Fairy Tale
Jan. 27th, 2009 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maculategiraffeI was cleaning out old gmail drafts (where I frequently store story-fragments) and found this; I think I wrote it right after watching Battlestar Galactica: Razor back in fall '07.
~750 words. NC-17 for language and themes.
"So what's so bad?" Starbuck asks, and takes a long pull off her bottle, the tingle spreading through her, making her chatty. She likes that about alcohol; it's half of what she loves about flying, too, the purr of the thrusters, the gentle bone-deep buzz.
"I loved her," says Shaw, and gives Starbuck a long, appraising glance before adding with no particular affect, "You wouldn't understand."
Starbuck tilts her chin, amused, ready as she always is for a fight, but ready not to fight, too, with this girl. This girl is not her adversary. This girl is just a drugged-out washup on KP, blurring random insults at someone she can barely see.
"No?" she asks, bored, but less bored than she'd be if Shaw quit talking. In that cute patrician accent. One hundred percent Caprican, those lazy "ahhh"s where her r's should be, like there's no edge, no growl to anything she says. Like Gaius Baltar, though his-- like everything else about him-- turned out to be a lie.
Not that Starbuck has any objection to lies on principle. She'd like to be better at them, herself.
Shaw's eyes are hooded; she's stoned and still, staring at the radio like it's got visual, or like her eyes have nothing better to do, which, let's face it, is true in this particular kitchen. But Starbuck gets the feeling it might be true anywhere else Shaw happened to be, too. She wonders about this Shaw, this pretty, fragile-looking, utterly ruthless bitch, shooting up in the kitchen after hours. So Shaw loved Helena Cain, by all accounts another ruthless bitch; they probably weren't frakking, though, since to hear the crew tell it, Cain was busy tonguing her pet toaster's mechanical cunt right up until she threw her in the brig. Maybe she took Shaw for a quick roll, squalid and unspoken-of afterwards, while the skinjob was getting raped on Cain's orders. Comfort food. Just like Mom used to make.
And now Shaw's moping in the kitchen, little lovelorn widow, dreaming of the woman who--
"She taught me," says Shaw, still staring at the radio. "Frak. She made me."
Starbuck's not sure what that's about, and they sit there for a while, Shaw looking little and desolate among the peeled potatoes, a junkie Cinderella, down on her knees in the scullery with a syringe hidden in an empty flour can.
Ah, that's it, thinks Kara, with sudden drunken insight. Shaw isn't Cain's widow, after all. She's her orphan. Shaw was Cain's girl like Starbuck was the Old Man's, and the Six wasn't her rival; she was her wicked stepmother, whispering lies in the true mother's ear, scrying in her magic mirror to destroy princess and kingdom alike.
And now comes sashaying into her kitchen of exile Kara Thrace, the seven stumpy dwarves rolled into one, clodhopping daughter of Galactica, with her big feet and her foul mouth and her bottle of booze, to torture poor Kendra, who sits there virtuous and silent as a lamb bound for slaughter. Except her eyes aren't lamb eyes, they're needle eyes, and when their points slide into Starbuck, the drug hits her bloodstream like the sweetest punch to the mouth: She really hates me.
Shaw doesn't just hate the girl from Galactica, or the insubordinate captain, or the asshole who wandered into the kitchen and interrupted Shaw's private coked-up pity party. No, this is personal. Shaw hates Starbuck for her mouth, for the lift of her chin, for drugging herself with something that pours and dribbles and stinks on the breath instead of something in an antiseptic needle, something neat and clean and odorless. Shaw hates the way Starbuck wipes her mouth on the back of her hand, messy messy; she hates the sloppy way Starbuck is sitting right now; she hates the way Starbuck's eyes widen and light up with alcohol, and the punch-drunk way she smiles.
"Shaw," she says, tasting the name, as the cool dark eyes flick away from her, and "Kendra." It tastes like her own name. It tastes like her mother.
"Thrace," says Shaw, her voice delicate with irony. "Kara."
Will Shaw lie down on the kitchen floor, among the potato peelings, under her wicked stepsister? Does she hate herself that much yet?
Kara's about to find out. As for herself, that's never been in doubt. She does. She will.
"Kendra," she says again, sweet and crisp as the first bite out of the poisoned apple, and the dark eyes close.
~750 words. NC-17 for language and themes.
"So what's so bad?" Starbuck asks, and takes a long pull off her bottle, the tingle spreading through her, making her chatty. She likes that about alcohol; it's half of what she loves about flying, too, the purr of the thrusters, the gentle bone-deep buzz.
"I loved her," says Shaw, and gives Starbuck a long, appraising glance before adding with no particular affect, "You wouldn't understand."
Starbuck tilts her chin, amused, ready as she always is for a fight, but ready not to fight, too, with this girl. This girl is not her adversary. This girl is just a drugged-out washup on KP, blurring random insults at someone she can barely see.
"No?" she asks, bored, but less bored than she'd be if Shaw quit talking. In that cute patrician accent. One hundred percent Caprican, those lazy "ahhh"s where her r's should be, like there's no edge, no growl to anything she says. Like Gaius Baltar, though his-- like everything else about him-- turned out to be a lie.
Not that Starbuck has any objection to lies on principle. She'd like to be better at them, herself.
Shaw's eyes are hooded; she's stoned and still, staring at the radio like it's got visual, or like her eyes have nothing better to do, which, let's face it, is true in this particular kitchen. But Starbuck gets the feeling it might be true anywhere else Shaw happened to be, too. She wonders about this Shaw, this pretty, fragile-looking, utterly ruthless bitch, shooting up in the kitchen after hours. So Shaw loved Helena Cain, by all accounts another ruthless bitch; they probably weren't frakking, though, since to hear the crew tell it, Cain was busy tonguing her pet toaster's mechanical cunt right up until she threw her in the brig. Maybe she took Shaw for a quick roll, squalid and unspoken-of afterwards, while the skinjob was getting raped on Cain's orders. Comfort food. Just like Mom used to make.
And now Shaw's moping in the kitchen, little lovelorn widow, dreaming of the woman who--
"She taught me," says Shaw, still staring at the radio. "Frak. She made me."
Starbuck's not sure what that's about, and they sit there for a while, Shaw looking little and desolate among the peeled potatoes, a junkie Cinderella, down on her knees in the scullery with a syringe hidden in an empty flour can.
Ah, that's it, thinks Kara, with sudden drunken insight. Shaw isn't Cain's widow, after all. She's her orphan. Shaw was Cain's girl like Starbuck was the Old Man's, and the Six wasn't her rival; she was her wicked stepmother, whispering lies in the true mother's ear, scrying in her magic mirror to destroy princess and kingdom alike.
And now comes sashaying into her kitchen of exile Kara Thrace, the seven stumpy dwarves rolled into one, clodhopping daughter of Galactica, with her big feet and her foul mouth and her bottle of booze, to torture poor Kendra, who sits there virtuous and silent as a lamb bound for slaughter. Except her eyes aren't lamb eyes, they're needle eyes, and when their points slide into Starbuck, the drug hits her bloodstream like the sweetest punch to the mouth: She really hates me.
Shaw doesn't just hate the girl from Galactica, or the insubordinate captain, or the asshole who wandered into the kitchen and interrupted Shaw's private coked-up pity party. No, this is personal. Shaw hates Starbuck for her mouth, for the lift of her chin, for drugging herself with something that pours and dribbles and stinks on the breath instead of something in an antiseptic needle, something neat and clean and odorless. Shaw hates the way Starbuck wipes her mouth on the back of her hand, messy messy; she hates the sloppy way Starbuck is sitting right now; she hates the way Starbuck's eyes widen and light up with alcohol, and the punch-drunk way she smiles.
"Shaw," she says, tasting the name, as the cool dark eyes flick away from her, and "Kendra." It tastes like her own name. It tastes like her mother.
"Thrace," says Shaw, her voice delicate with irony. "Kara."
Will Shaw lie down on the kitchen floor, among the potato peelings, under her wicked stepsister? Does she hate herself that much yet?
Kara's about to find out. As for herself, that's never been in doubt. She does. She will.
"Kendra," she says again, sweet and crisp as the first bite out of the poisoned apple, and the dark eyes close.
