Title: "The Weight is a Gift"
Author: Lila
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing: Kara, with a little bit of everyone else
Spoilers: "Rapture" but veers AU
Length: Part II: A of III
Summary: Everyone has to grow up sometime, even Kara Thrace.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing them for a few paragraphs.
Author's Note: This was originally going to be a three part story but Part II kept running away with itself and getting longer and longer and longer as the time between updates increased as well, so I made the executive decision to keep the story in its original three-part structure, but break Part II into three sections. I present Part A, the second step in Kara Thrace's journey to adulthood; two more will follow as I get them ready. Thank you to everyone for your wonderful support for this story. I'm feeling a lot more confident about writing BSG now!
TWO
A week after Doc Cottle pulls her off-duty, Kara falls in the shower during an FTL jump. She can't believe it happened, and for a full thirty seconds she lays on the cold tile, legs splayed awkwardly, waiting for the world to right itself. It's not until a strong hand locks around her bicep and pulls her up, her bare feet skidding on the wet tile, that she realizes without her body in flight she doesn't remember how to keep her feet locked to the ground.
"Are you okay?" Hot Dog asks, brushing wet hair off his forehead.
She brushes herself off and hopes the steam will camoflague the embarassed heat staining her cheeks, because she's Starbuck and she never does anything as pathetic as fall during an FTL jump she's done a hundred times before. "I'm fine," she assures him and doesn't bother to hide the annoyance in her voice. He's watching her closely, carefully, and she rubs her knee because it's supposedly an injury keeping her grounded. "I'm just a little weak on my feet, Hot Dog. Give it a rest."
"Are you sure you're okay?" he asks again and it takes her a few seconds to realize what he's talking about, what she should be thinking about. She's almost two full months along and there's a slight curve to her belly now, and when she isn't stark naked and she's covered in tanks and sweats, she can forget it's there. It's only now, when everything is laid bare, that it's impossible to ignore.
"I'm fine," she grits out with her trademark Starbuck menace and he holds up his hands and backs away. She steps back under the showerhead and lets the water wash the soap out of her hair the way she wishes it could wash away her mistakes. She waits until he's gone before pressing a hand to her belly, feeling the hard curve she wishes would disappear.
---
She forgets how small a world Galactica is until she's heading out of the showers for a briefing on a CAP she won't fly, and she overhears the gossip making its way through the corridors.
"Did you hear? Starbuck was totally lying. Her knees's fine. She's knocked up!"
"Who do you think the father is? Her husband? The CAG?"
"Yeah, right. This is Starbuck we're talking about. It could be anyone in the Fleet."
She winces as their laughter trails off as they turn the corner, because they're not wrong. The entire crew knows who she is and what she did and now they'll watch her suffer the consequences.
She can't meet Lee's eye when she slinks into a seat in back, but feels every other pair of eyes darting between her and him, back and forth, watching their private drama unfold. She swallows hard and tries to hold her head up high, the way Dee did when she saved her ass at her husband's request, and every person in the flight hangar was looking at her with such pity she'd wondered how the girl could keep standing. She'd felt so lucky to be alive that day, with Sam and Lee breathing beside her, that she hadn't had a spare thought for Dee's pain.
She knows now, as the pilots turn back to each other whispering under her breath, what it's like to suffer, Galactica-style. Dee broke Billy's heart and was rewarded with a loveless marriage; she sinned against the gods and they took away what she loves most. The briefing goes on around her and the words bump around her mind at their own accord because they no longer hold meaning for her because she's no longer a pilot.
She presses a hand to her lungs to ease her breathing and her breasts are tender to her touch, and straining a bit against the tight fit of her tanks. Her hands fall into her lap and bump the slight curve of her belly and she shoves them to her sides with a frustrated snap.
Lee won't even look at her as he drones on about the new CAP schedule and she wonders why she's still in the room. This isn't her life anymore. There's no point in tormenting herself with another thing she can't have. But CAP and space spiraling around her and the adreneline rushing through veins make up what's left of her world, and she can't seem to tear herself away. She's Kara Thrace – pain is all she knows.
There's whispering in the front row and Lee finally looks up from the re-tooled roster to confront his pilots. "Is there a problem?" he asks and there's a no-nonsense note to his voice that Kara hasn't heard in months.
Jester and Cougar, Pegasus' best offerings, stop needling each other and look up to meet the CAG's eye. "We want to offer Starbuck our congratulations," Jester says and beside him Cougar collapses in a fit of giggles.
Lee's jaw locks and Kara swears she sees a vein jump in his temple, but he keeps his cool and takes it out on the flight register crumpling between his fingers. "We're in the middle of a briefing. You can speak with Captain Thrace on your own time."
Kara doesn't want to speak to either of them and looks to the ceiling, hoping the gods will take the moment to take pity on her and the floor will open up and swallow her whole. It's not fair to Lee, to Sam, even Dee – this is her sin, her penance. She glares daggers at the back of Jester's and Cougar's heads, but they don't let up. "Aww, c'mon," Jester throws out. "We know didn't really hurt her knee."
Kara knows she sees the vein jump in Lee's temple, and she stands up before he loses his Apollo cool and gets half the squad thrown in the brig for slugging a superior officer. "It's true. I'm pregnant, and I'm grounded indefinitely." She glares at the nuggets she overheard gossiping in the corridor. "So pay attention and listen to the CAG so when you come back from CAP, we bring you back in one piece." She ignores the tenderness in her breasts and crosses her arms over them, locks her knees and stares down any challengers. "It's your job to keep humanity alive. Act like it."
She sits back down and the nuggets duck their heads and turn back to Lee's lecture. His face is calm again, without a ripple of tension, but he knows the gossip and the tips of his ears flame red as he releases his death grip on the files. He finishes the briefing without another incident, but his voice isn't as steady as before and the nuggets aren't as reassured. She looks back at the ceiling and really wishes the floor would open up and swallow her whole.
The briefing finally ends and the nuggets bolt from the room, ready to claim their winnings from the pools she knows have been circulating amongst the crews, but some of the officers hang back.
"Nice job," Racetrack says as she gathers up her papers. "You have the voice down exactly."
Kara has no idea what she's talking about. "What?"
"The voice, the mom voice. They totally lost their shit the moment you started yelling." Racetrack looks pointedly at the curved belly hiding beneath her sweatshirt. "When it's time, you'll have the voice ready." She pauses for a moment, then squeezes Kara's shoulder before going on her way.
The press of her fingers lingers as her words sink in. "Mom voice?" Kara thinks to herself. The only voice she knows is the yells and the screams, the spittle spraying her face while her fingers cracked and the pain flooded through her until she was numb with it. She shivers, prays Racetrack was simply telling a joke she didn't understand.
Hot Dog appears beside her before she can mull the issue further, and he extends a hand warily. "Congratulations, Starbuck," he says. "A baby is a blessing."
Kara wonders if she's landed in bizarro world because she has no idea what anyone is talking about. A sharp retort sticks to the tip of her tongue, because this is Hot Dog and he's a moron at his best, but there's a wet agony lurking behind the hardness in his eyes and she catches herself at the last second. She remembers how he was with Kat at the dance, a snippet of overheard conversation between him and Lee about trading for rings within the Fleet, the cracked and bleeding smile Kat wore the last time she saw her alive. She remembers that everyone has dreams, and they don't always come true, and sometimes other people are the ones who get to see them to fruition. Zak wanted to be her husband and instead she married Sam and Hot Dog wanted a future with Kat and she's the one giving humanity another shot at survival. It's not fair, but she knows too well that life never is.
She pushes the nasty remarks out of her mind and smiles like she means it. "Thank you," she says, even though it's a lie, but lying doesn't seem like such a sin when a little of the pain leaves Hot Dog's eyes. She's glad someone can be happy, even for only a moment.
Hot Dog takes his leave and she's alone in the room with Lee. He's rifling through his folders, straightening the pens, doing anything he can to avoid looking at her. He finally stows away his gear and clicks off the projector, and she realizes he's going to leave without saying a word.
"Lee," she tries, because she's Starbuck and he's Apollo and she can hurt him and break him, but he's her friend and she needs him.
"I'm married," he interrupts. He still won't look at her and his voice is strained, like it's hard for him to get the words out. "I can't do it to Dee, Kara. If you need me, really need me, I'll be there for you, but I can't do this. I can't be your friend right now."
She's glad he isn't looking at her because she recoils like she's been slapped and the last thing she wants is him feeling sorry for her. "I guess that's always been the problem. We never were just friends, were we?"
It's his turn to flinch and she's looking at him to see it, the tiny tremor that recoils violently through him. If she weren't so angry, she might feel a bit sorry for him. "Kara, that's not what I meant – "
"Go back to your wife, Lee," she says with a disgusted shake of her head.
He stands there for a full minute, one hand on the hatch and the other pulling away from his side, almost reaching for her. "Kara," he tries again but she's had enough. She should have known better than trying to rely on someone else.
"Go home, Lee," she repeats but he doesn't budge and now his hand is definitely reaching for her. She twists away, still agile and quick on her feet, and stands firm. "I don't need you," she says and this time he doesn't try to hide the shudder.
He doesn't fight her either, and a minute later she hears the scratch of the hatch door as he pushes it open. She waits for it to shut, close this chapter of her life, but he pauses in the doorway. "I meant what I said, Kara. If you really need me I'm here for you." She hears his footsteps echo down the corridor as he retreats to his wife.
He leaves the hatch open.
THREE
Her belly stretches and her body changes. She starts taking her meals intravenously, because the smell of processed algae alone makes her gag, and it's only worse when she has to eat the stuff. She can't keep what passes for food down, and after a couple days Doc Cottle orders her to sickbay and jams a needle in her wrist. She doesn't protest – she knows she won't win no matter how hard she fights.
She watches the clear liquid fill her veins and wonders if any of it is actually going to her, or if the thing in her belly is taking every last vitamin, every last nutrient, the way it's taken everything else.
"How are you feeling?" Doc Cottle asks and she this time she holds her head up high to meet his eye. It's not like before, when they were tiptoeing around the truth and avoiding the enormous elephant in the room. This time, there's a fetal monitor hooked up to the newly rounded curve of her belly and there are three heartbeats filling the room where there used to be two.
"Fine."
Doc Cottle's face is expressionless as he scribbles in her chart, but that annoyng sympathy is back in his eyes. "Good to hear." He pauses, waits a beat. "Do you have any questions?"
She averts her eyes and rolls the tubing between her fingers, watching the liquid flow through her to keep the thing in her belly alive. One flick of her wrist and it could all be over. She has a million questions, like why the smell of Racetrack's perfume makes her want to retch, or why the rest of her is still normal but her ass seems to have grown three sizes in the last three weeks. She keeps them to herself, and pastes on her blankest smile. "Nope, everything's good, Doc." The tube is clear and empty, the way she wishes she could be. "Can I go now?"
He looks at her hard as he pulls the tube out of her vein. "Are you taking your vitamins?
"Every day."
"You're not drinking or smoking?"
She remembers the first day she'd sashayed into the rec room after making her announcement. There'd been booze, but not a cigar in sight and it had only taken a moment to see the sign tacked on the back of the hatch in Lee's neat writing: "No Smoking." She hadn't apologized as she'd slipped into her chair and antyed into the game, but she hadn't tossed a nasty retort at the annoyed looks the rest of the group were sending her way. She'd won the first hand, folded on the second, and lost interest by the third. Playing cards to while away the hours between saving the world wasn't fun when there was no world for her to save anymore. Three days later she'd poked her head into the room between shifts and the sign was still there along with the stench of stale smoke. The nausea had flared up and she'd almost retched right then and there. She hadn't gone back; fun and games were no longer a part of her life.
She looks Doc Cottle right in the eye and tells the truth. "No. Nothing but clean living for me, right?"
He presses a piece of gauze to her wrist. "You'll thank me in a few months. Nothing is more important –"
"I know," she snaps, takes a deep breath, and gets herself together. "I know. Can I go now?"
He nods, and she hops off the table, taking a moment to settle. She's still quick on her feet, but there's a new heaviness in her step and she always feels a little off balance. She presses a hand to her back, sticking out her belly a little, and finds her footing. "Take care of yourself, Captain."
She rubs the bandaged spot on her wrist, thinks about the weeks that have passed since she's been in the air. "I'll do my best," she says because it's the most she can promise. She didn't ask for this, doesn't want this, and can't seem to stop it.
"Hope for the best but expect the worse," her mother used to say on the rare occasion she was sober and wasn't beating the living shit out of her daughter.
She doesn't want to admit it, but her mother is right – all she can do is try and hope she makes it through okay.
---
Sam joins the deckcrew to be near her. His military career lasts exactly a week, because a body and a mind bred for competition and winning can only take orders for so long before rebelling, and rather than dump Sam in the bring during his first week of service, the Admiral offers him an honorable discharge and finds him a security post on a Colonial ship.
She sees him every other week, when he can trade an R&R pass with the other guards, and he slips into her bunk and holds her like she'll break without his arms around her.
She knows she won't break, foreign moons and Kobol and even cylon farms failing to keep her down, but she lets him hold her because she knows he needs to believe it. After New Caprica, after Colonial Day Part Deux, after the thing in her belly taking root without a father to call its own, she owes him as much.
He sings her Caprican lullabyes she vaguely remembers from her childhood, from before her father died, and burrows into the shelter of his arms. It makes her believe, just for a few minutes, that every childhood isn't hell and just because cuts and bruises and screaming pain are the only things she knows, history doesn't have to repeat itself.
She doesn't need him, because she's Kara Thrace and she can take care of herself, but she likes his weight behind her, forearms resting right above the swelling bump of her belly. He holds her tight and presses kisses to her hair, fingers trailing over her rounded torso. He tells her he loves her and he loves the baby, no matter who the father is, because it's hers.
She pushes away the urge to flinch and snuggles deeper into the embrace of a man she doesn't need but thinks she'll always want. She's grateful someone, anyone, will love the thing in her belly because she's not sure she ever will.
FOUR
Lee ignores her and Dee leaves him a couple days before her second trimester starts. Every eye that wasn't trained on her before watches her back constantly now, and she knows there are new pools as to how long before the CAG and his pregnant maybe girlfriend hook up for real.
It doesn't happen.
She won't let it happen.
Adultery is a sin, but she's a wife and there's still time to honor her vow. She broke up one marriage; she's not condeming a sin against another.
She needs Sam. She needs him because she's fraked up royally once again and she knows he'll be there to hold her steady through it.
She ignores how he might keep her head above the water but won't teach her to swim.
---
It's been a full two months since Doc Cottle took her wings and almost two months since anyone but Lee has called her Starbuck.
There's something different about being a pilot, something that separates them from the rest of the Fleet, the rest of Galactica, because when it's go time they're the ones staring right into death's pulsating, red eyes. When her body isn't in motion and her feet are wearing trails into Galactica's corridors the way they did viper pedals, there's no longer anything special about her. She doesn't know how to be anyone but a pilot and she doesn't know Kara without Starbuck along for the ride.
The rest of the ship isn't making it any easier. Those who aren't friends of Dee's are happy to see the sainted Starbuck fall from grace, and sometimes when she's alone in the head with nothing but her belly for company she thinks she hears Kat's laughter because the mighty Starbuck has really, truly lost.
She tries to avoid her but the corridor is crowded full of people and she's forced to squeeze past Dee on her way out of the mess. Dee's tiny, but the crew is nosy, and there's no way to get around Lee's ex without acknowledging her presence.
"Kara," Dee says evenly.
"Dee," she returns.
"I want to tell you something," Dee says and her eyes are feverishly bright and she's holding herself so straight and tall Kara's surprised her back doesn't snap clear in half. She feels like a blimp in comparisson, her belly awkwardly pressing against the seams of a cast-off sweatshirt and she does her best to stand up straight as well but ends up in her pregnancy stance instead, knees splayed and a hand at her back to support the newfound weight. Dee keeps her eyes carefully averted, and locks them on Kara's face. It's uncomfortable, being under all that scrutiny, but she won't back down.
"Okay…" Kara responds because she and Dee aren't friends, will never be friends, and she's not sure why her kid's possible father's ex-wife is insisting on having a conversation in the very public corridor.
"My mother was a midwife on Sagittaron. When I was a teenager, I sometimes went with her to the births." She lowers her eyes and breathes in sharply as they lock on Kara's belly. "I know some of what you're going through, and I wanted to tell you that if you have any questions, feel free to ask."
Kara blinks. "You're offering me help."
Dee draws her eyes back to Kara's face and her shoulders are slightly slumped now, but she's holding her head just as high, just as proud as before. "I don't like you, Kara, and I don't have to like you. But your baby?" It's Kara's turn to take in a sharp breath. "You can't choose your parents. Your baby deserves a life, a happy life. I'm just doing my part."
Kara knows about doing her part, because if she had a choice her belly would be as flat as the day she first arrived on Galactica and her only worries would be tracking down the Fleet's dwindling supply of cigars.
She's never been good at apologies or selfless gestures, but she thinks Dee's pretty much embodying the latter and the least she can do is say thank you.
"Thanks, Dee," she says quietly. "I don't know what else to say."
Something ugly and angry flashes through Dee's eyes, and for a moment she looks every bit the adversary she roleplayed the long months of her marriage. "I'm not doing this for you, Kara. Remember that."
She walks away, trim and fit and without a hair out of place, but Kara isn't envious of her trim figure, or that her ass is a normal size, or that there isn't a thing in Dee's body sucking every bit of moisture out of her hair.
She watches the straight line of Dee's back make way through the corridor, parting the still nosy crowds and heading towards the CIC for duty and obligation and guiding the pilots home.
Kara knows why she's envious, because Dee's one of them and Kara isn't.
---
She stops going to briefings and spends the majority of her time in the hangar deck fixing vipers. There aren't any new nuggets to train, so she fills her days making sure they risk their lives but don't give their lives to keep humanity safe. There's always more work than people to do it, so Chief doesn't say a word about having an extra pair of hands, no matter where they come from.
She slips beneath a viper and digs her drillbit into the steel plate she's latching onto the underbelly of the plane. The bolt snaps, and suddenly everything is collapsing around her. She instinctively curls onto her side, drawing her legs against the bulk of her belly, and realizes, as she wraps her hands over her knees and arches out her back, that she's not unlike the thing in her belly. She saw it last week during her monthy visit with Doc Cottle, suspended inside her the way her viper used to take her through space. She'd tried to concentrate on the positive, the way the Doc had encouraged, and reminded herself that she only had five months to go until she had her body back.
Five months to go and light-weight steel plating can rain on her from above and the only life on the line will be hers.
Feet scurry around her and hands clutch at the sheeting. She can hear muffled shouting from beneath her blanket of metal, and she isn't the least surprised when Lee's face is the first she sees as she's hauled to her feet.
His eyes are blazing and the vein in his temple is itching to throb, and he doesn't speak to her, just locks his fingers around her bicep and drags her into the shadow of the viper's wing. The deck crew turns back to their work without a second thought. The circumstances might have changed but the players haven't, and they all know how it will end before it even starts. Laird, stationed at the viper directly next to theirs, even puts in a set of earplugs before maneuvering underneath his bird.
"What were you thinking, Kara?" Lee hisses. He's furious at her and she knows why, even if she won't admit it.
She's can still find the Starbuck inside her around him, and she whips around to face him. "Get off it, Lee. The only damage done is another viper missing its belly. Chief's short-staffed. The least I can do is lend a hand."
Despite the repetition, some of the flighthands have strayed away from their posts to listen in and Lee lowers his voice and pulls her closer so the rounded edge of her belly bumps his abdomen. He backs up with a jerk and smacks his head on the rim of the wing, and she jumps back to bang her bad knee on the wheel casing, and they let out yelps of pain in unison.
He's rubbing his head furiously, still frustrated but for entirely different reasons, and she hobbles around on her good leg, trying to find her footing once again. She's just able to stand up straight again when there's a weird pressure in her belly and she thinks her insides are trying to poke through her skin. She closes her eyes, sucks in a breath. She's still an adulterer, still carrying a kid that might not be her husband's – the gods don't have a time limit on penance.
"Kara, what is it?" Lee asks and there's a new frustration on his face, because she's hurting and he doesn't understand why. "Is it your knee? Can you stand?"
She knows exactly what it is and she wants to run, get away from him before this moment happens all over again, but she's pressed up against the wing of the plane and his fingers are pressing into her biceps and his eyes are searching hers and there's nowhere to go.
"Kara?" he tries again and his eyes are pleading now and they're troubled and tormented and remind her a bit of the day they spent at the beach the last time he saw his brother alive. She'd dared him to swim out, swim out further than the other bathers, and because he was Apollo and she was Starbuck, he'd taken her up on it. The cramp had hit midway to the buoy and she'd hadn't freaked, because she was Kara Thrace and capable of taking care of herself, but he'd insisted on tugging her home, her head cushioned on his shoulder so she'd get enough air. When they'd gotten back to the beach he'd showed her the way to rub out a cramp in mid-swim so it would never happen again.
She sees the look in his eyes and thinks it's her turn to keep him afloat.
"It kicked," she says and it's all the explanation she needs to provide.
Lee's eyes fill with emotions Kara hasn't seen since Helena Cain tried to blow all their lives apart. His hands loosen on her biceps and hover, because he knows what he wants but is afraid to take it. "Can I feel it?" he asks and she's too afraid to speak so she nods instead.
His hand presses feather light, so different from Sam's probing fingers, and his mouth hangs open a bit as his hand slips under her tanks to touch her bare skin. Their breath catches in unison because it happens again, just a tiny flutter, and then beats stronger and his fingers seem to shutter against her belly.
She doesn't want this, didn't ask for it, but she can't help enjoying it the tiniest bit because it's alive and it's kicking hello and it's all because of her. Sheltered behind the layers of skin and sinew and flesh, she's keeping it safe, Kara Thrace and no one else. Even with her feet rooted to the ground, she's still playing hero.
Lee draws back after a moment, seems to remember where they are and who he is, and straightens his shoulders and cocks his head in his best military stance. "I'll see if I can get you more shifts in the CIC, Captain. You'll be able to lend a hand without putting yourself in danger." It's implied that the thing in her belly will be out of harm's way as well.
He smiles at her, and she smiles back, and for the first time since this whole mess started she feels more Starbuck and less Kara.
Writers live for feedback – please leave some if you have the time.
