you work as hard for it?" Leoben asked.

Kara picked up her fork and stabbed it downwards. "Just once, I wish you could answer without talking in riddles."

"Is it a riddle if you understand?" Leoben asked.

Sam laughed.

"What?" Kara asked.

"This is crazy," Kara said. "The three of us, eating together. Whose idea was this?"

"Mine," Sam said. "You wanted a decent meal, so I asked him," Sam nodded at Leoben, "to see what he could bring over."

"Kara gave them another doubtful look and then set about eating.

Leoben and Sam did likewise, and as Sam passed dishes and spices, he made sure his fingers brushed Kara and Leoben's.

The other Cylon seemed to catch on, he cocked his head nad then lowered his eyes, focusing on his meal.

When Kara pushed her chair back, she folded her arms across her chest. "What's going on, Sam? You wouldn't have asked Leoben over if you didn't want something to happen."

"You're right, I do." Sam had started this, and even if he wasn't the sneakiest one in the room, he knew that he was going to have to be careful how he went about his next move. Kara expected him to get up and kiss her, even if they hadn't done more than share a bed in several weeks, they were still married, but she didn't think that he would reach out to Leoben at the same time.

Hand stretched out behind him, Sam waited for Leoben to come close enough for him to grab, and he tugged on the blond's shirt, until he was standing right next to them.

"You too," Sam said.

Leoben waited, as Kara pulled away from Sam and saw how little distance was between them.

"This is not happening," Kara said.

"Why not?" Sam asked. "We've been headed this way for months." He didn't want to have to bring up history that was painful for Kara, but had to point it out. "And the two of you have been at it even longer."

"We haven't done anything," Kara said.

"I'm not saying you've done anything wrong," Sam said.

"Then what are you trying to say, Sam?"

"That maybe the solution isn't to cut yourself off from both of us," Sam said. "Maybe it would be better to let us help you."

"This is helping?" Kara asked.

"It could be many things," Leoben said.

"Did you know about this?"

"No, Anders told me only that he wanted to see you well," Leoben said. "He was so concerned that you were neglecting your needs that he approached me."

Kara laughed. "Come on, Sam, what are you thinking, this won't work, you guys can't even stand each other."

"We've worked things out," Sam said.

"Do I want to know how?"

Sam knew what she was doing, anytime Kara was scared or uncomfortable, she tried to talk around it, and even if she'd gotten closure or something when they found Earth, some habits weren't so easy to change. "You don't need to."

She shook her head and her leg twitched.

Not knowing what else he should say, Sam threw a glance at Leoben, who inclined his head.

"The door is open, Kara," Leoben said. "You can choose to walk through it."

"Or you can stay," Sam said, taking his cue from the way that Leoben was standing back, not blocking Kara from an exit, letting her make up her mind.

Leoben stood at an angle to the two of them, hands in his pockets, Sam's hold on his shirt the only contact between them.

Kara stared at Sam's hand, and then at Leoben's face, and then she stepped closer. "If this goes wrong, I'm going to tell you I knew it would happen."

"How much ever goes right?" Sam asked as they came together. "This has as good a chance as anything."

"There is one thing better than chance," Leoben said. "Fate."

-end