BSG Fic: Home
Title: Home
Rating: PG
Summary: Sharon, Helo, and Hera after the mutiny. Set after Blood on the Scales
Disclaimer: Don't own. Yada, yada.
After the mutiny, Hera sleeps between her parents for a week - above their sheets with her own fuzzy pink blanket cocooned around her. Her pillow lays like a third torso along each of her parents sides and her mother rests her arm across it to palm her father's shoulder. Hera sleeps soundly, completely, sealed in by both their bodies, but they don't. Whether by their own thoughts or a tiny hand flung towards not so comfortable places, it doesn't matter. They may doze, but then glance at the other to find he or she is already looking back.
Tonight it's Sharon who breaks first and opens her eyes to look over at her husband. He's flat on his back, eyelids closed, but his neck is tight, rigid, not lolling to the side like when he's actually asleep. She studies the scabbed over wound running from the side of his head, down just to his ear. She wonders how long it'll be noticeable - if in a year or ten years it'll still stand out as a blaring reminder of what they could have lost. Of everything he's been put through because of her.
"Karl?"
"Yeah?"
There's no hesitation when he twists his neck to look at her. His eyes are slightly unfocused, but a small smile still finds it's way across his lips. His constant optimism makes her both want to believe with him and incredibly frightened for him.
"Do you ever regret it?"
She doesn't realize that her thumb starts moving against the skin of his shoulder when she asks the question, but he does. He reaches his opposite arm across his chest and grips her hand.
"Regret what?"
She blinks and looks down at Hera.
"Not killing me back on Caprica when you had the chance?"
"What? Gods, Sharon--"
"No one would blame you if--"
"No," he says, squeezing her hand. "Hey, look at me."
She does, while he pulls her hand to his lips to kiss her palm and her fingers graze the rough stubble at his jaw. His eyes stay on her's and her throat tightens. Maybe most of her already knew the answer, but there's something to be said for hearing a thing out loud - knowing that it's all worth it just to have a home no matter where they are, no matter what happens around them.
"I made my choice. Just like you," he says. "And I'd make the same one if I had to do it again."
She blinks, rubs her face into her pillow, but then nods. She feels the bed shift and then his palm on her head, coaxing her to look back at him. As she turns her neck, the bed shifts again with the movement of a wriggling three year old worming under her father's arm.
Karl smiles and hugs Hera to his chest, kissing her head and playfully jostling her. She giggles, squirms free, and scrambles to the safe base of her mother's chest. But she keeps a playful, teasing eye on her father, while Sharon strokes her hair, trying to calm her enough to slip back to sleep.
"Did we wake you, baby?" Sharon asks.
Hera shrugs. Sharon isn't sure if any of them will be getting anymore sleep tonight, not with the way Karl is smirking and inching his fingers tauntingly towards their daughter's ticklish stomach. She should make him stop, scold him for riling her up, but right now it doesn't really seem to matter all that much. She looks up at him and smiles back.
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