Watching You Without Me. (Part 3/4)
title: Watching You Without Me. (Part 3/4)
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Mini-Series, and the episode "Black Market"
pairings: kara/lee
overall fic rating: NC-17 (parts 1+2), PG (parts 3+4)
total word count: 13,500 (parts 1+2), 14,500 (parts 3+4)
beta: Such huge thanks to wicked_sassy for being my beta for this. Without her, this would be a big jumbled mess hardly worthy of the English language.
notes: This is a continuation to Parts 1 + 2 of the story by the same name (Which started as a short piece I wrote for the December 4, 2011 challenge in
the_applecart, originally posted here.)
summary: In an AU where the cylons never attacked, Kara and Lee reunite on the Battlestar Galactica Museum five years after its decommissioning.
previous chapters: Part 1, Part 2
The heat of Helios Alpha beat down on the pavement of the lot behind the Colonial Fleet Academy of Caprica. Kara rubbed her hand across her forehead, feeling the slickness of beaded sweat against her scorched skin. Another fifteen minutes out there and she’d have that semi-permanent burn to her skin followed by a few days of uncomfortable peeling from the sun damage. She cursed herself for not checking the weather reports that morning, sure she’d overdressed for the temperatures and the blaze sinking into her skin.
“Randall!” She bit out the name, hands to her hips in a stance that she used much too often those days. Kara had even caught one of her students imitating her in the mess hall, though she’d had a little too much pleasure in calling them out and assigning punishment for it.
“Sir?” The nugget replied, hand held as a makeshift visor over his eyes to block the sun.
“Just what the frak do you think you’re doing?” Kara approached the Mark VIII next to him, one in a long line of other identical-looking ships, void of a nameplate that indicated the vessel's owner. “Your classmates,” she ran the pads of her fingers through a layer of dust coating a plane of metal shielding, “…are done cleaning their birds, and you’re sitting here with your thumb up your ass. You’ve been at it an hour and your Viper doesn’t look any better than it did when you got here. Do you think your deck chief or your XO would let your ship sit in the hangar of their battlestar looking like this?”
“Isn’t that what the knuckle draggers are for, Captain?” He replied, and despite observing her rank, there was disobedience in his manner.
Kara’s lips pursed, the edges of her mouth pulled up into a grin, her words held back. It wasn’t that she was pleased by his words or proud of his resourcefulness, but like that day in the mess, she loved the chance to put someone into their place. She was still Starbuck, after all. “Do you want to repeat that, nugget?” Her eyes squinted a mere fraction, a subtle action that would have been missed in the time it took to blink.
“That’s what they’re paid to-”
“No.” Kara cut him off before he could get his words out. “They’re paid to fix your fuel line so it doesn’t leak and ignite your ship when you’re on CAP, taking you out before you’ve got time to eject. Do you think it’s that easy reaching for the lever when your console’s blazing and your cockpit’s filled with smoke? They’re paid to make sure your nav system is working so you can actually make it back to your battlestar. They’re not paid to clean your frakking ship.” Her open palm smacked onto the surface of the Viper, the sound of it calling the attention of the other nuggets nearby, diligently working on their vessels.
“You’ve got to own this bird. Should I even let you pass this course, that is. One day your name will be on it and she’ll be yours. You’ll know when she’s hurting and how to fix her aches. You’ll be on that deck every night patching her up alongside the deck crew. Don’t assume someone else will take care of her for you. She’s yours, and you make sure she knows it. Take pride in her, and she won’t ever let you down.” Kara dusted off her hands as she rounded the nose of the newer Viper model. They’d been released a year prior and already she’d heard the buzz about the new features they were integrating into the Nines.
“Don’t forget, one day you’re going to come crashing down in an emergency landing. Maybe there was a malfunction, maybe your ship got damaged. It doesn’t matter how or why, what matters is that it will happen. When you’re lying there, stuck in the crushed frame of your bird, it’s going to be that deck crew who pulls you out first. They’re going to be the ones fighting for your life.” Her eyebrows raised to him with meaning. This time, when she spoke, it was in warning. “Don’t give them reason to work a little slower.”
Kara dismissed the class early a few minutes later. The burn of her flesh and the sweat she felt all over her body was beginning to grow more than just uncomfortable. She was the first to retreat back to the main building, thanking the Gods when she fell under its shadow, feeling a sense of relief. She focused intently on the toes of her boots, her head so far away from her physical location, that she didn’t see the bodies ahead of her before she heard them. The voice of a child stuck out the most, perhaps because it was such a rare sound at the academy, at least during the week. On some weekends, officers' children visited their parents for a few hours. It was a contrast to life on a regular base, with family housing around the outskirts, children’s laughter filling the afternoons as they got home from school.
“Kara!” A voice shouted. That was the second sound that got her attention, as usually she was only two things at the academy: Captain, and sometimes, God. The nuggets didn’t dare to call her by her first name; her fellow officers wouldn’t risk such an informality while on the clock. As far as Starbuck went, that was a name she’d left behind when she came back, although she still used it when running simulations.
“Joseph?” Her eyes found the source of the commotion, the boy just shy of his fifth birthday eagerly waving as he ran for her, ahead of his nearby father. She smiled, amused at Lee's slow pace, and he mirrored her in silent greeting. She was surprised to see them both, but the explanation would have to wait as Joseph reached her, arms raised towards the sky. She knew what he wanted and expected; it had become something of routine for them since Lee had made Kara a permanent fixture in their lives. Her hands at his underarms, she lifted him up, spinning him around as his laughter filled the air.
“What are you doing here, nugget?” Kara asked when she finally put him back on the ground, her hand in his, leading him back to his father.
“What’s a nugget?” He said, looking up to her.
“That’s what I call the kids I’m teaching to fly,” she answered. They stopped as she gestured back to the students packing up their things by the Vipers assigned to them for the day. Kara lowered herself to one knee at his side, evening out the height difference. “Those are my nuggets and so are you.”
“Are you going to teach me to fly, too?”
“Oh, I’ll be old by then,” she tickled gently at his underarm, his giggling full-bodied. With a grin, he pulled away from her just long enough for a reprieve. “There’s so much else you can do, you don’t have to fly.” Kara was careful to walk the line Lee had quietly set for his son. He wouldn’t be like William Adama, forcing Joseph towards the career he held and into everything that being a Viper pilot entailed, but he wouldn’t discourage his own interests, either. For Kara, there was even more conflict; though she loved being up in the air or out in space, she couldn’t imagine the same fate befalling Joseph as had Zak, an accident taking his life too soon. No, she already knew she wanted to keep him safe.
“You can do whatever you want,” Lee said as he finally met up with them, ending the complicated topic with his simple words.
Kara rose to her full height and without hesitation, Lee touched his lips to her cheek. She wasn’t one to hold back on public displays of affection, something he knew both from when he saw her with Zak and their own time together, but things were different in front of her immediate superiors and her students. There were no frat regs to worry about despite their difference in rank, since Lee worked in a different location and an entirely different field. Regardless, he observed self-control, despite how much he really wanted more from her after the week apart.
“Surprised to see you,” she said, a question in her words.
“We played hooky,” replied Lee, rocking on the balls of his feet, his hands tucked sheepishly into the pockets of his black slacks.
“My, my...” Her words came out with a hint of satisfaction, knowing she caught him breaking rules. “Aren’t you just setting a bad example.” She looked to him, then down to the boy between them, Joseph’s eyes still on the ships.
“We won’t tell Mom, right, Joseph?” He touched the crown of his son’s head, drawing his attention back to them.
“Right,” Joseph repeated, nodding firmly.
The trio found their way inside a nearby building, Kara leading the way to her classroom. “How are you boys holding up on your own? Day five and you’re already cutting class,” she reprimanded them without sincerity as she slung her bag over her shoulder, sweatshirt in hand.
“He misses Gianne,” Lee said quietly to not remind his distracted son of his mother’s immediate absence.
Kara glanced at Joseph, who made himself at home in the front row, kicking his feet since they weren’t close to touching the ground. “Still another week until she gets back, has she called him?”
“A few times, but it makes it worse-just when he forgets that she’s away, she’s on the other line and it all comes back. It’s why he didn’t go to school today. She called and he was too upset to go in so I called out of work, asked him what he wanted to do. He asked when you were coming, so... here we are.” There was an apology in his words for his sudden intrusion, showing up without so much of a call to warn her, but he hadn’t been able say no once the idea came into his son's head.
“I need to get back to my room and get my things…” Kara gave up that rattrap apartment a few years back, finally severing ties with Zak’s ghost still in that space. Her room at the academy wasn’t remotely luxurious, but it was comfortable enough for one, despite how much it reminded her of being a cadet. It was supposed to be temporary until she found a new place, but interest in looking for her own apartment had vanished once she started spending her free time with Lee.
“I figured we could drive you back on Sunday, or there’s always the train…” This hadn’t been their routine. In fact, Lee hadn’t even seen where she was staying these days. She’d been the one to visit, making allowances for the fact that he usually had his son as well. She’d done it without complaint or even a mention, and every time she pulled up in the driveway, Lee was reminded of the person Kara was, underneath everything else .
Kara nodded and looked to the boy, fiddling with a toy he’d pulled from his pocket. “Hey, Joseph? Before we go back to your house, I’ve got something for you.” She turned her attention back to Lee. “If it’s okay with your Dad.”
His brows rose but she smiled reassuringly, waving her hand to them as she led them both out of the classroom and down the hall. She fished around for her identification card, swiping it through the door's keypad, then entering a sequence of numbers. The locking mechanism released simultaneously with the flash of the green light from the number pad. She pulled the heavy door open, letting them inside the larger room, rows of simulators laid out in a grid pattern.
“Relax, Apollo, ” Kara began before he could even sound off with worry. She placed her belongings down beside one of the machines, then reached her arm in. Soon the first simulator sprang to life and she repeated the process with the one beside it. “How about we go flying?”
“Really?” Joseph looked up to his father, trying to sense his approval or lack thereof.
His son’s face broke his concern and Lee acquiesced, nodding. “You sure this is safe for him?”
“They’ve changed these a lot since we were in school,” Kara patted the nearest one. Though they hadn’t been at the academy at the same time, their training had been nearly identical. “Who would guess it? I’m the teacher so I can tweak the programs how I want. Joey and I will be strictly sight-seeing. No G’s, nothing like that.”
She held out her hand and with Lee gently pushing him forward with a touch to his back, Joseph ran towards her, excitement across his face.
“Got one for you, too, Apollo. If you’re up for it.” Kara winked, turning to climb into the second simulator. Lee was there to help Joseph in once she was settled in her seat, the boy sitting on her lap, tiny legs running along the length of hers, the gear stick between them. She closed the faux-cockpit roof, this one made of digital screens rather than glass. Joseph let out a small, scared sound as they plunged into darkness, but Kara reassured him softly, patting his thigh. “You okay, buddy?”
“Y-yes,” he stuttered.
“Your Dad’s going to get into the next one and we’ll see him soon. Now, where do you feel like flying today?” She asked quickly in an effort to distract him from both his fear of the unknown and the temporary absence of his mother . “We can fly over Caprica City, over the ocean… over Tauron. Any planet, anywhere, even out in space if you want to.”
He considered her words. “Can we see my house?”
“Mmhmm.” Kara reached around him, cycling through the controls. She adjusted the settings as needed, the multiple screens of the cockpit canopy fading to the hangar deck of the Battlestar Atlantia, their starting point. It was lifelike, and even Kara often found it near impossible to distinguish between reality and fiction in the simulator. It was what made them such useful training tools when coupled to the normal settings, which forced the pilot to treat it like a real Viper and feel the effects of it as well. For Joseph, though, she had intentionally voided those portions of the simulation, leaving it little more than a very realistic looking thrill ride, but more than enough for a four-year-old.
“Look over there,” she pointed to the left window, where another computer-generated Mark VIII Viper casually taxied alongside towards the launch tubes. As it neared, Lee’s face could be made out, his hand raised in a wave to Kara and Joseph.
“How you feeling, Joseph?” Lee asked, his voice coming through the speakers of the simulator.
The child broke into absolutely gleeful laughter, amazed by the technology that he was immersed in. “Use my call sign!” He corrected his father.
“Oh, yeah? What’s yours?”
“I don’t know, Grandpa said you don’t get to choose your own.”
“He’s right, Apollo, we’ve got to give him a good one or he’ll end up with something stupid like Hot Dog.”
“No, no,” Joseph pleaded. “Don’t pick Hot Dog!”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, although I’m tempted to nickname you Macaroni. I’ve never seen a kid eat more of that stuff than you,” she laughed. “How about, for now… Linus. He’s the son of Apollo, after all.”
“You’re dooming my kid to the life of being nicknamed after a God. Have mercy on him, Starbuck.”
“I’m sure he won’t let it go to his head, unlike someone else.” She bit her tongue as she glanced to him through the screen, although it was a series of cameras actually doing the job.
“I like it,” Joseph replied.
“The boy speaks, Apollo. Linus it is. Now Linus, are you ready for take off?” He nodded and Kara helped direct his hand to the stick that controlled the Viper, her hand folding gently over his. “If this were real, you’d be talking to a comm officer now, asking for permission to take off, so repeat after me, Linus. ‘Atlantia, Linus...’”
With more of a struggle than she had, he did as instructed. “Atlantia, Linus. Viper Four-One-Nine-Zero requesting clearance for take off.” He faltered over the numbering, but with Kara whispering along, Joseph managed the words out after a few embarrassed giggles.
His father came over the wireless, playing the role of someone in the CIC. “Roger that, Linus, you are cleared for launch. Be safe.”
“Here we go, Linus,” Kara said as she stayed in character for him. Around them, the lights flickered in warning that the imaginary airlock was now opened. Suddenly, they were no longer stationary, zooming through the launch tube and out into space. It was a strange feeling to Kara, visually experiencing the process without the pressure she usually associated with it. They made it into the black, the darkness broken up by the stars twinkling around them. She directed their hands to press the stick to one side and the Viper turned. From where she sat, Kara could see Joseph’s lips parted in awe as he saw the universe up close for the first time. He was a boy after her own heart.
“You see that planet, Linus? That’s Caprica, that’s where we live.”
“It’s so tiny.”
“Just because we’re far away. Isn’t it beautiful, though? Look at all that water.” Though Kara was speaking for Joseph, she was also talking for herself. This was what she felt every time she flew, really flew, and gazed down at the planets. “Ready to go see your house?”
“No,” he shook his head. “I want to stay out here. Can we do spins?”
“You sure?” Lee asked as his Viper coasted alongside.
“No puking in the cockpit, Linus. Got it, nugget?”
“Got it, Starbuck,” Joseph chirped in reply. It was the first time he’d called her by anything other than her first name.
She smiled at his use of her own call sign, one hand drawing back to ruffle his hair affectionately. Kara hadn’t been sure how she would be around children, especially Lee’s, but she’d quickly grown to love their time together. Lee often apologized for Joseph’s near constant presence on the weekends, although sometimes he and Gianne flipped the schedule around to give Kara some time alone with Lee. Truth be told, she never minded when Joseph was nearby, finding him a comfort she never knew she would feel.
“On three, Apollo, let’s show your son some tandem barrel rolls.”
-
By the time they reached Lee’s home, twilight was upon them, the day's fading light flickering out in a mixture of blue and orange. Kara climbed into the back seat and released the clasp securing Joseph into his car seat. She was careful, a kind of gentleness she didn’t know she had in her, easing his slumbering form into her arms. He quickly succumbed to his fatigue as soon as they’d turned onto the highway in Delphi, but his arms instinctively curled around her neck, one of her hands holding his weight against her chest while her other palm soothed his back.
“You want me to…?” Lee asked as she straightened out, her feet on the ground.
Kara shook her head, content to feel the slow breathing of the boy in her arms while she watched Lee close the door for her before gathering the duffel bag she’d packed for the weekend . Inside the house, she continued to cradle Joseph to her, looking back to his father once the entranceway lights were on. “Think he’ll sleep through the night?”
He tilted his head back and forth, weighing the options. “Probably be up early.” Getting some time alone seemed like a good idea in that moment, but come the next sunrise when Joseph wakened due to his particularly early bedtime, Lee knew they would be regretting it. On the other hand, waking a sleeping four-year-old was still very much like waking a baby-you just didn’t do it unless you were willing to face their wrath. As it was, they’d gotten something to eat in Delphi, an early dinner or very late lunch, so his stomach wouldn’t be particularly grumbly from skipping a meal. Perhaps this time it was best to let the sleeping babe lie. “Let’s get him into his pajamas.”
Lee offered his empty arms to take him back but she denied him again, climbing the stairs to the second floor. He followed behind Kara, foregoing the light switch in Joseph’s room for the lamp on the boy’s dresser, hoping not to wake him. Kara reluctantly laid him down on his neatly made bed, Lee waiting behind her, a set of summer pajamas in hand. She went to the hallway bathroom and brought back a moistened wash cloth for Lee, who wiped the little boy’s face in a rudimentary kind of cleaning. It wouldn’t be sufficient, he’d have to take a bath come morning, but it would do for now. His father finished undressing him, then put him into the matching shirt and shorts, tucking him into his small bed.
He kissed his son’s forehead and moved away, then paused when he realized Kara wasn’t coming along. She still lingered at Joseph’s bedside and he watched her, his shoulder pressed into the door frame. Lee could read a kind of nervousness in her stiff shoulders-a part of her that was nearly as expressive as her face-but there was also some sense of longing in the way she leaned towards the boy, rather than vacating the room immediately. Joseph and Kara, the first and second most important people in his life, had shown a bond he never expected. She had been reluctant to agree to a relationship with him a few months prior and Lee knew his son had something to do with her decision in the end. His skin warmed as he watched them, the boy that claimed half his DNA and how infatuated Kara had become.
Kara bit her lower lip as she perched on the very edge of his mattress, spine arched, connecting her lips just above one of his brows. “Goodnight, Linus,” she whispered. After tracing her fingertips down one of his tiny arms to an even smaller hand, she finally stood, shutting the light off. She was surprised to meet Lee at the door, thankful for the darkness as she blushed, caught in the private act of affection.
Lee pulled the door shut behind them. As she headed for the staircase, he caught her hand in his and brought her to a stop. He crushed their lips together, the kind of kiss he’d wanted to give her since he’d seen her at the academy hours ago, sweating on the blacktop. “I love that you care about him so much,” Lee confessed, kissing into her hair.
She still wasn’t exactly sure of the role she was supposed to hold in his son’s life, which added to an inner layer of fear and guilt. Kara wasn’t his mother, not by any stretch of imagination, not even a step-mother. She was just a girl, a woman, that his father happened to be seeing, somewhat secretly at that. Gianne knew; since that first morning, Kara had found herself running into her on a weekly basis, trying to keep her distance when Joseph's mother was around, fearing that Gianne would think that Kara was trying to edge her out. Despite all that, though, Kara had begun to think of him less and less as just Lee’s son. What he was to her, she didn’t have words for. When she realized she was wondering how he was during her time away, even asking Lee about Joseph with genuine curiosity, Kara knew something significant had changed.
“He’s a cute kid,” she responded, not ready to express the thoughts swimming in her head.
Lee smiled and wrapped his arms around her, pulling their hips together. “Well, he gets it all from me.”
“Cute and modest.” Her eyes rolled, arms hooked around his neck.
“Mm, and not just that. I bought that wine you love. I think that earns me something extra.”
“Brilliant too, then,” Kara nodded through her words, drawing their lips back together. A soft sigh emitted from deep within as she felt the complete contentment that came with the time they shared. They were less volatile than they’d ever been, especially together, and it was a credit both to the time they’d endured and the child that was usually around, forcing them both to take a deep breath rather than let themselves resort to fists. “I can’t wait to get you drunk.”
“I’m easy either way,” Lee insisted.
Kara barked out a loud laugh in reply, her hand clamping down over her mouth with her eyes on the child’s door. “We wake him up and it won’t matter how much wine you bought me, you won’t be getting any tonight,” Kara wagged her finger at him, tearing herself away to head down the stairs.
-
In the kitchen, Lee removed the cork from the first of the two bottles he’d purchased with her in mind. He added an inch to each wine glass, but Kara’s hand touched to the bottom of the bottle just as he meant to stop, forcing more out into hers.
“You’re supposed to let it breathe.”
“That’s just bullshit they tell you to sell you more crap.” Her eyes lit up as she sipped the full wine glass, letting the flavor rinse through her mouth and over her tongue. “Two bottles? I’m going to be hurting tomorrow.”
“No one said you had to drink it all at once.” He lifted his own glass and drank down a mouthful.
“You know me, I’ve got no self-control.”
“I seem to recall you used to be a cheaper date, too. You only drank the bad stuff.”
“Not true.” Kara took another long swallow, not even letting herself savor it. “I was just too poor to afford anything good. I always drank the whiskey when you brought it. Gods,” her eyes glazed over in a faraway look. “You always had the best alcohol. I can’t imagine how much you spent.”
He shrugged, not wanting to get into it. At the time, he’d been younger and foolish, misguided. Lee knew he couldn’t have had her back then, but that didn’t mean he didn’t try silly little things to impress her, even if it meant spending more than he had-at least without his parents’ financial help-to see her light up when he brought out the good booze. “Thank you, by the way, for what you did earlier.”
She reached for the bottle and refilled her glass, eyes on the dark hue of the wine as it poured out. “Got to earn my brownie points with him somehow.”
His hand rested on her free one and it prompted her eyes to meet his. “He loves you, Kara. All week, he talks about you. What he wants to do when you come over, all the things you two did last time.”
“Then he’s also crazy, just like you.” She played it off.
He leaned down to where she sat at the counter, kissing her gently. “We love you,” Lee said. His brows pushed together like they were trying to meet as he clarified. “We love you, but Kara, what I mean is-I love you, too.”
“Drunk already? You’ve turned into such a lightweight, Apollo,” she patted his cheek, trying to lighten the suddenly-serious mood.
“Yeah,” he said with a smile, absorbing the feel of her skin on his. “I’ve gotten soft in my old age.” Though she hadn’t responded to his declaration directly, she had acknowledged it in her own way, and that would be enough for the time being. With Kara, it was all about compromise.
From behind her glass, she raised her eyes coyly. “I wouldn’t use the word soft, exactly.”
-
“I’ll have to call you a cab to take you to the train,” Lee said, sitting on the edge of the couch as he rubbed Joseph’s blanket-covered abdomen. He’d come down with something of a stomach bug, the excitement and energy usually brimming in the little boy almost instantly wiped out with the onset of symptoms.
Kara sat on the arm of the couch nearest to where Joseph’s head rested on a pillow as he watched the television across the room. “Don’t worry about it, Lee.” Her hand brushed over his son’s thin blonde hair as he laid still, bundled up to the throat with his favorite blanket. “You’ll feel better soon, Joey, these things go quick.” There was no way for her to know if she was being truthful or not, only time would tell, but she knew how comforting those words could be to a small child. All they sometimes needed was the reassurance of a parent, or just an adult they trusted, to put them on the imagined path to recovery. “You gonna have to take off again tomorrow, Lee?”
“I really can’t, I’ve got a meeting with an Admiral from out of town. I already called my parents to see if they could come over but I didn’t hear anything.” He sighed and stood, heading for the entranceway with Kara following. “I’ll figure it out though. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
She looked to her bag by the foot of the stairs, already packed a few hours earlier when things hadn’t been so serious. “And what if you can’t find someone, then what?”
Lee scratched his head and rolled his shoulders in a shrug, though it failed to ease his worry and tension out of him.
“I can stay,” she said, hands to her waist, helping to bolster some strength in her decision making. “I’ve got some time off built up, I can miss a day.”
“I couldn’t ask, Kara, already you’re probably going to get sick because of him.”
“Then it won’t hurt if I stay another day. I’m sure there’s another train out tomorrow night or the next morning.”
Lee shook his head, glancing between Kara and Joseph who was looking absolutely pitiful on the couch. He'd forgotten how much children could be sick with such a poorly formed immune system, picking up every little bug that went through school. It didn’t make it any easier though, and watching his son’s body be ravaged by the brief illness was still trying. He actually felt himself missing Gianne and how she always seemed to be infallible when it came to things like this. “You’ve seen him, he’s been throwing up. I can’t ask you to take care of that.”
“Lee, I cleaned up enough of your brother’s puke because he could never hold his liquor. I can handle one kid.” What she actually volunteered for began to set in. She’d never been left alone with Joseph, not for more than a few minutes as Lee ran to the store to grab something for dinner or lunch. In fact, she didn’t think she’d ever been left in charge of a child at all. A class of nuggets, sure, but someone else’s kid? It was a different ballgame.
“You’ll get in trouble.”
“I won’t.”
“Are you sure?” There was gratefulness in his eyes.
“I’m sure. You can owe me; when I get sick, you’ll have to listen to me complain about it.” Kara squeezed his bicep, reminding him he wasn’t alone. “These bugs are usually for twenty-four hours anyway, he’ll feel a lot better tomorrow and we’ll have lots of fun without you.”
He mouthed his thanks. This time, Kara initiated the hug, pulling him against her. There had been worry in him over the last few hours that she hadn’t ever seen, but it was familiar, because in some ways she felt it, too.
-
The next day, Kara sat on the couch, Joseph’s head in her lap as they watched a movie of his choice from his small collection at his father’s home. As expected, the illness seemed to already have pulled back from the ugly beast that it was the day before, leaving Joseph emptying his stomach into the toilet, a pot at his bedside, and even once in his own sheets in the middle of the night. That had been an experience Kara never thought she would live through-being jarred from sleep as the boy came crying into the room she shared with Lee, his PJ’s stained with his own sick. As gross as it had been, she’d stripped the bed of the messed sheets, put new ones on, and started up the washing machine on the sanitary cycle while Lee took charge in bathing and comforting his son. They’d met back together some minutes later to put Joseph back to bed, both of them sharing a look in silent prayer that it wouldn’t happen again.
When Lee left for work, looking put together in his dress grays in preparation for the higher-ups he had to meet with and entertain over his day, Joseph had still been asleep. Kara was there when he woke up. Despite her fears that he wouldn’t be welcoming to spending his day with her, he hadn’t put up a fight. They’d spent the morning being lazy, Kara fetching him juice and water whenever his parched mouth called for it. As lunchtime hit, she’d put soup on the stove to warm. They would start with easy to digest things first, then work back on up to solids when they were sure his stomach could take it.
“How’s your belly feeling?”
He nodded, looking from the television up to her. “Hungry.”
“Soup’ll be ready soon and before you know it, your Dad will be home. He said he’d leave a few hours early to get back to you as soon as he can.”
“Why are you here with me?” He asked, face puzzled as he watched her.
She wasn’t sure if it was genuine curiosity or some kind of accusation, as though he would have preferred someone, anyone else. “Because I wanted to make sure you felt better.”
“Don’t you have your children to make better?”
Kara forced a small smile, fingers stroking through his hair. “No, I don’t have any of my own.”
“Why not? Don’t you want them?”
She was careful in choosing her words. No, she hadn’t ever really wanted any children, but admitting such a thought to a child of his age might make him think that he wasn’t wanted in her life either. That had been quite the opposite as of late. “I was almost married a long time ago to your Uncle Zak, but then he passed away. I haven’t really thought about having children since then.”
“You and my Dad could have a baby.”
Kara laughed quietly, fingers barely tickling at his neck, just enough to make him smile, then backing off. “Usually people like to be together for a long time before they have a baby.” Oh, there were a world of exceptions to that idea, but Kara wasn’t about to begin that topic of conversation with a boy who was just learning to read. “I like having you, though,” she finally confessed. “I know I’m not your Mom, but I like being your friend.”
This time, Joseph smiled of his own accord. “Me too.”
He’d set alight a whirlwind of thoughts inside of her head, all eagerly chatting away and vying for attention. It wouldn’t do, though, and Kara changed the subject. “Your birthday’s coming up, are you going to have a party?”
“Uh-huh.” He finally sat up, bouncing his pajama-clad knees on the cushion beside her. “It’s at Mommy’s and she said I could invite all my friends from school-I can have ice cream cake if I want-and pick my own presents-are you going to come?”
She loved how he could turn himself on and off like that, from a tired sleepy child to one buzzing with excitement and rambling a mile a minute, his mouth not able to keep up with his thoughts. If anything, it also brought added comfort that he was getting that much better, based on his mood alone. “If you want me to come, I’ll be there.” Lee had already mentioned it to her and that it would be on one of the weekends coming up. It hadn’t been an outright invitation, but she knew it was one just the same, though part of her felt wrong for intruding in on something that was very obviously Gianne’s territory. “Let me go get our soup, okay?” She stood and sat a pillow on the floor in front of the coffee table. “You sit right here and I’ll be back.”
Kara returned a minute later with two bowls of soup, one set in front of where Joseph had migrated to the floor, the other where she was determined to sit. As she was about to join him, she heard the slamming of a car door. Her interest piqued. “Dad must be here,” she offered to Joseph, but he was already busy stirring his steaming broth. “Blow on it first!” Kara ordered as she headed to the entranceway, wanting to meet Lee as he came in. “You’re home earlier-” but she stopped herself, greeted by the sight of Carolanne Adama, keys in hand, ready to unlock the front door . “Ca-,” she paused again, correcting. “Mrs. Adama.”
Carolanne eyed Kara like she wasn’t sure exactly how to place the woman before her. Recognition finally dawned as she put her keys into her purse and stepped inside. “Kara, I haven’t seen you since…”
She didn’t need to finish it for Kara to know when was the last time she’d seen Carolanne. It had been at Zak’s funeral, over the casket of the older woman’s son, since Kara hadn’t had enough strength to even turn up at her home afterward for the wake to honor Zak. “How are you?” She asked politely, feeling a million times smaller. Lee and Zak’s mother had always done that to her the few times they’d met, and though seven years had passed since Zak’s death and even more time since she had first come to meet Carolanne, Kara knew nothing had changed.
“Well, I got Lee’s message late last night-messages, actually. The first one about needing someone to babysit Joseph since he was sick today, then there was one after saying he got a babysitter. I thought I’d stop by and give whomever it was a break since I had some free time.”
She and Lee had never discussed what they were and weren’t telling other people about their relationship. Gianne had found out on that first day and they’d done their best at avoiding both of his parents when Kara was visiting. It didn’t make her feel any better about simply being referred to as Joseph’s babysitter and nothing else, though. She inwardly knew Lee didn’t mean anything by it, had probably just said it in a rush and done so to preserve their privacy. Regardless, it stung, it stung somewhere deep. “Joseph’s fine, just having some soup,” she spit her words out, suddenly fearful that maybe simple broth wasn’t the proper thing to feed a child with such an illness and that Carolanne would reprimand her for it.
Joseph’s grandmother paid her no mind, heading for the living room where she found the boy blowing on each shaky spoonful of soup, just as Kara had advised.
“Grandma.” He smiled and slipped his spoon back into the bowl.
“What’s Kara doing letting you make a mess in the living room?” Carolanne leaned down to kiss her grandson’s head.
“Not making a mess,” Joseph insisted as he shook his head, annoyed at the implication: that he was a little boy and couldn’t be trusted with such a simple thing.
“Not yet, at least,” Carolanne replied. She met Kara back near the entrance of the room, her hand motioning towards the kitchen.
Kara followed and began idly to taking care of the soiled pot still on the stove.
“So how did you end up babysitting for my son? I didn’t even know you were in the area, I guess Bill must’ve told Lee. It’s good you and him are catching up.”
Kara set the pot in the sink, desperately wanting to distract herself by cleaning it, but she couldn’t, not when she knew Carolanne’s eyes would have been on her back the entire time. This was the first time, Kara realized, that she’d ever been left alone with the woman that raised Zak and Lee. Previously, and she’d only ever crossed paths with Carolanne a few times, her sons had been the buffer between them and she’d been in a far sweeter mood. There was a kind of tension around now; despite the fact that Kara had been trusted to be the adult and take care of Joseph, she felt nothing more than a child when faced down by the other woman's focused gaze.
“I ran into Lee and Joseph at the Galactica Museum awhile back.” Her mind raced, trying desperately to find a way to answer the coming onslaught of questions without giving both her and Lee away.
“Are you still in the military?”
“I’m teaching at the academy again.”
Carolanne gave something crossed between a sigh and a disapproving ‘hmph’ as she sat down on one of the stools at the counter. “You sure that’s a wise place for you to be?”
Kara stilled immediately, a chill running through the center of her body. She didn’t want to know what Carolanne implied by the question, and yet Kara couldn’t stop herself. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, last time you wound up dating my son and he was hardly out of his teens then. What,” Carolanne paused and looked directly at Kara. “What if you end up taking advantage of another student like that?”
Though Carolanne had never outright said something similar to her before, Kara had always felt the thought as an undercurrent in how Carolanne treated her. Zak had denied it, reassured her otherwise, and because he was there, she’d chosen to believe it. Now, though, she was left to face it alone. “I didn’t-”
“You were his teacher. No matter what way you try to spin it, it was your responsibility to not get involved with one of your students.”
The worst part was that Kara knew Carolanne was right. The age gap between her and Zak hadn’t been much at all, in fact it was hardly more than the one between her and Lee now. But she had been his instructor, and of course, someone of higher rank and authority. She was in the wrong for allowing him to break through that invisible barrier and continuing to carry out their illegal relationship over the months. “Carolanne, that’s not… Zak and I loved each other, I couldn’t, wouldn’t ever do that again.”
“Your past doesn’t exactly inspire good faith in that regard. And now, what are you doing here? You don’t expect me to believe Lee called you out of the blue to have a stranger come babysit his son for him. I’m not stupid or naive.”
Kara couldn’t take the weight of Carolanne’s accusing eyes, so she turned back to the sink, eager to drown out some of the words with the spray of water from the faucet. She soaped the sponge and lathered up the pot, furiously scrubbing away imaginary grime. Kara heard footsteps around her; when words joined in, they were far louder than before because of the proximity.
“Don’t ruin both of my sons.”
Kara choked back her anger and the pain she felt at having her worst fears verbalized from someone else. It was bad enough to hear it from herself all of the time, but to hear an independent person confirm it was the kind of ache she didn’t want to believe existed. For a moment, she wasn’t just listening to Carolanne berate her in the relative privacy of the kitchen, but her mother was in the room too, reminding her just how good for nothing she always had been and all the mistakes she’d made. She willed herself to continue on, feeling the searing sting of the hot water over her skin as she cleaned even long after it had been complete. She was so lost in trying to drown out the echo of Carolanne Adama’s and Socrata Thrace’s words in her ears that she didn't hear the front door open, nor the sound of Lee entering the kitchen to find his girlfriend and mother together.
He was immediately stricken at the sight, especially the way his mother nonchalantly stepped away from Kara and her hunched shoulders. His mother had that look he knew all too well, one he’d seen often growing up when she’d spent an afternoon drinking and reminding him of all the ways his father had been a disappointment to her. What was more telling than his mother’s body language was Kara’s, the way he could see the muscles in her body tensing up in preparation to either fight someone else or fight something off inside herself. “What’s going on?” He began to unbutton his uniform as he approached, stepping between them despite how far Carolanne had moved away.
“We were just catching up,” his mother answered. “Did you see Joseph?”
“He’s fine-and somehow I don’t think you two were just catching up.” He bit his words out and touched his hand to Kara’s elbow, not surprised when she jerked away from him, her own hands curling around the edge of the counter top. He could see that her eyes were tightly shut, her chest rising in slow, deep breaths.
“I should get going, Lee,” Kara finally forced out, not looking to him, instead taking the opposite route to slip quickly out the other entranceway.
“I swear to the Gods, Mom,” he said and followed Kara out. She was halfway up the stairs by time he got there, and he continued to trail behind a few steps away. He found her in his bedroom-as of late, he'd started to refer to it as their bedroom-quickly forcing her shoes on with one hand, as the other held her phone to her ear, on the tail end of calling for a cab. “Kara, please, what happened?”
“Nothing.” She hung up and slipped the phone into her pocket. “I’ve got to get back.”
“Don’t do this, okay? I don’t know what she said to you, but she’s out of her mind half the time. You can’t listen to her, I didn’t know she was coming here.” He pleaded with her quickly, desperately. “What happened?”
“I said, nothing!” She raised her voice to him, staring him down with the kind of ferocity she hadn’t felt in years.
“I can’t let you go, not like this, because I’m not sure if you’ll ever come back if you leave.”
“It would be for the best,” she said and zipped her duffel shut after stuffing a few items of clothing inside. “Tell Joseph I’m sorry I had to go, okay?” She put on a brave face, though her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“Kara, Gods, stop it. What the frak happened?”
Frustrated, she tossed her sweatshirt onto the bed. “She just said what everyone’s been thinking!”
“Who’s everyone? Because I sure as hell haven’t been thinking anything else!”
She shook her head and gathered her bag, forgetting the sweatshirt as she forced herself past Lee, hurrying down the hall and stairs. She glanced in the living room and saw Joseph’s eyes on her. Before she could even look away, he was up on his bare feet, following her out the front door.
“Kara! You didn’t say goodbye!”
It was the only thing that made her stop. Her father hadn’t so much as given her that, and she’d be damned if she repeated his mistakes. “Feel better, nugget.” She tried to feign indifference as they stood on the stoop, but she was unable to resist the urge to lean down and kiss his forehead and his cheeks. “Have a happy birthday for me.”
“Joseph, come inside,” Lee said from a few steps back, and though the boy obeyed, he did it with a glance towards her. “I’m begging you, Kara, please stay.”
“I can’t. I let myself believe that this could work, but it can’t and it won’t. There’s too much baggage, everything.”
“What do I have to do?” He was desperate and gently grasped her wrist.
She tore her arm away, cradling the offended wrist to her chest with the other hand. “Nothing. Move on, make your kid happy, forget that this happened.”
“Haven’t you been happy here? I thought things were okay?”
“They’ll never be okay, Lee, that’s where we differ. You think they are and I know they never will be.” She looked away, both pained and happy to see the oncoming taxi cab down the street.
“I love you, Kara, I have for years,” he tried finally, though it was a dirty move.
“And I loved Zak.” It was the truth, but not the whole truth. Just what she needed to say to put the necessary distance between them so he could let her go. Maybe if he hated her it would be easier for him to let her disappear yet again. The taxi stopped and Kara opened the back door, not looking back until she was about to step inside.
Her words hit him like a punch in the gut. All her worst fears had been brought to life through his mother earlier; hers now had the same effect on him. It hadn’t just been his sense of right and wrong that had kept him from confessing his feelings to her eight years ago. No, it had been also that he feared she would reject him. She loved his brother and maybe that was all there was to it. Maybe there would never be any room in her heart for him. “I love you,” he repeated anyway.
“Goodbye, Lee.”
He stood on his lawn long after the cab disappeared. Lee knew he could have followed her down to the station where she would probably sit for a few hours, waiting for the train she needed. He could have caught her there and argued with her inside the depot or out on the platform, but part of him was certain it wouldn’t have mattered.
When he came back to himself, he was full of rage, the unbridled kind. He found his mother in the living room with Joseph, who looked up to him with wide eyes that confessed he understood far more than people usually gave him credit for.
“Is Kara coming back?”
Lee ignored his son's question, meeting his mother’s gaze. “Do you understand what you did?”
“I won’t let her wreck everything you have, I won’t let-”
“Shut up!” he yelled, and Joseph nearly jumped, watching his father’s anger in horror. “You’ve ruined everything I’ve ever had, don’t you get it by now?”
“You’re not innocent in this, Leland, she’s your brother’s fiancee!”
“He’s dead, Mom! Zak’s been dead for almost a decade, but I’m still alive and so is she. She was good for him and you never wanted to see it, just like you won’t see how good she’s been for me.”
“Daddy,” Joseph whispered, his voice shaking in sadness as he tried to calm his father down.
“I love her!” He shouted the words at his mother, letting out a breaking sob in grief for the loss he felt.
“You’re just confused, Lee.” She came nearer and softened her tone, a tactic that had often worked on him when he was younger and more easily swayed by his loyalty to the woman that had given him life.
“I’m not a frakking child!” He stepped away from her, back towards the front door. “Get out. You’re not welcome here anymore. I swear to the Gods if you try to see Joseph or pick him up from school… I’ll call the frakking police.”
She wasn’t willing to believe him and stood her ground, arms crossing over her chest, calling his bluff.
“Get. Out.” He fished in his pocket for his phone, in no mood to actually endure one of her millions of tests she’d put him through at various points in his life.
Carolanne gave in after another moment, collecting her purse before heading to the front door. She paused, turning back to him. “Both of you deserved better than that.” It was the last thing she said, pulling the door shut as she left.
Lee leaned into his side of the closed front door, forehead pressed into the lacquered wood.
“Daddy,” Joseph said, tugging at Lee’s uniform. “It’s okay.” It was the first time he’d ever seen his father display so much raw emotion and he knew there was something inherently wrong with it. Joseph didn’t know how to fix it, or even what to do to soothe his own questions, so he simply drew himself towards his father. “Grandma didn’t mean it, she’s sorry.” Things were bathed in a simpler black and white for him.
Lee wiped his sleeve over his face, leaning down to pick up his son. He regretted letting Joseph see him like that and no apologies would remove the memory of it from his son’s head, so he let it go. “You feeling better?”
He nodded into Lee’s shoulder. “Kara didn’t eat her soup.”
“She had to go,” he replied.
“Can she come to my birthday?”
Lee squeezed Joseph gently and carried him back to the living room where he sat on the couch, his son cradled in his lap. “She’s got a lot of work to do,” he lied rather than explain it all to him, since he was unsure if he could ever promise his son that she would willingly see them both again.
Continue to Part 4.
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Mini-Series, and the episode "Black Market"
pairings: kara/lee
overall fic rating: NC-17 (parts 1+2), PG (parts 3+4)
total word count: 13,500 (parts 1+2), 14,500 (parts 3+4)
beta: Such huge thanks to wicked_sassy for being my beta for this. Without her, this would be a big jumbled mess hardly worthy of the English language.
notes: This is a continuation to Parts 1 + 2 of the story by the same name (Which started as a short piece I wrote for the December 4, 2011 challenge in
the_applecart, originally posted here.)
summary: In an AU where the cylons never attacked, Kara and Lee reunite on the Battlestar Galactica Museum five years after its decommissioning.
previous chapters: Part 1, Part 2
The heat of Helios Alpha beat down on the pavement of the lot behind the Colonial Fleet Academy of Caprica. Kara rubbed her hand across her forehead, feeling the slickness of beaded sweat against her scorched skin. Another fifteen minutes out there and she’d have that semi-permanent burn to her skin followed by a few days of uncomfortable peeling from the sun damage. She cursed herself for not checking the weather reports that morning, sure she’d overdressed for the temperatures and the blaze sinking into her skin.
“Randall!” She bit out the name, hands to her hips in a stance that she used much too often those days. Kara had even caught one of her students imitating her in the mess hall, though she’d had a little too much pleasure in calling them out and assigning punishment for it.
“Sir?” The nugget replied, hand held as a makeshift visor over his eyes to block the sun.
“Just what the frak do you think you’re doing?” Kara approached the Mark VIII next to him, one in a long line of other identical-looking ships, void of a nameplate that indicated the vessel's owner. “Your classmates,” she ran the pads of her fingers through a layer of dust coating a plane of metal shielding, “…are done cleaning their birds, and you’re sitting here with your thumb up your ass. You’ve been at it an hour and your Viper doesn’t look any better than it did when you got here. Do you think your deck chief or your XO would let your ship sit in the hangar of their battlestar looking like this?”
“Isn’t that what the knuckle draggers are for, Captain?” He replied, and despite observing her rank, there was disobedience in his manner.
Kara’s lips pursed, the edges of her mouth pulled up into a grin, her words held back. It wasn’t that she was pleased by his words or proud of his resourcefulness, but like that day in the mess, she loved the chance to put someone into their place. She was still Starbuck, after all. “Do you want to repeat that, nugget?” Her eyes squinted a mere fraction, a subtle action that would have been missed in the time it took to blink.
“That’s what they’re paid to-”
“No.” Kara cut him off before he could get his words out. “They’re paid to fix your fuel line so it doesn’t leak and ignite your ship when you’re on CAP, taking you out before you’ve got time to eject. Do you think it’s that easy reaching for the lever when your console’s blazing and your cockpit’s filled with smoke? They’re paid to make sure your nav system is working so you can actually make it back to your battlestar. They’re not paid to clean your frakking ship.” Her open palm smacked onto the surface of the Viper, the sound of it calling the attention of the other nuggets nearby, diligently working on their vessels.
“You’ve got to own this bird. Should I even let you pass this course, that is. One day your name will be on it and she’ll be yours. You’ll know when she’s hurting and how to fix her aches. You’ll be on that deck every night patching her up alongside the deck crew. Don’t assume someone else will take care of her for you. She’s yours, and you make sure she knows it. Take pride in her, and she won’t ever let you down.” Kara dusted off her hands as she rounded the nose of the newer Viper model. They’d been released a year prior and already she’d heard the buzz about the new features they were integrating into the Nines.
“Don’t forget, one day you’re going to come crashing down in an emergency landing. Maybe there was a malfunction, maybe your ship got damaged. It doesn’t matter how or why, what matters is that it will happen. When you’re lying there, stuck in the crushed frame of your bird, it’s going to be that deck crew who pulls you out first. They’re going to be the ones fighting for your life.” Her eyebrows raised to him with meaning. This time, when she spoke, it was in warning. “Don’t give them reason to work a little slower.”
Kara dismissed the class early a few minutes later. The burn of her flesh and the sweat she felt all over her body was beginning to grow more than just uncomfortable. She was the first to retreat back to the main building, thanking the Gods when she fell under its shadow, feeling a sense of relief. She focused intently on the toes of her boots, her head so far away from her physical location, that she didn’t see the bodies ahead of her before she heard them. The voice of a child stuck out the most, perhaps because it was such a rare sound at the academy, at least during the week. On some weekends, officers' children visited their parents for a few hours. It was a contrast to life on a regular base, with family housing around the outskirts, children’s laughter filling the afternoons as they got home from school.
“Kara!” A voice shouted. That was the second sound that got her attention, as usually she was only two things at the academy: Captain, and sometimes, God. The nuggets didn’t dare to call her by her first name; her fellow officers wouldn’t risk such an informality while on the clock. As far as Starbuck went, that was a name she’d left behind when she came back, although she still used it when running simulations.
“Joseph?” Her eyes found the source of the commotion, the boy just shy of his fifth birthday eagerly waving as he ran for her, ahead of his nearby father. She smiled, amused at Lee's slow pace, and he mirrored her in silent greeting. She was surprised to see them both, but the explanation would have to wait as Joseph reached her, arms raised towards the sky. She knew what he wanted and expected; it had become something of routine for them since Lee had made Kara a permanent fixture in their lives. Her hands at his underarms, she lifted him up, spinning him around as his laughter filled the air.
“What are you doing here, nugget?” Kara asked when she finally put him back on the ground, her hand in his, leading him back to his father.
“What’s a nugget?” He said, looking up to her.
“That’s what I call the kids I’m teaching to fly,” she answered. They stopped as she gestured back to the students packing up their things by the Vipers assigned to them for the day. Kara lowered herself to one knee at his side, evening out the height difference. “Those are my nuggets and so are you.”
“Are you going to teach me to fly, too?”
“Oh, I’ll be old by then,” she tickled gently at his underarm, his giggling full-bodied. With a grin, he pulled away from her just long enough for a reprieve. “There’s so much else you can do, you don’t have to fly.” Kara was careful to walk the line Lee had quietly set for his son. He wouldn’t be like William Adama, forcing Joseph towards the career he held and into everything that being a Viper pilot entailed, but he wouldn’t discourage his own interests, either. For Kara, there was even more conflict; though she loved being up in the air or out in space, she couldn’t imagine the same fate befalling Joseph as had Zak, an accident taking his life too soon. No, she already knew she wanted to keep him safe.
“You can do whatever you want,” Lee said as he finally met up with them, ending the complicated topic with his simple words.
Kara rose to her full height and without hesitation, Lee touched his lips to her cheek. She wasn’t one to hold back on public displays of affection, something he knew both from when he saw her with Zak and their own time together, but things were different in front of her immediate superiors and her students. There were no frat regs to worry about despite their difference in rank, since Lee worked in a different location and an entirely different field. Regardless, he observed self-control, despite how much he really wanted more from her after the week apart.
“Surprised to see you,” she said, a question in her words.
“We played hooky,” replied Lee, rocking on the balls of his feet, his hands tucked sheepishly into the pockets of his black slacks.
“My, my...” Her words came out with a hint of satisfaction, knowing she caught him breaking rules. “Aren’t you just setting a bad example.” She looked to him, then down to the boy between them, Joseph’s eyes still on the ships.
“We won’t tell Mom, right, Joseph?” He touched the crown of his son’s head, drawing his attention back to them.
“Right,” Joseph repeated, nodding firmly.
The trio found their way inside a nearby building, Kara leading the way to her classroom. “How are you boys holding up on your own? Day five and you’re already cutting class,” she reprimanded them without sincerity as she slung her bag over her shoulder, sweatshirt in hand.
“He misses Gianne,” Lee said quietly to not remind his distracted son of his mother’s immediate absence.
Kara glanced at Joseph, who made himself at home in the front row, kicking his feet since they weren’t close to touching the ground. “Still another week until she gets back, has she called him?”
“A few times, but it makes it worse-just when he forgets that she’s away, she’s on the other line and it all comes back. It’s why he didn’t go to school today. She called and he was too upset to go in so I called out of work, asked him what he wanted to do. He asked when you were coming, so... here we are.” There was an apology in his words for his sudden intrusion, showing up without so much of a call to warn her, but he hadn’t been able say no once the idea came into his son's head.
“I need to get back to my room and get my things…” Kara gave up that rattrap apartment a few years back, finally severing ties with Zak’s ghost still in that space. Her room at the academy wasn’t remotely luxurious, but it was comfortable enough for one, despite how much it reminded her of being a cadet. It was supposed to be temporary until she found a new place, but interest in looking for her own apartment had vanished once she started spending her free time with Lee.
“I figured we could drive you back on Sunday, or there’s always the train…” This hadn’t been their routine. In fact, Lee hadn’t even seen where she was staying these days. She’d been the one to visit, making allowances for the fact that he usually had his son as well. She’d done it without complaint or even a mention, and every time she pulled up in the driveway, Lee was reminded of the person Kara was, underneath everything else .
Kara nodded and looked to the boy, fiddling with a toy he’d pulled from his pocket. “Hey, Joseph? Before we go back to your house, I’ve got something for you.” She turned her attention back to Lee. “If it’s okay with your Dad.”
His brows rose but she smiled reassuringly, waving her hand to them as she led them both out of the classroom and down the hall. She fished around for her identification card, swiping it through the door's keypad, then entering a sequence of numbers. The locking mechanism released simultaneously with the flash of the green light from the number pad. She pulled the heavy door open, letting them inside the larger room, rows of simulators laid out in a grid pattern.
“Relax, Apollo, ” Kara began before he could even sound off with worry. She placed her belongings down beside one of the machines, then reached her arm in. Soon the first simulator sprang to life and she repeated the process with the one beside it. “How about we go flying?”
“Really?” Joseph looked up to his father, trying to sense his approval or lack thereof.
His son’s face broke his concern and Lee acquiesced, nodding. “You sure this is safe for him?”
“They’ve changed these a lot since we were in school,” Kara patted the nearest one. Though they hadn’t been at the academy at the same time, their training had been nearly identical. “Who would guess it? I’m the teacher so I can tweak the programs how I want. Joey and I will be strictly sight-seeing. No G’s, nothing like that.”
She held out her hand and with Lee gently pushing him forward with a touch to his back, Joseph ran towards her, excitement across his face.
“Got one for you, too, Apollo. If you’re up for it.” Kara winked, turning to climb into the second simulator. Lee was there to help Joseph in once she was settled in her seat, the boy sitting on her lap, tiny legs running along the length of hers, the gear stick between them. She closed the faux-cockpit roof, this one made of digital screens rather than glass. Joseph let out a small, scared sound as they plunged into darkness, but Kara reassured him softly, patting his thigh. “You okay, buddy?”
“Y-yes,” he stuttered.
“Your Dad’s going to get into the next one and we’ll see him soon. Now, where do you feel like flying today?” She asked quickly in an effort to distract him from both his fear of the unknown and the temporary absence of his mother . “We can fly over Caprica City, over the ocean… over Tauron. Any planet, anywhere, even out in space if you want to.”
He considered her words. “Can we see my house?”
“Mmhmm.” Kara reached around him, cycling through the controls. She adjusted the settings as needed, the multiple screens of the cockpit canopy fading to the hangar deck of the Battlestar Atlantia, their starting point. It was lifelike, and even Kara often found it near impossible to distinguish between reality and fiction in the simulator. It was what made them such useful training tools when coupled to the normal settings, which forced the pilot to treat it like a real Viper and feel the effects of it as well. For Joseph, though, she had intentionally voided those portions of the simulation, leaving it little more than a very realistic looking thrill ride, but more than enough for a four-year-old.
“Look over there,” she pointed to the left window, where another computer-generated Mark VIII Viper casually taxied alongside towards the launch tubes. As it neared, Lee’s face could be made out, his hand raised in a wave to Kara and Joseph.
“How you feeling, Joseph?” Lee asked, his voice coming through the speakers of the simulator.
The child broke into absolutely gleeful laughter, amazed by the technology that he was immersed in. “Use my call sign!” He corrected his father.
“Oh, yeah? What’s yours?”
“I don’t know, Grandpa said you don’t get to choose your own.”
“He’s right, Apollo, we’ve got to give him a good one or he’ll end up with something stupid like Hot Dog.”
“No, no,” Joseph pleaded. “Don’t pick Hot Dog!”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, although I’m tempted to nickname you Macaroni. I’ve never seen a kid eat more of that stuff than you,” she laughed. “How about, for now… Linus. He’s the son of Apollo, after all.”
“You’re dooming my kid to the life of being nicknamed after a God. Have mercy on him, Starbuck.”
“I’m sure he won’t let it go to his head, unlike someone else.” She bit her tongue as she glanced to him through the screen, although it was a series of cameras actually doing the job.
“I like it,” Joseph replied.
“The boy speaks, Apollo. Linus it is. Now Linus, are you ready for take off?” He nodded and Kara helped direct his hand to the stick that controlled the Viper, her hand folding gently over his. “If this were real, you’d be talking to a comm officer now, asking for permission to take off, so repeat after me, Linus. ‘Atlantia, Linus...’”
With more of a struggle than she had, he did as instructed. “Atlantia, Linus. Viper Four-One-Nine-Zero requesting clearance for take off.” He faltered over the numbering, but with Kara whispering along, Joseph managed the words out after a few embarrassed giggles.
His father came over the wireless, playing the role of someone in the CIC. “Roger that, Linus, you are cleared for launch. Be safe.”
“Here we go, Linus,” Kara said as she stayed in character for him. Around them, the lights flickered in warning that the imaginary airlock was now opened. Suddenly, they were no longer stationary, zooming through the launch tube and out into space. It was a strange feeling to Kara, visually experiencing the process without the pressure she usually associated with it. They made it into the black, the darkness broken up by the stars twinkling around them. She directed their hands to press the stick to one side and the Viper turned. From where she sat, Kara could see Joseph’s lips parted in awe as he saw the universe up close for the first time. He was a boy after her own heart.
“You see that planet, Linus? That’s Caprica, that’s where we live.”
“It’s so tiny.”
“Just because we’re far away. Isn’t it beautiful, though? Look at all that water.” Though Kara was speaking for Joseph, she was also talking for herself. This was what she felt every time she flew, really flew, and gazed down at the planets. “Ready to go see your house?”
“No,” he shook his head. “I want to stay out here. Can we do spins?”
“You sure?” Lee asked as his Viper coasted alongside.
“No puking in the cockpit, Linus. Got it, nugget?”
“Got it, Starbuck,” Joseph chirped in reply. It was the first time he’d called her by anything other than her first name.
She smiled at his use of her own call sign, one hand drawing back to ruffle his hair affectionately. Kara hadn’t been sure how she would be around children, especially Lee’s, but she’d quickly grown to love their time together. Lee often apologized for Joseph’s near constant presence on the weekends, although sometimes he and Gianne flipped the schedule around to give Kara some time alone with Lee. Truth be told, she never minded when Joseph was nearby, finding him a comfort she never knew she would feel.
“On three, Apollo, let’s show your son some tandem barrel rolls.”
-
By the time they reached Lee’s home, twilight was upon them, the day's fading light flickering out in a mixture of blue and orange. Kara climbed into the back seat and released the clasp securing Joseph into his car seat. She was careful, a kind of gentleness she didn’t know she had in her, easing his slumbering form into her arms. He quickly succumbed to his fatigue as soon as they’d turned onto the highway in Delphi, but his arms instinctively curled around her neck, one of her hands holding his weight against her chest while her other palm soothed his back.
“You want me to…?” Lee asked as she straightened out, her feet on the ground.
Kara shook her head, content to feel the slow breathing of the boy in her arms while she watched Lee close the door for her before gathering the duffel bag she’d packed for the weekend . Inside the house, she continued to cradle Joseph to her, looking back to his father once the entranceway lights were on. “Think he’ll sleep through the night?”
He tilted his head back and forth, weighing the options. “Probably be up early.” Getting some time alone seemed like a good idea in that moment, but come the next sunrise when Joseph wakened due to his particularly early bedtime, Lee knew they would be regretting it. On the other hand, waking a sleeping four-year-old was still very much like waking a baby-you just didn’t do it unless you were willing to face their wrath. As it was, they’d gotten something to eat in Delphi, an early dinner or very late lunch, so his stomach wouldn’t be particularly grumbly from skipping a meal. Perhaps this time it was best to let the sleeping babe lie. “Let’s get him into his pajamas.”
Lee offered his empty arms to take him back but she denied him again, climbing the stairs to the second floor. He followed behind Kara, foregoing the light switch in Joseph’s room for the lamp on the boy’s dresser, hoping not to wake him. Kara reluctantly laid him down on his neatly made bed, Lee waiting behind her, a set of summer pajamas in hand. She went to the hallway bathroom and brought back a moistened wash cloth for Lee, who wiped the little boy’s face in a rudimentary kind of cleaning. It wouldn’t be sufficient, he’d have to take a bath come morning, but it would do for now. His father finished undressing him, then put him into the matching shirt and shorts, tucking him into his small bed.
He kissed his son’s forehead and moved away, then paused when he realized Kara wasn’t coming along. She still lingered at Joseph’s bedside and he watched her, his shoulder pressed into the door frame. Lee could read a kind of nervousness in her stiff shoulders-a part of her that was nearly as expressive as her face-but there was also some sense of longing in the way she leaned towards the boy, rather than vacating the room immediately. Joseph and Kara, the first and second most important people in his life, had shown a bond he never expected. She had been reluctant to agree to a relationship with him a few months prior and Lee knew his son had something to do with her decision in the end. His skin warmed as he watched them, the boy that claimed half his DNA and how infatuated Kara had become.
Kara bit her lower lip as she perched on the very edge of his mattress, spine arched, connecting her lips just above one of his brows. “Goodnight, Linus,” she whispered. After tracing her fingertips down one of his tiny arms to an even smaller hand, she finally stood, shutting the light off. She was surprised to meet Lee at the door, thankful for the darkness as she blushed, caught in the private act of affection.
Lee pulled the door shut behind them. As she headed for the staircase, he caught her hand in his and brought her to a stop. He crushed their lips together, the kind of kiss he’d wanted to give her since he’d seen her at the academy hours ago, sweating on the blacktop. “I love that you care about him so much,” Lee confessed, kissing into her hair.
She still wasn’t exactly sure of the role she was supposed to hold in his son’s life, which added to an inner layer of fear and guilt. Kara wasn’t his mother, not by any stretch of imagination, not even a step-mother. She was just a girl, a woman, that his father happened to be seeing, somewhat secretly at that. Gianne knew; since that first morning, Kara had found herself running into her on a weekly basis, trying to keep her distance when Joseph's mother was around, fearing that Gianne would think that Kara was trying to edge her out. Despite all that, though, Kara had begun to think of him less and less as just Lee’s son. What he was to her, she didn’t have words for. When she realized she was wondering how he was during her time away, even asking Lee about Joseph with genuine curiosity, Kara knew something significant had changed.
“He’s a cute kid,” she responded, not ready to express the thoughts swimming in her head.
Lee smiled and wrapped his arms around her, pulling their hips together. “Well, he gets it all from me.”
“Cute and modest.” Her eyes rolled, arms hooked around his neck.
“Mm, and not just that. I bought that wine you love. I think that earns me something extra.”
“Brilliant too, then,” Kara nodded through her words, drawing their lips back together. A soft sigh emitted from deep within as she felt the complete contentment that came with the time they shared. They were less volatile than they’d ever been, especially together, and it was a credit both to the time they’d endured and the child that was usually around, forcing them both to take a deep breath rather than let themselves resort to fists. “I can’t wait to get you drunk.”
“I’m easy either way,” Lee insisted.
Kara barked out a loud laugh in reply, her hand clamping down over her mouth with her eyes on the child’s door. “We wake him up and it won’t matter how much wine you bought me, you won’t be getting any tonight,” Kara wagged her finger at him, tearing herself away to head down the stairs.
-
In the kitchen, Lee removed the cork from the first of the two bottles he’d purchased with her in mind. He added an inch to each wine glass, but Kara’s hand touched to the bottom of the bottle just as he meant to stop, forcing more out into hers.
“You’re supposed to let it breathe.”
“That’s just bullshit they tell you to sell you more crap.” Her eyes lit up as she sipped the full wine glass, letting the flavor rinse through her mouth and over her tongue. “Two bottles? I’m going to be hurting tomorrow.”
“No one said you had to drink it all at once.” He lifted his own glass and drank down a mouthful.
“You know me, I’ve got no self-control.”
“I seem to recall you used to be a cheaper date, too. You only drank the bad stuff.”
“Not true.” Kara took another long swallow, not even letting herself savor it. “I was just too poor to afford anything good. I always drank the whiskey when you brought it. Gods,” her eyes glazed over in a faraway look. “You always had the best alcohol. I can’t imagine how much you spent.”
He shrugged, not wanting to get into it. At the time, he’d been younger and foolish, misguided. Lee knew he couldn’t have had her back then, but that didn’t mean he didn’t try silly little things to impress her, even if it meant spending more than he had-at least without his parents’ financial help-to see her light up when he brought out the good booze. “Thank you, by the way, for what you did earlier.”
She reached for the bottle and refilled her glass, eyes on the dark hue of the wine as it poured out. “Got to earn my brownie points with him somehow.”
His hand rested on her free one and it prompted her eyes to meet his. “He loves you, Kara. All week, he talks about you. What he wants to do when you come over, all the things you two did last time.”
“Then he’s also crazy, just like you.” She played it off.
He leaned down to where she sat at the counter, kissing her gently. “We love you,” Lee said. His brows pushed together like they were trying to meet as he clarified. “We love you, but Kara, what I mean is-I love you, too.”
“Drunk already? You’ve turned into such a lightweight, Apollo,” she patted his cheek, trying to lighten the suddenly-serious mood.
“Yeah,” he said with a smile, absorbing the feel of her skin on his. “I’ve gotten soft in my old age.” Though she hadn’t responded to his declaration directly, she had acknowledged it in her own way, and that would be enough for the time being. With Kara, it was all about compromise.
From behind her glass, she raised her eyes coyly. “I wouldn’t use the word soft, exactly.”
-
“I’ll have to call you a cab to take you to the train,” Lee said, sitting on the edge of the couch as he rubbed Joseph’s blanket-covered abdomen. He’d come down with something of a stomach bug, the excitement and energy usually brimming in the little boy almost instantly wiped out with the onset of symptoms.
Kara sat on the arm of the couch nearest to where Joseph’s head rested on a pillow as he watched the television across the room. “Don’t worry about it, Lee.” Her hand brushed over his son’s thin blonde hair as he laid still, bundled up to the throat with his favorite blanket. “You’ll feel better soon, Joey, these things go quick.” There was no way for her to know if she was being truthful or not, only time would tell, but she knew how comforting those words could be to a small child. All they sometimes needed was the reassurance of a parent, or just an adult they trusted, to put them on the imagined path to recovery. “You gonna have to take off again tomorrow, Lee?”
“I really can’t, I’ve got a meeting with an Admiral from out of town. I already called my parents to see if they could come over but I didn’t hear anything.” He sighed and stood, heading for the entranceway with Kara following. “I’ll figure it out though. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
She looked to her bag by the foot of the stairs, already packed a few hours earlier when things hadn’t been so serious. “And what if you can’t find someone, then what?”
Lee scratched his head and rolled his shoulders in a shrug, though it failed to ease his worry and tension out of him.
“I can stay,” she said, hands to her waist, helping to bolster some strength in her decision making. “I’ve got some time off built up, I can miss a day.”
“I couldn’t ask, Kara, already you’re probably going to get sick because of him.”
“Then it won’t hurt if I stay another day. I’m sure there’s another train out tomorrow night or the next morning.”
Lee shook his head, glancing between Kara and Joseph who was looking absolutely pitiful on the couch. He'd forgotten how much children could be sick with such a poorly formed immune system, picking up every little bug that went through school. It didn’t make it any easier though, and watching his son’s body be ravaged by the brief illness was still trying. He actually felt himself missing Gianne and how she always seemed to be infallible when it came to things like this. “You’ve seen him, he’s been throwing up. I can’t ask you to take care of that.”
“Lee, I cleaned up enough of your brother’s puke because he could never hold his liquor. I can handle one kid.” What she actually volunteered for began to set in. She’d never been left alone with Joseph, not for more than a few minutes as Lee ran to the store to grab something for dinner or lunch. In fact, she didn’t think she’d ever been left in charge of a child at all. A class of nuggets, sure, but someone else’s kid? It was a different ballgame.
“You’ll get in trouble.”
“I won’t.”
“Are you sure?” There was gratefulness in his eyes.
“I’m sure. You can owe me; when I get sick, you’ll have to listen to me complain about it.” Kara squeezed his bicep, reminding him he wasn’t alone. “These bugs are usually for twenty-four hours anyway, he’ll feel a lot better tomorrow and we’ll have lots of fun without you.”
He mouthed his thanks. This time, Kara initiated the hug, pulling him against her. There had been worry in him over the last few hours that she hadn’t ever seen, but it was familiar, because in some ways she felt it, too.
-
The next day, Kara sat on the couch, Joseph’s head in her lap as they watched a movie of his choice from his small collection at his father’s home. As expected, the illness seemed to already have pulled back from the ugly beast that it was the day before, leaving Joseph emptying his stomach into the toilet, a pot at his bedside, and even once in his own sheets in the middle of the night. That had been an experience Kara never thought she would live through-being jarred from sleep as the boy came crying into the room she shared with Lee, his PJ’s stained with his own sick. As gross as it had been, she’d stripped the bed of the messed sheets, put new ones on, and started up the washing machine on the sanitary cycle while Lee took charge in bathing and comforting his son. They’d met back together some minutes later to put Joseph back to bed, both of them sharing a look in silent prayer that it wouldn’t happen again.
When Lee left for work, looking put together in his dress grays in preparation for the higher-ups he had to meet with and entertain over his day, Joseph had still been asleep. Kara was there when he woke up. Despite her fears that he wouldn’t be welcoming to spending his day with her, he hadn’t put up a fight. They’d spent the morning being lazy, Kara fetching him juice and water whenever his parched mouth called for it. As lunchtime hit, she’d put soup on the stove to warm. They would start with easy to digest things first, then work back on up to solids when they were sure his stomach could take it.
“How’s your belly feeling?”
He nodded, looking from the television up to her. “Hungry.”
“Soup’ll be ready soon and before you know it, your Dad will be home. He said he’d leave a few hours early to get back to you as soon as he can.”
“Why are you here with me?” He asked, face puzzled as he watched her.
She wasn’t sure if it was genuine curiosity or some kind of accusation, as though he would have preferred someone, anyone else. “Because I wanted to make sure you felt better.”
“Don’t you have your children to make better?”
Kara forced a small smile, fingers stroking through his hair. “No, I don’t have any of my own.”
“Why not? Don’t you want them?”
She was careful in choosing her words. No, she hadn’t ever really wanted any children, but admitting such a thought to a child of his age might make him think that he wasn’t wanted in her life either. That had been quite the opposite as of late. “I was almost married a long time ago to your Uncle Zak, but then he passed away. I haven’t really thought about having children since then.”
“You and my Dad could have a baby.”
Kara laughed quietly, fingers barely tickling at his neck, just enough to make him smile, then backing off. “Usually people like to be together for a long time before they have a baby.” Oh, there were a world of exceptions to that idea, but Kara wasn’t about to begin that topic of conversation with a boy who was just learning to read. “I like having you, though,” she finally confessed. “I know I’m not your Mom, but I like being your friend.”
This time, Joseph smiled of his own accord. “Me too.”
He’d set alight a whirlwind of thoughts inside of her head, all eagerly chatting away and vying for attention. It wouldn’t do, though, and Kara changed the subject. “Your birthday’s coming up, are you going to have a party?”
“Uh-huh.” He finally sat up, bouncing his pajama-clad knees on the cushion beside her. “It’s at Mommy’s and she said I could invite all my friends from school-I can have ice cream cake if I want-and pick my own presents-are you going to come?”
She loved how he could turn himself on and off like that, from a tired sleepy child to one buzzing with excitement and rambling a mile a minute, his mouth not able to keep up with his thoughts. If anything, it also brought added comfort that he was getting that much better, based on his mood alone. “If you want me to come, I’ll be there.” Lee had already mentioned it to her and that it would be on one of the weekends coming up. It hadn’t been an outright invitation, but she knew it was one just the same, though part of her felt wrong for intruding in on something that was very obviously Gianne’s territory. “Let me go get our soup, okay?” She stood and sat a pillow on the floor in front of the coffee table. “You sit right here and I’ll be back.”
Kara returned a minute later with two bowls of soup, one set in front of where Joseph had migrated to the floor, the other where she was determined to sit. As she was about to join him, she heard the slamming of a car door. Her interest piqued. “Dad must be here,” she offered to Joseph, but he was already busy stirring his steaming broth. “Blow on it first!” Kara ordered as she headed to the entranceway, wanting to meet Lee as he came in. “You’re home earlier-” but she stopped herself, greeted by the sight of Carolanne Adama, keys in hand, ready to unlock the front door . “Ca-,” she paused again, correcting. “Mrs. Adama.”
Carolanne eyed Kara like she wasn’t sure exactly how to place the woman before her. Recognition finally dawned as she put her keys into her purse and stepped inside. “Kara, I haven’t seen you since…”
She didn’t need to finish it for Kara to know when was the last time she’d seen Carolanne. It had been at Zak’s funeral, over the casket of the older woman’s son, since Kara hadn’t had enough strength to even turn up at her home afterward for the wake to honor Zak. “How are you?” She asked politely, feeling a million times smaller. Lee and Zak’s mother had always done that to her the few times they’d met, and though seven years had passed since Zak’s death and even more time since she had first come to meet Carolanne, Kara knew nothing had changed.
“Well, I got Lee’s message late last night-messages, actually. The first one about needing someone to babysit Joseph since he was sick today, then there was one after saying he got a babysitter. I thought I’d stop by and give whomever it was a break since I had some free time.”
She and Lee had never discussed what they were and weren’t telling other people about their relationship. Gianne had found out on that first day and they’d done their best at avoiding both of his parents when Kara was visiting. It didn’t make her feel any better about simply being referred to as Joseph’s babysitter and nothing else, though. She inwardly knew Lee didn’t mean anything by it, had probably just said it in a rush and done so to preserve their privacy. Regardless, it stung, it stung somewhere deep. “Joseph’s fine, just having some soup,” she spit her words out, suddenly fearful that maybe simple broth wasn’t the proper thing to feed a child with such an illness and that Carolanne would reprimand her for it.
Joseph’s grandmother paid her no mind, heading for the living room where she found the boy blowing on each shaky spoonful of soup, just as Kara had advised.
“Grandma.” He smiled and slipped his spoon back into the bowl.
“What’s Kara doing letting you make a mess in the living room?” Carolanne leaned down to kiss her grandson’s head.
“Not making a mess,” Joseph insisted as he shook his head, annoyed at the implication: that he was a little boy and couldn’t be trusted with such a simple thing.
“Not yet, at least,” Carolanne replied. She met Kara back near the entrance of the room, her hand motioning towards the kitchen.
Kara followed and began idly to taking care of the soiled pot still on the stove.
“So how did you end up babysitting for my son? I didn’t even know you were in the area, I guess Bill must’ve told Lee. It’s good you and him are catching up.”
Kara set the pot in the sink, desperately wanting to distract herself by cleaning it, but she couldn’t, not when she knew Carolanne’s eyes would have been on her back the entire time. This was the first time, Kara realized, that she’d ever been left alone with the woman that raised Zak and Lee. Previously, and she’d only ever crossed paths with Carolanne a few times, her sons had been the buffer between them and she’d been in a far sweeter mood. There was a kind of tension around now; despite the fact that Kara had been trusted to be the adult and take care of Joseph, she felt nothing more than a child when faced down by the other woman's focused gaze.
“I ran into Lee and Joseph at the Galactica Museum awhile back.” Her mind raced, trying desperately to find a way to answer the coming onslaught of questions without giving both her and Lee away.
“Are you still in the military?”
“I’m teaching at the academy again.”
Carolanne gave something crossed between a sigh and a disapproving ‘hmph’ as she sat down on one of the stools at the counter. “You sure that’s a wise place for you to be?”
Kara stilled immediately, a chill running through the center of her body. She didn’t want to know what Carolanne implied by the question, and yet Kara couldn’t stop herself. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, last time you wound up dating my son and he was hardly out of his teens then. What,” Carolanne paused and looked directly at Kara. “What if you end up taking advantage of another student like that?”
Though Carolanne had never outright said something similar to her before, Kara had always felt the thought as an undercurrent in how Carolanne treated her. Zak had denied it, reassured her otherwise, and because he was there, she’d chosen to believe it. Now, though, she was left to face it alone. “I didn’t-”
“You were his teacher. No matter what way you try to spin it, it was your responsibility to not get involved with one of your students.”
The worst part was that Kara knew Carolanne was right. The age gap between her and Zak hadn’t been much at all, in fact it was hardly more than the one between her and Lee now. But she had been his instructor, and of course, someone of higher rank and authority. She was in the wrong for allowing him to break through that invisible barrier and continuing to carry out their illegal relationship over the months. “Carolanne, that’s not… Zak and I loved each other, I couldn’t, wouldn’t ever do that again.”
“Your past doesn’t exactly inspire good faith in that regard. And now, what are you doing here? You don’t expect me to believe Lee called you out of the blue to have a stranger come babysit his son for him. I’m not stupid or naive.”
Kara couldn’t take the weight of Carolanne’s accusing eyes, so she turned back to the sink, eager to drown out some of the words with the spray of water from the faucet. She soaped the sponge and lathered up the pot, furiously scrubbing away imaginary grime. Kara heard footsteps around her; when words joined in, they were far louder than before because of the proximity.
“Don’t ruin both of my sons.”
Kara choked back her anger and the pain she felt at having her worst fears verbalized from someone else. It was bad enough to hear it from herself all of the time, but to hear an independent person confirm it was the kind of ache she didn’t want to believe existed. For a moment, she wasn’t just listening to Carolanne berate her in the relative privacy of the kitchen, but her mother was in the room too, reminding her just how good for nothing she always had been and all the mistakes she’d made. She willed herself to continue on, feeling the searing sting of the hot water over her skin as she cleaned even long after it had been complete. She was so lost in trying to drown out the echo of Carolanne Adama’s and Socrata Thrace’s words in her ears that she didn't hear the front door open, nor the sound of Lee entering the kitchen to find his girlfriend and mother together.
He was immediately stricken at the sight, especially the way his mother nonchalantly stepped away from Kara and her hunched shoulders. His mother had that look he knew all too well, one he’d seen often growing up when she’d spent an afternoon drinking and reminding him of all the ways his father had been a disappointment to her. What was more telling than his mother’s body language was Kara’s, the way he could see the muscles in her body tensing up in preparation to either fight someone else or fight something off inside herself. “What’s going on?” He began to unbutton his uniform as he approached, stepping between them despite how far Carolanne had moved away.
“We were just catching up,” his mother answered. “Did you see Joseph?”
“He’s fine-and somehow I don’t think you two were just catching up.” He bit his words out and touched his hand to Kara’s elbow, not surprised when she jerked away from him, her own hands curling around the edge of the counter top. He could see that her eyes were tightly shut, her chest rising in slow, deep breaths.
“I should get going, Lee,” Kara finally forced out, not looking to him, instead taking the opposite route to slip quickly out the other entranceway.
“I swear to the Gods, Mom,” he said and followed Kara out. She was halfway up the stairs by time he got there, and he continued to trail behind a few steps away. He found her in his bedroom-as of late, he'd started to refer to it as their bedroom-quickly forcing her shoes on with one hand, as the other held her phone to her ear, on the tail end of calling for a cab. “Kara, please, what happened?”
“Nothing.” She hung up and slipped the phone into her pocket. “I’ve got to get back.”
“Don’t do this, okay? I don’t know what she said to you, but she’s out of her mind half the time. You can’t listen to her, I didn’t know she was coming here.” He pleaded with her quickly, desperately. “What happened?”
“I said, nothing!” She raised her voice to him, staring him down with the kind of ferocity she hadn’t felt in years.
“I can’t let you go, not like this, because I’m not sure if you’ll ever come back if you leave.”
“It would be for the best,” she said and zipped her duffel shut after stuffing a few items of clothing inside. “Tell Joseph I’m sorry I had to go, okay?” She put on a brave face, though her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“Kara, Gods, stop it. What the frak happened?”
Frustrated, she tossed her sweatshirt onto the bed. “She just said what everyone’s been thinking!”
“Who’s everyone? Because I sure as hell haven’t been thinking anything else!”
She shook her head and gathered her bag, forgetting the sweatshirt as she forced herself past Lee, hurrying down the hall and stairs. She glanced in the living room and saw Joseph’s eyes on her. Before she could even look away, he was up on his bare feet, following her out the front door.
“Kara! You didn’t say goodbye!”
It was the only thing that made her stop. Her father hadn’t so much as given her that, and she’d be damned if she repeated his mistakes. “Feel better, nugget.” She tried to feign indifference as they stood on the stoop, but she was unable to resist the urge to lean down and kiss his forehead and his cheeks. “Have a happy birthday for me.”
“Joseph, come inside,” Lee said from a few steps back, and though the boy obeyed, he did it with a glance towards her. “I’m begging you, Kara, please stay.”
“I can’t. I let myself believe that this could work, but it can’t and it won’t. There’s too much baggage, everything.”
“What do I have to do?” He was desperate and gently grasped her wrist.
She tore her arm away, cradling the offended wrist to her chest with the other hand. “Nothing. Move on, make your kid happy, forget that this happened.”
“Haven’t you been happy here? I thought things were okay?”
“They’ll never be okay, Lee, that’s where we differ. You think they are and I know they never will be.” She looked away, both pained and happy to see the oncoming taxi cab down the street.
“I love you, Kara, I have for years,” he tried finally, though it was a dirty move.
“And I loved Zak.” It was the truth, but not the whole truth. Just what she needed to say to put the necessary distance between them so he could let her go. Maybe if he hated her it would be easier for him to let her disappear yet again. The taxi stopped and Kara opened the back door, not looking back until she was about to step inside.
Her words hit him like a punch in the gut. All her worst fears had been brought to life through his mother earlier; hers now had the same effect on him. It hadn’t just been his sense of right and wrong that had kept him from confessing his feelings to her eight years ago. No, it had been also that he feared she would reject him. She loved his brother and maybe that was all there was to it. Maybe there would never be any room in her heart for him. “I love you,” he repeated anyway.
“Goodbye, Lee.”
He stood on his lawn long after the cab disappeared. Lee knew he could have followed her down to the station where she would probably sit for a few hours, waiting for the train she needed. He could have caught her there and argued with her inside the depot or out on the platform, but part of him was certain it wouldn’t have mattered.
When he came back to himself, he was full of rage, the unbridled kind. He found his mother in the living room with Joseph, who looked up to him with wide eyes that confessed he understood far more than people usually gave him credit for.
“Is Kara coming back?”
Lee ignored his son's question, meeting his mother’s gaze. “Do you understand what you did?”
“I won’t let her wreck everything you have, I won’t let-”
“Shut up!” he yelled, and Joseph nearly jumped, watching his father’s anger in horror. “You’ve ruined everything I’ve ever had, don’t you get it by now?”
“You’re not innocent in this, Leland, she’s your brother’s fiancee!”
“He’s dead, Mom! Zak’s been dead for almost a decade, but I’m still alive and so is she. She was good for him and you never wanted to see it, just like you won’t see how good she’s been for me.”
“Daddy,” Joseph whispered, his voice shaking in sadness as he tried to calm his father down.
“I love her!” He shouted the words at his mother, letting out a breaking sob in grief for the loss he felt.
“You’re just confused, Lee.” She came nearer and softened her tone, a tactic that had often worked on him when he was younger and more easily swayed by his loyalty to the woman that had given him life.
“I’m not a frakking child!” He stepped away from her, back towards the front door. “Get out. You’re not welcome here anymore. I swear to the Gods if you try to see Joseph or pick him up from school… I’ll call the frakking police.”
She wasn’t willing to believe him and stood her ground, arms crossing over her chest, calling his bluff.
“Get. Out.” He fished in his pocket for his phone, in no mood to actually endure one of her millions of tests she’d put him through at various points in his life.
Carolanne gave in after another moment, collecting her purse before heading to the front door. She paused, turning back to him. “Both of you deserved better than that.” It was the last thing she said, pulling the door shut as she left.
Lee leaned into his side of the closed front door, forehead pressed into the lacquered wood.
“Daddy,” Joseph said, tugging at Lee’s uniform. “It’s okay.” It was the first time he’d ever seen his father display so much raw emotion and he knew there was something inherently wrong with it. Joseph didn’t know how to fix it, or even what to do to soothe his own questions, so he simply drew himself towards his father. “Grandma didn’t mean it, she’s sorry.” Things were bathed in a simpler black and white for him.
Lee wiped his sleeve over his face, leaning down to pick up his son. He regretted letting Joseph see him like that and no apologies would remove the memory of it from his son’s head, so he let it go. “You feeling better?”
He nodded into Lee’s shoulder. “Kara didn’t eat her soup.”
“She had to go,” he replied.
“Can she come to my birthday?”
Lee squeezed Joseph gently and carried him back to the living room where he sat on the couch, his son cradled in his lap. “She’s got a lot of work to do,” he lied rather than explain it all to him, since he was unsure if he could ever promise his son that she would willingly see them both again.
Continue to Part 4.