fic: Downfall
title: downfall
summary: kara & cain, spoilers to 2.12
specs: a surprise birthday ficlet for ebneter. At least, I wrote it with her in mind, not knowing really even what she prefers or likes in her fic. Either way, it's written now. You'll all have to deal with it.
Helena Cain wants to be concerned, but can’t. She feels the absurd and dichotomous urges to both pull her sidearm, or to reach out and grip Thrace’s sweaty fingers in her own with the absolute conviction and coherence of action that has always driven her. She holds a steady gaze with no effort at all, split in an internal division that will not unify. Thrace’s skin is slicked with sweat and grease, but her eyes are clear. Helena can read her thoughts, and she envies the pilot her stiff spine, her rigidity as she leans her entire being and future into the earpiece of the handset.
The only decision here is Adama’s, and he makes it, and Thrace’s hands drop from her sidearm and the handset, but she doesn’t turn away. She stares at Helena with the clarity of a child, and she looks grateful.
And here, the Admiral coheres. She drops a few words to Adama, and then Jack, though she can’t keep herself from staring at the drowned-looking woman who turns to quiet her shaking hands by the hatch.
“Captain,” Helena says in the Admiral’s voice, “Perhaps now is the time for excess.”
--
There is no celebration on the Pegasus. As Kara trails Cain through the upper causeways, she hears the silence of the decks and berths. No shouting, no voices. Just the distant tread of medics and deck hands, repairing damages, correcting losses.
There is one chair in the span of Cain’s apartments. The one behind her desk. Cain does not take it, but leans against her desk, pained. She rubs at her neck and says, “Grab the bottle of ’34 from the cabinet. Lower left.”
Kara bends to read labels as Cain releases the clasps of her holster and places her sidearm on the desk, over yesterday’s munitions reports. She moans, the soft sound of an old cat, and under that moan, a footfall.
Kara turns, that greasy, desperate efficiency from before still worked into her bones and fingers, and she fires into the skeleton that has stepped from the bedroom. A smell comes off the woman as she slumps to the ground, pistol in hand, and Cain stares, open-mouthed. Kara finds that she does not know whether to place her pistol back in its holster, now that she has committed murder with it.
“It’s the Cylon,” says Cain, choked like a victim should be.
Kara steps forward, still uncertain, still holding her gun. She is scowling. She is wondering where the hell Lee is. She looks at the mess on the floor and thinks about the first time she murdered this model, on Caprica, for an arrow, for the last hope of the Fleet.
Cain’s mouth is closed over her knuckle, and her eyes are leaking drops to the floor. Her sob comes from the same place as the moan, deep and private, locked in a cage behind breasts and ribs. She stands with a fist at her waist, and looks away to glass shelves and scale replicas.
Kara fires another shot to its head, she turns to the Admiral and reaches around to place her own fist over a shuddering back. She holds the sobbing woman, tilts her head to a shoulder clad in the same blue-grey, and feels nothing but gratitude.
summary: kara & cain, spoilers to 2.12
specs: a surprise birthday ficlet for ebneter. At least, I wrote it with her in mind, not knowing really even what she prefers or likes in her fic. Either way, it's written now. You'll all have to deal with it.
Helena Cain wants to be concerned, but can’t. She feels the absurd and dichotomous urges to both pull her sidearm, or to reach out and grip Thrace’s sweaty fingers in her own with the absolute conviction and coherence of action that has always driven her. She holds a steady gaze with no effort at all, split in an internal division that will not unify. Thrace’s skin is slicked with sweat and grease, but her eyes are clear. Helena can read her thoughts, and she envies the pilot her stiff spine, her rigidity as she leans her entire being and future into the earpiece of the handset.
The only decision here is Adama’s, and he makes it, and Thrace’s hands drop from her sidearm and the handset, but she doesn’t turn away. She stares at Helena with the clarity of a child, and she looks grateful.
And here, the Admiral coheres. She drops a few words to Adama, and then Jack, though she can’t keep herself from staring at the drowned-looking woman who turns to quiet her shaking hands by the hatch.
“Captain,” Helena says in the Admiral’s voice, “Perhaps now is the time for excess.”
--
There is no celebration on the Pegasus. As Kara trails Cain through the upper causeways, she hears the silence of the decks and berths. No shouting, no voices. Just the distant tread of medics and deck hands, repairing damages, correcting losses.
There is one chair in the span of Cain’s apartments. The one behind her desk. Cain does not take it, but leans against her desk, pained. She rubs at her neck and says, “Grab the bottle of ’34 from the cabinet. Lower left.”
Kara bends to read labels as Cain releases the clasps of her holster and places her sidearm on the desk, over yesterday’s munitions reports. She moans, the soft sound of an old cat, and under that moan, a footfall.
Kara turns, that greasy, desperate efficiency from before still worked into her bones and fingers, and she fires into the skeleton that has stepped from the bedroom. A smell comes off the woman as she slumps to the ground, pistol in hand, and Cain stares, open-mouthed. Kara finds that she does not know whether to place her pistol back in its holster, now that she has committed murder with it.
“It’s the Cylon,” says Cain, choked like a victim should be.
Kara steps forward, still uncertain, still holding her gun. She is scowling. She is wondering where the hell Lee is. She looks at the mess on the floor and thinks about the first time she murdered this model, on Caprica, for an arrow, for the last hope of the Fleet.
Cain’s mouth is closed over her knuckle, and her eyes are leaking drops to the floor. Her sob comes from the same place as the moan, deep and private, locked in a cage behind breasts and ribs. She stands with a fist at her waist, and looks away to glass shelves and scale replicas.
Kara fires another shot to its head, she turns to the Admiral and reaches around to place her own fist over a shuddering back. She holds the sobbing woman, tilts her head to a shoulder clad in the same blue-grey, and feels nothing but gratitude.