FIC: How It Ends (Kara/Lee, Lee POV)
Title: How It Ends
Author: abelard
Rating: K+
Spoilers: Unfinished Business, the final scene ("I missed you." "I missed you too. I missed you too.")
Feedback: Please!
Archive: Yes, just let me know.
Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.
Author's Note: I know, I know. I've had a long absence from fic. And real life ain't letting up anytime soon, so even though I've almost got the ending of Chasm and Flood worked out, I won't be posting the next part of that in the near future. However, I just saw UB and geez louise, what Apollo/Starbuck shipper could *not* write fic after that? Oh, and btw, I've never ever written a fic like this before: one that basically recaps a scene from the ep. I've always considered those fics to be a tad on the boring side. So it's up to you to decide whether I was right about that. But like I said, I couldn't *not* write this fic. It refused to stay inside.
At the end, they say the same words to one another, the first real words they've said to each other since the night in the forest.
But after they say the words, he is weeping, and she is smiling.
He can tell, even though he can't see her face. He knows the feel of Kara's smile against his skin. He knows how the breath leaves her body when she's happy. He'll never forget the sensory experience of her happiness. It is graven onto the skin that lies beneath his many uniforms, the suits of armor. And he tried first to scrub that underlayer away, and then to bury it beneath even more folds of flesh, and neither worked. So he knows the feel of a happy Kara is with him to stay.
And he feels that now. She's happy. They're bleeding, busted up, busted open and spilling everywhere. They've been bloodthirsty for each other but now they're so still, wrapped up in each other's wounded wings, that people are leaving the ringside. Starbuck and Apollo, in the end, are boring.
The hate he's lived with for a long long time has vanished, and when it goes he knows what she's thinking. He knows that she married Anders to defend herself against Lee, and to protect Lee from herself. That's Starbuck all over: she'll break you in half and that'll be her noble sacrifice. She doesn't trust herself with him, so she makes him distrust and despise her. Trading blows with her burns all that sick enmity away, though, and what she can't burn off is the love. Damn that thing, it's got more lives than the Galactica.
He knows why she pushed him away that morning and he knows why she pushed him today, made sure he got in that ring, pushed him all the way to trying to beat her senseless. (He succeeded, but she did the same to him, and they've been finding new ways of doing that to each other since just about the minute they met.)
He knows that all she wanted was this. Was a hug. From him.
And this was the only way she would allow herself to ask for it.
He's weeping, and she's smiling. He's mourning the fact that this is all they have, this is all they are. She's celebrating the fact that she still has this much of him; this is all she'll allow herself, all that she thinks she deserves.
She got what she came in the ring for. She was aiming high, for her: expiation, forgiveness, reconciliation, reunion. That's what she wanted, she wasn't sure she could get it, and she did. She won all of that from him.
He's never gotten what he comes for, when he comes to her. He always means to aim low: just friendship, just family, just an embrace, a quick kiss, an easy frak, a simple question. So how does he end up shooting for the stars, going all supernova on her, with his love and his shouting and his naked ass jumping up and down? He's a smart guy, for gods' sake, how could he not have known the one way to make Kara run far and fast is to love her and say it, and to demand that she do the same?
She won and he lost, and that puts them in exactly this space, the same place they have seemingly always been. Dancing and standing still, in what any onlooker might think was a battle or a prelude to a kiss. Every interpretation would be the right one.
This is how it ends.
What is sad and scary, and thrilling, is that this ending means it will all begin again. He cannot wait, he cannot wait for what is next.
Author: abelard
Rating: K+
Spoilers: Unfinished Business, the final scene ("I missed you." "I missed you too. I missed you too.")
Feedback: Please!
Archive: Yes, just let me know.
Disclaimers: Not mine, etc.
Author's Note: I know, I know. I've had a long absence from fic. And real life ain't letting up anytime soon, so even though I've almost got the ending of Chasm and Flood worked out, I won't be posting the next part of that in the near future. However, I just saw UB and geez louise, what Apollo/Starbuck shipper could *not* write fic after that? Oh, and btw, I've never ever written a fic like this before: one that basically recaps a scene from the ep. I've always considered those fics to be a tad on the boring side. So it's up to you to decide whether I was right about that. But like I said, I couldn't *not* write this fic. It refused to stay inside.
At the end, they say the same words to one another, the first real words they've said to each other since the night in the forest.
But after they say the words, he is weeping, and she is smiling.
He can tell, even though he can't see her face. He knows the feel of Kara's smile against his skin. He knows how the breath leaves her body when she's happy. He'll never forget the sensory experience of her happiness. It is graven onto the skin that lies beneath his many uniforms, the suits of armor. And he tried first to scrub that underlayer away, and then to bury it beneath even more folds of flesh, and neither worked. So he knows the feel of a happy Kara is with him to stay.
And he feels that now. She's happy. They're bleeding, busted up, busted open and spilling everywhere. They've been bloodthirsty for each other but now they're so still, wrapped up in each other's wounded wings, that people are leaving the ringside. Starbuck and Apollo, in the end, are boring.
The hate he's lived with for a long long time has vanished, and when it goes he knows what she's thinking. He knows that she married Anders to defend herself against Lee, and to protect Lee from herself. That's Starbuck all over: she'll break you in half and that'll be her noble sacrifice. She doesn't trust herself with him, so she makes him distrust and despise her. Trading blows with her burns all that sick enmity away, though, and what she can't burn off is the love. Damn that thing, it's got more lives than the Galactica.
He knows why she pushed him away that morning and he knows why she pushed him today, made sure he got in that ring, pushed him all the way to trying to beat her senseless. (He succeeded, but she did the same to him, and they've been finding new ways of doing that to each other since just about the minute they met.)
He knows that all she wanted was this. Was a hug. From him.
And this was the only way she would allow herself to ask for it.
He's weeping, and she's smiling. He's mourning the fact that this is all they have, this is all they are. She's celebrating the fact that she still has this much of him; this is all she'll allow herself, all that she thinks she deserves.
She got what she came in the ring for. She was aiming high, for her: expiation, forgiveness, reconciliation, reunion. That's what she wanted, she wasn't sure she could get it, and she did. She won all of that from him.
He's never gotten what he comes for, when he comes to her. He always means to aim low: just friendship, just family, just an embrace, a quick kiss, an easy frak, a simple question. So how does he end up shooting for the stars, going all supernova on her, with his love and his shouting and his naked ass jumping up and down? He's a smart guy, for gods' sake, how could he not have known the one way to make Kara run far and fast is to love her and say it, and to demand that she do the same?
She won and he lost, and that puts them in exactly this space, the same place they have seemingly always been. Dancing and standing still, in what any onlooker might think was a battle or a prelude to a kiss. Every interpretation would be the right one.
This is how it ends.
What is sad and scary, and thrilling, is that this ending means it will all begin again. He cannot wait, he cannot wait for what is next.