Angel on Top of the Tree
ALC Punk!

He says it like it's supposed to be a quote, but Kara thinks he means it. He's not supposed to mean it, here in the darkness.

"You're being human again." Boomer's voice cuts in cleanly, precisely (fingers through the back of her neck, pushingproddingpulsing).

And the world starts up again.

Kara wants the darkness back.

Naked skin. Pale flesh and golden-brown flesh, and Helo has *always* been good with his hips (Boomer knows now, too). Boomer's voice is ragged when she says, "More."

And Kara watches from outside (elsewhere, she thinks she's sleeping and tossing and turning, and there are needles in her skin) as her hand moves to cup one of those perfect breasts, as her own head tilts and she's kissing the column of the Cylon's neck (just a toaster, but she tastes human), nibbling and licking until Boomer lets out a cry of her own, and shudders between them.

"So hot."

"You're such a man." Kara snaps, but she bends down and kisses him, unable to help herself.

Boomer's hand snakes under her shirts, and Kara lets out a surprised gasp.

"Definitely hot." Helo mumbles against her mouth.

What is she doing? She pulls back and catches Boomer's wrist, turning away from them both and standing.

The movement plunges the world into dark again, and she is standing alone in the middle of nothing.

"You didn't find Kobol."

She's almost ready for the lights to flash back up, and she stares at the horror before her. Leoben's standing over them both, Boomer frozen, staring up (a lioness lost in her guarding).

Helo's blood stains the white of the ground beneath (grass should be greener on the other side).

Time stops standing still.

"You killed him!"

"No, I--" But the gun is in her hand, and she suddenly remembers pulling the trigger. "--I was aiming for you."

"Oh, God! Helo!" Boomer seems unable to do more than weep as she kneels there, hands scrabbling uselessly at his chest (more blood, and a coldly precise voice telling her that the heart hasn't stopped beating), pulling the fabric away.

And Kara can move again, the gun clatters to the ground as she drops next to Boomer, staring at what she's done. "I didn't--"

"But you're a screw-up, Starbuck." And Boomer's face is streaked with grime and tears, making the clinical tone sound so wrong. "You always have been, you always will be."

Light flares too close, and Kara's blinded by it as Boomer moves.

The pain doesn't hit until she's slamming into the wall (cave, deck, floor--where's the bed again?), sliding down and wondering how many ribs are cracked. She breathes in and her chest wheezes. "Boomer."

"Do you love anyone, Starbuck?"

OK, this is something she knows now.

Leoben vanishes, the light changes, and Zak Adama looking up at her from the pool of Helo's blood is almost expected. "Been here, done that. Got anything new for me?"

"You killed me," Zak whispers, skin turning grey, turning black and flaking off, leaving nothing but withered husk and bones that creak as he shifts and tries to reach her. "Kara, you killed me. I can't ever forgive you. No one can love you."

"That's what they keep telling me," she murmurs.

"Want to join us, Starbuck?"

She can't turn for a moment towards Helo's voice, because Zak is dying before her eyes, and even though she's seen it in her dreams a hundred thousand times before, it's so real, she feels it as if her own bones are cracking and fading.

"Come on, Starbuck." Boomer, now, and a hand slides around her waist, fingers skimming under her shirts (again, and she wants to taste something human). "You can't say you're not interested. Not after before."

Her body responds to the caress as her mind tries to flee, and Kara turns and looks at Boomer--and Helo is behind her, his face broken and brittle.

"You've killed him."

"Killed them all," Boomer whispers, tugging up Kara's shirts and leaning in to kiss her belly. "But we need you. They need you. They need me."

Kara's fingers thread into Boomer's hair, and she tugs, pulling, forcing the Cylon's head back and back until she shouldn't be able to push more, but does. "No one needs me, Boomer. Get that right."

"You're hurting me."

"You're a toaster."

Fingers wrap around her wrist, and Boomer isn't Boomer anymore.

Kara's getting used to these changes now, almost riding them like a tide. Zak took her surfing one day, and they were both sunburned and covered in sand before the evening. But she remembers laughing forever (Zak was always laughing, even as he died in her arms a thousand times over).

"Lieutenant Thrace." President Roslin sounds unnaturally calm (she's perfected that, though, almost as if she wants to kill everyone that contradicts her, but she's too polite for that).

"Madame President. Glad you could join us."

"You have failed us."

"Right."

"Kara, what are you doing?"

"Ah. I was wondering when you'd show up." She lets the President drop, turns, knowing the woman at her feet has already disappeared, and looks at him. "I've let you down, you've let me down. We're a real pair, ya know? And let's add Helo, who's frakking a Cylon to the mix."

"I'm so disappointed."

"We can't all be perfect," the words are over-used, the shrug easy. The lie painful.

Then it stops. The record skips, the world tips sideways, and someone is whispering her name.

"Starbuck, wake up!" Something flops across her face, and she jerks, body flashing with adrenaline. For a moment she can't breathe--then she's smelling dirty socks, and she turns on her side and the sock falls off her face as she glares at Helo.

"What the frak?"

"You were mumbling."

Kara throws the sock at him, smacking him in the face with it. "Yeah, well, that's the last time I eat your cooking."

"Cooking?" Boomer sounds amused.

And for a moment, Kara remembers that Cylon tastes like human, and she shivers in her dirty flight jacket (arousal, fear, don't want to know which). "Yeah. Gave me nightmares."

"Well, your cooking's worse," Helo counters, "I seem to recall needing to spend all night in the head--"

"That had nothing to do with my cooking."

"Right."

And Boomer looks at them, a strangely haunted look in her eyes, as if she wants to participate in their friendly bickering. And Kara wonders if she looks like that when Lee smiles at someone else, then shakes the thought away and sits up. "So, what's for breakfast?"

"Cylon stew?" suggests Boomer.

And all three laugh, the sound strange in the wilderness of a dead planet.

-f-

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