The Frog Prince, Cinderella, and Six Swans by innibis

Frakked-up? Maybe. Frakking awesome? Definitely.

Hopefully there's a lot more where this came from because these delightful little works of cracktastic genius make me so happy. I never tire of the way Innibis weaves in truths about BSG canon alongside totally hilarious, wild changes (like how the Tighs are Lee's parents in the already-recced Rapunzel), and I flat-out love it when she manages to use a direct quote from the show.

As the first fairytale Innibis tackled, The Frog Prince will always hold a dear place in my heart, but things have only gotten better from there on out. I like how she doesn't just plop the characters down in a Grimm's fairytale, either. She shows off her ability to really reinvent a story with Cinderella (not to mention Beauty and the Beast), where Kara and Lee are still themselves and their story is more of a metaphor for the fairytale. Six Swans is really wonderful to me, both because the original story is one that I'm not familiar with and I love how she worked the different character's relationships.

Keep it up, Girl.

In The Months After His Death by sangga

Sometimes all it takes for me to remember a story is a really satisfying ending.

Infidelirium by mercurial_wit

There's a lot going on here, so many peeks into the personal lives of the people serving on Galactica. All these sad, broken, desperate thoughts that the war has squeezed from otherwise normal people. After the second season, when things got a little too sci-fi and a little less drama, it was hard to remember that there were real people out there, trapped on ships with no clue where they were going. Fics like this bring back the horror of being alive and struggling to retain your humanity when your life becomes a nightmare.

Kat's section is kind of an unexpected treat. I love the frantic mood and how well her character was captured. Her whoring around, her attempt to seduce Lee, "the only person she thinks about during sex is herself..." it's all so good. Getting inside Baltar's head is another of my favorite things. He was consistently one of the most fascinating characters on the show, and I loved seeing that spark of sympathy that came out during the Gina episodes. He's such an enigma and the way even he is confused by himself is well-captured here. Of course, there are some things in this fic that I'd rather not read about (like Hotdog having his fingers in anyone), but it's no surprise that my favorite moments are about Kara and Lee. Oddly enough, though, I like seeing them the most through Anders's eyes. The pretending is so familiar, and it breaks my heart to read lines about exactly what they're pretending...


I don't hate Anders or Dualla, so their pain isn't pleasant to me, but I do take some satisfaction from the way they react to their significant other's infidelity. I wish they'd been as proactive in canon.

Until The Truth Comes Out by stars_like_dust

That this was once a possibility in all our minds, and knowing how far away our loves fell, frankly, kind of kills me every time I remember it.

Reckoning by wisteria_

This is like if Lee decided to tell Kara that he doesn't care and nothing matters but the two of them way back when the mutiny was just picking up steam. It's way longer, and sadder, and sexier this way.

I'm so glad that Kara tells Lee everything this time.

I'm Awake and You're Breathing by delle

Lee can't sleep before the big tyllium refinery mission, so he's trying to wear himself out by doing pushups in the bunkroom. Kara gets annoyed with his pushups, so she has to come up with another way for him to work off all that nervous energy. I wonder what totally outside-the-box plan she'll think of this time...

This is great if you find yourself missing the comparatively lighthearted angst of the first season; if you're really, really craving some fun snarky bantering; or if all you want, ever, is covert pilot sexing.

Another True Confession: I love it when people walk in on them unawares, requiring Kara and Lee to stifle their laughter even as they're mid-frak.

This Transparency by moodfic, aka voleuse

Oh, sweet anticipation. This is the perfect length for a story about Kara and Lee dancing around their feelings. There's also just something about Voleuse's writing style... I can't describe what it does to me, but she just seems to capture so elegantly the grief and fear and loneliness that must have permeated life in the fleet after the initial attacks. It makes me miss Season 1 so, so much.

Testing the Gods by taragel

She ignored the little click she felt in her gut and that feeling that was too much like relief and refused to think about the ways it felt like coming home.

Restless (Part II) (Part III) by widget285

Okay, so, confession: I don't exactly love this story, but I'm reccing it anyway. The overlong chase element and Lee's out of control pity partying make this a little too melodramatic to gain admittance to my Ultimate Desert Island Fic List. However, I think this story deserves some recognition because the author made some unpopular decisions about her tale. She went a couple of routes that aren't very common amongst the fics I've read, so this one has always stood out to me even though I have a few beefs with it.

I don't think any other fic does quite what this one does with Kara's return to the fleet. I like that Kara and Lee don't just fly into each other's arms, happy to forget their Colonial Day spat and any residual anger just because they are so relieved to be reunited. I like that they're cold and awkward and don't really know how to be friends again, but there's just too much to talk about and it's been too long, and they don't know how to get past that. That seems like a much more natural reaction to a fight and a reunion and tragic happenings in between than just pretending to return to the status quo without talking about what went on while each other was gone.

Lee's longing for Kara is also given a really interesting twist. He seems to actually be ashamed of wanting her, and I don't know if it's because he thinks she'll be disgusted because it's him (he is in the throes of some deep self-pity) or because she's her. Lee seems to spend a great amount of time being jealous of Kara, and when he's not busy being jealous of her, he's stalking any of her past or probable sexual partners and being jealous of them. It's not in that deranged-Lee-is-going-to-break-some-heads way, it's in a really pathetic kind of mournful way. I'm not going to lie, it's a little confusing to me, but I can also see how this was a possible path for Lee's character to take at that time. He'd been through the shit and came out worse for it and less confident and he felt really alone? And there's Kara being all radiant and victorious and Starbuck? Yeah, I think he'd be feeling like the little boy whose father always left him for the stars all over again. It's interesting to see how much more successfully and realistically Lee was written into a depression in this fic than he was on the show with "Black Market."

This post-"Home" AU wins some major points for originality, and deserves a read (or a re-read) because of Kara and Lee's natural human reaction to seeing each other again, and for the thought-provoking downward direction of Lee's psyche; I just wish it didn't all end with a tacked-on "Boning Solves Everything" wrap-up.

Beauty and the Beast by innibis

Woohoo! New favorite fairy tale.

Good Company by olaf47 

Sweet Lords of Kobol. This is the cutest, funniest, sexiest, awesomest thing I've read in a long time.

In defiance of the laws of nature, Lee Adama's unlikely combination of adorkable/hot increases tenfold when he's stoned. Kara is hilarious (the cake and the action figure, haha!). They are so good together.

Alternate Route by daybreak777

Frak frakking shit. Frak.

This is a large amount of steamy with a healthy sprinkling of feelings and cuteness thrown in for good measure. And because it's Daybreak, it's well-written as hell. I just wish reading it didn't make me so frakking sad.

Why did they even bother with "The Oath" if everything was going to immediately start sucking even harder directly afterwards? Just remembering how fantastic Kara and Lee were together in this episode hurts. They were so real and themselves and together again, and it was only for the shortest time. She saves his life. They kiss. She finds him a gun and they kick ass. They share a look when Daddy and Mommy start making out. She falls for his tricks and he mocks her. 

RDM rips my heart out of my chest.

(Why do I care so godsdamned much?) 

At the Battle, With Faithful Arrows by daygloparker

Sad. Desperate. Angry. Comforting. Safe. Scared. Fraaaaak, I miss these pilots.

I love the way this was written.

Rapunzel by innibis

This is my favorite of Innibis's "Frakked-Up Fairy Tale" series.

Lee as Rapunzel is so delicious. He makes a wonderful damsel and it's almost scary how well he fits as the character who has been trapped in a tower and raised on a diet of idealism and almost no human contact. I imagine he's the blushingest Lee that ever was (which is saying a lot). The banter is really well-written and so in-character, especially Kara's wry humor. The few little lines stolen directly from the series are nice touches, as well.

There's absolutely nothing not awesome about this. 

Epilogue by zefire2

I never trust happy endings and by the time 4.5 rolled around I didn't even want one for Kara and Lee. A lot of the fix-it fics didn't do anything for me, but I really like this one.

In case you were wondering how that could be, it's because I read it so the mountain lion got Lee and he's dead, but doesn't know it. I don't know if the author intended it this way, or if she even intended the ambiguity, but it's the only way I can accept Kara coming back to him like this.

A CAG's Work is Never Done by Jason Thompson

A while back, when I was super frustrated with Kara and Lee, I discovered I had this weird weakness... Lee + Anyone. What can I say? Sometimes I hate the guy, but he is hot as the frakking sun, especially when he's being a hardass CAG.

Bonus points for Kara and Lee being friends.

Ordinary Light by whatimages

Whoa.

I'd never read this before today, and it really touched me. It's not the ending I would have chosen for them by the end, but it's exactly what I think could have happened if the first Earth hadn't turned out to be a wasteland. It's hard to forget about everything that happened post-Dead Earth—that's kind of when everything started to go irreparably wonky and even I couldn't recognize my show anymore—but way back then, Kara and Lee could have really made it. "Sometimes a Great Notion" was the end of Pilots, I think. Dee's suicide killed something in Lee, too, and finding her own corpse was (understandably) what tore it for Kara. They just weren't themselves after that, and who could blame them? How do you trust love when the women in your life keep offing themselves? How do you trust anything at all when you don't even know what you are?

It's nice to read this rewrite where our pilots are still a little sensitive and wary of each other, but are truly, honestly working at being together. They're doing their jobs and being normal human beings and they're so, so in love. True, it's been done before, but there's a palpable sadness in the writing that echoes my own lingering sadness concerning these two. I'm sad that they didn't get this ending, and I'm sad that it had to end at all. There is a feeling of reluctance, or not wanting to let go, and I don't know if this is the writer's emotion over the show coming through, or if she made a conscious effort to write Apollo and Starbuck's bittersweet feelings of leaving Galactica behind to begin a new life on Earth. Whichever it is, it doesn't really matter to me, because the effect is stunning. I think it suits both perspectives, and maybe it's that shared feeling that makes the emotion so successful.

Aerilon Girls Are Easy by flowrs4ophelia

The premise of this AU is a familiar one: the Cylons never attacked and Lee and Kara haven't seen each other since their not-so-nice parting in the brig. We jump back and forth in time between meaningful moments in Kara and Lee's past as we see how their story unfolds once they meet again in the present, and the characters are there and they're so real they're practically three-dimensional. The action and the dialogue are superbly written. This is one of those tales that comes alive because of how deep and intricately woven and vivid it is. What makes this stand out as one of the most entertaining, emotional, and satisfying fanfiction reads out there, is in the details. Literally. So much is revealed about Kara and Lee's relationship through memories, symbols, and actions that hold meaning only for each other, and it makes this an absolute joy to read, even though the overall mood is bittersweet.

Kara and Lee's secret code word was the first clue I got that this was going to be a memorable story, but I didn't know it was going to be one of my forever favorites until I read the part where Kara and Lee find out about Zak's accident. The carefree giddiness of their shopping trip and their ease with one another was so brilliantly and feelingly crushed by the phone call, and Lee's anguish and Kara's numbness are written in a way that is at once completely emotional and completely objective.

When they meet again they try to act like it's totally normal and nothing has changed and it hasn't been years since they were friends, but they're both just festering with guilt. The scene in the bar and the scene at his place and the flashback scene where he almost tells her are rife with anxiety and tension and I love how their simultaneous need to be both damned and absolved by the other comes out like this dance. He hints at The Thing, she flat-out confesses but makes sure he doesn't take her seriously, he hints a little more, and hints a little more, until she can't take it and explodes. In that moment, I completely understood Kara, because looking at Lee and seeing him blame himself while he reaches for her is like a knife in her heart, and the only way she can be punished for putting that pain on him is by making him hate her, because that would hurt more than anything.

This is almost more than I could ever ask for in a fic. It's tragic and honest and also just happens to be one of the best-written stories out there. I particularly appreciate how open-ended this is. We don't know what Lee decided to do with his life and we don't know where Kara ended up. We don't even know if Adama ever forgave her. I don't think Kara and Lee could ever be tied up nicely with a bow, so having the ending be anything but is about as worthy a finale as can be.

Off the Beaten Path by lint138

I've been looking for this one for two weeks, because it so perfectly satisfies what I want to see for Kara and Lee just now.

1. I want to see the love, because no matter what, I think you have to be pretty frakking blind to say that Kara and Lee didn't have an ounce of love between them. In fact, I kind of think they had so much love that it made it impossible for them to be together. They just loved each other in too many ways and some of them contradicted the others. This story totally captures that complicated, crazy, intense love they had that was always roiling beneath the surface. They could never really keep the love out of their eyes and I can practically smell the wood of the bar and the stale beer and the cigarette smoke that's permeating the air as the Kara and Lee in this fic just gaze at each other, it's so real.

A thousand years ago, before all our hearts were broken by "Daybreak," there was a thread where a genius wrote that the "I missed you," "I missed you too," was one of the greatest, most powerful declarations of love in any television show, ever. I wholeheartedly agree, and the mirror scene Lint wrote here doesn't lack any of that power. It's perfectly preserved and just as heart-wrenchingly tragic, just in a different time and place.

2. I want Kara and Lee to behave like human beings, not like stereotypes or mystic-purpose-having angels or society-dooming dumbasses. One of the things that made the Miniseries and Season 1 so amazing was how real and raw and human the characters were. As time went on, I think the show lost a lot of that rawness (though it did come back from time to time, like in the New Caprica arc (Tigh blew my mind with every second of screentime he had) and maybe a little bit during "The Oath") and the characters got a little too plastic. Here, Kara and Lee are just two regular people, living their unremarkable lives and going about their unremarkable business, when those damned cycles throw them back together. They react like two regular people, and share a drink and reminisce a bit, and nothing crazy involving mandalas or explosions or even wild bathroom sex happens. They're just two regular people sharing a moment out of time before going back to real life.

3. I want it to be a little sad, because I'm just like that. Also, I've come to a place in my Kara/Lee shipping where I really and truly believe they were no good for each other. I don't think they could have ever gotten past Zak, and in some ways I wouldn't have wanted them to. Maybe I could have handled it before we found out about the tabletop almost-frak, but for them to do that and then get together years later... I think I would question their conscience. I don't think Kara ever had a time in her life where she was fully dealing with all of the baggage she was carrying, and I think a lot of her baggage was of the type to make her incredibly, fantastically unsuited for being in a relationship. I think she truly cared for Lee in a phenomenal and profound way, but I don't think she was ever in a place where she was psychologically able to reconcile her love for him with all of the feelings of guilt and inadequacy and distrust she was carrying around. Lee had his own problems, and since I get Lee a lot less than I get Kara, I really can't nail down what his deal was as succinctly as I can with Kara. I think Lee had a bit of a pattern with being hurt by and then deliberately hurting the people he loved the most in his life. He really was a serious grudge-holder (he learned from the best) and he was largely incapable of dealing with his emotions honestly. They might have worked things out if they could have talked, but they were both so weighted down with phobias and mental blocks and misplaced survival instinct that they were probably never completely honest with each other. They never dealt with their collective problems rationally because they weren't even capable of dealing with their personal problems rationally.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I heart fic where Kara and Lee aren't together. Hello, Off the Beaten Path.

I'm not so far gone that I'm unaccepting of anything less than total heartbreak, so I'm okay with the little bit of a "to be continued..." vibe this has, but I prefer to think it really did end here. I can't deny canon—I've tried and it won't work—so I need that bittersweet, chest-aching, sick-making feeling right now. I want to feel like Lee (bastard) felt in that meadow the second time Kara left him.

P.S.– I know I said I wouldn't do anything to taint your belief, but I didn't know how to write this rec without being totally honest about how I feel regarding Kara and Lee. I guess I'm still grieving their relationship and the passing of Battlestar altogether, and this is just how I'm dealing with it right now. Sorry.

I know! These aren't Kara/Lee and they're not even BSG, but I was so ticked at everything Kara/Lee last week that I gave shipping Barney/Robin a test drive (it didn't take and I don't even watch that show, but I love what I know about Barney Stinson and my love for Neil Patrick Harris grows exponentially every time I see him in anything). There are some similarities between Barney and Robin and Kara and Lee, mainly the way that both couples have always had a great friendship dynamic with a hint of sexual tension to it. I guess I'm a sucker for that whole Emma friends-who-fall-in-love thing. I dig how Barney and Robin aren't all schmoopy and there's next to no angst, at least not on the holocaust/murderous robots/dying and mysterious rebirth/dooming of civilization as they knew it scale. Anyway, these two stories are by far the best works from that fandom and, in my opinion, worth reading even if you don't follow the show.

'A' Game by svilleficrecs
Sex as only Kate Andrews can write it. I love the moment they both envision ravaging each other in the puddle of scotch. If you're like me and are totally stupid for all things Kate Andrews, you can't miss this. She is magical.

Metal Heart by the_spin
Awesome because of the secret sex element and that "We're just friends who had a one-night stand. We're just friends with benefits. We're just friends who don't sleep with other people. We're just... totally in love." thing that I have a big stupid weakness for.