Fic: "myopia, and how the present takes hold (a remix from lightyears away)" (Battlestar Galactica)
Title: myopia, and how the present takes hold (a remix from lightyears away)
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG-13-ish
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Starbuck, Leoben
Pairings: none
Genre: pretentious
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 1855
Status: one-shot, finished
Author's Note: some housekeeping. I wrote this for bantha_fodder in the remixredux08 ficathon. this is remixed from bantha_fodder's lovely taking cue (past holds on)
Summary: "Kara can match any robot's silence."
-
Kara cannot make herself impenetrable when she is around Vipers. The first time he met her in flesh, flying was her religion. She carries that in her, the reverence.
Lee Adama always begins his confrontations here, unwisely. His love for Kara is blinding and consuming and a bit misguided. He asks about Helo, her better judgment.
Kara hides her annoyance in her grin, as she always does. Her grin is contagious, and they are both grinning.
"We're not frakking, if that's what you're worried about."
Lee is not skilled enough to hide his relief. "I know that," he lies.
Kara runs her fingers absently over a wing. "So what?" A trick question.
"But you're fighting," Lee dislikes imbalance, a natural inclination. "I thought you and Helo were the model for Raptor-Viper relations."
She ducks behind a cockpit, running away from all of her better inclinations. "We were," she laughs, "things change." (She does not actually change.)
He tries to comfort her, squeezing her shoulder, but Kara runs away. She's still running.
But the cycle is about to arc, God help them all.
-
Kara Thrace is a remarkable woman. But human, and frail.
Her psyche is wounded. She thinks she hears laughter the does not exist.
She does not understand the meaning. He has told her, but she wouldn't listen.
Fascinating.
-
In his dreams, they are inside of her Caprica apartment. Kara is naked, laying on the floor, and her hair is long. The floor itself is covered in holy scripture.
They are both naked. She is completely bare, but for the paint. He has the brush in his hand, drawing concentric circles on every blank bit of skin. First was ink, then paint, and blood will be next.
He is on the red. Kara is laughing, then crying. "We're going the wrong way," she sobs.
Everything is a symbol. He begins to paint in the opposite direction. She has lipstick on her chin.
-
Boomer says, "Does she ever talk about me?" Boomer is desperate for news of the fleet, any little hateful scrap. She sends messages to him in the hope that his time among the humans has made him sympathetic.
He does not tell her of Kara's dream. Even though it does involve her, and he could very well. (A lovely dream, too. Babies born of airlocks.)
Boomer will learn to reassimilate. Sooner would be better. She still denies God's will, denies His very existence.
And on Galactica, Kara enters the brig. She recognizes the symmetry of hands against glass.
Kara looks away, but she is learning. There is symmetry in all things.
-
Kara unwrapped her idols, her false gods and prayed for his soul. Even unsure of it, she prayed for his soul.
He knew when he returned home, covered in new skin. She had prayed for him.
Aphrodite and Athena covered in cloth, "Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer. I don't know if he had a soul or not but, if he did, take care of it."
Take care of it; and there were no sweeter words outside of the scripture.
And true as their handprints smudged on both sides of the airlock.
-
Kara shuffles through the mess hall. She glides to a spot next to her old friend Helo, despite the parts of their relationship that have fractured. She wants to fix it.
She makes a joke about a pickle, grinning.
Helo, who has created a child with an Eight, walks away from her. Unwisely. Kara is more perceptive than anyone gives her credit for. She notices the tray in his hands as he walks out the door.
Kara taps her fingers on the table.
He knows where she is going.
-
They are orbiting each other.
He is simply waiting for their next meeting point.
It is inevitable.
(After their first meeting, he returned home healed of all wounds and safe in a new body, full of knowledge and love. And of God, even stronger than before.
And knowledge of Kara Thrace, he has that. The way her hair curls around her ear, and the warmth of her throat in his hand.
He dreams often of water. He does not dream of drowning. He cannot drown.)
-
Kara sits in front of their pregnant Eight and says nothing. Weeks since they last broke silence.
She glares from the very corners of her eyes, dares their Eight to speak.
Kara hasn't brushed her hair. She has been to Caprica and to Kobol and she wants to fix her life. She knows that this won't do it. She still does it. This is written in her blood.
Their Eight is a flawed model, and she will talk first.
-
Kara had her fingers broken, cruelly. When she was quite young. (And so odd to see her young. The lines of her body she had not yet grown into.)
Slammed in the door of her mother's broken down apartment. Cigarette ashes in the corner of every room. Each of her dresses were dirty and torn. Kara's hair was never brushed.
Her mother was a vicious woman, deserving of misery. Kara's mother did not tolerate disobedience.
But it is only Kara's nature. She cannot be taught into any other way.
There has always been God in her.
That is not hard to understand.
&.
Kara has reclined against a broken couch in her old apartment, sacred arrow against her back.
She was as close as she has ever been to giving up. And it is not close.
Her father played the piano, her eyes closed and her fingers pressed against her forehead.
Kara was bruised, in need of sleep.
He knows why she stood up.
There is no rest in purpose. God never needs to sleep.
-
The hybrid is excited, babbling rapidly. Unusual news. Kara is with their pregnant Eight, talking through a jail cell. "Mixing destines causes volcanoes, ash," she cries. "We are pleased with this development."
The hybrid lays smiling in the tank. Bits of fluid have gathered on her brow, and he is holding her hand.
"Transcribing," she says, in monotone. "Restless. I'm not stupid. I'm not going to play games with you. I'm sorry, I can't hear you. Don't do that. Get out of my frakking head, cylon. Well. Stop taking Karl's rations. They are a gift. He gives them out of love. The frak he does. The frak? What have you done? I have done nothing. What can I do, locked here, away in this cell? You're a machine. Tell the door to let me out. If I could do that, do you think I'd still be in here? You have a plan. And I don't know what it is, but it suits you to be here, safe and sound in the belly of a battlestar. Why Kara, that's almost poetic. End of line."
He wipes the fluid from her forehead and cheeks with a soft cloth. "Praise to God," he says.
"She is walking away," the hybrid cries. Kara always tries to walk from her destiny, but she will return.
"Increase oxygen production by .07 percent." The hybrid takes two long breaths, sees the face of God. "Care is heavy, therefore sleep you; you are care, and care must keep you."
-
Kara will create paths where there were none before her, fly patterns in space that no others can trace.
She will strap on her heavy helmet inside of a ship that has never been flown. And she will tame it.
He has seen.
She is joyful.
&.
Kara will return to Caprica a third time before she is completely finished.
God has shown.
Her face will glow orange in the light. She will end her cycle.
They will plan accordingly.
-
The hybrid stops monitoring their air quality, eyes blinking rapidly.
"Transcribing," she calls, her voice clear as a chorus of angels. "Tell him to stop. To stop what. To stop loving you. Why would I do that. I want my friend back. My friend wouldn't love you. Your friend always has. Maybe you need to deal with that. End of line."
Their pregnant Eight, and Kara. Of course.
"Praise to God," he says, kissing her hand.
He had not foreseen this. He does not run to his quarters to meditate, mostly.
He imagines the curve of her collarbone. She is a revolution, beginning to turn around.
-
Kara should live in the sky, among the clouds. But she will be tied to the ground.
She will choose it. She will choose choking atmosphere when she needs be soaring.
Oh, Kara. Broken bowls and rasping lungs and an inevitable shrinking of purpose. Gravity pushing harder on her shoulders, stooping her lower.
She will never make the wise choice.
There will be a river behind her tent, and he looks forward to swimming in it.
-
Kara does not enjoy injustices upon her.
Whenever she passes the door to the brig, she kicks it. Superstitious.
-
Kara fights against her better nature. Again this time, Helo symbolizes her better nature.
They are drinking, because Starbuck likes to drink. Starbuck would probably like to frak something, and she has a cigar hidden in every nook of this room.
She is an angry drunk. "I don't understand," she slurs.
Her better nature says, "I love her. That's all there is."
"Karl," she slams her drink on the table. "That's not enough."
"Sometimes it is."
When Kara talks of a baby making factory, she means her ovary. Her precious ovary, lying in ruin on an irradiated wasteland. She does realize why they did not take both.
She does not listen to his answer, although it is valid. Instead, Kara throws a glass against the door, simply to watch it shatter.
It is frustrating to love her.
"Motherfrakker," she says.
-
She will take his head and shove in underwater, hold him there until he can see. Until he makes peace with the water, and doubly with her.
She will drag him downwards as far as she can dig.
She will find the limits of his tolerance and pound them until his bones cry for mercy.
She will find the edges of his soul, realize them and then she will pray.
This has happened before, and it will happen again.
God has made him a tolerant man.
(He was nervous, before he met her; worried that when he was first with her, he might angrily rip her skull from spinal column.
Uncertainty was stripped away at exact the instant when he saw her with his eyes.)
-
Kara is walking, stomping in the hallways. Through the hallways. Her face is carefully blank, trained. And her eyes are undiscerning. She is walking to the brig as she goes to her destiny; she is unprepared, aching to fight.
When she stomps, heavy, the sound waves travel through the metal floor, through the metal casing and out into space. They travel further into space, reverberating, until they reach him. A beacon.
Her shoelaces are untied.
-
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG-13-ish
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Starbuck, Leoben
Pairings: none
Genre: pretentious
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't own "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 1855
Status: one-shot, finished
Author's Note: some housekeeping. I wrote this for bantha_fodder in the remixredux08 ficathon. this is remixed from bantha_fodder's lovely taking cue (past holds on)
Summary: "Kara can match any robot's silence."
-
Kara cannot make herself impenetrable when she is around Vipers. The first time he met her in flesh, flying was her religion. She carries that in her, the reverence.
Lee Adama always begins his confrontations here, unwisely. His love for Kara is blinding and consuming and a bit misguided. He asks about Helo, her better judgment.
Kara hides her annoyance in her grin, as she always does. Her grin is contagious, and they are both grinning.
"We're not frakking, if that's what you're worried about."
Lee is not skilled enough to hide his relief. "I know that," he lies.
Kara runs her fingers absently over a wing. "So what?" A trick question.
"But you're fighting," Lee dislikes imbalance, a natural inclination. "I thought you and Helo were the model for Raptor-Viper relations."
She ducks behind a cockpit, running away from all of her better inclinations. "We were," she laughs, "things change." (She does not actually change.)
He tries to comfort her, squeezing her shoulder, but Kara runs away. She's still running.
But the cycle is about to arc, God help them all.
-
Kara Thrace is a remarkable woman. But human, and frail.
Her psyche is wounded. She thinks she hears laughter the does not exist.
She does not understand the meaning. He has told her, but she wouldn't listen.
Fascinating.
-
In his dreams, they are inside of her Caprica apartment. Kara is naked, laying on the floor, and her hair is long. The floor itself is covered in holy scripture.
They are both naked. She is completely bare, but for the paint. He has the brush in his hand, drawing concentric circles on every blank bit of skin. First was ink, then paint, and blood will be next.
He is on the red. Kara is laughing, then crying. "We're going the wrong way," she sobs.
Everything is a symbol. He begins to paint in the opposite direction. She has lipstick on her chin.
-
Boomer says, "Does she ever talk about me?" Boomer is desperate for news of the fleet, any little hateful scrap. She sends messages to him in the hope that his time among the humans has made him sympathetic.
He does not tell her of Kara's dream. Even though it does involve her, and he could very well. (A lovely dream, too. Babies born of airlocks.)
Boomer will learn to reassimilate. Sooner would be better. She still denies God's will, denies His very existence.
And on Galactica, Kara enters the brig. She recognizes the symmetry of hands against glass.
Kara looks away, but she is learning. There is symmetry in all things.
-
Kara unwrapped her idols, her false gods and prayed for his soul. Even unsure of it, she prayed for his soul.
He knew when he returned home, covered in new skin. She had prayed for him.
Aphrodite and Athena covered in cloth, "Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer. I don't know if he had a soul or not but, if he did, take care of it."
Take care of it; and there were no sweeter words outside of the scripture.
And true as their handprints smudged on both sides of the airlock.
-
Kara shuffles through the mess hall. She glides to a spot next to her old friend Helo, despite the parts of their relationship that have fractured. She wants to fix it.
She makes a joke about a pickle, grinning.
Helo, who has created a child with an Eight, walks away from her. Unwisely. Kara is more perceptive than anyone gives her credit for. She notices the tray in his hands as he walks out the door.
Kara taps her fingers on the table.
He knows where she is going.
-
They are orbiting each other.
He is simply waiting for their next meeting point.
It is inevitable.
(After their first meeting, he returned home healed of all wounds and safe in a new body, full of knowledge and love. And of God, even stronger than before.
And knowledge of Kara Thrace, he has that. The way her hair curls around her ear, and the warmth of her throat in his hand.
He dreams often of water. He does not dream of drowning. He cannot drown.)
-
Kara sits in front of their pregnant Eight and says nothing. Weeks since they last broke silence.
She glares from the very corners of her eyes, dares their Eight to speak.
Kara hasn't brushed her hair. She has been to Caprica and to Kobol and she wants to fix her life. She knows that this won't do it. She still does it. This is written in her blood.
Their Eight is a flawed model, and she will talk first.
-
Kara had her fingers broken, cruelly. When she was quite young. (And so odd to see her young. The lines of her body she had not yet grown into.)
Slammed in the door of her mother's broken down apartment. Cigarette ashes in the corner of every room. Each of her dresses were dirty and torn. Kara's hair was never brushed.
Her mother was a vicious woman, deserving of misery. Kara's mother did not tolerate disobedience.
But it is only Kara's nature. She cannot be taught into any other way.
There has always been God in her.
That is not hard to understand.
&.
Kara has reclined against a broken couch in her old apartment, sacred arrow against her back.
She was as close as she has ever been to giving up. And it is not close.
Her father played the piano, her eyes closed and her fingers pressed against her forehead.
Kara was bruised, in need of sleep.
He knows why she stood up.
There is no rest in purpose. God never needs to sleep.
-
The hybrid is excited, babbling rapidly. Unusual news. Kara is with their pregnant Eight, talking through a jail cell. "Mixing destines causes volcanoes, ash," she cries. "We are pleased with this development."
The hybrid lays smiling in the tank. Bits of fluid have gathered on her brow, and he is holding her hand.
"Transcribing," she says, in monotone. "Restless. I'm not stupid. I'm not going to play games with you. I'm sorry, I can't hear you. Don't do that. Get out of my frakking head, cylon. Well. Stop taking Karl's rations. They are a gift. He gives them out of love. The frak he does. The frak? What have you done? I have done nothing. What can I do, locked here, away in this cell? You're a machine. Tell the door to let me out. If I could do that, do you think I'd still be in here? You have a plan. And I don't know what it is, but it suits you to be here, safe and sound in the belly of a battlestar. Why Kara, that's almost poetic. End of line."
He wipes the fluid from her forehead and cheeks with a soft cloth. "Praise to God," he says.
"She is walking away," the hybrid cries. Kara always tries to walk from her destiny, but she will return.
"Increase oxygen production by .07 percent." The hybrid takes two long breaths, sees the face of God. "Care is heavy, therefore sleep you; you are care, and care must keep you."
-
Kara will create paths where there were none before her, fly patterns in space that no others can trace.
She will strap on her heavy helmet inside of a ship that has never been flown. And she will tame it.
He has seen.
She is joyful.
&.
Kara will return to Caprica a third time before she is completely finished.
God has shown.
Her face will glow orange in the light. She will end her cycle.
They will plan accordingly.
-
The hybrid stops monitoring their air quality, eyes blinking rapidly.
"Transcribing," she calls, her voice clear as a chorus of angels. "Tell him to stop. To stop what. To stop loving you. Why would I do that. I want my friend back. My friend wouldn't love you. Your friend always has. Maybe you need to deal with that. End of line."
Their pregnant Eight, and Kara. Of course.
"Praise to God," he says, kissing her hand.
He had not foreseen this. He does not run to his quarters to meditate, mostly.
He imagines the curve of her collarbone. She is a revolution, beginning to turn around.
-
Kara should live in the sky, among the clouds. But she will be tied to the ground.
She will choose it. She will choose choking atmosphere when she needs be soaring.
Oh, Kara. Broken bowls and rasping lungs and an inevitable shrinking of purpose. Gravity pushing harder on her shoulders, stooping her lower.
She will never make the wise choice.
There will be a river behind her tent, and he looks forward to swimming in it.
-
Kara does not enjoy injustices upon her.
Whenever she passes the door to the brig, she kicks it. Superstitious.
-
Kara fights against her better nature. Again this time, Helo symbolizes her better nature.
They are drinking, because Starbuck likes to drink. Starbuck would probably like to frak something, and she has a cigar hidden in every nook of this room.
She is an angry drunk. "I don't understand," she slurs.
Her better nature says, "I love her. That's all there is."
"Karl," she slams her drink on the table. "That's not enough."
"Sometimes it is."
When Kara talks of a baby making factory, she means her ovary. Her precious ovary, lying in ruin on an irradiated wasteland. She does realize why they did not take both.
She does not listen to his answer, although it is valid. Instead, Kara throws a glass against the door, simply to watch it shatter.
It is frustrating to love her.
"Motherfrakker," she says.
-
She will take his head and shove in underwater, hold him there until he can see. Until he makes peace with the water, and doubly with her.
She will drag him downwards as far as she can dig.
She will find the limits of his tolerance and pound them until his bones cry for mercy.
She will find the edges of his soul, realize them and then she will pray.
This has happened before, and it will happen again.
God has made him a tolerant man.
(He was nervous, before he met her; worried that when he was first with her, he might angrily rip her skull from spinal column.
Uncertainty was stripped away at exact the instant when he saw her with his eyes.)
-
Kara is walking, stomping in the hallways. Through the hallways. Her face is carefully blank, trained. And her eyes are undiscerning. She is walking to the brig as she goes to her destiny; she is unprepared, aching to fight.
When she stomps, heavy, the sound waves travel through the metal floor, through the metal casing and out into space. They travel further into space, reverberating, until they reach him. A beacon.
Her shoelaces are untied.
-