One Was Destroyed
abstraction
(Battlestar Galactica isn't mine.)
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"You're not listening," he sighs, exasperated. One of his lapels sticks up a little, coat stiff from authority and ironing, and his hand splays across his features with unintended (but unsurprising) defeat.
You smirk. Something clever could be on the tip of your tongue, so you carefully run it over your teeth, feeling the even divisions and imagining the damage you could do. You're carefully dissecting the sarcasm that may or may not leave your lips because you still have that line you know, that perfect separation between talking and talking and you maybe definitely don't want to cross over from one to the other tonight.
You glance over and for a beat you're not even thinking, just letting the moment wash over you, and suddenly his hand drops from his face and he stares right into your eyes, into you, like he's seeing something you don't even know about yourself. You blink, and take a breath, ready for anything to come from the word bank poised on your tongue, but he is still staring at you and your insides bristle, unsure at the feeling he's starting to create.
"Kara," he states, slowly, and the word is infused with – something.
"Lee," you reply automatically, making sure the tone of your voice is just right.
The silence descends quick and heavy and you begin to think that this is dangerous - this is crossing that thin little line you avoid so vigorously and --- and then chaos.
Someone moves, and then all you register is the crush of bodies, the coiled tension of this frakking life bleeding into him like paint in water, the sudden burst of color bright behind your eyelids like a flaming viper against the endless black. His teeth scrape against your bottom lip and you thread your arms up, pull hard on his uniform's lapels and bring yourself closer, the fabric scrunching between your straining fingers. His hands grasp at your back, yank at the hair at the nape of your neck, hold you in a near iron grip.
It's nothing and everything you want, you need, and you feel physical, real, like this is something you can control, a decision that you've made and you hiss at the notion of free will. You drag air into your lungs, pulling it in sharply from between teeth, and somewhere in that action there is this blissful, surreal moment where you aren't even you, you're not anything but action and friction and feeling.
He breaks away and you both stand, breathing roughly, his eyes moving from your pupils to your lips. Gods, you think, and you disentangle from him and the look on your face is carefully constructed to say what the frak just happened, but he just straightens his back and eyes you. His mouth opens like he's going to say something but his breath stops right before leaving his lips. It closes for a moment and you're not sure what to do, so you just stand, cataloguing the events and rearranging your brain to fit this in – whatever this is. He takes a small breath and says, "Kara, I--"
"Lee," you cut in, and you think you've both moved closer, so you take a step back just in case, "I can't."
He nods, and something in his frakking eyes is pained but you can't do this, because you're just – you're just projecting, you think, just wanting to feel something through all this carnage and you turn away from him, feeling the tension seep back into your shoulders, feeling reality settle back into your brain. Your footsteps clang across the room, ringing in your ears. Lee is still standing, watching you walk away.
Somewhere in the distance a future clicks into place, a timeline breaks apart like veins and stitches itself back together.
Somewhere in the back of Kara Thrace's mind, a destiny begins to crackle.