No Takebacks

Kara's Pyramid ball, a present from her father, bounces between earth and sky, and she thinks of it as her connection to the gods.

When her Pyramid dreams fade, her Viper has a similar effect, arcing through space that is so beautiful, so much fuller than she had imagined. She trusts in Caprica's science because it brings her closer to the gods.

On Earth, alongside Lee - the new Earth, unharmed by its future, battered by winds on which ships will not ride for millennia - she feels closer still.

The gods are here, she realises, and takes his hand.

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The gods are here, she realises, and takes his hand.

This. *sighs*

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Thank you! *sighs at your icon*

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Oh this hurts. So. Good.

Just beautiful! K

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Aw, thank you! *offers snuggly pilots in recompense for hurt*

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I love the multiple connections between Earth, sky, and the divine. This was just gorgeous. Thank you!

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So glad you liked it - thank you! Kara's religion always seems to me like an odd blend of mysticism and pragmatism - earth and sky, I suppose. :)

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Lyras assures me that off-topic is fine, which is good, because mine DEFINITELY doesn't follow that prompt.

Drabble: Forgotten Promises (200 words)

It’s not until she’s standing outside Lee’s office on Colonial One that she realises she’s left it behind on Earth.

Around her neck hang the deathless tags and ring. The ones she came back with; the ones she wears still. Homage to a life, long past. Her right hand is pressed tightly closed on the perfect match to this; not even a mirror image, but the same. They are the ghostly second set, splattered with her own blood, condemning her as a cylon, demon or worse. Edges of them digging into her palm like a knife.

One for Sam. One for Lee. A perfect balance, preventing movement either forward or back. Static and stable. Known.

Not like this new thing...

Kara closes her eyes for a moment, wondering what her oversight means... Troubled that it didn’t even occur to her until now. But she’s never been any good at reading the signs. The gods and their plans have always been too murky. Had it happened before New Caprica, she would have known, and this visit to Apollo would have had a different meaning... but now she cannot understand.

The object lost and never retrieved is the match to Zak’s ring.

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I love that there's so much in this - I've read it several times and pick up on something new each time.

I especially liked this line: "One for Sam. One for Lee. A perfect balance, preventing movement either forward or back."

And the ending...Oh, Kara, it's a new beginning. Take it! *pushes her*

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Thanks! I'd push her too... but I'm pretty sure she'd just punch me back, so I'm writing her into her own happy ending instead. :>D

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Oh, Zak. I'm reading/writing a lot of Zak recently. This is lovely. :)

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Thanks - you are sweet! This little missing piece always puzzled me so it was fun to write. :>) K

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This was just lovely. Thanks so much for sharing it! You've painted a great image of balance between past and future with the idea of one set for Sam and one for Lee (which got the living set, and which got the ghost, I wonder?) It's a haunting, ambiguous final image, very well done.

This just goes to show that I wasn't paying enough attention to the episodes in question, but was one of her dogtag sets actually missing the ring?

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You know, I actually always assumed that the ring on her thumb was always on her thumb, and that the ring on the tags was a wedding band that she never wore. If not, then that's an incorrect assumption on my part, but it still makes an interesting premise.

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Oh, how interesting! Of course, two different rings, one on her hand and one on her tags, make sense to me now that I think about it.

Neat :)

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Lee's life over these past years has been a successive accumulation of grief - pain and loss that he has only half-processed. Zak, the Colonies, Kara, Dee, and Kara once again. One would think he'd get used to the ache in his chest, but he knows it doesn't work that way. He still wakes every morning, pulling on clothes that will eventually wear out and he wonders how long it will take for the wounds to heal.

He walks far most days, when he's not managing or meeting or doing the thousand small things a man like him is supposed to do. The high grass of the meadow is his place of solitude, where he comes to ease the hurt and touch the ground where she last stood. He pushes his feet into the dirt, feels the wind in his hair and if he squints his eyes towards the clouds, he thinks just maybe he can see her viper shooting across the sky.

Edited Date: 2010-07-28 04:29 am (UTC)

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Oh my goodness, this makes me so sad. (In a wonderful, perfectly lovely way.) Favorite line:

The high grass of the meadow is his place of solitude, where he comes to ease the hurt and touch the ground where she last stood.

Makes my throat ache for that loss. You are such an amazing writer, H. :>)

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It is still an ache, that poof. I just read two Zak grief fics and had to answer the prompt with something achy. Thanks, honey. *tearful hugs*

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This was really gorgeous, thank you. I agree with kag523 in the line she picked out as exceptionally beautiful. The whole thing is so simple and sad -- Lee's grief is quiet and solitary, and so are his moments of comfort. It all feels very much like him.

I know I'm forever quoting poetry, but your drabble really reminded me of a bit of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's writing:

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud excess
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man,
Express grief for thy dead in silence like to death.

** meep **

I love your drabble, thanks so much for sharing it!

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Oh this is so beautiful. Thank you for selecting and sharing it with up. Love it!

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What a beautiful poem. The last line is heartbreaking - it is like a little death, grieving. Thank you for sharing it. *hearts in eyes*

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Oh! *weeps*

That last line is just amazing. Such a beautiful closing image!

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Thank you! I like to think of him on that field looking up at the sky wondering where she is. *cries*

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A lovely topic ~ I'm really enjoying everyone's drabbles so far! Hopefully the muse will strike for me at some point, too! :)

When it comes to AU theories, one of my favorites has to do with Kara's painted mandala. Having stared at it for far too long, I decided that the black scribbles in the white center of the circles looked like a loopy, cursive version of the word, "up." I'm sure this is just my brain being Rorshach-style crazy, but it's just close enough to plausible to work for me:

See? Those squiggles in the center could be a loopy cursive "up," right?

The reason I love this idea is that it would mean Kara was equally fated to fly into that storm or to fly out of it ~ she could go up or go down; she could choose her destiny. The journey through it was the most important part, and having gone through her spiritual epiphany she could have flown *up* and still led the people to their true end. In fact, I think she might even have bypassed a lot of the awfulness in the first half of Season Four (it was her crashed Viper and her dead body that pulled her towards old Earth ~ without those, maybe she could have just concentrated on her father's music and found New Earth all the faster.)

I liked this crazy little idea so much that I wrote a tiny story about it ~ that was my first venture into BSG fanfiction. It's called Shortcuts (http://rachelindeed.livejournal.com/5454.html), if anyone's interested :)

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Eeeee! I LOVE THIS PREMISE! *borrows your brain for next bit of writing*

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I love this, because I really hated the feeling we had in season 4 that Kara was somehow tied to her destiny, and couldn't do anything else (and indeed, that once she'd "fulfilled" it, there was nothing else left for her in life *stabs things*). Let Kara choose her own destiny!

Also, I've never actually seen a close-up of the mandala before, and the poem is fascinating, so thanks for posting it. :)

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baciami2.livejournal.com

Has anyone ever been able to transcribe the poem next to the mandala? I seem to read "stroking my hair" and "every delicious sip" and "beat of his heart."

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You get a pretty good look at the poem in both "Valley of Darkness" and "Maelstrom." From pausing my DVD and squinting, this is what I come up with:

Methodicaly
Smoking my cigarette
every breath
i breathe
wet the day
with every delicious sip
i drink away the night
stroking my hair to
the beat of his heart
watching a
boy turn
into a Man

I'm not sure about the word "wet," but other than that I'm pretty sure this is right.

In his commentary, Ron Moore says that Tahmoh and Katee went into the apartment and did a lot of the painting on the walls themselves before they filmed the first scene there. If I had to guess, I'd bet that poem was a Katee Sackhoff contribution :)

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baciami2.livejournal.com

Thanks so much! I don't have any of the dvd's. Instead I tivo'd about 50 of my favorite episodes. Maelstrom was too painful and I can't recall why I didn't keep Valley of Darkness.

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Hee! Valley of Darkness is pretty by-the-numbers when it comes to the plot and action, but I love it because it has such beautiful character notes amid all the craziness. The scene with Kara and Helo in her old apartment is so haunting and unexpectedly lovely. And I really love the little dialogue exchange between Lee and the scared deckhand he's recruited to fight the Centurions:

Deckhand: I'm not really cut out for this, sir.
Lee: (wry) Me, neither. But sometimes you gotta roll the hard six.
Deckhand: What does that mean?
Lee: Um...I don't know. It's something my father says. Just don't shoot until I tell you to, okay?

I laugh every time on that one. Plus I love Tigh's great last line: "Thank the gods I didn't have kids."

So fun :)

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I love that lee scene, too. Thank you for reminding me of it. I'll have to watch it again later. Hee.

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baciami2.livejournal.com

Those scenes are in those ep's? Well then I'll have to remember when they start rerunning the episodes on syfy, which I'm sure they'll do at some point. Thanks for the heads up!

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