for whom it is reserved
Wandering stars, for whom it is reserved --
The blackness, the darkness, forever.
Portishead
Protocol dictates that he take point, and then enter last, so he's got one eye on his docking clamps when she throws herself out of her Viper, scrambles down the wing (against regs) and bolts off. Her helmet is, in fact, still spinning on the deck floor when next he looks around. One of the deck crew personnel, on automatic pilot himself, reaches down and snags the helmet.
Still sitting in the cockpit, his first thought is that she can't bear to look at him. But maybe that's not it.
He thinks of collateral damage, and then the word murder comes into his head, it has a gluey, archaic ring to it, and he closes his eyes, tries to dismiss it, but it just won't go away.
It...sticks.
Half-staggering down the ladder, feeling numb, like a wind rustling through hollow bones, someone helping him down the last step maybe. He looks for her but she's gone. Spots Sharon over by the hatch to the flight deck head, she's squatting, back propped against the wall with her jacket gaping open in the front, washed out, and certainly the most tired he's seen her since all this started.
Since it started... he thinks, lightweight and floating somehow. But I finished it. I pulled the trigger. I finished it.
When he walks over Sharon has already anticipated him, so he doesn't even have to ask, which is at least an energy saver, and Sharon closes her eyes and jerks a thumb to back behind her.
"She's in there."
"Is she all right?" he asks, trying to keep some low-key detachment in his voice but no one's really gonna blame him if it's just way too much effort.
Sharon makes a gesture somewhere between a shake and a shrug, and he squints in confusion, decides that if it comes down to it he's seen worse than Starbuck pissing. Opens the hatch and steps in.
The sound alerts him before he even catches sight of her in a stall, doubled over a toilet with one hand on the wall for support.
"Kara, what are you --"
"Puking, sir," she gasps, and then tips forward to heave again, and then again, face like ashes and nothing coming up but stringy water.
And he thinks towel, but more importantly balance, and he steps forward and reaches quickly to slip an arm around her waist before she goes into the bowl headfirst.
She coughs, gags again, dry heaves a couple more times. Her eyes are shut and slime drips out her nose, and she wipes her shiny face with her hand.
"Well, this is attractive," she gargles, before spitting a couple of times and trying to get her breath back. She's still got her hand on the wall, so he thinks it's safe and lets her go to grab a handtowel off one of the washbasins. She hasn't even got the energy to look grateful, so it's just relief and wiping off and blowing her nose a few times. He can see that the effort of vomiting has made her break out in a sweat.
She's leaning against the wall of the cubicle now, loosened flight suit, Death warmed over, and he leans back too, and they stare at each other for a second.
"I hate stims," she says finally.
"You told me."
"Well now you know why."
He wants to curl up on the floor of the stall but that's not gonna happen, he keeps pushing himself just that extra mile.
"You fired," he says heavily. "You followed through."
"Yes," she nods, slow and careful, trying to avoid a repeat performance at the toilet.
"You said no way. But you fired."
"Moral support."
"Do you -" and he has to stop because his voice is cracking, until he clears his throat, tries again. "Do you think it was the right thing?"
And she doesn't bullshit him, doesn't reassure or patronize, just spears him with her dog-tired psycho eyes, forcing him to keep standing, to match her strength for strength, will for will.
"I guess, in 33 minutes, we'll find out," she says.
Two days later she catches him sitting at the table in officer's, with the thick wad of printout in front of him. And she takes it straight out of his hands -- the last name he sees is Magdala, Vita (31), landscape designer; 2 dependents, Core (6), Rayna (2) -- and she doesn't even look at it, just frowns hard at him.
"Don't."
"I was just --"
"Don't," she repeats, and walks over to the waste disposal unit, springs the release, chucks the passenger manifest in, closes it up.
And he's angry for a second -- anger, something, something like that, he doesn't know what he feels -- and then when she's staring over at him, he can't... He bites his lip.
"Did you look in the windows? Did you see anybody?"
"No," she says seriously, firmly. "And neither did you."
And he swallows and nods.
"Right." He has to blink and look away. "Right."
Pilots, deck crew, repair workers. They're all spaced around the flight deck, and Kara's pacing, bizarrely, a kind of slow zombie two-step -- one, two, turn; one, two, turn. She probably doesn't have enough strength in her legs to pace properly. And then the alarm goes -- everyone looks up.
And then the clocks all start ticking into 34. And then 35. And then 36...
It's strange because there's no rejoicing, there's no claps or whoops, everyone's just...staring. Watching the clocks waste through another minute, and then another. Looking at each other, glancing, gauging. It's not until the disembodied voice rings through the deck, saying that the alert status has been downgraded...only then do people start to smile, to sigh, to fall in a heap some of them, to shake a fist.
Kara slips one hand up to her armpit, turns a little unsteadily, keeps walking. He decides to intervene. As he approaches she looks up blearily and speaks.
"Well I guess we know."
And he realises she's right, they do know, but it doesn't really make him feel solid again. And there's other things to deal with now.
"Kara," he says, coming closer. "Kara, stop pacing. It's over. Stop pacing."
"Can't," she says, her eyes back on the floor. One, two, turn.
Watching her makes him want to grit his teeth.
"Kara -- rack. Now. That's an order."
"Stims," she says breathlessly, teeth chattering. "Frakking stims."
So he takes her by the arm and walks with her, all the way to officer's quarters, pushes her into a bunk, then exerts himself hauling up the ladder to his own bed. It feels like mountain climbing.
He hears her tossing and punching her pillow below, then his eyes drag down and, with an overwhelming sense of relief, he disappears.
It's at the end of the third day, or no, maybe it's the fourth day -- yes, early on the fourth day, something like 167 jumps, 167 patrols down, when things are really starting to hot up, wear thin, cut deep, when he can look around the briefing room and see how the adrenaline edge has long worn off, and now people are surviving on the rigidity of schedule, fear of death, loss of loved ones...
And stimulants.
And he's talking, it's the end of The Talk, when he still had enough sense to say 'good hunting' instead of some lame spiel about being careful and staying alive. He looks over every face in the room, assessing, only his dull-burning eyes keep travelling back, and travelling back, again and again, to her. And he rubs his hand over his face as he speaks, feeling the weariness embedded in him, so thick and heavy it makes his joints ache, and thinking for an hysterical second that she looks like a cadaver -- white lips and thin cheeks, sunk in her seat, rationing only enough energy to listen and watch, eyes flicking over him...
He realizes that she's really looking at him, examining him, and he has no idea why. Sizing him up? Assessing his level of fatigue, his professional character, his stamina -- can he do the job, bring them home, get them all out in one piece?
The very thought of being regarded, being quantified by her in this way, makes his back stand straighter.
And it's not until later, days later, until now, in fact, that he realizes that the expression on her face was simply a mirror of his own. That she was checking on him, looking out for him, caring about him even, and he had been so tired and defensive that he'd interpreted it as a questioning of his ability. So he had firmed his jaw and stood resolute, and tried to give the massed troops the impression I am capable, I will get you through this, and that perhaps this was the reaction from him she'd been banking on all along.
He jerks awake half an hour later. Which is only to be expected.
His first thought is oh frak, that's he's missed the flight call for incoming attack. His second thought is oh frak, there's no call, no attack, because he killed 1300 civilians to prevent it. And his third thought is oh frak, that he's still so frakking tired, that he could sleep for a year, that missed sleep can never really be made up, that it just adds another layer of heaviness to your body, another weight to drag around, day in day out.
And then he thinks -- Kara.
He rolls and looks over the edge of his bunk, and of course her rack is empty. So he groans softly, and crawls out of his warm bed and goes hunting.
She's not in the squad bunkroom, or the ready room, or the head, or the mess. He takes a stab on her not being in CIC, then goes to the only other place he thinks she might haunt.
"Hey, have you seen --"
Cally, exhausted but chipper, not off-duty for another hour, points towards the repair bay.
"She's over there, under Viper 12. She's checking the valves."
He's a bit flabbergasted.
"Did she happen to mention that she's off rotation? I saw her thirty minutes ago and she could barely see straight, but you're letting her handle Viper repairs?"
Cally shrugs, apologetic, caught in the crossfire between two superior officers.
"She said she was wired, that she needed something to focus on..." She shrugs again. "Respectfully, sir, the Chief would have doublechecked her work anyway."
He snorts, then nods wearily.
"Okay, fine. I'll go get her out of your way."
He walks there, edging around a couple of injured birds and a catastrophe of parts and equipment, and there's her legs, sticking out from underneath the Viper.
"Kara."
He doesn't get a response and he thinks that it's typical, she's either so totally involved in what she's doing, or so completely absorbed in Kara's World, or so utterly brain-fryingly exhausted that she doesn't even return his hail, so he tries again.
"Kara."
And then he nudges her foot, which flops back to the same position --
And then he gets it. So he squats down to check, before getting on his hands and knees and crawling in under the Viper, scooting up next to her where she's lying, with her head rolled back, mouth open, snoring gently, one hand resting on her belly and one hand, next to him, still loosely gripping a slim metal shifter.
He looks at her eyes -- closed now, powered down -- and the deep dark etchings of tiredness and grief around them. The skin of her cheek, where the silver tracks are drying slowly in the chill air of the deck. He sees that her hands are worn, her fingers all faintly callused, smears of grease still lodged inside the lines there. He reaches out tentatively and smoothes a finger over the nail of her thumb, the one resting on her stomach, the one that pressed the trigger. She doesn't stir.
And he thinks about moral support, and he thinks about how he's only ever killed Cylons until now, and he thinks -- he thinks --
Gods, he doesn't know what he thinks.
He takes a breath, and sighs it out, long and slow. And he thinks about how he's gonna get Kara out from under the Viper and back to her rack without waking her up.
"Run with me," she says.
Five days later and he hears the buzz of her alarm, muffled by the curtain below, and he listens to her stir and sigh into wakefulness, and then the soft muted sounds of preparations -- a quick trip to the head, shorts, shoes, windbreaker zip -- and then she is at eye-level. Run with me, she says, and he can hardly refuse because it's been over a week and here he is, at 0430, just staring at the ceiling again. So this will be a break from the insomniac routine, and who knows, it might even do him some good. He's not on shift for hours anyway.
They warm up together in the corridor, stretch and sway, push against the walls.
"You done?" she asks, and he is, he nods, still blinking fatigue away and hoping for the best.
It's a good thing that Kara starts at a hard pace, because he makes an early break, hands bunched into fists, running like the souls of the damned are nipping at his heels.
They make a full lap before he starts to flag. And then, after the initial desperate burst of energy deserts him, he feels like he's dying, all heavy bone and sluggish blood. He just can't get any power in his legs. His shoulders are sagging. It's like someone has attached a lead-rope to the small of his back, and he pulls against it, strains, hears his breathing lose fluency, become jagged and strained. There's no lift in his stride, only thirty pound weights at ankles and wrists, and before he even realises what he's doing he slows, staggers, comes to a stop. When she breaks speed, turns and jogs back to him, it's all he can do to lean against the wall and gasp an admonition.
"Don't..." He waves ineffectually. "Don't stop. Go on, I'm...don't worry about it. I just...I can't..."
And he gives up and lets the cold metal of the bulkhead sear at his shoulder, drops his head, fighting for breath.
"Lead-foot morning, huh?"
He raises his eyes enough to look at her. She's sweating, breathing hard, but she looks collected, in and of herself. Her hair is drying at the ends, escaping haphazardly from where she's scraped it back, and her face is dark and glowing, full of concern. Big eyes, inquiring. If she stays with him too long she'll cool down, which isn't any good. He drops his head again, still puffing.
"It's okay. You go. Don't wait."
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. First, jogging. Then, loping. Then --
Running. Slam of footfalls against the deck, burn in his midriff clear and bright, perspiration on his face, down his cheek, almost like tears, and he clenches and unclenches his hands, shakes his shoulders, shifts in the hips.
The rasp of his breath is like a choked cry, his legs start to throb again but he is running, bolting, careering down the corridors. He catches up with her at the next turn, and she matches his serious, triumphant glance before she bursts out laughing, and it's the break he needs to slip in front - body working, hands raised, feeling something rip and tear, his heart breaking, or the winner's ribbon splitting against his chest, all the bittersweet victories playing out in his head as he lifts his chin, like the sun in his face -
Finish line.