No Takebacks

Well I love fic about K/L from Dee or Sam's POV, especially

daphnaea's Anatomy of a Triangle (http://daphnaea.livejournal.com/7329.html#cutid1): which includes this, one of my favorite examples of Kara's character:

Anastasia knew exactly when her husband started cheating, because Starbuck stopped being nice to her. Since the boxing match (Dee refused to think of it as any kind of dance), Captain Thrace had been all hesitant smiles and averted eyes and military correctness over the comms when she was flying CAPs. Then, a few days ago, she’d run bodily into her in the corridor, and Starbuck had smirked viciously and said, “Watch it, Lieutenant.” And Dee had just known. It was somehow perfectly Starbuck to only act guilty before she’d actually broken the rules. As if the thought was wrong, but the deed its own justification. And she had hated the other woman then, hated her because Lee looked at Starbuck exactly the same way he always had, but she could no longer pretend not to know what it meant. If loving Kara was a mistake, it was not one he had ever stopped making. She walked back to their quarters in a kind of numb shock, and when she closed the hatch behind her, Lee stood up and smiled and kissed her the same way he always did. He didn’t look different or sound different or smell different, and she wanted to ask for confirmation that a few hours ago he’d been frakking another woman, not to cause a scene but just to make sure. Because if she’d assumed infidelity every time Starbuck was rude, she’d never have had a marriage at all. A bubble of something rose in her chest – laughter or tears, she couldn’t tell – as she thought maybe I didn’t, really.

There's also Fahye's Set Light to Me (some Surprising Day) (http://mercurial-wit.livejournal.com/37783.html) also from Dee's POV: Again, it comes down to family, so obviously that it hurts: the crew of the Galactica is acting like Lee has been widowed and the Admiral has lost his only daughter, like they’re all the family the other has left. Adama hasn’t invited her to his quarters in a while. On the most unbearable days it seems like these men never wanted the perfect military asset that she is, but the frak-up. Kara Thrace was their excuse, their outlet, and by loving her they could love the worst parts of themselves without guilt.

And Rawles's Tell Me Enough to Make Me Know You Are Glad (http://rawles.livejournal.com/188581.html) from Sam's POV which includes one of he best descriptions of Kara ever:
The thing Sam admires most about Starbuck is her ability to wear every emotion flashing right on her surface, and hide everything about who she is at the same time. Evasion without evasiveness, secrets without secrecy. Something about her is entrancing, and she shows so much with every grin and every scowl that you don't realize that you don't really know her.

And I love the part where "Captain Adama never offers him any of the water that's sitting in a pitcher on his side of the table."

And Support (http://shuchong.livejournal.com/3685.html#cutid1) by Suchong which is from Gaeta's POV after New Caprica and is just gorgeous! This is one small part. Pilots have a different definition of personal space than normal people, and when it came to each other Starbuck and Apollo had always stretched that definition a bit further. They had worked as a unit, not so much in the air, where Starbuck was always pushing, and Apollo was always trying to reign her in, but on the ground. Each one had always seemed to know where the other was, how the other would move, when the other would need a hand.

Edited Date: 2010-08-20 02:37 pm (UTC)

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Love all those, thank you for quoting. <3333 I think I need to go re-read all of them!

Fahye's "Set Light to Me" of course reminded me of her Anders fic that I love so much--"Amateur." A snippet:

When he’s almost at the rec room he slows down, because his angle of approach is such that he can see right in. It’s almost deserted. Kara and Lee are sitting side by side on the low table, her eyes darting restlessly and her fist pounding into her thigh in a slow, constant repetition. The expression is pure Kara: anger suffused with a succession of other emotions, one by one. Pain, guilt, something approaching fear. As he watches, Lee shifts to give her a loose one-armed hug, pulling her closer, pressing a kiss into her hair. His lips stay there, moving and mumbling in a neverending stream of what Anders can only assume is comfort, reassurance, the words that she needs to hear so that tomorrow she’ll be able to get up and do her job all over again.

After a little while Kara’s angry expression collapses into a wobbly fatigue. She closes her eyes and unfolds her fist, rubbing Lee’s knee absently before letting the hand fall. I think this snippet says everything about how it all shoulda gone down:

Anders is out of their line of sight. He leans against the wall and watches them, noting with an almost amusing detachment the way his mind shuffles through a strange series of reactions: the pragmatic knowledge that losing a pilot is something that her CAG would understand better than her boyfriend, the brief pang of hurt that she hasn’t even tried to talk about it with him, the impulse to knock on the hatchway, nod at Lee, pull Kara up and take her back to bed. But they’re all held in check by the uncomfortable feeling that he’s interrupting something intensely private.

Sigh. Pilots!

Edited Date: 2010-08-20 03:24 pm (UTC)

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ETA: Uh, just FYI, though I'm sure it's easy to figure out, "I think this snippet says everything about how it all shoulda gone down" right in the middle of the snippet is my typo!

Oooh and I forgot how much I love this part too:

In CIC he stands near Dee and forces himself to send her quick smiles. When she returns them he sees a flash of kindred spirit, an acknowledgment that whilst some things can’t be salvaged, they can be avoided. She’s jumped clear of the hurtling wreck that is Starbuckandapollo. The way she holds herself speaks of bruises from impact, but nothing compared to what she would have suffered through if she’d held on much longer.

Edited Date: 2010-08-20 03:42 pm (UTC)

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You know thinking about it...I actually prefer fic where it's clear that no one else understands them and the way they work. They may THINK they get it, but I don't think they really can. I don't think Kara and Lee even understand themselves. Sigh.

I can't think of any off the top of my head. I tried to write this in Terms of Endearment, when Hot Dog, Helo, Racetrack, Gaeta, Dee and Kat all get glimpses but none of them really get it.

But a humorous bit I really enjoy is Sharon's snippet from svilleficrec's Something Pretty (http://svilleficrecs.livejournal.com/25078.html)

Sharon crouched, dripping next to Kara's bunk. "How long are you going to keep this
up?"

"Until it stops being funny."

"So, until you two break down and do it already."

Kara set down her book and presented her friend with two middle fingers. "Now that, that's funny."

"When it happens, we all think it's going to be hilarious."

"Out. Here." She grabbed her conditioner and pushed it into her friend's hand. "Scoot."

"Could you let me know, so I can win some money?"

"I'm not going to justify that with a response. Wait, is there seriously a pool?"

A very wide grin broke across Sharon's face.

Hmm and now I'm thinking of a Kat POV fic that I have to go find...heh

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"Terms of Endearment"!!!!! Forgive me my lapse. My faaavorite part is in the end when Kat sees Kara just say "Lee" and snuggle with him.

I do love that part in "Something Pretty" (which I re-read not too long ago!). Really, anytime the pool is mentioned is just awesome.

Yeah, it's fascinating to me when people don't get them. And like you said, evem when they're sure they do, they really don't anyway. :) Isn't that true of the Gaeta POV you posted? I feel like he says something to the affect of not getting them, but it's been quite some time since I last read it.

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I re-read Something Pretty a lot. A LOT. Heh. It's one of my favorites.

It's sorta true of the Gaeta POV although...I think it's supposed to be more of a moment of understanding them, of finally gettting a glimpse at something that's usually completely private. I guess I prefer fics like Those Journeymen Divine or Periapsis (especially Periapsis) where people don't really get them so they leave them alone. heh.

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Ooh this reminded me of another good one, where Zak sees/knows they love each other. Lint138's Heard This One Before? (http://lint138.livejournal.com/225679.html#cutid1)

He stands in-between the two suddenly feeling very much the third wheel even though it’s his brother meeting his girlfriend, it’s them seeming to forget he’s there.

Then Lee sticks his hand out and says “nice to finally meet you.” Kara doesn’t even hesitate to shake his hand, and it’s almost convincing to the point where Zak wonders if he’s just being paranoid. To let him admit to himself that even though they’re grown up it still feel’s like he’s living in his big brother’s shadow. That he finally has a girl worthy of Lee’s attention, but is still afraid that he will get bested in his affection for her as he had been with so many other things.

Neither Kara nor Lee see these things in him, because they’d have to be looking at him to notice.

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Mmm, yeah. I love Lint's fic.

We could probably do this all day, b/c yours reminded me of

elly427's "Circumstance"!

ETA: I'm too lazy to use the link generator, so I'll just say that the best way to find this fic is with Elly's "fic:BSG" tag. A bit of this fic too:

Zak can't take his eyes off of them, can't stop watching they way they almost glow. He's never been prouder of his brother or his lover, and if he smiles any wider he's going to strain something in his face. He watches, amused, as Kara throws her arms around Lee, and watches as Lee squeezes back, his eyes closed for just a moment.

It's only a moment, and then Lee lets go, but something, some part of something deep inside Zak's chest freezes at the expression on his brother's face.

It's everything and nothing and he watches, suddenly numb, as Kara lets him go to ruffle his hair. There's camaraderie and some sort of connection between the two of them, so obvious a stranger could see it, so obvious he can see it and knows he and Kara have never shared the same between them, despite everything else between them.

Edited Date: 2010-08-20 03:54 pm (UTC)

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Hey you might know the answer to this! Someone wrote a pre-mini/academy kara/zak, lee fic where she's in bed with zak but say's lee's name (he doesn't quite catch it, thinks she says please or something). Any idea who?
It's NOT any of the usual: Circumstance, Decline and Fall, Laws of Gravity, Brief History of Starbuck and Apollo, Ways of Being, etc. etc.

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Oooh. I know I've read that but can't remember where... Let me think about it and get back to you if no one else gets it first. :)

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Just thought: Do we know for sure it isn't Latte's? I know she did some Lee/Kara/Zak stuff, and that's all gone now...

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I can kinda picture the journal, which had customized comment pages, so I don't think so. The writing style was different too.

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stripes13.livejournal.com

I remember reading that, but can't for the life of me remember who it was by or what the title was. I've been looking for it for a while, too

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I hope I'm not violating the spirit of the prompt by giving a long excerpt here, but it's just so lovely, it's my very favorite among the Zak POVs on Lee and Kara. It's from spamdilemma's wonderful Tomorrow's dust (flares into breath) (http://community.livejournal.com/bsg2003fics/285532.html), and I can't recommend it enough -- the story as a whole is a concise, masterful examination of the complicated Adama family dynamics; a subtle character study in the way they love.

~~

You're twenty and Lee's twenty-four and you're out with Kara, out in the open. She's with you, beside you in a small booth opposite Lee, and her hand in yours has never felt anything but right until you look across at Lee looking at Kara looking at him.

You know your brother. You know him. And that look on his face, once you cut it down and cut it down again, there's love written all over.

And as much as you know your brother, he knows you tenfold. So when you duck out under the pretense for fresh air and a dirty smoke, he follows, and this only incenses you more.

"Hey," he tries, but you're having nothing of it.

"How long? Since I started going out with her, or before?"

Lee sighs, and there's a "before" in it, though you can't process that just yet. "Zak, there's nothing there and never has been. You don't have to worry."

"Oh, I'm not worried," you spit out. "I am pissed that you said nothing before now."

"I told you, there's nothing to tell!" And now he's angry, and you can't help but feel glad for it. "It's better that it's you, anyway," Lee says.

You look unseeingly at him. "What the frak does that even mean? You don't assign who you do or do not love, and Kara -"

"She doesn't!" Lee flares up again. "And I could never give her that, like you can."

"It's not so hard, Lee," you say after a moment. "You got to give up something of yourself sooner or later."

He gives you a smile, too wry, but exactly Lee. "I suppose it has to be later."

"Lee, could you just - I need you to be okay with this."

"I am," Lee stresses. "But you don't need my stamp of approval."

"Shut up," you say, "I need yours most of all."

Kara's chosen you, and maybe it makes you a lesser person to value her love more knowing how your brother feels - and refuses to feel. But perhaps it makes you a better person too, when that sense of triumph you thought might take over, does not. There's no winner, nor should there be.

It makes a weird sort of sense, in your mind. You've loved the same people all your lives, why should it be so different here? Lee loves first and you follow.

From:

Could it be? A fic I have not read? Or at least not read in a while. Anyway, thanks for this! I always like Zak's POV b/c Zak...can be pretty much whoever we want him to be, you know? He's such an important person in Kara and Lee's lives but one we really don't know much about, so it's always cool to see how people write him.

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Yes, I agree. Zak is a fascinating challenge because he's so important and so unknown, and this particular story gives him a really wonderful voice. I think you'll like it, if you haven't seen it before :)

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antismiles.livejournal.com

Oh yes, absolutely. That's one of my favorite fics. And actually, I think it was one of the first fics I read in the BSG fandom.

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This has nothing to do with the topic, BUT I'm in a very

sangga kind of mood today!

On the way into work I was thinking about the last lines perfection of Supply and Demand (http://goblok.livejournal.com/tag/bsg):
Kara smiles and holds up an orange in demonstration, spinning it in orbit between them. Then she sees the orange itself, regards the splash of colour with laconic surprise, suspends it next to her face.

“And hey, look. Suns.”

Lee laughs softly, there on her bed.

“And suns,” he agrees.

And he smiles, because he’s not looking at the orange.

I LOVE THAT LAST LINE SO MUCH. ♥ ♥ ♥

And then when I read Heather's post I somehow thought of For Whom It Is Reserved (http://sangga.livejournal.com/263.html#cutid1), where Kara asks to carry the Olympic Carrier slip for a while.

He pulls up the hem of his windbreaker to wipe off perspiration that's stinging his eyes, and a tiny scrap of paper flutters out of his pocket, spins down to the floor like ash, and before he can make a grab she's stooped to retrieve it.

She reads the two words written on the paper, looks at him, looks at the paper again. He stands there, all sweat and hard breath, feeling the colour of discomfiture high on his cheeks. When she looks at him again, he feels obliged to say something. But he doesn't know what he should say that she doesn't already know, and in fact, she doesn't seem to need any words.

She gives him a long measured look, before folding the paper once and slipping it into the pocket of her own jacket.

"Why don't you let me carry this for a while?" she says.

All he can do is blink, and then nod dumbly. She returns her faintest smile, then backs off and starts away again, jogging on ahead, somehow sure that he will follow.

Which he does.

Such great fic writers in this fandom. Sigh.

From:

scifishipper.livejournal.com

You should post that over on

leeadama_daily. It's beautiful. *sighs*

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Oh that's right. It wasn't this Heather's post but YOUR Heather's post. And then I kinda stumbled on the fic by accident because I couldn't remember if it was fanon or I was getting confused about canon! And when I was looking for supply and demand I just kinda stumbled upon it.

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Well, today's topic prompt used the word 'poetry' and I'm always eager to sneak in a few more quotations. These don't really fit "outsider" point of views, per se, but they were certainly written by people far outside the BSG universe :) And they're lovely.

1) This one, by W.H. Auden, sums up pilots to me:

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

2) Dorothy Parker has a very Kara-like voice:

Prophetic Soul

Because your eyes are slant and slow,
Because your hair is sweet to touch,
My heart is high again; but oh,
I doubt if this will get me much.

The Deal

Then if my friendships break and bend,
There’s little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die.

3) Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell, is one of my go-to poets for pilot angst. These particular poems of his I associate strongly with specific fanfic stories, both written by shah_of_blah, actually. The first one is a nice accompaniment to "Portraits," and the second to "The Disappearing Ground." Both are very much about Lee and Kara after the finale:

Interior Portrait

You don't survive in me
because of memories;
nor are you mine because
of a lovely longing's strength.

What does make you present
is the ardent detour
that a slow tenderness
traces in my blood.

I do not need
to see you appear;
being born sufficed for me
to lose you a little less.

Second Duino Elegy

I know,
you touch so blissfully because the caress preserves,
because the place you so tenderly cover
does not vanish; because underneath it
you feel pure duration. So you promise eternity, almost,
from the embrace. And yet, when you have survived
the terror of the first glances, the longing at the window,
and the first walk together, once only, through the garden:
lovers, are you the same? When you lift yourselves up
to each others’ mouths and your lips join, drink against drink:
oh how strangely each drinker seeps away from his action.

Wasn’t love and departure
placed so gently on shoulders that it seemed to be made
of a different substance than in our world? Remember the hands,
how weightlessly they rest...
These self-mastered figures know: “We can go this far,
this is ours, to touch one another this lightly; the gods
can press down harder upon us. But that is the gods’ affair.”

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reginaspina.livejournal.com

Oh, Rachel, my poetry-loving friend - I know I have posted this one here before, but do you know May Sarton's "Leaves Before the wind"? In my head it is the quintessential Kara/Lee poem - especially the part about saying goodbye and returning to one another:

Leaves before the Wind

We have walked, looked at the actual trees:
The chesnut leaves wide-open like a hand,
The beech leaves bronzing under every breeze,
We have felt flowing through our knees

As if we were the wind.

We have sat silent when two horses came,
Jangling their harness, to mow the long grass.
We have sat long and never found a name
For this suspension in the heart of flame

That does not pass.

We have said nothing; we have parted often,
Not looking back, as if departure took
An absolute of will--once not again
(But this is each day's feat, as when

The heart first shook).

Where fervor opens every instant so,
There is no instant that is not a curve,
And we are always coming as we go;
We lean toward the meeting that will show

Love's very nerve.

And so exposed (O leaves before the wind!)
We bear this flowing fire, forever free,
And learn through devious paths to find
The whole, the center, and perhaps unbind

The mystery

Where there are no roots, only fervent leaves,
Nourished on meditations and the air,
Where all that comes is also all that leaves,
And every hope compassionately lives

Close to despair.

- May Sarton

And I have a whole series of icons using Yeat's "Brown Penny" as text because there are so many lovely things in there:

I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

From:

Wow! Thank you so much for sharing these gorgeous poems ~ I was especially astounded by May Sarton's. You're right, its images of air and fire and the way opposite impulses (arrival and departure, hope and despair) draw towards each other like magnets in cyclical tension are so perfect for Kara and Lee. I'm always glad to be introduced to new poems, whenever I find new ones I feel like I'm on a fictional shopping spree! Thanks so much for these!

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How could I have forgotten about "Believe Them to Be True"?!!! I'm so out of it today. :(

Will be back with more info/quotes from that...once I re-read it maybe since it's been a while, hee hee hee.

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nazkey.livejournal.com

I've been trying to find the fic that's from Kat's POV ... the one that starts with "no one knew what THIS was." Anyone? Aside from all the wonderful fics you guys mentioned above (and by the way, Amateur is one of my favorites), that's a really good one too.

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stripes13.livejournal.com

I know that one.....it is, ironically enough called What This Was (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2619710/1/What_This_Was)

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nazkey.livejournal.com

That's the one! You are so wise! Thx bb.

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samstareagle.livejournal.com

This wouldn't happen to be open to an impromptu drabble, would it? :)

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