Demeter, for rayruz
Title: Demeter
Author: letterstonorah
Summary: Years after the trauma she faced on New Caprica, Kara deals with the continuing challenges of being a mother and a partner.
Characters/Pairings: Kara/Lee, Seph (rayruz’s OC)
Rating: PG13
Words: 1500
Warnings: None, really. Sexy time?
Disclaimer: Not mine, obvi. Actually, doubly not mine.
original story is “Persephone” by rayruz
A/N: “Persephone” takes place in the same universe as “No Haven for This Heart” but years later. I’ve made this fic accessible to anyone who has not read that, though everyone should!
Lee’s arm is tucked possessively around Kara’s waist when she startles awake, a nightmare nipping at her heels, again. Frak. Okay. She’s got this. She’s got this.
1) Breathe. 2) Breathe again. 3) One more time. 4) Okay.
5) She’s home. Her home. Her bed. Her quilts. Her afghans. No-their home, their bed, their quilts, their afghans.
6) Warm skin, coarse stubble, hot lips. Yes. Lee. Lee is here. And so is-
Kara pats the bed frantically, flipping the sheets off of herself, opening the drawer to the bedside table to remove her pistol. If that frakker has done something to-no. This isn’t right. Gods-frakking-damnit. Okay. Take two.
7) She breathes again, and again and again and again until her brain frakking obeys like it’s frakking supposed to. She is at home, on Earth, with Lee-which means her daughter is asleep in the other room. Seph is safe. Kara is safe. Lee is safe. New Caprica is lightyears away.
She forces the thoughts on loop through her head. Seph is safe. Kara is Safe. Lee is safe. Seph is safe. Kara is safe. Lee is safe.
This is the fourth time this month Kara’s had the dream-the fourth time since Leoben showed up at her cabin door, holding Seph’s hand. Get inside - Kara had said, grabbing her little girl’s shoulder. Leoben smiled, Kara’s chest contricting as his face twisted and morphed. Captive for months in his designer-decorated cage, she’d become fluent in Leobenese. ‘Cocky grin’ translated loosely into Caprican as Still here. Didn’t think you could get rid of me that easily, did you?
No, she hadn’t thought that.
Kara stretches to wake herself up, watching Lee sleep. With the curtains drawn, she cannot make out the details of his face, of his body. But she’s memorized every aspect of him. She knows his skin and his muscles and his skeleton better than he does-the sharp jut of his hip bone, the hard surface of his arms, the prickly patch of hair, leading down.
She smiles. Part of her knows the exact face he’ll make when she tells him the news. That smile-his smile-will make the last few weeks of nausea a little easier to bear. And it’s one more reminder why she frakking bothers with all this shit, the breathing exercises and the affirmations. For their smiles-Lee’s and Seph’s. And for all the smiles to come.
Kara hurries to dress herself, anxious to spend the morning with Seph. Once school begins in a week, they won’t have this time together anymore. As usual, summer is ending abruptly and without welcome. Turns out the sun is just as stingy on Earth as it was back on the Twelve Colonies. As if the days weren’t already too short. Frakking seasons and frakking Mother Nature and frakking cycles. Yeah, screw winter and the shitty-ass horse it rode in on. The cold brings back thoughts of New Caprica, the galaxy’s combined toilet and prison. There, even on the equator, humans endured frigid temperatures and gray skies year-round. At least on Earth the sun always comes back. A dependable star, a star you could kind of get behind
Kara wants nothing more than to soak up the last few bits of summer sun, to linger in the days where work is light on base.
Once her clothes are on, she tip-toes to Seph’s room, rubbing her nose into the little girl’s tiny, pink ear to wake her.
“Momma?” Seph asks, her short-cut hair standing every which way but right. There’d been a lice outbreak a few months prior, affecting all the kids at the day camp Seph sometimes goes to. Earth was still want for little things like pesticide, and Kara and Lee had decided the easiest solution was to give the girl a buzz cut.
“Shh, nugget,” says Kara, placing a kiss on Seph’s cheek. “Come on, before your dad wakes up.” Seph nods and rubs the sleep from her eyes.
Kara watches the little girl get ready in the half-light of early morning. Seph removes her night shirt so that she’s only in a pair of underwear, then pulls on some overalls. Kara helps Seph fasten the buckles at the chest, thinking that with winter coming, the little girl needs new clothes. Nothing from last year is likely to fit well if at all-and Lords of Kobol, wasn’t it only yesterday that Seph had been born, squirming and twisting against Kara’s breasts, soft skin and even softer hair? At her last checkup, she’d weighed in at nearly three stone. Every day, she looks more and more like Kara, lips growing poutier, cheek bones lifting higher.
Except for her blue eyes, which are perfectly Lee, she looks so much like Kara it hurts.
Kara places her palm over her belly button, wonders about what is inside there, who is inside there, what the child might come to look like. It’s been seven years since she found out she was pregnant with Seph, but she remembers the signs, remembers how her body had rebelled against her. Will this one have light hair like Seph, or dark hair like Lee’s? Boy or girl?
“Momma, you coming?” Seph asks.
Kara smiles, nods.
The trek through the forest is long, but its worth it. Kara strips to her underwear than plunges into the river, salty from rock and fish. The dark teal water feels impossibly warm, as it’s had all of June, July, and August to absorb the sun’s rays.
“Jump, nugget,” Kara says, holding out her hands.
“Will you catch me?” Seph asks.
“Always,” says Kara.
Seph closes her eyes and plugs her nose, then takes a leap off the short cliff. As she hits water, Kara pulls the little girl into her chest.
“How was that?” Seph asks, face breaking through the surface, eyes bright and smiling.
“Perfect and amazing,” says Kara. “How’d you get so crazy brave, nugget?”
“I get it from you, that’s what Dad says.”
“I think you just get it from you,” says Kara. “You are the bravest person I know.”
Years after New Caprica, forced to be Leoben’s play-thing alongside her daughter, Kara still wakes up sweating every now and then, like today.
Winters are the worst, the most basic things transforming into triggers-steak knives, bath robes, the smell of grilled asparagus, white sheets. She remembers to breathe. She remembers the anchors that are Lee and the Old Man. Mostly, though, she thinks about Seph, how her daughter was right there with her. Seph was brave, and so Kara could be, too. They’d both survived, and Kara owes it to herself to keep on surviving.
“Now hold on to my arm, Seph,” says Kara, “and I want you to kick your legs as hard as you can.”
#
Of course, Lee’s there to witness her lose her breakfast. “I’m fine,” she says, trying to smile through the discomfort in her belly, but Lee doesn’t buy it.
He picks up Seph into his arms and spins her, saying good morning. “Are you ready for the Olympics, yet?” he asks “Gonna kill it in the 100 meter?”
Seph shrugs her shoulders shyly, and Kara smiles. Maybe the kid’s not quite ready for the Olympics, but she’s learning fast, and in no time she’ll be able to beat Hera in a race. Hera is bigger, sure, but Seph has a lot of spirit and fight in her, and she is fast and strong.
“Why don’t you run inside, Nugget?” Lee says, setting Seph down, patting her butt to get her to scoot off into their cabin.
“Okay,” she says, obeying, but not very enthusiastically.
Kara begins to follow their daughter inside, but Lee grabs her hand, pulling her back.
“What?” she says.
“You all right?”
“Great,” she says.
“Do you want to see Dr. Stoffa?” asks Lee.
No, Lee, she doesn’t need to set up an appointment with her shrink. The nausea today had nothing to do with what had happened on New Caprica.
“I know sometimes you feel sick when-”
“It’s not that,” Kara says.
“Then what is it? How long has this been going on?”
“Maybe it is time I see a doctor, but not Stoffa.”
Lee doesn’t get it, but he agrees. She’ll drop intp the clinic when they go into town for groceries and supplies, though it’s just a formality. She knows, and Lee and Seph will know soon, too.
#
Then there it is. That smile of his. As he lights up, so does she. She can’t help it. She’s such a frakking girl sometimes.
Kara and Lee sit hip to hip under Earth’s stars-the same stars they’d seen in the Tomb of Athena. This child, their child, will be born here, in this beautiful, beautiful place. This is why she remembers to breathe.
Author: letterstonorah
Summary: Years after the trauma she faced on New Caprica, Kara deals with the continuing challenges of being a mother and a partner.
Characters/Pairings: Kara/Lee, Seph (rayruz’s OC)
Rating: PG13
Words: 1500
Warnings: None, really. Sexy time?
Disclaimer: Not mine, obvi. Actually, doubly not mine.
original story is “Persephone” by rayruz
A/N: “Persephone” takes place in the same universe as “No Haven for This Heart” but years later. I’ve made this fic accessible to anyone who has not read that, though everyone should!
Lee’s arm is tucked possessively around Kara’s waist when she startles awake, a nightmare nipping at her heels, again. Frak. Okay. She’s got this. She’s got this.
1) Breathe. 2) Breathe again. 3) One more time. 4) Okay.
5) She’s home. Her home. Her bed. Her quilts. Her afghans. No-their home, their bed, their quilts, their afghans.
6) Warm skin, coarse stubble, hot lips. Yes. Lee. Lee is here. And so is-
Kara pats the bed frantically, flipping the sheets off of herself, opening the drawer to the bedside table to remove her pistol. If that frakker has done something to-no. This isn’t right. Gods-frakking-damnit. Okay. Take two.
7) She breathes again, and again and again and again until her brain frakking obeys like it’s frakking supposed to. She is at home, on Earth, with Lee-which means her daughter is asleep in the other room. Seph is safe. Kara is safe. Lee is safe. New Caprica is lightyears away.
She forces the thoughts on loop through her head. Seph is safe. Kara is Safe. Lee is safe. Seph is safe. Kara is safe. Lee is safe.
This is the fourth time this month Kara’s had the dream-the fourth time since Leoben showed up at her cabin door, holding Seph’s hand. Get inside - Kara had said, grabbing her little girl’s shoulder. Leoben smiled, Kara’s chest contricting as his face twisted and morphed. Captive for months in his designer-decorated cage, she’d become fluent in Leobenese. ‘Cocky grin’ translated loosely into Caprican as Still here. Didn’t think you could get rid of me that easily, did you?
No, she hadn’t thought that.
Kara stretches to wake herself up, watching Lee sleep. With the curtains drawn, she cannot make out the details of his face, of his body. But she’s memorized every aspect of him. She knows his skin and his muscles and his skeleton better than he does-the sharp jut of his hip bone, the hard surface of his arms, the prickly patch of hair, leading down.
She smiles. Part of her knows the exact face he’ll make when she tells him the news. That smile-his smile-will make the last few weeks of nausea a little easier to bear. And it’s one more reminder why she frakking bothers with all this shit, the breathing exercises and the affirmations. For their smiles-Lee’s and Seph’s. And for all the smiles to come.
Kara hurries to dress herself, anxious to spend the morning with Seph. Once school begins in a week, they won’t have this time together anymore. As usual, summer is ending abruptly and without welcome. Turns out the sun is just as stingy on Earth as it was back on the Twelve Colonies. As if the days weren’t already too short. Frakking seasons and frakking Mother Nature and frakking cycles. Yeah, screw winter and the shitty-ass horse it rode in on. The cold brings back thoughts of New Caprica, the galaxy’s combined toilet and prison. There, even on the equator, humans endured frigid temperatures and gray skies year-round. At least on Earth the sun always comes back. A dependable star, a star you could kind of get behind
Kara wants nothing more than to soak up the last few bits of summer sun, to linger in the days where work is light on base.
Once her clothes are on, she tip-toes to Seph’s room, rubbing her nose into the little girl’s tiny, pink ear to wake her.
“Momma?” Seph asks, her short-cut hair standing every which way but right. There’d been a lice outbreak a few months prior, affecting all the kids at the day camp Seph sometimes goes to. Earth was still want for little things like pesticide, and Kara and Lee had decided the easiest solution was to give the girl a buzz cut.
“Shh, nugget,” says Kara, placing a kiss on Seph’s cheek. “Come on, before your dad wakes up.” Seph nods and rubs the sleep from her eyes.
Kara watches the little girl get ready in the half-light of early morning. Seph removes her night shirt so that she’s only in a pair of underwear, then pulls on some overalls. Kara helps Seph fasten the buckles at the chest, thinking that with winter coming, the little girl needs new clothes. Nothing from last year is likely to fit well if at all-and Lords of Kobol, wasn’t it only yesterday that Seph had been born, squirming and twisting against Kara’s breasts, soft skin and even softer hair? At her last checkup, she’d weighed in at nearly three stone. Every day, she looks more and more like Kara, lips growing poutier, cheek bones lifting higher.
Except for her blue eyes, which are perfectly Lee, she looks so much like Kara it hurts.
Kara places her palm over her belly button, wonders about what is inside there, who is inside there, what the child might come to look like. It’s been seven years since she found out she was pregnant with Seph, but she remembers the signs, remembers how her body had rebelled against her. Will this one have light hair like Seph, or dark hair like Lee’s? Boy or girl?
“Momma, you coming?” Seph asks.
Kara smiles, nods.
The trek through the forest is long, but its worth it. Kara strips to her underwear than plunges into the river, salty from rock and fish. The dark teal water feels impossibly warm, as it’s had all of June, July, and August to absorb the sun’s rays.
“Jump, nugget,” Kara says, holding out her hands.
“Will you catch me?” Seph asks.
“Always,” says Kara.
Seph closes her eyes and plugs her nose, then takes a leap off the short cliff. As she hits water, Kara pulls the little girl into her chest.
“How was that?” Seph asks, face breaking through the surface, eyes bright and smiling.
“Perfect and amazing,” says Kara. “How’d you get so crazy brave, nugget?”
“I get it from you, that’s what Dad says.”
“I think you just get it from you,” says Kara. “You are the bravest person I know.”
Years after New Caprica, forced to be Leoben’s play-thing alongside her daughter, Kara still wakes up sweating every now and then, like today.
Winters are the worst, the most basic things transforming into triggers-steak knives, bath robes, the smell of grilled asparagus, white sheets. She remembers to breathe. She remembers the anchors that are Lee and the Old Man. Mostly, though, she thinks about Seph, how her daughter was right there with her. Seph was brave, and so Kara could be, too. They’d both survived, and Kara owes it to herself to keep on surviving.
“Now hold on to my arm, Seph,” says Kara, “and I want you to kick your legs as hard as you can.”
#
Of course, Lee’s there to witness her lose her breakfast. “I’m fine,” she says, trying to smile through the discomfort in her belly, but Lee doesn’t buy it.
He picks up Seph into his arms and spins her, saying good morning. “Are you ready for the Olympics, yet?” he asks “Gonna kill it in the 100 meter?”
Seph shrugs her shoulders shyly, and Kara smiles. Maybe the kid’s not quite ready for the Olympics, but she’s learning fast, and in no time she’ll be able to beat Hera in a race. Hera is bigger, sure, but Seph has a lot of spirit and fight in her, and she is fast and strong.
“Why don’t you run inside, Nugget?” Lee says, setting Seph down, patting her butt to get her to scoot off into their cabin.
“Okay,” she says, obeying, but not very enthusiastically.
Kara begins to follow their daughter inside, but Lee grabs her hand, pulling her back.
“What?” she says.
“You all right?”
“Great,” she says.
“Do you want to see Dr. Stoffa?” asks Lee.
No, Lee, she doesn’t need to set up an appointment with her shrink. The nausea today had nothing to do with what had happened on New Caprica.
“I know sometimes you feel sick when-”
“It’s not that,” Kara says.
“Then what is it? How long has this been going on?”
“Maybe it is time I see a doctor, but not Stoffa.”
Lee doesn’t get it, but he agrees. She’ll drop intp the clinic when they go into town for groceries and supplies, though it’s just a formality. She knows, and Lee and Seph will know soon, too.
#
Then there it is. That smile of his. As he lights up, so does she. She can’t help it. She’s such a frakking girl sometimes.
Kara and Lee sit hip to hip under Earth’s stars-the same stars they’d seen in the Tomb of Athena. This child, their child, will be born here, in this beautiful, beautiful place. This is why she remembers to breathe.