Watching You Without Me. (Part 4/4)
title: Watching You Without Me. (Part 4/4)
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, Part 3
“Class dismissed, I’ll see you all tomorrow.” Kara piled up the papers in front of her as the students began filing out slowly, loud chatter filling the room as they finished for the day. She paid them no mind as she shoved her belongings into her bag until there was a sudden deafening silence over the room. When she looked up she saw them all in the middle of a rigid salute, elbows folded and arms crisp and straight. The source of such attention stepped through the crowd as the students parted and watched, voyeurs to whatever reason the unknown Major had for seeking out their instructor.
Kara snapped her own salute up, perhaps even more carefully than the nuggets. It was the first time she’d ever saluted him in her life and both of them knew she wasn’t actually doing it out of respect but out of a kind of defiance. Another wall between them.
Lee returned her gesture weakly and without heart. “Listen, Kara…” He started but turned back to see some of the students still lingering in the class, hoping to hear what they could about their teacher’s private life. “I believe the Captain said that you were dismissed,” he said, and this time they did obey. He didn’t dare open his mouth again until he heard the click of the door in the doorframe, signaling that they were alone. Kara doubletimed her packing, giving her clearance to treat him without the decorum that protocol said she must observe.
He’d given her a little over two weeks to cool off, hoping that she would reach out to fix what had happened between them. It wasn’t a surprise that she hadn’t, so when he finally mustered up enough courage, he’d come to see her himself. A phone call wouldn’t have ever been enough.
“Don’t even start, Lee. You and I both know it wouldn’t be the first time I hit a Major.” She wouldn’t allow herself to look at him, her attention everywhere else. Kara turned to the whiteboard behind her, picking up the eraser to remove evidence that she’d been there at all.
“I miss you.” He leaned against the edge of her desk and watched her. His arms crossed over the blue fabric of his uniform, finding its confines unbelievably tight all of a sudden. “I didn’t come here for me.” Lee saw her arm falter as it swiped over the board. “I mean, I did, but I knew you wouldn’t give me the time of day.” He withdrew a small folded card from his pocket, setting it on her bare desk. “You don’t have to come, but I know it would mean a lot to Joseph if you did. I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want, but I need you to know my mother won’t be there.” He was more than mortified for the things his mother had said to her. Carolanne had been one of the few parts of his life he’d never been able to control. Like Kara, he thrived on making sure he had as much control as he could, for not entirely different reasons than she had. He continued to talk.
“My mom… she’s got her problems. She may not have been drinking when she came over, but it’s started to bleed over into every part of her life the last few years.” He had his own family secrets, things they never talked about, and admitting some of it aloud, even to Kara, was taking its toll on him. “I’m sorry, and for what it’s worth, I don’t believe any of the things she said.”
“Just let it go. We had fun but I knew it wouldn’t ever really work. I let you convince me it would when I should’ve listened to myself.”
“I don’t agree.” He stood up, shifting his weight between his feet before tapping his knuckles on the card he’d left on the desk. “Like I said, it would mean a lot.”
She watched him step away and set the eraser down. “You could have sent it in the mail. Didn’t have to waste your afternoon coming out here.”
Lee had the door open as he turned around, hands slipping into his pockets. “Yeah, I could’ve, but I wanted to see you.”
When the door clicked shut again, Kara let herself pick up the card. It was fairly bare and the inside was handwritten in a flowery script she assumed belonged to Gianne. A date. A time. She looked back to the door where she’d seen him last and palmed the card into her chest. He’d driven the two hours or so just to see her for a few minutes; in a very unlike Lee moment, he hadn’t pushed. There was something about it that resonated in her. He’d made himself clear without going too far, respecting the boundaries she’d drawn again without even telling him about.
Kara wasn’t sure if she’d be at the party only a few days away, but she had an idea that maybe she wanted to be.
-
“Frak me,” Kara said as she tossed the paper into the passenger seat. She’d followed the written instructions and still managed to lose her way, proving that her sense of direction in the cockpit didn’t exactly translate well on the ground. She was running late, well beyond the bounds of any kind of acceptable tardiness, and she didn’t have anything or anyone to blame it on except herself. There hadn’t been traffic or an accident along the way, or a present to pick up since she’d actually done that a few weeks ago, before the whole mess with her and Carolanne Adama. There hadn’t been a party planned back then, but she knew Joseph’s fifth birthday approached and she wasn’t going to be caught off guard without a gift to bring a smile to his lips.
She’d stared at it every day since then, still in the bag under her desk in her quarters, although it had begun to stop representing the happiness it was to bring the boy and instead reflected the stirring of fear she began to feel when she thought of having to face Lee again. Kara thought about mailing it, boxing it up and sending it to Gianne’s or Lee’s with a note, or even just not giving it at all, but all the other options left her unsatisfied. No, she knew she’d have to bring it herself. Not for her, not for Lee, but for the little boy that was a bystander in the complicated life of Kara Thrace. Joseph’s grandmother had warned Kara to stay away from Lee, but maybe she had also meant to stay away from his son. She didn’t know Joseph that well, and maybe it was presumptuous of her to think so, but she imagined that her departure had left some small missing piece from his life, a piece that would still be there had she never forced her way in.
Kara stopped at the corner, her car creeping forward as she looked for any kind of street sign. The usual marker was missing but she caught a glimpse of a dense population of cars parked on the street, far more than anyone would expect for normal circumstances. She turned the wheel, following the new road, and a few multi-colored balloons waved in the breeze from a nearby mailbox. Kara parked behind the last car and turned the ignition off. She released the seatbelt, hands folding down the visor to view herself in the small mirror. Fingers wiped under her eyes then fluffed her hair, restoring a kind of life that she didn’t truly feel. The last thing she wanted to do was to show up to the party later than anything, looking out of place and a complete mess. Her resolve faltered the longer she stared at herself in the mirror so she forced it away, opening the car door as she exited quickly with the present under one arm.
She idly played with the wrapping paper around the box, pushing it into place like it would correct the shoddy job she’d done a few hours earlier. It had been years since she’d actually wrapped a present of any kind and the lack of crisp corners was a testament to it. In so many ways she was unlike her usual self as she slowly made her way down the block, self-conscious of the bow taped to the top of the present and the way the fabric of her short dress clung when a gust of wind caught it. She tugged at the hem, fighting not to turn back as she contemplated whether two inches or so above her knee was far too short for a child’s birthday party. What did adults even wear to something like this? The last birthday celebration she’d attended involved shots and getting so drunk she’d barely made it back to her quarters before passing out, not wondering if the mothers of the other children would judge her for not understanding the unsaid rules of the functions.
It took a few rings of the doorbell before anyone actually answered, and though she expected it to be Gianne, it wasn’t. It was perhaps the one person she did need to see-the Old Man.
“Starbuck,” he said with the kind of warmth she only felt around him.
“Sir,” she offered lamely, her hand drawn up in an instinctive salute, but he pulled her into his arms before her fingers even met her forehead.
“We didn’t think you would make it.”
She followed him inside as he led the way, though the house was far too empty and quiet for the number of cars she’d seen out front.
“Everyone’s in the backyard,” he answered her like he could read her mind. “I can’t believe how long it’s been. You should’ve come to see me when you got back to Caprica.”
“Just… been busy.” It was an attempt at an excuse she didn’t have. She had intended to visit him, but when she started to see Lee it became easier to avoid him rather than to have to explain whatever it was existed between her and his other son. “How’s retirement?”
“Awful!” He laughed boisterously in a way she was sure he never had done in all the time she knew him before. Certainly never as the Commander of a battlestar. “I don’t know what to do with myself half the time. I thought I’d enjoy it, have free time to go fishing at my father’s cabin, but do you realize how boring it is when you’re sitting out there alone all day?”
She didn’t have to force a smile as she listened to him speak. Kara hadn’t met him before Zak’s death, but part of her always wished she had been able to see father and son together. Zak had some of his mother in him, but whenever she looked at the man that used to be her Commander, she always saw the reflection of Zak in his features. Perhaps that had been another reason why she’d been so drawn to Adama after Zak’s death. Practically the only differences between them were the color of their eyes, the pock marks on the Old Man’s face, and the fact that Zak hadn’t worn glasses, though she suspected with age he would’ve needed them too. “I can’t get used to life back on the ground either.”
They stopped a few feet shy of the closed patio doors, the glass drowning out the sounds of children playing and adults talking. Adama looked to her, sensing her apprehension, and touched his hand gently to her arm. Kara looked up to him with wide eyes that didn’t hide a thing.
“Not sure if I belong here,” she confessed quietly.
“My grandson invited you, of course you do.”
“Commander…” That would be one thing she’d never be able to shake. He’d been her close friend and higher-ranking officer for years, she doubted that the need to treat him with that kind of respect would ever leave her.
He gave her the courtesy of turning his attention back towards outside as he spoke. “I know about you and Lee already, and about what happened with my ex-wife.”
In some ways she was thankful that she wouldn’t have to explain it to him. From a young age she’d been taught to swallow down treatment like that from others without complaint. She learned it from her mother first and only as she got older did she start to use her fists as a response. However, hitting Carolanne Adama wasn’t exactly an option for her. The one thing she knew was that you didn’t go ratting out a person for what they’d said or done and you didn’t show the kind of emotion the instigator always wanted to get out of you. With Adama’s ex-wife, she’d violated all those rules and she felt shame for having other people know she couldn’t take care of it herself or just learn to ignore it.
“The rest of us, we don’t agree with her. You know that, don’t you?” He finally looked back to her, blue eyes identical to those that belonged to his only living son and of course, his solitary grandchild.
“I know.” Kara’s voice was small and she wiped away a tear with her hand. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t believe it, too.”
“Kara,” he shook his head and set his palms to her shoulders, barely covered in the blue cap sleeves of her dress. “I didn’t know you when you were with Zak, only the person you became afterward. I know you now, and I would’ve been happy to welcome you into our family then.”
She suspected a ‘but’ was coming and she held her breath as she waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Whatever it is you have with Lee, or had if that really is the case, you’re both adults, and it’s no one else’s place to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. But-” His fingers touched the curve of her jawline. “I couldn’t imagine someone better for Lee than you. That’s just one old man’s opinion.” He smiled and it brought forward a smile from her, despite her red-rimmed eyes. “You look beautiful. Now go say hello before my son breaks his neck with how many times he’s looked around to see if you were here.”
Kara hugged him one-handedly, the other still cradling the gift she’d brought. “Thank you.” Even before her mother had died, she’d felt like an orphan for most of her life. Her time on Galactica had been different, and for once in her life she’d felt like someone else had truly been looking out for her. They’d never shared such ideas aloud, but Kara knew he considered her to be his daughter as much as she felt him to be the father figure she’d never really known.
With a final nod, they headed outside and parted ways. Kara looked for Lee, but couldn’t spot him through the throngs of parents and extended family members. She didn’t know a soul except those who went by the last name Adama and of course, Gianne, who waved, motioning her over.
“Kara, this is Henry. Henry, Kara.”
She extended her hand to greet the man with a shake. His face wasn’t familiar, but by his closeness to Gianne and the name she’d heard more than a few times, Kara knew he was the man Gianne had been seeing and disappeared on holiday with the few weeks prior.
“I never got to thank you for taking care of Joseph when he was sick.” Gianne's tone was genuine, in contrast to their first crossing of paths.
“He’s a great kid, I didn’t mind.” Awkward tension bubbled just beneath the surface, and she suddenly felt bare in the spotlight. Put her as acting CAG in a pilots’ brief or in a boxing ring, and Kara could command attention like no other. Put her in a dress around complete strangers at a child’s birthday party and things were entirely different.
“Lee told me something happened with Carolanne…”
She felt furious at once, the lack of control she had in sharing her private problems stirring within her. Her blood boiled and the last thing she wanted to do was to listen to Gianne lecture her on it, but when she felt the touch of the other woman’s cool hand to her forearm, she was grounded again. Suddenly able to focus without all the rest.
“I wanted to tell you that I know how she is, she’s hard to get along with. Lee and I planned not to get married, but she pushed the idea on us for so long. Said that it was only right that we be married if we were having a child and eventually we gave in for her sake. We realized pretty quick it wasn’t the right choice for us. You wouldn’t believesome of the things she said to both of us when we were splitting up.” Gianne pulled her hand back to herself as she continued to speak in the quiet tone of voice meant only for her and Kara and the mutual understanding both women now had. “Lee’s been a mess since everything happened. I know everyone thinks ex-wives aren’t supposed to encourage other women to see their ex-husbands, but if it had to be someone, I’d be happy it was you. I don’t know you that well, but you’ve proven to me that I can trust you with them.”
It was more than the two of them had ever talked before, and probably more important than anything else they’d previously shared in passing. Kara felt a kind of jealousy when it came to Gianne in lots of ways, for having had Lee, for having Joseph, and for having a life that seemed quite perfect from the outside. She’d never thought that Carolanne may not have approved of Gianne and the situation they had gotten themselves into five years ago. Kara was stunned by the confession. “Have you seen him?“ She nearly choked on her words, clearing her throat as she clarified what she meant. “Lee?”
“I think he’s getting the cake ready,” Henry gestured toward the picnic table set up in the clearing.
Kara bowed out from the conversation, apologizing as she squeezed her way past those that blocked her path. She could hear Joseph’s wild laughter, catching him playing amongst the friends he’d so often told her about on the weekends she visited.
Lee was bent over the sheet cake, heaps of icing decorating the edges while frosting balloons covered most of the rest, save for the area that wished Joseph a happy fifth birthday. He opened the pack of candles and stuck them along the top edge, placing the sixth candle in the very center. One for luck. Lee stood back up to his full height; sensing he was no longer alone, he glanced to his left, seeing her out of the corner of his eye. “Kara?”
“It’s a good-looking cake. What do I have to do to get a corner piece?”
Lee reached forward and lifted the knife from where it sat. “Know the guy who cuts the cake.”
She bumped her shoulder into his. He returned it back, smiling as he turned to watch her.
“I’m sorry,” Kara whispered.
“No, I’m the one who is.” He set the knife back down and brushed his hand through the ends of her hair. It had grown about an inch and a half or so since he’d kissed her months earlier, when the weather hadn’t been quite so hot. “Can’t believe you’re wearing a dress.”
Kara tossed her head back in laughter, hand lightly pushing at his arm in retaliation. “I can clean up sometimes, just don’t get used to it.”
“I wonder what your nuggets would say if they saw you like this…” He mused aloud, obviously teasing.
“Ha ha, Lee.” She heard the distant voice of Gianne calling the children, hands clapping to get their attention. It was time for cake, and in seconds they’d be swarmed by the tiny bodies that made up Joseph’s fellow preschool students. They had a minute left alone at best, and she intended not to let it go to waste. “Can we be okay?”
“We’re okay.” Lee leaned in and she met him halfway, their lips moist as they joined in a chaste kiss. There were children around, after all. Kara pulled back and the first thing she saw was Lee, the way he saw her as if she was the only other thing around him. Watching him watching her. It was a look she’d missed since her quick getaway.
Adults and children gathered about the table, and it was another moment before the birthday boy pushed his way through, his eyes alight when he found Kara. “You came!” Joseph said as he hugged her legs.
“Of course I did, Linus.” Kara opted to act as if nothing had happened over the past few weeks, like he hadn’t been aware of her extended absence. If there were questions to be answered, now wasn’t the time. “I couldn’t miss your birthday,” she said, and it no longer surprised her how genuinely she felt the words. She crouched down until they were at eye level, hugging him back just as tightly as he did to her. “I brought you a present you can open later.”
He nodded in understanding, his attention only leaving her when his father’s hand patted his head. “She came,” Joseph said to his father as quietly as he could manage, like it was some kind of secret between them.
“You were right, and you can brag about it after you blow out your candles.” His eyes met with Kara’s as she stood up, his cheeks warm in a reaction that wasn’t caused by the heat of the sun above. With Gianne having already busily lit each candle, he lifted Joseph and set him on the space of bench left empty for the birthday boy. As the large group began to sing happy birthday, Lee’s hand sought out Kara’s, content only when their fingers threaded together.
-
Lee’s house sang with the kind of silence that Kara had so rarely found there before. There was no child in it that night, no five-year-old to fill the walls with the echo of laughter and the sounds of imagination. It was an emptiness that wasn’t physical, since Joseph’s belongings still littered the living room and kitchen counters. Kara’s fingertips ran over the sharp edges of a popsicle-stick-framed drawing the child had made for his father. The scribbles of crayon were hardly identifiable, but if she squinted and cocked her head slightly, she was sure she could make out what were supposed to be a few people, all looking rather similar to the others with their oblong heads and stick-like appendages.
“What are you thinking about?” Lee said as he joined her.
“Huh?” Her eyes blinked rapidly as she forced herself out of theoretical thoughts and back to reality.
“You’re smiling.”
Being caught only made it worse, the muscles in her cheeks forcing her lips even wider in the kind of grin that no one, not even Kara Thrace, could fight off in the end. “Your kid won’t be going to art school any time soon.”
He laughed. “Probably something else he got from me.”
Kara’s hand dropped from the picture, one of many that covered the surface of the appliance.
“Can I get you…?” Lee asked, his hand on the handle of the fridge, looking to seek out whatever she could want, although it was more of an icebreaker than anything else.
“No.” Kara sighed loudly and stepped back. “Lee-” She felt like a machine, caught in a loop and unable to move on with what actually needed to be done, or in this case, said. “Can I talk to you?”
“I thought that’s what we were doing.” The corner of his mouth tugged upwards, hinting at the tone of his words.
“Lee.” She tried to be stern and reprimand him, but laughed despite herself. Leave it to him to not be serious the first moment she ever really wanted to be.
“Let’s go outside at least, too good of an evening to let it go to waste.”
Out on the back patio, cracked cement beneath their feet, Lee sat down on one of the pair of lounge chairs, moaning aloud as tired muscles were able to relax for the first time all day. Thirty-two and he already knew the aches and pains associated with age, or at least with wrangling fifteen four- and five-year-olds for the entire afternoon. He shut his eyes to savor it for an extra moment, but felt the material beneath him shift and stretch from added weight. Kara knelt along the edge; his hands raised, palms open and inviting, and pulled her to him. It took some maneuvering, less than elegant in the length of her dress, but she came to rest across his lap, leaned against his chest with her head comfortably resting into his neck and shoulder.
She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, steady and strong. It was like her body knew his instinctively, the familiar swell of his lungs complementary to her own breathing pattern and instilling the kind of deep-seated comfort she hadn’t ever had in her life before, except when it came to the man beneath her or his brother, long since departed. Her palm rubbed against his neck, thumb soothing over the light prickle of his jaw. His job and position demanded he be clean cut on a daily basis. It was Sundays that had become her favorite as a result, because he’d foregone the shaving portion of his daily ritual for her all weekend long. There was something about that scrape of roughness against her skin that she’d never be able to confuse with anyone else, a sense memory for Lee and Lee alone.
“What did you want to talk about?” Lee exhaled deeply and breathed in with the same amount of strength, inhaling the mix of Kara's soap and skin reserved only for moments of such closeness.
All of that determination she’d feigned in the kitchen had left her with the sun’s final rays splayed over their skin. All she could focus on was the way his thumb drew circles over her upper thigh, his hand cloaked beneath the fabric of her skirt. Saying a word that could possibly disrupt it seemed like the worst idea she’d ever had, but for just this once, Kara knew playing things close to the chest wasn’t the way things needed to be.
“I’m sorry I left-that I didn’t call or...”
Lee sensed these were words she was struggling on getting out at all, so he didn’t dare interrupt.
“…I didn’t come today for you or for me, to try to fix things with us. I got up this morning and just like every day the last few weeks, I knew that whatever we had was over.” Her fingers tugged gently at his collar, straightening out the fabric, smoothing it over and over between her fingers in an attempt to force a little wrinkle out. It was easier to talk to him like this, when her body had something else to focus on besides the need for earth beneath her feet as she put more distance between them and she needn’t endure his scrutinizing gaze as she chewed over her words in thought. “But I got there, Lee,” Kara said at barely more than a whisper. “And I didn’t want it to be over anymore. I know that tomorrow, part of me will kick myself for all of this. I’ll say I was an idiot and try to go, but I want you to know that I don’t want to. No matter what I say tomorrow or the next day, where I want to be is right here.”
He kissed into her hair, breathing her in. “So I won’t let you talk yourself out of it.”
“It’s never that easy.” Her hand stopped at her ministrations over his shirt, fingers gripping into the fabric on his shoulder, like if she squeezed hard enough she could make herself permanently a part of him, a piece she wouldn’t be able to tear away from. “I loved Zak,” Kara’s hand tensed a little more as she used it for leverage to pull herself in closer to him, shutting her eyes along the way. “I’ll never not love him. He was the first person in my life that made me realize someone could actually look at me and see nothing wrong, nothing that disappointed them, nothing that they wanted to change about me. I don’t even look at myself and think that, and then I met him, and everything just felt okay. And when he died, I had nothing else. It was worse than before because I knew what it was like to have that and then it was gone. When I lost him, I lost everything about myself too.”
Lee pulled her tighter in his arms, both for her comfort and for his.
“I only just started to figure out who I was and then I didn’t even want to be me anymore, I didn’t want to be her. Kara Thrace. Whoever that girl is, I couldn’t do it.” She stopped, sniffling quietly to herself. “I’ve spent years doing whatever I could to drown her out and it scares me because if I’m with you I have to get to know her again. You deserve someone complete. Someone whole.”
“Do you think I’m not in a million pieces every day?” Lee waited to hear if she’d respond, but as he expected, she kept quiet. “I get by and do my job, I take care of my son and pay my bills, but I’ve never, not ever felt like things made sense for me until the last few months. For the last ten years, the one thing I’ve wanted has been something I couldn’t have. Now that I’ve had you, the reality doesn’t even compare to the dream. All of this, it’s been better than I ever could have imagined, whether you’re a part or a whole, whether you’re happy as you are or want to be something more.”
Her eyes clenched tightly shut, Kara fought her hardest not to let him hear the audible cry she was desperate to let out, nor feel the tremor of her chest as emotion took hold. “What I said when I left, it wasn’t the whole truth. I loved him, Lee, but there’s room for you. I knew that a long time ago.”
Lee’s hand slipped from her thigh down to her knee, repeating the broad sweeps over her skin. The afternoon had been warm, but now there was a light chill in the air. If he was feeling it, he knew she had to be as well. “I don’t want to keep doing this back and forth forever. We’re okay for awhile and something from our past comes back to haunt us.”
She shook her head and lifted it, sitting up a little straighter to regard him for the first time since they’d begun talking. Her fingers occupied themselves in the hair behind his ear, stroking the short dark strands. “I know. And that’s why I want this to be permanent,” she spoke with newly found conviction.
“What are you saying?”
“Not what you’re thinking.” Her eyelashes fluttered rapidly at even the subtle hint to the M-word. “I don’t think I’ll ever want that. But this place, I want to come home on the weekends, Lee. To both of you.”
The backs of his fingers stroked against her cheek, not missing the way she leaned in to his touch. “Where’s all this coming from?”
Kara thought about the last few days, months, even years. All the things that had changed for her and for him while life in the Colonies continued on by, the leaves falling and suns setting like clockwork to indicate the time passed. He’d grown up and had a child, a marriage and a divorce, a new life on his own once again. For her, she’d worked and taught, seen a few planets and moons she’d never been to before, and more than anything, Kara had gotten to know the loneliness a life of relative solitude offered her. She had friends scattered across the Colonies, some with their own families and some without, people that made her smile and brought her soul alight just being in their presence. It was comforting, but she knew it was no longer enough. Kara had let her dwindling supply of anger keep her going through her days, and for the second time in her life, she knew that she could have something else as her fuel to get by. It was within her grasp.
“Maybe it’s like you said, months ago. I finally know what I want.”
And though around them Caprica had finally been plunged into darkness, the constellations above them burning bright, Lee, nor Kara, could find any reason to pull their eyes off each other.
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, Part 3
“Class dismissed, I’ll see you all tomorrow.” Kara piled up the papers in front of her as the students began filing out slowly, loud chatter filling the room as they finished for the day. She paid them no mind as she shoved her belongings into her bag until there was a sudden deafening silence over the room. When she looked up she saw them all in the middle of a rigid salute, elbows folded and arms crisp and straight. The source of such attention stepped through the crowd as the students parted and watched, voyeurs to whatever reason the unknown Major had for seeking out their instructor.
Kara snapped her own salute up, perhaps even more carefully than the nuggets. It was the first time she’d ever saluted him in her life and both of them knew she wasn’t actually doing it out of respect but out of a kind of defiance. Another wall between them.
Lee returned her gesture weakly and without heart. “Listen, Kara…” He started but turned back to see some of the students still lingering in the class, hoping to hear what they could about their teacher’s private life. “I believe the Captain said that you were dismissed,” he said, and this time they did obey. He didn’t dare open his mouth again until he heard the click of the door in the doorframe, signaling that they were alone. Kara doubletimed her packing, giving her clearance to treat him without the decorum that protocol said she must observe.
He’d given her a little over two weeks to cool off, hoping that she would reach out to fix what had happened between them. It wasn’t a surprise that she hadn’t, so when he finally mustered up enough courage, he’d come to see her himself. A phone call wouldn’t have ever been enough.
“Don’t even start, Lee. You and I both know it wouldn’t be the first time I hit a Major.” She wouldn’t allow herself to look at him, her attention everywhere else. Kara turned to the whiteboard behind her, picking up the eraser to remove evidence that she’d been there at all.
“I miss you.” He leaned against the edge of her desk and watched her. His arms crossed over the blue fabric of his uniform, finding its confines unbelievably tight all of a sudden. “I didn’t come here for me.” Lee saw her arm falter as it swiped over the board. “I mean, I did, but I knew you wouldn’t give me the time of day.” He withdrew a small folded card from his pocket, setting it on her bare desk. “You don’t have to come, but I know it would mean a lot to Joseph if you did. I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want, but I need you to know my mother won’t be there.” He was more than mortified for the things his mother had said to her. Carolanne had been one of the few parts of his life he’d never been able to control. Like Kara, he thrived on making sure he had as much control as he could, for not entirely different reasons than she had. He continued to talk.
“My mom… she’s got her problems. She may not have been drinking when she came over, but it’s started to bleed over into every part of her life the last few years.” He had his own family secrets, things they never talked about, and admitting some of it aloud, even to Kara, was taking its toll on him. “I’m sorry, and for what it’s worth, I don’t believe any of the things she said.”
“Just let it go. We had fun but I knew it wouldn’t ever really work. I let you convince me it would when I should’ve listened to myself.”
“I don’t agree.” He stood up, shifting his weight between his feet before tapping his knuckles on the card he’d left on the desk. “Like I said, it would mean a lot.”
She watched him step away and set the eraser down. “You could have sent it in the mail. Didn’t have to waste your afternoon coming out here.”
Lee had the door open as he turned around, hands slipping into his pockets. “Yeah, I could’ve, but I wanted to see you.”
When the door clicked shut again, Kara let herself pick up the card. It was fairly bare and the inside was handwritten in a flowery script she assumed belonged to Gianne. A date. A time. She looked back to the door where she’d seen him last and palmed the card into her chest. He’d driven the two hours or so just to see her for a few minutes; in a very unlike Lee moment, he hadn’t pushed. There was something about it that resonated in her. He’d made himself clear without going too far, respecting the boundaries she’d drawn again without even telling him about.
Kara wasn’t sure if she’d be at the party only a few days away, but she had an idea that maybe she wanted to be.
-
“Frak me,” Kara said as she tossed the paper into the passenger seat. She’d followed the written instructions and still managed to lose her way, proving that her sense of direction in the cockpit didn’t exactly translate well on the ground. She was running late, well beyond the bounds of any kind of acceptable tardiness, and she didn’t have anything or anyone to blame it on except herself. There hadn’t been traffic or an accident along the way, or a present to pick up since she’d actually done that a few weeks ago, before the whole mess with her and Carolanne Adama. There hadn’t been a party planned back then, but she knew Joseph’s fifth birthday approached and she wasn’t going to be caught off guard without a gift to bring a smile to his lips.
She’d stared at it every day since then, still in the bag under her desk in her quarters, although it had begun to stop representing the happiness it was to bring the boy and instead reflected the stirring of fear she began to feel when she thought of having to face Lee again. Kara thought about mailing it, boxing it up and sending it to Gianne’s or Lee’s with a note, or even just not giving it at all, but all the other options left her unsatisfied. No, she knew she’d have to bring it herself. Not for her, not for Lee, but for the little boy that was a bystander in the complicated life of Kara Thrace. Joseph’s grandmother had warned Kara to stay away from Lee, but maybe she had also meant to stay away from his son. She didn’t know Joseph that well, and maybe it was presumptuous of her to think so, but she imagined that her departure had left some small missing piece from his life, a piece that would still be there had she never forced her way in.
Kara stopped at the corner, her car creeping forward as she looked for any kind of street sign. The usual marker was missing but she caught a glimpse of a dense population of cars parked on the street, far more than anyone would expect for normal circumstances. She turned the wheel, following the new road, and a few multi-colored balloons waved in the breeze from a nearby mailbox. Kara parked behind the last car and turned the ignition off. She released the seatbelt, hands folding down the visor to view herself in the small mirror. Fingers wiped under her eyes then fluffed her hair, restoring a kind of life that she didn’t truly feel. The last thing she wanted to do was to show up to the party later than anything, looking out of place and a complete mess. Her resolve faltered the longer she stared at herself in the mirror so she forced it away, opening the car door as she exited quickly with the present under one arm.
She idly played with the wrapping paper around the box, pushing it into place like it would correct the shoddy job she’d done a few hours earlier. It had been years since she’d actually wrapped a present of any kind and the lack of crisp corners was a testament to it. In so many ways she was unlike her usual self as she slowly made her way down the block, self-conscious of the bow taped to the top of the present and the way the fabric of her short dress clung when a gust of wind caught it. She tugged at the hem, fighting not to turn back as she contemplated whether two inches or so above her knee was far too short for a child’s birthday party. What did adults even wear to something like this? The last birthday celebration she’d attended involved shots and getting so drunk she’d barely made it back to her quarters before passing out, not wondering if the mothers of the other children would judge her for not understanding the unsaid rules of the functions.
It took a few rings of the doorbell before anyone actually answered, and though she expected it to be Gianne, it wasn’t. It was perhaps the one person she did need to see-the Old Man.
“Starbuck,” he said with the kind of warmth she only felt around him.
“Sir,” she offered lamely, her hand drawn up in an instinctive salute, but he pulled her into his arms before her fingers even met her forehead.
“We didn’t think you would make it.”
She followed him inside as he led the way, though the house was far too empty and quiet for the number of cars she’d seen out front.
“Everyone’s in the backyard,” he answered her like he could read her mind. “I can’t believe how long it’s been. You should’ve come to see me when you got back to Caprica.”
“Just… been busy.” It was an attempt at an excuse she didn’t have. She had intended to visit him, but when she started to see Lee it became easier to avoid him rather than to have to explain whatever it was existed between her and his other son. “How’s retirement?”
“Awful!” He laughed boisterously in a way she was sure he never had done in all the time she knew him before. Certainly never as the Commander of a battlestar. “I don’t know what to do with myself half the time. I thought I’d enjoy it, have free time to go fishing at my father’s cabin, but do you realize how boring it is when you’re sitting out there alone all day?”
She didn’t have to force a smile as she listened to him speak. Kara hadn’t met him before Zak’s death, but part of her always wished she had been able to see father and son together. Zak had some of his mother in him, but whenever she looked at the man that used to be her Commander, she always saw the reflection of Zak in his features. Perhaps that had been another reason why she’d been so drawn to Adama after Zak’s death. Practically the only differences between them were the color of their eyes, the pock marks on the Old Man’s face, and the fact that Zak hadn’t worn glasses, though she suspected with age he would’ve needed them too. “I can’t get used to life back on the ground either.”
They stopped a few feet shy of the closed patio doors, the glass drowning out the sounds of children playing and adults talking. Adama looked to her, sensing her apprehension, and touched his hand gently to her arm. Kara looked up to him with wide eyes that didn’t hide a thing.
“Not sure if I belong here,” she confessed quietly.
“My grandson invited you, of course you do.”
“Commander…” That would be one thing she’d never be able to shake. He’d been her close friend and higher-ranking officer for years, she doubted that the need to treat him with that kind of respect would ever leave her.
He gave her the courtesy of turning his attention back towards outside as he spoke. “I know about you and Lee already, and about what happened with my ex-wife.”
In some ways she was thankful that she wouldn’t have to explain it to him. From a young age she’d been taught to swallow down treatment like that from others without complaint. She learned it from her mother first and only as she got older did she start to use her fists as a response. However, hitting Carolanne Adama wasn’t exactly an option for her. The one thing she knew was that you didn’t go ratting out a person for what they’d said or done and you didn’t show the kind of emotion the instigator always wanted to get out of you. With Adama’s ex-wife, she’d violated all those rules and she felt shame for having other people know she couldn’t take care of it herself or just learn to ignore it.
“The rest of us, we don’t agree with her. You know that, don’t you?” He finally looked back to her, blue eyes identical to those that belonged to his only living son and of course, his solitary grandchild.
“I know.” Kara’s voice was small and she wiped away a tear with her hand. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t believe it, too.”
“Kara,” he shook his head and set his palms to her shoulders, barely covered in the blue cap sleeves of her dress. “I didn’t know you when you were with Zak, only the person you became afterward. I know you now, and I would’ve been happy to welcome you into our family then.”
She suspected a ‘but’ was coming and she held her breath as she waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Whatever it is you have with Lee, or had if that really is the case, you’re both adults, and it’s no one else’s place to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. But-” His fingers touched the curve of her jawline. “I couldn’t imagine someone better for Lee than you. That’s just one old man’s opinion.” He smiled and it brought forward a smile from her, despite her red-rimmed eyes. “You look beautiful. Now go say hello before my son breaks his neck with how many times he’s looked around to see if you were here.”
Kara hugged him one-handedly, the other still cradling the gift she’d brought. “Thank you.” Even before her mother had died, she’d felt like an orphan for most of her life. Her time on Galactica had been different, and for once in her life she’d felt like someone else had truly been looking out for her. They’d never shared such ideas aloud, but Kara knew he considered her to be his daughter as much as she felt him to be the father figure she’d never really known.
With a final nod, they headed outside and parted ways. Kara looked for Lee, but couldn’t spot him through the throngs of parents and extended family members. She didn’t know a soul except those who went by the last name Adama and of course, Gianne, who waved, motioning her over.
“Kara, this is Henry. Henry, Kara.”
She extended her hand to greet the man with a shake. His face wasn’t familiar, but by his closeness to Gianne and the name she’d heard more than a few times, Kara knew he was the man Gianne had been seeing and disappeared on holiday with the few weeks prior.
“I never got to thank you for taking care of Joseph when he was sick.” Gianne's tone was genuine, in contrast to their first crossing of paths.
“He’s a great kid, I didn’t mind.” Awkward tension bubbled just beneath the surface, and she suddenly felt bare in the spotlight. Put her as acting CAG in a pilots’ brief or in a boxing ring, and Kara could command attention like no other. Put her in a dress around complete strangers at a child’s birthday party and things were entirely different.
“Lee told me something happened with Carolanne…”
She felt furious at once, the lack of control she had in sharing her private problems stirring within her. Her blood boiled and the last thing she wanted to do was to listen to Gianne lecture her on it, but when she felt the touch of the other woman’s cool hand to her forearm, she was grounded again. Suddenly able to focus without all the rest.
“I wanted to tell you that I know how she is, she’s hard to get along with. Lee and I planned not to get married, but she pushed the idea on us for so long. Said that it was only right that we be married if we were having a child and eventually we gave in for her sake. We realized pretty quick it wasn’t the right choice for us. You wouldn’t believesome of the things she said to both of us when we were splitting up.” Gianne pulled her hand back to herself as she continued to speak in the quiet tone of voice meant only for her and Kara and the mutual understanding both women now had. “Lee’s been a mess since everything happened. I know everyone thinks ex-wives aren’t supposed to encourage other women to see their ex-husbands, but if it had to be someone, I’d be happy it was you. I don’t know you that well, but you’ve proven to me that I can trust you with them.”
It was more than the two of them had ever talked before, and probably more important than anything else they’d previously shared in passing. Kara felt a kind of jealousy when it came to Gianne in lots of ways, for having had Lee, for having Joseph, and for having a life that seemed quite perfect from the outside. She’d never thought that Carolanne may not have approved of Gianne and the situation they had gotten themselves into five years ago. Kara was stunned by the confession. “Have you seen him?“ She nearly choked on her words, clearing her throat as she clarified what she meant. “Lee?”
“I think he’s getting the cake ready,” Henry gestured toward the picnic table set up in the clearing.
Kara bowed out from the conversation, apologizing as she squeezed her way past those that blocked her path. She could hear Joseph’s wild laughter, catching him playing amongst the friends he’d so often told her about on the weekends she visited.
Lee was bent over the sheet cake, heaps of icing decorating the edges while frosting balloons covered most of the rest, save for the area that wished Joseph a happy fifth birthday. He opened the pack of candles and stuck them along the top edge, placing the sixth candle in the very center. One for luck. Lee stood back up to his full height; sensing he was no longer alone, he glanced to his left, seeing her out of the corner of his eye. “Kara?”
“It’s a good-looking cake. What do I have to do to get a corner piece?”
Lee reached forward and lifted the knife from where it sat. “Know the guy who cuts the cake.”
She bumped her shoulder into his. He returned it back, smiling as he turned to watch her.
“I’m sorry,” Kara whispered.
“No, I’m the one who is.” He set the knife back down and brushed his hand through the ends of her hair. It had grown about an inch and a half or so since he’d kissed her months earlier, when the weather hadn’t been quite so hot. “Can’t believe you’re wearing a dress.”
Kara tossed her head back in laughter, hand lightly pushing at his arm in retaliation. “I can clean up sometimes, just don’t get used to it.”
“I wonder what your nuggets would say if they saw you like this…” He mused aloud, obviously teasing.
“Ha ha, Lee.” She heard the distant voice of Gianne calling the children, hands clapping to get their attention. It was time for cake, and in seconds they’d be swarmed by the tiny bodies that made up Joseph’s fellow preschool students. They had a minute left alone at best, and she intended not to let it go to waste. “Can we be okay?”
“We’re okay.” Lee leaned in and she met him halfway, their lips moist as they joined in a chaste kiss. There were children around, after all. Kara pulled back and the first thing she saw was Lee, the way he saw her as if she was the only other thing around him. Watching him watching her. It was a look she’d missed since her quick getaway.
Adults and children gathered about the table, and it was another moment before the birthday boy pushed his way through, his eyes alight when he found Kara. “You came!” Joseph said as he hugged her legs.
“Of course I did, Linus.” Kara opted to act as if nothing had happened over the past few weeks, like he hadn’t been aware of her extended absence. If there were questions to be answered, now wasn’t the time. “I couldn’t miss your birthday,” she said, and it no longer surprised her how genuinely she felt the words. She crouched down until they were at eye level, hugging him back just as tightly as he did to her. “I brought you a present you can open later.”
He nodded in understanding, his attention only leaving her when his father’s hand patted his head. “She came,” Joseph said to his father as quietly as he could manage, like it was some kind of secret between them.
“You were right, and you can brag about it after you blow out your candles.” His eyes met with Kara’s as she stood up, his cheeks warm in a reaction that wasn’t caused by the heat of the sun above. With Gianne having already busily lit each candle, he lifted Joseph and set him on the space of bench left empty for the birthday boy. As the large group began to sing happy birthday, Lee’s hand sought out Kara’s, content only when their fingers threaded together.
-
Lee’s house sang with the kind of silence that Kara had so rarely found there before. There was no child in it that night, no five-year-old to fill the walls with the echo of laughter and the sounds of imagination. It was an emptiness that wasn’t physical, since Joseph’s belongings still littered the living room and kitchen counters. Kara’s fingertips ran over the sharp edges of a popsicle-stick-framed drawing the child had made for his father. The scribbles of crayon were hardly identifiable, but if she squinted and cocked her head slightly, she was sure she could make out what were supposed to be a few people, all looking rather similar to the others with their oblong heads and stick-like appendages.
“What are you thinking about?” Lee said as he joined her.
“Huh?” Her eyes blinked rapidly as she forced herself out of theoretical thoughts and back to reality.
“You’re smiling.”
Being caught only made it worse, the muscles in her cheeks forcing her lips even wider in the kind of grin that no one, not even Kara Thrace, could fight off in the end. “Your kid won’t be going to art school any time soon.”
He laughed. “Probably something else he got from me.”
Kara’s hand dropped from the picture, one of many that covered the surface of the appliance.
“Can I get you…?” Lee asked, his hand on the handle of the fridge, looking to seek out whatever she could want, although it was more of an icebreaker than anything else.
“No.” Kara sighed loudly and stepped back. “Lee-” She felt like a machine, caught in a loop and unable to move on with what actually needed to be done, or in this case, said. “Can I talk to you?”
“I thought that’s what we were doing.” The corner of his mouth tugged upwards, hinting at the tone of his words.
“Lee.” She tried to be stern and reprimand him, but laughed despite herself. Leave it to him to not be serious the first moment she ever really wanted to be.
“Let’s go outside at least, too good of an evening to let it go to waste.”
Out on the back patio, cracked cement beneath their feet, Lee sat down on one of the pair of lounge chairs, moaning aloud as tired muscles were able to relax for the first time all day. Thirty-two and he already knew the aches and pains associated with age, or at least with wrangling fifteen four- and five-year-olds for the entire afternoon. He shut his eyes to savor it for an extra moment, but felt the material beneath him shift and stretch from added weight. Kara knelt along the edge; his hands raised, palms open and inviting, and pulled her to him. It took some maneuvering, less than elegant in the length of her dress, but she came to rest across his lap, leaned against his chest with her head comfortably resting into his neck and shoulder.
She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, steady and strong. It was like her body knew his instinctively, the familiar swell of his lungs complementary to her own breathing pattern and instilling the kind of deep-seated comfort she hadn’t ever had in her life before, except when it came to the man beneath her or his brother, long since departed. Her palm rubbed against his neck, thumb soothing over the light prickle of his jaw. His job and position demanded he be clean cut on a daily basis. It was Sundays that had become her favorite as a result, because he’d foregone the shaving portion of his daily ritual for her all weekend long. There was something about that scrape of roughness against her skin that she’d never be able to confuse with anyone else, a sense memory for Lee and Lee alone.
“What did you want to talk about?” Lee exhaled deeply and breathed in with the same amount of strength, inhaling the mix of Kara's soap and skin reserved only for moments of such closeness.
All of that determination she’d feigned in the kitchen had left her with the sun’s final rays splayed over their skin. All she could focus on was the way his thumb drew circles over her upper thigh, his hand cloaked beneath the fabric of her skirt. Saying a word that could possibly disrupt it seemed like the worst idea she’d ever had, but for just this once, Kara knew playing things close to the chest wasn’t the way things needed to be.
“I’m sorry I left-that I didn’t call or...”
Lee sensed these were words she was struggling on getting out at all, so he didn’t dare interrupt.
“…I didn’t come today for you or for me, to try to fix things with us. I got up this morning and just like every day the last few weeks, I knew that whatever we had was over.” Her fingers tugged gently at his collar, straightening out the fabric, smoothing it over and over between her fingers in an attempt to force a little wrinkle out. It was easier to talk to him like this, when her body had something else to focus on besides the need for earth beneath her feet as she put more distance between them and she needn’t endure his scrutinizing gaze as she chewed over her words in thought. “But I got there, Lee,” Kara said at barely more than a whisper. “And I didn’t want it to be over anymore. I know that tomorrow, part of me will kick myself for all of this. I’ll say I was an idiot and try to go, but I want you to know that I don’t want to. No matter what I say tomorrow or the next day, where I want to be is right here.”
He kissed into her hair, breathing her in. “So I won’t let you talk yourself out of it.”
“It’s never that easy.” Her hand stopped at her ministrations over his shirt, fingers gripping into the fabric on his shoulder, like if she squeezed hard enough she could make herself permanently a part of him, a piece she wouldn’t be able to tear away from. “I loved Zak,” Kara’s hand tensed a little more as she used it for leverage to pull herself in closer to him, shutting her eyes along the way. “I’ll never not love him. He was the first person in my life that made me realize someone could actually look at me and see nothing wrong, nothing that disappointed them, nothing that they wanted to change about me. I don’t even look at myself and think that, and then I met him, and everything just felt okay. And when he died, I had nothing else. It was worse than before because I knew what it was like to have that and then it was gone. When I lost him, I lost everything about myself too.”
Lee pulled her tighter in his arms, both for her comfort and for his.
“I only just started to figure out who I was and then I didn’t even want to be me anymore, I didn’t want to be her. Kara Thrace. Whoever that girl is, I couldn’t do it.” She stopped, sniffling quietly to herself. “I’ve spent years doing whatever I could to drown her out and it scares me because if I’m with you I have to get to know her again. You deserve someone complete. Someone whole.”
“Do you think I’m not in a million pieces every day?” Lee waited to hear if she’d respond, but as he expected, she kept quiet. “I get by and do my job, I take care of my son and pay my bills, but I’ve never, not ever felt like things made sense for me until the last few months. For the last ten years, the one thing I’ve wanted has been something I couldn’t have. Now that I’ve had you, the reality doesn’t even compare to the dream. All of this, it’s been better than I ever could have imagined, whether you’re a part or a whole, whether you’re happy as you are or want to be something more.”
Her eyes clenched tightly shut, Kara fought her hardest not to let him hear the audible cry she was desperate to let out, nor feel the tremor of her chest as emotion took hold. “What I said when I left, it wasn’t the whole truth. I loved him, Lee, but there’s room for you. I knew that a long time ago.”
Lee’s hand slipped from her thigh down to her knee, repeating the broad sweeps over her skin. The afternoon had been warm, but now there was a light chill in the air. If he was feeling it, he knew she had to be as well. “I don’t want to keep doing this back and forth forever. We’re okay for awhile and something from our past comes back to haunt us.”
She shook her head and lifted it, sitting up a little straighter to regard him for the first time since they’d begun talking. Her fingers occupied themselves in the hair behind his ear, stroking the short dark strands. “I know. And that’s why I want this to be permanent,” she spoke with newly found conviction.
“What are you saying?”
“Not what you’re thinking.” Her eyelashes fluttered rapidly at even the subtle hint to the M-word. “I don’t think I’ll ever want that. But this place, I want to come home on the weekends, Lee. To both of you.”
The backs of his fingers stroked against her cheek, not missing the way she leaned in to his touch. “Where’s all this coming from?”
Kara thought about the last few days, months, even years. All the things that had changed for her and for him while life in the Colonies continued on by, the leaves falling and suns setting like clockwork to indicate the time passed. He’d grown up and had a child, a marriage and a divorce, a new life on his own once again. For her, she’d worked and taught, seen a few planets and moons she’d never been to before, and more than anything, Kara had gotten to know the loneliness a life of relative solitude offered her. She had friends scattered across the Colonies, some with their own families and some without, people that made her smile and brought her soul alight just being in their presence. It was comforting, but she knew it was no longer enough. Kara had let her dwindling supply of anger keep her going through her days, and for the second time in her life, she knew that she could have something else as her fuel to get by. It was within her grasp.
“Maybe it’s like you said, months ago. I finally know what I want.”
And though around them Caprica had finally been plunged into darkness, the constellations above them burning bright, Lee, nor Kara, could find any reason to pull their eyes off each other.