Fic: In the Middle of a Dream, Chapter 3/?
Here it is.
Title: In the Middle of a Dream (I hear you calling): Chp. 3/?
Rating: PG(13?)
Summary: Lee is spazzing even worse, Kara is conflicted, and everything's getting steadily frakked-er and frakked-er.
Spoilers: THIS MIGHT BE TAKEN AS SPOILERY, IN THAT I HAVE USED EARLY SPOILER INFORMATION AS SUBJECT FODDER, BUT WHAT HAPPENS IN MY FIC IS, TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE, COMPLETELY A.U., SO READ AT YOUR DISCRETION.
Disclaimer: None of the characters portrayed herein are mine, nor am I making any money by borrowing them.
Previous chapters:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
**
“Do you trust me?” he asked, hand extended toward her, voice as earnest as she’d ever heard it. And still she wasn’t sure.
“Is there another option?”
“No,” he said. Not if you want to live.
She wondered how long she could hesitate before he asked her again. She shifted from foot to foot, but Leoben remained motionless, arm outstretched. It would be worse, she knew, to give up hope of survival than it would to take this risk.
She pushed his hand away, but his other reached up and grabbed her wrist.
“Do you trust me?” he asked her again, colder this time. She matched the ice in his eyes.
“No,” she shouted, and heard her echo climb the rocky slope before her. Leoben released his hold and spun a frustrated circle. Behind him, a faint purple light bloomed against the gray, and Kara knew that somewhere behind the clouds, the sun was falling. A sudden chill ghosted across her skin. She looked down.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Leoben turned, and his sad eyes were now grateful, though some mistrust shone beneath. “Good. Follow me,” he said, and this time made no move to offer his hand. “Leave the communicator,” he told her, and turned to go, but Kara did not follow. He only got a few feet before he noticed.
“What?” he asked, looking down at the tangle of wires emitting from the raider’s small metal cortex. “You won’t pick up any fleet frequencies on that, I can promise you. And it’s useless, besides-no electricity between synapses, no function. Like a human brain,” he said, “Without the human.”
Kara looked at her hands, covered in the drying filth of the cockpit-that-wasn’t of a dead raider, holding her pitiful cut of its anatomy. She hefted it and pitched it hard against the rocks. She wondered if it meant anything to Leoben, seeing that, and doubted it. She knew she’d just ruined her only chance to do this without him.
“Lead the way,” she said.
**
Lee was halfway out the door by the time his father even stood up.
“Major!” Adama called, but there was nothing left to address. Both knew. And what he couldn’t tell Lee, what Lee knew was the truth, was that it hadn’t had anything to do with concern or doing what was best for him-No, that patronization he could’ve tolerated, compared to this. His father viewed him as a liability now, compromised, as apt to harm as to help the fleet. No one would keep a cracked pilot on rotation, not even in the fleet’s desperate situation. But it was the implication, not the result, that bothered Lee.
His father thought he was crazy.
Lee had surely thought it himself, but the unshakeable knowledge that he’d really seen Kara had won out over his skepticism. His father, though-he had given up on his little girl. His Starbuck. So, Lee thought-this really was the end of the world.
He was walking so quickly that he felt the still air of the hallway surge against his face. His mind fell silent as he put as much distance as he could between himself and what he’d just heard; the crowd around him thinned as he made his way toward the empty pilots’ quarters. His CAP shift had started five minutes ago, and he couldn’t even spare a mournful thought for the flying he’d miss. He could barely push past his own rage to think.
His hands moved stiffly, jerkily, as he yanked off his uniform jacket, scraping his hands across the pins on the shoulders. He tossed it onto his bed and fell there beside it. Despair and fury roiled and swarmed in his head, and he wondered to which he would succumb, but the decision was made for him as the hatch swung open and Hotdog lumbered in, his boots unlaced and flightsuit halfway removed.
Lee sat up and braced his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands before his mouth as if to ward off some imaginary cold. Hotdog looked down and nodded at his CAG, before turning to toss his socks onto his, the adjacent top bunk.
“Missed you at the tradeoff, Apollo,” the younger pilot said with an audible smirk. He leaned forward to pull the silver suit from his legs. He straightened, and half-turned towards Lee as he set to work on his shirt. “You’re off your game without St-“
But he never finished his sentence, because Lee had launched from his bunk toward the younger man in that one blind moment, and now had him by the throat and chest, a veritable stranglehold.
“What was that, Costanza?” Lee said, deadly soft, before shoving Hotdog sideways into the bulkhead. Hotdog braced for the impact and pushed himself back off the wall towards his attacker, and came within a foot of Lee before he stopped. Froze, really. His hands fell limp to his sides.
“What was that? You gonna hit me? Try. Gods, please, just try,” Lee said, closing the distance between them then rocking back on his heel. He needed this. Needed a fight.
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m not going to hit you, sir.”
“Why not?” he asked, shoving the other pilot back. Hotdog rebounded and slipped past him toward the door. “Answer me, Lieutenant.” he spun to face Apollo.
“This isn’t you, sir. Frak, this isn’t even her.” His eyes darted, he thought of running, but stood and looked straight at Lee. “She wouldn’t do this, you know, if it’d been you.” Hotdog wrung the tanks in his hands and looked down, a sort of humble, graveside gesture. Lee’s ego recoiled. Of course she would, he wanted to say. She loves me.
But he didn’t know that.
“So you know her that well?” He wrenched his mouth sideways, inhaled sharply. “What would she do?”
A moment passed. The air writhed between them.
“Never said I knew.” Hotdog cast his eyes away and pushed past Apollo toward the door. “But think before you kill me. We’re already down two.”
**
Leoben walked at an angle down the hill, to where a stand of trees began. Kara scrambled after him, feet unsure on the crumbling slope, its loose lichen proving more of a hindrance than expected. She made it to level ground and followed Leoben into the woods.
At first she was determined to walk by herself, some feet from him and out of rhythm with his stride, but as the total shadow of the thickening trees overtook them, she began to stumble. Brambles sprang from underfoot to lick at her legs, expertly finding the areas of exposed skin where the material of her flightsuit had torn. She sidestepped quickly to avoid a cluster of briars, but lost balance and fell forward over an errant root-only to feel a rush of air as Leoben stepped toward her, and his arms close around her as he intercepted her fall. She sagged against him, dizzier now.
Once her breathing slowed and the trees righted themselves in her eyes, she pushed off of him. He kept her right hand in his, however, and turned away. “Don’t trip,” he whispered, then resumed forward. Kara stifled a shiver at his voice-she’d never know if that deep note was concern or a threat.
She hated the silence that followed, and noted that the gray had disappeared from between the branches above their heads.
“Pretty smart,” she said, attempting a light tone and achieving a hoarse and deprecating one. “Leading me wherever the frak we’re going in the dark.” Leoben looked back, face confused, so she elaborated. “Knowing I’ll never be able to retrace the path. Not even in daylight.”
He smiled; not really-never really-but enough to scare her. “I’d expect better of the great Kara Thrace,” he said. “Not much the navigator, Starbuck?” he gave her hand a little tug, and it threw her off-balance on the inside. She smiled in spite of them both, in spite of the fact that she should’ve wanted to kill the thing in front of her. The man that held her hand.
“The Gods gave me lots of things,” she said softly. “Night-vision wasn’t one of them.”
He made a noise like laughter, but it stuck in his throat like smoke and dissolved as he began to reply. “No point in knowing the way,” he said. “You’ll never see this place again.”
Her fingers went limp in his hand, but he clung to them, pulling him after her faster. She struggled against him, but to no avail-his strength was greater than he’d ever had cause to show. She twisted her lips and shook her head, clearing fear like cobwebs with a gesture. Voice firm, she asked: “What do you mean?”
“You told me you trusted me.”
“That was before you gave me reason to suspect that you’re leading me to my death.”
“I’m not,” he said, voice curt and calm. “I promise.”
“You’d say so,” she said. “And if you’re lying about this, you probably lied about the communicator, the crash, the food. Gods,” she exclaimed, the image of a closet full of stacked and sealed provisions flashing in her mind. “Did you poison me?”
She heard her heart in her chest, loud and fast, routing a slow-acting killer through her. Whatever this was, it was setting in.
Leoben stopped and turned. “I didn’t have to,” he told her. “You did it yourself.”
His face, pale in the dark, was the last she saw as the world went black.
**
Title: In the Middle of a Dream (I hear you calling): Chp. 3/?
Rating: PG(13?)
Summary: Lee is spazzing even worse, Kara is conflicted, and everything's getting steadily frakked-er and frakked-er.
Spoilers: THIS MIGHT BE TAKEN AS SPOILERY, IN THAT I HAVE USED EARLY SPOILER INFORMATION AS SUBJECT FODDER, BUT WHAT HAPPENS IN MY FIC IS, TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE, COMPLETELY A.U., SO READ AT YOUR DISCRETION.
Disclaimer: None of the characters portrayed herein are mine, nor am I making any money by borrowing them.
Previous chapters:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
**
“Do you trust me?” he asked, hand extended toward her, voice as earnest as she’d ever heard it. And still she wasn’t sure.
“Is there another option?”
“No,” he said. Not if you want to live.
She wondered how long she could hesitate before he asked her again. She shifted from foot to foot, but Leoben remained motionless, arm outstretched. It would be worse, she knew, to give up hope of survival than it would to take this risk.
She pushed his hand away, but his other reached up and grabbed her wrist.
“Do you trust me?” he asked her again, colder this time. She matched the ice in his eyes.
“No,” she shouted, and heard her echo climb the rocky slope before her. Leoben released his hold and spun a frustrated circle. Behind him, a faint purple light bloomed against the gray, and Kara knew that somewhere behind the clouds, the sun was falling. A sudden chill ghosted across her skin. She looked down.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Leoben turned, and his sad eyes were now grateful, though some mistrust shone beneath. “Good. Follow me,” he said, and this time made no move to offer his hand. “Leave the communicator,” he told her, and turned to go, but Kara did not follow. He only got a few feet before he noticed.
“What?” he asked, looking down at the tangle of wires emitting from the raider’s small metal cortex. “You won’t pick up any fleet frequencies on that, I can promise you. And it’s useless, besides-no electricity between synapses, no function. Like a human brain,” he said, “Without the human.”
Kara looked at her hands, covered in the drying filth of the cockpit-that-wasn’t of a dead raider, holding her pitiful cut of its anatomy. She hefted it and pitched it hard against the rocks. She wondered if it meant anything to Leoben, seeing that, and doubted it. She knew she’d just ruined her only chance to do this without him.
“Lead the way,” she said.
**
Lee was halfway out the door by the time his father even stood up.
“Major!” Adama called, but there was nothing left to address. Both knew. And what he couldn’t tell Lee, what Lee knew was the truth, was that it hadn’t had anything to do with concern or doing what was best for him-No, that patronization he could’ve tolerated, compared to this. His father viewed him as a liability now, compromised, as apt to harm as to help the fleet. No one would keep a cracked pilot on rotation, not even in the fleet’s desperate situation. But it was the implication, not the result, that bothered Lee.
His father thought he was crazy.
Lee had surely thought it himself, but the unshakeable knowledge that he’d really seen Kara had won out over his skepticism. His father, though-he had given up on his little girl. His Starbuck. So, Lee thought-this really was the end of the world.
He was walking so quickly that he felt the still air of the hallway surge against his face. His mind fell silent as he put as much distance as he could between himself and what he’d just heard; the crowd around him thinned as he made his way toward the empty pilots’ quarters. His CAP shift had started five minutes ago, and he couldn’t even spare a mournful thought for the flying he’d miss. He could barely push past his own rage to think.
His hands moved stiffly, jerkily, as he yanked off his uniform jacket, scraping his hands across the pins on the shoulders. He tossed it onto his bed and fell there beside it. Despair and fury roiled and swarmed in his head, and he wondered to which he would succumb, but the decision was made for him as the hatch swung open and Hotdog lumbered in, his boots unlaced and flightsuit halfway removed.
Lee sat up and braced his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands before his mouth as if to ward off some imaginary cold. Hotdog looked down and nodded at his CAG, before turning to toss his socks onto his, the adjacent top bunk.
“Missed you at the tradeoff, Apollo,” the younger pilot said with an audible smirk. He leaned forward to pull the silver suit from his legs. He straightened, and half-turned towards Lee as he set to work on his shirt. “You’re off your game without St-“
But he never finished his sentence, because Lee had launched from his bunk toward the younger man in that one blind moment, and now had him by the throat and chest, a veritable stranglehold.
“What was that, Costanza?” Lee said, deadly soft, before shoving Hotdog sideways into the bulkhead. Hotdog braced for the impact and pushed himself back off the wall towards his attacker, and came within a foot of Lee before he stopped. Froze, really. His hands fell limp to his sides.
“What was that? You gonna hit me? Try. Gods, please, just try,” Lee said, closing the distance between them then rocking back on his heel. He needed this. Needed a fight.
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m not going to hit you, sir.”
“Why not?” he asked, shoving the other pilot back. Hotdog rebounded and slipped past him toward the door. “Answer me, Lieutenant.” he spun to face Apollo.
“This isn’t you, sir. Frak, this isn’t even her.” His eyes darted, he thought of running, but stood and looked straight at Lee. “She wouldn’t do this, you know, if it’d been you.” Hotdog wrung the tanks in his hands and looked down, a sort of humble, graveside gesture. Lee’s ego recoiled. Of course she would, he wanted to say. She loves me.
But he didn’t know that.
“So you know her that well?” He wrenched his mouth sideways, inhaled sharply. “What would she do?”
A moment passed. The air writhed between them.
“Never said I knew.” Hotdog cast his eyes away and pushed past Apollo toward the door. “But think before you kill me. We’re already down two.”
**
Leoben walked at an angle down the hill, to where a stand of trees began. Kara scrambled after him, feet unsure on the crumbling slope, its loose lichen proving more of a hindrance than expected. She made it to level ground and followed Leoben into the woods.
At first she was determined to walk by herself, some feet from him and out of rhythm with his stride, but as the total shadow of the thickening trees overtook them, she began to stumble. Brambles sprang from underfoot to lick at her legs, expertly finding the areas of exposed skin where the material of her flightsuit had torn. She sidestepped quickly to avoid a cluster of briars, but lost balance and fell forward over an errant root-only to feel a rush of air as Leoben stepped toward her, and his arms close around her as he intercepted her fall. She sagged against him, dizzier now.
Once her breathing slowed and the trees righted themselves in her eyes, she pushed off of him. He kept her right hand in his, however, and turned away. “Don’t trip,” he whispered, then resumed forward. Kara stifled a shiver at his voice-she’d never know if that deep note was concern or a threat.
She hated the silence that followed, and noted that the gray had disappeared from between the branches above their heads.
“Pretty smart,” she said, attempting a light tone and achieving a hoarse and deprecating one. “Leading me wherever the frak we’re going in the dark.” Leoben looked back, face confused, so she elaborated. “Knowing I’ll never be able to retrace the path. Not even in daylight.”
He smiled; not really-never really-but enough to scare her. “I’d expect better of the great Kara Thrace,” he said. “Not much the navigator, Starbuck?” he gave her hand a little tug, and it threw her off-balance on the inside. She smiled in spite of them both, in spite of the fact that she should’ve wanted to kill the thing in front of her. The man that held her hand.
“The Gods gave me lots of things,” she said softly. “Night-vision wasn’t one of them.”
He made a noise like laughter, but it stuck in his throat like smoke and dissolved as he began to reply. “No point in knowing the way,” he said. “You’ll never see this place again.”
Her fingers went limp in his hand, but he clung to them, pulling him after her faster. She struggled against him, but to no avail-his strength was greater than he’d ever had cause to show. She twisted her lips and shook her head, clearing fear like cobwebs with a gesture. Voice firm, she asked: “What do you mean?”
“You told me you trusted me.”
“That was before you gave me reason to suspect that you’re leading me to my death.”
“I’m not,” he said, voice curt and calm. “I promise.”
“You’d say so,” she said. “And if you’re lying about this, you probably lied about the communicator, the crash, the food. Gods,” she exclaimed, the image of a closet full of stacked and sealed provisions flashing in her mind. “Did you poison me?”
She heard her heart in her chest, loud and fast, routing a slow-acting killer through her. Whatever this was, it was setting in.
Leoben stopped and turned. “I didn’t have to,” he told her. “You did it yourself.”
His face, pale in the dark, was the last she saw as the world went black.
**