Rewriting Recollection (1/1)
Title: Rewriting Recollection
Part: 1 of 1.
Author: ninamazing, or Nina
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Word Count: 777.
Rating: R.
Spoilers: Through 1x10 "The Hand of God."
Characters: Helo/Athena.
Excerpt: At long last her world is closing in so he is all that it contains.
Author's Note: Writing on a plane is even better than doing aerodynamics homework on a plane; as proof, I offer you this. (Woman in 15B, I apologize for my dirty mind, but maybe you shouldn't be peeking in other people's notebooks, huh?) This is for the cats who compiled the Helo/Sharon moments at Kindreds, because THIS IS TOTALLY YOUR FAULT. In every way.
They're getting close to Delphi. She can feel it, as though the sight of Telamont's spire has triggered the activation of a new protein in her blood. Shrieks of a dozen alarm bells are jostling for supremacy in her head; she's taking Helo on a narrow, winding path through the city outskirts and hoping the centurion deployments haven't changed. She keeps thinking she hears a shot, and will turn around to find him slumped against a tree with a bullet in his belly - but he is always beside her, always breathing deeply to keep up.
"You've worn me out," he says when they make camp for the night, but the goading light in his eyes begs to disagree. Sharon just smiles, and begins to gather leaves into a rough carpet. The sun, crimson tinged with orange, slips over the edge of the mountain range and smirks at them both.
She went through the primary Eight's memories with a neuroscientist's relish - she became Sharon Valerii right alongside her. She didn't just sniff, or sip; she drank, swallowed whole gulps of the profound and unshakable thing that seemed to be her life.
It tasted good. The curiosity, the ecstasy; the tragedy, the pain. She savored the whirr of the gears in the mines, the scrape of her father's stubble, even the violence of the blast as it knocked her to the ground and darkened her vision. So close in her mind was the feel of the Chief's arms around her - the wet of his tongue, the way he gasped when she pulled him inside her. She even cherished the image of Braxton, another little boy who'd survived the explosion on Troy, who dropped his head to her shoulder as they huddled in the back of a rescue ship. He frakked her before she left for the fleet, urgent, desperate, his ears coloring pink before he went limp against her.
Sharon wants all of her new memories to be of Helo. She finds herself compelled to fill a thousand data banks with snapshots of his big hands, cupping the back of her head as he samples her mouth; of the sweaty lines of his tendons against her lips; of his chestnut curls weaving through her fingers. One growl from Karl, low and soft and surprising along her neck, thrills her with more intensity than all of her early recollections.
With her fingers clutching at him, with moans spilling from her throat like accidents, she's afraid she resembles that awkward first frak. It's embarrassing, this frantic need to keep him - to save him - to hold him fast in defiance of the rain and the bullets and the Sixes and the beat of her own mechanical heart. None of this comes from memory. She has no reference frame for this potency, this vulnerability, this burn.
"Sharon?" he asks, drawing curves on her cheeks as he grinds against her. "You okay, Sharon?" His body above her in the forest is the nuclear weight of this planet; his face, the light of its sun.
"Yes - yes," she answers, with difficulty. The sound of her voice barely travels to her eardrums. "Take me with you, Helo. Please."
Her mind's phantasm sears her eyelids when she closes them: She sees a flash of steel, his body slumped against a tree. The horror of it stills her breathing. Please, Helo, make me forget.
There are so many things she has to tell him, and the words rush up from her lungs until they clog and all she can do is open her mouth to his and grab him and hold on. He seems to understand. She tugs at his arms and they come down; his hands press hers back into the dirt and he nuzzles her, slowing, as if to make sure. She rocks her hips toward him and falls, weightless, under the push of his wrists. He thrusts harder. He strikes a rhythm into her body that is both crushing and controlled, agony and reassurance in alternating seconds. His kisses are reverent, complex; they are his version of the longer speech he didn't give. He lets her up for air and drags his teeth across the shallow place between her jawbone and her ear; she whimpers. At long last her world is closing in so he is all that it contains.
Electrons spit out pulses of light as they drop to lower energy levels, mediating falls with fireworks. Helo, holding her steady as she sinks into oblivion, sucks sparks from her lips like photons. She offers every quantum with all the sweetness she can muster.
All she wants to do is protect him.
Part: 1 of 1.
Author: ninamazing, or Nina
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Word Count: 777.
Rating: R.
Spoilers: Through 1x10 "The Hand of God."
Characters: Helo/Athena.
Excerpt: At long last her world is closing in so he is all that it contains.
Author's Note: Writing on a plane is even better than doing aerodynamics homework on a plane; as proof, I offer you this. (Woman in 15B, I apologize for my dirty mind, but maybe you shouldn't be peeking in other people's notebooks, huh?) This is for the cats who compiled the Helo/Sharon moments at Kindreds, because THIS IS TOTALLY YOUR FAULT. In every way.
They're getting close to Delphi. She can feel it, as though the sight of Telamont's spire has triggered the activation of a new protein in her blood. Shrieks of a dozen alarm bells are jostling for supremacy in her head; she's taking Helo on a narrow, winding path through the city outskirts and hoping the centurion deployments haven't changed. She keeps thinking she hears a shot, and will turn around to find him slumped against a tree with a bullet in his belly - but he is always beside her, always breathing deeply to keep up.
"You've worn me out," he says when they make camp for the night, but the goading light in his eyes begs to disagree. Sharon just smiles, and begins to gather leaves into a rough carpet. The sun, crimson tinged with orange, slips over the edge of the mountain range and smirks at them both.
She went through the primary Eight's memories with a neuroscientist's relish - she became Sharon Valerii right alongside her. She didn't just sniff, or sip; she drank, swallowed whole gulps of the profound and unshakable thing that seemed to be her life.
It tasted good. The curiosity, the ecstasy; the tragedy, the pain. She savored the whirr of the gears in the mines, the scrape of her father's stubble, even the violence of the blast as it knocked her to the ground and darkened her vision. So close in her mind was the feel of the Chief's arms around her - the wet of his tongue, the way he gasped when she pulled him inside her. She even cherished the image of Braxton, another little boy who'd survived the explosion on Troy, who dropped his head to her shoulder as they huddled in the back of a rescue ship. He frakked her before she left for the fleet, urgent, desperate, his ears coloring pink before he went limp against her.
Sharon wants all of her new memories to be of Helo. She finds herself compelled to fill a thousand data banks with snapshots of his big hands, cupping the back of her head as he samples her mouth; of the sweaty lines of his tendons against her lips; of his chestnut curls weaving through her fingers. One growl from Karl, low and soft and surprising along her neck, thrills her with more intensity than all of her early recollections.
With her fingers clutching at him, with moans spilling from her throat like accidents, she's afraid she resembles that awkward first frak. It's embarrassing, this frantic need to keep him - to save him - to hold him fast in defiance of the rain and the bullets and the Sixes and the beat of her own mechanical heart. None of this comes from memory. She has no reference frame for this potency, this vulnerability, this burn.
"Sharon?" he asks, drawing curves on her cheeks as he grinds against her. "You okay, Sharon?" His body above her in the forest is the nuclear weight of this planet; his face, the light of its sun.
"Yes - yes," she answers, with difficulty. The sound of her voice barely travels to her eardrums. "Take me with you, Helo. Please."
Her mind's phantasm sears her eyelids when she closes them: She sees a flash of steel, his body slumped against a tree. The horror of it stills her breathing. Please, Helo, make me forget.
There are so many things she has to tell him, and the words rush up from her lungs until they clog and all she can do is open her mouth to his and grab him and hold on. He seems to understand. She tugs at his arms and they come down; his hands press hers back into the dirt and he nuzzles her, slowing, as if to make sure. She rocks her hips toward him and falls, weightless, under the push of his wrists. He thrusts harder. He strikes a rhythm into her body that is both crushing and controlled, agony and reassurance in alternating seconds. His kisses are reverent, complex; they are his version of the longer speech he didn't give. He lets her up for air and drags his teeth across the shallow place between her jawbone and her ear; she whimpers. At long last her world is closing in so he is all that it contains.
Electrons spit out pulses of light as they drop to lower energy levels, mediating falls with fireworks. Helo, holding her steady as she sinks into oblivion, sucks sparks from her lips like photons. She offers every quantum with all the sweetness she can muster.
All she wants to do is protect him.