Title: Delos
Author: Imry (loki013 lj)
Summary: Delos- in Greek mythology, the birthplace of Artemis and Apollo. Home 2 tag.
Disclaimer: Most certainly not mine. But Ron Moore said I could play in his sandbox, so what the hell.
A/N: Many thanks to my beta.
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He's felt different since they landed. Not suspicious or fearful or apprehensive, though he can pick each of those out from the swirling nameless thing that's lodged inside his chest. It's not fear or joy or anger or lust or recognition or hope but bits of all those rolled into something he can't name or recognize. And it's more, too- this whole thing is more than him, or her, or any of them and there's nothing they can do but follow the path down through the woods.
It's this that lets him follow the words of a cylon and a book he puts little stock in. He doesn't fully believe her promised loyalty, the gun she threw at his feet notwithstanding. But Kara believes and the President believes and there's this nameless thing urging him on and that's got to be enough. He doesn't like it; doesn't have to like it, wishes he had something more concrete to hold on to, but it's all they have. So he follows.
Kara's been a constant presence in his dreams since she left, since before she left, since a long time ago. But now his dreams get stranger- snakes and statues and stars and chasing Kara through a treacherous wood. She always outruns him, bare feet sure on the dirt paths where he trips and stumbles. The dreams get more vivid the closer they get (and he knows they're getting closer) until he wakes up in a cold sweat, harder than a teenager. Fear of what he might have betrayed teases at the periphery of his mind when he wakes, lingering long after the smell of Kara and the dream-forest have faded. He wonders how long it will be until the dreams start intruding on his waking consciousness and what the hell he's going to do then.
She's always sleeping, curled up across the tent when he wakes. A faint line that wasn't there before she went away creases her forehead even in her sleep. He senses she feels a little of this too, knows without asking or saying anything to her. They don't talk much, and when they do, it's mostly trivial shit- memories from flight school, speculation on which crewmembers were doing it. But they don't need to talk. Everything they say is in pauses and silences and the look she gives him when she thinks no one's watching. Which is almost like it's always been.
When he blinks and sees a different forest, sees a flash of colour through the trees and hears Kara's laugh, he knows they're there. He doesn't need Sharon to tell him- the mossy, unassuming pile of stones tells its own story. It takes three of them to shoulder the door open, and he has to reflect wryly that he never thought walking into a legend would require so much elbow grease.
The tomb is dusty and dank, smelling damply of mould and dirt and time. Surveying the cavern, he can name each of the statues almost without looking, and he's not at all surprised to find that Kara is as drawn to the Archer as he is. She's feeling the same mix of terror-joy-apprehension-inexorable-frakking-destiny as he is, despite the blank cast of her face. His pulse races and he tries not to blink for fear of what his subconscious will plaster across the dark of his eyelids. Nervously, almost lovingly, her fingers slide the arrow into the empty slot. He can hear her heartbeat like it's his own, feel the arrow under her fingertips and the anxiety that chokes her, cutting off her speech and oh lords please let this work and then the arrow slides all the way in and everything goes black.
Luminous constellations twinkle against the deep blue forever of the sky, drawing his gaze upwards. He's been staring up at the stars since he was small, but these are foreign and distant, sparkling high and far away from the blood and death and fire that smears their lives. He has to smile, grin up at the remote constellations because he's never felt so liberatingly insignificant in his life. It's a nice change from having the world bearing down on his shoulders, choking the air out of him.
The stars light the faces of his companions, washing the colour out of their skin so that their eyes stand out starkly in the darkness, making miniature galaxies mirroring the sky. They're talking, debating the meaning of this place but Lee ignores them for the most part because he already knows, he's just waiting for that knowledge to surface. It burns in the pit of his stomach, in the dreams that have plagued him since they landed, in Kara's eyes.
"We're standing on it. On Earth." Says Kara suddenly, and it penetrates the haze of starlight. Feeling her eyes boring into him, he realizes that it's his turn for some kind of brilliant revelation. He gropes for the things that lurk just out of his reach, winding through his subconscious, taunting him when he sleeps. Glancing from the sky to the stones and back to Kara, his eyes meet hers, and he makes the mistake of blinking.
He can hear and feel and see her like she's real, more than real, gasping under him with the stars in her eyes and grass in her hair, her nails drawing long red lines on his back. The name he kisses off her lips isn't his- it's more than that, more than them, reaching so far beyond anything they have been or will be or could conceive of- it would make his head spin if he wasn't so sure of this, of them.
And then he opens his eyes, the afterimage of his dream still burned into his mind's eye. Kara's staring at him, pinning him to the rocky wall. Her tongue darts out, wets her lips and she nods almost imperceptibly. Lee stares up at the stars and grins. And he knows the way.
The bunkroom's quiet, all the pilots flying CAP or attached to the triad table. Except them. He runs his hands over her back, feeling the ridges of her spine. Lying there, tangled with Kara, parts of the twisting nameless something he felt on Kobol fall into place so clearly he can almost hear them. Maybe it's the big things- the president reinstated, his father alive or the calculations Galactica's computers are running to find the way to Earth. Or perhaps it's the little things- the way Kara's breath slides evenly across his chest, the feel of her hair against his cheek, the curve of her body into his. It feels something like fate, and he thinks they're going to be okay.