shah_of_blah | Fic: Lift Me Up

Written for a prompt at

no_takebacks : “The Passage,” Kara and Lee try to take care of each other in subtle ways, first as they begin to starve and then as they suffer through radiation sickness.

Title: Lift Me Up
Disclaimer: not mine, not for profit.
Characters/Pairing: Kara/Lee
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1500
Not beta'd.

Kara hasn’t tasted fresh fruit in too many months to count.

In line at the mess, she pokes at something hard, dry, and yellow. Bread? Wrinkling her nose, she goes to put it back where she found it, but her eyes abruptly spot Lee across the room. He’s sitting alone, papers spread before him and his own tray resting untouched.

She picks up the roll again, brings it to her lips. Takes a deep bite. All the while, she watches him watching her.

~~~

They run out of bread.

Lee sits in his office, too hungry to work and too tired to eat. He looks at the medical report in front of him. Cottle’s prescribed dietary supplements for three of his pilots. Soon they’ll run out of those too.

Starbuck’s the only one who breaches his den of solitude. She doesn’t even knock when she brings him the latest report from the flight deck. She slaps it down on his desk, glancing over Cottle’s report as she does so.

While her gaze is focused on the paper, Lee studies her. He imagines that he can still see shadows of fading bruises, can still feel the echoing ache in his knuckles. He blinks, curls and uncurls his fists. He’s imagining things. He blinks again.

When his eyes snap back to focus on her face, Kara is looking at him with concern.

“Lee,” she says. Her voice is low and rough. “Lee, when was the last time you ate? Slept? Saw the inside of a shower stall?”

“I’m fine,” he says, scrubbing one hand against his face.

“Come on, Lee.”

“Kara, please just…” He doesn’t know why, but when he asks her to go, she goes, though the look on her face is far from pleased. He doesn’t have time to think about that, not with reports and ailing pilots and CAP in an hour.

He runs into her on his way to the flight deck, or rather she runs into him. She doesn’t say a word, but her eyes have that set, determined, take-no-prisoners look she’s so fond of. He doesn’t say a word either when she stretches out one hand and shoves something rough and round into his hand.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she’s gone, striding through the halls and not looking back. Lee glances down at his hand. He frowns when he realizes what it is.

Hard and dry and so far beyond stale, it’s the last piece of bread in the universe.

~~~

Like so much of their equipment, the food processing system is not meant to run for years without planetside maintenance. A week after they run out of bread in the mess, the system breaks down entirely, and now the foul slop they’re left with is a precious commodity. After a few days of bland, unidentifiable substances in the mess—freeze-dried protein, for the most part and the occasional can of beans—hunger is a constant companion for Kara. The gnawing ache makes sleep, work, even flying difficult.

Restless, she spends half of her night shift in the unused starboard hangar bay, leaning against a pile of crates and wishing she had a cigarette or gum or a godsdamn cracker.

When he shows up, she’s not surprised.

“Got room for one more?” he says, leaning against the bulkhead a few feet away.

She shrugs, pats the empty space beside her. He settles in, head thunking back against the crates and eyes falling closed as he rests his forearms on his bent knees. She eyes him for a few moments before settling back into a similar pose.

“You know what I miss?” he says eventually. His voice is soft, but they’re sitting so close that she swears she can feel the vibrations or some shit like that.

She’s silent, waiting for him to say what he wants to say. She doesn’t know what her answer would be if he asked. Can’t say food—too obvious. Can’t say anything else either—too revealing.

“Gum,” he says.

When she opens her eyes, he’s looking right at her. Just like that day in the mess, and countless days before it, she watches him watching her. Then she grins and leans back. “Gum, huh? What flavor?”

He shrugs. His shoulder is a hair’s breadth from touching hers.

“Don’t know. Don’t remember.”

He closes his eyes again and she sighs, thinking this over. She shifts restlessly, and feels a slow smile stretching across her face when inspiration strikes. It only takes her a few seconds to desecrate the mission briefing folded up in her pocket.

“Here,” she says, shoving something into his open hand. “Don’t look.”

“What is it?”

“For frak’s sake, Lee, it’s chewing gum. I said don’t look.”

“Bossy,” he mutters, but obediently shoves it in his mouth. As he does, Kara’s eyes are drawn, as ever, to the gleam of his ring.

She turns her head away, staring across the empty bay. She feels things like hunger and exhaustion and guilt tugging at her, dragging her apart at the seams, and lords she must be tired to be thinking this way. Finally, she pops the improvised ‘gum’ in her mouth too.

“Minty fresh,” she says after a moment.

“Mmm,” he says, “mine’s watermelon.”

“Watermelon, gods. I don’t remember when was the last time I had that.”

And for a little while, they sit and think about watermelon and forget all the hurt and the confusion until even the ache in their bellies starts to fade. When Kara’s head starts to droop, and she nearly nods off slumped against Lee’s shoulder, he nudges her awake. Finally, they stand, holding onto each others’ hands a moment longer than necessary.

“Thanks,” Lee says, “for the gum.” He spits out the chewed up wad of paper.

“Anytime,” she says. “Best use of your briefings I’ve ever found.”

He smiles and she smiles and then they’re walking away.

There’s a moment, just before she falls asleep when Kara looks out through the curtain of her bunk and sees the rack that hasn’t been his in a long time. She thinks of chewing gum and watermelon and, hungry as she is, everything might be okay.

~~~

Two days later, Athena finds a way through the star cluster.

Kara flies, watching her hands steady on the Raptor controls. She carefully eyes her greying badge.

Radiation is rough on an empty stomach.

She counts time by trips through the cloud and ever-darkening spots on that badge.

After one rough flight, she waits, breathing hard, to go through the detox screen. Once she’s clear, she’s out of there. No one gets in her way and she doesn’t pause until she’s on her knees in the head, coughing and breathing, breathing through the gag reflex.

There’s nothing in her stomach but bile; still, she’d rather not lose that, thank you very much.

Some time later, she realizes she’s not alone in the head. He’s slumped over one of the sinks, and glances up at her when she steps out of the stall. She doesn’t walk so much as stagger across the room to take up a similar posture, head down over the basin as she splashes cold water—one of the few things they’ve still got enough of—on her face.

“Starbuck,” he says, suddenly much closer to her than before, “you okay?”

She doesn’t lift her head, still shaky from the dry-heaving and everything else. “Request permission for a transfer, sir.”

His voice is just over her shoulder when he says, “All transfer requests must be submitted in writing, Captain.”

She grins, ducks her head back under the cool stream of water. When she finally lifts her head, her hair is a dark cap and he’s standing just behind her, eyes meeting hers in the mirror. For a moment, everything seems to tilt and flicker—better not be her stomach again—and she feels years younger. But no less tired.

“I’ll go find a pen,” she tells him.

Neither of them moves. They stay that way until the aches in her body start to overwhelm and she allows herself, briefly, to lean on him. They exit the head together, but once they reach the corridor they’re walking an appropriate distance apart.

~~~

“You know what I miss?” she says, later—after clouds and the Carina and growing darkness on their badges. And Kat.

“What do you miss?” he asks, sitting across from her in the dark storage locker, knees just barely brushing hers.

“Fresh fruit,” she says, and she’s tired, so tired. “I don’t remember what it tastes like.”

Her whole body feels like it’s sinking somehow, but he just nods.

“I remember the last time I ate a, a peach. I was on leave, to Picon. I was just walking through the market—you know, the one by the spaceport. Anyway I was walking through the market. I passed this vendor and, see, my shore leave was up. I knew I wouldn’t be planetside again for awhile, so when I saw this stand of fruit…”

She leans back, ready to sink into the bulkhead but his voice holds her there even as her eyes drift closed. She won’t act on it, not today, but it’s comforting to know that he’ll be there if she needs a shoulder to lean on or someone to watch her six.

fin

Notes: This fic references two deleted scenes. The chewing gum scene was reputedly cut from The Passage. If it was ever filmed, I don't recall seeing it. The second is a deleted scene from 33, which is on the DVDs (the "request permission to transfer" scene).