She's Back (with L/K/L fic)
So this would be my first in, oh... Jeez. Over a year.
Good news is, the fact that it's a cliffhanger indicates that I'm planning on writing more. Bad news? I think it sucks, and having been away so long, I felt awkward asking around for someone to beta. Oh, and I've not been keeping up on most of what anybody's been writing, so it's probably already been done. Eh, whatever. I can try, right?
Title is from a Neutral Milk Hotel song called April 8th, but I think the cover by Hazeldine was better. Anyway, without further ado:
Title: In the Middle of a Dream (I hear you calling): Chp. 1/?
Rating: PG (don't worry, it'll get better)
Summary: Lee is lonely, Kara is stranded, and everything's basically frakked.
Spoilers: through Crossroads II (will it go AU? Maybe. Probably. I'll be surprised if it doesn't.)
Disclaimer: Every fangirl believes there is some alternate universe in which she *is* TPTB. It's how we sleep at night. Alas...
**
He couldn’t sleep.
Used to be, on these occasions, he’d find Starbuck-for very likely, she’d be why he was awake, and she wouldn’t be asleep either. But he didn’t have the luxury of her warmth or conversation anymore, and to be honest, he’d set it aside before it had been taken away from him.
He shut his eyes and there she was, branded on the insides of his eyelids and smiling her slight and nervous and knowing smile-telling him she loved him and was sorry and was coming home in ways she would expect him to catch in the set of her shoulders and the swelling music in her eyes, which he could see from where he saw her, through two layers of glass and metal and twelve feet of space. He would have resented her for disappearing, but he saw her with photographic clarity every time he blinked. And he might even have resented her more for that.
“Hi, Lee.”
He heard it in his ears just the way it had come over the comm, and damn it if he wouldn’t overanalyze it, because that’s all she’d said to him. The rest was for the fleet to know, for his father, but she’d said his name so… what? Lovingly? Or did he misremember her voice the way he’d wished it had been?
Had it been?
That was the worst of it. He’d pulled off from the group to play alone in the cloud, and he had seen exactly what he’d wanted to see. Not what he’d expected, by any means-he’d expected to find something to shoot down-but it was no secret he hadn’t grieved, hadn’t accepted her for dead. It’d been too many times now he thought they’d have to fish her smoldering corpse out of her burnt and dented bird, and she’d leapt out and stuck her landing every single one. This was true Starbuck fashion: never actually die, just come close enough to bring Apollo close to killing you.
So no, he couldn’t go on thinking he’d never see her again, have her again, get a chance to go about things properly. They’d ended it so badly, it couldn’t possibly be the end, right? He couldn’t even trust himself to leave reality well enough alone, which is why-and it pained him to admit it-he doubted he’d really seen her at all.
Everything about Galactica reminded him of her and the lack. Everything he did, they once did together: eat, fly, fight, play, sleep-though he did less of that now. He lay for hours staring at the pattern of welded wires that supported the bunk above him; his curtain opened a crack for air, he studied the pattern of light that fell across his body and onto the wall at his side. Sleep, when it came, was fitful, and his dreams were full of her. Lee scrubbed his face with a hand, knowing he’d never catch up on all this missed rack time.
Hell, he thought, it was worth a try anyway.
**
Kara was elbow-deep in wires. Her legs were going numb underneath her, and she fidgeted a toe as if to tell her nerves she was working as fast as she could.
Moss covered the rocks all around her, and behind her, just out of sight, was a house.
She knew too well what it was to be stranded on a desert planet, without food or company or shelter. She’d survived this situation once, and she wasn’t about to let it kill her now that she was wise to its tricks. For whatever it was worth, she wasn’t alone on the planet, thanks to her expert marksmanship-she’d taken out several raiders before the storm took her, and two of those followed her into its gravity. She saw them both fall, but she only needed to find the one-the column of smoke coming from its burning wreckage had led her here.
And so for two days, she had waited and watched-waited, because it was anybody’s idea of stupid to go around ripping parts out of burning aircraft-and watched to be sure she really was alone-as far as she knew, furnished houses with stocked pantries didn’t grow organically out of the ground. No one showed, and the raider cooled to moderate temperature, its fire banked.
As soon as she could, she had entered the wet and fleshy body of the beast through a trapdoor in its belly. She had crawled on elbows and knees to the front of the raider, where its red-lit transparent eyes gave her a panoramic view of the green crags. She had pried the unmarked front panel from a larger console using a piece of scrap metal she’d carried in, and located the heavy little box connected to every control by a wire, what had to be the raider’s communicator, relaying every neural synapse back to its Basestar brain.
She set about following every wire to where it disappeared into a pile of membranous bits, and winced for the half-flesh plane every time she yanked one free.
This is how she found herself elbow-deep in wiring, and not a little sinew. She shuddered to see her own hands, shaking and covered in a viscous rosy liquid, as she lifted the communicator from the guts of the plane.
Now that she had what she’d come for, there was the precarious trip back out to contend with-there was no room to turn around, so Kara had to crawl backwards the way she’d come, hands held at face-level to avoid damaging the box. She slid to the ground and crawled out from underneath the raider, and, dizzy, leant against its hull-but only felt fainter as her vision focused on the man standing before her.
“Hello, Kara.”
**
Good news is, the fact that it's a cliffhanger indicates that I'm planning on writing more. Bad news? I think it sucks, and having been away so long, I felt awkward asking around for someone to beta. Oh, and I've not been keeping up on most of what anybody's been writing, so it's probably already been done. Eh, whatever. I can try, right?
Title is from a Neutral Milk Hotel song called April 8th, but I think the cover by Hazeldine was better. Anyway, without further ado:
Title: In the Middle of a Dream (I hear you calling): Chp. 1/?
Rating: PG (don't worry, it'll get better)
Summary: Lee is lonely, Kara is stranded, and everything's basically frakked.
Spoilers: through Crossroads II (will it go AU? Maybe. Probably. I'll be surprised if it doesn't.)
Disclaimer: Every fangirl believes there is some alternate universe in which she *is* TPTB. It's how we sleep at night. Alas...
**
He couldn’t sleep.
Used to be, on these occasions, he’d find Starbuck-for very likely, she’d be why he was awake, and she wouldn’t be asleep either. But he didn’t have the luxury of her warmth or conversation anymore, and to be honest, he’d set it aside before it had been taken away from him.
He shut his eyes and there she was, branded on the insides of his eyelids and smiling her slight and nervous and knowing smile-telling him she loved him and was sorry and was coming home in ways she would expect him to catch in the set of her shoulders and the swelling music in her eyes, which he could see from where he saw her, through two layers of glass and metal and twelve feet of space. He would have resented her for disappearing, but he saw her with photographic clarity every time he blinked. And he might even have resented her more for that.
“Hi, Lee.”
He heard it in his ears just the way it had come over the comm, and damn it if he wouldn’t overanalyze it, because that’s all she’d said to him. The rest was for the fleet to know, for his father, but she’d said his name so… what? Lovingly? Or did he misremember her voice the way he’d wished it had been?
Had it been?
That was the worst of it. He’d pulled off from the group to play alone in the cloud, and he had seen exactly what he’d wanted to see. Not what he’d expected, by any means-he’d expected to find something to shoot down-but it was no secret he hadn’t grieved, hadn’t accepted her for dead. It’d been too many times now he thought they’d have to fish her smoldering corpse out of her burnt and dented bird, and she’d leapt out and stuck her landing every single one. This was true Starbuck fashion: never actually die, just come close enough to bring Apollo close to killing you.
So no, he couldn’t go on thinking he’d never see her again, have her again, get a chance to go about things properly. They’d ended it so badly, it couldn’t possibly be the end, right? He couldn’t even trust himself to leave reality well enough alone, which is why-and it pained him to admit it-he doubted he’d really seen her at all.
Everything about Galactica reminded him of her and the lack. Everything he did, they once did together: eat, fly, fight, play, sleep-though he did less of that now. He lay for hours staring at the pattern of welded wires that supported the bunk above him; his curtain opened a crack for air, he studied the pattern of light that fell across his body and onto the wall at his side. Sleep, when it came, was fitful, and his dreams were full of her. Lee scrubbed his face with a hand, knowing he’d never catch up on all this missed rack time.
Hell, he thought, it was worth a try anyway.
**
Kara was elbow-deep in wires. Her legs were going numb underneath her, and she fidgeted a toe as if to tell her nerves she was working as fast as she could.
Moss covered the rocks all around her, and behind her, just out of sight, was a house.
She knew too well what it was to be stranded on a desert planet, without food or company or shelter. She’d survived this situation once, and she wasn’t about to let it kill her now that she was wise to its tricks. For whatever it was worth, she wasn’t alone on the planet, thanks to her expert marksmanship-she’d taken out several raiders before the storm took her, and two of those followed her into its gravity. She saw them both fall, but she only needed to find the one-the column of smoke coming from its burning wreckage had led her here.
And so for two days, she had waited and watched-waited, because it was anybody’s idea of stupid to go around ripping parts out of burning aircraft-and watched to be sure she really was alone-as far as she knew, furnished houses with stocked pantries didn’t grow organically out of the ground. No one showed, and the raider cooled to moderate temperature, its fire banked.
As soon as she could, she had entered the wet and fleshy body of the beast through a trapdoor in its belly. She had crawled on elbows and knees to the front of the raider, where its red-lit transparent eyes gave her a panoramic view of the green crags. She had pried the unmarked front panel from a larger console using a piece of scrap metal she’d carried in, and located the heavy little box connected to every control by a wire, what had to be the raider’s communicator, relaying every neural synapse back to its Basestar brain.
She set about following every wire to where it disappeared into a pile of membranous bits, and winced for the half-flesh plane every time she yanked one free.
This is how she found herself elbow-deep in wiring, and not a little sinew. She shuddered to see her own hands, shaking and covered in a viscous rosy liquid, as she lifted the communicator from the guts of the plane.
Now that she had what she’d come for, there was the precarious trip back out to contend with-there was no room to turn around, so Kara had to crawl backwards the way she’d come, hands held at face-level to avoid damaging the box. She slid to the ground and crawled out from underneath the raider, and, dizzy, leant against its hull-but only felt fainter as her vision focused on the man standing before her.
“Hello, Kara.”
**