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millari.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
crack_van2009-01-08 01:42 pm
Mirror Box, by anna_bird and sasha_feather. Rated R
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millari and I'll be your driver this month for Battlestar Galactica 2003. I'll try and include stuff for a variety of tastes, but I'd like to try and put a little extra emphasis on great fics that represent what I feel have been less recced genres, characters and pairings in BSG here. You can expect a mix of het, slash and gen, as well as a bit of crack!fic. I hope you find something you like and haven't seen in this fandom before, or even better, that you are encouraged to try out a new fandom. Now, let's get to the good stuff:
Fandom: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Pairing: Anders/Gaeta
Length: 6,000 words
Author on LJ:
anna_bird and sasha_feather Author Website: the authors' LJs
Why this must be read: "Mirror Box" is at times a heartbreaking, at times funny, at times even a little mystically creepy recovery and reconciliation fic about Felix Gaeta, Galactica's navigator who lost part of his leg in Season 4, and Sam Anders, the athlete and estranged husband to Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. In the heat of a mutiny, Anders was responsible for Gaeta's injury. Ever since, these two characters have never interacted, never mind reconciled. This story of their awkward, uneasy attempt to do that is paralleled with an intriguing B-plot of Gaeta trying to reconcile to the strangeness of an artificial leg sickbay has given him – taken from a defunct Centurion. There is also eventually slash, but the main focus is on the recovery and reconciliation.
Anders starts out this story almost stalking Gaeta, trying to make Gaeta accept his guilt-ridden apology for the injury and subsequent amputation, but by the end of the story, it is Gaeta who has turned the tables on Anders. The harsh-yet-gentle, playful banter between the two characters is competitive and a little messed-up, but ultimately goodhearted. The authors draw interesting parallels between these two characters not highlighted on the show. A fic I kept thinking about for days afterwards.
Anders can’t get the moment out of his head. Finger on the trigger, a moment engraved in memory, a gunshot, the smell of powder in the hot air. That ship was always so damn hot. A crack, and then Gaeta started screaming.
He’s not even sure what happened, or why. He knows that he did it for Kara. He did it all for Kara: and now she won’t even touch him. She’ll meet his eyes these days, but as if from a distance, as if her perspective has shifted to something farther on, as if Anders is nothing but a distraction.
It might be the ship. Galactica feels like home, yeah, as much as it can when home is portioned between a few familiar rooms. But it’s not his home, not really. It doesn’t belong to him the way it belongs to Kara.
It might be him, the other surfacing him. But Anders won’t think about that. He doesn’t remember much about his meetings with the other three, these days; doesn’t remember if they’re still meeting in cluttered storage compartments just to reassure each other, to discuss their continued incognito status – or if the meetings have turned into something else. Strategy. Contingency. These are some of the keywords he turns over in his brain, words spoken in Tory’s voice. He’s seen how she looks at him after he returned from the Demetrius, her eyes dark with pity and disdain for his weakness. But he can’t care, can’t pay attention. He’s locked with Gaeta, Gaeta’s screams, Gaeta’s lonely ballad.
Leave it, he thinks, and he tries to leave it, to let it get buried by the detritus of the daily tasks, by a few throat-burning glasses of whiskey, by sleep.
Mirror Box
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The pairing in this one interests me. *nod* I'm not much of a fan of Sam, but I like the writing style here.
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