Your Heart is Keeping Time with Me
Feb. 14th, 2012 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
in_the_blueTitle: Brighter Than the Sun
For:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deborah_judge
From:in_the_blue
Canon: Battlestar Galactica
Word Count: approx. 1900
Summary: Kara, Sam, and sunshine. Written for the prompt "the sun reminds me of you" on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
pyramidofdreams. Contains full-series spoilers. Thanks to lostinapapercup for reading for me, and for running the event.
Notes: Happy Valentine's Day!
Aside from a few choice terms of endearment, Sam was never one to use nicknames. He used them his entire professional life in pyramid: He was T, Johan Hudson morphed into a shot-blocking maniac by the name of Jo-Man, go-getter Rally was plain old Robert Smith beneath the uniform, and flashy Erick Singleton wowed fans and detractors alike as the crowd-pleasing eternal favorite Ten-Point. When he thought nicknames, he didn't think about them for the people close to him because really, his teammates were dead, most of them, lost back on Caprica and maybe he figured nicknames to be a memorial tribute, or maybe he'd just had enough of them, or maybe they didn't really fit any more because none of them were still playing games. Only him and Barolay and Hillard left, and they really weren't ball players any more. Just three more civilians, just the remaining .0625% of all the Caprica Buccaneers who'd started out together in Delphi the day of the attack. The pilots had callsigns and that was enough, and he never used Starbuck when he was talking to Kara. That's because as far as he was concerned, her name, that simple four-letter name, was a little slice of perfection all wrapped up in a beautiful, melodic sound. Kara. Kara Thrace. The antiquated habit of a woman taking her husband's name didn't matter to him, he didn't give a good godsdamn. It was enough that she woke him up that morning after the groundbreaking ceremony, gave him about two seconds to brush the sand out of his eyes and mouth, and asked him if he felt like getting married that day.
Frak, yes, he'd said without even having to think about it. There was nothing he wanted more and yeah, it was something he'd thought about but hey, he was easy. He took what he could get when he could get it — always had, probably always would — and that Kara wanted to take vows to dedicate herself to him? More than he'd imagined, man, a frak of a lot more than he'd ever thought possible. The last thing he ever wanted to do was make her feel trapped, not by him. Circumstance did that plenty all on its own, and it did it for all of them.
It wasn't until she was taken from him that he started referring to her in conversation as Starbuck. At first he told himself it was because that was recognizable, people knew who he was talking about. Really, though, he knew that it was because Starbuck belonged to everyone, but Kara was his. So he went about the business of searching for her every frakking day. "Seen Starbuck? Any sign of Starbuck? Any word on Starbuck?" His questions were always met with the same sorry shake of the head, but he never gave up. She wasn't dead and he knew it. He could tell. He could feel it. She was his everything: his life, his reason, his sun, his moon, his stars in the frakking sky. Every morning on New Caprica he rose with the sun and told himself that was the day. That was the day he was going to find her, that was the day he'd bring her home and hold her and never let her go. That was the day he'd have her back in his life, and without that... that faith, that belief, he would have given up. She was his balance, his other half, and the only way he could honor her was by believing in her. Without her and without the promise of her return, life wasn't really even worth living.
So there was Kara, his wife, and there was Starbuck, the missing woman. She was somewhere, he knew it. He knew it deep inside his heart.
*
Sam. Sammy: that one came along immediately. She liked it because it bugged him, but it bugged him in a way that proved he secretly liked it. No one else got to call him that; he wouldn't stand for it. But she did. She could. It was much better than Middle Initial T — he was more than the totality of just one frakking letter — and Sam was okay, and she never called him Samuel because frak that, she wasn't his frakking mother, she was his wife, and sometimes she called him honey and sometimes she called him baby, just like he did to her. Those words didn't drip off her tongue quite as willingly as a lot of other words, and she only used them when no one else was around. It wasn't that she was fearful of giving away that she had a softer side. She was human, what the frak did those motherfrakkers expect?
The one thing she never admitted to anyone was that she'd fallen for Sam pretty much right away, back on Caprica. The air was charged with an electric danger and the time was all wrong for love, but weird frakking things happen all the time in wartime and once they got it all established — once Sue-Shaun was done playing defensive big sister and Sammy and the rest of the C-Bucs had lowered their weapons and they'd all agreed for the time being that everyone was human — Sam gave her a wary smile.
And then they played ball (what kind of resistance force makes setting up a pyramid court their first order of business anyway?) and he smiled at her again. Skeptically at first, his I'll wipe the court with you equal parts challenge and taunt, but once he gave her a genuine smile? Frak it, she never admitted it, but he caught her with that smile like she was a fish on a line, and he reeled her in with those pyramid player arms of his and those bright blue eyes and that come-frak-me-if-you-dare attitude, and she was hooked and he was hooked. She knew it the next morning when he pulled that pity party on her, and she knew it when she set aside their mission just long enough for another great frak. Sam was like chocolate, like Scorpian ambrosia, like the sun brightening the sky. His smile alone could light up the room. It didn't take rocket science to see they had chemistry up the frakking ass. And that was something that couldn't be manufactured or forced or taken away. "It's a fundamental law of physics," he told her one morning on New Caprica. "Attraction, I mean. A law of nature, like... like gravity or the changing of the seasons. It can never be denied."
She argued because she liked to argue with him, and she called him Sammy and told him to stop being such a physics geek and get back into bed and show her a different law of physics, and he was only too happy to oblige. Just like sunshine, she thought, he was impossibly hot.
(And so was she.)
*
Earth.
Or what passed for Earth. She didn't know what she was any more than she knew what this planet was, except she'd brought them here. Through some frakked-up miracle, she'd jumped them here and the song played over and over in her head, that one she'd played with the piano player at Joe's. The one she'd played as a child, her father indulgently seated at her side. The one she'd played that final time to jump the Fleet.
There was no joy in it. They'd all done a lot for the good of their ragtag band of civilization. They'd all stepped over that line, the one the Admiral hadn't wanted to cross but expected them all to cross, and the people of Fleet, both human and Cylon, had survived.
Most of them had, anyway. In any war there were casualties. It seemed to Kara that her personal cost had been exceptionally high. She no longer minded that she'd died — that was the only way she could rationalize what had happened — but every time she looked up at the sun, at that big frakking star that gave life to this planet — her breath caught in her throat and tightened there, threatening her composure. She never gave in to it, but she wondered: how close was Sam? How long would it take? Would she know it when he guided Galactica into that giant ball of flame out there? Would she be able to feel it?
She didn't know. All she knew was that the sun reminded her of him, and that every day she spent here, she resented that sun more and more for what was about to happen to Sam. It made her restless and unhappy, and when she thought too hard about everything it filled her with regret and she'd never wanted to live with her heart right out on her frakking sleeve. Or maybe she'd always done just that. She thought about all of it: the good and the bad. The war, the Cylons, her mother, their tattoos. Leoben, the Demetrius, her missing two months, that story about Earth Sam wove after he'd been shot, that life she'd never been a part of and as he'd talked, she'd jealously yearned to be a member of that same exclusive club she'd been fighting against for years. Nothing made sense, none of it. At first wishing for it made her own existence seem less stupid and futile, and then she'd grown angry and disappointed that he'd gone and had this life thousands of years ago without her, because he was her Sam. Her Sam, no one else's. Hers. Stubborn and tired, she refused to give up on him. Stubborn and tired, she decided to kill him because a long long time ago they'd made a bargain: if the Cylons get us, you do me and I'll do you. She was only trying to carry out her end of the deal and besides, she was already dead. Time for him to join her.
But he was her Sam, her balls-to-the-wall do-whatever-was-asked pyramid-playing hot-shot ray of sunshine, the one with the smile that lit the room, the one who loved her when she was nice and loved her when she was an asshole and loved her when she loved Lee and loved her when she loved him and loved her when she was dead and loved her when she tried to kill the President and loved her when she shoved him away and loved her even when she didn't let him. She loved him when she lost the Sam she knew but she loved him before then too, and she knew that somewhere, somewhere, Sammy would find her again because he'd always insisted that for better or for worse, losing her for good was the one thing he could never do no matter how hard he tried.
The minute the remnants of the Fleet met the sun, she knew it. She felt it. She left Lee mid-sentence and if she'd had the chance to explain she would have said it was time to go because finally, Sam was ready for her again. Sam needed her. Sam was waiting for her and she stepped away from the green grasses and the blue sky into the familiar warmth of an embrace she'd both loved and resented, but mostly loved, and when she heard the familiar words you took your sweet time she smiled so hard she was sure her face would split in two. For the first time in a long frakking time, she was surrounded by honest-to-gods pure sunshine. For the first time in a long frakking time, she was home.
For:
deborah_judgeFrom:
in_the_blueCanon: Battlestar Galactica
Word Count: approx. 1900
Summary: Kara, Sam, and sunshine. Written for the prompt "the sun reminds me of you" on
pyramidofdreams. Contains full-series spoilers. Thanks to lostinapapercup for reading for me, and for running the event.Notes: Happy Valentine's Day!
Aside from a few choice terms of endearment, Sam was never one to use nicknames. He used them his entire professional life in pyramid: He was T, Johan Hudson morphed into a shot-blocking maniac by the name of Jo-Man, go-getter Rally was plain old Robert Smith beneath the uniform, and flashy Erick Singleton wowed fans and detractors alike as the crowd-pleasing eternal favorite Ten-Point. When he thought nicknames, he didn't think about them for the people close to him because really, his teammates were dead, most of them, lost back on Caprica and maybe he figured nicknames to be a memorial tribute, or maybe he'd just had enough of them, or maybe they didn't really fit any more because none of them were still playing games. Only him and Barolay and Hillard left, and they really weren't ball players any more. Just three more civilians, just the remaining .0625% of all the Caprica Buccaneers who'd started out together in Delphi the day of the attack. The pilots had callsigns and that was enough, and he never used Starbuck when he was talking to Kara. That's because as far as he was concerned, her name, that simple four-letter name, was a little slice of perfection all wrapped up in a beautiful, melodic sound. Kara. Kara Thrace. The antiquated habit of a woman taking her husband's name didn't matter to him, he didn't give a good godsdamn. It was enough that she woke him up that morning after the groundbreaking ceremony, gave him about two seconds to brush the sand out of his eyes and mouth, and asked him if he felt like getting married that day.
Frak, yes, he'd said without even having to think about it. There was nothing he wanted more and yeah, it was something he'd thought about but hey, he was easy. He took what he could get when he could get it — always had, probably always would — and that Kara wanted to take vows to dedicate herself to him? More than he'd imagined, man, a frak of a lot more than he'd ever thought possible. The last thing he ever wanted to do was make her feel trapped, not by him. Circumstance did that plenty all on its own, and it did it for all of them.
It wasn't until she was taken from him that he started referring to her in conversation as Starbuck. At first he told himself it was because that was recognizable, people knew who he was talking about. Really, though, he knew that it was because Starbuck belonged to everyone, but Kara was his. So he went about the business of searching for her every frakking day. "Seen Starbuck? Any sign of Starbuck? Any word on Starbuck?" His questions were always met with the same sorry shake of the head, but he never gave up. She wasn't dead and he knew it. He could tell. He could feel it. She was his everything: his life, his reason, his sun, his moon, his stars in the frakking sky. Every morning on New Caprica he rose with the sun and told himself that was the day. That was the day he was going to find her, that was the day he'd bring her home and hold her and never let her go. That was the day he'd have her back in his life, and without that... that faith, that belief, he would have given up. She was his balance, his other half, and the only way he could honor her was by believing in her. Without her and without the promise of her return, life wasn't really even worth living.
So there was Kara, his wife, and there was Starbuck, the missing woman. She was somewhere, he knew it. He knew it deep inside his heart.
*
Sam. Sammy: that one came along immediately. She liked it because it bugged him, but it bugged him in a way that proved he secretly liked it. No one else got to call him that; he wouldn't stand for it. But she did. She could. It was much better than Middle Initial T — he was more than the totality of just one frakking letter — and Sam was okay, and she never called him Samuel because frak that, she wasn't his frakking mother, she was his wife, and sometimes she called him honey and sometimes she called him baby, just like he did to her. Those words didn't drip off her tongue quite as willingly as a lot of other words, and she only used them when no one else was around. It wasn't that she was fearful of giving away that she had a softer side. She was human, what the frak did those motherfrakkers expect?
The one thing she never admitted to anyone was that she'd fallen for Sam pretty much right away, back on Caprica. The air was charged with an electric danger and the time was all wrong for love, but weird frakking things happen all the time in wartime and once they got it all established — once Sue-Shaun was done playing defensive big sister and Sammy and the rest of the C-Bucs had lowered their weapons and they'd all agreed for the time being that everyone was human — Sam gave her a wary smile.
And then they played ball (what kind of resistance force makes setting up a pyramid court their first order of business anyway?) and he smiled at her again. Skeptically at first, his I'll wipe the court with you equal parts challenge and taunt, but once he gave her a genuine smile? Frak it, she never admitted it, but he caught her with that smile like she was a fish on a line, and he reeled her in with those pyramid player arms of his and those bright blue eyes and that come-frak-me-if-you-dare attitude, and she was hooked and he was hooked. She knew it the next morning when he pulled that pity party on her, and she knew it when she set aside their mission just long enough for another great frak. Sam was like chocolate, like Scorpian ambrosia, like the sun brightening the sky. His smile alone could light up the room. It didn't take rocket science to see they had chemistry up the frakking ass. And that was something that couldn't be manufactured or forced or taken away. "It's a fundamental law of physics," he told her one morning on New Caprica. "Attraction, I mean. A law of nature, like... like gravity or the changing of the seasons. It can never be denied."
She argued because she liked to argue with him, and she called him Sammy and told him to stop being such a physics geek and get back into bed and show her a different law of physics, and he was only too happy to oblige. Just like sunshine, she thought, he was impossibly hot.
(And so was she.)
*
Earth.
Or what passed for Earth. She didn't know what she was any more than she knew what this planet was, except she'd brought them here. Through some frakked-up miracle, she'd jumped them here and the song played over and over in her head, that one she'd played with the piano player at Joe's. The one she'd played as a child, her father indulgently seated at her side. The one she'd played that final time to jump the Fleet.
There was no joy in it. They'd all done a lot for the good of their ragtag band of civilization. They'd all stepped over that line, the one the Admiral hadn't wanted to cross but expected them all to cross, and the people of Fleet, both human and Cylon, had survived.
Most of them had, anyway. In any war there were casualties. It seemed to Kara that her personal cost had been exceptionally high. She no longer minded that she'd died — that was the only way she could rationalize what had happened — but every time she looked up at the sun, at that big frakking star that gave life to this planet — her breath caught in her throat and tightened there, threatening her composure. She never gave in to it, but she wondered: how close was Sam? How long would it take? Would she know it when he guided Galactica into that giant ball of flame out there? Would she be able to feel it?
She didn't know. All she knew was that the sun reminded her of him, and that every day she spent here, she resented that sun more and more for what was about to happen to Sam. It made her restless and unhappy, and when she thought too hard about everything it filled her with regret and she'd never wanted to live with her heart right out on her frakking sleeve. Or maybe she'd always done just that. She thought about all of it: the good and the bad. The war, the Cylons, her mother, their tattoos. Leoben, the Demetrius, her missing two months, that story about Earth Sam wove after he'd been shot, that life she'd never been a part of and as he'd talked, she'd jealously yearned to be a member of that same exclusive club she'd been fighting against for years. Nothing made sense, none of it. At first wishing for it made her own existence seem less stupid and futile, and then she'd grown angry and disappointed that he'd gone and had this life thousands of years ago without her, because he was her Sam. Her Sam, no one else's. Hers. Stubborn and tired, she refused to give up on him. Stubborn and tired, she decided to kill him because a long long time ago they'd made a bargain: if the Cylons get us, you do me and I'll do you. She was only trying to carry out her end of the deal and besides, she was already dead. Time for him to join her.
But he was her Sam, her balls-to-the-wall do-whatever-was-asked pyramid-playing hot-shot ray of sunshine, the one with the smile that lit the room, the one who loved her when she was nice and loved her when she was an asshole and loved her when she loved Lee and loved her when she loved him and loved her when she was dead and loved her when she tried to kill the President and loved her when she shoved him away and loved her even when she didn't let him. She loved him when she lost the Sam she knew but she loved him before then too, and she knew that somewhere, somewhere, Sammy would find her again because he'd always insisted that for better or for worse, losing her for good was the one thing he could never do no matter how hard he tried.
The minute the remnants of the Fleet met the sun, she knew it. She felt it. She left Lee mid-sentence and if she'd had the chance to explain she would have said it was time to go because finally, Sam was ready for her again. Sam needed her. Sam was waiting for her and she stepped away from the green grasses and the blue sky into the familiar warmth of an embrace she'd both loved and resented, but mostly loved, and when she heard the familiar words you took your sweet time she smiled so hard she was sure her face would split in two. For the first time in a long frakking time, she was surrounded by honest-to-gods pure sunshine. For the first time in a long frakking time, she was home.
