beccatoria (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccatoria) wrote2007-06-13 09:03 pm
beccatoria) wrote2007-06-13 09:03 pm
Sorta!Fic - or, using my LJ as a sketch!pad for Starbuck.
Spamming because I'm bored. Also not real writing because it's not finished or beta'd or anything. It's just a draft, really, so no worries on comments or anything. Just a post-3.20 fragment. I'm toying with trying to make it into an actual story. I think I see the edges of a plot.
And if Starbuck sounds weird - that's because she is. I mean, how would you feel if you'd just gotten spat out of a maelstrom in a viper?
So, self-indulgent rambling I'm mostly posting so's I won't lose it when my computer crashes again, but am not bothering to lock:
It's a lazy combat landing; she's too hot and she knows it. But she gives the throttle a little more leeway and steepens her angle, letting her bird free in an overpowered dive - the sheer rush of hearing the skids scream with joy against Galactica's deck. The LSO's yelling in her ear - a thunderroll of military jargon that fits her mind like "Yessir," and "Full Colours!" - until he gets cut off because queries about the state of her bird, the state of the deck, whether her radio's working, are all secondary to the Old Man's voice (so full of static even before it's put through a wireless) wanting to know, "Kara, is that really you?"
She can feel her bird buck; the whole hangar responding as another plane pounds down behind her's and pulls up, neater, tidier, no yelling from the LSO. It's the same love she felt in Kindergarten when she saw a girl who could already colour between the lines - a whole picture with not a pencil dash out of place.
"Kara -" that's the Old Man.
"Kara? -" that's Lee.
"Kara! -" that's the LSO.
Her face is split with joy. The hangar doors are closing. The deck gangs are spidering across the repressurized floor.
"Kara, do you copy? Starbuck?"
Automatically she thumbs her canopy release and detaches her helmet. She pushes herself up to the edge of the cockpit. The ladder's a couple of meters away; no one's pushed it to the edge of her bird, so she stands there, just waiting. The others wait back.
Her radio keeps crackling. It's not her name now, it's, "What the frak is going on down there? Kelly, do you copy? What's her status?"
She says, "Hey."
That's when her brother busts through to the front of the crowd. She knows that expression. It's not the elation that's filling her own face. It's horror. She frowns. All the people in the crowd; not one of them's smiling. And her brother, it's there on his face to be read - "You shouldn't be here."
She remembers she's dead. She feels foolish to have forgotten it. It pulls at the corners of her mouth.
She shouldn't be here.
She couldn't be here.
Unless.
"Chief," she calls.
He looks at her with pure terror. It's the fear she knew in flight school when the instructor called her name first, before all others. The memory snakes itself along her spine deliciously, like fear's friendly echo. She wants to tell him, it'll be okay. They've known each other forever; they're family - that's what the Old Man always said. She wants to tell him that of everyone in the hangar, he doesn't need to be afraid; they're so alike, they could be siblings.
But she remembers - and it's as abrupt as the memory of the flames eating her cockpit as the pressure split her eardrums - that he wouldn't understand. People aren't supposed to cast off lives as easily as flight suits. They aren't built to understand that even the worst pain is transitory.
"Chief," she says. "Get me some handcuffs."
No one moves.
"Handcuffs!" she shouts. The words burn through her mind with the familiarity of an over-used circuit. "Right frakking now! And then, you're going to take me to the brig."
And if Starbuck sounds weird - that's because she is. I mean, how would you feel if you'd just gotten spat out of a maelstrom in a viper?
So, self-indulgent rambling I'm mostly posting so's I won't lose it when my computer crashes again, but am not bothering to lock:
It's a lazy combat landing; she's too hot and she knows it. But she gives the throttle a little more leeway and steepens her angle, letting her bird free in an overpowered dive - the sheer rush of hearing the skids scream with joy against Galactica's deck. The LSO's yelling in her ear - a thunderroll of military jargon that fits her mind like "Yessir," and "Full Colours!" - until he gets cut off because queries about the state of her bird, the state of the deck, whether her radio's working, are all secondary to the Old Man's voice (so full of static even before it's put through a wireless) wanting to know, "Kara, is that really you?"
She can feel her bird buck; the whole hangar responding as another plane pounds down behind her's and pulls up, neater, tidier, no yelling from the LSO. It's the same love she felt in Kindergarten when she saw a girl who could already colour between the lines - a whole picture with not a pencil dash out of place.
"Kara -" that's the Old Man.
"Kara? -" that's Lee.
"Kara! -" that's the LSO.
Her face is split with joy. The hangar doors are closing. The deck gangs are spidering across the repressurized floor.
"Kara, do you copy? Starbuck?"
Automatically she thumbs her canopy release and detaches her helmet. She pushes herself up to the edge of the cockpit. The ladder's a couple of meters away; no one's pushed it to the edge of her bird, so she stands there, just waiting. The others wait back.
Her radio keeps crackling. It's not her name now, it's, "What the frak is going on down there? Kelly, do you copy? What's her status?"
She says, "Hey."
That's when her brother busts through to the front of the crowd. She knows that expression. It's not the elation that's filling her own face. It's horror. She frowns. All the people in the crowd; not one of them's smiling. And her brother, it's there on his face to be read - "You shouldn't be here."
She remembers she's dead. She feels foolish to have forgotten it. It pulls at the corners of her mouth.
She shouldn't be here.
She couldn't be here.
Unless.
"Chief," she calls.
He looks at her with pure terror. It's the fear she knew in flight school when the instructor called her name first, before all others. The memory snakes itself along her spine deliciously, like fear's friendly echo. She wants to tell him, it'll be okay. They've known each other forever; they're family - that's what the Old Man always said. She wants to tell him that of everyone in the hangar, he doesn't need to be afraid; they're so alike, they could be siblings.
But she remembers - and it's as abrupt as the memory of the flames eating her cockpit as the pressure split her eardrums - that he wouldn't understand. People aren't supposed to cast off lives as easily as flight suits. They aren't built to understand that even the worst pain is transitory.
"Chief," she says. "Get me some handcuffs."
No one moves.
"Handcuffs!" she shouts. The words burn through her mind with the familiarity of an over-used circuit. "Right frakking now! And then, you're going to take me to the brig."