WIP Amnesty: Strict Joy, Low Rising
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away, I signed up for this challenge to choose an album and write a fic for each song. I picked Strict Joy by the Swell Season. I wrote three completed fic(lets), and started many more. I will post the three completed ones separately, then compile the unfinished ones. These are unconnected, and do not need to be read together.
(Oh, and they're all BSG fics, mostly Kara/Lee)
Title: Strict Joy, Low Rising
Word Count: ~1500
Warning: depression
This one is a Maelstrom AU.
Low Rising
Cause we’ve gotta come up, we’ve gotta come up
Low rising
Cause there’s no further for us to fall
Low rising
Cause I fear we’ve had enough, and we’re
Low rising
All for the love of you
-Low Rising, The Swell Season
Kara skids across the hangar deck like it’s her first combat landing. Her hands are shaking so badly that it takes her a minute to get the canopy open, and by the time she pushes out of her seat, she can hear him.
She doesn’t raise her head because she already knows she’ll see him striding across the deck, and she can tell by his heavy footfalls that he’s angry. She’s still on the ladder when his boots enter her vision, but they don’t stop at the deck and then she can’t look away when he reaches up to her.
And she’s caught, like in the storm, by the sight of his eyes and the feel of his fingers digging into her shoulders, like if he doesn’t hold her there she’ll float away.
“Kara,” he says. “Kara-”
When he chokes on her name and shifts one hand so that his thumb brushes against the exposed skin of her throat, she realizes she made a mistake. He’s not angry.
He’s afraid.
~~~
You come back! he’d screamed, and she had, but she can’t say how or why, can barely remember the flight back to the barn, barely feels like she’s escaped atmo at all.
~~~
He waits on the other side of the curtain while Doc Cottle checks her out. The grumpy old major forces her to endure the indignity of an MRI. The scan comes up empty though, and the doctor has no choice but to release her.
There’s nothing wrong with her, he says. Not physically anyway. It’s all in her head.
Like she hadn’t figured that one out on her own.
~~~
She’s not a pilot anymore, and she feels about that the same way she feels about everything else: tired. She doesn’t have a job to do, since she’s too crazy to fly or work on the deck or, gods forbid, stand duty in CIC. She spends a lot of time in her bunk these days.
Kara hasn’t had a smoke in a long, long time-rationing really blows-but now she aches for a cigar. Anything to take her mind off the mess she’s made of things. She always knew she’d frak things up, but she never quite imagined things would get this bad.
At least the hallucinations have stopped; if only the dreams would too. Kara doesn’t want anyone to know about them, least of all Lee, which is more pressing now that his marriage (‘the best they’ve ever been’) has quietly imploded and he’s taken up residence in the bunk right across from hers.
Frakker. Like she doesn’t know what he’s doing.
“You okay?” he says once.
She nods. Cottle had said she was okay, hadn’t he? Fan-frakking-tastic. With a little crazy on the side.
Another time, Lee asks if she wants to talk. She tells him no, and so they don’t talk.
~~~
A week after her spectacular frak-up, the Admiral pages her to his quarters. She contemplates not going for awhile, but eventually gets off her ass. It’s not that she wants to see him, she tells herself. It’s not even that she’s bored. And really, a trip to hack wouldn’t be so bad. It’s just that she can’t think of any reason not to go.
She almost regrets her decision when she steps through the hatch and he greets her by name.
“Kara,” he says. “Thank you for coming.” And she knows this will be worse than she thought.
They sit in his office, he in the chair and she on the couch. He hands her a tumbler of something brown and smooth and she resists the temptation to down it in one swallow.
He asks her how she’s doing and she says she’s fine though she knows he can see right through her.
The problem is she doesn’t know how to talk to him anymore. But he’s kind of looking at her like she’s killed his puppy (and hasn’t she done far worse than that, in reality?) so she tries. They talk about the pilots. They talk about shortages. They talk about algae. She even makes a joke at the XO’s expense and is thinking that maybe she can pull this off when her eyes catch on his model ship-specifically on the dull gleam of the figurehead.
Aurora.
Something tightens in her chest and she has to swallow a few times before she can manage words again.
That night, she lies in her bunk and can’t stop thinking about the winged woman on the bow.
~~~
Three weeks after her spectacular frak-up, she’s standing on the catwalk watching the familiar chaos of the flight deck when Helo bumps her shoulder.
She gives him a glance, but says nothing and neither does he for a few minutes as they just stand there, side by side.
Then, “do you miss it?” he says.
“What, smelling like tylium all the time and having to pee so badly you think you’re gonna explode by the end of your CAP?”
He gives her That Look, the Go Bullshit Someone Else, Thrace, Maybe They’ll Buy It look.
She shrugs and looks down at her hands on the railing.
“You know Apollo and the Old Man would put you back up there, you say the word.”
“I know.”
“So what are you so afraid of?”
She looks at him once, then at the ships below them. “I had a destiny,” she says after a long moment, “and I was too much of a coward to follow through.”
“A destiny,” he says. Then the motherfrakker laughs, actually laughs at her.
She glares at him. “You know, if I pushed you off here, I bet you’d break at least two limbs.”
He takes a cautionary step away, hands raised in surrender, but doesn’t wipe the stupid grin off his face. “You’re saying that your destiny was to scare the living shit out of everyone? Because I’m pretty sure you’ve managed that a few times already, and-”
“No, godsdamnit,” she snaps, “to see the other side!”
He raises one eyebrow, then turns from side to side in an exaggerated motion. “The other side of what?”
The question stumps her. “Frak if I know,” she says after a moment. And it’s all so godsdamn ridiculous that for an instant her lips turn upwards and she almost feels like laughing.
~~~
Kara is walking back from the mess one day when she passes the open hatch to the officer’s gym. She’s struck by a small but unexpected wanting, and the feeling is so rare these days that she doesn’t think twice about following through. The punching bag is occupied and she doesn’t have a spotter, so she turns instead to the free weights and quickly settles into a series of reps.
It’s Lee at the punching bag, but she’s used to the wanting when it comes to him, and equally used to pushing past the desire so she lets her eyes slide away from him and concentrates instead on the slight burn in her biceps.
She can’t quite shut out the sound, though, of his padded fists striking the bag, and she wonders what’s got him so worked up. At one time, she would’ve gone over there and asked him, probably with a smile and a joke, maybe inquiring as to just whose face he was imagining pounding in and whether or not it was hers.
But that was before. Today she stays seated and, after a few more mintes, she walks out first.
~~~
Eight weeks after the storm, the Cylons find them again and all her lethargy of the last two months sloughs away under the onslaught of the call to Action Stations.
Chief is busy elsewhere and none of the other deckhands think to question it when Starbuck bounds onto the hangar deck and heads straight for her viper. Seconds later, she’s launching and she sees nothing but the deep black of space and the flashing red eyes of the raiders, perfect targets for all of her ire.
Bullseye. She laughs, long and loud, then shouts, “Splash one!” into her comm, and she’s spinning away, away, and nobody can catch her in their sights, not one, as she inhales and exhales with the rhythm of the fray.
When the raiders retreat, she’s almost disappointed, and she almost doesn’t heed the call to return to the barn until it’s Lee’s voice through the comm.
~~~
You come back! he’d said, again and again, and this time she did.
~~~
When she’s washed away the evidence of the battle, sweat and adrenaline alike swirling down the drain, Kara stretches out in her bunk and closes the curtain, content to lie there in the darkness because, for once, there are no storm clouds and no mandalas behind her closed lids.
That’s where she is when he finds her. She doesn’t open her curtain; she doesn’t need to. She’d know those footfalls anywhere. He sits outside her bunk for awhile, just breathing. She’s distantly aware that the other pilots are on duty or revelling in the rec room, and they are alone. Then he speaks.
“You asked me a question once,” Lee whispers into the graying curtain of her bunk. “I lied to you. You-you and I, we’re not just a CAG and a pilot. Never have been, never will be. And I, I would miss you. Just know that, Kara, please.”
On the other side, she smiles.
(Oh, and they're all BSG fics, mostly Kara/Lee)
Title: Strict Joy, Low Rising
Word Count: ~1500
Warning: depression
This one is a Maelstrom AU.
Low Rising
Cause we’ve gotta come up, we’ve gotta come up
Low rising
Cause there’s no further for us to fall
Low rising
Cause I fear we’ve had enough, and we’re
Low rising
All for the love of you
-Low Rising, The Swell Season
Kara skids across the hangar deck like it’s her first combat landing. Her hands are shaking so badly that it takes her a minute to get the canopy open, and by the time she pushes out of her seat, she can hear him.
She doesn’t raise her head because she already knows she’ll see him striding across the deck, and she can tell by his heavy footfalls that he’s angry. She’s still on the ladder when his boots enter her vision, but they don’t stop at the deck and then she can’t look away when he reaches up to her.
And she’s caught, like in the storm, by the sight of his eyes and the feel of his fingers digging into her shoulders, like if he doesn’t hold her there she’ll float away.
“Kara,” he says. “Kara-”
When he chokes on her name and shifts one hand so that his thumb brushes against the exposed skin of her throat, she realizes she made a mistake. He’s not angry.
He’s afraid.
~~~
You come back! he’d screamed, and she had, but she can’t say how or why, can barely remember the flight back to the barn, barely feels like she’s escaped atmo at all.
~~~
He waits on the other side of the curtain while Doc Cottle checks her out. The grumpy old major forces her to endure the indignity of an MRI. The scan comes up empty though, and the doctor has no choice but to release her.
There’s nothing wrong with her, he says. Not physically anyway. It’s all in her head.
Like she hadn’t figured that one out on her own.
~~~
She’s not a pilot anymore, and she feels about that the same way she feels about everything else: tired. She doesn’t have a job to do, since she’s too crazy to fly or work on the deck or, gods forbid, stand duty in CIC. She spends a lot of time in her bunk these days.
Kara hasn’t had a smoke in a long, long time-rationing really blows-but now she aches for a cigar. Anything to take her mind off the mess she’s made of things. She always knew she’d frak things up, but she never quite imagined things would get this bad.
At least the hallucinations have stopped; if only the dreams would too. Kara doesn’t want anyone to know about them, least of all Lee, which is more pressing now that his marriage (‘the best they’ve ever been’) has quietly imploded and he’s taken up residence in the bunk right across from hers.
Frakker. Like she doesn’t know what he’s doing.
“You okay?” he says once.
She nods. Cottle had said she was okay, hadn’t he? Fan-frakking-tastic. With a little crazy on the side.
Another time, Lee asks if she wants to talk. She tells him no, and so they don’t talk.
~~~
A week after her spectacular frak-up, the Admiral pages her to his quarters. She contemplates not going for awhile, but eventually gets off her ass. It’s not that she wants to see him, she tells herself. It’s not even that she’s bored. And really, a trip to hack wouldn’t be so bad. It’s just that she can’t think of any reason not to go.
She almost regrets her decision when she steps through the hatch and he greets her by name.
“Kara,” he says. “Thank you for coming.” And she knows this will be worse than she thought.
They sit in his office, he in the chair and she on the couch. He hands her a tumbler of something brown and smooth and she resists the temptation to down it in one swallow.
He asks her how she’s doing and she says she’s fine though she knows he can see right through her.
The problem is she doesn’t know how to talk to him anymore. But he’s kind of looking at her like she’s killed his puppy (and hasn’t she done far worse than that, in reality?) so she tries. They talk about the pilots. They talk about shortages. They talk about algae. She even makes a joke at the XO’s expense and is thinking that maybe she can pull this off when her eyes catch on his model ship-specifically on the dull gleam of the figurehead.
Aurora.
Something tightens in her chest and she has to swallow a few times before she can manage words again.
That night, she lies in her bunk and can’t stop thinking about the winged woman on the bow.
~~~
Three weeks after her spectacular frak-up, she’s standing on the catwalk watching the familiar chaos of the flight deck when Helo bumps her shoulder.
She gives him a glance, but says nothing and neither does he for a few minutes as they just stand there, side by side.
Then, “do you miss it?” he says.
“What, smelling like tylium all the time and having to pee so badly you think you’re gonna explode by the end of your CAP?”
He gives her That Look, the Go Bullshit Someone Else, Thrace, Maybe They’ll Buy It look.
She shrugs and looks down at her hands on the railing.
“You know Apollo and the Old Man would put you back up there, you say the word.”
“I know.”
“So what are you so afraid of?”
She looks at him once, then at the ships below them. “I had a destiny,” she says after a long moment, “and I was too much of a coward to follow through.”
“A destiny,” he says. Then the motherfrakker laughs, actually laughs at her.
She glares at him. “You know, if I pushed you off here, I bet you’d break at least two limbs.”
He takes a cautionary step away, hands raised in surrender, but doesn’t wipe the stupid grin off his face. “You’re saying that your destiny was to scare the living shit out of everyone? Because I’m pretty sure you’ve managed that a few times already, and-”
“No, godsdamnit,” she snaps, “to see the other side!”
He raises one eyebrow, then turns from side to side in an exaggerated motion. “The other side of what?”
The question stumps her. “Frak if I know,” she says after a moment. And it’s all so godsdamn ridiculous that for an instant her lips turn upwards and she almost feels like laughing.
~~~
Kara is walking back from the mess one day when she passes the open hatch to the officer’s gym. She’s struck by a small but unexpected wanting, and the feeling is so rare these days that she doesn’t think twice about following through. The punching bag is occupied and she doesn’t have a spotter, so she turns instead to the free weights and quickly settles into a series of reps.
It’s Lee at the punching bag, but she’s used to the wanting when it comes to him, and equally used to pushing past the desire so she lets her eyes slide away from him and concentrates instead on the slight burn in her biceps.
She can’t quite shut out the sound, though, of his padded fists striking the bag, and she wonders what’s got him so worked up. At one time, she would’ve gone over there and asked him, probably with a smile and a joke, maybe inquiring as to just whose face he was imagining pounding in and whether or not it was hers.
But that was before. Today she stays seated and, after a few more mintes, she walks out first.
~~~
Eight weeks after the storm, the Cylons find them again and all her lethargy of the last two months sloughs away under the onslaught of the call to Action Stations.
Chief is busy elsewhere and none of the other deckhands think to question it when Starbuck bounds onto the hangar deck and heads straight for her viper. Seconds later, she’s launching and she sees nothing but the deep black of space and the flashing red eyes of the raiders, perfect targets for all of her ire.
Bullseye. She laughs, long and loud, then shouts, “Splash one!” into her comm, and she’s spinning away, away, and nobody can catch her in their sights, not one, as she inhales and exhales with the rhythm of the fray.
When the raiders retreat, she’s almost disappointed, and she almost doesn’t heed the call to return to the barn until it’s Lee’s voice through the comm.
~~~
You come back! he’d said, again and again, and this time she did.
~~~
When she’s washed away the evidence of the battle, sweat and adrenaline alike swirling down the drain, Kara stretches out in her bunk and closes the curtain, content to lie there in the darkness because, for once, there are no storm clouds and no mandalas behind her closed lids.
That’s where she is when he finds her. She doesn’t open her curtain; she doesn’t need to. She’d know those footfalls anywhere. He sits outside her bunk for awhile, just breathing. She’s distantly aware that the other pilots are on duty or revelling in the rec room, and they are alone. Then he speaks.
“You asked me a question once,” Lee whispers into the graying curtain of her bunk. “I lied to you. You-you and I, we’re not just a CAG and a pilot. Never have been, never will be. And I, I would miss you. Just know that, Kara, please.”
On the other side, she smiles.