Author: minerva_fan
Beta: elemental_fey
Pairing: Laura/Kara (sort of)
Rating: Gen
Challenge: A pilot takes someone for a joyride.
Disclaimer: BSG is owned by a lot of people, not us (R&D TV, Sky TV and USA Cable Entertainment LLC, Ron Moore and Glen Larson). This fic is written for pleasure, not profit.
Author Notes:
***
Her pilot turns back to check on her more than once. Laura is tired, more exhausted than she has been in a long while, and she keeps drifting off as they make their way back towards Colonial One.
Kara Thrace is a good pilot, the best pilot they have, and Laura feels safe enough dozing while they fly. She knows that Kara will be discreet, and that Kara will keep her safe. She’s watched her, these past several weeks. She knows that Kara managed to fight off two men, even with her injured knee, when Valance was apprehended on Cloud Nine. She knows that Kara is capable, and is unencumbered by fear or self-doubt.
It’s beneath her, she thinks absently as she watches the lights from the panel play off Starbuck’s blonde tresses, this shuttling of dignitaries from one ship to another. Honor duty at most. Kara volunteered to bring her, somebody told Roslin as she dragged herself from the seemingly endless party to the docking bay. It seemed to Laura as she’d prepared to board the shuttle alone that Lt. Thrace was anxious to be off the pleasure ship and back in space where she seemed to be the most comfortable. Maybe something had happened at the party, she muses now, as she settles into her seat at the back of the shuttle.
The chamalla extract is kicking in. She took it just before leaving the party, a quick trip to the ladies’ room and two little pills with a glass of water. She’d skipped her previous dose during the elections, preferring discomfort to the fogginess that often hit her right after she took her meds. Now that the politics are done for the day, now that she’s played nice with Adama and kept her claws sheathed when Zarek confronted her at the party, now that all this is behind her, all Laura wants is a bit of rest. Some peace and quiet.
Starbuck seems to want the same thing. She checks on her now and then, but she isn’t chatty the way most pilots are when they get a VIP passenger. She doesn’t ask how Laura enjoyed the trip, or if she liked the music at the party. She doesn’t make little comments about the election to show that she is informed.
No, Kara Thrace simply pilots the shuttle, and for that Laura is grateful. She watches Starbuck through heavy-lidded eyes, noting the slender shape of the woman’s back, the easy way she carries herself.
Starbuck, who defies death every chance she gets. Starbuck, who sweet-talks Cylon raiders out of the dirt when almost anybody else would have already been dead for an hour.
It’s funny how she notices her. Even without the chamalla, it’s hard not to notice Starbuck. Tall and proud, golden with a frack-you attitude. Laura has found herself on more than one occasion noticing, like so many others can’t help but notice, the gentle sway of Starbuck’s walk, the deliciousness of her smile, the devilish confidence that seems to permeate her simplest motions. At times, it’s noticing on the verge of being unpresidential, and Laura has had to snap her eyes forward, to shake her mind free of decadent thoughts she can no longer afford to have.
Laura Roslin rests her head against the seat-back, knowing that she has several minutes of transport back to her ship. She can already feel the chamalla in her system, the fuzzy-sweet lack of pain that always accompanies her dose. She thinks absently about the priests, the ones who take this stuff on purpose, to induce visions, to reach new spiritual heights through highly chemical means.
She doesn’t aspire to spiritual heights. She just wants to pull herself out of the mire of pain that is becoming a constant in her life.
The visions are a bonus.
Like now, for instance. She watches the stars skimming past Kara. It is odd, she thinks, that Kara seems to shine against the backdrop of stars. Like a sun seen without the benefit of atmosphere, bright against the darkness of space, more vivid than anything one can see when planet-bound.
Laura has an instance of bliss, just a momentary feeling of weightlessness, as she watches Kara work. For a moment, the shuttle is gone, the fleet is gone, and she is flying through the stars with Kara as her guide. Kara’s sun is her focus, and she flies toward it.
There is no pain here, among the endless stars, only free flight, open space, beauty and light. It is good here, in this chamalla dream, good and safe and peaceful.
There’s no sound in space. No questions that can’t be answered, no fighting amongst terrified people, no scrounging for scraps of salvation, no bickering and baiting and feeding generations-old feuds because nobody knows any other way to live.
Here, among the endless stars, Laura feels her heart relax. She simply watches Starbuck, her sun, as she guides her through space. She watches her shining against the endless night, and wonders what it would be like to touch that sun, to burn in its glow. She wonders how quickly death would come, not six months of slow descent, but a glorious flare of life set free from its shackles.
To fall into a star. To fall into Starbuck.
This is the way she dreams of going, when she is floating in her chamalla dreams. Free-falling into the light, not slowly trudging toward the end.
Toward reality. Back to Colonial One, where all this will vanish and she’ll be President Roslin once more, no longer a free soul flying through space, guided by a beautiful star, reveling in the silence and openness.
In a shorter time than she wants to admit, the walls will close around her again. The reality will glare its harsh light on her, dimming the stars from view. In a shorter time than she thinks she can bear, she will be herself again.
But for now, it is enough for Laura to dream of endless stars.
***
The president is dozing. Kara leans over her shoulder and checks on her again. It seems odd that she would fall asleep on such a short flight, but Starbuck is not exactly in a position to judge.
Maybe she’s exhausted from all the crap that’s gone on in the last few days. Maybe assassination plots and dirty politics and being everything to everybody are enough to tire out even Laura Roslin.
Kara doesn’t mind. She was afraid the president might want to chat, or to ask her what she thought about Important Issues.
Frak Important Issues, she thinks as she maneuvers her way clear of Cloud Nine. Nobody is really paying attention to her. Most of the Colonial One crew is still down on the pleasure ship, including the newly-elected Vice President.
Kara groans to herself, and the president stirs slightly. She looks peaceful, she notes. It’s funny. She’s seen enough of Madame President in the past several weeks that she’s seen her determined, grim, ecstatic, consoling, and even flirtatious. But she’s never actually seen Laura Roslin peaceful before.
No, peaceful is a rare commodity these days. Kara takes the long way back toward the presidential ship. She doesn’t mind this, marshmallow flying between luxury ship and Colonial One. There are no Cylons in range. Nobody to cause them any harm. And thanks to Laura Roslin, no chatty passengers to disturb her peace.
She wants to make a run for it. Just crank up the drives and head out for open space. What do you think, Madame President, she asks silently of the older woman, her passenger who stares through heavy lids at the stars in front of Kara. Wanna go for a joyride?
Away from this fleet of ships, from stupid political games, from seductions she wishes she’d never let happen, from names called out, the wrong names at the wrong moment. She wonders how Roslin would react if she just took this shuttle and headed out for points unknown?
Roslin is staring now. Kara doesn’t think she even sees her. She’s noticed it, once before, that the president sometimes has to blink, as if she doesn’t believe what her eyes are showing her. But she’s not blinking now. Her face is forward, looking at Kara as if she doesn’t even realize Kara’s looking back, her eyes wide and filled with wonder. Kara shudders, unnerved by the look of rapture in the older woman’s face.
Unnerved by the fact that she is drawn to that rapture. She watches Laura Roslin, studying the squarish face, the bright eyes, the subtle mouth. She wonders what drives her, and wonders what could bring such brilliant delight to her face.
She wants to be gone from here, and Laura Roslin wouldn’t be bad company on an adventure. Kara stares at her panel. It wouldn’t take much, just a few adjustments of their course.
They could be free of this place, free of these stupid chains that tie them, each of them, to their destinies.
Because Kara Thrace believes in destiny. She knows that destiny is a hard mistress, and that no matter how often you frak it up, you can’t escape the path the gods have put you on.
Not even if you’re a pilot, and you have the opportunity to steal away with a sleeping president, to run from your responsibilities, from the wrong men you’ve slept with, from the wrong men you don’t want to sleep with, and from the lovely woman in the back of your shuttle that you’re quickly realizing you wouldn’t mind sleeping with.
No, there’s no escaping who you are, not even if you have a fast shuttle and know how to fly it.
Roslin has blinked awake now. They are only a few minutes away from Colonial One, she tells the president. There is no trace of emotion in her voice. There is no trace of the desperation she feels, the longing for freedom that is pushing hard against her resolve.
"Thank you, Lieutenant," Roslin says in a sleepy voice. It’s like warm chocolate against her skin, that voice, and she imagines for the briefest moment hearing her name called out in ecstasy by that voice.
But she’s already frakked one politician too many tonight, and Kara steels herself against the loneliness she feels.
"Did you enjoy the party," she asks as she turns her back to the president, rolling her eyes at the insipid question.
"It was very nice," Roslin replies, still in that licking chocolate off your fingers voice.
And they begin their final approach to Colonial One, each of them thinking of stars they’ll never see.
END