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Entry tags:
fic: BSG, Complex Uncertainties, PG13, Kara/Sam
disclaimer: not mine.
length: 3300+
pairing: Kara Thrace/Sam Anders
rating: PG13, violence, language
set: partially inside 'Blood on the Scales', partially after/before 'No Exit' (spec for 'No Exit', though)
spoilers: Only through 'BotS'.
notes: This was mostly finished last night, but I didn't post it and then this morning![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rose_griffes wrote a similar fic from Romo's pov. And I sorta flailed and then pointed out to myself that there are now three (four?) versions of Felix Gaeta getting his tattoo. And all of them include Kara Thrace in some capacity (bad influence, that woman). So I went back over, double-checked for similarities, ripped out several clunky bits, and expanded the last scene some more.
Complex Uncertainties
by ALC Punk!
The adrenaline that got her moving, got her shooting, is still flooding her veins. Kara stares at Sam, his head lolling, his eyes not quite focusing, and feels it spike higher. Frak. He could die. Here and now, he could die, and all of the things they've never said--the things that never seemed to matter until now, with his blood on her hands--will remain unsaid.
She can't help it, she laughs a little, leaning forward to press her forehead against his, swallowing against the taste of blood at the back of her mouth.
If she can get the blood to stop spilling so fast out of his neck, she might have a chance. She can feel it still sliding down between her fingers, sluggish but still pulsing with the beat of his heart.
"Don't you die on me," she mutters, raising her head again.
The sound of firing hasn't drifted away and Kara realizes she's frakked. If she goes for help, Sam will die. That's a certainty, something she feels in her gut. If they stay right here, he'll die. There's no way anyone will find them in time to do anything. And the more those guns fire closer and closer, the more there's a chance someone will come around the corner and take her out.
"So, we gotta move. Get to Cottle. Right."
She can do this. Her hand tightens on the back of his neck and then she scrabbles, one-handed, for something to tie the bandage on. There's nothing within reach and she starts cursing.
A babbling mumble from Sam jerks her head up, and in reflex she picks her side-arm up, have caught under her knee, left-handed, but sure.
The marine squeezing down on his trigger dies before he can get off a shot.
"Gods-dammit--" she swears again, keeping her hand on Sam's neck while she scrabbles for the spare ammo-packs with the other. If she runs out before they make it, they are dead.
Kara's got a lot of faith in the old man, but right now, he's not even free. "Cottle," she reminds herself, trying to ignore the way her belly clenches at the thought of Sam dying. He's a toaster, Kara, she reminds herself. Yeah? And what the frak are you?
It's the memory of hauling her own corpse that gets her moving, shifting Sam (he tries to help, but he's not coordinated enough for a concerted effort) and sliding behind him.
She presses the bandage against his neck, then lets go. It stays. Sort of--it's going to slide off and he's going to start bleeding again, but she can either stay here, pressing it against his neck and watch him die, or she can move. And maybe he'll die on the way.
"Gonna need both hands, Sammy. Try not to bleed to death on me, k?"
Keeping his neck and head steady on her shoulder is hard when she shifts and moves. "Frak--"
Standing from this angle isn't an option and she curses as she gets to her knees and tries to push up, lifting with her legs and not her back.
"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," she mutters, managing to get him up just enough to move a step. Two. Walking backwards hauling him isn't the easiest thing she's ever done. It's not the worst, though, and her knee twinges as a reminder of walking a moon into what was almost oblivion.
She makes it barely halfway down the corridor, Sam's feet dragging and catching on the decking before her legs buckle, taking them both down.
"Up, c'mon, up--" Kara feels everything strain as she gets back to her feet, Sam still dragging at her. He's dead-weight, worse than her body was, and she wants to tell him that.
He won't remember if she tells him now, in this place and time with his life bleeding out down the front of her shirt. I found my body, Sam. I'm dead. I never came back. I don't know what the frak I am-- she's jerked from her thoughts when he shifts, obviously trying to help.
"No, no, Sam--don't move. I've got you--" she swears and goes down to one knee when he over-balances them.
It's frakking depressing to see how little they've come. She has six corridors to get through before Cottle's. They're lucky this isn't the normal brig, one deck up and even more frames over. "Frak--"
She huffs out a breath too fast, panting as she struggles back up.
By the time she's made it another ten feet, her muscles are burning with the strain.
She goes down again, smacking her head into a crate and wanting to cry at the hopelessness of it all. Sam's stopped responding to her words, stopped moving except to breathe (she had to stop and check that, almost hysterical, suddenly).
"Not gonna die on me, Sammy," she pants, pushing back up, getting a new grip on him and ignoring how slick her fingers are with his blood.
Gripping the gun in her hand is getting harder, but she can still hear the sound of gunfire, shouts and screams from the people surrounding it. The battle that started when someone was stupid enough to try taking over her ship is still raging, and she feels a grim sort of satisfaction about that. The old man might have lost support, but the Galactica wasn't going down in mutinous flames without a fight.
Eventually, she's reduced to moving a few feet and then resting. Talking is useless, all her breath needed for other things. Two civilians try to take her down when they notice Sam and she shoots them without a thought, then continues on.
A marine patrol nearly manages to box her in, but even with Sam killing her maneuverability, she's still the best shot in the frakking fleet. They're dead before they get their act together and Kara has to lean against the wall to steady herself, hitching Sam a little higher, before starting off again. She's lucky the marines fell where they did or she'd be negotiating around them and probably tripping.
She figures she's about halfway there when her legs give out again and she goes down hard, trying not to curse and going silent as she hears the sound of approaching feet.
Maybe this time, it'll be someone who can help.
A quick looks hows her some weaselly-looking guy and a marine at his back.
It's not hard to guess which might be on her side and Kara twists, gun coming up.
It's just a pity it clicks on empty.
-=-
"Frak," he stalks back over to her.
Kara thinks she should recognize him, and maybe she would, if she'd frequented the shooting gallery during Baltar's trial. But she was dead then, and only Athena or Racetrack could have shown her the bullet-hole-riddled targets containing Romo Lampkin's face.
Reloading while he stands there feels odd. The blood on her fingers makes it harder to grip everything, but she manages, the clip snapping in with a click. Safety off.
"Can you shoot that?" she nods at the gun in his hand.
"Nah, I picked it up for show."
The sarcasm doesn't even make her smile, "Safety's on."
"Yeah, I know. If I'm going to be shoving it in a pocket, I'd rather not shoot something off."
"Take his feet," Kara orders, already gathering herself for lifting Sam again. She wonders about how many times they've fallen, but the count doesn't seem to matter. Under her arms and against her body, she can still feel him breathing fitfully.
"Gods, he's huge."
It's the only complaint Lampkin utters as Kara gets to her feet and both of them strain under Sam Anders' weight. Romo hooks one arm around Sam's legs so he has one hand free, pistol in it and Kara wants to laugh about how ridiculous this all is. One civilian and one broken-down pilot to haul a Cylon to the doctor. It's like the beginning of a stupid joke that ends with them shooting each other in the head.
With only a little difficulty, Lampkin takes the lead, leaving Kara to follow, Sam held too-tight against her chest, her back and arms aching from the strain.
The awareness of that disappears in a surge of adrenaline when two marines round the corner. Kara manages to put a bullet in one without dropping Sam, and Lampkin manages the other, though they both end up on their knees.
It's slower going after that, both aware that the nearby fighting is too close for comfort.
"Take the next turn," Kara eventually says, her breath short again, the panic still near to the surface. Sam is heavier with every step and she wonders a little wildly how she ever managed to make it as far as she had.
"No, no, can't. Came that way. It's too thick with people--" glancing at her, Lampkin drops Sam's feet without warning and she staggers under the added weight. "There's got to be a different way."
Sam's head shifts on her shoulder, and she can feel his heart beating against her fingers. It's too slow. "That's the fastest route to Cottle."
"If we both get shot, he's not going to make it," Lampkin snaps. "There's got to be a different way."
And if they're too late, they'll be hauling a corpse. A spike of adrenaline surges through her and she fights back a sob. "All right. Go left. We can cut through the head on B deck."
The next while is etched in quick, still-frame images that fill her nightmares (when she remembers them) for the rest of her life. Sam, breathing becoming less and less obvious, Kara's arms and legs failing every half-dozen steps until she can't feel them anymore, and she only knows Sam is there because his head is on her shoulder. Romo, steady but erratic, pistol taking out two civilians before they can fire back.
Tears sting her eyes when the adrenaline gets to be too much (or it's anger and rage and terror at how he could die, but that's something to shove down), but she ignores them. When Sam dies, that's when she'll take a rag and wipe her face clean. Until then, there's no time. Not with the sharp smell of his blood coating the back of her throat and the slippery-slick feel of it seeping down under her clothing.
She thinks a little wildly that his Cylon blood is trying to become a part of her, like he always is.
It actually surprises her that the detour doesn't end in tragedy. They make it to the infirmary, Sam still heavy in their arms. A cordon of marines lets them past with barely a flicker, and Kara thanks the Gods that Adama's people are still in charge here. One of the orderlies spots them and turns, shouting for Cottle. Ishay bustles out of one of the curtained areas. On seeing them, she pauses, her eyes wide and expression conflicted.
"You have to help us," Kara says, her voice breaking. "Please."
Whether it's Kara's plea or Cottle arriving that does it, Ishay moves again, calling for help. Within seconds they're in one of the exam areas, Sam flat on a bed. They shove Romo out of the way, but not her (or perhaps they try and she simply doesn't notice). Kara feels strange, not having him in her arms and she wraps her hands around one of his while they start poking and prodding.
"Get an IV in him, NOW."
"He took a bullet in the back of the neck," Kara tells everyone or no one at all. Time seems to shift a little, her eyes wide as she stares at Sam's face. She's aware of Cottle giving more orders, of words like 'blood pressure dropping' and 'units of whole blood' and 'get the frakking cat-scan online'. But they don't really connect.
Not until Ishay shakes her, almost rattling her teeth together, does she come back from that strange half-reality. She blinks and draws in a breath, tasting blood and antiseptic. The room snaps into focus again.
"Captain!" Ishay sounds like she's repeating herself, "Captain, is any of that blood yours?"
"No."
"All right. Would you like to get cleaned up?"
"No." The only word she can think, right now. No, you're not allowed to die, Sam. Someone hooked him up to too many tubes, and Kara wonders if they're helping or killing him. But the reassuring rise and fall of his chest, echoed by the hiss from the oxygen tubes stays her sudden paranoia.
"Suit yourself. I have other patients, Cottle should be back once this unit is nearly-finished. Shout if there's a problem."
It's only after she's gone that Kara starts to have questions. But Sam's hand is warm between hers, and there's two bags of fluid sliding into his body, taking up the space left open by what's down her shirt.
-=-
After too little time or too much, Cottle comes back and tells Kara bluntly to back the frak off while they wheel Sam off for tests. The bullet might still be lodged in his spine (Cottle doesn't say that's bad, doesn't tell her that the journey from the brig with its stops, starts, falls and moments of terror might have ruined Sam's spine). They need to find out if there's a need for surgery. If not, they'll stitch him up and hope for the best.
The best. Kara wants to laugh at the idea that as far as she's concerned the best means Sam alive and whole, standing just so she can punch him for making her worry.
Cottle comes back, puffing on his cigarette and just looks at her a moment before saying bluntly, "You look like hell, and so does he. The bullet's lodged between vertebrae. If we're lucky, we can get it out without damaging anything more than it already is--"
"Worst case, Doc," Kara demands, voice dry.
"He dies. Next worst, he's crippled."
Gods. Somewhere, Felix Gaeta is having his last laugh. Kara sucks in a breath. "Best case?"
"We can repair the damage, and he walks again."
"Cottle," Ishay bustles up, "We're ready in surgery."
He nods and leaves Kara. She follows to the surgery area, one of the nurses stopping her outside the plastic drape. Inside, Sam looks small surrounded by people and machines. She can hear his heartbeat, almost too slow, but at least it's steady.
"You'll need to wait out here," another tells her, sliding the plastic closed.
Kara can still see through it, and she wonders if they'd truly stop her from walking in and holding Sam's hand. Waiting isn't something she's good at and won't ever be. If she could just do something--
"Think the toaster will live?"
Racetrack is a distraction from the panic and fear still lurking under her skin--and Kara will take any excuse not to think too hard about why she doesn't want him to die. She won't even consider that he could survive and be unable to walk again.
"Just so I know," Racetrack continues, jaw set and a sneer on her lips, "if I have to shoot him myself."
"Don't know. Think that sad sack of shit Skulls is gonna live?" Kara fires back, pleased with her alliteration if not with the scattered wits that make the words stale.
"It wasn't a kill-shot." There's a deadness in Maggie's voice, like she's throttling down some horrible thing.
"Damn. Must be getting rusty."
Racetrack steps right up into Kara's personal space, her eyes glittering with anger, "You wanna say that again, frak-up?"
Leaning down that little bit, Kara smirks a little, and whispers, "Must be gettin' rusty if I couldn't kill him without paying attention."
There's a beat and then Racetrack snaps a fist into Kara's jaw. She was ready for it, and moves just enough that it only grazes her. Kara comes back with a punch of her own, slamming into Racetrack's gut.
Once upon a time, she might've waited, might've let Racetrack rethink her decision to pick a fight with Starbuk. But Kara was frakking sick of waiting, and Sam's heart was still a thready beat somewhere behind the plastic curtains. She moves, diving forward and tackling Racetrack back into the decking.
Maggie's head smacks into the hard metal and Kara's fist breaks her nose a moment later.
Then Maggie shifts beneath her and Kara finds herself being thrown, even though the other woman is smaller. She swears as Racetrack drops onto her, knee smashing into Kara's belly. Her elbow bruises Kara's mouth before Kara can get her hands up.
They roll again, Kara pissed, the adrenaline still surging through her blood needing the outlet. She lands on top and catches Racetrack's hands in hers, pinning them to the deck.
"Oh, come on," Maggie wheezes through blood, her eyes angry, "That it, Starbuck? That all you frakking got, now the toasters own your soul?"
Which is just an excuse for Kara sit back, let Racetrack's hands go and punch her in the face again. There's something satisfying about it. As though, hitting Maggie is punching Zarek and Gaeta and the marine who's dead, whom she can't kill four or five times for the life that's bleeding out behind her.
"Shit--Captain--"
Kara can't ignore the hands grabbing at her, dragging her off Racetrack. She struggles a little, but gives up when an arm wraps around her throat, cutting off her air. She claws at it; after all, she likes to breathe.
On the floor, Racetrack has her hands up over her face.
There's blood, everywhere, but that's nothing new. Kara's been seeing blood for what feels like hours. This fresh blood is just a brighter color than the tacky, dried stiffness on her hands and tanks (except for the splotches of Maggie's that cover Sam's).
"Stop fighting, Captain." Dimly, Kara recognizes LSO Kelly's voice. It's something else that adds to her confusion.
But she listens, going limp and trying to relax.
"Try anything and I'll choke you unconscious, Starbuck."
Kelly's arm relaxes from around her neck and Kara coughs a little, finding her voice, "Not going to try anything."
"Heard that before," he replies, but his hands let her go and he steps back.
Reaching up to rub her neck, Kara coughs again and turns back to the plastic sheeting. Cottle and his people are still working.
"He's a toaster, Starbuck."
She doesn't look at Kelly, or at Racetrack being helped to a bed, limping and coughing on her own blood. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."
"Kara?" Lee, on her other side, and she wonders a little when he got there. If he saved his dad, and the ship is back in the hands of the good guys (are there any?). Not that it matters.
"Hey, Lee." She frowns, trying to remember how to care about the bigger picture. "Your dad ok? We get the ship back?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we did."
"Good." A shiver wracks her and she wraps her arms around herself, wondering if they've turned the heat down suddenly. Shoving the fog away a little, Kara turns her head away from the plastic sheeting and looks at Lee, shirt open and stance confident. "Good job."
"Yeah." Lee's eyes are looking through the plastic, "Ishay filled me in on Sam's condition. She said you brought him in."
"Had some help."
This is not what she does, Kara thinks, staring through the plastic again. She doesn't watch life pass, she doesn't wait for things to happen, she doesn't tie herself to a Cylon. But here she is, and there Sam is.
And maybe right now, this is what she does.
-f-
length: 3300+
pairing: Kara Thrace/Sam Anders
rating: PG13, violence, language
set: partially inside 'Blood on the Scales', partially after/before 'No Exit' (spec for 'No Exit', though)
spoilers: Only through 'BotS'.
notes: This was mostly finished last night, but I didn't post it and then this morning
rose_griffes wrote a similar fic from Romo's pov. And I sorta flailed and then pointed out to myself that there are now three (four?) versions of Felix Gaeta getting his tattoo. And all of them include Kara Thrace in some capacity (bad influence, that woman). So I went back over, double-checked for similarities, ripped out several clunky bits, and expanded the last scene some more. Complex Uncertainties
by ALC Punk!
The adrenaline that got her moving, got her shooting, is still flooding her veins. Kara stares at Sam, his head lolling, his eyes not quite focusing, and feels it spike higher. Frak. He could die. Here and now, he could die, and all of the things they've never said--the things that never seemed to matter until now, with his blood on her hands--will remain unsaid.
She can't help it, she laughs a little, leaning forward to press her forehead against his, swallowing against the taste of blood at the back of her mouth.
If she can get the blood to stop spilling so fast out of his neck, she might have a chance. She can feel it still sliding down between her fingers, sluggish but still pulsing with the beat of his heart.
"Don't you die on me," she mutters, raising her head again.
The sound of firing hasn't drifted away and Kara realizes she's frakked. If she goes for help, Sam will die. That's a certainty, something she feels in her gut. If they stay right here, he'll die. There's no way anyone will find them in time to do anything. And the more those guns fire closer and closer, the more there's a chance someone will come around the corner and take her out.
"So, we gotta move. Get to Cottle. Right."
She can do this. Her hand tightens on the back of his neck and then she scrabbles, one-handed, for something to tie the bandage on. There's nothing within reach and she starts cursing.
A babbling mumble from Sam jerks her head up, and in reflex she picks her side-arm up, have caught under her knee, left-handed, but sure.
The marine squeezing down on his trigger dies before he can get off a shot.
"Gods-dammit--" she swears again, keeping her hand on Sam's neck while she scrabbles for the spare ammo-packs with the other. If she runs out before they make it, they are dead.
Kara's got a lot of faith in the old man, but right now, he's not even free. "Cottle," she reminds herself, trying to ignore the way her belly clenches at the thought of Sam dying. He's a toaster, Kara, she reminds herself. Yeah? And what the frak are you?
It's the memory of hauling her own corpse that gets her moving, shifting Sam (he tries to help, but he's not coordinated enough for a concerted effort) and sliding behind him.
She presses the bandage against his neck, then lets go. It stays. Sort of--it's going to slide off and he's going to start bleeding again, but she can either stay here, pressing it against his neck and watch him die, or she can move. And maybe he'll die on the way.
"Gonna need both hands, Sammy. Try not to bleed to death on me, k?"
Keeping his neck and head steady on her shoulder is hard when she shifts and moves. "Frak--"
Standing from this angle isn't an option and she curses as she gets to her knees and tries to push up, lifting with her legs and not her back.
"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," she mutters, managing to get him up just enough to move a step. Two. Walking backwards hauling him isn't the easiest thing she's ever done. It's not the worst, though, and her knee twinges as a reminder of walking a moon into what was almost oblivion.
She makes it barely halfway down the corridor, Sam's feet dragging and catching on the decking before her legs buckle, taking them both down.
"Up, c'mon, up--" Kara feels everything strain as she gets back to her feet, Sam still dragging at her. He's dead-weight, worse than her body was, and she wants to tell him that.
He won't remember if she tells him now, in this place and time with his life bleeding out down the front of her shirt. I found my body, Sam. I'm dead. I never came back. I don't know what the frak I am-- she's jerked from her thoughts when he shifts, obviously trying to help.
"No, no, Sam--don't move. I've got you--" she swears and goes down to one knee when he over-balances them.
It's frakking depressing to see how little they've come. She has six corridors to get through before Cottle's. They're lucky this isn't the normal brig, one deck up and even more frames over. "Frak--"
She huffs out a breath too fast, panting as she struggles back up.
By the time she's made it another ten feet, her muscles are burning with the strain.
She goes down again, smacking her head into a crate and wanting to cry at the hopelessness of it all. Sam's stopped responding to her words, stopped moving except to breathe (she had to stop and check that, almost hysterical, suddenly).
"Not gonna die on me, Sammy," she pants, pushing back up, getting a new grip on him and ignoring how slick her fingers are with his blood.
Gripping the gun in her hand is getting harder, but she can still hear the sound of gunfire, shouts and screams from the people surrounding it. The battle that started when someone was stupid enough to try taking over her ship is still raging, and she feels a grim sort of satisfaction about that. The old man might have lost support, but the Galactica wasn't going down in mutinous flames without a fight.
Eventually, she's reduced to moving a few feet and then resting. Talking is useless, all her breath needed for other things. Two civilians try to take her down when they notice Sam and she shoots them without a thought, then continues on.
A marine patrol nearly manages to box her in, but even with Sam killing her maneuverability, she's still the best shot in the frakking fleet. They're dead before they get their act together and Kara has to lean against the wall to steady herself, hitching Sam a little higher, before starting off again. She's lucky the marines fell where they did or she'd be negotiating around them and probably tripping.
She figures she's about halfway there when her legs give out again and she goes down hard, trying not to curse and going silent as she hears the sound of approaching feet.
Maybe this time, it'll be someone who can help.
A quick looks hows her some weaselly-looking guy and a marine at his back.
It's not hard to guess which might be on her side and Kara twists, gun coming up.
It's just a pity it clicks on empty.
-=-
"Frak," he stalks back over to her.
Kara thinks she should recognize him, and maybe she would, if she'd frequented the shooting gallery during Baltar's trial. But she was dead then, and only Athena or Racetrack could have shown her the bullet-hole-riddled targets containing Romo Lampkin's face.
Reloading while he stands there feels odd. The blood on her fingers makes it harder to grip everything, but she manages, the clip snapping in with a click. Safety off.
"Can you shoot that?" she nods at the gun in his hand.
"Nah, I picked it up for show."
The sarcasm doesn't even make her smile, "Safety's on."
"Yeah, I know. If I'm going to be shoving it in a pocket, I'd rather not shoot something off."
"Take his feet," Kara orders, already gathering herself for lifting Sam again. She wonders about how many times they've fallen, but the count doesn't seem to matter. Under her arms and against her body, she can still feel him breathing fitfully.
"Gods, he's huge."
It's the only complaint Lampkin utters as Kara gets to her feet and both of them strain under Sam Anders' weight. Romo hooks one arm around Sam's legs so he has one hand free, pistol in it and Kara wants to laugh about how ridiculous this all is. One civilian and one broken-down pilot to haul a Cylon to the doctor. It's like the beginning of a stupid joke that ends with them shooting each other in the head.
With only a little difficulty, Lampkin takes the lead, leaving Kara to follow, Sam held too-tight against her chest, her back and arms aching from the strain.
The awareness of that disappears in a surge of adrenaline when two marines round the corner. Kara manages to put a bullet in one without dropping Sam, and Lampkin manages the other, though they both end up on their knees.
It's slower going after that, both aware that the nearby fighting is too close for comfort.
"Take the next turn," Kara eventually says, her breath short again, the panic still near to the surface. Sam is heavier with every step and she wonders a little wildly how she ever managed to make it as far as she had.
"No, no, can't. Came that way. It's too thick with people--" glancing at her, Lampkin drops Sam's feet without warning and she staggers under the added weight. "There's got to be a different way."
Sam's head shifts on her shoulder, and she can feel his heart beating against her fingers. It's too slow. "That's the fastest route to Cottle."
"If we both get shot, he's not going to make it," Lampkin snaps. "There's got to be a different way."
And if they're too late, they'll be hauling a corpse. A spike of adrenaline surges through her and she fights back a sob. "All right. Go left. We can cut through the head on B deck."
The next while is etched in quick, still-frame images that fill her nightmares (when she remembers them) for the rest of her life. Sam, breathing becoming less and less obvious, Kara's arms and legs failing every half-dozen steps until she can't feel them anymore, and she only knows Sam is there because his head is on her shoulder. Romo, steady but erratic, pistol taking out two civilians before they can fire back.
Tears sting her eyes when the adrenaline gets to be too much (or it's anger and rage and terror at how he could die, but that's something to shove down), but she ignores them. When Sam dies, that's when she'll take a rag and wipe her face clean. Until then, there's no time. Not with the sharp smell of his blood coating the back of her throat and the slippery-slick feel of it seeping down under her clothing.
She thinks a little wildly that his Cylon blood is trying to become a part of her, like he always is.
It actually surprises her that the detour doesn't end in tragedy. They make it to the infirmary, Sam still heavy in their arms. A cordon of marines lets them past with barely a flicker, and Kara thanks the Gods that Adama's people are still in charge here. One of the orderlies spots them and turns, shouting for Cottle. Ishay bustles out of one of the curtained areas. On seeing them, she pauses, her eyes wide and expression conflicted.
"You have to help us," Kara says, her voice breaking. "Please."
Whether it's Kara's plea or Cottle arriving that does it, Ishay moves again, calling for help. Within seconds they're in one of the exam areas, Sam flat on a bed. They shove Romo out of the way, but not her (or perhaps they try and she simply doesn't notice). Kara feels strange, not having him in her arms and she wraps her hands around one of his while they start poking and prodding.
"Get an IV in him, NOW."
"He took a bullet in the back of the neck," Kara tells everyone or no one at all. Time seems to shift a little, her eyes wide as she stares at Sam's face. She's aware of Cottle giving more orders, of words like 'blood pressure dropping' and 'units of whole blood' and 'get the frakking cat-scan online'. But they don't really connect.
Not until Ishay shakes her, almost rattling her teeth together, does she come back from that strange half-reality. She blinks and draws in a breath, tasting blood and antiseptic. The room snaps into focus again.
"Captain!" Ishay sounds like she's repeating herself, "Captain, is any of that blood yours?"
"No."
"All right. Would you like to get cleaned up?"
"No." The only word she can think, right now. No, you're not allowed to die, Sam. Someone hooked him up to too many tubes, and Kara wonders if they're helping or killing him. But the reassuring rise and fall of his chest, echoed by the hiss from the oxygen tubes stays her sudden paranoia.
"Suit yourself. I have other patients, Cottle should be back once this unit is nearly-finished. Shout if there's a problem."
It's only after she's gone that Kara starts to have questions. But Sam's hand is warm between hers, and there's two bags of fluid sliding into his body, taking up the space left open by what's down her shirt.
-=-
After too little time or too much, Cottle comes back and tells Kara bluntly to back the frak off while they wheel Sam off for tests. The bullet might still be lodged in his spine (Cottle doesn't say that's bad, doesn't tell her that the journey from the brig with its stops, starts, falls and moments of terror might have ruined Sam's spine). They need to find out if there's a need for surgery. If not, they'll stitch him up and hope for the best.
The best. Kara wants to laugh at the idea that as far as she's concerned the best means Sam alive and whole, standing just so she can punch him for making her worry.
Cottle comes back, puffing on his cigarette and just looks at her a moment before saying bluntly, "You look like hell, and so does he. The bullet's lodged between vertebrae. If we're lucky, we can get it out without damaging anything more than it already is--"
"Worst case, Doc," Kara demands, voice dry.
"He dies. Next worst, he's crippled."
Gods. Somewhere, Felix Gaeta is having his last laugh. Kara sucks in a breath. "Best case?"
"We can repair the damage, and he walks again."
"Cottle," Ishay bustles up, "We're ready in surgery."
He nods and leaves Kara. She follows to the surgery area, one of the nurses stopping her outside the plastic drape. Inside, Sam looks small surrounded by people and machines. She can hear his heartbeat, almost too slow, but at least it's steady.
"You'll need to wait out here," another tells her, sliding the plastic closed.
Kara can still see through it, and she wonders if they'd truly stop her from walking in and holding Sam's hand. Waiting isn't something she's good at and won't ever be. If she could just do something--
"Think the toaster will live?"
Racetrack is a distraction from the panic and fear still lurking under her skin--and Kara will take any excuse not to think too hard about why she doesn't want him to die. She won't even consider that he could survive and be unable to walk again.
"Just so I know," Racetrack continues, jaw set and a sneer on her lips, "if I have to shoot him myself."
"Don't know. Think that sad sack of shit Skulls is gonna live?" Kara fires back, pleased with her alliteration if not with the scattered wits that make the words stale.
"It wasn't a kill-shot." There's a deadness in Maggie's voice, like she's throttling down some horrible thing.
"Damn. Must be getting rusty."
Racetrack steps right up into Kara's personal space, her eyes glittering with anger, "You wanna say that again, frak-up?"
Leaning down that little bit, Kara smirks a little, and whispers, "Must be gettin' rusty if I couldn't kill him without paying attention."
There's a beat and then Racetrack snaps a fist into Kara's jaw. She was ready for it, and moves just enough that it only grazes her. Kara comes back with a punch of her own, slamming into Racetrack's gut.
Once upon a time, she might've waited, might've let Racetrack rethink her decision to pick a fight with Starbuk. But Kara was frakking sick of waiting, and Sam's heart was still a thready beat somewhere behind the plastic curtains. She moves, diving forward and tackling Racetrack back into the decking.
Maggie's head smacks into the hard metal and Kara's fist breaks her nose a moment later.
Then Maggie shifts beneath her and Kara finds herself being thrown, even though the other woman is smaller. She swears as Racetrack drops onto her, knee smashing into Kara's belly. Her elbow bruises Kara's mouth before Kara can get her hands up.
They roll again, Kara pissed, the adrenaline still surging through her blood needing the outlet. She lands on top and catches Racetrack's hands in hers, pinning them to the deck.
"Oh, come on," Maggie wheezes through blood, her eyes angry, "That it, Starbuck? That all you frakking got, now the toasters own your soul?"
Which is just an excuse for Kara sit back, let Racetrack's hands go and punch her in the face again. There's something satisfying about it. As though, hitting Maggie is punching Zarek and Gaeta and the marine who's dead, whom she can't kill four or five times for the life that's bleeding out behind her.
"Shit--Captain--"
Kara can't ignore the hands grabbing at her, dragging her off Racetrack. She struggles a little, but gives up when an arm wraps around her throat, cutting off her air. She claws at it; after all, she likes to breathe.
On the floor, Racetrack has her hands up over her face.
There's blood, everywhere, but that's nothing new. Kara's been seeing blood for what feels like hours. This fresh blood is just a brighter color than the tacky, dried stiffness on her hands and tanks (except for the splotches of Maggie's that cover Sam's).
"Stop fighting, Captain." Dimly, Kara recognizes LSO Kelly's voice. It's something else that adds to her confusion.
But she listens, going limp and trying to relax.
"Try anything and I'll choke you unconscious, Starbuck."
Kelly's arm relaxes from around her neck and Kara coughs a little, finding her voice, "Not going to try anything."
"Heard that before," he replies, but his hands let her go and he steps back.
Reaching up to rub her neck, Kara coughs again and turns back to the plastic sheeting. Cottle and his people are still working.
"He's a toaster, Starbuck."
She doesn't look at Kelly, or at Racetrack being helped to a bed, limping and coughing on her own blood. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."
"Kara?" Lee, on her other side, and she wonders a little when he got there. If he saved his dad, and the ship is back in the hands of the good guys (are there any?). Not that it matters.
"Hey, Lee." She frowns, trying to remember how to care about the bigger picture. "Your dad ok? We get the ship back?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we did."
"Good." A shiver wracks her and she wraps her arms around herself, wondering if they've turned the heat down suddenly. Shoving the fog away a little, Kara turns her head away from the plastic sheeting and looks at Lee, shirt open and stance confident. "Good job."
"Yeah." Lee's eyes are looking through the plastic, "Ishay filled me in on Sam's condition. She said you brought him in."
"Had some help."
This is not what she does, Kara thinks, staring through the plastic again. She doesn't watch life pass, she doesn't wait for things to happen, she doesn't tie herself to a Cylon. But here she is, and there Sam is.
And maybe right now, this is what she does.
-f-