BSG -- The Remnants of Our Shaking Ghosts
Apr. 28th, 2008 03:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anythingbutgreyi should really be asleep. damn you, muse.
Title: The Remnants of Our Shaking Ghosts
Characters + Ships + Fandom: Jean Barolay, Samuel T. Anders, Kara Thrace, the Buccaneers. Jean/Sam, Kara/Sam. (Battlestar Galactica)
Rated: PG?
Spoilers: Through 'Lay Down Your Burdens'
A/N: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deadduck008, who loves Sam, buccaneers, and PEATTR, the best otp. ♥
Summary: It takes them all a minute to understand what’s happening before the audible click of someone’s screaming.
Sometimes they wonder what made them so damn special that they got to live.
Sometimes they wonder what made them so special they had to be damned to this life.
-
They see the bombs go off before they hear them. An old equation about the speed of light being faster than the speed of sound runs through his mind. Sam was never very good at equations, but he knows about speed, force and mass, acceleration, the angles necessary to throw a pyramid ball just right.
It takes them all a minute to understand what’s happening before the audible click of someone’s screaming. They don’t remember who starts crying first, but they never talk about it.
-
It doesn’t take them long to learn military tactics.
“Just like a pyramid game,” Sue-Shaun breathes, her finger on the trigger.
-
Morris used to run anti-gun marches through Caprica City. After Sam teaches him to shoot straight Morris can’t speak, can’t eat, can’t sleep.
“You need your rest,” Sam says, sitting next to him in the dark. “They could find us soon.”
But Morris doesn’t rest.
-
The day they decide to try to find survivors they fight with screaming words and clenched fists.
“We have no reason to think there's anyone else left,” Rally protests.
“We have no proof there isn't,” Morris shoots back.
“Enough,” Sam says with quiet authority. They don’t know when he fell into leader, and he knows least of all, but it happened, and it stuck, and he hates it.
Jean finishes for him, a firm voice ringing, “We’re going.”
-
It’s hard, and it’s bloody, and people die. People always die. But it’s the first time people die, they haven’t grown numb to blood yet, and Sam throws up in a bush when he thinks no one can see.
Jean sees. She’s seen a lot of things she knows not to talk about. She remembers who cried first long after everyone else forgets.
They come out of it with forming scars and sweaty backs and tormented stomachs, but they come out of it.
“Remember,” Jean says to the people they’ve managed to collect, bloodied and broken in too many ways. “Any day you survive is a good day. Today is a good day.”
The soft echoes of a woman crying over her dead child filters through the crowd, making them shiver. Jean stays perfectly still, like an ice sculpture, the result of someone’s hard labor.
Later, there’s Sam, and, “Do you believe that? Really? Any day where you survive is a good day?”
She shrugs. “It only matters if they believe it. We can handle ourselves. They can’t. Not yet, anyway.”
His hands are calloused on her chin, and his lips catch hers, his tongue both foreign and familiar in that way all men are, his rough touch on her skin making her think this might leave scars.
Luckily, they both already have enough to go around, and a few more won’t hurt.
-
Their legs are tangled together in the morning when Hillard finds them in the woods. His sharp words wake them.
“This is going to get you killed,” he snaps, and they stir with embarrassed blushes tingeing both of their cheeks. They slip their clothes on quietly and try not to think if Hillard is right.
(As it turns out, they’re the ones to survive, in the end. Of course, they don’t know that yet.)
Back at camp, Sue-Shaun laughs, “Where were you?”
Rally smirks.
This is the last time any of them can remember smiling together.
They lose four the next day on a rescue attempt, if anyone can call running from one huddled shelter to another a rescue. That night, over ambrosia, Sam asks, “Jean, is this a good day?”
She grabs the bottle with a stubborn grip. “It’s a good day for you and me, Sam. You can’t think about the sacrifices. Think about yourself. Your life.”
He sighs close to her lips. “You think we’ll survive this? Live to be 80-years-old with fat grandkids and stories about the war they’ll keep fighting?”
She kisses him so she doesn’t have to answer. She’s never been good with the hard questions. Her mother always said she’d be a failure, and Jean met her acceptance onto the Buccaneers with a smirk. But she doesn’t think about her mother anymore.
-
Sam becomes a doctor the day Jean gets shot in the thigh by a chrome-job in the woods.
It was his fault, he thinks with frantic hands, he should have known better than to wander off, and Hillard will be right, it will get her killed, Sam will get her killed –
But he gets the bleeding to slow with wrapped bandages, pulls her back to the camp where there are clean sheets and old sewing supplies, stitches Jean back up with heavy breath. He puts his head in his hands by her bed. She has fallen unconscious, the even breathing patterns the only calming sound he has heard from her since this tumultuous part of their lives began.
He doesn’t know how long he’s there, hand clenching hers, but he lifts his head as a hand lingers through his hair. Jean smiles at him.
“You didn’t think I’d go that easy, did you?” she laughs, and he pretends he can’t hear something shaking in her voice.
Playing along seems best, and he smirks, “Nah. No toaster is taking you out.”
Her smile falls, and she tries to pick it up again, but can’t the upturned corners of her mouth falling out of her fingers. “No,” she says, too quiet. “That’ll be you.”
-
It's just that everything in the world looks different after the first tangible brush with death, and Jean never wants to get there again. Things have to change. Emotions must be dropped like balls of paper, failed manuscripts.
-
The next day, she can’t look at him.
The day after, he can’t look at her.
The lines begin to spread and blur, like watercolors forgotten in the rain, any possibilities erased.
Hillard says, “This is for the best” and eventually they all forget.
Except Jean. Jean never forgets.
-
Kara Thrace smirks her way into their lives weeks later, after Sam learns to look at Jean again, after Jean stops caring (mostly).
Even Jean can’t deny it; Thrace has an air about her. Sam breathes it in.
Jean knows very quickly where the two of them are headed, rushed wedlocks and lustful I love yous over the finest homemade ambrosia anyone can offer these days. They’re knee deep in each other, and the rainy season on Caprica always left sticky mud behind. Sometimes people just snap together like children’s toys. Put enough pieces together and you can build anything: a tower, a palace, a home.
-
When Thrace leaves, Sam stays hidden and silent in his quarters for a full day. It’s the longest any of them go without seeing him, and they can do nothing but pray the Cylons won’t attack.
When Thrace comes back, it’s like seeing someone remember they know how to swim after nearly drowning, the shocked face, the sudden capability to survive. His aim had worsened while Kara was away.
Hidden behind her pistol, Jean sighs.
A bomb goes off. The war ticks on.
*
feedback?
Title: The Remnants of Our Shaking Ghosts
Characters + Ships + Fandom: Jean Barolay, Samuel T. Anders, Kara Thrace, the Buccaneers. Jean/Sam, Kara/Sam. (Battlestar Galactica)
Rated: PG?
Spoilers: Through 'Lay Down Your Burdens'
A/N: For
deadduck008, who loves Sam, buccaneers, and PEATTR, the best otp. ♥Summary: It takes them all a minute to understand what’s happening before the audible click of someone’s screaming.
Sometimes they wonder what made them so damn special that they got to live.
Sometimes they wonder what made them so special they had to be damned to this life.
-
They see the bombs go off before they hear them. An old equation about the speed of light being faster than the speed of sound runs through his mind. Sam was never very good at equations, but he knows about speed, force and mass, acceleration, the angles necessary to throw a pyramid ball just right.
It takes them all a minute to understand what’s happening before the audible click of someone’s screaming. They don’t remember who starts crying first, but they never talk about it.
-
It doesn’t take them long to learn military tactics.
“Just like a pyramid game,” Sue-Shaun breathes, her finger on the trigger.
-
Morris used to run anti-gun marches through Caprica City. After Sam teaches him to shoot straight Morris can’t speak, can’t eat, can’t sleep.
“You need your rest,” Sam says, sitting next to him in the dark. “They could find us soon.”
But Morris doesn’t rest.
-
The day they decide to try to find survivors they fight with screaming words and clenched fists.
“We have no reason to think there's anyone else left,” Rally protests.
“We have no proof there isn't,” Morris shoots back.
“Enough,” Sam says with quiet authority. They don’t know when he fell into leader, and he knows least of all, but it happened, and it stuck, and he hates it.
Jean finishes for him, a firm voice ringing, “We’re going.”
-
It’s hard, and it’s bloody, and people die. People always die. But it’s the first time people die, they haven’t grown numb to blood yet, and Sam throws up in a bush when he thinks no one can see.
Jean sees. She’s seen a lot of things she knows not to talk about. She remembers who cried first long after everyone else forgets.
They come out of it with forming scars and sweaty backs and tormented stomachs, but they come out of it.
“Remember,” Jean says to the people they’ve managed to collect, bloodied and broken in too many ways. “Any day you survive is a good day. Today is a good day.”
The soft echoes of a woman crying over her dead child filters through the crowd, making them shiver. Jean stays perfectly still, like an ice sculpture, the result of someone’s hard labor.
Later, there’s Sam, and, “Do you believe that? Really? Any day where you survive is a good day?”
She shrugs. “It only matters if they believe it. We can handle ourselves. They can’t. Not yet, anyway.”
His hands are calloused on her chin, and his lips catch hers, his tongue both foreign and familiar in that way all men are, his rough touch on her skin making her think this might leave scars.
Luckily, they both already have enough to go around, and a few more won’t hurt.
-
Their legs are tangled together in the morning when Hillard finds them in the woods. His sharp words wake them.
“This is going to get you killed,” he snaps, and they stir with embarrassed blushes tingeing both of their cheeks. They slip their clothes on quietly and try not to think if Hillard is right.
(As it turns out, they’re the ones to survive, in the end. Of course, they don’t know that yet.)
Back at camp, Sue-Shaun laughs, “Where were you?”
Rally smirks.
This is the last time any of them can remember smiling together.
They lose four the next day on a rescue attempt, if anyone can call running from one huddled shelter to another a rescue. That night, over ambrosia, Sam asks, “Jean, is this a good day?”
She grabs the bottle with a stubborn grip. “It’s a good day for you and me, Sam. You can’t think about the sacrifices. Think about yourself. Your life.”
He sighs close to her lips. “You think we’ll survive this? Live to be 80-years-old with fat grandkids and stories about the war they’ll keep fighting?”
She kisses him so she doesn’t have to answer. She’s never been good with the hard questions. Her mother always said she’d be a failure, and Jean met her acceptance onto the Buccaneers with a smirk. But she doesn’t think about her mother anymore.
-
Sam becomes a doctor the day Jean gets shot in the thigh by a chrome-job in the woods.
It was his fault, he thinks with frantic hands, he should have known better than to wander off, and Hillard will be right, it will get her killed, Sam will get her killed –
But he gets the bleeding to slow with wrapped bandages, pulls her back to the camp where there are clean sheets and old sewing supplies, stitches Jean back up with heavy breath. He puts his head in his hands by her bed. She has fallen unconscious, the even breathing patterns the only calming sound he has heard from her since this tumultuous part of their lives began.
He doesn’t know how long he’s there, hand clenching hers, but he lifts his head as a hand lingers through his hair. Jean smiles at him.
“You didn’t think I’d go that easy, did you?” she laughs, and he pretends he can’t hear something shaking in her voice.
Playing along seems best, and he smirks, “Nah. No toaster is taking you out.”
Her smile falls, and she tries to pick it up again, but can’t the upturned corners of her mouth falling out of her fingers. “No,” she says, too quiet. “That’ll be you.”
-
It's just that everything in the world looks different after the first tangible brush with death, and Jean never wants to get there again. Things have to change. Emotions must be dropped like balls of paper, failed manuscripts.
-
The next day, she can’t look at him.
The day after, he can’t look at her.
The lines begin to spread and blur, like watercolors forgotten in the rain, any possibilities erased.
Hillard says, “This is for the best” and eventually they all forget.
Except Jean. Jean never forgets.
-
Kara Thrace smirks her way into their lives weeks later, after Sam learns to look at Jean again, after Jean stops caring (mostly).
Even Jean can’t deny it; Thrace has an air about her. Sam breathes it in.
Jean knows very quickly where the two of them are headed, rushed wedlocks and lustful I love yous over the finest homemade ambrosia anyone can offer these days. They’re knee deep in each other, and the rainy season on Caprica always left sticky mud behind. Sometimes people just snap together like children’s toys. Put enough pieces together and you can build anything: a tower, a palace, a home.
-
When Thrace leaves, Sam stays hidden and silent in his quarters for a full day. It’s the longest any of them go without seeing him, and they can do nothing but pray the Cylons won’t attack.
When Thrace comes back, it’s like seeing someone remember they know how to swim after nearly drowning, the shocked face, the sudden capability to survive. His aim had worsened while Kara was away.
Hidden behind her pistol, Jean sighs.
A bomb goes off. The war ticks on.
*
feedback?
