Taking Chances, PG
Title: Taking Chances (Academy!verse)
Written because I was trying to write my paper and the plotbunny wouldn't shut up. Warn for massive angst (post-Daybreak). I cried for like an hour straight. (So much snot) Hope you like. (This is the song/poem that inspired it: Taking Chances. OMG, I wrote song!fic...)
It’s been two and a half weeks. Two and a half dismal rainy weeks since he stood in a field of grass, finally finally able to settle again with his beautiful, perfect Kara, his beloved wife. Holocaust, Cylons, battles, rape, near divorce, her death, and there they’d been. On Earth. And he’d known in his heart that this was the bright shiny future where they’d grow old together, safe in each other’s arms. He’d been ready to shout his love to the heavens again. He’d turned to hold onto her, smell her hair and… she’d been gone. Vanished as completely as if she’d never been there at all and all the hope in his soul had ground to dust. At first, he’d thought it was one of her jokes, that she’d hidden in the tall grass for him to find and tackle and he’d searched, calling her name, promising all kinds of vengeance but knowing they’d end up rolling naked in the grass, making love on a new planet. Forty-five minutes later, when he had crushed most of the grass flat, he’d had to admit it. She was gone and, with no more Earth to find, no more grand quests, his angel had returned to the heaven that had given her back for so short a time. He’d been too hollowed out to weep or rage at the sky. Shattered, he’d returned to base camp. His first thought had been to look for a pistol and follow her, but he hadn’t even been able to muster up the enthusiasm to bother. Instead, he’d picked up their bags, his and hers, and set out in the direction of the setting sun.
The sun has undoubtedly risen and set every day since then, but all he’s seen are gray clouds that don’t seem to do anything but dump endless rain on him. He wonders if somehow they got hold of the tears he hasn’t been able to shed for her. He’s shut down completely. He intends to wander this world, her world since she found it, until his body stops fighting the inevitable and he can fall into blessed oblivion. He makes camp when there’s enough of a clearing in the forest to support it, otherwise he keeps walking. He eats carefully out of his pack, half a protein bar twice a day, enough food there to last him twenty days, per regulations. He’s not going anywhere in particular, just trying to outrun his memories. By day eleven, he knows that’s impossible. Day fourteen, he makes a choice and leaves her bag at his campsite when he leaves. It’s over and he knows it and the relentless logical part of his mind, the part that tried to forget her every time she disappeared, has taken over. Lee Adama is gone and the man who walks this new Earth is just a shell.
Now it’s day eighteen. He has food left for two more days and after that, it’ll just be a matter of days before he can stop. The clouds overhead are getting darker and he knows he should find somewhere to sleep so he can tick one more day off of his ever shortening mental calendar. Two hours later, when he can barely see his hand in front of his face, he stumbles into a large, nearly perfectly circular clearing, so well-sheltered from the rain that the ground is actually dry. He sets down his pack and glances around, it seems too good to be true. What isn’t? his traitorous mind reminds him. There are dry sticks lying around the clearing and he stacks them and lights a fire for the first time since he’d tried on the third day and gotten nothing but thick damp smoke. These branches catch the spark from his flint easily and cast a warm inviting orange glow on his thin drawn face.
That dealt with, he takes stock, wondering exactly how this area managed to repel the rain. He walks a circle around the fire, mostly looking up at the dense canopy, so he almost misses it when he steps on something that isn’t dirt or twigs. It rustles a little though and he looks down to see his foot on what looks like a folded piece of paper. After a moment of hesitation, wondering if he’s hallucinating, he bends over and picks it up. Lee is scrawled on it and he feels dizzy and light-headed. If he wasn’t absolutely certain it couldn’t be, he would swear the writing was Kara’s. His knees are wobbling and threatening to give out, so he sits down, close to the fire, and stares at the paper. There is no paper on this planet. Not here, away from where the rest of the Colonials are settling. There are no pens. And there are no narrow pale hands, pilot’s hands, artist’s hands, to write his name like he’s seen it thousands of times on lists and whiteboards and notes. He shivers hard, his breath coming faster, as he unfolds the single sheet.
It’s a poem, written in Kara’s slanted sprawling longhand.
Don't know much about your life.
Don't know much about your world, but
Don't want to be alone tonight,
On this planet they call Earth.
You don't know about my past, and
I don't have a future figured out.
And maybe this is going too fast.
And maybe it's not meant to last,
But what do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's solid ground below
Or a hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say?
What do you say?
I just want to start again,
Maybe you could show me how to try,
Maybe you could take me in,
Somewhere underneath your skin?
What do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's solid ground below
Or a hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say,
What do you say?
And I had my heart beaten down,
But I always come back for more, yeah.
There's nothing like love to pull you up,
When you're laying down on the floor there.
So talk to me, talk to me,
Like lovers do.
Yeah walk with me, walk with me,
Like lovers do,
Like lovers do.
What do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's solid ground below
Or hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say,
What do you say?
Don't know much about your life
And I don't know much about your world
He stares and stares. She must have tucked it into his bag as a joke, back when they first came down to the planet. He knows that isn’t true, he’s been through the whole bag four times or more since he started this suicide walk and there was no folded note from his dead lover. There’s no way he’s been carrying this message for weeks. But it’s the only rational explanation. He carefully refolds it and tucks it into his breast pocket, where it can stay next to what’s left of his bruised and battered heart. Staring into the flames, he wishes that he could turn off the stirrings of emotion he thought he’d locked away. Anger, hurt, despair, the desperate overwhelming love that used to swamp him every time he looked at her… It’s too much to bear and he whispers her name, just once more.
“Yeah?” The voice is soft and a little wry, barely audible over the crackle of the fire, but he hasn’t heard a human voice in over two weeks, and it’s like a gunshot.
He jumps hard enough to almost send himself sprawling into the fire and then he looks around wildly. At first he doesn’t see anything and then she steps out of the shadows across the clearing and sets down her bag. Khaki pants, tanks, worn olive drab jacket, dog tags that also hold two rings and a bullet… Smooth pale skin, wide full lips, straight nose, big hazel green eyes, shoulder-length blonde hair that catches the firelight and gleams like gold… The world seems to spin around him.
She bites her lower lip and half-smiles. “Hello, Lee”
Two deep breaths and he’s steady enough to stand up and face her. Stepping closer to the fire, she shrugs a little. “So, what do you say?”
“What… what do I say?! I can’t… I don’t…” He sputters as the emotions that had begun to bubble up when he read her poem slam into him full force.
“Take a chance on me?” Her eyes are hopeful, she really wants this opportunity, she’s reaching out to him, he could have her again, hold her again, be complete as he only ever is with her…
“No.” He shakes his head and closes his eyes against the disappointment written across her lovely face. “I can’t, Kara, I… There’s not enough left of me to do it again. I’ve loved you and lost you over and over and I can’t do it again. I’m sorry, but I can’t be the guy who waits for you anymore. I’m too old, too worn out to go around again. I’d rather just die here. It hurts too much to lose you. I can’t, I’m sorry.” Even though he knows he’ll regret seeing whatever emotions well up in her eyes, he can’t help opening his eyes, looking at her one more time. His treacherous mind tells him that if he looks, she’ll have him again. That if he sees her, even for a moment, when she disappears again it will hurt as much as it has every other time, but he can’t stop himself. It’s Kara and he’s always been hers, no matter how bad an idea it seems like.
She’s studying him quietly, tears standing in her eyes, and he hates himself a little for wanting to kiss away the drops. “I understand. It’s frakked up and wrong and you have every right to turn your back on me. That last time… every time… I haven’t wanted to leave you. I never want to leave you, Lee.”
“All you do anymore is leave me. There’s no me left to leave. Please go. Let me die here. You’ll find someone better.” He sits down again, slowly. At least, he thinks, this time he didn’t touch her, smell her hair, taste her lips, feel her warmth pressed against him. It might make this a little simpler.
“What if I could swear that I would never leave you again, that I’ll be with you until we both die?”
“You’ve already died. I lost you that time, too.” He presses his lips together, resolutely not looking at her. “Please leave, K-Kara,” his voice falters and he forces the tears that are threatening, tightening his throat, back down. “No bright shiny futures, remember? I don’t have much of a future and you… you deserve better than that.”
When she kneels beside him, he curses softly. She’s close enough that he could extend an arm and touch, lean over and smell, taste, and he only has so much control. It feels like every cell in his body is stretching, reaching for her. If he does, he knows coldly that it will be the end of him. He’ll give up what little he has left for her, burn himself up in her flame.
It’s silent, just her presence beside him. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t argue, she’s just there. He wonders if she knows that she can wear him down by being close enough to touch. He steels himself and sneaks a glance. He doesn’t know what he expects, but it isn’t this. Her head is bowed, her hands clenched in her lap, shaking. He can see that her nails are digging into her palms and her lips are moving silently, her face twisted in distress, the kind of anger she only really directs at herself.
“Kara… Kara. Stop. Kara, listen to me, stop. You’ll hurt yourself.”
Her head flies up in anger. “I’ll hurt myself? I’ll hurt myself?! Frak me! You’re so frakking… Damnit, Lee! You’re out here, trying to die in the forest like a wounded wolf because I disappeared again, but you’re worried that I’ll hurt myself?! I motherfrakking hope I frakking hurt myself!” By now, she’s gotten up and is pacing on the other side of the fire. “You listen to me, Lee frakking Adama. I frakked up. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t mean to, that I fought tooth and nail to be allowed to come back to you, that would give anything anyone ever asked of me for you, because I frakked us up so badly that we may not be able to repair it. And if I did, then it will be my frakking fault and I will frakking hurt myself!”
“You are not to blame for this!” He doesn’t remember when he got to his feet, but he’s standing and shouting across the fire at her. “I’m just as frakked up as you are and if I die out here, it won’t be your godsdamned fault, so you damn well better not hurt yourself!”
“You don’t want me anymore, so it’s none of your frakking business if I hurt myself, so you can frak off!”
“Don’t wa- don’t WANT YOU?! Are you out of your frakking mind, Kara?! Are you frakking INSANE?! Lords, how many godsdamned times do I have to tell you that I have never wanted anything in the universe as much as I want you before you get it through your thick pilot skull?!” They’re nose to nose, shouting at each other. When he finishes, they’re both breathing heavily, ready to follow up the argument with a fistfight. Lee looks into her eyes and suddenly, just like all those years ago, he starts laughing. After a beat of abject confusion, Kara joins him and they both laugh until they fall to the ground.
When the giggles have finally subsided, they’re leaning shoulder to shoulder next to the fire, gasping for breath. Kara tucks her head onto his shoulder and sighs. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Lee. I don’t know where this Earth thing is going to end up, what our lives will be like, but I swear to all the Lords of Kobol, I will not leave you again. I am yours and you’re mine forever. So… please, will you have me? One more chance?”
He holds her hand. “One more chance. You and me, forever. We’ll go back, and we’ll make it work.”
She nods seriously.
“Tell you what, though, you’re going to have to navigate us back, I wasn’t really paying attention on the way out.”
She snorts and nods. “We’ll get back. Marcia’s waiting.”
When they wake up in the early morning and step out of the shelter of the trees, for the first time in weeks he see the sun beginning to rise. Daybreak.
Written because I was trying to write my paper and the plotbunny wouldn't shut up. Warn for massive angst (post-Daybreak). I cried for like an hour straight. (So much snot) Hope you like. (This is the song/poem that inspired it: Taking Chances. OMG, I wrote song!fic...)
It’s been two and a half weeks. Two and a half dismal rainy weeks since he stood in a field of grass, finally finally able to settle again with his beautiful, perfect Kara, his beloved wife. Holocaust, Cylons, battles, rape, near divorce, her death, and there they’d been. On Earth. And he’d known in his heart that this was the bright shiny future where they’d grow old together, safe in each other’s arms. He’d been ready to shout his love to the heavens again. He’d turned to hold onto her, smell her hair and… she’d been gone. Vanished as completely as if she’d never been there at all and all the hope in his soul had ground to dust. At first, he’d thought it was one of her jokes, that she’d hidden in the tall grass for him to find and tackle and he’d searched, calling her name, promising all kinds of vengeance but knowing they’d end up rolling naked in the grass, making love on a new planet. Forty-five minutes later, when he had crushed most of the grass flat, he’d had to admit it. She was gone and, with no more Earth to find, no more grand quests, his angel had returned to the heaven that had given her back for so short a time. He’d been too hollowed out to weep or rage at the sky. Shattered, he’d returned to base camp. His first thought had been to look for a pistol and follow her, but he hadn’t even been able to muster up the enthusiasm to bother. Instead, he’d picked up their bags, his and hers, and set out in the direction of the setting sun.
The sun has undoubtedly risen and set every day since then, but all he’s seen are gray clouds that don’t seem to do anything but dump endless rain on him. He wonders if somehow they got hold of the tears he hasn’t been able to shed for her. He’s shut down completely. He intends to wander this world, her world since she found it, until his body stops fighting the inevitable and he can fall into blessed oblivion. He makes camp when there’s enough of a clearing in the forest to support it, otherwise he keeps walking. He eats carefully out of his pack, half a protein bar twice a day, enough food there to last him twenty days, per regulations. He’s not going anywhere in particular, just trying to outrun his memories. By day eleven, he knows that’s impossible. Day fourteen, he makes a choice and leaves her bag at his campsite when he leaves. It’s over and he knows it and the relentless logical part of his mind, the part that tried to forget her every time she disappeared, has taken over. Lee Adama is gone and the man who walks this new Earth is just a shell.
Now it’s day eighteen. He has food left for two more days and after that, it’ll just be a matter of days before he can stop. The clouds overhead are getting darker and he knows he should find somewhere to sleep so he can tick one more day off of his ever shortening mental calendar. Two hours later, when he can barely see his hand in front of his face, he stumbles into a large, nearly perfectly circular clearing, so well-sheltered from the rain that the ground is actually dry. He sets down his pack and glances around, it seems too good to be true. What isn’t? his traitorous mind reminds him. There are dry sticks lying around the clearing and he stacks them and lights a fire for the first time since he’d tried on the third day and gotten nothing but thick damp smoke. These branches catch the spark from his flint easily and cast a warm inviting orange glow on his thin drawn face.
That dealt with, he takes stock, wondering exactly how this area managed to repel the rain. He walks a circle around the fire, mostly looking up at the dense canopy, so he almost misses it when he steps on something that isn’t dirt or twigs. It rustles a little though and he looks down to see his foot on what looks like a folded piece of paper. After a moment of hesitation, wondering if he’s hallucinating, he bends over and picks it up. Lee is scrawled on it and he feels dizzy and light-headed. If he wasn’t absolutely certain it couldn’t be, he would swear the writing was Kara’s. His knees are wobbling and threatening to give out, so he sits down, close to the fire, and stares at the paper. There is no paper on this planet. Not here, away from where the rest of the Colonials are settling. There are no pens. And there are no narrow pale hands, pilot’s hands, artist’s hands, to write his name like he’s seen it thousands of times on lists and whiteboards and notes. He shivers hard, his breath coming faster, as he unfolds the single sheet.
It’s a poem, written in Kara’s slanted sprawling longhand.
Don't know much about your life.
Don't know much about your world, but
Don't want to be alone tonight,
On this planet they call Earth.
You don't know about my past, and
I don't have a future figured out.
And maybe this is going too fast.
And maybe it's not meant to last,
But what do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's solid ground below
Or a hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say?
What do you say?
I just want to start again,
Maybe you could show me how to try,
Maybe you could take me in,
Somewhere underneath your skin?
What do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's solid ground below
Or a hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say,
What do you say?
And I had my heart beaten down,
But I always come back for more, yeah.
There's nothing like love to pull you up,
When you're laying down on the floor there.
So talk to me, talk to me,
Like lovers do.
Yeah walk with me, walk with me,
Like lovers do,
Like lovers do.
What do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's solid ground below
Or hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say,
What do you say?
Don't know much about your life
And I don't know much about your world
He stares and stares. She must have tucked it into his bag as a joke, back when they first came down to the planet. He knows that isn’t true, he’s been through the whole bag four times or more since he started this suicide walk and there was no folded note from his dead lover. There’s no way he’s been carrying this message for weeks. But it’s the only rational explanation. He carefully refolds it and tucks it into his breast pocket, where it can stay next to what’s left of his bruised and battered heart. Staring into the flames, he wishes that he could turn off the stirrings of emotion he thought he’d locked away. Anger, hurt, despair, the desperate overwhelming love that used to swamp him every time he looked at her… It’s too much to bear and he whispers her name, just once more.
“Yeah?” The voice is soft and a little wry, barely audible over the crackle of the fire, but he hasn’t heard a human voice in over two weeks, and it’s like a gunshot.
He jumps hard enough to almost send himself sprawling into the fire and then he looks around wildly. At first he doesn’t see anything and then she steps out of the shadows across the clearing and sets down her bag. Khaki pants, tanks, worn olive drab jacket, dog tags that also hold two rings and a bullet… Smooth pale skin, wide full lips, straight nose, big hazel green eyes, shoulder-length blonde hair that catches the firelight and gleams like gold… The world seems to spin around him.
She bites her lower lip and half-smiles. “Hello, Lee”
Two deep breaths and he’s steady enough to stand up and face her. Stepping closer to the fire, she shrugs a little. “So, what do you say?”
“What… what do I say?! I can’t… I don’t…” He sputters as the emotions that had begun to bubble up when he read her poem slam into him full force.
“Take a chance on me?” Her eyes are hopeful, she really wants this opportunity, she’s reaching out to him, he could have her again, hold her again, be complete as he only ever is with her…
“No.” He shakes his head and closes his eyes against the disappointment written across her lovely face. “I can’t, Kara, I… There’s not enough left of me to do it again. I’ve loved you and lost you over and over and I can’t do it again. I’m sorry, but I can’t be the guy who waits for you anymore. I’m too old, too worn out to go around again. I’d rather just die here. It hurts too much to lose you. I can’t, I’m sorry.” Even though he knows he’ll regret seeing whatever emotions well up in her eyes, he can’t help opening his eyes, looking at her one more time. His treacherous mind tells him that if he looks, she’ll have him again. That if he sees her, even for a moment, when she disappears again it will hurt as much as it has every other time, but he can’t stop himself. It’s Kara and he’s always been hers, no matter how bad an idea it seems like.
She’s studying him quietly, tears standing in her eyes, and he hates himself a little for wanting to kiss away the drops. “I understand. It’s frakked up and wrong and you have every right to turn your back on me. That last time… every time… I haven’t wanted to leave you. I never want to leave you, Lee.”
“All you do anymore is leave me. There’s no me left to leave. Please go. Let me die here. You’ll find someone better.” He sits down again, slowly. At least, he thinks, this time he didn’t touch her, smell her hair, taste her lips, feel her warmth pressed against him. It might make this a little simpler.
“What if I could swear that I would never leave you again, that I’ll be with you until we both die?”
“You’ve already died. I lost you that time, too.” He presses his lips together, resolutely not looking at her. “Please leave, K-Kara,” his voice falters and he forces the tears that are threatening, tightening his throat, back down. “No bright shiny futures, remember? I don’t have much of a future and you… you deserve better than that.”
When she kneels beside him, he curses softly. She’s close enough that he could extend an arm and touch, lean over and smell, taste, and he only has so much control. It feels like every cell in his body is stretching, reaching for her. If he does, he knows coldly that it will be the end of him. He’ll give up what little he has left for her, burn himself up in her flame.
It’s silent, just her presence beside him. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t argue, she’s just there. He wonders if she knows that she can wear him down by being close enough to touch. He steels himself and sneaks a glance. He doesn’t know what he expects, but it isn’t this. Her head is bowed, her hands clenched in her lap, shaking. He can see that her nails are digging into her palms and her lips are moving silently, her face twisted in distress, the kind of anger she only really directs at herself.
“Kara… Kara. Stop. Kara, listen to me, stop. You’ll hurt yourself.”
Her head flies up in anger. “I’ll hurt myself? I’ll hurt myself?! Frak me! You’re so frakking… Damnit, Lee! You’re out here, trying to die in the forest like a wounded wolf because I disappeared again, but you’re worried that I’ll hurt myself?! I motherfrakking hope I frakking hurt myself!” By now, she’s gotten up and is pacing on the other side of the fire. “You listen to me, Lee frakking Adama. I frakked up. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t mean to, that I fought tooth and nail to be allowed to come back to you, that would give anything anyone ever asked of me for you, because I frakked us up so badly that we may not be able to repair it. And if I did, then it will be my frakking fault and I will frakking hurt myself!”
“You are not to blame for this!” He doesn’t remember when he got to his feet, but he’s standing and shouting across the fire at her. “I’m just as frakked up as you are and if I die out here, it won’t be your godsdamned fault, so you damn well better not hurt yourself!”
“You don’t want me anymore, so it’s none of your frakking business if I hurt myself, so you can frak off!”
“Don’t wa- don’t WANT YOU?! Are you out of your frakking mind, Kara?! Are you frakking INSANE?! Lords, how many godsdamned times do I have to tell you that I have never wanted anything in the universe as much as I want you before you get it through your thick pilot skull?!” They’re nose to nose, shouting at each other. When he finishes, they’re both breathing heavily, ready to follow up the argument with a fistfight. Lee looks into her eyes and suddenly, just like all those years ago, he starts laughing. After a beat of abject confusion, Kara joins him and they both laugh until they fall to the ground.
When the giggles have finally subsided, they’re leaning shoulder to shoulder next to the fire, gasping for breath. Kara tucks her head onto his shoulder and sighs. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Lee. I don’t know where this Earth thing is going to end up, what our lives will be like, but I swear to all the Lords of Kobol, I will not leave you again. I am yours and you’re mine forever. So… please, will you have me? One more chance?”
He holds her hand. “One more chance. You and me, forever. We’ll go back, and we’ll make it work.”
She nods seriously.
“Tell you what, though, you’re going to have to navigate us back, I wasn’t really paying attention on the way out.”
She snorts and nods. “We’ll get back. Marcia’s waiting.”
When they wake up in the early morning and step out of the shelter of the trees, for the first time in weeks he see the sun beginning to rise. Daybreak.