#numbr8

[thr4ce]

if the marines are confused by starbuck's marked lack of caution when it comes to the toaster hidden in the bowels of the galactica, they don't show it: they're good at all the things she's not, shutting up and taking orders as read, and right now she's grateful. this isn't a talk they can have through two-odd feet of metal and plexiglass. if @numbr8 wanted to kill her, she wouldn't have ...

" i want to know why you did it. " it's flat, toneless; the very same tone they used for the one that called himself leoben. a gunman guards the door, ready to intervene at the slightest provocation, but they're effectively alone. kara fights the impulse to massage their throat.

[thr4ce]

she's lighting up a stogie, trying not to think about very much at all; the hard-coded ritual of a smoke has worked relatively well for that, historically, and what the nicotine can't kill, she has liquor for. it's different now, not quite so effective at drowning the torrent when a pattern has formed among students of kara's that get themselves killed and it's her - it's her, and the way she just can't keep her mouth shut when she really, really should. athena catches them on a drag and they cough through the shock, jolted back into their body by force. they sit up in one fluid move, shake blond from their eyes, force them into focus. gods above, she looks wrecked. sounds it, too. she doesn't ask, not like this. not ever so plainly.

" what? what is it, what happened? "

@thr4ce gets a season 3 based starter.

her chest feels like it's on fire — that's the feeling she focuses on to try and calm her racing thoughts. her feet move at a pace that feels far too slow, but is considered reasonable in present company. the last thing she needs is someone stopping her as she forces one foot in front of the other, heading to every potential space that kara could be. the flight deck first, the rec second, before making her way to their quarters. she doesn't meet a single gaze, doesn't respond when acknowledged, just keeps her head down and her breathing steady, her determination growing with every thudding beat of her heart.

she doesn't knock or announce herself, entering and only taking the briefest moment to thank god that the room is empty save for the one body she needs to be present. "kara." it's the first thing she's said since she entered adama's office, demanding the truth of boomer's words. she feels shaky suddenly, like the adrenline is wearing thin, and she steels herself against the exhaustion. she cannot falter. hera needs her to be strong now. "kara, i need your help..."

[lghtyear]

where do you hold your love ?

you  hold  your  love  in  your  heart .   love  is  intrinsic ,  inevitable ,  love  is  the  beating  core  of  everything ;  love  is  also  hard  to  talk  about .   your  love  comes  out  with  more  rareness ,  mostly  shows  up  for  the  big  things  in  a  big  way -  this  doesn't  mean  it  doesn't  beat  for  the  small  stuff ,   you  feel  it  all ,   in  fact  you  feel  it  more  intensely  than  most  which  is  why  it's  so  hard  to  get  out .   you  hold  your  love  inside  you  because  it  matters ,   it  might  be  the  only  thing  that  does .

tagged by : @salvatoraes <3 tagging : @tr4umaborn ( felix ) , @numbr8 , @ncmad , @priestbit , @cursedher , @t1meaway ( gale ) , @thr4ce , and you !

[truhk]

[thr4ce]

hera's down for the night - sleeping peacefully in her father's lap, curled away from the light of their rudimentary fire. she's a sweet kid so far, even in spite of all that suffering. maybe she'll learn anger, the way kara did; more likely, she'll learn kindness like her mother. there's peace in the air. kara can feel it, in some strange, metaphysical way. her time here is drawing to a close. the music in her bones has played itself out, and the old ways are dying, and it's good. she is death like tarot; a herald of new beginnings, robed in stardust, fundamentally unknowable. [ fundamentally human. part of everyone and everything. ]

they sit, legs crossed, cheated away from the fire too. there's no fiddling, no messing with their dogtags or their jacket or drumming out notes on their thighs. this is their last stop, and there's a foreign serenity behind the cocksure grin. " so, who's gonna teach her to shoot pyramid? "

@numbr8 gets a daybreak starter because i love crying.

[thr4ce]

[ stolen ] (from boomer)

it's one of those things they don't talk about, growing in number with every day they're at war; people are hurting, they're lonely, they're scared. starbuck's been all three since the attacks - a walking adrenaline bomb, like there are stims in her blood still, slow-acting, extended release. [ if she could only walk, she'd be stalking for the chief, twice-broken fingers itching to bleed over his jaw. instead they tap against triad cards, erratic, and boomer kisses her on occasion, only in ways that could be seen as acceptable between friends at a stretch. it's not the most elegant solution, but it works. it works. ]

" yeah, yeah, " they say, cuffing her shoulder, grinning wide. there's no privacy here, absolutely none, so natural is the only way to respond to the rushed press of boomer's lips, a little flash of boldness kara would like very much to crack wide open when she's better. " try not to miss me too much out there, mkay? "

[thr4ce]

a loose breakdown of my canon divergences for the new caprica arc, since @numbr8 helped me to hammer them out properly and i figure i should get them written down before i lose track.

first and foremost, kara remains on the galactica. she's got absolutely no interest whatsoever in settling on new caprica for any number of reasons; effectively giving up on the search for earth leaves a sour taste in her mouth when she risked everything in that effort and literally stood there, to say nothing of the fact that all her life up to that point has been spent in motion, between colonies, aboard ships, and she has never before expressed any interest in settling down anywhere. given that in my canon, they broke off anything romantic with anders after the caprica rescue, their strongest ties are to lee, helo, athena, and adama, all of whom are spread across the fleet, most of whom are aboard the galactica. they stay on to help maintain the ship, and retain their role as galactica cag. necessarily, this means that a lot of the leoben arc does not occur. i'll have a canon compliant verse that encompasses this if anyone ever writes leoben, which i highly doubt will ever happen. i do think it's important that they have some interaction on new caprica; i approach that by having him take her hostage during the rescue op, which starbuck leads in name only - it's still athena's show all the way. in this version of events, he only has them for a few days at the absolute outside. that's enough time to create shadows of the dynamic we see canonically without being so deeply traumatic and cruel. there is no child, taken from her rightful mother and used to manipulate someone who never wanted to be a mother in the first place. she has a hand in her own rescue, and kills leoben several times in several unique ways. tl;dr: fight me, ron, this arc made no frakking sense.

[thr4ce]

#THR4CE is an independent, highly private portrayal of captain k.ara "starbuck" th.race, as originally conceived in ronald d. m.oore's battle.star galacti.ca. flown by jadzia, 9teen, they & them.

affiliated with: @numbr8.

⁰¹ CARRD. ⁰² PROMO. ⁰³ INTEREST TRACKER. ⁰⁴ PINTEREST.

[thr4ce]

" i should have let him shoot you, " she says, the turn of her mouth rife with disgust, and that's unassailable fact. every instinct she's ever had, every rule this fleet lives by tells her that the longer this thing has to get in their heads, the less chance they have of making it out alive. unspoken, in the glossy finish to their furious gaze, is the weakness behind all that anger. triad games in the sickbay. long nights flying cap. " frak me. "

do you believe in god, sharon? it's not a question she can ask, but she wonders, on some level, whether leoben is alone in his faith. whether if she pulled her sidearm right now, sharon would lace her fingers together and pray to the same lord. it shouldn't matter; she shouldn't care, but she remembers the look in his eye when the airlock closed, and her sidearm stays where it is. [ she'll pray for the old man tonight, subvocal, where no one can see her. she'll pray, and she'll think about wringing sharon's neck, equally as religious, equally as faraway. ] they want to kiss her, somewhere deep. all they can do is stare.

it didn't much matter that kara had saved her life — instinct has sharon examining their every shift in posture. years of boomer's memories give her plenty to work with; reading the stiffness, the erect posture that's familiar in a distant way, the look in their eyes like they don't know her.

and they don't. not her. they may know her face (and her hands and her mouth and her -) but the two beings facing off in this cell are strangers, and she has to remind herself that all those memories don't belong to her. the inclination to lean on history won't save her here, not like with helo.

"well, consider your debt paid in full." she decides for a false nonchalance, meeting kara where she lives; sitting back on the thin mattress of the cot they provided her, her lower back screaming as she leaned against the wall, pulling her legs up and crossing her arms atop them in a lazy, unaffected pose. "was there something else you needed from me, lieutenant thrace?"

[thr4ce]

" i don't like having outstanding debts. " they're even now, at a stretch; kara and this cylon, settled up, neither of them owed anything. she still feels owed, though, crackling in her fingertips, so much furious betrayal throbbing in her temples. she still wants to hurt this sharon until it takes, retribution for that girl from troy who never was, but felt ...

[ you would have done it for her. you would have gone down screaming for her like anyone else in your squadron, and that's the point. that's why she was here and not anywhere else in the fleet, so that you look at lee and kat and 'track now and think are you gonna put a round in my chest, someday? ]

there's a stiffness in them, and they're sure it shows, how they're fantasising about this thing's imitation blood caking beneath their fingernails ... they held lee back and they don't know why, not really, not in any way that matters. it was instinct like this is, like kara always works in. something in their gut says this isn't through yet.

there is a tug every time kara enters a room — low in her gut, urging her forward, toward familiarity. in her heart, she knows the person standing in her cell now… but in kara’s face, she can see that all they’re looking at is a stranger. she shouldn’t care. there shouldn’t be a constant ache of disappointment when the people aboard galactica look at her in the same vacant way. and some cases were so much harder to stomach than others. the bluntness of the inquiry doesn’t even shock her. this is kara — of course she wouldn’t mince words with a cylon. but… this is kara. why is she asking at all? “once upon a time, you would have done it for-“ me. me me me me. “her.” she dares to look up, to meet their eyes for the first time. “it felt like the right call.” its subconscious as she reaches up, fingers grazing her unharmed cheek. a distant memory flashes, laced with the memories of pain in her face, overlapping with the feel of lee's hand at her throat. “same question.”