Title: The Other Side (of This Life)
Written for the bsg remix challenge on LiveJournal, this is a remix of "Hic sunt dracones" by elly427 ( http : // elly427 . livejournal . com / 172897 . html )
Pairing: Kara/Lee
Beta: rose_griffes
Disclaimer: Not mine; not for profit.
Spoilers: through SAGN (4.11).
AN: Title borrowed from David Byrne's "The Other Side of This Life."
Kara Thrace has wrecked two Vipers on Earth. She wonders if she'll go in the history books for that, since she's surely the only person (or thing) to hold that distinction. But she figures there won't be any history books, and nobody will remember her anyway. She thinks that's just as well.
She walks away from the second wreck. It is in a field not unlike the first, though she lost her nav systems on the fiery run through the atmosphere, so while she is pretty sure she's on the same continent, she can't say much more than that. Maybe all of Earth looks like this—tall, dry grass beating against her in the wind as though it wants to swallow her whole.
Maybe this is the same field, same wreckage. This has all happened before, and all that.
It doesn't matter. She picks a direction and starts walking. She makes it to water eventually, and she can just make out the ruins they had walked through before on a distant beach.
She prefers it this way. Silent, dead, devastated, alone.
Kara Thrace has always been more comfortable with dead men. They don't even have to be in the ground—just gone will do fine. She's used to that. She's used to enduring, surviving through the hard times with or without them. She knows how to be on her own, so it's co-dependency that usually causes her the most trouble.
As she stands on the surface of the barren Earth, she thinks that at least she'll never have that problem again. Kara Thrace will be alone for the rest of her (probably short) life. Which is what she wants, right?
Kara never was one for self-examination, but Lee frequently challenged that rule. Today was no exception. Today she walked to his father's office, and she knew it was the son she was looking for. She wanted to see him, and didn't want to think too much about the why.
But when she saw him standing amidst his father's things, standing there with his feet tipping towards each other and his head bent over the book in his hands, she stopped worrying about the why.
He didn't exactly smile when he saw her, but there was a lightening around his eyes and she figured that counted. She wanted to see him, and maybe he wanted to see her too. That would be enough for her.
"We'll get there," she told him, pressing one palm against the dark wood of the desk. "Walk those halls together."
She listened to him talk about the Old Man, and thought, Earth never sounded so nice. They would get there, she knew, no matter what.
He was starting to look at her in that way he had that used to terrify her when the comm buzzed. The Admiral was back, and he'd brought company.
The Raptor hatch closed over Tory's unreadable face, and Kara watched as the ship carrying D'Anna and her answers departed. Four Cylons within the fleet, she'd said. Kara had felt nothing, no spark of recognition at the words, and she'd known that D'Anna was not speaking to her. She felt eyes on her but stayed silent; she had nothing to say.
Once the Raptor was gone and the deck was resuming its ordinary pace, Kara turned and saw Lee, his back to her and his shoulders hunched as he walked away, head bent. With just a few quick strides, Kara was by his side, her shoulder brushing against his with the lightest of touches.
His head lifted, eyes sliding sidelong to her, but the tension remained in the angles of his shoulders and the folds of his civvie suit.
"You okay?" she said.
He looked at her for a long moment before replying. "Yeah," he said, and she could hear the release in the single syllable.
He kept staring at her like a lunatic as they walked through the halls, and she figured it was a good thing that the crew was used to getting out of Starbuck and Apollo's way, or else he might have mowed down a few hapless deckhands, the way he was walking.
"So what do we do now, Mr. President?"
He coughed slightly and turned back to watch where he was going. "Now, well, it's a waiting game..."
Kara listened as Lee talked about what he thought D'Anna might do while they waited for these four Cylons. He talked about what he hoped would happen, and what he feared, dwelling of course on the worst case scenario (D'Anna's been playing them all along—she takes the Final Five, executes the hostages, and jumps to Earth).
Kara concentrated on the timbre of his voice, low and near, drowning out the hustle and bustle of the corridor. She felt the warmth of his arm brushing hers and knew, as surely as she had known anything since she came back, that she would stay by his side until the end of everything.
The end of everything might be sooner than expected, she thought as she sat in the Admiral's office. She watched Lee and wished she could see his face as he spoke about his decision to blow up the basestar and everyone on it if necessary. When the meeting concluded, Lee was the first out of the hatch, claiming that he had work to do (he probably did, Kara conceded, being President and all that). The Old Man stared after him for a moment before seeming to turn inward. Tigh watched the Admiral and Kara knew this wasn't her place. Neither of the men said a word as she stood up and left.
She didn't know where Lee was going, but not knowing the destination had never stopped her before. Really it was a process of elimination, and after only a few guesses she found him in the ready room, standing behind the podium but facing away from the seats. If he heard her coming in, he didn't react, continuing to stare at the bulkhead.
She rested one palm against his back, momentarily taken aback by the warmth of him through the suit jacket, thinner than any flight suit. She liked the feeling. It was almost like something she'd forgotten—the feel of him—or something that had always been there but she was just now rediscovering.
"Breathe," she said since he didn't seem to be. "These are difficult decisions we're making. You're making," she corrected.
Lee closed his eyes, his chin dipping towards his chest and his muscles relaxing under the motion of her hand on his back. "Yeah," he said after a moment.
She dipped her hand under the jacket to smooth against the softer material of his shirt, distracted for a moment by the sensation. "You're making the right decisions," she repeated, her voice coming out softer than she'd intended.
"Yeah?" He turned to face her fully, and Kara brought her focus to the corners of his mouth and to his eyes, open and bright and looking at her.
"Yeah," she said, smoothing her fingers against his hip. She felt the skin and bone as though the cloth had evaporated, been burned away. And just like that, she felt the next words. Like many things in her life, Kara acted on instinct and didn't think twice. "If it was me over there," she said, "would you have made the same decision?"
There were some things in life that she just needed: Lee's eyes on her, the heartache she read in every line of his body, and the words she heard in his silence.
Lee went off to do presidential things, and Kara remembered that she was CAG again, or still. She was in the ready room when Sam found her, trying to rework the schedule for the umpteenth time to accommodate the hostages and the rescue mission and whatever else might go wrong that week.
"Kara," he said. "Kara, I—I need to talk to you. I need to show you something. Could you come with me for a second?"
She hesitated, but something about the way he was looking at her, open and trusting and, gods, afraid, kept her from outright refusal. It was so godsdamned hard to turn her back on him.
"Please," he said, after a moment.
It wasn't a word she was accustomed to hearing. She nodded. "Okay."
He led her to the derelict starboard hangar deck, empty save for the ship that had brought her back from the dead. Or wherever. Tyrol was there too, leaning against the wing. He looked up when she and Sam came in, but didn't say anything. Sam insisted that there was something going on with this Viper, that there was something important here and maybe she could find it.
"It's sitting here the same way it has been for months," Kara said as she paced beside the ship. "What made you think something was happening?"
Sam shifted from where he was leaning against the ladder. "Hard to explain, you know," he hedged. "It's a feeling..."
A feeling. She rounded on him. "Yeah, I got a feeling too: you're both out of your frakking minds."
"Kara," he said again, straightening and stepping towards her, "you had a feeling you could find Earth. I trusted you, backed you every step of the way; now I need you to trust ours."
For a moment, she resented him. Resented his endless support, the way he never asked her for anything—usually. Resented the way he had of reminding her that he was her husband at the most inopportune times. Mostly she resented him because she knew he was right.
But before she could respond, the hatch burst open and the deck reverberated with the sounds of half a dozen marines storming through.
"Ensign Anders, Specialist Tyrol," snapped one such marine. "Slowly put your hands on your heads and face the Viper. Do it now!"
Kara stood in shock, hands raised away from her holster. "What the hell is going on?"
"They're Cylons," the marine said. "Just like the XO."
And it was idiotic but for a second all she thought was, The XO is a Cylon? Only for a second. Then, well, then she couldn't think at all. Could only turn to him and plead, with her eyes and with his name—plead for it to be a lie and for this to be one thing in her life that was uncomplicated. For him to just be her Sam, and for their mess to just be her fault.
"It's true Kara," he finally said. She barely registered Tyrol laughing quietly behind her, or the Marines pressing in on all three of them—on her and the Cylons, the Cylons and her. There was just his face, so familiar, and his voice, like a stranger.
"There's something different about this Viper," he said as they hauled him away. "Something's changed. You've gotta find it."
Then he was gone, and Kara Thrace was left standing alone on the cold deck. Finally, almost painfully, she moved towards the plane. Her plane, abandoned here for so long. She settled into the seat and her hands smoothed over the sides of the cockpit. She gazed forward and could feel infinite space all around her, and a planet before her, beautiful and bright and home.
She remembered flying then, remembered the stars as she passed them by, and Apollo on her wing, like before and always.
Her fingers found the signal and gods she believed.
Everything after that was a whirlwind of preparations, planning, that revelation she couldn't even contemplate—and through it all Lee, and the steady knowledge that beat through Kara's veins. This is not all that we are.
"I still love you, you know," he said to her. They were in the CAG's office, and even though she held that position his presence reminded her of those early days, when they were just Starbuck and Apollo. When he was her CAG and she was his hotshot problem pilot.
She smiled at his words, but kept her eyes on the star charts before her. Lee and his words. She thought maybe it should have bothered her, since there was only one other man in her life (if you could call him that) who had been so focused on those three little words, on saying them and hearing them said. But Lee was just Lee, always himself and when she was with him she found it so difficult to think of anyone else.
She looked up and caught his gaze. In that moment he was so painfully, beautifully human—but that was a deceptive thought, now wasn't it? Her eyes dropped back down to the chart, following the path of her finger moving idly over the edge. Even after everything, Lee was untouched by the toasters or her destiny and nobody was writing their story but themselves. "I know," she said, and she did.
She turned her attention to the stars and the planet that must be somewhere within them. She believed in it, she did; she had to. But she'd believed in other things (people) too, and she needed this to be true. Needed it to be real.
"Earth," Lee said, following her lead. She heard him draw in a few breaths before reaching for the charts. "We should take these to Gaeta, get him to confirm the coordinates."
She quickly stopped his hand with her own, offering to take them instead, so that he could go be influential and all that. When he started to protest, she cut him off with a lazy grin. "Come on Mr. President," she said. "Time to speak truth to power. Isn't that why they gave you the job, anyways?"
Lee laughed and, before she could pull away, he wrapped his fingers around her own. He started to say her name again, and a blanket protest was on her lips immediately (habit, she supposed; and besides, she couldn't let all this lack of fighting go to his head). It was his turn to cut her off though, and maybe just as well.
"We're going to make it," he said. His eyes were steady on hers and his grip was warm and firm on her hand. "You were right. Earth."
You were right. The words struck her more than she liked. She didn't often like being right, which must be lucky since she was usually wrong. Still, there were more than a few lives riding on her shoulders this time. "We'll see," she said, her gaze dropping to the charts. "You should take these to your father." Her fingers brushed over the space that could be their home. Lee was looking at her when she finally lifted her head.
"Okay," he said and nodded as if that were that.
She wished she could nod and smile and forget just like that, but she couldn't; instead, she busied herself with rolling up the navigation charts, mindful of Lee's watchful gaze as she straightened, the rolls under one arm.
She was almost out the door when he asked her to meet him for dinner. She studied him over her shoulder before smiling slightly and giving him a small nod. "Okay, if you're free of all your presidential duties."
Before they could meet for dinner, the call went out for a meeting in the Admiral's quarters. The mess just happened to be on her way, so it wasn't any trouble for Kara to bring Lee an algae bar. Dinner didn't matter anyway. They were going to Earth, and there would be no recon, no second-guessing, and no turning back.
Lee went with his father and Roslin to CIC in order to prepare for the actual jump. From the way he'd looked back at her, Kara thought maybe he expected her to join them. But she hadn't felt like she belonged there in a long while.
Besides, she thought as she stood in the memorial hall, she liked the company here better. She chuckled softly to herself, but her amusement didn't linger. She stared at the pilot on the wall. Kat. Louann Katraine. She realized abruptly that she might be the only person alive who knew that wasn't the woman's real name. And she couldn't even remember what it was.
There was a space next to Kat, a bare patch of bulkhead that resisted the other dead people crowding in on it. Kara knew why.
"We made it kid," she whispered. She knew he heard her anyway, knew he'd been lurking for awhile, and knew that he'd said nothing because he was afraid he was unwelcome.
Maybe he was. She hadn't really worked that one out yet.
Sam didn't say anything, just stood there and breathed, hardly twelve inches of recycled air between them. Just stood there and watched her. She could feel his eyes boring into her and her hands clenched involuntarily at her sides. Fingers tensed, curled, turned into weapons. She drew in a breath and let it out, slowly, still staring at the wall.
She moved to press her right hand flat against the wall, her thumb just lightly brushing the corner of Kat's photo as her palm came to rest over that damned blank space. Her fingers seemed crooked and her hand seemed small against the metal.
She let out another deep breath and turned slowly to face Sam, leaning slightly against the bulkhead, pressing into it as though she and the ship were connected within the outline of her hand.
"Kara," he began. "Kara, I—I'm sorry."
She nodded, unsurprised.
"I should have told you. I didn't know what to do. I didn't even know—what I was—not until the nebula."
He waited. She was silent.
"I'll understand," he continued, haltingly, "if you... But you need to know that what's between us—it isn't programming. Our marriage is as real now as it ever was."
She snorted softly, glanced down at the decking before looking back up at his face, open and earnest as always. She watched him watching her, and she felt...she didn't know what she felt. Nothing maybe. Perhaps she was still in shock, she mused. She'd been angry earlier, and objectively she still was. But it seemed too taxing to summon and maintain that anger. Not now, not while they were in orbit above the Thirteenth Colony.
He was still looking at her and she knew she needed to say something. She stood straighter and pulled her hand away from the wall. "I don't know what to tell you, Sam." She felt as though she were somehow distant, removed, watching him and her from afar. Some other woman was speaking these words. "I think you should go."
She turned her eyes back to the pictures on the wall and didn't watch him walking away. Not long after his footsteps had faded, she heard someone else approaching, their steps steady but light. She knew it was Lee and just like that the distant feeling was gone. It was almost a shock to her system, this resurgence of reality and presence—like a splash of frigid water, or a full-body tackle. There was no thought or effort, everything just was and she couldn't hold in her smile as she turned her face to his.
He smiled too, that almost shy, bashful smile of his, and neither of them said a word as he wrapped his arms around her. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt such comfort and easy joy in physical contact. This unexpected delight was rising within her, through her body, her wide smile, her arms around his neck, and the laughter bubbling out of her. The laughter which turned into a rather undignified high-pitched noise (that she vowed to deny) when he picked her up and spun her around.
When he set her back on her feet, she leaned back against the bulkhead and tugged him forward. His jacket was gone, tie loosened and dress shirt coming untucked. Her hands were fisted in the soft cotton as she pulled him into her until their lips met.
There wasn't any space between them; she could feel him at every point, every pore—every molecule was suffused with him. And when they broke apart for air, her eyes never left his face and she forgot about the blank bit of bulkhead reserved for her across the corridor.
After that, Kara felt constant movement, within and around her. She felt a strange energy thrumming through her bones. It was like when she was sitting in the Viper and she found the signal—she felt as though she were flying through the universe and her vision was tunneling around it—Earth, the Thirteenth Colony, the end of the line.
She got on the first shuttle headed planetside. Nobody questioned her presence, and she figured she'd earned her way. She'd brought them here. She looked around and saw the Old Man, Laura Roslin, Tigh (and Sam) and the other Cylons. She saw Helo and Athena and Lee, hands in his pockets and back to her as he gazed out the small porthole. She knew she hadn't been alone, but she still felt the knowledge in her veins. She, Kara Thrace, had done this.
The transport ship was just big enough for the lot of them to move about, and just small enough that when she came to stand by Lee it felt intimate.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" she said. He was staring at the planet, all blues and greens and pale clouds; she was staring at him.
Lee turned towards her, his face solemn but not sad. "It is," he agreed. "Like Kobol was."
She couldn't contain her grin then; he was just so Lee. "What's this? Lee Adama, not a believer?"
As she moved to stand right beside him, shoulder lightly bumping against his, he gave her the barest hint of a sideways smile. It was passing, but that was enough. "I will be," he said, "when we get down there and find the thirteenth tribe."
She took in a deep breath, nodded, let it out. She stepped closer to the window as though she could reach Earth on her own. Suddenly she could smell it in the air all around her, could feel it between her fingers. "It was so beautiful, Lee." She tilted her head away from the planet drifting in space, turned to face him fully. "Like everything and nothing you've ever seen before." She didn't even think about the plural pronoun as the next words tumbled out of her mouth: "We're going to love it."
His answering smile and whispered words—"I believe so, Kara"—were like a rush of oxygen, blood pumping through her veins; and still there through it all lay the answer to all of their prayers just within her grasp.
"Earth," Roslin said, and Kara knew.
Lee went back to Galactica, and Kara found the signal. The events were unrelated, but Kara thought of them that way. Lee went back to Galactica. She trekked through a wasteland with a machine pretending to be a man. She found the signal, and with it the knowledge that Leoben was not the only one pretending. Yeah, she thought, this is not all that we are. Lee wasn't there, and she was glad, truly. She watched Leoben's face change with the realization, watched him run away, and she thanked the lords that it wasn't Lee leaving her this time.
She was grateful, but she was also a glutton for punishment; though she hated to admit it to herself, there were some things that she needed now more than ever.
She got on a Raptor back into space, and she didn't look at the planet, so beautiful from far away.
When she stepped off the Raptor, the deck was hushed, eerily so. Figurski didn't look up until she grabbed his arm; even then, it took him several beats too long to respond. When she asked where Apollo was bunking, the deckhand didn't even blink. He muttered the answer even as his eyes dropped from hers. She released his arm and walked away, spine straight and eyes straight ahead.
The hatch was unlocked. That was good. The lights were off. That was also good. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out Lee, rising from the bed and approaching. They moved together and then his hands were on her, under her tanks, pressing into her skin.
He said her name, the two syllables echoing with desolation in the quiet room. She kissed him so he wouldn't say it anymore.
They didn't say much after that—not with words anyway. The desk was cold but he was warm and that was all that mattered. Earth, she thought. Earth, Earth, Earth. But she said his name instead, cried it, chanted it, like some sort of rite to replace that which had been lost. Or maybe like a sacrifice.
Her hands gripped the strands of his hair like they were her anchor, and he covered her body with his own. She didn't realize she'd been weeping until he wiped away her tears. She said his name, and then, "Earth," because what else could she say?
"Kara," he said and pulled her closer to him. She pressed her face into his chest and neck, and she imagined she could hear his heart beating, drowning out every other sound as she leaned into him. She concentrated on that rhythm, simultaneously soothing and terrifying, and guided him to the bed.
Then there was just the heartbeat, and the motion of skin on skin until she lay spent beside him, her head on his chest and his arm around her.
With him, she could almost forget the scent of burning flesh and the pillar of thick, black smoke rising and reaching towards the sky. But she dreamed, and in the dreams she saw him in the flames but she was the one who was burning. Kara never professed to be particularly clever, but it didn't take a genius to figure that one out.
She woke in the morning, or what passed for morning in space, and just lay with him for a moment, listening still for that heartbeat. Then she eased out of his embrace, gently laying the arm that had been wrapped around her over his torso. She dressed in silence, the knowledge of what was coming making her chest ache and her hands tremble.
I'm so sorry, she wrote on a piece of paper she'd found in his desk. Her hand stilled for a moment as the enormity rushed through her. She, Kara Thrace, had done this. I'm so sorry for all of it.
She took one last, lingering look before stepping through the hatch. She wanted to memorize his features, burn this image into her brain. Never wanted to forget the tranquility on his face, turned just slightly into the pillow. It didn't matter what had come before; in this moment he was innocent, untouched by her sins.
She would remember him this way forever.
Then she was shutting the hatch, spinning the wheel, blinking in the low lights of the corridor. And if tears were stinging her eyes, well, what did it matter?
She returned to the bunkroom for her flightsuit and didn't look at her bunk or the contents of her locker. If any of the other pilots spoke, their words didn't reach her ears. When she reached the hangar deck, it was easy enough to bend Laird to her will. He may have looked startled, even concerned, but he didn't question her intent.
Survival instinct, she thought as she climbed into the cockpit of that godsdamned Viper. Though it wasn't her survival she was concerned with.
Then she was launching, leaving the old girl behind. She kept accelerating, didn't want to ever turn back or slow down.
She knew it wasn't safe as she entered the atmosphere, knew that she was going far too fast. But that was Starbuck, wasn't it? Pushing the envelope or, in this case, the thruster pedal. A danger to herself and others.
She survived the landing and so did her plane. Sort of. Her shiny new Viper wasn't so shiny anymore. She walked away from the wreckage, stepping over the debris. Her boot crunched against a piece of her comm system, still blinking out its distress beacon that no one would hear. The parallel pleased her.
"Kara Thrace needs no one," she says aloud, to no one. "Kara Thrace rescues herself."
She pauses, thinks about her words. Maybe this, after all, is proof positive that she's not who she appears to be. Kara Thrace died in her Viper, where she belonged.
And this person she is now? She's ashes, maybe. She looks to the distant horizon and sees nothing, nothing in her way. Just this empty shell, ravaged by wind and fire. She looks at what's left and she's lonely.
She digs the toe of her boot into the dry, shifting earth, watching the way the reddish soil clumps and breaks at this intrusion. She turns her face up to the sky and thinks of the way this world had looked from the stars, the way Lee—no, she stops herself. She is well-practiced in the art of self-deception. So she sets her gaze on that horizon and starts walking.
fin