![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaSo here's the first of the three prompts I got for More Joy Day. The original idea was to write three very short drabbles or something over the weekend, but then the weekend got busy and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frolicndetour's prompt turned into a 3,500 word...thing (I hesitate to suggest it has enough plot to qualify as a story).
Title: Live [Wireless] at the Helice Opera House
Word Count: Approx 3,500
Spoilers: Through 4x17 though it takes place in some wonderful, yet indeterminate AU where 4.5 wasn't something I wished would die in a fire.
Pairing: Kara/Sam
Summary: Hera and Kara babysit Sam. Bad things happen, good things happen and there is an Opera House.
Live [Wireless] from the Helice Opera House
Seventy-eight times a minute, the green bar on the monitor spiked in time to the electronic rhythm of Sam's heart. Kara felt it through his chest, heard it like a metronome, in time with the piano in the tape deck.
Where did you learn to play that song? Who taught you that?
From the speakers, her father ran through a syncopated series of chromatic notes, and came out at the other end with a new tempo and key.
I played it as a kid, my father...
Sam's heart slowed to an andante beat so softly Kara barely noticed. In her entire world, the only thing that made sense was the rhythm, in her husband and the piano.
Daniel, Ellen had said. Oh my Lord, Daniel was your father.
Dutifully, Kara had tried to react – to feel something other than the numb asystole of indifference. A final puzzle piece in place revealing a picture that changed nothing. Half-cylon. Half-dead. She wished they would all leave; if they did, perhaps the space beside her on the piano bench would no longer be empty.
Instead Ellen hugged her as if she loved her.
Kara remembered saying, “Thanks,” and “I have to go.”
Kara remembered stumbling down to the infirmary with her tape deck and her father's double album and curling up on the chest of the only Cylon who didn't want something from her.
In the live recording, her father wrapped up one piece and moved on to Nomian's third sonata, second movement.
The sound of Helo screaming drowned out everything after the fifth bar.
The front of his uniform was soaked in blood; his daughter was in his arms.
“Sharon!” he was yelling. “Where is she? Where's my wife? Sharon!”
Hera was crying; Helo's voice was raw, like he'd been yelling the entire way here. Kara was sick as she remembered, not ten minutes ago, a trauma had been brought in. She remembered Cottle and Ishay spitting medical terms, calling for blood, the sound of a gurney rolling past, towards the operating theatre. She'd ignored it. It had never occurred to her it had been someone with a name.
“You frakking let me in there! You let me in! Get your frakking hands off me!”
Kara scrambled from Sam's bed. “Helo,” she said, “Karl,” she wrapped her hands around his enormous biceps, gently pulling him away from the small nurse blocking his way through the plastic curtain that led to the OR. He didn't move.
“She's my wife Kara, it's Sharon, don't you understand?”
“I know, Karl,” she said. “But you need to let Doc Cottle work. Why don't you,” she struggled for words, wondering how exactly you lied to someone and told them their spouse was coming out of that theatre intact.
She turned to the nurse. He was a short, thin man with a buzzcut. “When Sam was having his first operation, they let me scrub in,” she said. “Can he do that?”
The nurse looked nervous. Caught between Helo and the Doc, Kara wasn't entirely sure she blamed him. “You can at least ask,” Kara said, softly. “It's his wife, for gods' sakes.”
He still seemed uncertain, but he said, “All right. I'll check. But if the answer's no, Captain, the answer's no, I'm sorry.”
Karl closed his eyes, squeezing out tears, and nodded. “Okay,” he said.
“If you head over there, Michelle will get you costumed and scrubbed up and if the Doc says so, I'll come fetch you.”
“Kara?” Helo asked, and Kara almost wished he was still yelling, he sounded so small. “Can you take Hera?”
“Sure,” Kara said. “Sure, I'll watch her.” She took the crying child and hoisted her against her hip. “Karl?” she asked, tentatively.
“Yeah?”
“What happened?”
“Boomer,” Helo said. “Boomer happened. She tried to take Hera. It...it would have worked too. I would have thought she was Sharon – my Sharon – if I hadn't seen the blood. From under the bathroom stall, I just, it was just this trickle, you know? And at first I just thought, maybe someone tried to hurt themselves? Because since Earth... But when I found her, Starbuck, there was so much blood. Gods. And Boomer ran off, I knew she must have wanted Hera, but there was no one to sound the alarm. I went after her. I got her – don't worry, I got her; had to knock her out before she quit fighting me. But I had to run two corridors before I found anyone to raise the alarm, to get Sharon. What if I waited too long?”
He put his hands to his cheeks and pulled them down, either side of his nose, over his mouth. “What if she's not okay?”
Hera wept, more quietly now, into Kara's shoulder. Helo let out a shuddering sob.
Kara understood, finally, how to tell that lie. You just did it. “It's gonna be okay, Karl,” she said. “Go put on your scrubs.”
Kara waited with Helo until the nurse came back and told him that he could go in, but that if he puked, fainted or started yelling, he'd be out or facing charges.
She took Hera back to Sam's bedside and held her until she fell into a fitful, hiccuping sleep. Eventually Kara dozed off too, the bleep of the heart monitor and the hypnotic rhythm of the bass piano line wrapped around her like a comforter.
When she woke up, it was to the dull click--click--click--click-- of the tape's end as it tried and failed to spool forward. Hera was curled into a ball with her back to Sam's hip. Her eyes were open. They looked pretty red-rimmed, but she wasn't crying.
“Hey,” Kara whispered, still groggy. “You sleep good?”
Hera sniffed.
“Yeah.” Kara agreed. She glanced around; a nurse ran past carrying a bag of blood, heading into the operating theatre and there was no sign of Helo.
“C'mere,” she reached over and pulled Hera onto her lap.
“Sleeping,” Hera said, pointing at Sam. “Sam.”
“Yup, that's my Sammy,” she said, flatly. “He's, uh. I guess he's your...”
She trailed off, wondering exactly what Sam was to her. What she and Hera were to each other. It felt more real, now, with the girl in her arms. Half-robot. It was absurd. She sure as hell didn't feel like she had a hard drive for a brain, or like she could stick wires in her arms and talk to computers. She'd sat for Hera before; the kid was normal. She drew, she played with broken toys Helo scrounged from the Fleet. She liked crawling into the laundry basket and pretending it was a ship. It was easy to put stuff into a part of your brain where you just didn't think about it. Her lip curled a little; like a passworded directory, she supposed. Like that one time Hera had drawn circles in blue and yellow and red, and Kara had stolen the picture and ripped it to pieces.
Sam had made Athena. Sort of, somewhere down the line. Maybe not this Athena, but the first one – the first Eight. And he'd made her father. Seven. She shivered. It was... She shook her head.
“Let's just say he's your uncle. It's less creepy that way.”
Hera pulled herself back onto the bed, crawled to the top and kissed Sam on the temple. “Sweet dreams,” she said. “Tuck you in,” she said, tugging at the blanket, pulling it up so high, his feet were exposed and it covered half his face.
Kara smiled, faintly. “You're the babysitter now, huh?”
“Sleeping,” Hera said, tucking Sam in some more, breaking off into a stream of toddler half-words. “Cus when there's sleepin' there's sweet dreams and then its tuck you in then story time then bathroom then more story.”
Hera sniffed. “Story time now.”
“I don't know any, kid. At least, none I could safely tell you.”
“Story.”
“I told you, I don't know any.”
Hera looked like she might cry. Kara felt like a total ass. What else was the girl going to do but try and hold onto something familiar? She pressed her fingers against her eyes and wiped the sleep out of them.
“Okay,” she said. “I tell you what. When I was little, like you, and I couldn't sleep, my Daddy would play music for me, instead of stories. I have a tape of him right here.” She gestured to the ancient tape deck, still slowly clicking as the tape spooled with nothing left to play.
Hera looked dubious. Kara reached for the machine.
“No!” Hera yelled. “I do it.”
“You?”
“I wanna.”
“Okay,” Kara lifted her from the bed and showed her how to press the eject button, flip the cassette and close the lid. “Now,” she said. “Press play.”
Hera pressed fast-forward.
“No,” Kara said, pressing stop. “This one – play.”
Hera frowned and pressed fast-forward again. “This one.”
“There's no sound, kid. You need to make it play.”
Hera wiped her nose with the back of her hand, then pressed the play button. There was the warped sound of a tape going from fast-forward to play too quickly, and then it settled into her father's piano concert.
It took her a minute to realise exactly what he was playing. That frakking song. Except this time it didn't make her feel happy and sad all at the same time; this time it just made her feel sick.
“Hera,” she started.
“No!” the girl answered. “My song!”
They sat, staring at each other, silently as the piano built into the hammering rhythm that preceded the lyrics. An electric current rippled across Kara's skin; the hairs on her arms were humming.
“This way,” Hera whispered and jumped from her lap.
Kara knew, rationally, she was the adult in charge, she needed to grab Hera and keep her here. But there was a pull in her heart. Hera was right, it was this way. They went.
Hera ran to keep up with Kara's swift strides as they traversed corridors and rounded corners. They reached a ladder so Kara picked up the toddler and carried her. Hera squirmed until she let her go, then flat out sprinted, so fast she seemed completely unstable and Kara was surprised she didn't topple entirely. She finally slowed in front of a metal hatch that Kara couldn't help but feel ought to look grander than it did. She crouched to pick up Hera, and when she rose again, instead of the hatch, she saw a pair of white, wooden double-doors.
They went in. It was an Opera House. Red seats filled the auditorium. There was a balcony above them, a stage ahead, and on the stage was Dreilide Thrace, exactly as he was on the cover of the album. Long hair and the bowler hat Kara just barely remembered from her childhood.
With a flourish, he threw down the final note of the piece, lifting his index finger and blowing on it.
He turned to the audience, but Kara was surprised to note that he wasn't looking at her. He was looking at two people sat in the first row.
“Well?” he said.
“Not bad,” Sam answered. Kara's heart leapt. “I like the improvisation in the bridge; you added that.”
Dreilide (Daniel? Seven?) shrugged the shrug of a confident man.
Kara began to run forward, immediately recognising the back of her husband's head and shoulders above the velvet seat. She reached the front row, looked along it, and saw that sat next to him was Athena, in her flightsuit, with a very vacant expression.
“Mommy!” Hera squealed, escaping from Kara's grasp and running to her mother.
Athena picked her up with a kind of absent automation. “Hey, baby,” she said blearily. “I'm...” she looked as if she was trying to figure something, but gave up and settled for readjusting her daughter in her lap. For her part, Hera curled up and looked completely content.
Kara had no idea what to do with herself.
Her father saved her from the trouble of deciding. “Kara!” he smiled, standing up and walking over to her. It wasn't an urgent walk, not the walk of a man who felt bad about abandoning his only kid. For years, Kara had wanted nothing more than to have him back, but now that he was here – embracing her like they were old acquaintances meeting thanks to happy chance – she found she was angry.
“What the hell is all this?” she hissed, and didn't hug him back.
“This is the Helice Opera House,” he answered, stepping back, but leaving his hands on her shoulders. “And I'm proud of you, kid, you grew up good.”
“That's not an answer, and it's no thanks to you.”
“Yeah, I know. I'm sorry about that, Cavil never really gave me the chance to stick around long enough to see it for real. Still,” he said cheerfully. “What a great location for a family reunion!”
Kara felt herself breathing more quickly, a bursting feeling in her chest. She had that stomach-ice she only ever got when she was pretending to everyone she wasn't upset about something. Desperately, and feeling not unlike the seven year old who would have recognised this version of her father as a good man, who hadn't (yet) abandoned her, she glanced over to Sam.
He smiled at her. “I missed you, baby.”
“Sam,” she whispered. “What's going on? Please. I don't get it.”
Dreilide took his hat off and spun it between his palms.
“Come sit with me,” Sam said. “Daniel'll play us another song – something original this time, Dan, stop ripping off my work! - and I'll do my best to clear this up.”
Kara did so, stepping past Hera and her still-vacant mother, as her father started playing the second movement of the piece they'd been composing in Joe's Bar.
“Now you're ripping off Kara's work too?” Sam heckled, good-naturedly.
“Sam. Cut it out and tell me what the frak all this is.”
He nodded, more serious now, and suddenly far sadder. “This isn't real,” he said.
“Yeah,” Kara bit. “I gathered that. He's dead, she might be dead and you're a vegetable.” She regretted the words immediately. “Sam,” she said. “I didn't mean that.”
“I know. Kara, I'm so sorry about what happened, I should've seen that guy coming and then after, when I got all the memories back – I shouldn't have put off the surgery. Maybe if I hadn't...”
“Hey,” Kara said. “Hey, stop it. Just...just stop it. It happened. It's frakking done with. We just...we go from here.”
He nodded.
“That's not really my dad, is it?”
“No.”
“I mean, he's nothing like the guy I met in Joe's. I kind of don't think either of them are like my dad really was.”
“You project him because you miss him. Because a part of you has always known what you are, Kara, just like a part of me always knew. But he's just a projection.”
“How do you even know about that? About what happened in the bar?”
“I can hear you, Kara. When you come to sick bay, you talk to me. It helps. Thank you for that.”
The relief Kara felt, that, even though she knew this entire experience could be some psychotic break or drug induced hallucination, that this might be proof Sam wasn't lost, washed over her like the wave of fear she hadn't allowed herself to contemplate since Ishay had told her there were no brainwaves. She found she didn't have anything to say. She was glad when Sam continued to speak. “In the bar, you weren't ready to remember him. Now, you are and you're angry. So he's...”
“Treating it like it was no big deal. Acting like he never gave it a second thought like I was always afraid of, yeah, I get it. No need to trawl through my entire subconscious.”
“Technically,” Sam said. “This is your subconscious. It's all of our subconscious.”
Kara arched an eyebrow.
“Think about it this way,” Sam continued. “What are dreams? They're basically just programs your brain runs while you're asleep to make sense of the day. But a program needs an operating environment; a way to interface with the hardware – something to launch it.”
“This...is a giant bootloader for my dreams?”
“It's not normally accessible on any conscious level, because it's function is to facilitate more useful subconscious processes. But when we fall into truly extreme states of unconsciousness – moments between life and death and...” he looked rueful. “States that aren't exactly either, this is where we end up. I'm too dead to dream, Starbuck.”
“Don't say that,” she said. “Don't say that. You're gonna wake up. You're gonna be fine, Sam.” She opened her mouth to say something else but stopped; her voice would crack, she could tell.
Sam closed his eyes for a moment before continuing. “Our, uh, native wireless networking capabilities allow us to share the environment to a degree, over short distances,” he said. “It's an ability you and Hera seem to have inherited.”
“It's so weird, hearing you talk like that.”
“Yeah. I guess for you it is. I'm sorry.”
“No. No it's okay. You're not the same you anymore. But I'm not the same me either.”
He nodded.
She said, “I found my body on Earth. My real, dead body.”
He nodded, slower this time, like he was thinking.
“I still love you,” he said.
“But you don't have an answer?”
“You and me, Kara,” he said. “I don't think we were ever gonna find our answers in each other. All I know is about the past, baby. That's where my questions were. You're meant for bigger things than that. All I can do is love you along the way, not make it easy.”
“Gods, when did you get to be such a philosopher?”
“Two thousand years ago,” he smiled.
They sat, quietly, for a time. Hera shifting on Athena's lap, Athena sometimes humming and off-key lullaby that clashed with the piano, rolling low along the bass clef.
Finally, Kara spoke. “Me and Hera – we're not dying, or in a coma, are we? That's not why we're here, right?”
Sam shook his head. “I think the song acted as a powerful hypnotic trigger. I think you're both probably unconscious next to my bed in sickbay. But why that is is a question you'll have to ask the someone who knows why Hera drew that song in the first place. And that's someone who isn't me.”
“Figures,” Kara said.
“But I am so glad to see you,” he smiled.
“Me too,” she felt her mouth forming a grin, the first genuine grin in a longer time than she cared to count. It only lasted for a moment, but it set something free in her chest.
She glanced back to Athena. “She looks in a worse state than you.”
“The opposite, actually. She hasn't fully fallen into this part of her mind yet, that's why she's confused. She's fighting it. She's strong. We made the them all strong, but Sharon was always the most determined. Even John had nothing on her.”
“Will it help – seeing Hera? Remind her what she's got to fight for?”
“I hope so.”
Reluctantly, Kara said, “We oughta go – if we really are unconscious I don't want to freak everyone out. Helo might be back any minute.”
Sam nodded. “I'm coming back, Kara, I am,” he said. “Don't give up on me.”
“Never,” Kara said, and kissed him, hand at the back of his neck, eyes squeezed tight as she forced herself to imagine the sickbay, the feel of the hard, plastic chair, the sound of the heart monitor and the click--click--click--click-- of a tape deck that had once again reached the end of its run.
frolicndetour's prompt turned into a 3,500 word...thing (I hesitate to suggest it has enough plot to qualify as a story). Title: Live [Wireless] at the Helice Opera House
Word Count: Approx 3,500
Spoilers: Through 4x17 though it takes place in some wonderful, yet indeterminate AU where 4.5 wasn't something I wished would die in a fire.
Pairing: Kara/Sam
Summary: Hera and Kara babysit Sam. Bad things happen, good things happen and there is an Opera House.
Live [Wireless] from the Helice Opera House
Seventy-eight times a minute, the green bar on the monitor spiked in time to the electronic rhythm of Sam's heart. Kara felt it through his chest, heard it like a metronome, in time with the piano in the tape deck.
Where did you learn to play that song? Who taught you that?
From the speakers, her father ran through a syncopated series of chromatic notes, and came out at the other end with a new tempo and key.
I played it as a kid, my father...
Sam's heart slowed to an andante beat so softly Kara barely noticed. In her entire world, the only thing that made sense was the rhythm, in her husband and the piano.
Daniel, Ellen had said. Oh my Lord, Daniel was your father.
Dutifully, Kara had tried to react – to feel something other than the numb asystole of indifference. A final puzzle piece in place revealing a picture that changed nothing. Half-cylon. Half-dead. She wished they would all leave; if they did, perhaps the space beside her on the piano bench would no longer be empty.
Instead Ellen hugged her as if she loved her.
Kara remembered saying, “Thanks,” and “I have to go.”
Kara remembered stumbling down to the infirmary with her tape deck and her father's double album and curling up on the chest of the only Cylon who didn't want something from her.
In the live recording, her father wrapped up one piece and moved on to Nomian's third sonata, second movement.
The sound of Helo screaming drowned out everything after the fifth bar.
The front of his uniform was soaked in blood; his daughter was in his arms.
“Sharon!” he was yelling. “Where is she? Where's my wife? Sharon!”
Hera was crying; Helo's voice was raw, like he'd been yelling the entire way here. Kara was sick as she remembered, not ten minutes ago, a trauma had been brought in. She remembered Cottle and Ishay spitting medical terms, calling for blood, the sound of a gurney rolling past, towards the operating theatre. She'd ignored it. It had never occurred to her it had been someone with a name.
“You frakking let me in there! You let me in! Get your frakking hands off me!”
Kara scrambled from Sam's bed. “Helo,” she said, “Karl,” she wrapped her hands around his enormous biceps, gently pulling him away from the small nurse blocking his way through the plastic curtain that led to the OR. He didn't move.
“She's my wife Kara, it's Sharon, don't you understand?”
“I know, Karl,” she said. “But you need to let Doc Cottle work. Why don't you,” she struggled for words, wondering how exactly you lied to someone and told them their spouse was coming out of that theatre intact.
She turned to the nurse. He was a short, thin man with a buzzcut. “When Sam was having his first operation, they let me scrub in,” she said. “Can he do that?”
The nurse looked nervous. Caught between Helo and the Doc, Kara wasn't entirely sure she blamed him. “You can at least ask,” Kara said, softly. “It's his wife, for gods' sakes.”
He still seemed uncertain, but he said, “All right. I'll check. But if the answer's no, Captain, the answer's no, I'm sorry.”
Karl closed his eyes, squeezing out tears, and nodded. “Okay,” he said.
“If you head over there, Michelle will get you costumed and scrubbed up and if the Doc says so, I'll come fetch you.”
“Kara?” Helo asked, and Kara almost wished he was still yelling, he sounded so small. “Can you take Hera?”
“Sure,” Kara said. “Sure, I'll watch her.” She took the crying child and hoisted her against her hip. “Karl?” she asked, tentatively.
“Yeah?”
“What happened?”
“Boomer,” Helo said. “Boomer happened. She tried to take Hera. It...it would have worked too. I would have thought she was Sharon – my Sharon – if I hadn't seen the blood. From under the bathroom stall, I just, it was just this trickle, you know? And at first I just thought, maybe someone tried to hurt themselves? Because since Earth... But when I found her, Starbuck, there was so much blood. Gods. And Boomer ran off, I knew she must have wanted Hera, but there was no one to sound the alarm. I went after her. I got her – don't worry, I got her; had to knock her out before she quit fighting me. But I had to run two corridors before I found anyone to raise the alarm, to get Sharon. What if I waited too long?”
He put his hands to his cheeks and pulled them down, either side of his nose, over his mouth. “What if she's not okay?”
Hera wept, more quietly now, into Kara's shoulder. Helo let out a shuddering sob.
Kara understood, finally, how to tell that lie. You just did it. “It's gonna be okay, Karl,” she said. “Go put on your scrubs.”
Kara waited with Helo until the nurse came back and told him that he could go in, but that if he puked, fainted or started yelling, he'd be out or facing charges.
She took Hera back to Sam's bedside and held her until she fell into a fitful, hiccuping sleep. Eventually Kara dozed off too, the bleep of the heart monitor and the hypnotic rhythm of the bass piano line wrapped around her like a comforter.
When she woke up, it was to the dull click--click--click--click-- of the tape's end as it tried and failed to spool forward. Hera was curled into a ball with her back to Sam's hip. Her eyes were open. They looked pretty red-rimmed, but she wasn't crying.
“Hey,” Kara whispered, still groggy. “You sleep good?”
Hera sniffed.
“Yeah.” Kara agreed. She glanced around; a nurse ran past carrying a bag of blood, heading into the operating theatre and there was no sign of Helo.
“C'mere,” she reached over and pulled Hera onto her lap.
“Sleeping,” Hera said, pointing at Sam. “Sam.”
“Yup, that's my Sammy,” she said, flatly. “He's, uh. I guess he's your...”
She trailed off, wondering exactly what Sam was to her. What she and Hera were to each other. It felt more real, now, with the girl in her arms. Half-robot. It was absurd. She sure as hell didn't feel like she had a hard drive for a brain, or like she could stick wires in her arms and talk to computers. She'd sat for Hera before; the kid was normal. She drew, she played with broken toys Helo scrounged from the Fleet. She liked crawling into the laundry basket and pretending it was a ship. It was easy to put stuff into a part of your brain where you just didn't think about it. Her lip curled a little; like a passworded directory, she supposed. Like that one time Hera had drawn circles in blue and yellow and red, and Kara had stolen the picture and ripped it to pieces.
Sam had made Athena. Sort of, somewhere down the line. Maybe not this Athena, but the first one – the first Eight. And he'd made her father. Seven. She shivered. It was... She shook her head.
“Let's just say he's your uncle. It's less creepy that way.”
Hera pulled herself back onto the bed, crawled to the top and kissed Sam on the temple. “Sweet dreams,” she said. “Tuck you in,” she said, tugging at the blanket, pulling it up so high, his feet were exposed and it covered half his face.
Kara smiled, faintly. “You're the babysitter now, huh?”
“Sleeping,” Hera said, tucking Sam in some more, breaking off into a stream of toddler half-words. “Cus when there's sleepin' there's sweet dreams and then its tuck you in then story time then bathroom then more story.”
Hera sniffed. “Story time now.”
“I don't know any, kid. At least, none I could safely tell you.”
“Story.”
“I told you, I don't know any.”
Hera looked like she might cry. Kara felt like a total ass. What else was the girl going to do but try and hold onto something familiar? She pressed her fingers against her eyes and wiped the sleep out of them.
“Okay,” she said. “I tell you what. When I was little, like you, and I couldn't sleep, my Daddy would play music for me, instead of stories. I have a tape of him right here.” She gestured to the ancient tape deck, still slowly clicking as the tape spooled with nothing left to play.
Hera looked dubious. Kara reached for the machine.
“No!” Hera yelled. “I do it.”
“You?”
“I wanna.”
“Okay,” Kara lifted her from the bed and showed her how to press the eject button, flip the cassette and close the lid. “Now,” she said. “Press play.”
Hera pressed fast-forward.
“No,” Kara said, pressing stop. “This one – play.”
Hera frowned and pressed fast-forward again. “This one.”
“There's no sound, kid. You need to make it play.”
Hera wiped her nose with the back of her hand, then pressed the play button. There was the warped sound of a tape going from fast-forward to play too quickly, and then it settled into her father's piano concert.
It took her a minute to realise exactly what he was playing. That frakking song. Except this time it didn't make her feel happy and sad all at the same time; this time it just made her feel sick.
“Hera,” she started.
“No!” the girl answered. “My song!”
They sat, staring at each other, silently as the piano built into the hammering rhythm that preceded the lyrics. An electric current rippled across Kara's skin; the hairs on her arms were humming.
“This way,” Hera whispered and jumped from her lap.
Kara knew, rationally, she was the adult in charge, she needed to grab Hera and keep her here. But there was a pull in her heart. Hera was right, it was this way. They went.
Hera ran to keep up with Kara's swift strides as they traversed corridors and rounded corners. They reached a ladder so Kara picked up the toddler and carried her. Hera squirmed until she let her go, then flat out sprinted, so fast she seemed completely unstable and Kara was surprised she didn't topple entirely. She finally slowed in front of a metal hatch that Kara couldn't help but feel ought to look grander than it did. She crouched to pick up Hera, and when she rose again, instead of the hatch, she saw a pair of white, wooden double-doors.
They went in. It was an Opera House. Red seats filled the auditorium. There was a balcony above them, a stage ahead, and on the stage was Dreilide Thrace, exactly as he was on the cover of the album. Long hair and the bowler hat Kara just barely remembered from her childhood.
With a flourish, he threw down the final note of the piece, lifting his index finger and blowing on it.
He turned to the audience, but Kara was surprised to note that he wasn't looking at her. He was looking at two people sat in the first row.
“Well?” he said.
“Not bad,” Sam answered. Kara's heart leapt. “I like the improvisation in the bridge; you added that.”
Dreilide (Daniel? Seven?) shrugged the shrug of a confident man.
Kara began to run forward, immediately recognising the back of her husband's head and shoulders above the velvet seat. She reached the front row, looked along it, and saw that sat next to him was Athena, in her flightsuit, with a very vacant expression.
“Mommy!” Hera squealed, escaping from Kara's grasp and running to her mother.
Athena picked her up with a kind of absent automation. “Hey, baby,” she said blearily. “I'm...” she looked as if she was trying to figure something, but gave up and settled for readjusting her daughter in her lap. For her part, Hera curled up and looked completely content.
Kara had no idea what to do with herself.
Her father saved her from the trouble of deciding. “Kara!” he smiled, standing up and walking over to her. It wasn't an urgent walk, not the walk of a man who felt bad about abandoning his only kid. For years, Kara had wanted nothing more than to have him back, but now that he was here – embracing her like they were old acquaintances meeting thanks to happy chance – she found she was angry.
“What the hell is all this?” she hissed, and didn't hug him back.
“This is the Helice Opera House,” he answered, stepping back, but leaving his hands on her shoulders. “And I'm proud of you, kid, you grew up good.”
“That's not an answer, and it's no thanks to you.”
“Yeah, I know. I'm sorry about that, Cavil never really gave me the chance to stick around long enough to see it for real. Still,” he said cheerfully. “What a great location for a family reunion!”
Kara felt herself breathing more quickly, a bursting feeling in her chest. She had that stomach-ice she only ever got when she was pretending to everyone she wasn't upset about something. Desperately, and feeling not unlike the seven year old who would have recognised this version of her father as a good man, who hadn't (yet) abandoned her, she glanced over to Sam.
He smiled at her. “I missed you, baby.”
“Sam,” she whispered. “What's going on? Please. I don't get it.”
Dreilide took his hat off and spun it between his palms.
“Come sit with me,” Sam said. “Daniel'll play us another song – something original this time, Dan, stop ripping off my work! - and I'll do my best to clear this up.”
Kara did so, stepping past Hera and her still-vacant mother, as her father started playing the second movement of the piece they'd been composing in Joe's Bar.
“Now you're ripping off Kara's work too?” Sam heckled, good-naturedly.
“Sam. Cut it out and tell me what the frak all this is.”
He nodded, more serious now, and suddenly far sadder. “This isn't real,” he said.
“Yeah,” Kara bit. “I gathered that. He's dead, she might be dead and you're a vegetable.” She regretted the words immediately. “Sam,” she said. “I didn't mean that.”
“I know. Kara, I'm so sorry about what happened, I should've seen that guy coming and then after, when I got all the memories back – I shouldn't have put off the surgery. Maybe if I hadn't...”
“Hey,” Kara said. “Hey, stop it. Just...just stop it. It happened. It's frakking done with. We just...we go from here.”
He nodded.
“That's not really my dad, is it?”
“No.”
“I mean, he's nothing like the guy I met in Joe's. I kind of don't think either of them are like my dad really was.”
“You project him because you miss him. Because a part of you has always known what you are, Kara, just like a part of me always knew. But he's just a projection.”
“How do you even know about that? About what happened in the bar?”
“I can hear you, Kara. When you come to sick bay, you talk to me. It helps. Thank you for that.”
The relief Kara felt, that, even though she knew this entire experience could be some psychotic break or drug induced hallucination, that this might be proof Sam wasn't lost, washed over her like the wave of fear she hadn't allowed herself to contemplate since Ishay had told her there were no brainwaves. She found she didn't have anything to say. She was glad when Sam continued to speak. “In the bar, you weren't ready to remember him. Now, you are and you're angry. So he's...”
“Treating it like it was no big deal. Acting like he never gave it a second thought like I was always afraid of, yeah, I get it. No need to trawl through my entire subconscious.”
“Technically,” Sam said. “This is your subconscious. It's all of our subconscious.”
Kara arched an eyebrow.
“Think about it this way,” Sam continued. “What are dreams? They're basically just programs your brain runs while you're asleep to make sense of the day. But a program needs an operating environment; a way to interface with the hardware – something to launch it.”
“This...is a giant bootloader for my dreams?”
“It's not normally accessible on any conscious level, because it's function is to facilitate more useful subconscious processes. But when we fall into truly extreme states of unconsciousness – moments between life and death and...” he looked rueful. “States that aren't exactly either, this is where we end up. I'm too dead to dream, Starbuck.”
“Don't say that,” she said. “Don't say that. You're gonna wake up. You're gonna be fine, Sam.” She opened her mouth to say something else but stopped; her voice would crack, she could tell.
Sam closed his eyes for a moment before continuing. “Our, uh, native wireless networking capabilities allow us to share the environment to a degree, over short distances,” he said. “It's an ability you and Hera seem to have inherited.”
“It's so weird, hearing you talk like that.”
“Yeah. I guess for you it is. I'm sorry.”
“No. No it's okay. You're not the same you anymore. But I'm not the same me either.”
He nodded.
She said, “I found my body on Earth. My real, dead body.”
He nodded, slower this time, like he was thinking.
“I still love you,” he said.
“But you don't have an answer?”
“You and me, Kara,” he said. “I don't think we were ever gonna find our answers in each other. All I know is about the past, baby. That's where my questions were. You're meant for bigger things than that. All I can do is love you along the way, not make it easy.”
“Gods, when did you get to be such a philosopher?”
“Two thousand years ago,” he smiled.
They sat, quietly, for a time. Hera shifting on Athena's lap, Athena sometimes humming and off-key lullaby that clashed with the piano, rolling low along the bass clef.
Finally, Kara spoke. “Me and Hera – we're not dying, or in a coma, are we? That's not why we're here, right?”
Sam shook his head. “I think the song acted as a powerful hypnotic trigger. I think you're both probably unconscious next to my bed in sickbay. But why that is is a question you'll have to ask the someone who knows why Hera drew that song in the first place. And that's someone who isn't me.”
“Figures,” Kara said.
“But I am so glad to see you,” he smiled.
“Me too,” she felt her mouth forming a grin, the first genuine grin in a longer time than she cared to count. It only lasted for a moment, but it set something free in her chest.
She glanced back to Athena. “She looks in a worse state than you.”
“The opposite, actually. She hasn't fully fallen into this part of her mind yet, that's why she's confused. She's fighting it. She's strong. We made the them all strong, but Sharon was always the most determined. Even John had nothing on her.”
“Will it help – seeing Hera? Remind her what she's got to fight for?”
“I hope so.”
Reluctantly, Kara said, “We oughta go – if we really are unconscious I don't want to freak everyone out. Helo might be back any minute.”
Sam nodded. “I'm coming back, Kara, I am,” he said. “Don't give up on me.”
“Never,” Kara said, and kissed him, hand at the back of his neck, eyes squeezed tight as she forced herself to imagine the sickbay, the feel of the hard, plastic chair, the sound of the heart monitor and the click--click--click--click-- of a tape deck that had once again reached the end of its run.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-19 11:40 pm (UTC)<3
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 09:18 pm (UTC)I admit that I kind of mean the philosopher thing a little less literally than that and was just trying to callback to his whole speech in his little bathtub but yes, I remember now reading something about how that was your personal canon and it works well with the character. Though personally I'm still too hung up on how he was clearly a ROCK STAR SUPERSCIENTIST! ;)
Thanks for the comment and I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-25 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:09 am (UTC)“Our, uh, native wireless networking capabilities allow us to share the environment to a degree, over short distances,” he said. “It's an ability you and Hera seem to have inherited.”
CYLON BLUETOOTH.
Hera and Kara babysit Sam.
You had me at hello.
The original idea was to write three very short drabbles or something over the weekend
*laughs and laughs and laughs*
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 10:21 pm (UTC)I'm really glad people are responding well to the different versions of her father. It wasn't something I'd originally planned but seemed right as I was writing it, but I did wonder if it would come through as clearly as I wanted.
CYLON BLUETOOTH FOR THE WIN! :D
*laughs and laughs and laughs*
IT'S ALL YOUR DAMN FAULT AND YOU'LL BE SORRY WHEN YOUR FIC TAKES 6 MONTHS TO MATERIALISE! *shakes fist*
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:47 am (UTC)*reads*
Oh, frak canon. *subscribes* ;)
I really love this existing halfway between everything. I don't know, it doesn't feel like not a story so much as a story where everything's just about to happen. Between events. Sam's mostly dead, Kara's half-dead, a half-Cylon, and still has this crazy awesomely ambiguous and creepy destiny ahead. It's so visual in my brain, I can't stand not being able to see it really! But I put that down to all the lovely small details like Hera pulling up the covers and leaving his feet out all the way, to the clicking of the tape deck at the end. Shared subconscious projection/family therapy is love. The bit about how Kara's projections of her father change is amazing too.
No!” Hera yelled. “I do it.”
“You?”
“I wanna.”
Oh, she is so 3 1/2. Hee.
*sits on hands to avoid quoting everything else.* I adore the philosophy exposition version of Sam that's still recognizably him, but I really think this fits so well with how I saw Kara during that time too.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 10:43 pm (UTC)*subscribes to the idea that we can subscribe to alternate canons!*
I'm so glad that you enjoyed it! I love the Opera House as the apotheosis of the in-between and I get entirely what's you mean with the whole story where everything's *about* to happen. It's...an in-between story just like the Opera House is an in-between place. *looks shifty that most of her BSG AUs in various formats are in-between-about-to-happen stories...* ;)
Anyway, thanks so much for taking the time to comment and I'm really glad you enjoyed it.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 06:09 am (UTC)I could hear the music! At first I thought it was Metamorphosis One and then it was that song and Kara pushing buttons.
“You and me, Kara,” he said. “I don't think we were ever gonna find our answers in each other. All I know is about the past, baby. That's where my questions were. You're meant for bigger things than that. All I can do is love you along the way, not make it easy.”
I really, really like this line. It feels true to me. I can't even comment on it because it just says everything that ought to have been said.
I'm not sure how I understood everything about this story I'm going to have to read it again. And again. :-) But I like Kara and Hera in it and I feel they are very in character. And even though I'm a bit confused I like that the story doesn't end with all the answers. Oh, and I'm really worried about Athena. I hope she makes it. In this story I hope everyone makes it. :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 10:52 pm (UTC)Thanks for the compliments on that line - that was another one I thought about for a while. I wanted Kara to tell him that she was dead and for him not to care, but for him to just not care in the same way as Lee didn't felt...cheap. I mean, ultimately I think for both boys it's the same reason - she's Kara and that's all that matters, they don't need to understand the reasons why she came back, just that she's here. But they needed different ways of expressing it. So I wanted Sam to like...say something different. For Lee it was about tying it in with *right now* it being all that matters, so for Sam I thought I'd try to work in like...their roles in the mythology, like how historically it doesn't matter? Ugh, that's not very clear! Anyway, I'm glad you like it.
If it helps I'm not sure I understand everything in this story; I think it's a lot of ideas and not a lot of answers, but if it helps, I hope everyone makes it too. As Sam said, Athena's a fighter and she hasn't really slid all the way into the Opera House. I think she'll be okay. Like you say, in this story, I hope everyone makes it.
I like your icon too - it almost looks like Kara is in a goo bath or something! Very hybridy!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 07:19 am (UTC)I WILL get back to this later. It might be a couple days though.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 10:54 pm (UTC)But really, don't worry, there's no hurry. ;)
Yours is up next! I finally have the starts of an idea, so hopefully I can get working on it in the next few days.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 08:03 am (UTC)Like Merry said, you hit so many of my kinks here it's kind of ridiculous. Starting of course with Kara being a hybrid (and fleeing the Dylon family reunion, heh)
And at first I just thought, maybe someone tried to hurt themselves? Because since Earth...
Oh Helo! Yes, this would have been a better outcome. ;) And of course I can never get enough Kara/Helo friendship, especially not if it's an excuse for baby-sitting hijinks.
“Let's just say he's your uncle. It's less creepy that way.”
*snickers*
“Cus when there's sleepin' there's sweet dreams and then its tuck you in then story time then bathroom then more story.”
Awww! *PTSD twitch from putting one too many childrens to "bed"* Hera trying to tuck Sam in is possibly the cutest thing ever.
With a flourish, he threw down the final note of the piece, lifting his index finger and blowing on it.
Interesting how he's changed here, to become more what Kara needs; someone she can be angry at.
“Hey,” Kara said. “Hey, stop it. Just...just stop it. It happened. It's frakking done with. We just...we go from here.”
<3 That's pretty spot-on Kara, and I'm so glad that she gets to lose a little of the guilt and hopelessness, here.
“Our, uh, native wireless networking capabilities allow us to share the environment to a degree, over short distances,” he said. “It's an ability you and Hera seem to have inherited.”
1. HEE, shared Cylon bluetooth. LOVE.
2. Kara having the hybrid ability to project her fears and desires is intriguing and adds yet another wrinkle to Maelstrom and her death/resurrection.
" All I can do is love you along the way, not make it easy.”
That's kind of the Sam Anders theory of relationships, right there. <3
Sam nodded. “I'm coming back, Kara, I am,” he said. “Don't give up on me.”
Yaay! :) And the last paragraph is so vivid; like
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 11:17 pm (UTC)Awww! *PTSD twitch from putting one too many childrens to "bed"*
Hee! And...yes... *twitch*
I'm really glad you "got" what I was doing with Daniel. I was a little worried it'd just come off as weird and not that sense-making, but also when I was writing it, I knew I wanted him there too, but...the scene didn't work if he was also emotionally reuniting with Kara at the same time as Sam. It becomes weird and...uneven. But he needed to be there and...I just got the idea and ran with it but was a little worried people wouldn't like it. So <3
<3 also for thinking I got Kara right. I haven't really written Kara/Sam before (the only time that really counts was probably The Body is a Myth where like, they weren't even on the same planet/ship for most of it), so, um, glad to hear my first foray into it succeeded!
That's kind of the Sam Anders theory of relationships, right there. <3
<3 indeed!
None of us will ever give up on Sammy!
And I'm so glad you enjoyed it and took the time to let me know!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-20 04:54 pm (UTC)xade at cogeco dot ca
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 01:07 am (UTC)let's go there. I miss it so much! this story is so delectably mythological, not to mention the epic cuteness of Kara and Hera being baby-hybrids in projectionland together. queer inter-technic family FTW!