Hope is the Thing with Feathers.
Notes: Don't you love how everything I write is written at two in the morning? Here is angsty number 42, 'hope is the thing with feathers.' X-posted to 
64damn_prompts and
beyond_insane. Mmmkay.
//
When he steps off the Raptor to attend what will inevitably be an eternally long meeting with the Admiral and the President, Cally intercepts him on the hangar deck. “Sir,” she begins in her most neutral, cheerful, careful tone, “Starbuck asked me to tell you to wait for her in her office after your meeting.”
(If it’d been anyone else he would’ve immediately dismissed them, but he can’t ignore her. Not Cally. Not little Cally, his favorite - the only deckhand he’s even been 100% comfortable trusting his birds to.) “Oh?” He raises an eyebrow.
“She’s on CAP at the moment,” the petite deckhand continues, undeterred, “but she figures she should be back not much longer after you’re finished, Sir.”
He ponders Cally, finally saying, “Thank you, Specialist,” and walking out of the deck.
Cally shakes her head at his retreating back. “They’re going to be the deaths of each other,” she observes to no one in particular.
//
When he (finally, thank the Lords) walks out of the meeting three hours later, he thinks about going straight back to his ship, but, for some reason, decides against it. As he walks down the corridors of Galactica to her office -- his old office -- he decides that really the only reason he’s staying is because Cally asked him to, and he doesn’t want to leave immediately because he knows that if he walks into that hanger deck before Starbuck comes home, his favorite deckhand will be sorely disappointed, and he really doesn’t feel like meeting her sweet, scrutinizing eyes right at the moment.
And, really, it’s the only reason he’s staying.
He settles himself the CAG’s desk and opens one of the five new, thick files he received during the meeting. Its title is, “Outline for the Semi-Voluntary Population Settlement of the As-Of-Yet-Unnamed Planetoid.” It is roughly eighty pages long. He groans and takes his jacket off, throwing it rather haphazardly over the back of the chair. (He is trying very, very hard not to let the smell of her cigars distract him.)
//
“This seems familiar,” she announces with a vague smile, striding purposefully into the room. Her flight suit is unzipped to the waist, pushed down and tied back; her face flushed that gloriously exalted rosy pink he is all too familiar with. He misses flying, but he misses flying with her even more.
He watches her with an open, appreciative stare as she moves busily around the small room, and though he knows she must be aware of his eyes on her bare shoulders, she doesn’t appear to care one way or the other. She rifles through a stack of papers perched precariously on the corner of the desk before producing the one she wants. It’s a flight schedule, and she sighs loudly and begins scratching at names.
“One of my nuggets,” she tells him, not looking up, her voice laced with both amusement and anger, “Has a bad stomach flu. Now, that’d be okay… if she hadn’t of given it to Hot Dog. And that would be okay… if he hadn’t of given it to Kat.” She makes a rumbling noise in the back of her throat akin to a growl. “Lords help me,” she mutters, considering the now half-empty schedule for a moment before penciling her own name into most of the open slots. “If at least one of them doesn’t get better in the next three days… Helo’s frakked.” She grins at the thought, throwing the schedule on top of a tall stack in the only guest chair of the room. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”
The bemused smile that has been playing on his lips over the last few minutes fades instantly. Why did she have to remind him?
Tomorrow she is marrying one Samuel T. Anders, the self-proclaimed luckiest man alive.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. After she opens them, she glances at him in her chair. “Lee,” she exclaims as though she’s just seen him and he hasn’t been sitting there for the last forty-five minutes, waiting for her. “I need to talk to you.”
She leans on the side of the desk, looking at him over her shoulder. “No, actually,” she says, quieter, slower, pushing a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, “you need to listen to me.” She gives him a pointed look. “There’s a difference.”
He shuts the boring report back into its file folder, wondering to himself if this is the last time he will ever have the privilege of watching her come down off of her famous, beautiful post-flight euphoria. He folds his hands calmly on the edge of the desk, determined not to frak this one up. “Go ahead,” he tells her. “I’m all ears.”
Walking across the room, she shuts the hatch and spins it locked, biting her lower lip nervously as she does so. “Listen, Lee,” she begins, twisting Zak’s ring on her thumb, “I just wanted to make right with you. And… and I just wanted to say that even though we’ve had our rough times… and we’re sort of having one right now… and even though I’m marrying Sam… and leaving the Galactica…” She frowns anxiously. “I just wanted to say that you’re still my friend and you always will be. And I just wanted to make sure we were okay.”
He attempts to close his mouth, hanging open, but instead the signals get mixed up and he begins to speak instead of staying quiet, which was his original plan. “I’m sorry; did you just say that you wanted to make sure that WE were okay?” He laughs meanly. “Wow, you know, I must be hearing things, because I could have sworn that you told me not that long ago that there is no us.” He glares at her.
“Frak you,” she says, jaw tightening. “I don’t even know why I thought this was a good idea.”
They are both very quiet for about three minutes.
Defeated, he admits, “All I ever wanted was to love you, you know.” Immediately after the words leave his mouth, he regrets having said them. He needs to stop talking, but the words are pouring from his lips and they won’t stop can’t stop oh Gods he’s digging his own grave. “I’ve always loved you, Kara.” His voice drops to a low, clear whisper. “I know you knew. But you never let me love you and now it’s too frakking late and I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.”
“Lee, you bastard, how am I supposed to trust a moody man sending mixed signals?” She raises an eyebrow accusingly. “We’re dangerous. We hurt each other. We both knew from the beginning that it never would have worked. All I want is to attempt to preserve our friendship, so cut the crap,” she says. It’s half an order and half a last plead. “You know I love you. You’re my best friend.”
“Then why are you marrying Sam?”
“Because he’s frakking stable!” She takes a deep breath, letting her words take their full effect on him. “Because he loves me and he’s sane and he wants to take care of me. Because I love him and he doesn’t hurt me and he doesn’t push me and he doesn’t take every possible opportunity to point out every single one of my shortcomings.”
Lee sits without answering, stunned by this new honesty thing that Kara is doing.
“Besides,” she says, “what about you and Dee? Don’t you love her?”
“No,” he answers, a little too quickly. Kara stares at him. “She’s warm.”
“You’re such a bastard, you know that?”
It takes several heartbeats for his anger to bubble up and explode. He springs from his chair, suddenly. “That’s your fault, Kara. Yours! Your fault for breaking my heart so many times over that now, now I’m a sick frakker who likes the pain because it’s all I can get from you. Your fault for marrying Samuel T. Anders.” He says the name mockingly. “It’s your fault that I hurt you, because frak me if you didn’t hurt me first.”
The guilt hits her like he knew it would. He tracks its progress over her face. It’s a low blow, but he can’t lie right now. He just can’t. No, all he appears to be able to do is blunder on, melancholy and irate. “I would readily die, given the chance,” he says, “and it’s your fault.” And that statement is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
“Oh,” she breathes, closing the space between them, clutching him to her. “Lee, I---“
She kisses him and tastes salt and can’t decide if it is her tears or his that disturb her more.
But the thought echoes through both their heads that this is wrong and it has to stop.
She rests her forehead against his. “Lee, listen,” she murmurs. “I’m a simple girl. In my mind, everything is either black or white. It’s a yes, or it’s a no.” She tangles her fingers in his hair, combing it pensively. “But you, Lee? Frak me, but you’re a frakking grey-maybe.” She thinks for another long moment. “I love you, okay? More than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life. More than Sam. More than anything. But we’re bad for each other. We hurt each other, Lee. Don’t you frakking understand?! We just… we, we can’t. We can’t.”
He pulls back a little, to see into her eyes, but then decides that he really doesn’t want to see into her eyes just now, and tugs her head to rest in the crook of his shoulder. They stay that way for a few moments, breathing together.
Eventually, she realizes that she needs to walk out of this office before she loses all resolve. She drops a feather-light kiss to the pulse point on his temple, telling his hairline, “Everything will be okay in the end, you know… So this just means that it’s not the end yet,” and she holds him in her embrace for just a little longer before pulling away, granting him a devious grin, and sauntering away. The hatch slams behind her.
He stares at the space she just occupied for about ten minutes before sighing and collecting his files and putting his jacket on and walking very slowly to the hanger bay, because he really needs to get back to his ship.
//
She looks beautiful in the morning. And happy. Not that he expected anything less. He doesn’t know where she found the white dress. Part of him wants to burn her in his memory forever, and part wishes he never came.
One of the most important wedding traditions is that the bride and groom absolutely cannot look at one another as they recite their vows. The old wives’ tales always tell about the angry Gods smiting spouses for sneaking glances at each other, proving that their level of religious devotion is lacking. Of course, she’s never been one to subscribe to old wives’ tales, but she follows the custom perfectly, just to be safe.
She turns to face those gathered, as the tradition dictates. Her eyes lock with Lee’s. It is a mistake that she knows she will regret later, but the icy, steely quality to his normally-soft blue eyes both scares and intrigues her in a dangerously addicting way. She takes a deep breath and begins to recite her vow with perfectly-pronounced diction, written down many years ago. It is the vow that every person says in a marriage.
“I, Kara Maria Thrace, named by my father, proclaim before the Gods and this gathering that I do love this man, Samuel Thomas Anders. My love for him is whole and never-ending. I love him with every part of my mortal soul, which the Gods granted me so long ago. I do now commit my body, heart, and soul to him, to be his faithfully wedded wife in all seasons of life, until Hades welcomes me to his immortal kingdom. So say ye all?”
“So say we all,” the gathering answers.
“Liar,” Lee whispers. It is so quiet that not even his father sitting next to him hears it, but she’s always been good at reading his lips. Her eyes widen with fear.
“No,” she whispers back, but it’s too late.
He’s risen to his feet.
“That’s a lie,” he says. His voice is calm, but his hands are shaking with rage and hurt. “If what you told me yesterday was true, then this is all one big frakking lie.” He turns to leave, struggling to keep his steps even, trying not to run until he is out.
Her lips try to form his name, but all she can manage is a choked, “Oh--!”
Lee lingers at the open hatch, his eyes still very much locked with hers.
Samuel T. Anders, self-proclaimed luckiest man alive, puts his body between the two of them. “Kara,” he says, forcefully, “I love you. That sick bastard obviously doesn’t, else he’d treat you better. Right?”
She can’t stop staring into Lee’s eyes, but she manages a nod and a vague, “R… Right.”
Sam grabs her wrist. “Okay then,” he says. His face is an odd shade of reddish-purple, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“Kara,” Lee calls from the hatch, “I just want you to know that this will never be okay. Never.” He pulls the hatch shut with a resounding bang.
She is perceptibly trembling. She screams his name to the closing hatch. Sam squeezes her wrist to the point of extreme pain, but she can’t seem to tear her eyes away from the hatch.
After a pregnant pause, he begins his vows through clenched teeth. “I, Samuel Thomas Anders, named by my mother…”
When the priestess finally pronounces them husband and wife, he kisses her angrily and tastes salt.
//
A hand-shaped bruise encircles her pale, thin wrist for approximately a week afterwards. Every night that week, she cries herself to sleep, wishing that Sam was enough of a sick bastard to stay up and hold her, like Lee always used to.
64damn_prompts and
beyond_insane. Mmmkay.
//
When he steps off the Raptor to attend what will inevitably be an eternally long meeting with the Admiral and the President, Cally intercepts him on the hangar deck. “Sir,” she begins in her most neutral, cheerful, careful tone, “Starbuck asked me to tell you to wait for her in her office after your meeting.”
(If it’d been anyone else he would’ve immediately dismissed them, but he can’t ignore her. Not Cally. Not little Cally, his favorite - the only deckhand he’s even been 100% comfortable trusting his birds to.) “Oh?” He raises an eyebrow.
“She’s on CAP at the moment,” the petite deckhand continues, undeterred, “but she figures she should be back not much longer after you’re finished, Sir.”
He ponders Cally, finally saying, “Thank you, Specialist,” and walking out of the deck.
Cally shakes her head at his retreating back. “They’re going to be the deaths of each other,” she observes to no one in particular.
//
When he (finally, thank the Lords) walks out of the meeting three hours later, he thinks about going straight back to his ship, but, for some reason, decides against it. As he walks down the corridors of Galactica to her office -- his old office -- he decides that really the only reason he’s staying is because Cally asked him to, and he doesn’t want to leave immediately because he knows that if he walks into that hanger deck before Starbuck comes home, his favorite deckhand will be sorely disappointed, and he really doesn’t feel like meeting her sweet, scrutinizing eyes right at the moment.
And, really, it’s the only reason he’s staying.
He settles himself the CAG’s desk and opens one of the five new, thick files he received during the meeting. Its title is, “Outline for the Semi-Voluntary Population Settlement of the As-Of-Yet-Unnamed Planetoid.” It is roughly eighty pages long. He groans and takes his jacket off, throwing it rather haphazardly over the back of the chair. (He is trying very, very hard not to let the smell of her cigars distract him.)
//
“This seems familiar,” she announces with a vague smile, striding purposefully into the room. Her flight suit is unzipped to the waist, pushed down and tied back; her face flushed that gloriously exalted rosy pink he is all too familiar with. He misses flying, but he misses flying with her even more.
He watches her with an open, appreciative stare as she moves busily around the small room, and though he knows she must be aware of his eyes on her bare shoulders, she doesn’t appear to care one way or the other. She rifles through a stack of papers perched precariously on the corner of the desk before producing the one she wants. It’s a flight schedule, and she sighs loudly and begins scratching at names.
“One of my nuggets,” she tells him, not looking up, her voice laced with both amusement and anger, “Has a bad stomach flu. Now, that’d be okay… if she hadn’t of given it to Hot Dog. And that would be okay… if he hadn’t of given it to Kat.” She makes a rumbling noise in the back of her throat akin to a growl. “Lords help me,” she mutters, considering the now half-empty schedule for a moment before penciling her own name into most of the open slots. “If at least one of them doesn’t get better in the next three days… Helo’s frakked.” She grins at the thought, throwing the schedule on top of a tall stack in the only guest chair of the room. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”
The bemused smile that has been playing on his lips over the last few minutes fades instantly. Why did she have to remind him?
Tomorrow she is marrying one Samuel T. Anders, the self-proclaimed luckiest man alive.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. After she opens them, she glances at him in her chair. “Lee,” she exclaims as though she’s just seen him and he hasn’t been sitting there for the last forty-five minutes, waiting for her. “I need to talk to you.”
She leans on the side of the desk, looking at him over her shoulder. “No, actually,” she says, quieter, slower, pushing a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, “you need to listen to me.” She gives him a pointed look. “There’s a difference.”
He shuts the boring report back into its file folder, wondering to himself if this is the last time he will ever have the privilege of watching her come down off of her famous, beautiful post-flight euphoria. He folds his hands calmly on the edge of the desk, determined not to frak this one up. “Go ahead,” he tells her. “I’m all ears.”
Walking across the room, she shuts the hatch and spins it locked, biting her lower lip nervously as she does so. “Listen, Lee,” she begins, twisting Zak’s ring on her thumb, “I just wanted to make right with you. And… and I just wanted to say that even though we’ve had our rough times… and we’re sort of having one right now… and even though I’m marrying Sam… and leaving the Galactica…” She frowns anxiously. “I just wanted to say that you’re still my friend and you always will be. And I just wanted to make sure we were okay.”
He attempts to close his mouth, hanging open, but instead the signals get mixed up and he begins to speak instead of staying quiet, which was his original plan. “I’m sorry; did you just say that you wanted to make sure that WE were okay?” He laughs meanly. “Wow, you know, I must be hearing things, because I could have sworn that you told me not that long ago that there is no us.” He glares at her.
“Frak you,” she says, jaw tightening. “I don’t even know why I thought this was a good idea.”
They are both very quiet for about three minutes.
Defeated, he admits, “All I ever wanted was to love you, you know.” Immediately after the words leave his mouth, he regrets having said them. He needs to stop talking, but the words are pouring from his lips and they won’t stop can’t stop oh Gods he’s digging his own grave. “I’ve always loved you, Kara.” His voice drops to a low, clear whisper. “I know you knew. But you never let me love you and now it’s too frakking late and I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.”
“Lee, you bastard, how am I supposed to trust a moody man sending mixed signals?” She raises an eyebrow accusingly. “We’re dangerous. We hurt each other. We both knew from the beginning that it never would have worked. All I want is to attempt to preserve our friendship, so cut the crap,” she says. It’s half an order and half a last plead. “You know I love you. You’re my best friend.”
“Then why are you marrying Sam?”
“Because he’s frakking stable!” She takes a deep breath, letting her words take their full effect on him. “Because he loves me and he’s sane and he wants to take care of me. Because I love him and he doesn’t hurt me and he doesn’t push me and he doesn’t take every possible opportunity to point out every single one of my shortcomings.”
Lee sits without answering, stunned by this new honesty thing that Kara is doing.
“Besides,” she says, “what about you and Dee? Don’t you love her?”
“No,” he answers, a little too quickly. Kara stares at him. “She’s warm.”
“You’re such a bastard, you know that?”
It takes several heartbeats for his anger to bubble up and explode. He springs from his chair, suddenly. “That’s your fault, Kara. Yours! Your fault for breaking my heart so many times over that now, now I’m a sick frakker who likes the pain because it’s all I can get from you. Your fault for marrying Samuel T. Anders.” He says the name mockingly. “It’s your fault that I hurt you, because frak me if you didn’t hurt me first.”
The guilt hits her like he knew it would. He tracks its progress over her face. It’s a low blow, but he can’t lie right now. He just can’t. No, all he appears to be able to do is blunder on, melancholy and irate. “I would readily die, given the chance,” he says, “and it’s your fault.” And that statement is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
“Oh,” she breathes, closing the space between them, clutching him to her. “Lee, I---“
She kisses him and tastes salt and can’t decide if it is her tears or his that disturb her more.
But the thought echoes through both their heads that this is wrong and it has to stop.
She rests her forehead against his. “Lee, listen,” she murmurs. “I’m a simple girl. In my mind, everything is either black or white. It’s a yes, or it’s a no.” She tangles her fingers in his hair, combing it pensively. “But you, Lee? Frak me, but you’re a frakking grey-maybe.” She thinks for another long moment. “I love you, okay? More than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life. More than Sam. More than anything. But we’re bad for each other. We hurt each other, Lee. Don’t you frakking understand?! We just… we, we can’t. We can’t.”
He pulls back a little, to see into her eyes, but then decides that he really doesn’t want to see into her eyes just now, and tugs her head to rest in the crook of his shoulder. They stay that way for a few moments, breathing together.
Eventually, she realizes that she needs to walk out of this office before she loses all resolve. She drops a feather-light kiss to the pulse point on his temple, telling his hairline, “Everything will be okay in the end, you know… So this just means that it’s not the end yet,” and she holds him in her embrace for just a little longer before pulling away, granting him a devious grin, and sauntering away. The hatch slams behind her.
He stares at the space she just occupied for about ten minutes before sighing and collecting his files and putting his jacket on and walking very slowly to the hanger bay, because he really needs to get back to his ship.
//
She looks beautiful in the morning. And happy. Not that he expected anything less. He doesn’t know where she found the white dress. Part of him wants to burn her in his memory forever, and part wishes he never came.
One of the most important wedding traditions is that the bride and groom absolutely cannot look at one another as they recite their vows. The old wives’ tales always tell about the angry Gods smiting spouses for sneaking glances at each other, proving that their level of religious devotion is lacking. Of course, she’s never been one to subscribe to old wives’ tales, but she follows the custom perfectly, just to be safe.
She turns to face those gathered, as the tradition dictates. Her eyes lock with Lee’s. It is a mistake that she knows she will regret later, but the icy, steely quality to his normally-soft blue eyes both scares and intrigues her in a dangerously addicting way. She takes a deep breath and begins to recite her vow with perfectly-pronounced diction, written down many years ago. It is the vow that every person says in a marriage.
“I, Kara Maria Thrace, named by my father, proclaim before the Gods and this gathering that I do love this man, Samuel Thomas Anders. My love for him is whole and never-ending. I love him with every part of my mortal soul, which the Gods granted me so long ago. I do now commit my body, heart, and soul to him, to be his faithfully wedded wife in all seasons of life, until Hades welcomes me to his immortal kingdom. So say ye all?”
“So say we all,” the gathering answers.
“Liar,” Lee whispers. It is so quiet that not even his father sitting next to him hears it, but she’s always been good at reading his lips. Her eyes widen with fear.
“No,” she whispers back, but it’s too late.
He’s risen to his feet.
“That’s a lie,” he says. His voice is calm, but his hands are shaking with rage and hurt. “If what you told me yesterday was true, then this is all one big frakking lie.” He turns to leave, struggling to keep his steps even, trying not to run until he is out.
Her lips try to form his name, but all she can manage is a choked, “Oh--!”
Lee lingers at the open hatch, his eyes still very much locked with hers.
Samuel T. Anders, self-proclaimed luckiest man alive, puts his body between the two of them. “Kara,” he says, forcefully, “I love you. That sick bastard obviously doesn’t, else he’d treat you better. Right?”
She can’t stop staring into Lee’s eyes, but she manages a nod and a vague, “R… Right.”
Sam grabs her wrist. “Okay then,” he says. His face is an odd shade of reddish-purple, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“Kara,” Lee calls from the hatch, “I just want you to know that this will never be okay. Never.” He pulls the hatch shut with a resounding bang.
She is perceptibly trembling. She screams his name to the closing hatch. Sam squeezes her wrist to the point of extreme pain, but she can’t seem to tear her eyes away from the hatch.
After a pregnant pause, he begins his vows through clenched teeth. “I, Samuel Thomas Anders, named by my mother…”
When the priestess finally pronounces them husband and wife, he kisses her angrily and tastes salt.
//
A hand-shaped bruise encircles her pale, thin wrist for approximately a week afterwards. Every night that week, she cries herself to sleep, wishing that Sam was enough of a sick bastard to stay up and hold her, like Lee always used to.