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Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 11/?
Author: abelard
Rating: M
Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part
Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a “special destiny.” LeeKara, of course.
Feedback: Please!
Archive: Yes, just let me know.
Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.
Part 11
It has come to this, Lee thinks. From that long-ago morning when he first saw Kara, as she leaned lazily against his brother’s arm in the bright morning sun of Caprica, when Lee first saw her smile and thought, very very briefly, of wanting to touch her, from that morning to this one, when he has abandoned all his duty and responsibility and any hope of seeing his father again, when he has discovered the love of his and his brother’s lives is a machine, when there is no way to keep her alive and serve humanity at the same time, so he has deserted humankind for her - it has come to this morning, when he and Kara are sailing on a rickety makeshift boat on an ocean that leads nowhere, as far as Lee knows, on a planet that knows nothing of spacecrafts or Cylons.
He is trapped in an existence where he and Kara are utterly alone. They are sailing nowhere, with no one but each other.
At a certain level of his being, one that lies deep beneath the outer layers of rational thought and psychological health, Lee has never been happier.
“What now?” Kara asks.
What can he tell her? They have a basket of food and a barrel of water that will last three days at the most, and they’ll only last that long if the waters don’t get rough and overturn this raft they stole from the harbor. Kara said she thinks the rafts are only used for fishing - no one in the village has spoken of sailing out onto the deep waters. No one knows what’s on the other side of this ocean, or if there is another side at all.
“We hope for land,” Lee says. “An island, or another continent.” Now he wishes he’d attended the briefing on this op. He told Helo he didn’t need to know anything other than that his father was ordering him down planetside. It wasn’t like Lee to miss a briefing but then, he hadn’t been himself since he watched Kara’s dead body ejected into cold space. Lee didn’t seen the visuals on the planet. None of the geographic specs, no renderings or maps. He has no idea what they’re drifting towards.
“And if we don’t find land?” Kara asks. Lee makes no answer, so she replies to herself. “Then we die out here.”
Lee wants to ask, Is that so bad? He wants to tell her what it was like to lose her, what it felt like to live - to try to survive every day, every minute - knowing, *knowing*, that she did not exist anymore. He knows he’s gone, very far gone, because he finds himself thinking that this is all he wants: to die with her, to pass onto the other side, whatever’s next, even if it’s nothing, in the same breath that she does.
Except Kara doesn’t die, does she? It will only be Lee who passes over. While Kara will only go to sleep, and however painful a sleep it is, she’ll wake up and she’ll be whole and new.
For a moment, Lee’s hands tighten around the handle of the raft’s rudder. He feels a familiar fury in his gut. Familiar, but born of different causes this time. Thinking that he and Kara can never be together had always driven Lee to deep and secret rage. When he first fell in love with her (a hundred million years ago, so it feels now, and it feels as if he’s fallen in love with her a trillion times in that span of time), he knew they could never be together. Now that he’s resigned himself only to this thinnest of rewards, the hope of a shared death, even in that, they can never be together. Not as Lee has always desperately wished them to be. Not together forever.
He will die, and Kara will wake up somewhere else.
Lee wonders at how he was born to one of the most respected families in the colonies, was blessed with strength and intelligence and his father’s feel for flying, was given the call sign of a mighty god, was allowed to survive the destruction of worlds...in so many ways has Fortune favored him, and yet in this, the most powerful longing of his heart, he is cursed as the lowest of the damned.
“Lee,” Kara says, and Lee’s hand releases the rudder. She has always been able to compel his attention with a word. With a breath. By appearing in his sights. That’s all she has to do, and he’s hers. Even though she’ll never really be his.
“Yeah?” he asks, and his throat feels dry but he wants to conserve the water, hold off his and Kara’s final separation for as long as he can.
“If we don’t find land, then we’ll die here. On this raft,” Kara says, her eyes big and green, the way they get sometimes when she’s nervous about something. Lee remembers the first time he touched her, not just a handshake but really touched her - it was all innocence, Zak was in the shower and he and Kara just started playing tag out of boredom, and when he was It, instead of tagging her he grabbed her by the wrist and the shock of her skin went all through him, and their eyes met and hers were huge and green like gemstones and he let go of her and they couldn’t look at each other all night, and later Zak asked what was wrong and Lee said Nothing.
“Yes,” Lee says to Kara’s statement. He’s not going to lie to her now.
“Then will you tell me? Before we die?” she asks.
“Tell you what?” Lee has no idea what she’s asking for.
“Will you tell me what I really am? What is it that makes it impossible for me to go...home, wherever our home is? What makes me so horrible that you’re running away from your own father to hide me from him? What makes dying better than letting him know what I am? What *am* I, Lee?”
He can’t keep using euphemisms and code words. He can’t tell her some story about how they accused her of being a “witch.” They might have three days left, and it could be only hours if the sea gets choppy, or if they get caught in a storm.
“You’re not a person, Kara,” he says, unblinking.
Her eyes flash with surprise, then turn hazel, with shock, then a dark brown, with anger. Her eyes narrow. Lee curses himself. He should have held her as he told her. He should have been touching her. Although that hasn’t always calmed her down. Many times, it’s only fueled whatever rage she’s nursing.
“What does that mean?” she snaps at him, her voice shaky but hard. “That I’m not a person. What do you mean by that?!”
Lee likes to think he’s a man that can learn from his mistakes, so he carefully leans forward and takes her hand. It’s a blessing that she doesn’t resist him. Finally, at the end of things, she doesn’t resist him touching her.
“I want you to know, that whatever you are,” he says, putting everything he’s ever felt for her into his gaze as he looks at her, “I love you. No matter what. I can’t be without you, and I can’t let you...suffer,” he says, because now he knows she cannot die.
“Don’t stall,” Kara says. That’s the Starbuck he knows. “Just say it.”
“Kara, you’re not a person. You’re a machine.”
A wave of water crashes into his face, and all Lee can think is that he can’t see Kara’s reaction to what he just said. But then another wave crashes and Lee hears an engine - more than one engine - and then another wave, and another, much larger this time, and then Lee’s in the water and he’s swimming but not getting closer to the surface and he’s thinking *Kara Kara Kara* but how can he possibly find her when he can’t even see....
*****
Lee awakens with a start and thinks *Kara*. His eyes aren’t focusing properly, but he sees blonde hair above him, leaning over him, so he blinks, twice, then three times, and the image comes clear.
The blonde isn’t Kara. It’s one of her kind, though. It’s the model they call Six.
“You led us to her,” Six says, smiling down at him. “Thank you.”
Title: Chasm and Flood, Part 11/?
Author: abelard
Rating: M
Spoilers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec on my part
Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a “special destiny.” LeeKara, of course.
Feedback: Please!
Archive: Yes, just let me know.
Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.
Part 11
It has come to this, Lee thinks. From that long-ago morning when he first saw Kara, as she leaned lazily against his brother’s arm in the bright morning sun of Caprica, when Lee first saw her smile and thought, very very briefly, of wanting to touch her, from that morning to this one, when he has abandoned all his duty and responsibility and any hope of seeing his father again, when he has discovered the love of his and his brother’s lives is a machine, when there is no way to keep her alive and serve humanity at the same time, so he has deserted humankind for her - it has come to this morning, when he and Kara are sailing on a rickety makeshift boat on an ocean that leads nowhere, as far as Lee knows, on a planet that knows nothing of spacecrafts or Cylons.
He is trapped in an existence where he and Kara are utterly alone. They are sailing nowhere, with no one but each other.
At a certain level of his being, one that lies deep beneath the outer layers of rational thought and psychological health, Lee has never been happier.
“What now?” Kara asks.
What can he tell her? They have a basket of food and a barrel of water that will last three days at the most, and they’ll only last that long if the waters don’t get rough and overturn this raft they stole from the harbor. Kara said she thinks the rafts are only used for fishing - no one in the village has spoken of sailing out onto the deep waters. No one knows what’s on the other side of this ocean, or if there is another side at all.
“We hope for land,” Lee says. “An island, or another continent.” Now he wishes he’d attended the briefing on this op. He told Helo he didn’t need to know anything other than that his father was ordering him down planetside. It wasn’t like Lee to miss a briefing but then, he hadn’t been himself since he watched Kara’s dead body ejected into cold space. Lee didn’t seen the visuals on the planet. None of the geographic specs, no renderings or maps. He has no idea what they’re drifting towards.
“And if we don’t find land?” Kara asks. Lee makes no answer, so she replies to herself. “Then we die out here.”
Lee wants to ask, Is that so bad? He wants to tell her what it was like to lose her, what it felt like to live - to try to survive every day, every minute - knowing, *knowing*, that she did not exist anymore. He knows he’s gone, very far gone, because he finds himself thinking that this is all he wants: to die with her, to pass onto the other side, whatever’s next, even if it’s nothing, in the same breath that she does.
Except Kara doesn’t die, does she? It will only be Lee who passes over. While Kara will only go to sleep, and however painful a sleep it is, she’ll wake up and she’ll be whole and new.
For a moment, Lee’s hands tighten around the handle of the raft’s rudder. He feels a familiar fury in his gut. Familiar, but born of different causes this time. Thinking that he and Kara can never be together had always driven Lee to deep and secret rage. When he first fell in love with her (a hundred million years ago, so it feels now, and it feels as if he’s fallen in love with her a trillion times in that span of time), he knew they could never be together. Now that he’s resigned himself only to this thinnest of rewards, the hope of a shared death, even in that, they can never be together. Not as Lee has always desperately wished them to be. Not together forever.
He will die, and Kara will wake up somewhere else.
Lee wonders at how he was born to one of the most respected families in the colonies, was blessed with strength and intelligence and his father’s feel for flying, was given the call sign of a mighty god, was allowed to survive the destruction of worlds...in so many ways has Fortune favored him, and yet in this, the most powerful longing of his heart, he is cursed as the lowest of the damned.
“Lee,” Kara says, and Lee’s hand releases the rudder. She has always been able to compel his attention with a word. With a breath. By appearing in his sights. That’s all she has to do, and he’s hers. Even though she’ll never really be his.
“Yeah?” he asks, and his throat feels dry but he wants to conserve the water, hold off his and Kara’s final separation for as long as he can.
“If we don’t find land, then we’ll die here. On this raft,” Kara says, her eyes big and green, the way they get sometimes when she’s nervous about something. Lee remembers the first time he touched her, not just a handshake but really touched her - it was all innocence, Zak was in the shower and he and Kara just started playing tag out of boredom, and when he was It, instead of tagging her he grabbed her by the wrist and the shock of her skin went all through him, and their eyes met and hers were huge and green like gemstones and he let go of her and they couldn’t look at each other all night, and later Zak asked what was wrong and Lee said Nothing.
“Yes,” Lee says to Kara’s statement. He’s not going to lie to her now.
“Then will you tell me? Before we die?” she asks.
“Tell you what?” Lee has no idea what she’s asking for.
“Will you tell me what I really am? What is it that makes it impossible for me to go...home, wherever our home is? What makes me so horrible that you’re running away from your own father to hide me from him? What makes dying better than letting him know what I am? What *am* I, Lee?”
He can’t keep using euphemisms and code words. He can’t tell her some story about how they accused her of being a “witch.” They might have three days left, and it could be only hours if the sea gets choppy, or if they get caught in a storm.
“You’re not a person, Kara,” he says, unblinking.
Her eyes flash with surprise, then turn hazel, with shock, then a dark brown, with anger. Her eyes narrow. Lee curses himself. He should have held her as he told her. He should have been touching her. Although that hasn’t always calmed her down. Many times, it’s only fueled whatever rage she’s nursing.
“What does that mean?” she snaps at him, her voice shaky but hard. “That I’m not a person. What do you mean by that?!”
Lee likes to think he’s a man that can learn from his mistakes, so he carefully leans forward and takes her hand. It’s a blessing that she doesn’t resist him. Finally, at the end of things, she doesn’t resist him touching her.
“I want you to know, that whatever you are,” he says, putting everything he’s ever felt for her into his gaze as he looks at her, “I love you. No matter what. I can’t be without you, and I can’t let you...suffer,” he says, because now he knows she cannot die.
“Don’t stall,” Kara says. That’s the Starbuck he knows. “Just say it.”
“Kara, you’re not a person. You’re a machine.”
A wave of water crashes into his face, and all Lee can think is that he can’t see Kara’s reaction to what he just said. But then another wave crashes and Lee hears an engine - more than one engine - and then another wave, and another, much larger this time, and then Lee’s in the water and he’s swimming but not getting closer to the surface and he’s thinking *Kara Kara Kara* but how can he possibly find her when he can’t even see....
*****
Lee awakens with a start and thinks *Kara*. His eyes aren’t focusing properly, but he sees blonde hair above him, leaning over him, so he blinks, twice, then three times, and the image comes clear.
The blonde isn’t Kara. It’s one of her kind, though. It’s the model they call Six.
“You led us to her,” Six says, smiling down at him. “Thank you.”