Title: The Marble and the Sculptor
remix author:
olaf47Summary: Five men who helped Sharon find herself.
Characters: Sharon
Pairings: Sharon/OMC, Sharon/Chief
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers through Kobol’s Last Gleaming, Pt. 2
Title, Author and URL of original story:
She Will By Loved by
amathelaAuthor Notes: I think of this piece as very Helo/Athena, though he is barely mentioned. Title from a quote by Alexis Carrel: “Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for her is both the marble and the sculptor.”
Sharon’s little now, but she was big for a six year old. Not as big as Max Jeffries, though.
He was seven, and for some reason, everybody thought he was the coolest kid in school. Sharon thought he wasn’t very nice.
He pushed her over when they played pyramid at recess. In class, she always sat in the front and he always sat in the back, but he made sure he had a clear path to blow spitballs at her. One day, he stole her lunch.
Her mom said he only picked on her because he liked her. But Sharon called him a bully and ignored him, started climbing trees at recess instead of playing pyramid.
-
When she was fifteen, Sharon spent most of the summer in a bikini, flirting with boys and giggling with her friends.
Max was still one of the coolest kids around-even cooler now that he had a car. He gave her a ride home from the beach once, told her she looked cute. When he suggested they go out that weekend, she shook her head.
“I’m sorry about elementary school, you know,” he smiled. “I thought you were cute back then, too.”
“I know. Thanks for the ride.” She slipped out of the car and into her house without looking back.
She had always been stubborn.
-
---
-
They had a weekend of leave, months before the end of the worlds. And between Helo’s forlorn looks and fights with the Chief that had taken on an erotic edge, Kara was Sharon’s closest friend on Galactica. So she let Starbuck take her to some seedy bar with cheap ambrosia and a crowded dance floor.
A civvie sent her a drink from across the bar. Kara cackled as Sharon raised it to him-he was cute, she thought, unable to be certain from the distance and the dim light. But he wandered over soon thereafter and she was right, he was cute.
“Jason,” he’d grinned and shook her hand.
“Sharon.”
She had forgotten what civilians could be like: he was fascinated with her stories of flying, no matter if she frakked up every landing, and he didn’t understand why Kara kept calling her Boomer. Instead of explaining things, she downed some more ambrosia and took him to the dance floor.
Later, in a bathroom with a flickering light bulb, she let him twist his fingers inside of her. She said, “Gods,” when she came, because Jason was neither the first, nor the second name she’d thought of.
-
---
-
It was her long before it was ever Kara. Leoben didn’t lie to himself-the Eights held some kind of allure for him. He couldn’t quite place it, just knew he wanted it, wanted her.
They tried every pairing to conceive. God demanded that they be fruitful, and they tried. Leoben was the most devoted of the models, but with the Sixes, with the Threes, he merely went through the motions.
When it came to Sharon, though, he tried romance. He cooked dinner and lit candles and played quiet music in the background. He tried to make her laugh, succeeded a couple of times.
During the act itself, he undressed her with reverence and she let him, but didn’t reciprocate. He murmured her name. She closed her eyes.
“I don’t love you,” she said after.
She wonders if his experiment with Kara was just an attempt to prove he could make someone love him.
-
---
-
Lee Adama might be the best man Sharon’s ever met. He has always been honor and courage with a touch of mischief. But no matter the butterflies Boomer got the first time she saw him, Lee Adama always belonged wholly to Kara Thrace.
He’s loyal that way, to Kara, to his father, to all of humankind. He does a pretty good job being everyone’s hero.
Sharon knew what it felt like once, to be the hero, the joy overflowed her until suddenly there were two bullets in Commander Adama’s chest.
That’s the memory that plagues her most. It wasn’t her, but it feels like it was. She can remember reaching for his hand, then the sound of the gun. She remembers the confusion, the fear, and, when she finally felt the gun in her own hand, the panic.
It’s all reflected at her now, through Lee’s eyes-confusion and desperation and panic and hatred. Not all of it is for her, she knows, but she makes a convenient scapegoat. So she lets his fingers crush her windpipe, lets her vision almost black out.
She quietly lets him almost kill her and still thinks he’s the best man she’s ever known.
-
---
-
There are memories of Boomer’s that Sharon likes. The Chief, for instance.
Her relationship with Helo is not the simplest-none of her relationships are simple anymore-and sometimes she likes to lose herself in memories of the Chief. Furtive kisses and not-so-furtive showers. They were the worst kept secret on Galactica, mostly because she could rarely keep a straight face when he was around. The corners of her mouth would quirk up, slowly at first, but then he’d notice and smirk at her, eyes full of mirth, and she couldn’t help but beam.
When he comes to visit, she knows she’s not that Sharon.
He seems to realize it, too, looks at her like she’s someone else, someone he doesn’t know.
They talk about CAP or triad or repairs on the birds or sometimes nothing at all. He looks at her with questions but never asks. Sometimes, though, he’s happier, less guarded. She makes him laugh until he realizes what’s happening, where he is, who she is.
“Do you-” he says once, face sober and laughter lost.
She wills him to understand. “She did.”