Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/480892.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/F, Gen
  Fandom:
      Battlestar_Galactica_(2003)
  Relationship:
      Helena_Cain/Gina_Inviere
  Character:
      Helena_Cain, Gina_Inviere, Sam_Anders
  Additional Tags:
      Gang_Rape, Wartime, Torture
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-08-08 Words: 1685
****** The Purpose of War ******
by deborah_judge
Summary
     Cain uses rape as a weapon of war because she knows that's how it
     works. A prequel to The_End_of_the_Interrogation, and like it set in
     an AU in which the Caprica Resistance and the Pegasus don't make
     contact with the Galactica but they do make contact with each other.
When Cain was a Junior Lieutenant, two years after joining up, she had once had
the misfortune of going drinking with an idiot Captain who couldn't stop
telling her how she didn't belong in the Fleet. "No women do," he said. "It's
biological. When men win battles they take the defeated women and spread their
genes. That's why men are programmed to fight, that's the entire purpose of
war. It's the most basic urge that men have, to conquer so they can reproduce
more broadly.
"Not that we do that any more, of course," he added drunkenly. Of course. And
there was no point in saying anything, Cain already had her plan to take him
down, but she couldn't help herself.
"That's not the most basic urge," she said. He lolled his head at her, eyes
red, but punching him would be useless. "It's revenge," she said. "That's the
most basic urge that humans have." As a practical matter, he'd discover the
implications of that soon enough.
Before Cain joined up she lived on the streets with a gang of children. The
bomb that had taken her family and home had left nowhere else for her to go.
There were others like her, children of dead families huddled together in
bombed-out buildings for warmth. They were the lucky ones, the ones who had
lived when their families and everyone who cared for them were gone. They lived
on caned food from bombed kitchens, on carcasses of rats and squirrels, and on
what they could steal from the poor pathetic Capricans who had vainly come to
help and from other children who weren't quite as strong. There was never
enough, but they were lucky. They were alive. At eleven Cain wasn't the oldest,
but she also wasn't weak, and she knew that if she didn't fight for food she
was going to die without it.
Two years later a military recruiter set up an office in the ruins of Tauron to
take people who didn't have anywhere else to go. Cain was in the first group to
enlist, and while the recruiter must have known she was lying about her age she
doubted he knew she was off by four years.
*
Cain knew there was a chance at being alive when she heard the weak, faint
transmission from Caprica. calling colonial vessels, calling colonial vessels….
It was stupid to answer, the channel wasn't secure, but she scrambled her
signal to make it sound like she was at the other end of the galaxy and sent
three words: who are you?
The answers came slowly, hesitantly, between bursts of enemy fire and her
scrambled Vipers shooting raiders out of the sky. His name was Sam Anders, a
fomer pyramid player leading what he called the Caprica resistance. Cain knew
what civilians could do when cornered, she'd seen it in her childhood, seen
boys as young as five kill slightly weaker children for food. And Anders was
hitting the Cylon, hitting them hard, blowing them up when he could, sniping
when they got in range, even burning forests to make trees fall on their heads.
"Don't they just come back?" Cain asked.
"That's not the point," Anders said. "The point is to hurt them. When they come
back they remember it, remember all of it. Eventually it's going to hurt so
much they can't stand it, and they'll leave because it hurts less to go than to
stay."
"And then we go after them," Cain said. "We go to their world and we hurt them
so much they never ever come back."
It was sweet, seductive, with a taste of possibility. Humans had a world they
could go back to, if they were strong enough. Only one world out of twelve, but
that would be enough for the few humans that were left. They were the lucky
ones, out of forty billion the only few thousand left alive. The crew and
supplies they had taken from the Scylla were enough to keep them going, to keep
them fighting, and Sam's words braced her with their faint hope of survival.
In the holding cell Thorne kept Gina manacled and gagged. Cain tried not to
look at her, although a brief glance was enough to see the bruises. The night
after the attacks Gina had held her close, had touched her, had told her not to
be afraid.
"I see you're hurting her," Cain said, then corrected herself. "Hurting it.
Good. Keep hurting it. Make sure it doesn't die."
There were many Cylons, Anders told her, but there were only a few models. The
ones who looked alike seemed to share memories. The one that looked like Gina
seemed to have power. "Do you think they'll know there what we're doing to them
here?" Cain asked Anders.
"I don't know," Anders said. "But it's all we can do." Can we do anything else?
the question hung between them, and Cain hung on to the radio like a lifeline.
A few days later Anders told her about the Farms. Cain knew about rape. In the
gangs the older boys made anyone who went up against them take it if they lost.
Boys took it in the ass and hoped that the older boys bothered to use lube.
Girls took it in the pussy and if they got pregnant ate berries and hoped they
didn't die. Cain never had to take it because she never lost. In the Farms the
remnant of humanity lay on their backs, tubes in orifices while the Cylons used
them.
"I need you to rape it," Cain said to Thorne the next time he reported. Her.
It. "The medic has drugs that can help you." Middle-aged men who couldn't
satisfy their wives were hardly a high-priority need. "Try to have the Cylon
raped by as many men as you can." There were only a few models. The pain and
humiliation they suffer would be remembered. Hurting them is the only power we
have. "I need you to do this," she said. She couldn't do it herself. She'd
watched girls give it up, in the gangs, when she needed to show she was in
control, but the memory of Gina's mouth on her was too sweet and she couldn't
do this.
Thorne didn't say anything. "Did you already do it?" The thought made her rage
inside. "Good," she said. She thought about Gina in manacles, the bruises
purpling on her inner thighs.
At night Cain grabbed on to the radio and listened to Sam. Every day his
resistance group was smaller. Some of his people were killed. Others were taken
to the Farms. "I know they've got a bed for me there," Anders said. "I know one
day they're going to take me, and they're going to put their things in me, and
I won't be able even to die."
"We just have to keep hurting them," Cain said.
"That's right," said Anders, and his voice was faint and she wanted to give him
strength she didn't have. "Fight until we can't."
The next day Cain watched man after man penetrate Gina's limp body. Gina didn't
respond, just lay there as they frakked her. Sometimes they'd hit her, or pull
her hair, or stick sharp pins in her arm while they thrust. She was good at not
responding, but sometimes the pain would be too great and she would cry out,
and the man would hit her again before thrusting one last time and leaving his
semen on her bloody genitals and bruised legs.
"I'd like a turn," Cain said to Thorne. He told the man pumping in Gina to get
out of the way. "I'd like privacy," Cain said. When the room was clear, Cain
turned off all the cameras and barred the door. If the Cylon wanted to gather
the strength to try to hurt her, the Cylon was welcome to try. Gina lay face
down on the floor, her torn dress not covering anything of consequence. Cain
tore it to expose more, then kicked Gina to turn her over and look in her
bruised, empty eyes. Gina just watched her.
"Say something," Cain said.
"I've made love to you willingly," Gina said. "You don't have to force me."
And that was it, that was enough, she kicked Gina over and over hard enough to
bruise, then harder. And it was pointless, Gina didn't respond, it was like
kicking a copse, like killing someone she had already killed. "Forty billion
people," she said. They were the lucky ones, those few who survived. What would
they do to be worthy of survival, and to avenge those many fallen?. "Forty
billion people." It was too much, an unimaginable number, and Cain's boot on
Gina's thighs and belly couldn't help her understand it. All her people,
everyone she'd ever learned how to love.
A final kick broke a rib, and then Cain had to stop because she couldn't let
Gina die. Her pain was what mattered. Gina's pain was all that could save them.
She sat down at the far end of the cell and put her face in her hands.
"I wish I were a man," Cain said, and the words shocked her. She'd never wished
that before, not even in the gangs when a few extra ounces of strength would've
made her that much less afraid for her life. Then she thought about the idiot
Captain, years ago, and his stupid, stupid wrongness, and how much she wished
that she could allow herself the illusion that this was about life.
"But you're not," Gina said. "And I'm not human."
"No," Cain said. "No you're not."
Cain stood up, let herself out, and locked the door behind her. "You can go
back," she told Thorne and the men, and heard the sound of rape behind her. She
went to her room and lay close to the radio as Anders gave his status report.
Three more dead. Two more missing. Four Cylons killed in pain. She curled up
around Anders' voice and let it hold her against the dark.
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