Iter Itineris (Pt1)

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:45:49 GMT

Title: Iter Itineris (Pt 1)
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Spoilers: 4.02/4.04 - Six of One
Word Count: 951
Pairing: Starbuck/Roslin
Rating: R, but nothing graphic (yet)
Summary: I wrote this as an alternate story of how the confration between Starbuck and Roslin might have played out after the President picked up the gun.
Notes: New to livejournal, and this is my first fanfic. Please forgive any inadvertent nugget mistakes/errors/crappy-ass writing.

Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine, this is just a bit of re-imagining inspired by Portishead's song Roads.

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“Leave.”

The word is ground out with the same tension Roslin is currently applying to the gun trigger. It takes me a moment to realize that it was not, in fact, directed at me. If circumstances had been slightly less dramatic it would have been amusing to note how quickly the only civilian in the room was obeyed. Hell, the Old Man only quirked an eyebrow – how ironic to be kicked out of your own quarters at the same time you are being removed from a situation you should be controlling. An insight into their dynamic, or the deference paid a President?

Oh damn, who the frak really cares? Her glare is currently burning through the haze of my own self-doubt. How many leaps of faith have I made for this President, for this woman? How many times must I risk my life and all that I care about before I earn the benefit of the doubt? The idea that she could doubt me, while not a foreign concept in this paranoid fleet, is still the most surprising aspect of my return. Or maybe I am shocked by the intensity of my reaction to her immediate disbelief. I expected to debrief, extensively, but I did not expect a grand frakking inquisition. So I’m back from the dead, well frakk, so is she! She has more damned cylon blood running through her veins than I ever will.

A small shake of my head and it suddenly dawns on me that the President looks frail and translucent. The backbone of steel is there, but her skin looks thin – as if it is no more than a delicate layer of rice paper. Her cheeks are flushed, and while her arm never wavers, I can tell her resolve to shoot me definitely has. Nice to know she still cares.

How long have I been staring at her? It might be time to make a small verbal foray, “I never had any intentions of shooting you, you know.”

“Yes, I’m sure that is the impression you relayed to everyone involved in this fiasco.” Her expression becomes even more disdainful, a feat of escalating visual censure.

“You put me in a corner, and then suffocated me with your suspicion. What else was I supposed to do?” I hold my arms out, palms up, trying to drain the anger and aggression from my stance. I let the hurt play out across my face; she’s rubbed me raw anyway, and probably knows it.

“Why must your every reaction be expressed in such extremes?”

“Why must yours!?”

“How do I know that you aren’t some drone replacement for the Kara Thrace who died two months ago? How do I know you aren’t fresh from a resurrection ship, a cylon all along?” She adds something in a whisper at the end, and slowly begins to lower the gun.

“You horde your faith like a greedy child, content to bestow it only upon yourself! I know who I am, where I’ve been, and what I’ve seen. You had visions; well I had the actual physical experience! What can I possibly do to prove this, if you won’t return to the nebula?” I am breathing heavily, and have been all along. I instinctively reach out to grab the wrist holding the gun, and step into her personal space. She isn’t ready for me to be this close to her, and I find myself perversely pleased not to be the only one struggling for sure footing. I slowly place my other hand against her chest, also flushed, and feel the heartbeat quicken against the calluses on my palm.

“Don’t.” Ah, the grating tension again. How long has it been since we’ve touched? I know I’ve actively avoided it, after that night. This is not our first ‘fiasco’, as she so aptly puts it.

It was supposed to be simple frakking, something impulsive that served only our base urges, something rushed and slightly awkward. We were both blindsided by the actual experience. I close my eyes, briefly, remembering. I feel the echo of her shudder through my body, and know she remembers too. I exercised my last shred of self restraint in the heated aftermath of that encounter, and she never asked again in either word or gesture. This is a woman who could consume me, and what then would I have left to fight with?

“Would a cylon bother to remember the way you sound when you orgasm?” Her heartbeat thrums again,” Would a cylon be so shattered by her own that she would refuse to be that vulnerable again? Laura, if I were a cylon infiltrator, I’d have kept on frakking the President.” Somewhere, in the back of my logical mind, I recognize that I have finally made a valid point. This mental coup is forsaken as I find my fingers drifting beneath the soft fabric V of her shirt. One moment of inattention, and I return to find my body pressing its own agenda. Touching this woman is an exquisite agony, and I am suddenly tired of fighting myself. I let her wrist slide out of my grasp, both hands falling to her hips. I touch my forehead to hers, and my arms loosely encircle her waist. I hope this is enough for her, because anything else threatens to overwhelm my eroding control. Touching her is enough...or not nearly enough.

We are caught in that moment, two women in amber, and it seems there is an infinity stretching on for us, punctuated only by the sound of the gun falling to the deck as she finally lets herself lean in to me. Time compression indeed.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:56:22 GMT

First entry on livejournal....hmm, i've heard about this beast but have never ridden it.

Just finished The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.  That was one HELL of a book, damnation. 10/10 I don't think I'll start another book until Sat or so...allow myself time to really digest this book. It bears another reading, and another, and another. One of those books.

I read Scifi/Alt fiction almost exclusively...with some Fantasy thrown in....and yanno, i like all the derivatives...magical realism, urban folklore, cyberpunk, steampunk, etc. The last "fiction" book I read was the Time Travelers Wife...and hell, that had some cool scifi shit in it. Good book, bleak, but good...i mean, time travel should be frakkin COOLER...yanno? Or maybe thats what i liked best about...that it wasn't fun or exciting...it was painful and terrifying and lonely...and then you get laid. heh.

Anyway, where's my point...umm....no, its gone.

Okay, so the book.  A first contact novel....a religious first contact novel. Amazing how into all the characters I was...most especially the Jesuit priests. Russell really knows how to write about relationships...not yanno...sex and sweat, altho it had that...but just...interconnectedness...and how people go about creating and laboring over these relationships. I loved the characters, I loved their dialogue with each other and the aliens. When i read narrative this tender (but not pandering or sentimental) i always tend to think that ONLY a woman could have written it. It was tender and torturous, and never lacking in detail...yanno? LIke women. Maybe thats just my sexual bias speaking. I mean, certainly The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss made me actually cry...but that man is extraordinarily kind and decent and shy...like Neil Gaiman mebbe...without the wife and kids. Hehe, you read peoples blogs and suddenly you think you have enough insight to comment on their character, versus their characters. Aw well, general consensus among fandom bears this out for both men. IMO

So the book is a first contact adventure layered with philosophy, action, religion, sex, friendship, endurance, torture....i think its real imparted message was about intentions....and how they are almost always going to be confounded. Hell, you usually get them fubared with humans...beings you know and belong to...imagine how outside yer expectations an entire other world would be. Russell throws this sort of theme around a lot in the book...the characters struggle within themselves...each has ideas at crosspurposes and juggling them is part of the mental exercise in reading it...intentions vs outcome, piety vs sexual expression, faith vs agnostism, attraction vs camaraderie, predator vs prey, beauty vs utility, etc...

Sure they are on this mission of huge import, but they never stop being people. This isn't a scifi book cut and parsed to include only the adrenaline and action...it is written with a firm realization that most of our lives...even in extreme conditions...are spent waiting or going through the motions or anticipating. I suppose you need to include the pauses in your book if you want to have any room for religious or philosophical contemplation ...the book is all the better for it...and never, to my mind, boring or filler.

I even enjoyed the exposition...which sometimes really GRINDS at me...i mean, i would really have missed out on Tad Williams Otherland series if i hadn't trudged through all of his *tedious* exposition....an exposition that lasted almost the ENTIRE FUCKING first book. I was thoroughly engrossed in those damned books, and hope never to read them again...yanno? lol

So, in conclusion...err...HIGHLY Recommended!

artifice77

Iter Itineris (Pt1)

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell