A little piece of introspection on Kara's part. Set approx. two months after LDYB part 2 ends.
ooooooooooooooooooo
Blue. It's a colour that haunts me. Every good thing in my life has been blue. And they've all been taken away from me.
It used to be my favourite colour when I was a kid. I was never a 'girly girl' who liked pink and purple and pretty flowers. I loved blue - the colour of the ocean we used to visit when I was little ... before my father left, and my mother began to drink. My bedroom was blue, my clothes were blue, and I used to pretend my eyes were blue too. I hated these wishy-washy hazel green eyes. Clear, dazzling blue like the ocean is what I wanted.
Blue became the colour of my life as I grew older as well - black and blue. As my mother's drinking increased, so did the beatings. I always knew when they were coming. She used to sit at home in the afternoons and drink red wine with our neighbour, who also had marital woes. Red wine had a way of turning my mother's lips blue, once she'd had a bottle or so. I'd get home from school and there she'd be, a glazed look in her eye and blue lips, and I knew I was in for a rough evening.
That was my 'blue' period. That's seriously frakking funny. Makes me sound like an artist or something.
It got better when I left home. I moved to Caprica City and went to Caprica U on a Pyramid scholarship. Our team's colours were blue and white, but that was okay. I was on my own now, and blue was a safe colour again - the colour of happiness and fun. Till I frakked up my knee and couldn't play anymore. I didn't what to do with myself. I spent countless hours laying on my back, staring into the sky, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Eventually it hit me. Fly.
I enrolled in flight school and spent my days in the blue sky, soaring and spinning - discovering a freedom I'd never had before. It was amazing. It was wonderful. It was me. I graduated with the highest grade ever received and was nudged towards the academy so I could learn to fly real machines - raptors and vipers. It was heavenly. I was happier then than at any other time in my life. Following the rules sucked, but my time in the cockpit more than made up for it. After graduation, they asked me to stay and teach - I'd beaten every record held during my time there and shown that I had what it takes to be a kick-ass fighter pilot. As if I didn't know that already! I loved flying, and fighting was something that just came naturally to me anyway.
My apartment was blue when I moved into it. I slowly changed that - added colour and spice to it. My life had enough blue in it already - I spent nearly twelve hours daily in the sky!
But it seemed that I was destined to encounter another kind of blue. The world-stopping kind. The kind that made my heart do backflips and my gut wrench in agony. Zack's eyes. The agony part was when I realized I'd fallen hopelessly in love with one of my students - way to go Thrace, always going for the big frakups! But he doggedly persisted and eventually I caved - those deep, crystal blue eyes were impossible to resist. He took me places I never thought I'd go. Helped me reached heights I could never even hope to find while flying solo. He was the best thing in my life. And the worst.
I'd never loved anyone before. I thought I did, but they were just pale infatuations compared to the real thing. I'd have done anything for him. Anything - except the one thing he wanted. Which would have broken his heart and spirit. I couldn't. I couldn't bear to see the look in those beautiful blue eyes, so I passed him. The intense joy I saw there was almost enough to convince me I did the right thing. Until he died.
This time it was a black period - blacker than the darkest night in hell. I wasn't sure I was going to make it. But then a lifeline was thrown to me and I grabbed it and held on like there was no tomorrow. I didn't feel like there was, or like I deserved to have one, but the Admiral was there for me like a father - like the father I'd once had, who'd abandoned us so long ago.
And life began to look up again. The black gave way to blue - the blue-grey of Galactica's hull, my new home. Life wasn't great, but it was at least tolerable. Until Lee Adama's blue eyes walked back into my life - this time for good. They'd been a part of my life intermittently while I was with Zack, but I'd never really given them a second thought. They were so like Zack's, but at the same time so different as well. Where Zack's had always held fun and laughter, Lee's were serious and somber. And when we met again, after the end of the worlds, they were full of sorrow and regret. I hated to see them so sad, in so much pain. So I made it my job to bring a smile to those piercingly blue eyes. And I did, little by little, bringing him back to the land of the living, all the while doing the same for myself, without even realizing it.
Until one day it hit me. Those blue eyes hadn't just walked back into my life, they'd walked into my heart. And that was something that could never be. No matter how much I wanted it, or he wanted it. It was just wrong.
I could have sunk back into a blue period - considered it, although at that point I was seriously seeing red thanks to that idiot frakhead. How dare he call me a slut? Me, who'd only slept with one man since Zack died! All the things he heard about me were just rumours. Didn't he realize that people make up all sorts of things, especially about their superiors? It would curl Lee's hair if he heard some of the stories people told about him!
But my blue funk over falling for the wrong guy ended as quickly as it had begun. A new shade of blue had entered my life. Anders. Samuel T. Anders. He was something completely new - a shade I'd never experienced before. Someone as rough around the edges as I was. And I fell hard and fast. Frak - it nearly killed me to leave those beautiful sky-blue eyes behind. Sam represented openness and freedom to me - something I didn't have on Galactica, and never could. I had to go back for him. Had to. My heart was breaking - cracking just a few millimetres each day, but eventually it would be ripped in two if I didn't.
Our life together was far from perfect. It was tough as hell on Galactica - the men resented him - especially Lee, and the women resented me for having him. So we left - picked up and moved to the planet. It was all kinds of hell there, more unpleasant than any place I'd ever been, but my blue eyes were there and the twinkle they'd lost on Galactica was back. He loved the vast openness of the terrain; needed to see the blue of the sky - not that it was blue very often, but when it was, the colour matched his eyes perfectly.
Now I kneel here at his grave, a pathetic little cross marking a mound of dirt, knowing I will never see those blue eyes smile at me again. I think of all the blue in my life that's come and gone - the ocean, the Caprican sky, Zack, Lee, Sam, Galactica ... I've lost them all, for who knows where the remnants of the fleet went when the cylons came back? Who knows if we will ever see them again ... if they're even alive still.
Now the only blue left in my life is the steely grey-blue of the cylons as they march around and through our settlement, holding us all in their power. I have a sinking feeling in my stomach that this is about to be the darkest blue period I've experienced yet.
Fin