Title: Worship
Author: walkingdaydream
Written For: The bsgficathon, for sentraaquila, who asked for Kara choosing between Lee and Anders, denial, angst, and an unexpected ending. This is sort of that.
Rating: PG-13
Characters / Pairing: Kara (Lee/Kara, Anders/Kara)
Spoilers: Up to 2.10 Pegasus.
Author's Notes: Approximately 1,300 words. Thank yous to rosiespark for being the bestest beta ever. Constructive criticism is appreciated.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Worship
Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer…
Sunlight and sweat is her favourite smell on a man. Better than engine grease or astringent soap or plastic pressure suit or anything else Kara's used to finding lingering on her lovers. Sam likes to substitute pyramid for foreplay and she inhales whenever he moves in close, breathes him in, heart pounding as she twists her body and feints to the left to keep the ball out of his reach.
Flesh was meant to know sun, wind, soil. This is how it's meant to be, how it was in the beginning, how it will be when the Cylons are done trying to exterminate the human race. She loves to fly, and loves the Galactica, but that fabricated lifestyle isn't healthy, and can't last forever. You can't grow up as she has and not believe in the Lords of Kobol, not know that they intended these places – the twelve colonies – for their children, not feel it in your bones and your blood. The call home, intensifying in her belly even as home falls to dust around them.
She wants skin against hers at night, a heartbeat under her cheek when she can't sleep. To listen to the rain and catch snowflakes on her tongue. Even this unnatural, irradiated summer is a thousand times better than the metallic aftertaste of recycled air.
Kara takes advantage of this opportunity, enjoys it while she can, and thanks the Gods for it. Fraks Sam every night (and sometimes in the morning, too) and sleeps in her own bunk only because he's restless when he dreams and years on flight rotation have made her a light sleeper. She doesn't tell him he's a gift from the Gods, because he's arrogant enough as it is.
But she prays at night, before she leaves his bed.
…watch over your daughter, Kara Thrace…
When she and Lee make love for the first time, his skin tastes like rainwater.
And it is love, she thinks, but it might be more the birthplace of the Gods that the man she's with that makes it so.
She presses her mouth to his neck, his cheek. Catches small rivulets of water on her tongue as they slide down from beneath his hair.
The breeze is warm, shaking droplets loose from the leaves overhead, the moving branches offering tantalizing glimpses of blue sky from where she's lying. The sun is just starting to set, and the dampness is settling into her bones, uncomfortable but welcome.
Kara smiles, and lets his body grind hers into the moist soil, gritty now, under her nails and in her hair. Lee moves against her, inside her, rhythmic and instinctive and she lets it carry her away. Enjoys him, and lets him enjoy her.
When it's over, and they're dirty and satisfied and Lee's grinning (and she can't think of anyone more beautiful that Lee when he grins), she rolls them over so she's on top and pins his wrists and makes him pray with her.
He doesn't believe, but he should, and he says the words just to please her, and that's good enough for right now.
She doesn't explain, even though Lee would never tease her about this. But she thinks that maybe he's staking a claim on her – the kiss, his confession, this tryst in the woods – and she won't give him any more advantages over her.
…guide her on the path you've chosen for her…
A flash of light, and everything is different, but familiar, and perfect. The alignment of the stars is alien, but the stones stand as guideposts, monuments to the twelve colonies. The Gods' chosen homes for their children.
Kara believes in destiny.
This is fate, that they should come together in this place, at this time, with everything they need to plot their journey.
"We're standing on it," she whispers, "we're standing on Earth."
She's been waiting for this moment for so long (listening to her mother's fanatical ranting, curled up on the sofa with her father's prayer book). Didn't understand until now, that she was meant to make them believe.
To watch, as Lee chooses a direction.
Later, when the others are asleep, she leads him back to the tomb and holds him under those alien stars. Invokes the Lords and listens to his breathing slow again, his hand resting on her hip, his face in her hair. Wonders how old she'll be when (if) she stands on this planet again. Galactica has a course, and will jump away from Kobol within days, but the journey could take years, even decades, assuming they survive it.
It's Lee's journey, Roslin's, the Old Man's. She isn't sure it's hers. She's done her part.
Lee kisses her, and she turns her face away from the night sky.
…and bring her home…
Kara hasn't been to services in more than two years; not since she transferred to the Galactica.
There's a temple on board – uppermost deck, starboard side, near the observation lounge – and the priest in residence before the decommissioning ceremony followed Caprican traditions. But Kara keeps her idols in her locker, and the privacy of her bunk late at night has always seemed more appropriate for her prayers. She sometimes asks for things she shouldn't.
Since the colonial holocaust, the temple has become a place of mourning, not worship, and Kara has very little to mourn. For every gift the Lords of Kobol bestow, there is a price, and Kara's more than paid her price, a long time ago. She figures she's entitled only to gifts now.
The temple has been mostly empty, anyway, since Elosha's death – maybe it doesn't offer the same comfort now as it did when someone wiser than they are was in residence – and it's now that Kara chooses to come here. She's been reminded too strongly, too vividly, of what life was supposed to be, years ago, before all this happened, and she can't seem to settle back into shipboard life and wartime routine.
She's taken to wandering the Galactica's corridors at odd hours. It's not insomnia, but unrest: She could sleep if she let herself, but she feels like she's lost something inside her.
She can't explain it, though the Old Man tries to understand.
She flies her viper. Plays cards. Drinks the Chief's supply closet ambrosia. Trains nuggets. Teases Lee, runs with him in the mornings, but can't bring herself to kiss him and smell engine grease and astringent soap and plastic pressure suit.
…so that she may be reunited with those she's left behind…
The transfer to the Pegasus is the last straw – this isn't where she's supposed to be.
By the time Kara finishes transmitting surveillance photos of the Cylon ships back to Galactica, the fleet is breaking up, taking sides. The battle is well underway: fighters from Galactica and Pegasus meet between the two battlestars, and Cain has begun firing on any ship that moves to gain Adama's protection. One civilian freighter has already taken heavy damage and is venting atmosphere into space.
Lee is out there somewhere, in one of the raptors. She can't pick him out specifically. She doesn't think anyone can pick her out either, in the Laura.
It can't end well. Too many personnel have been transferred between the two military vessels, so squadron loyalty is tenuous on both sides. Kara can't predict what side individual pilots will choose, and the Pegasus is better equipped than they are to survive a prolonged engagement. Cut and run is what works best for the Galactica.
She considers flying right into the middle of it all – trademark Starbuck, really – but she isn't sure what side anyone else is on at this point. And it doesn't matter anyway, because this isn't her fight, not really. She's done her part.
She whispers a quick prayer for Lee and the others, then spins up the FTL drive, gains a couple klicks distance from the bulk of the fleet and jumps away.
She's going home.
…so say we all.