Couples_therapy 39.3
This features AU!Leoben, and is set in the AU!Verse. Kara is Burnandrave, and Sam is notmyfate.
3. Discuss a location of special significance to you and your partner.
That would be the place Kara and I do not talk about. New Caprica, where she was my hostage for four months, three days, and seventeen hours.
None of us like to talk about New Caprica. It makes Kara upset and gives her nightmares, and it makes Sam angry at me. I do not have fond memories, either--does anyone believe I enjoyed keeping the woman I love prisoner, knowing how very much she hated me for it?
And I died a great many times. Each time was more painful than the last, and each time, I told myself if I would just be what she wanted, convince her of the rightness of our being together, I would stop suffering increasingly painful rebirths. But of course, I knew as time went on, that that was not to be. And I would have accepted it, each death and successive painful re-download, would have accepted it gladly, if she had not tried to take her own life.
So I did what I had to do. I found a child and pretended it was ours, as if our entwined destiny was to lead to a child instead of Earth. I made the child Earth, the fruit of our labors, I tried to give Kara something to live for. It worked, for a time. And time was what I needed. I needed to keep Kara alive. I would have done anything, told any lie, to see that happen.
One of my models died out of range of the resurrection ship, sick with a plague, shortly after the exodus from New Caprica. Kara tells me that I said to her, All is fair in love and war, when we spoke together. That does sound like something I would say. Perhaps I was thinking she would put something in my neck again and end my misery, as it sounded as if I was very sick. Or perhaps I was just in a bad mood. I am capable of that, on occasion.
Here on Earth, Kara and I were wary around each other in our first few weeks of domestic cohabitation. It was different, on Galactica, during the final battle. This, sharing a space, cooking dinner--these are all things we've done before. And yet, it is so much different. She stays when she has the freedom to leave.
I don't know if any of us will put New Caprica to rest. It is a ghost, a specter, that haunts us all. Perhaps in time it will fade, but maybe it shouldn't. It is a testament to the things love will make you do. Maybe we should remember that.
3. Discuss a location of special significance to you and your partner.
That would be the place Kara and I do not talk about. New Caprica, where she was my hostage for four months, three days, and seventeen hours.
None of us like to talk about New Caprica. It makes Kara upset and gives her nightmares, and it makes Sam angry at me. I do not have fond memories, either--does anyone believe I enjoyed keeping the woman I love prisoner, knowing how very much she hated me for it?
And I died a great many times. Each time was more painful than the last, and each time, I told myself if I would just be what she wanted, convince her of the rightness of our being together, I would stop suffering increasingly painful rebirths. But of course, I knew as time went on, that that was not to be. And I would have accepted it, each death and successive painful re-download, would have accepted it gladly, if she had not tried to take her own life.
So I did what I had to do. I found a child and pretended it was ours, as if our entwined destiny was to lead to a child instead of Earth. I made the child Earth, the fruit of our labors, I tried to give Kara something to live for. It worked, for a time. And time was what I needed. I needed to keep Kara alive. I would have done anything, told any lie, to see that happen.
One of my models died out of range of the resurrection ship, sick with a plague, shortly after the exodus from New Caprica. Kara tells me that I said to her, All is fair in love and war, when we spoke together. That does sound like something I would say. Perhaps I was thinking she would put something in my neck again and end my misery, as it sounded as if I was very sick. Or perhaps I was just in a bad mood. I am capable of that, on occasion.
Here on Earth, Kara and I were wary around each other in our first few weeks of domestic cohabitation. It was different, on Galactica, during the final battle. This, sharing a space, cooking dinner--these are all things we've done before. And yet, it is so much different. She stays when she has the freedom to leave.
I don't know if any of us will put New Caprica to rest. It is a ghost, a specter, that haunts us all. Perhaps in time it will fade, but maybe it shouldn't. It is a testament to the things love will make you do. Maybe we should remember that.