Space Oddity
Title: Space Oddity
Rating: PG-13, mostly for themes rather than actual content
Disclaimer: Don't own them; just borrowing.
Summary: Lost/Battlestar Galactica crossover; Kate Austen & Kara Thrace, mostly. Starbuck crashes onto the Lost island.
Spoilers: For Lost, mostly vague spoilers through season 3. Takes place mid-season, sometime after the return from Hydra Island and before the appearance of Naomi and the freighter. For BSG, spoilers through “Sometimes a Great Notion,” though it actually takes place around the time of Kara's disappearance/reappearance (season 3, between “Maelstrom” and “Crossroads II”).
Notes: This fic spawned from 30 words I wrote for the Crack Drabble Meme (Kara crash-lands her Viper somewhere that might be Earth...Two weeks later, they find another wreck, her dog tags, in the jungle. Kate pulls her gun. “Who are you?”). lenina20 made the comment that this needed to be explored further, and the idea proceeded to blow itself out of proportion, as these things are wont to do. So, Lenina, this is for you. This was meant to be ready for your birthday, but since I'm almost two months too late for that, let's just say this is a you're-just-generally-awesome gift. Hope you enjoy.
Title is from David Bowie's song of the same name, of course.
It could have been a dream: the Raider, the nebula, the storm. But when Kara opens her eyes, there's a planet in her sights, green and blue and surrounded by clouds. She manages to take a series of photos with her gun cam before her instruments go dark.
She closes her eyes again and gets carried away on an unfamiliar, heady feeling and it might even be joy. Before she blacks out, she dares to hope: Earth.
-----
There's a damned stubborn boar she's tracking, and Kate's finally closing in on it when she hears it: a high-pitched whine and rumbling, a crashing of branches and metal and ground, then silence. She ducks into a nearby clump of trees, but these aren't the usual, telltale signs of the Monster. Gun drawn, boar forgotten, she ventures out, and there's smoke above the treeline now, against the bright blue sky. Too close.
She counts to five, then keeps walking.
It's in a newly-made crash-clearing she finally stops. Stares. She grips her gun tighter, leading with the weapon as she steps into the open. There's an injured plane - or something that could at least pass for an aircraft of sorts - and suddenly she has a sick feeling, and it's not from the acrid smell in the air, hot metal and fuel. It's the fuselage all over again, the first week on the island. She doesn't know whether to hope to find someone alive or not.
She calls out, finally, behind the gun: “Is someone there? Come out here, show yourself!”
Nothing.
She ventures closer, and through a cracked window she sees movement.
-----
When Kara wakes up, there's bright blue above her, but it's not like any sky she's ever seen. Her head aches and her frakking knee's twinging, which is just great. As soon as she groans her displeasure, something else comes into her line of vision, and she'll be damned if it isn't a gun. That gets her moving quickly, but she finds she can't move far. She's cuffed to something, and that's when her memory comes back: the storm at the nebula, the blue and green planet, instrument failure. And now she's cuffed to gods-know-what.
“Frak me!” she exclaims angrily, before she can stop herself. The gun in her line of sight is joined by a face she doesn't recognize, angry and suspicious.
“Who are you? Where did you come from?” the woman demands, and Kara notices the gun doesn't waver.
“Might ask you the same thing,” Kara retorts, despite the gun. “I'm the one who's cuffed to a frakking...” she looks around, finally. The blue is not the sky, but a tarp. She follows her straining arm to where it's held fast. “...tree,” she finishes.
“You're the one who showed up with no warning,” her captor points out. “I'll do the asking.” And then the woman turns, speaks to someone Kara can't see. “Jack, she's awake.”
-----
Kate watches as Jack examines the woman, inspects the sutures he'd given her after Kate had first carried her, unconscious, out of the jungle. “You can call me Starbuck,” is all she'll say to questions of her name and origins, and at least that seems to be part of the truth; Kate recalls seeing the name painted on the side of the plane as she'd pulled the woman out. All other questions are met with angry, sarcastic responses.
(The wondering comes, unbidden, whether or not the Others would have files on this strangely misplaced pilot, too. Kate's disturbed to discover she actually wants to find out.)
“Is this Earth?” the woman asks then, just as angry and sarcastic, but with something just underneath that sounds like hope.
Kate's too surprised to answer right away, but she looks around her, at the airplane tarp and the sand and ocean outside the flap, at the footprints of the other survivors who have hovered around the tent for the hours Starbuck has been here.
“Don't know where else it would be.”
-----
They've finally let her out of the cuffs - guess they figure she can't go far with a bum knee - and Kara's limping back to her sleeping area with a bowl of something the others call Dharma oatmeal (and it doesn't have much on the algae version, to be honest). She tenses, reaching for a sidearm that's long been confiscated, when there's someone in her tent.
“What in the gods' names d'you think you're doing?” she barks, traces of old anger and not-so-old mistrust lacing her voice.
The intruder turns, and it's the woman who'd found her; she lifts up Kara's chain from where it lay on her bedroll, the one that holds her dog tag and Zak's ring. “What's the K for?”
“Stands for keep the frak out of my stuff,” she snarls back, and lunges for the chain but stumbles on her twinging knee, dropping the bowl into the sand and swearing loudly.
The woman picks up the bowl, calm, and holds it and the chain out to Kara. “I'm Kate,” she adds, stubborn but quiet. “What's the K for?”
Kara eyes her and slips the chain back over her head, ignores the crap breakfast, ruined anyway. “Kara,” she mutters, finally, and the other woman smiles.
-----
Kate watches her, closely. She still doesn't have much of Starbuck - Kara - figured out. She knows the woman is easy to rile up - Sawyer's taken to calling her things like Latte and Frappuccino, which Kate suspects she doesn't even understand - and when he does, Kara swears at him, takes a swipe to spill his beer, while Sawyer merely laughs. She's more volatile when she's been drinking, Kate knows that much.
She also knows Kara's a gambler. She obviously doesn't know the rules of poker, but catches on quickly enough, and soon she's winning piles of mangoes and cans of Dharma green beans. Hurley refuses to play against her anymore, but Kate notices he brings the new arrival fresh meat off the fire when he thinks no one else is looking, and is often the first - or only - one to reach out a hand when the woman stumbles on her still-healing knee.
For her part, Kate watches her intently, but from a distance. It's only removed that she can see something else underneath the anger and sarcasm, the tough talk and the swagger, something that causes her to watch the sky, more often than anyone else does.
It's how she finds her one evening, when the stars are brilliant against the black sky: looking up. Kate approaches quietly, cautiously, curling her own toes against the damp sand of the shore. She looks up, too, at constellations that are familiar after months on the island, and wonders what this strangely misplaced pilot sees in the heavens.
The other woman glances at Kate as she nears, then turns to walk away.
-----
There's only so much no-stakes gambling she can do, and so much flat beer she can drink, before Kara goes a little stir crazy. On Galactica, there'd been the metal halls to run, scared nuggets to bully, always a Cylon or ten to shoot out of the sky. Here, there's nothing. She's the low man in a hierarchy she doesn't understand, here. Even this war, she doesn't understand. The elusive Others (capital O, judging from the way the others - lowercase o - whisper the name in frightened, angry tones) don't come in ugly steel ships, or even stealthily on the faces of people they trust. There's no method to the madness here, and she finds herself almost longing for the regimented crazy of the frakked-up military she'd left behind.
She still doesn't know what to think of this place. If it's Earth, if it's not Earth. She's not even sure she wants it to be, anymore.
It disgusts her, is what it does.
At least her knee is healing. She's been testing it out, cautiously at first, and then more boldly, taking walks further down the beach and then, when she's more confident, into the jungle. Today she's ventured farther than she ever has before, when she comes across a clearing in the trees, something unnatural-looking at its center. She approaches slowly, cautiously, recalling the ominous warnings about Others and a Monster, and not for the first time, she curses the doctor for confiscating her sidearm when she'd first arrived.
She draws in a breath, sucker-punch, when she sees it: a Viper, burned out. Someone inside. Step closer. Her callsign below the cockpit. Kara thinks she might be sick. (Step closer.) There can't be someone inside. There can't. She's standing here. She is reaching out and grabbing the tarnished dog tags from the body. She is holding them in her hand. (There cannot be someone dead inside her Viper.)
She looks. She knows before she does, that it's her name on the tags.
A crack, then, and Kara whirls around. It's Kate, the woman who'd first found her. (Who pulled her out of the wreckage of her Viper.) The one who watches her all the time. She has her gun trained on this wreckage, on Kara. The other woman moves closer, and now she's near enough to see the dog tags, to read the name. The gun comes up, unwavering at Kara's temple.
“Who are you?” Low and frightened.
Kara shakes her head, almost imperceptibly. Eyes wild.
“I don't know.”
Beat. Several minutes, maybe more. Then -
Kate lowers the gun, slowly, and Kara can see she's confused, considering. They're both silent, staring, and the dog tag is cutting into Kara's palm where she's clutching it too tightly. Finally -
“Come on. Be getting dark soon.”
Kara follows her, limping slowly, back to camp.
-----
Kate follows her again, the next night, and it turns out to be not a difficult task at all, not with moonlight and a torch to guide her. She'd guessed where Kara'd been going, anyway, and as she steps out into the clearing she isn't even surprised to see the pilot pulling pieces from the wreckage. Arranging, stacking. A litter. A pile. Understanding dawns.
A pyre.
As she gets closer, Kate can see Kara's wearing the dog tags, burned and tarnished, on the same chain as her other one, unmarred. The other woman looks up then, a helmet in her hands.
Kate nods and hands her the torch.
(This could be dangerous. The Others could see the smoke; so could the people on the beach. She's not sure what would be worse. Maybe it doesn't even matter. She knows what it is to have something to hide. After all, she's lit fires before.)
She pulls an old bottle of airline liquor from her pocket, sits cross-legged in the sand and passes what's left of the whiskey to Kara. The fire warms their faces as the flames rise.
fin
Rating: PG-13, mostly for themes rather than actual content
Disclaimer: Don't own them; just borrowing.
Summary: Lost/Battlestar Galactica crossover; Kate Austen & Kara Thrace, mostly. Starbuck crashes onto the Lost island.
Spoilers: For Lost, mostly vague spoilers through season 3. Takes place mid-season, sometime after the return from Hydra Island and before the appearance of Naomi and the freighter. For BSG, spoilers through “Sometimes a Great Notion,” though it actually takes place around the time of Kara's disappearance/reappearance (season 3, between “Maelstrom” and “Crossroads II”).
Notes: This fic spawned from 30 words I wrote for the Crack Drabble Meme (Kara crash-lands her Viper somewhere that might be Earth...Two weeks later, they find another wreck, her dog tags, in the jungle. Kate pulls her gun. “Who are you?”). lenina20 made the comment that this needed to be explored further, and the idea proceeded to blow itself out of proportion, as these things are wont to do. So, Lenina, this is for you. This was meant to be ready for your birthday, but since I'm almost two months too late for that, let's just say this is a you're-just-generally-awesome gift. Hope you enjoy.
Title is from David Bowie's song of the same name, of course.
It could have been a dream: the Raider, the nebula, the storm. But when Kara opens her eyes, there's a planet in her sights, green and blue and surrounded by clouds. She manages to take a series of photos with her gun cam before her instruments go dark.
She closes her eyes again and gets carried away on an unfamiliar, heady feeling and it might even be joy. Before she blacks out, she dares to hope: Earth.
-----
There's a damned stubborn boar she's tracking, and Kate's finally closing in on it when she hears it: a high-pitched whine and rumbling, a crashing of branches and metal and ground, then silence. She ducks into a nearby clump of trees, but these aren't the usual, telltale signs of the Monster. Gun drawn, boar forgotten, she ventures out, and there's smoke above the treeline now, against the bright blue sky. Too close.
She counts to five, then keeps walking.
It's in a newly-made crash-clearing she finally stops. Stares. She grips her gun tighter, leading with the weapon as she steps into the open. There's an injured plane - or something that could at least pass for an aircraft of sorts - and suddenly she has a sick feeling, and it's not from the acrid smell in the air, hot metal and fuel. It's the fuselage all over again, the first week on the island. She doesn't know whether to hope to find someone alive or not.
She calls out, finally, behind the gun: “Is someone there? Come out here, show yourself!”
Nothing.
She ventures closer, and through a cracked window she sees movement.
-----
When Kara wakes up, there's bright blue above her, but it's not like any sky she's ever seen. Her head aches and her frakking knee's twinging, which is just great. As soon as she groans her displeasure, something else comes into her line of vision, and she'll be damned if it isn't a gun. That gets her moving quickly, but she finds she can't move far. She's cuffed to something, and that's when her memory comes back: the storm at the nebula, the blue and green planet, instrument failure. And now she's cuffed to gods-know-what.
“Frak me!” she exclaims angrily, before she can stop herself. The gun in her line of sight is joined by a face she doesn't recognize, angry and suspicious.
“Who are you? Where did you come from?” the woman demands, and Kara notices the gun doesn't waver.
“Might ask you the same thing,” Kara retorts, despite the gun. “I'm the one who's cuffed to a frakking...” she looks around, finally. The blue is not the sky, but a tarp. She follows her straining arm to where it's held fast. “...tree,” she finishes.
“You're the one who showed up with no warning,” her captor points out. “I'll do the asking.” And then the woman turns, speaks to someone Kara can't see. “Jack, she's awake.”
-----
Kate watches as Jack examines the woman, inspects the sutures he'd given her after Kate had first carried her, unconscious, out of the jungle. “You can call me Starbuck,” is all she'll say to questions of her name and origins, and at least that seems to be part of the truth; Kate recalls seeing the name painted on the side of the plane as she'd pulled the woman out. All other questions are met with angry, sarcastic responses.
(The wondering comes, unbidden, whether or not the Others would have files on this strangely misplaced pilot, too. Kate's disturbed to discover she actually wants to find out.)
“Is this Earth?” the woman asks then, just as angry and sarcastic, but with something just underneath that sounds like hope.
Kate's too surprised to answer right away, but she looks around her, at the airplane tarp and the sand and ocean outside the flap, at the footprints of the other survivors who have hovered around the tent for the hours Starbuck has been here.
“Don't know where else it would be.”
-----
They've finally let her out of the cuffs - guess they figure she can't go far with a bum knee - and Kara's limping back to her sleeping area with a bowl of something the others call Dharma oatmeal (and it doesn't have much on the algae version, to be honest). She tenses, reaching for a sidearm that's long been confiscated, when there's someone in her tent.
“What in the gods' names d'you think you're doing?” she barks, traces of old anger and not-so-old mistrust lacing her voice.
The intruder turns, and it's the woman who'd found her; she lifts up Kara's chain from where it lay on her bedroll, the one that holds her dog tag and Zak's ring. “What's the K for?”
“Stands for keep the frak out of my stuff,” she snarls back, and lunges for the chain but stumbles on her twinging knee, dropping the bowl into the sand and swearing loudly.
The woman picks up the bowl, calm, and holds it and the chain out to Kara. “I'm Kate,” she adds, stubborn but quiet. “What's the K for?”
Kara eyes her and slips the chain back over her head, ignores the crap breakfast, ruined anyway. “Kara,” she mutters, finally, and the other woman smiles.
-----
Kate watches her, closely. She still doesn't have much of Starbuck - Kara - figured out. She knows the woman is easy to rile up - Sawyer's taken to calling her things like Latte and Frappuccino, which Kate suspects she doesn't even understand - and when he does, Kara swears at him, takes a swipe to spill his beer, while Sawyer merely laughs. She's more volatile when she's been drinking, Kate knows that much.
She also knows Kara's a gambler. She obviously doesn't know the rules of poker, but catches on quickly enough, and soon she's winning piles of mangoes and cans of Dharma green beans. Hurley refuses to play against her anymore, but Kate notices he brings the new arrival fresh meat off the fire when he thinks no one else is looking, and is often the first - or only - one to reach out a hand when the woman stumbles on her still-healing knee.
For her part, Kate watches her intently, but from a distance. It's only removed that she can see something else underneath the anger and sarcasm, the tough talk and the swagger, something that causes her to watch the sky, more often than anyone else does.
It's how she finds her one evening, when the stars are brilliant against the black sky: looking up. Kate approaches quietly, cautiously, curling her own toes against the damp sand of the shore. She looks up, too, at constellations that are familiar after months on the island, and wonders what this strangely misplaced pilot sees in the heavens.
The other woman glances at Kate as she nears, then turns to walk away.
-----
There's only so much no-stakes gambling she can do, and so much flat beer she can drink, before Kara goes a little stir crazy. On Galactica, there'd been the metal halls to run, scared nuggets to bully, always a Cylon or ten to shoot out of the sky. Here, there's nothing. She's the low man in a hierarchy she doesn't understand, here. Even this war, she doesn't understand. The elusive Others (capital O, judging from the way the others - lowercase o - whisper the name in frightened, angry tones) don't come in ugly steel ships, or even stealthily on the faces of people they trust. There's no method to the madness here, and she finds herself almost longing for the regimented crazy of the frakked-up military she'd left behind.
She still doesn't know what to think of this place. If it's Earth, if it's not Earth. She's not even sure she wants it to be, anymore.
It disgusts her, is what it does.
At least her knee is healing. She's been testing it out, cautiously at first, and then more boldly, taking walks further down the beach and then, when she's more confident, into the jungle. Today she's ventured farther than she ever has before, when she comes across a clearing in the trees, something unnatural-looking at its center. She approaches slowly, cautiously, recalling the ominous warnings about Others and a Monster, and not for the first time, she curses the doctor for confiscating her sidearm when she'd first arrived.
She draws in a breath, sucker-punch, when she sees it: a Viper, burned out. Someone inside. Step closer. Her callsign below the cockpit. Kara thinks she might be sick. (Step closer.) There can't be someone inside. There can't. She's standing here. She is reaching out and grabbing the tarnished dog tags from the body. She is holding them in her hand. (There cannot be someone dead inside her Viper.)
She looks. She knows before she does, that it's her name on the tags.
A crack, then, and Kara whirls around. It's Kate, the woman who'd first found her. (Who pulled her out of the wreckage of her Viper.) The one who watches her all the time. She has her gun trained on this wreckage, on Kara. The other woman moves closer, and now she's near enough to see the dog tags, to read the name. The gun comes up, unwavering at Kara's temple.
“Who are you?” Low and frightened.
Kara shakes her head, almost imperceptibly. Eyes wild.
“I don't know.”
Beat. Several minutes, maybe more. Then -
Kate lowers the gun, slowly, and Kara can see she's confused, considering. They're both silent, staring, and the dog tag is cutting into Kara's palm where she's clutching it too tightly. Finally -
“Come on. Be getting dark soon.”
Kara follows her, limping slowly, back to camp.
-----
Kate follows her again, the next night, and it turns out to be not a difficult task at all, not with moonlight and a torch to guide her. She'd guessed where Kara'd been going, anyway, and as she steps out into the clearing she isn't even surprised to see the pilot pulling pieces from the wreckage. Arranging, stacking. A litter. A pile. Understanding dawns.
A pyre.
As she gets closer, Kate can see Kara's wearing the dog tags, burned and tarnished, on the same chain as her other one, unmarred. The other woman looks up then, a helmet in her hands.
Kate nods and hands her the torch.
(This could be dangerous. The Others could see the smoke; so could the people on the beach. She's not sure what would be worse. Maybe it doesn't even matter. She knows what it is to have something to hide. After all, she's lit fires before.)
She pulls an old bottle of airline liquor from her pocket, sits cross-legged in the sand and passes what's left of the whiskey to Kara. The fire warms their faces as the flames rise.
fin