The Weight is a Gift

The Weight is a Gift

Maybe This Weight was a Gift, Like I Had to See What I Could Lift...

Title: "The Weight is a Gift"
Author: Lila
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing: Kara, Kara/Lee, Kara/Sam
Spoilers: "Rapture" but veers AU
Length: Part I of III
Summary: Everyone has to grow up sometime, even Kara Thrace.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing them for a few paragraphs.

Author's Note: This is my first venture into the BSG fandom, so please be gentle. I've been trying to reconcile my feelings on Starbuck, who I liked a lot previously and is annoying me immensely in the later half of season three. I know babyfic is cliché and probably overdone, but if there's anything I want for Starbuck it's for her to grow a pair and start acting like an adult, not a spoiled teenager, and babyfic created an outlet for taking her through that journey. I would love feedback because while I've written fanfic before, never BSG, and the first fic in a new fandom is always the hardest. I'm worried about characterization and would love more experienced readers and writers to let me know how I'm doing. Title and cut courtesy of Nada Surf. I hope you enjoy.

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It starts when it's her run at CAP and the bottom half of her flight suit won't button. She blames it on the new food, because no one's body is adjusting well to a permanent diet of processed algae, and doesn't think about it again. She eats a smaller portion for lunch and dinner, but the next day she can't get the button closed again.

She spends her off time running, running to nowhere, and dodging personnel as she moves through the causeways, but when she bends at the waist and presses a hand to her side to catch her breath, she can't ignore the hot curve of her abdomen. It's hard, and she's always had a body made of muscle and sinew, but something is different. Something's wrong, very, very wrong, and she's Starbuck and she's tough and doesn't break so easy, but she's been through too much and seen too much to think she's indestructible.

It isn't easy, but she makes an appointment with Doc Cottle and tells him her bum knee is acting up. He watches her through a cloud of cigarette smoke, taking in the flushed cheeks and feverish eyes, and jabs a needle in her arm to suck out a vial of her blood. He mumbles something about an iron deficiency and she nods absently, chews the end of her cigar and drums her fingers nervously against her thigh while she waits. It's weird, being in the sickbay without Lee's obnoxious banter ringing in her ears. She closes her eyes to block out the memories, but it doesn't work and they flash against her eyelids against her will. Lee has propped himself up on her crutches and he's laughing, teasing, pushing her to push herself. She thrusts open her eyes and she's bitten clear through the end of her cigar. It tastes old, bitter in her mouth, and she spits it into her palm. It looks the way she feels, torn and twisted and unlike itself. If only she'd been more careful, thought her actions through…she hops off the exam table, fake knee injury be damned, and throws the cigar out. She wishes she could dispose of her own mistakes so easily.

"Lay it on me straight, Doc," she insists when he pushes her curtain open and appears at her bedside, clutching a folder in his hand and his customary cigarette tucked behind one ear rather than propped between his lips. He won't quite meet her eye and she won't meet his, and fixes her gaze somewhere over his shoulder rather than look at his face.

"You're not going to like what I have to say, Starbuck," he says and tries to catch her eye, but she's too good at this game to let him win.

"So what is it? A couple weeks on med-leave? Another surgery?" She looks at him for half a second, long enough to wiggle her eyebrows and flash a trademark grin. "More happy pills to make me all better?"

"You're pregnant," he cuts through the bullshit and she literally feels the smile drop from her face. She shivers, and it has nothing to do with the cold air blasting over the expanse of skin revealed by the too-tight fit of her tanks.

Neither of them say anything for a long moment. "What can I do about it?" she finally asks, but Doc Cottle just watches her sadly. She doesn't say it outright, but they both know what she's talking about.

"You know the rules, Captain. It's the law now."

Her lip trembles, just the tiniest bit, and she locks her jaw to keep her expression straight but it can't quite hide the fear flashing through her eyes. "But I'm a pilot," she says. "I'm the best fraking pilot in the fleet. They need me." It goes unsaid that she needs them too, and she grips the edge of the exam table to keep from punching the sympathetic expression off Doc Cottle's face.

"They need babies more," he says. "If humanity has any hope for survival, it needs to grow." She's eyeing him strangely, because she's never known him as anything but cranky Doc Cottle, and right now he's looking and acting like the grandfather who died when she was seven. Her knuckles flare white as her fingers tighten on the table edge; the last thing she wants is another person's pity.