Request!fic - Tangled
It is hard to breathe.
Not just difficult to wrap her brain around the inhale, exhale concept, but hard. As though the environmental systems on Galactica are malfunctioning - all oxygen has been sucked out of the ship and replaced with some unknown foreign contaminant. Perhaps Earth’s (Earth - it hardly deserved the name, hardly deserved to be called anything) atmosphere has somehow leaked in, bled up through the sky, through the many holes in the outer atmosphere they had detected and seeped into Galactica’s very veins, poisoning the air wrapped around them.
It hurts.
She can’t even pinpoint one thing, one spot, one moment - it all hurts in a way she has never felt before. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to keep her eyes open, its hurt to shut them, too. She was accustomed to pain - her tolerance levels high, so, so high after dying once, twice - but this time hurts more. Because it wasn’t her body falling apart around her, it wasn’t hair or skin, flesh or bone - it was her soul. Dying.
Third time’s the charm.
She couldn’t even speak. Couldn’t open her mouth to reassure any of the people who looked to her, couldn’t unleash this pain or allow it any type of escape. If it got out - slipped out of her iron-clad control -
He followed her like a morose shadow. Just as silent. Just as still - and she wondered - did he feel vindicated by this?
He, who had never believed, never really, truly believed in Earth to begin with?
A lie.
A made-up story told to soothe the children, told to give rest to the discontent, told to her and everyone else to give them a reason to go on.
Pain, and pain, and pain, and pain built and built until it wasn’t pain anymore. He hadn’t believed - not all of them had believed, and maybe - maybe if they had -
It is no one’s fault. She knew this - knew it and felt it and knew it in her heart. But her heart is currently driven into radioactive soil somewhere thousands of kilometres below them - it is not here, could not be, because if it is even in the room with her, her blood and flesh and bones would not be enough to contain it.
It is no one’s fault, but she needs something - anything to blame, and the Cylons are on their own ship, much too far away, and the crew is scattered, living within their own pain - and there is no one, no one but her and him - and she needs someone to blame.
It lodges in her throat - and she chokes for a second on the bitter, vile taste of it lurking there - ready to spew forth and destroy everything in her path, everything in this room.
She needs someone to blame, but when she looks across the room to his bent form, she swallows, knowing it can not - can never be him.
“I brought us here.” The whisper is dry, her throat parched and her voice sandpapery with emotion. “We could have gone back - turned back and gone home. We could have stayed on New Caprica. We could have gone anywhere but here.”
“We could have done a lot of things. None of it matters now, because we did come. We saw. We know.”
And now what? It hangs, an unasked, unanswerable albatross of a question, hanging from her neck. Their necks. A weight shared, but by no means eased. He walks across the room, his arms reaching for her - wanting to lift the weight and carry it, even though her own grip on it is so tight she cannot for the life of her let go. She wonders if it would hurt more or less if she was alone in this?
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” Her statement is abrupt - the tears stinging the backs of her eyes and her nose tingling unpleasantly as the last piece of straw floats down through the air to land on her back. So much is piled there already. So much she carries with her, - some she shares with him and some she never could, but it is all too much and she laughs, the sound high-pitched and hysterical. “I don’t want to be here right now. I was never supposed to be here. I wasn’t! I was supposed to die. Die all those years ago - give you Earth and die and never be here. And I’m not, and that’s your fault, Bill - it’s your fault.” Her hands hit him as she speaks, pounding into him with every piece of anger she can fit into her small palms. She battles against him, but he is immovable, indestructible. “I was supposed to die. I should have died. You should have let me die. I wish - I wish - ” Her sobs make one word indistinguishable from the next and his arms tighten around her, refusing to let go, refusing to loosen, refusing.
They sink to the floor, her face buried in his jacket even as her fists still pound relentlessly into his shoulders. Her aim is off, her strength failing now. But he does not let go. “I hate that you let them save me. And I hate that you came back for us on that frakking planet, and I hate that you followed me here, and I hate - I hate - ” Her sobs are painful, jagged breathing catching on the corners of her pain until her lungs are torn open and she cannot speak any longer. She cannot finish the sentence - because the next part (I hate you) is too large a lie for her to say, even now while wrapped in her own pain and misery.
“Finish it.” His voice is unyielding and she shakes her head silently. “Finish it!”
She knows then. She is punishing herself in the worst way she knows how - by hurting him on purpose. And he is punishing himself in the only way he can - by letting her. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous.
They have no home.
They had none before.
They have no direction.
It was not the first time.
She had felt like they had no hope - but this, right here, curled on his floor, his arms like a vice around her....
They have hope. They have hope. Because there is nowhere to go, but nowhere was a destination of sorts - one they could reach together.
“I hate that hat.” Her words, her spinning about-face change of attitude, startle him into dropping his arms, and he stares at her for a second. Two, five, seven, ten. And then he laughs, and she laughs and they laugh together until she can’t breathe anymore - because it hurts.
Pain hurts.
Joy does too at times.
Her hands reach up and remove the hat, throwing it behind her onto the sofa. And in the pace of one breath (inhale, gasping with laughter to combat the pain) and another (exhale, absorb his warmth and let longing enter), laughter turns to lust and her hands are in his hair and she is pressing her mouth to his, whispering I’m sorrys and soothing nonsense words into his lips until he begins to repeat them back to her.
When they break apart, his jacket has joined the hat and her hands are pressed against the skin of his ribs, warmth below and soft cotton above. He is still laughing softly, and she is glad because that means they are doing this from joy and not from grief. His lips are on her neck, his chuckles running straight through her until they hit bottom and reverberate there for a moment, pleasant shockwaves spreading from the epicentre.
His hands are pulling her coat off, tugging on the fabric of her blouse until it gives, loosened from the waistband of her pants, and his fingers can brush against sensitive skin even as his breath drifts across to where her neck meets her shoulder. She is moving forward, wrapping her arms around his back and pushing herself into his lap until she can feel him against her. Tangled in a heap of laughter and pain and joy and reality on his rug.
“We’re too old for this.”
“Never too old for this.” She smiles against his hair, her lips moving across his hairline, down his temple, and pulling his face to hers by sheer power of will, because their hands are still too preoccupied with the glorious feel of skin.
“Dad! President Roslin!” It is lightning fast - a series of events: the door hitting the wall with a clang as Lee bounds in like an over-eager puppy, a grin on his face and paper clutched in his hands. Grinning and leaping until he sees them and then looks again and sees them and his face flushes with red as he turns his back and stammers endlessly - inarticulate words no one could make out, even if they wanted to. Which she didn’t.
She stays where she is - refusing to move even when Bill’s hands slide down to her hips, trying to push her off.
“Do you not know how to knock, Delegate Apollo?”
“Well, the door was open - and I thought that maybe - there was a - Tigh gave me a - oh Gods, this is worse than that time I was seven. Can I -”
“No!” Bill’s refusal is swift, and her giggles are quick to follow, ignoring Bill’s glares and taking her own sweet time about getting up. She is sure to add an extra twist of her hips, just before they lift from his, and Bill’s involuntary groan shoots through the room like a cannon.
“Oh my Gods! Are you - are you still going -” The report hits the floor a foot from her as she slides off Bill’s lap, and she stretches for it, fingers spread as she grabs the edge. “Recon. The lower hemisphere is far more habitable and temperate. I’m leaving.” Lee delivers all of this to the wall in front of him before lifting a hand to the side of his face and scurrying over to the door. “They’ll want you in CIC..... soon. And if we could never talk about this ever again, that’d be great.” The door clangs again - but fully shut this time as she clutches the papers to her chest and dissolves into laughter. “And lock the frakking thing, alright?” The shout echoes from outside, and Laura grins, looking down at the papers in her hand.
“We should get to the CIC. Get a full report.” He is reaching for the papers even as she stretches her arm behind her, keeping them from his grasp.
“We will.” She smiles, the words temperate and habitable ringing in her ears as she places the paper gently on the sofa before crawling back across the floor on her hands and knees to reach him. She pulls herself up against him, pressing herself into him with a smile - “Soon.”
Not just difficult to wrap her brain around the inhale, exhale concept, but hard. As though the environmental systems on Galactica are malfunctioning - all oxygen has been sucked out of the ship and replaced with some unknown foreign contaminant. Perhaps Earth’s (Earth - it hardly deserved the name, hardly deserved to be called anything) atmosphere has somehow leaked in, bled up through the sky, through the many holes in the outer atmosphere they had detected and seeped into Galactica’s very veins, poisoning the air wrapped around them.
It hurts.
She can’t even pinpoint one thing, one spot, one moment - it all hurts in a way she has never felt before. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to keep her eyes open, its hurt to shut them, too. She was accustomed to pain - her tolerance levels high, so, so high after dying once, twice - but this time hurts more. Because it wasn’t her body falling apart around her, it wasn’t hair or skin, flesh or bone - it was her soul. Dying.
Third time’s the charm.
She couldn’t even speak. Couldn’t open her mouth to reassure any of the people who looked to her, couldn’t unleash this pain or allow it any type of escape. If it got out - slipped out of her iron-clad control -
He followed her like a morose shadow. Just as silent. Just as still - and she wondered - did he feel vindicated by this?
He, who had never believed, never really, truly believed in Earth to begin with?
A lie.
A made-up story told to soothe the children, told to give rest to the discontent, told to her and everyone else to give them a reason to go on.
Pain, and pain, and pain, and pain built and built until it wasn’t pain anymore. He hadn’t believed - not all of them had believed, and maybe - maybe if they had -
It is no one’s fault. She knew this - knew it and felt it and knew it in her heart. But her heart is currently driven into radioactive soil somewhere thousands of kilometres below them - it is not here, could not be, because if it is even in the room with her, her blood and flesh and bones would not be enough to contain it.
It is no one’s fault, but she needs something - anything to blame, and the Cylons are on their own ship, much too far away, and the crew is scattered, living within their own pain - and there is no one, no one but her and him - and she needs someone to blame.
It lodges in her throat - and she chokes for a second on the bitter, vile taste of it lurking there - ready to spew forth and destroy everything in her path, everything in this room.
She needs someone to blame, but when she looks across the room to his bent form, she swallows, knowing it can not - can never be him.
“I brought us here.” The whisper is dry, her throat parched and her voice sandpapery with emotion. “We could have gone back - turned back and gone home. We could have stayed on New Caprica. We could have gone anywhere but here.”
“We could have done a lot of things. None of it matters now, because we did come. We saw. We know.”
And now what? It hangs, an unasked, unanswerable albatross of a question, hanging from her neck. Their necks. A weight shared, but by no means eased. He walks across the room, his arms reaching for her - wanting to lift the weight and carry it, even though her own grip on it is so tight she cannot for the life of her let go. She wonders if it would hurt more or less if she was alone in this?
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” Her statement is abrupt - the tears stinging the backs of her eyes and her nose tingling unpleasantly as the last piece of straw floats down through the air to land on her back. So much is piled there already. So much she carries with her, - some she shares with him and some she never could, but it is all too much and she laughs, the sound high-pitched and hysterical. “I don’t want to be here right now. I was never supposed to be here. I wasn’t! I was supposed to die. Die all those years ago - give you Earth and die and never be here. And I’m not, and that’s your fault, Bill - it’s your fault.” Her hands hit him as she speaks, pounding into him with every piece of anger she can fit into her small palms. She battles against him, but he is immovable, indestructible. “I was supposed to die. I should have died. You should have let me die. I wish - I wish - ” Her sobs make one word indistinguishable from the next and his arms tighten around her, refusing to let go, refusing to loosen, refusing.
They sink to the floor, her face buried in his jacket even as her fists still pound relentlessly into his shoulders. Her aim is off, her strength failing now. But he does not let go. “I hate that you let them save me. And I hate that you came back for us on that frakking planet, and I hate that you followed me here, and I hate - I hate - ” Her sobs are painful, jagged breathing catching on the corners of her pain until her lungs are torn open and she cannot speak any longer. She cannot finish the sentence - because the next part (I hate you) is too large a lie for her to say, even now while wrapped in her own pain and misery.
“Finish it.” His voice is unyielding and she shakes her head silently. “Finish it!”
She knows then. She is punishing herself in the worst way she knows how - by hurting him on purpose. And he is punishing himself in the only way he can - by letting her. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous.
They have no home.
They had none before.
They have no direction.
It was not the first time.
She had felt like they had no hope - but this, right here, curled on his floor, his arms like a vice around her....
They have hope. They have hope. Because there is nowhere to go, but nowhere was a destination of sorts - one they could reach together.
“I hate that hat.” Her words, her spinning about-face change of attitude, startle him into dropping his arms, and he stares at her for a second. Two, five, seven, ten. And then he laughs, and she laughs and they laugh together until she can’t breathe anymore - because it hurts.
Pain hurts.
Joy does too at times.
Her hands reach up and remove the hat, throwing it behind her onto the sofa. And in the pace of one breath (inhale, gasping with laughter to combat the pain) and another (exhale, absorb his warmth and let longing enter), laughter turns to lust and her hands are in his hair and she is pressing her mouth to his, whispering I’m sorrys and soothing nonsense words into his lips until he begins to repeat them back to her.
When they break apart, his jacket has joined the hat and her hands are pressed against the skin of his ribs, warmth below and soft cotton above. He is still laughing softly, and she is glad because that means they are doing this from joy and not from grief. His lips are on her neck, his chuckles running straight through her until they hit bottom and reverberate there for a moment, pleasant shockwaves spreading from the epicentre.
His hands are pulling her coat off, tugging on the fabric of her blouse until it gives, loosened from the waistband of her pants, and his fingers can brush against sensitive skin even as his breath drifts across to where her neck meets her shoulder. She is moving forward, wrapping her arms around his back and pushing herself into his lap until she can feel him against her. Tangled in a heap of laughter and pain and joy and reality on his rug.
“We’re too old for this.”
“Never too old for this.” She smiles against his hair, her lips moving across his hairline, down his temple, and pulling his face to hers by sheer power of will, because their hands are still too preoccupied with the glorious feel of skin.
“Dad! President Roslin!” It is lightning fast - a series of events: the door hitting the wall with a clang as Lee bounds in like an over-eager puppy, a grin on his face and paper clutched in his hands. Grinning and leaping until he sees them and then looks again and sees them and his face flushes with red as he turns his back and stammers endlessly - inarticulate words no one could make out, even if they wanted to. Which she didn’t.
She stays where she is - refusing to move even when Bill’s hands slide down to her hips, trying to push her off.
“Do you not know how to knock, Delegate Apollo?”
“Well, the door was open - and I thought that maybe - there was a - Tigh gave me a - oh Gods, this is worse than that time I was seven. Can I -”
“No!” Bill’s refusal is swift, and her giggles are quick to follow, ignoring Bill’s glares and taking her own sweet time about getting up. She is sure to add an extra twist of her hips, just before they lift from his, and Bill’s involuntary groan shoots through the room like a cannon.
“Oh my Gods! Are you - are you still going -” The report hits the floor a foot from her as she slides off Bill’s lap, and she stretches for it, fingers spread as she grabs the edge. “Recon. The lower hemisphere is far more habitable and temperate. I’m leaving.” Lee delivers all of this to the wall in front of him before lifting a hand to the side of his face and scurrying over to the door. “They’ll want you in CIC..... soon. And if we could never talk about this ever again, that’d be great.” The door clangs again - but fully shut this time as she clutches the papers to her chest and dissolves into laughter. “And lock the frakking thing, alright?” The shout echoes from outside, and Laura grins, looking down at the papers in her hand.
“We should get to the CIC. Get a full report.” He is reaching for the papers even as she stretches her arm behind her, keeping them from his grasp.
“We will.” She smiles, the words temperate and habitable ringing in her ears as she places the paper gently on the sofa before crawling back across the floor on her hands and knees to reach him. She pulls herself up against him, pressing herself into him with a smile - “Soon.”