ficlet (bsg): our empty rooms

[averita]

Title: Our Empty Rooms

Author: averita

Summary: They don’t talk much, these days, looking to books and the slide of skin to say what needs to be said.

A/N: You guys, I actually wrote fic! What is this? (400 words totally counts. It's been over a year and I'm very much in poetry mode at the moment.) This was written for adama_roslin's MOL, prompt "lonely". Spoilers for 4.5, set sometime after ADFMS.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Title comes from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, because I am creative.

* * *

“It’s okay if you blame me,” she murmurs one night, long after he thought she’d drifted off. He doesn’t know what to say but “I don’t.”

They’re lying as they often do, loose-limbed and liquid, closer than even the narrow rack requires. For the past twenty minutes he’s been whispering the same four verses of a half-forgotten poem, stock images of lilies along mud-slaked shores. He doubts she’s heard.

She snorts. It’s a familiar sound. “Bill, do you even know what I’m talking about?” she asks, twisting to face him.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, determined. Stubborn, she’d say, or would have, once. “Everything that’s happened, it’s on both of us.”

“Earth,” she muses, and hums. “We never really talked about it.”

They don’t talk much, these days, looking to books and the slide of skin to say what needs to be said. It’s enough, he thinks, desperately. Words have only ever gotten them into trouble.

Something is shining in Laura’s eyes and he looks away, stroking her arm and watching goosebumps rise as she continues, soft and contemplative. “You know, I – ever since Billy, I haven’t liked Dee very much.” She shakes her head slightly. “I know it’s irrational but it took me so long to forgive you, and Lee…to forgive her when she’d hurt him like that, when he’d loved her so much…” Her voice trembles, breaks. It’s another familiar sound. “But when I heard, all I could think was that I’m far more responsible for her than she ever was for Billy. That you have more right to blame me than I ever had to blame you, or Lee.”

He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t want to. You made me believe, he told her once, and he tells her again, because that’s all he knows anymore, all he needs to know. You make me believe. Her breath hitches but she says nothing, curling back into the bend of his body.

They dreamed of a world with wide skies and a quiet lake. He thinks he sees it now, Earth, in the still, dim light and the shadows on her skin. Her body is all flat expanses and sudden, subtle curves; her stomach clenches, plates shifting under a planet’s surface, and he tastes the ocean-salt along the curve of her cheek.

Laura closes her eyes, twines her fingers through his. She doesn’t know how to make him remember. Earth is a wasteland.

Comments

[defyingnormalcy.livejournal.com]

When it comes to fanfic, I've always felt that it's quality over quantity. And this is certainly quality.

I particularly love this line: They don’t talk much, these days, looking to books and the slide of skin to say what needs to be said. It’s enough, he thinks, desperately. Words have only ever gotten them into trouble.

Well done! Excellent interpretation of the prompt.

[averita.livejournal.com]

I appreciate it! I'm going to have to build my way back up to longer pieces, I think (soon, actually, because I have a 12 page fiction piece due soon - eeek) but sometimes shorter works better for me.

Thank you very much :)

[defyingnormalcy.livejournal.com]

Good luck! I am in a similar boat - tons of papers due rather soon! Eeek! :P

[larsfarm77.livejournal.com]

I love that you chose to write fic! I loved the bittersweet notes in this, with Laura trying to face things as fast as Bill is smoothing them over. There's something so moving in the fact that his Earth is her, he believes in her. It can never be a wasteland to him.

My favourite part is the same as defyingnormalcy's. So perfect.

Thanks for joining in the fun!

[averita.livejournal.com]

Thank you, and thank you for organizing the MOL!

Laura trying to face things as fast as Bill is smoothing them over.

That was one of the themes that interested me so much in episodes like Six of One and Islanded in a Stream of Stars, and also depressed the hell out of me, so it was interesting to delve into a little bit. What can I say, I love the angst.

[hollywobbles.livejournal.com]

Ooh, this is sad and lovely. Her (your) observation about Dee is such a good one, and one I hadn't thought about. When all is said and done, they all had so much blood on their hands -- so many fragile people and so much stumbling about and inadvertently landing in tragedy. :/

[averita.livejournal.com]

The line about Dee is the first bit that I came up with, actually, so I'm glad you liked it! I love the character but I feel like Laura would have had really conflicting thouhgts about her.

I've just started rewatching the show and in many ways watching the miniseries again was so depressing for that reason - seeing characters like Dee and Gaeta and Tyrol fresh-faced and eager really hurt, knowing what was coming!

Thanks so much for commenting :)

[somadanne.livejournal.com]

This is deep and beautiful and I'm so glad you wrote fic!

Like others, I loved this line:

They don’t talk much, these days, looking to books and the slide of skin to say what needs to be said.

That observation about Dee is something I'd never thought about either--and I like it so much.

And then the way he sees Earth in her and your ending "Earth is a wasteland" really pack such a sad wallop. Nicely done.

[averita.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much!

[lindy999.livejournal.com]

Wow what a way to come back!!!

[averita.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[starbuck92.livejournal.com]

Short but so them. Good job!

[averita.livejournal.com]

They are rather angsty, aren't they? Thank you ♥

[meryl-edan.livejournal.com]

It's been so long since I read BSG fic - I only read this because it was you, and now I'm really, really wanting to read some original fiction of yours. Your prose is so fluid and your pacing is magical. I think you should quit school and write full-time.

[averita.livejournal.com]

That's really sweet - thank you for reading it to begin with, and for the compliments.

It's been a long time since I've written substantial original fiction, tbh, but I've been trying to get back into it and have started revising some older pieces (mostly very short - like I said, I've been struggling with longer pieces lately, and am trying to build my way back up. This whole self-discipline thing is an issue.) If you're interested I could send some of them your way.

I think you should quit school and write full-time.

Don't tempt me! But seriously, thank you. That means a lot.

[marzipanilla.livejournal.com]

Definitely a topic I've always thought about them discussing.

Wonderful representation of their relationship at that point.

[averita.livejournal.com]

It is kind of strange that they never discussed Earth on the show, isn't it? That could have been so powerful - but then, I guess the fact that they didn't says a lot as well.

Thank you!

[afrakaday.livejournal.com]

This is really great. So crushingly beautiful in so few words. A pleasure to read.

[averita.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much!

[leetah47.livejournal.com]

good job, sweetie. After a whole year...you can't tell.
This was lovely :-)

[averita.livejournal.com]

♥ Thanks, bb!

[akachankami.livejournal.com]

(*o*) few crushing perfect utterly beautiful words!
thank you for writing this!

They dreamed of a world with wide skies and a quiet lake. He thinks he sees it now, Earth, in the still, dim light and the shadows on her skin. Her body is all flat expanses and sudden, subtle curves; her stomach clenches, plates shifting under a planet’s surface, and he tastes the ocean-salt along the curve of her cheek.
she made him believe in her and her dream of earth, and
i love that you compared her cancer to the nuclear destruction and her body to the wasteland that is earth. and i love even more that he sees it with his heart, like their dream was: beautiful and perfect and lovely ♥
the last sentences are so sad and true and perfect my heart aches!

[averita.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for such a sweet comment! I'm really glad you enjoyed.

[propernice.livejournal.com]

Oh damn.

This is the first BSG fic I've read in...probably years. And it made me tear up, like I just...this was beautiful. I've always, ALWAYS wondered how she felt about Dee after Billy died, and I think this is really, really truthful and honest and beautiful.

Bill makes me ache a little.

Wonderful, wonderful job.

[averita.livejournal.com]

In that case, I'm really flattered that you read it to begin with, and am so glad that you liked it. It means a lot. There are so many things in the show, especially in 4.5, that I would have loved to see explored further and I'm really happy that this rang true for you.

♥

[cynicalangel88.livejournal.com]

This was truly lovely. I like the comparison you make about the people they have lost and how they assign blame. It’s very in character that Laura would blame herself for what happened to Dee, and equally in character that Bill would have never thought of blaming her. Well done. I’m loving all these MoL offerings; it’s like Christmas everyday around here.

[averita.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!

MOL is great - I haven't read all of the fics yet but I have several open in tabs just waiting for me, and I'm incredibly excited. It's nice to get back into the fandom.

[icedteainthebag.livejournal.com]

I love this. It's very romantic/tragic to think of them as perpetually lonely, no matter how physically intimate they were at any moment in time. But I like that for them (maybe because I'm an angst hound)... that no matter how close they got to each other, there was a longing that didn't get met. They're not only separate here as they lie together; they're lonely for what was promised, for what they believed in and what they'll never have. What they have is this and you can tell for both of them that it isn't enough. They just deal with it in different ways. This is all expressed so well here.

You do a great job of having them engage each other using that complicated season 4.5 dynamic of his consumption by guilt and denial and her struggle to accept both the consequences of her faith in Earth and her long road toward death.

Thanks for writing. It was really lovely.

[averita.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I still go back and forth on 4.5. I think that everything you said here is exactly how I imagine them around ADFMS, which is largely why I was so uncomfortable with how that episode played out, and I'm really glad that you think it came through here. I'm ultimately torn between the angst-whore and the romantic in me, and ultimately think that they were able to come to some sort of reconciliation - I think that Laura, at least, was at peace and fully content at the end. It was very jarring, though, to go from The Hub (which I view as the pinnacle of their connectedness, so to speak) to the incredibly complicated dynamic that colored 4.5. It was really sad.

Anyway, thanks for the lovely comment!