DPP: Angst
Apr. 20th, 2011 08:43 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
scifishipper.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no_takebacks
Happy and fun pilots make me smile and laugh and feel good, but I have to say that my heart responds most to the angst, that achy feelings that drives me to write and read and watch pilots over and over again.
For today, I'm going to ask you to write a bit of angst. You can resolve with some happy if you like, but let's see the struggle first. Wanna go dark? Do it. Need to work out some demons via a little fic? Let's see it. The conflict and angst in BSG and between pilots provides more than enough fodder for the angstiest among us.
Not feeling the angst? Try pressing play, then give yourself a few minutes and I bet you'll be writing angst before you know it!
If that doesn't work, here are some prompts to get your angst (or your ire) up. Some of these can be set anywhere (AU, pre-mini, academy, post-finale, or canon). Some are pretty ouchy, so be warned (and brave!). :D
Kara stays with Zak after she and Lee sleep together.
Kara tells Lee that she's going to poof.
Lee gets trapped on New Caprica with Kara and Sam.
Lee tries to apologize to Kara right after she meets with Laura about the Arrow (KLG).
Lee wakes up first, but Kara marries Sam anyway.
Kara and Lee have a tentative romance and then Kara finds out she's pregnant with Sam's baby.
Kara and Lee get together after the Colonial Day dance, but it doesn't go as planned.
Kara divorces but Lee's still not convinced.
Sam is killed or nearly killed by centurions on the algae planet.
Kara is revealed to be a cylon before maelstrom.
Also, please warn if you are writing anything particularly disturbing or triggering. Thanks. Readers, please heed author warnings. :)
ETA: Hello again to all of the lurkers and regulars that came out to play yesterday. I'm feeling much happier and surrounded by K/L-loving peeps. <3<3
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Free Fall: Fic Part 1/2
Date: 2011-04-20 03:13 pm (UTC)A) I’m in the last week before Easter Break and all my students are insane.
B) I’m in the middle of an epic long!fic which is taking all of my spare time
Today, however, YOU GET ME! Why? Because I’m all about the angst. ALL OVER IT! And if you don’t know this, then you haven’t read a goddamn word of anything I write. As a few readers have reminded me, if I give a hint of fluff, it’s because I’m going to pummel you with the angst hammer next chapter.
This is an Unbetaed fic
Warnings: Character death
Free Fall
Kara isn’t sure what she’s supposed to do when she hears the news. She’s sitting in the debrief aboard Galactica, her body shaky and worn with the emotions of the last hours following that order to kill Cain, (the one that surely would have gotten her killed.) For hours she’s been cursing Lee for not making the rendezvous with her. Pissed and waiting for the minute he’ll arrive and she’ll lay into him, roaring at him for frakking up. And he’ll either rise to the bait or laugh it off.
Just like old times.
At the front of the room, Tigh walks into the room. He’s alone, she sees, a military folder under his arm. Kara wonders at it – the fact that Adama isn’t with him seems odd – but the second the scowling XO comes up to her, dropping a heavy hand to her shoulder she simply knows. There isn’t even a question in her mind.
Something’s happened.
The XO’s words now echo in the corridors of her mind.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the blackbird was taken out. By the time the recon team arrived, Lee was already gone....”
Kara sits now in stony silence, her body here, but her mind trapped hours earlier. She takes a shaky breath, running her hand through her hair, her eyes wide, though all she sees is space ahead of her and the flash-burn gold of the gunports of her viper. The battle was hard won today. She heard the call for help from Lee, relayed it to Galactica, but she was too busy fighting the raiders that this time she didn’t respond.
Someone else was going to get him. Right?
At the front, Tigh switches places with a young major from Pegasus whose name Kara cannot, for the life of her, remember. She can’t remember anything about the present. Only the past. Sitting here now in the military debrief, she feels the sudden urge to vomit, stomach roiling. There’s too much going on: Cain murdered, power shifted back to Adama, the resurrection ship destroyed. There’s so much to manage that she almost can’t fathom the last point. Instead it appears insidiously in the walls around her, like the smudges of engine oil along her dirty nails.
Blackbird destroyed. Lee Adama killed in action.
A slide flashes at the front, burning brightly, and she closes her eyes. She can still remember his voice on the comm.
“Starbuck, Apollo. Target’s FTL is history. She’s all yours.”
These will be his last words to her, her mind chatters. Her own, no more important.
“Roger that, Apollo. Red Wing initiated. Attack...”
Frakking stupid.
There should have been something else. Something with meaning. Even after Zak’s funeral they told each other things of consequence. And that was the worst of times...
Lee’s dead.
Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-20 03:14 pm (UTC)And as always, Lee is beside her in the dark.
“For frak’s sake...” she hisses at him. He won’t stop watching this film.
“There! There... There is a shadow. There is someone in that seat.”
“That could be anything...” Kara grumbles. “A bulkhead... a trick of the light.”
“Yeah? What if it’s not...” Lee’s voice is full of pain.
“Enough. Alright..? Enough, Lee,” she snaps. “We did it. Now we’ve got to live with it... Maybe even get used to it. You want to know why?”
He glances over at her, and she sees the layers of grief that reach down to his soul. Lee isn’t hard enough for this life. He isn’t like her.
“Because I bet there’ll be other times...” she continues. “Times when we have to take lives to save lives...” For a second she stops, but there’s more to the explanation, something she knows deep inside. “Maybe even leave people behind so the rest of us can make it.”
“Yeah, well, if we do...” Lee finally answers. “We’d better be damn sure it’s our only choice... Otherwise we’re no better than they are.”
And then, sitting in the debriefing, a horrific realization comes to Kara. That’s exactly what she’s done here.
She left Lee behind, to finish the job. Win the battle. Follow the orders. Be a good soldier. Only this time, the payment for success has been Lee. She takes a ragged breath, coughing loudly for a second, and those sitting around her twist to look. The major pauses, and Tigh speaks up, his voice echoing loudly in the ready room.
“Dismissed, Starbuck,” he growls. “I’ll come find you later.”
There is an awkward silence as Kara lurches to her feet, staggering like a drunk toward the hatch. All the other pilots are watching as she reaches the door. This time she doesn’t touch the photograph, just moves through the hatch. She doesn’t want the protection any longer. There are other voices in her head now too. Lee’s and Zak’s and Sam’s. All of them in chorus. They are begging her to listen, but she pushes them away, refusing.
Finally making it back to the bunkroom, she spins the hatch and stumbles in. The room is blessedly empty. With steadier motions and plodding steps, she makes it to the locker door, pulling it open and glancing at the photograph one last time. Pulling it down, she walks back to her bunk, laying it neatly on her pillow, then closing the drape. She doesn’t know why, but that is what she needs Adama to find.
The three of them together.
With a heavy sigh, Kara unlatches the gun from her belt, sitting down at the metal table, listening for a moment to all of the chatter in her mind. The accusations and denials. The lies and grief. And after all that, the honest moments that meant so much. She and Lee have been the keepers of each other’s secrets. The gates to those hidden shadows of their souls.
For just a moment, there’s another memory, and as it rises, Kara flips back the safety and pumps the sidearm, putting the bullet into the chamber.
“I know fear, and I get scared... just not of dying.”
“So then what does scare you?”
“Being forgotten.”
She smiles, closing her eyes. And remembers.
Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-20 03:44 pm (UTC)Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-20 07:08 pm (UTC)Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-20 03:44 pm (UTC)Also that made me cry. Beautiful.
Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-20 07:08 pm (UTC)Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-20 04:08 pm (UTC)This was excellent. Obviously very sad, but excellent.
Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-20 07:09 pm (UTC)Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-20 06:56 pm (UTC)Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-20 07:09 pm (UTC)Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-21 02:05 am (UTC)I'm having a hard time thinking Kara would just kill herself like that, though. I still find it hard to think of Lee capable of doing it. But I have already come to accept that about him. But Kara. I think if she would ever do it, it would be through a more self-destructive journey. A longer process, maybe. I don't know. It's just too hard to think about it. :(
You did an amazing job writing it, though. No question about it.
Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-21 02:20 am (UTC)Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-21 02:32 am (UTC)again. And then he gets back. And is told about Kara....Oh yes, there's something wrong with me.
Also, loved the call-back to post-Olympic Carrier angsting. It's like a twofer! Painfully good.
Re: Free Fall: Fic Part 2/2
Date: 2011-04-21 02:45 am (UTC)All at Once
Date: 2011-04-20 04:28 pm (UTC)“Starbuck! You’re being paged to sick bay. Something happened on the planet.”
Kara doesn’t focus on the voice, but Athena and Racetrack are hanging just outside the hatch. They’re whispering about her no doubt. Kara flashes them a glare before taking off down the corridor. Her stomach is still turning despite being empty. It’s a sinking, twisting pit that threatens to pull her into the wall more than once. Sam and Lee are both down on the planet. Her gut drops again. She crashes hard into the wall and shakes off the throb taking up residence in her right temple. She winces at the flash of a child’s laughter and keeps stumbling down the hallway.
Lee hasn’t spoken to her since he left to run the operations. He won’t cheat. She won’t divorce. He boards the raptor without looking back. Dee is waiting for him planet, but Kara stands half dressed in the ready room, panting and feeling the first rumblings of sickness. She pulls down her tanks, smoothes her hair, wipes the tastes of him off her lips and strolls to the head to toss her breakfast for the first time. She brushes her teeth before kissing Sam good-bye on the flight deck. She makes sure everyone sees how happy she looks, hears how proud she is of his service to the fleet. The rest of the day she hides in the CAGs office plowing through paper work as acting CAG and trying not to cry. Starbuck doesn’t cry over men trouble after all.
When Kara rounds the corner into Life Stations, it’s Sam. He’s pale. Tubes run in and out. Cottle tells her he’s been shot, the cylons found the planet, the fleet, some ages old temple of the planet. Kara only stares at her husband, relief rolling off of her in waves only to be replaced by a guilt that literally weighs on her shoulders. She should be relieved when Cottle updates Sam’s condition to stable. She’s only relieved it’s not Lee. Can’t think what she would do if it were Lee lying there. It doesn’t occur to her that she wouldn’t have been called to sick bay for someone else’s husband.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispers as she takes Sam’s hand. The test isn’t back yet but she knows. Then she lifts her head at a motion beyond Sam’s curtain. Lee’s eyes are huge, blue, the only spot of color in the place. He heard her. “It’s yours,” she continues without breaking their illicit stare. Then her face falls back to Sam, and she smiles, brushing the hair along his face. “We’ll be a family,” she tells her husband.
When Kara glances up again, Lee is gone.
Re: All at Once
Date: 2011-04-20 04:47 pm (UTC)Re: All at Once
Date: 2011-04-20 06:05 pm (UTC)Re: All at Once
Date: 2011-04-20 06:56 pm (UTC)Fix this please!
Re: All at Once
Date: 2011-04-20 08:11 pm (UTC)Re: All at Once
Date: 2011-04-21 05:14 pm (UTC)Re: All at Once
Date: 2011-04-20 07:10 pm (UTC)Re: All at Once
Date: 2011-04-20 08:13 pm (UTC)Re: All at Once
Date: 2011-04-21 01:58 am (UTC)Re: All at Once
Date: 2011-04-21 02:23 am (UTC)Trapped
Date: 2011-04-20 07:31 pm (UTC)The cylons don't ease up and he's starting to think his father won't come back. He can't imagine what the Old Man could do - an evacuation seems impossible, the cylons are too great a force. He doesn't really even understand why they've kept them alive, why they're trying to work with them like they didn't nearly annihilate their entire race. They've tried to speak to him because they know who he is. They've invited him to the table, to negotiate on behalf of the military, to ask them to return for a peaceful existence. Lee has refused. The anger Kara dredges up in him is more than enough to fill his belly and the cylons can go frak themselves. He'd rather die than pretend he gives a shit about anything right now.
When they throw him in the detention cell, some part of him is grateful because now he doesn't have to see her. The torture he receives hurts but he's got something deeper and more painful that he's already used to. They can't break something that's already broken.
The smug pride he wore in his youth is gone, replaced by thick lines around his eyes as the skin hangs loose on his gaunt face. When they release him, no one is there to see. He just walks slowly, leaning heavily on his uninjured leg, head down and hoping he doesn't see her before he gets to his tent.
For three days he lies on his thin cot, needing the enclosed space, imagining he's back on Galactica or even back in his cell. He feels oddly disconnected from the rest of humanity, a shadow that's waiting for the sun so he can disappear. No one bothers to see him, his usefulness to Saul Tigh and the rest of humanity disappeared when he shunned them the first time, telling them to fight their own frakking battles because he's tired. It seems like a lifetime ago, but it's only been a few weeks. He thinks things could have been different, if he had been on Pegasus instead of dealing with planetside crap, he might be making plans right now. At least he wouldn't be trapped with them.
The bitterness he feels makes him laugh sometimes, get over yourself, he thinks, but in the end he's just too worn out. He's not as strong as he used to be - not after years of war and getting his guts ripped out by the only person he's ever loved. It's just too much.
When Sam comes to see him, the deadness he feels inside sparks back into rage and he tells him to get the frak out. Sam stays, waits, presses him, tells him that Kara's been missing. She's not in the detention center.
Lee doesn't want to frakking care. Get someone else, godsdammit. She's not my problem anymore. The fury and jealousy is boiling over until he forcibly pushes Sam out of the tent, shouting at him to leave him the frak alone.
But he can't stop the thoughts from racing through his head, that all of the torture he wished upon Kara was just a desperate plea to diffuse his own pain, spread it around to the person he most hated in the worlds. The actual idea that she's missing or dead or getting herself frakked up by the cylons is more than he can actually stand.
After all the pain and loss and torture, he still frakking loves her.
Re: Trapped
Date: 2011-04-20 08:10 pm (UTC)Re: Trapped
Date: 2011-04-21 12:50 am (UTC)Re: Trapped
Date: 2011-04-21 12:56 am (UTC)Me neither. Poor soul.
Re: Trapped
Date: 2011-04-20 08:21 pm (UTC)Re: Trapped
Date: 2011-04-21 12:50 am (UTC)Re: Trapped
Date: 2011-04-20 08:31 pm (UTC)Re: Trapped
Date: 2011-04-21 12:52 am (UTC)Thanks, Lynn!
Re: Trapped
Date: 2011-04-21 03:37 am (UTC)prompted by the pics
Date: 2011-04-21 02:19 am (UTC)Vague allusions to Kara's past things.
Don't
You can't die.
She stares at him, lying there. A hole in his chest. The medbay's deserted now, the middle of the night, no Dee beseeching him to stay, words Kara has no right to say.
Don't die.
Please. Gods.
Lee.
No one's here, but she still can't come any closer to that bed, that beeping monitor. She can't stay away, but going any closer to his side makes her feel physically sick. So she stands there like she's trapped in amber, screaming inside her echo-chamber head.
Don't, please, don't.
Her hand, holding a pen, hovering over check boxes.
I killed Zak.
Her hand, holding a golden arrow, walking away.
I killed Sam.
Her hand, holding a gun, squeezing the trigger.
Don't, don't, please.
Her hands are shaking now, her whole body trembling.
Don't let me kill you.
She'd known, she'd always known. Her parents knew, must have known, too; her father fled and all her mother could do was try to beat it out of her. If Zak and Sam had known, maybe they'd still be alive.
But they hadn't known. They'd tried to love her and let her love them and didn't know it would kill them.
Her eyes trace his face, seeing the shock, the pain, the confusion above her gunsights. Heartbeats of don't.
Don't. Don't. Don't.
Ever since she'd known him, that had been the refrain. Don't love me. I'm not free. Don't love me. I'm not worth it. Don't love me. I'm cursed.
Don't love me. I'm poison.
He lies there, so fragile, so close to death, and she cringes under every twinge of hope she'd ever felt, that maybe – maybe – he was someone she could love and not destroy. The breath in her lungs wails with wanting, but terror pumps through her veins, swamping it with don't.
She wants to go to him.
Don't.
She wants to beg him to forgive her.
Don't.
She wants to beg him to live.
Don't.
She wants to beg him to love her and not die.
Don't.
Re: prompted by the pics
Date: 2011-04-21 02:22 am (UTC)Re: prompted by the pics
Date: 2011-04-21 02:36 am (UTC)Re: prompted by the pics
Date: 2011-04-21 02:38 am (UTC)Re: prompted by the pics
Date: 2011-04-21 02:44 am (UTC)Re: prompted by the pics
Date: 2011-04-21 06:28 am (UTC)I esp. love the repetition of "Her hand..." and zak/sam/lee
Re: prompted by the pics
Date: 2011-04-21 02:18 pm (UTC)