fic: BSG, End of Line; New Command, Kara/Sam, post-Daybreak
disclaimer: not mine
spoilers: all the way through Daybreak
pairings: Kara Thrace/Sam Anders, reference: Caprica/Gaius, Athena/Helo, Kara/Lee, Paulla/Lee, Roslin/Adama, Ellen/Saul, Lemon/Redwing
rating: ...R? there's sexy funtimes in here, though non-explicit.
notes: Friday night BSG chat people are evil, obvsly. This is Ron's Daybreak, not palmetto's, though hers is arguably better. I hate titles.
End of Line; New Command
by ALC Punk!
The first thing Kara notices about the afterlife is the quiet.
So she smacks something that feels like a wall and it makes a little 'plink' noise. Which is at least better than nothing.
"Hello?" Her voice sounds tinny for an instant, then it echoes back.
The afterlife doesn't exactly change, it just suddenly feels like she opened her eyes. Color and light and sound dazzle her for an instant before someone slams into her.
Kara's grabbing onto his shirt and he's holding her steady, big hands on her arms, before she recognizes him.
It takes a moment, because it feels like her heart is going to break or maybe she'll puke or do something else un-angel like, but her voice bursts out, a little high and squeaky, "--Sam!"
He smiles, and it's Sam and it's the Sam who shouted at her in the operating room and it's the hybrid who talked riddles about her face and destiny and death all at once. Which is almost too much, but then he's just Sam, all of those together, and it fits.
It works, because she's just Kara, dead and alive and angelic and not always real.
They're in each others' arms, talking (babbling) before she registers anything else.
"I missed you--"
"I told you I'd wait--"
He laughs, the sound reverberating against her, and Kara starts crying. She missed this, she missed him, the way he smelled and laughed and smiled and frakked--she buries her face in his neck and feels him do the same.
When she pulls back, she can see he's been crying, but he's also smiling that smile she always loved.
"I--Sam, I--"
It hits her that there are a million and one things she wants to say to him: about being a hybrid and being an angel and about them, or who they were and what they were and how they could have been, if--
Sam solves her incoherence with his mouth and the kiss sears her down to her toes.
"Gods--"
He laughs a little, then huffs out a breath, "I could hear you. I couldn't get the right words out, but I could hear you."
"So," she pushes up on her toes and kisses him, "You like being part of my back-up band, Sammy?"
"Don't call me Sammy."
It's the same, but it's not the same, and Kara's laughing too much to care about the differences as they stagger up a set of stairs and he pushes open a door, hands under her shirt and Kara doesn't care if she's flashing people, either.
-
Afterwards, she stretches out on his clean white sheets and plays with his hair. Gods, she'd missed his hair. She almost opens her mouth to say so, but it's too frakking pathetic, so instead she just wriggles closer and tucks her head on his shoulder.
"Do we sleep?" she asks, after a while.
The room shifts a little, but she ignores it. Sam chuckles, hand brushing lazily down her stomach. "Sometimes. It's not required, though."
Kara pushes up on her elbow and narrows her eyes at him, "You don't know shit."
Calling his bluff is something she's always been good at. He tilts his head and smiles at her, "Know more'n you."
"My piece of Cylon ass," she mocks, patting his chest.
"You're cute." His hands shift along her skin and he moves, pinning her beneath him. "Gonna hold my heritage against me the rest of our afterlife?"
"Dunno, you gonna hold me against you--?"
He snorts at the inanity of her words, but his mouth drifts down her neck, teasing kisses that set her skin on fire again and her nails dig into his shoulders soon after.
-
They spend entirely too long having sex and enjoying the freedom of doing nothing. They talk and they laugh and Kara traces their wedding bands with her fingertips until he stops her, fingers lacing between hers.
It's novel just having him, and Kara doesn't think he understands until later, when he talks about when she was dead and gone, and following her during the Demetrius fiasco--
"I tell you, Leoben ran from me?" she asks a little bit after that, her voice turning breathy as she tries not to laugh (it's funny, now), "Ran like a frakking rabbit and there I was, all alone in the too-tall grass, smelling the stench of my corpse..."
He lets her stop for a time, just holding her.
There's something wrong about being comfortable with the simple tangle of skin and limbs, but Kara remembers being a lazy cadet and a pilot who hated mornings, and thinks it might just be an extension of that.
-
"Are you happy?"
"I just got here," she whispers, getting up in a sudden movement that leaves him sprawled behind her.
There are windows looking out onto the square, though she's not sure what the square looks like. Still naked, she turns and looks back at him, "What d'you do for fun 'round here, Sammy?"
"Clothing is usually a good start. Though you don't have to get dressed on my account," says Cavil.
He's just there, eyeing Kara with something uninterested in his expression.
Kara reaches for a gun she no longer has, and swears.
"It's ok," Sam sounds tired, but he gets up and tosses Kara his shirt while he pulls on his pants. "He's not John. Well, not Cavil, at least."
"Who the frak is he?" Kara demands, yanking Sam's shirt on, though she really only does it so that she's not naked in front of a Cylon she despises.
Before Cavil can reply, Sam answers, "He's the original template for Cavil, Ellen's father. He's here to help instruct us on... being here."
-
There weren't rules, other than the big one, of course.
Don't interfere.
Kara doesn't even bother to find out if she can before she drags Sam back down to 'Earth'.
The humans are settling, and Hera looks older than she was.
"Time passes differently for us," Sam says, half-moving to help Helo when he trips on a branch and loses his balance.
Kara's hand catches his, but Helo bounces back, laughing a little at his own clumsiness. Sharon calls back something mocking, but Kara can see worry in the set of her shoulders.
"He's got a good forty years in him yet," John says, appearing beside them and looking disapproving, "So don't even think about doing anything."
"Thought you didn't believe in 'God'," Kara shoots at him before stomping away.
She doesn't make a sound that can be heard in the real world.
-
Sam finds her in the middle of the woods, and cheerfully informs her that John's told him the rest of the basics and won't be bothering them anymore.
"Yeah?" Kara demands, "That mean he can still pop in unannounced?"
"No."
"Good." She shoves at Sam, pinning him up against a tree. He's almost laughing, letting her press him back against the bark, so she nips his chin, then glares. "Stop laughing."
"No."
She loves the way he turns the tables, pinning her against a different tree before she sends them both crashing to the ground.
Naked, she wonders if she's really feeling the pine needles beneath her knees or if that's just as much an illusion as the sunlight filtering down or the fresh breeze making her nipples harden.
-
It becomes a game, then. They find survivors, check in on their lives and then inevitably have sex. On one memorable occasion, they're sprawled all over Romo Lampkin's bedroll and Kara snickers when he walks in on them.
Not that he can see them, of course, but the dog sort of can and Jake gives them disdainful looks as Kara tries not to fall of Sam, her giggles making the whole thing worse.
"We should thank him," Kara finally manages, as the ex-lawyer, ex-president, current-hermit slumps down on the ground near them.
"For what?"
She sobers as abruptly as she'd been laughing and looks down at Sam, her hands stroking up his chest. "He helped me get you to Cottle."
Propping himself up on an elbow doesn't unseat her, but Sam's hands tighten on her anyway. He looks at Romo, "He's a little shrimpy to be hauling me around." His tone is skeptical.
"He had help, jackass."
"Oh." He drops and grabs her shoulders, pulling her down, "So, having sex on his bedroll--"
"He won't notice us."
-
Romo Lampkin notices. He doesn't know who the frak is frakking with him, but he notices the shift of his bedclothes (ratty things that they are), and he notices the handprint in the dirt nearby.
But what he doesn't do is give a shit.
-
Sam trails her up the last rolling hill and slows when she stops, giving her time to decide. He reaches her just as she starts toward the cairn of rocks, her steps careful, as if she's afraid to disturb the loose shale and cause an avalanche. He could tell her it wouldn't matter, but the care is something still human about her.
Besides, as morbid as it is, he has a really nice view of Kara's backside in the sweats she'd adopted once she'd figured out the clothes thing.
"Do you think she still believed, in the end?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I do," he murmurs, one hand touching her shoulder. "There was nothing--"
"Yeah." A laugh and then she glances up at him, "She tried to kill me, you know."
He blinks, mind racing, trying to imagine Laura Roslin airlocking Kara Thrace. "When?"
"Right after--" she stops and one hand comes up, her fingers brushing over his cheek, "Right after I came back, before all hell broke loose and Adama gave me the Demetrius."
She's never apologized to him for cold-cocking him that afternoon, and Sam catches her hand, his smile crooked, "Ah."
"If you were a Cylon," she murmurs before looking away again.
They're silent so long evening begins to fall. The shuffle of careful boots on shale and stone doesn't make them move. Sam would love to have eyes in the back of his head, though the man that appears eventually is exactly who he'd thought it would be.
William Adama walks through them as though they aren't there and settles on a stone that's seen a lot of use already.
Neither of them moves as he talks to her, as he tells her the mundane details of his day and eventually falls silent.
The dusk deepens the sky cherry-red and streaks of gold and blue until they all fade into black and stars.
"It's what I would have missed most on New Caprica," the old man says, eyes traveling between the pin-points of light.
-
It's Hera Agathon again, and this time she's being watched by Caprica, her lips stretched into a smile as she chases butterflies around the fields. Kara lets herself lean against Sam and relaxes a little.
Hera comes dashing towards them after a purple and yellow thing that's bigger than Sam's fist and stumbles to a halt in front of them, her eyes wide.
For a moment, they stare at the little girl and she stares back at them.
"Angels," Hera says before she whirls and dashes towards Caprica, giggling even before the Cylon swings her up into the air, laughing as well.
"What is it, Hera? Did the butterfly get away?"
"Angels," repeats Hera, pointing at Sam and Kara.
Caprica's gaze jerks to them and her eyes widen.
"You can see us?" Kara blurts.
Sam wants to clap his hand over her mouth or make them both disappear, but it's too late for that.
"Are you here for--is there something wrong?"
"No! No," Sam adds, his voice careful, "Nothing wrong. We were just..."
Caprica studies them for a moment, then her lips start to twitch and she looks down at Hera, "Why don't we go find some more butterflies, Hera?"
"Flutterbies!" Hera burbles, clapping.
-
"Close call," John says, frowning at both of them.
Kara shrugs from where she's sitting on the couch she and Sam hauled into the apartment that isn't an apartment. "Not our fault you've all frakked with Caprica."
"Not all," he corrects, glaring at her. "And don't speak, next time. Not that there will be a next time, I trust."
They get twenty more minutes of lecture before he stomps off. Kara tries hard not to look at Sam, but it's inevitable and she's still giggling when they start stripping and tumble into bed.
-
The pilots are next, and Kara feels a strange sense of loss as Marcia chases a Six with a pail of water. They're both laughing and shrieking and the Eight behind them is calling pointers and ideas. Redwing pops out of the fields to tackle the Six, and Kara wonders again how the hell he survived.
Marcia calls pointers to Redwing on getting the Six off and Hotdog comes stomping out of the small hut, complaining that Nick needs his afternoon nap and they all need to shut the frak up.
"Gods," Kara says, her voice full of laughter as she lets Sam drag her off from the pilot shenanigans.
-
Kara stumbles onto the method of creating vipers and leaves Sam behind one day. She can see him as a tiny speck below her while she flies and dips and turns. It's mostly like old times, except for the part where she can feel the wind rushing through her hair.
Afterwards, she tackles him backwards into the grass and has her way with him while he laughs at her.
The next time she goes up, he's with her, matching her move for move until the flying is almost sex.
-
The island is remote and desolate, and Sam laughs a little as they round a big out-cropping of stone and find Galen there, flopped on his back in the sand. "Gonna get worms that way," Sam mutters at him.
He can't hear, but that's really not the point. Kara knows as well as Sam does that this is their way of making sure the people they knew will make it--are making it, she corrects herself fiercely, refusing to think of a grey old man and his pile of rock.
They watch the tide come in until Tyrol gets tired of the water tickling his bare feet and gets up. Kara follows him, unable to help shouting, "Wake up, Chief!" at him.
For a moment, there's a falter in his step, but his shoulders tighten and he stomps on, ignoring them.
-
Ellen and Saul Tigh are almost a relief, and Kara thinks they're utterly adorable, curled up underneath a tree with sunlight spilling on their legs.
"That could be us," Sam mutters from behind her.
She glances back at him, "Two old drunks with nothing left but each other? Sammy, that is us."
"Charming."
"You like me charming."
"Oh, yeah." His hands pull her back against him, but neither of them goes further as Ellen shifts and glances towards them.
"We're surviving," she says to Kara, then her eyes close as though to blot out the sun.
-
Sam makes them walk up into the mountains, and Kara bitches until she runs out of air and then bitches a little more until Sam gets tired of it. After finding a nice bed of pine needles, they move on, Kara somewhat more relaxed, if still occasionally complaining.
By late evening they've reached the summit, but there's no one there.
"Are you sure?" Kara asks, turning around again, though her eyes are straying to the stars that appear.
"Yup. Could be morning, though."
She grumbles, but lets him distract her until the sunrise turns the grass into molten gold and the sky into shades of pale.
A few hours later, a woman reaches the summit, her breath a little uneven, but otherwise fine. She turns and calls back down the mountain, her words lost in a gush of air.
Lee Adama follows her, giving the area a cursory look before he turns and just stares out over the valley as though he's counting every rock and tree with his eyes and a mental ticker tape. Kara recognizes the woman as one of Baltar's harem.
"You'll grow roots," she tells Lee after shedding her pack and moving around to find a good spot for the firepit.
A laugh and Lee looks over his shoulder at her, "That's what we're supposed to do, Paulla. Grow roots on this new planet. Didn't you read that in the brochures?"
"Frakkin' optimists," she mutters, getting on her knees to clear the grass.
When Lee walks past them, Kara studies his face. There's a lightness to it, an erasing of the lines and cynicism she remembers from so long ago. When he kneels to help Paulla, Kara turns her head and looks at Sam, "Do we have to walk back down?"
"No."
They take vipers. No one notices, except for a small hybrid child in the middle a field, but she's chasing butterflies.
-
Leoben is the last, of course. Sam's pretty sure Kara didn't even want to check on him, but there's something oddly right (not to mention cyclical) about watching the Twos toil in the fields and the villages.
Finding the right one is less easy, and they spend a lot of time traveling the planet by viper, though on one memorable trip they're both naked (which means they don't actually make it anywhere, and Sam finds out that, yes, you can have sex in a viper cockpit, you just have to be willing to make certain sacrifices and be exceedingly flexible).
By the time they track him down, Kara's actually looking forward to it and Sam's the one dragging his feet. They're actually bickering softly as they approach, though Kara hushes Sam before they're in hearing range.
"You didn't have to come looking," Leoben says without glancing back over his shoulder at them.
"Sure we did. There's that whole destiny bullshit, remember?"
Sam snorts, "Of course he can hear us."
"I always said you weren't meant to be enemies." Turning a little, he looks at them, and there's something reverent and sad in his gaze. "I once... I once thought that there would be more to this, to all of us."
"You kept me alive," Sam bursts out, and there's something raw and uncertain in his voice.
Kara glances between them, suddenly wondering... "Sam?"
He sucks in a breath, then runs his hands over his face and looks at Leoben, "I ran into a few of them, on Caprica, before we met. And he always held back."
"There was something special about you, and the hybrid--" It's Leoben's turn to look down and then back, and his eyes are on Kara now, "But she was wrong, they were all wrong, about so many things."
Getting an idea what he's saying, Kara smirks a little, "Nah. They got one thing right." She grabs Sam's hand in hers and looks up at him, "This is destiny."
They don't take vipers when they fly this time.
-f-
spoilers: all the way through Daybreak
pairings: Kara Thrace/Sam Anders, reference: Caprica/Gaius, Athena/Helo, Kara/Lee, Paulla/Lee, Roslin/Adama, Ellen/Saul, Lemon/Redwing
rating: ...R? there's sexy funtimes in here, though non-explicit.
notes: Friday night BSG chat people are evil, obvsly. This is Ron's Daybreak, not palmetto's, though hers is arguably better. I hate titles.
End of Line; New Command
by ALC Punk!
The first thing Kara notices about the afterlife is the quiet.
So she smacks something that feels like a wall and it makes a little 'plink' noise. Which is at least better than nothing.
"Hello?" Her voice sounds tinny for an instant, then it echoes back.
The afterlife doesn't exactly change, it just suddenly feels like she opened her eyes. Color and light and sound dazzle her for an instant before someone slams into her.
Kara's grabbing onto his shirt and he's holding her steady, big hands on her arms, before she recognizes him.
It takes a moment, because it feels like her heart is going to break or maybe she'll puke or do something else un-angel like, but her voice bursts out, a little high and squeaky, "--Sam!"
He smiles, and it's Sam and it's the Sam who shouted at her in the operating room and it's the hybrid who talked riddles about her face and destiny and death all at once. Which is almost too much, but then he's just Sam, all of those together, and it fits.
It works, because she's just Kara, dead and alive and angelic and not always real.
They're in each others' arms, talking (babbling) before she registers anything else.
"I missed you--"
"I told you I'd wait--"
He laughs, the sound reverberating against her, and Kara starts crying. She missed this, she missed him, the way he smelled and laughed and smiled and frakked--she buries her face in his neck and feels him do the same.
When she pulls back, she can see he's been crying, but he's also smiling that smile she always loved.
"I--Sam, I--"
It hits her that there are a million and one things she wants to say to him: about being a hybrid and being an angel and about them, or who they were and what they were and how they could have been, if--
Sam solves her incoherence with his mouth and the kiss sears her down to her toes.
"Gods--"
He laughs a little, then huffs out a breath, "I could hear you. I couldn't get the right words out, but I could hear you."
"So," she pushes up on her toes and kisses him, "You like being part of my back-up band, Sammy?"
"Don't call me Sammy."
It's the same, but it's not the same, and Kara's laughing too much to care about the differences as they stagger up a set of stairs and he pushes open a door, hands under her shirt and Kara doesn't care if she's flashing people, either.
-
Afterwards, she stretches out on his clean white sheets and plays with his hair. Gods, she'd missed his hair. She almost opens her mouth to say so, but it's too frakking pathetic, so instead she just wriggles closer and tucks her head on his shoulder.
"Do we sleep?" she asks, after a while.
The room shifts a little, but she ignores it. Sam chuckles, hand brushing lazily down her stomach. "Sometimes. It's not required, though."
Kara pushes up on her elbow and narrows her eyes at him, "You don't know shit."
Calling his bluff is something she's always been good at. He tilts his head and smiles at her, "Know more'n you."
"My piece of Cylon ass," she mocks, patting his chest.
"You're cute." His hands shift along her skin and he moves, pinning her beneath him. "Gonna hold my heritage against me the rest of our afterlife?"
"Dunno, you gonna hold me against you--?"
He snorts at the inanity of her words, but his mouth drifts down her neck, teasing kisses that set her skin on fire again and her nails dig into his shoulders soon after.
-
They spend entirely too long having sex and enjoying the freedom of doing nothing. They talk and they laugh and Kara traces their wedding bands with her fingertips until he stops her, fingers lacing between hers.
It's novel just having him, and Kara doesn't think he understands until later, when he talks about when she was dead and gone, and following her during the Demetrius fiasco--
"I tell you, Leoben ran from me?" she asks a little bit after that, her voice turning breathy as she tries not to laugh (it's funny, now), "Ran like a frakking rabbit and there I was, all alone in the too-tall grass, smelling the stench of my corpse..."
He lets her stop for a time, just holding her.
There's something wrong about being comfortable with the simple tangle of skin and limbs, but Kara remembers being a lazy cadet and a pilot who hated mornings, and thinks it might just be an extension of that.
-
"Are you happy?"
"I just got here," she whispers, getting up in a sudden movement that leaves him sprawled behind her.
There are windows looking out onto the square, though she's not sure what the square looks like. Still naked, she turns and looks back at him, "What d'you do for fun 'round here, Sammy?"
"Clothing is usually a good start. Though you don't have to get dressed on my account," says Cavil.
He's just there, eyeing Kara with something uninterested in his expression.
Kara reaches for a gun she no longer has, and swears.
"It's ok," Sam sounds tired, but he gets up and tosses Kara his shirt while he pulls on his pants. "He's not John. Well, not Cavil, at least."
"Who the frak is he?" Kara demands, yanking Sam's shirt on, though she really only does it so that she's not naked in front of a Cylon she despises.
Before Cavil can reply, Sam answers, "He's the original template for Cavil, Ellen's father. He's here to help instruct us on... being here."
-
There weren't rules, other than the big one, of course.
Don't interfere.
Kara doesn't even bother to find out if she can before she drags Sam back down to 'Earth'.
The humans are settling, and Hera looks older than she was.
"Time passes differently for us," Sam says, half-moving to help Helo when he trips on a branch and loses his balance.
Kara's hand catches his, but Helo bounces back, laughing a little at his own clumsiness. Sharon calls back something mocking, but Kara can see worry in the set of her shoulders.
"He's got a good forty years in him yet," John says, appearing beside them and looking disapproving, "So don't even think about doing anything."
"Thought you didn't believe in 'God'," Kara shoots at him before stomping away.
She doesn't make a sound that can be heard in the real world.
-
Sam finds her in the middle of the woods, and cheerfully informs her that John's told him the rest of the basics and won't be bothering them anymore.
"Yeah?" Kara demands, "That mean he can still pop in unannounced?"
"No."
"Good." She shoves at Sam, pinning him up against a tree. He's almost laughing, letting her press him back against the bark, so she nips his chin, then glares. "Stop laughing."
"No."
She loves the way he turns the tables, pinning her against a different tree before she sends them both crashing to the ground.
Naked, she wonders if she's really feeling the pine needles beneath her knees or if that's just as much an illusion as the sunlight filtering down or the fresh breeze making her nipples harden.
-
It becomes a game, then. They find survivors, check in on their lives and then inevitably have sex. On one memorable occasion, they're sprawled all over Romo Lampkin's bedroll and Kara snickers when he walks in on them.
Not that he can see them, of course, but the dog sort of can and Jake gives them disdainful looks as Kara tries not to fall of Sam, her giggles making the whole thing worse.
"We should thank him," Kara finally manages, as the ex-lawyer, ex-president, current-hermit slumps down on the ground near them.
"For what?"
She sobers as abruptly as she'd been laughing and looks down at Sam, her hands stroking up his chest. "He helped me get you to Cottle."
Propping himself up on an elbow doesn't unseat her, but Sam's hands tighten on her anyway. He looks at Romo, "He's a little shrimpy to be hauling me around." His tone is skeptical.
"He had help, jackass."
"Oh." He drops and grabs her shoulders, pulling her down, "So, having sex on his bedroll--"
"He won't notice us."
-
Romo Lampkin notices. He doesn't know who the frak is frakking with him, but he notices the shift of his bedclothes (ratty things that they are), and he notices the handprint in the dirt nearby.
But what he doesn't do is give a shit.
-
Sam trails her up the last rolling hill and slows when she stops, giving her time to decide. He reaches her just as she starts toward the cairn of rocks, her steps careful, as if she's afraid to disturb the loose shale and cause an avalanche. He could tell her it wouldn't matter, but the care is something still human about her.
Besides, as morbid as it is, he has a really nice view of Kara's backside in the sweats she'd adopted once she'd figured out the clothes thing.
"Do you think she still believed, in the end?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I do," he murmurs, one hand touching her shoulder. "There was nothing--"
"Yeah." A laugh and then she glances up at him, "She tried to kill me, you know."
He blinks, mind racing, trying to imagine Laura Roslin airlocking Kara Thrace. "When?"
"Right after--" she stops and one hand comes up, her fingers brushing over his cheek, "Right after I came back, before all hell broke loose and Adama gave me the Demetrius."
She's never apologized to him for cold-cocking him that afternoon, and Sam catches her hand, his smile crooked, "Ah."
"If you were a Cylon," she murmurs before looking away again.
They're silent so long evening begins to fall. The shuffle of careful boots on shale and stone doesn't make them move. Sam would love to have eyes in the back of his head, though the man that appears eventually is exactly who he'd thought it would be.
William Adama walks through them as though they aren't there and settles on a stone that's seen a lot of use already.
Neither of them moves as he talks to her, as he tells her the mundane details of his day and eventually falls silent.
The dusk deepens the sky cherry-red and streaks of gold and blue until they all fade into black and stars.
"It's what I would have missed most on New Caprica," the old man says, eyes traveling between the pin-points of light.
-
It's Hera Agathon again, and this time she's being watched by Caprica, her lips stretched into a smile as she chases butterflies around the fields. Kara lets herself lean against Sam and relaxes a little.
Hera comes dashing towards them after a purple and yellow thing that's bigger than Sam's fist and stumbles to a halt in front of them, her eyes wide.
For a moment, they stare at the little girl and she stares back at them.
"Angels," Hera says before she whirls and dashes towards Caprica, giggling even before the Cylon swings her up into the air, laughing as well.
"What is it, Hera? Did the butterfly get away?"
"Angels," repeats Hera, pointing at Sam and Kara.
Caprica's gaze jerks to them and her eyes widen.
"You can see us?" Kara blurts.
Sam wants to clap his hand over her mouth or make them both disappear, but it's too late for that.
"Are you here for--is there something wrong?"
"No! No," Sam adds, his voice careful, "Nothing wrong. We were just..."
Caprica studies them for a moment, then her lips start to twitch and she looks down at Hera, "Why don't we go find some more butterflies, Hera?"
"Flutterbies!" Hera burbles, clapping.
-
"Close call," John says, frowning at both of them.
Kara shrugs from where she's sitting on the couch she and Sam hauled into the apartment that isn't an apartment. "Not our fault you've all frakked with Caprica."
"Not all," he corrects, glaring at her. "And don't speak, next time. Not that there will be a next time, I trust."
They get twenty more minutes of lecture before he stomps off. Kara tries hard not to look at Sam, but it's inevitable and she's still giggling when they start stripping and tumble into bed.
-
The pilots are next, and Kara feels a strange sense of loss as Marcia chases a Six with a pail of water. They're both laughing and shrieking and the Eight behind them is calling pointers and ideas. Redwing pops out of the fields to tackle the Six, and Kara wonders again how the hell he survived.
Marcia calls pointers to Redwing on getting the Six off and Hotdog comes stomping out of the small hut, complaining that Nick needs his afternoon nap and they all need to shut the frak up.
"Gods," Kara says, her voice full of laughter as she lets Sam drag her off from the pilot shenanigans.
-
Kara stumbles onto the method of creating vipers and leaves Sam behind one day. She can see him as a tiny speck below her while she flies and dips and turns. It's mostly like old times, except for the part where she can feel the wind rushing through her hair.
Afterwards, she tackles him backwards into the grass and has her way with him while he laughs at her.
The next time she goes up, he's with her, matching her move for move until the flying is almost sex.
-
The island is remote and desolate, and Sam laughs a little as they round a big out-cropping of stone and find Galen there, flopped on his back in the sand. "Gonna get worms that way," Sam mutters at him.
He can't hear, but that's really not the point. Kara knows as well as Sam does that this is their way of making sure the people they knew will make it--are making it, she corrects herself fiercely, refusing to think of a grey old man and his pile of rock.
They watch the tide come in until Tyrol gets tired of the water tickling his bare feet and gets up. Kara follows him, unable to help shouting, "Wake up, Chief!" at him.
For a moment, there's a falter in his step, but his shoulders tighten and he stomps on, ignoring them.
-
Ellen and Saul Tigh are almost a relief, and Kara thinks they're utterly adorable, curled up underneath a tree with sunlight spilling on their legs.
"That could be us," Sam mutters from behind her.
She glances back at him, "Two old drunks with nothing left but each other? Sammy, that is us."
"Charming."
"You like me charming."
"Oh, yeah." His hands pull her back against him, but neither of them goes further as Ellen shifts and glances towards them.
"We're surviving," she says to Kara, then her eyes close as though to blot out the sun.
-
Sam makes them walk up into the mountains, and Kara bitches until she runs out of air and then bitches a little more until Sam gets tired of it. After finding a nice bed of pine needles, they move on, Kara somewhat more relaxed, if still occasionally complaining.
By late evening they've reached the summit, but there's no one there.
"Are you sure?" Kara asks, turning around again, though her eyes are straying to the stars that appear.
"Yup. Could be morning, though."
She grumbles, but lets him distract her until the sunrise turns the grass into molten gold and the sky into shades of pale.
A few hours later, a woman reaches the summit, her breath a little uneven, but otherwise fine. She turns and calls back down the mountain, her words lost in a gush of air.
Lee Adama follows her, giving the area a cursory look before he turns and just stares out over the valley as though he's counting every rock and tree with his eyes and a mental ticker tape. Kara recognizes the woman as one of Baltar's harem.
"You'll grow roots," she tells Lee after shedding her pack and moving around to find a good spot for the firepit.
A laugh and Lee looks over his shoulder at her, "That's what we're supposed to do, Paulla. Grow roots on this new planet. Didn't you read that in the brochures?"
"Frakkin' optimists," she mutters, getting on her knees to clear the grass.
When Lee walks past them, Kara studies his face. There's a lightness to it, an erasing of the lines and cynicism she remembers from so long ago. When he kneels to help Paulla, Kara turns her head and looks at Sam, "Do we have to walk back down?"
"No."
They take vipers. No one notices, except for a small hybrid child in the middle a field, but she's chasing butterflies.
-
Leoben is the last, of course. Sam's pretty sure Kara didn't even want to check on him, but there's something oddly right (not to mention cyclical) about watching the Twos toil in the fields and the villages.
Finding the right one is less easy, and they spend a lot of time traveling the planet by viper, though on one memorable trip they're both naked (which means they don't actually make it anywhere, and Sam finds out that, yes, you can have sex in a viper cockpit, you just have to be willing to make certain sacrifices and be exceedingly flexible).
By the time they track him down, Kara's actually looking forward to it and Sam's the one dragging his feet. They're actually bickering softly as they approach, though Kara hushes Sam before they're in hearing range.
"You didn't have to come looking," Leoben says without glancing back over his shoulder at them.
"Sure we did. There's that whole destiny bullshit, remember?"
Sam snorts, "Of course he can hear us."
"I always said you weren't meant to be enemies." Turning a little, he looks at them, and there's something reverent and sad in his gaze. "I once... I once thought that there would be more to this, to all of us."
"You kept me alive," Sam bursts out, and there's something raw and uncertain in his voice.
Kara glances between them, suddenly wondering... "Sam?"
He sucks in a breath, then runs his hands over his face and looks at Leoben, "I ran into a few of them, on Caprica, before we met. And he always held back."
"There was something special about you, and the hybrid--" It's Leoben's turn to look down and then back, and his eyes are on Kara now, "But she was wrong, they were all wrong, about so many things."
Getting an idea what he's saying, Kara smirks a little, "Nah. They got one thing right." She grabs Sam's hand in hers and looks up at him, "This is destiny."
They don't take vipers when they fly this time.
-f-