It can't be.
He tells himself it's an illusion. A trick of the light. (He's not used to flying in atmospheric conditions anymore.) Wishful thinking. He's snapped finally. The fragile hold on sanity that he's had for well over a year has finally loosened it's grip and he's gone stark-raving mad. Bonkers like Baltar. Nice alliteration Lee, he tells himself.
He'd laugh but it isn't funny.
He'd cry but frankly tears and Starbuck just don't mix. He hasn't cried for her yet (weeping inwardly doesn't count?) but perhaps that's because she never cries. She's tough so he has to be.
Nothing has ever been harder for him.
He'd blow her right out of the frakking sky but he can't. The niggling voice deep inside him won't be quiet. (What if it really is her? )He should blow her into dust. That's what she'd do.
He'd hold her in his arms and never frakking let go ... if only she were real. If only it wasn't a dream.
So what if it is a dream? So what if he is crazy? Maybe it's time to just go with it. Stop overthinking. What's the worst they can do? Throw him in a cell with Baltar? Two loonies sharing the same bin. Great. They can love their imaginary blondes together.
He laughs, finally. There's an edge of hysteria to it. He knows they can hear it.
It doesn't matter now.
She takes her time coming out. Lifts the helmet off her sweaty hair and just sits breathing deeply, looking for all the world like she's drinking in the putrid smells they all abhor, willingly. Overheated engines, grease, sweat, body odours aplenty ... the smells the pilots notice for all of about three seconds after returning home. If it were longer they'd gag but acclimatizing comes quickly.
She looks as though she's smelling the most beautiful perfume the colonies had ever known. Eyes forward, body unmoving. Using only the one sense to take it all in.
He lives a lifetime in those moments, waiting for her to descend. It's her, it's not her, it's her, it's not her, repeats over and over like a child's verse, simplistic in it's black and white truth.
She is grey though (always has been) but still the mantra is true - all of it. It is her yet it isn't her. It can't be. She can't be real. People can't reanimate from a million atoms and molecules in space to become themselves again.
But she is, she did, and she's descending the staircase with that familiar Starbuck swagger. As the atoms and molecules rejoined to form the whole again did they encompass spirit? Mannerisms? Personality? How did she come back?
The questions don't die on his lips. They are completely erased from his brain as her eyes lock onto his like a missile finding it's target. They don't matter anymore (nothing matters) now that she's in his arms.
(Gods save me. No, don't. Let me die here, now, a happy man.)
He thinks at first that he's experiencing her with all his senses - touching her, smelling her, seeing her, hearing her ... even tasting her hair on his lips but the truth is it can't be described that way. He's not using his senses as if to understand a foreign object - she's within him, part of him and he's experiencing her from the inside out. (If that makes any sense at all.)
As his arms hold her he feels her warmth radiating out of his heart. Her hair smells like nothing - the scent of Kara Thrace is so deeply embedded in him that he's ceased to notice there even is a smell anymore. He's not sure if what he sees before him is really Kara - she's the one thing he's been seeing everywhere he goes and every time he shuts his eyes for months. Her rapid breathing is like the hum of the ship itself - a warm thrumming that he's barely aware of, save when it's not there.
The way she tastes as he kisses her ... oh Gods there are no words to describe it. It's everything ... good, bad, evil, desirable, pleasurable ... There's nothing in the universe to compare to it. One taste and he's enslaved yet again, body and soul more firmly entwined with hers than before. (If that's even possible.)
He doesn't care that everyone is watching. He doesn't care that it's adultery. He doesn't care that yes, Kara Thrace died three months ago and the warm, soft body he's holding is probably a machine programmed both to look and act like her. He doesn't care that maybe she's always been a Cylon and this is just another copy.
She's here, she's alive (in whatever fashion) and she's holding him and kissing him with as much wild abandon as he is her. The only thing that matters is that they've finally made it.
They've arrived.
Same place, same time, same feelings.
She's come back from the dead and nothing is the same as it was. They aren't held back by the baggage of the past, the avoidance of the present or the fear of the future. Time is irrelevant now, and space. Everything else is irrelevant. She is the alpha and omega of his existence. And everything in between.
There's no beginning and no end. (No end. This love is forever.)
fin