On Our Way: An ode to Kara Thrace and Zak Adama. (Part 2/2)
title: On Our Way (Part 2/2)
author:
apodixis
spoilers: All seasons
pairings: kara/zak, brief hints at kara/lee
overall fic rating: NC-17
total word count: 17,700
notes: Not sure if many people are going to be interested in this since I know almost everyone I have added is a die hard Kara/Lee shipper, but here it is anyway. We only got to know Zak Adama through a few flashbacks and a couple conversations in the series. Somewhere along the way I started to love him more than was probably intended and decided to write a piece of the history he shares with Kara. I've tried to incorporate nearly every concrete detail we know about his life, but I've had to make some guesses/take some creative liberties on some points to make sense of it all.
summary: An ode to Kara Thrace and Zak Adama. How they met, who they were, and how they fell in love, told through a series of glimpses into their lives.
other sections: Part 1
“When I graduate,” Zak starts, his arm around her, Kara’s head on his shoulder as he holds her close, “we wont have to hide anymore.” He’s been dreaming about that day, although there’s always been the worry that maybe this only works because it’s a secret. Everything about that thought changed tonight, though, both of their bloodstreams swimming with their confessions of how deep their affections run.
“You’ll go away.” Kara strokes the hand of his arm around her, fingers tracing over the lengths of his own and over the silver ring around his smallest finger. “And I’ll be here.” There’s sadness in her voice at the idea. Never before has she thought aloud about what it’ll really mean in a few months when they’re torn apart.
“I’ll come home when I can. To you.” By now, Kara’s heard the story of his family, of his parent’s less than happy marriage. He doesn’t know what the future holds for them, but he promises himself he won’t repeat the mistakes he’s seen in his mother and father. Zak wants to make his father proud, wants to make Lee proud, and he will. With Kara’s help, he’ll finally be a Viper pilot, but after that, he’ll be hers. Flying will be part of his life, not his whole life. “You won’t be stuck here forever, either. They’ll give you another chance on a battlestar.”
With him, she doesn’t feel the need to buck the rules. Maybe once and for all, she can fall in line just enough to put her life back together and get back up to the stars. His reassurance is suddenly all she needs.
“Besides, it was good you frakked up. Never would have met me.” There’s amusement in his voice.
She tilts her head up to him, smile across her face. “It was worth it.”
His fingers dance across her skin to her breast and there’s nothing sexual about his touch. It’s comforting in a way she never knew existed. Kara turns her head into him a little further, kisses the side of his chest, wherever she can reach.
“My brother’s going to be around in a few weeks, I was thinking that maybe you should meet him.”
“The infamous hotshot Viper pilot, Lee Adama?” Kara teases the man in his absence.
“Yeah, that jerk.” He doesn’t mean anything by it and Kara knows. If anything’s true about Zak, it’s how much he worships the ground his older brother walks on.
“You sure?”
“We can put it off if you want. I know it’s a big step, but if you’re worried he’d tell someone…”
“No.” Kara shifts until she’s on her side and can look to him easier. Her arm stretches over his chest, and her fingers trace small shapes across his skin. “I don’t think that. I’m not good with families, Zak. I was an only child, my Dad left when I was a kid. Mama-” Kara stops, closes her eyes tight to take a breath, only opening them when she’s got the strength to go on. It’s the most she’s ever talked about her family to him or anyone. “She died a few years ago. I’ve been on my own most of my life.”
“Not anymore.” Zak palms her cheek, a reminder of how things have changed.
“Yeah,” she repeats, “not anymore.”
-
The stir fry’s burning on the stove when the doorbell rings.
She heads to the stairs, jogging up. “Coming!” Kara calls and then she’s at the door, pulling it open to reveal the man behind it. There’s a smile on her lips before she can help it, and it’s not just because she’s been eagerly waiting for this moment. Lee’s handsome, in a way that’s so unlike his brother. She’s seen a photo or two of him, but the differences were never so apparent as they are now. Where Zak’s soft, Lee’s is full of sharp angles, a face no man or woman could deny. Zak’s skin is darker, caramel in color, and Lee’s is an entirely different hue. The most striking of all his features is the eyes, bright blue in a color that barely seems real, especially when compared to how dark Zak’s are. Kara’s not sure what she expected, but it isn’t this.
“You must be,” they both repeat at the same time, and they smile a little brighter. Her giggle wins out, feeling like a fool. “Sorry, I’m Kara. Come on in.” It’s only then that she realizes the flowers in his hands, a gift that makes her feel far too much like an adult for her tastes, but makes her insides warm anyway. “You didn’t have to do that. I’ll take those and put them in some water.”
They make their way down the stairs and Kara’s in an overwhelmed haze, her head bubbling with all the little things left to do before they sit down to eat. There’s food to stir, places to set, still a small mess to clean up. While she’s fluttering about in her own world for the briefest of time, Zak finally makes his appearance from the bedroom, greeting his brother. It makes her smile, a pang of jealousy washing through her at the camaraderie between them. The way Zak looks, though, his arm around his brother and Lee’s around him, it’s a kind of happiness so unlike to what he shares with her. It’s just different.
Over dinner, they get to know each other, the three of them emptying glass after glass of wine, the small stash in the liquor cabinet dwindling down as the hours go. There’s something about Lee, Kara thinks, even as he vehemently debates the merits of voting and the system. He’s just like a politician, except maybe not yet so jaded and worked over by the process he claims to love.
“Honey,” Kara tilts her head back towards Zak, “I think I’m starting to like your brother.”
Afterward, they talk Vipers, trading their own little brags about the tricks and stunts they’ve pulled in the past. It’s not a conversation for Zak, so it’s good he happens to be a kind of lightweight when it comes to holding his liquor, and ends up passing out across Kara’s couch.
On their own and three sheets to the wind, Kara tells Lee how she’s not afraid of dying, but afraid of being forgotten. It’s a whole lot more than she’s ever admitted to Zak in the months they’ve been together, and even intoxicated, Kara has no idea why she’s telling Lee. Just that she is, just that it feels right, just that it feels like he needs to know.
She’s vibrant and bold, a force to be reckoned with. Lee’s never seen her fly, but he wants to, even if, like he fears, she is far better than he’ll ever be. Kara’s like a storm, swirling round and picking up things in her wake, and all he knows is that he wants to be part of it. She’s alive in ways he’s never known before, never even felt a hint of until he’d seen her through that doorway of her apartment, until they huddled together sharing secrets, fears, and shots. Already he’s certain he’d give up every other moment of his life if he could have one wish: for her to not belong to his brother.
Lee tries to shove away the attraction, beautiful in a way that is more than skin deep. He pushes away the draw he feels to her… and then she’s daring him from her own drunken stupor, to take her, right there on that table. “Double dog dare?” He laughs as he repeats her words. Nothing makes sense, but he lets instinct guide him, crawling over her as she backs up along the table, sprawled out like a Gods damned feast.
Like him, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. It’s like that night in the bar all over again, half of her saying no while the other half is screaming: Yes, Gods yes. Except this time it isn’t Zak’s hand on her knee, his smile across from her. It’s his brother between her thighs and Kara can’t think about how only hours earlier, Zak had been there, pounding himself inside of her while she cried out for him. There’s just something there with Lee, something she can’t explain.
Their lips touch and it’s like fire, her body a mix of overwhelming heat and chills, skin breaking out in goosebumps. He tastes like wine and ambrosia, a hint of saltiness leftover from the dinner she’d made and he’d eaten gratefully. Nothing’s going to stop her, she wants to feel him inside of her, feel how deep he can go, how his mouth feels pulling at her breast, his hands all over her skin.
Her arm moves back to steady herself a little more, comes in contact with one of their glasses, and even before it hits the floor, Kara can feel the world drop out from under them.
“Something’s broken,” Zak calls out, half asleep, from across the room after the glass shatters on the floor. He slumps back down, returns to his slumber.
Lee pulls away instantly and so does she, and that heat that was there before is replaced by guilt and shame. They both feel suddenly sober, a stark contrast to only a moment earlier. She gets his coat for him as she wobbles on unsteady legs, her hand extended between them.
“It was nice to meet you, Lee Adama.”
“Likewise, Kara Thrace.”
They stare across at one another, neither wanting to let the other go, but Zak’s sleeping a few feet away. There’s no way for it to work or ever make sense, not that either of them even know what the hell it is they feel between them. It’s something, though. Something that they both finally and reluctantly let go of.
She listens for the sound of the apartment door shutting after he slowly climbs the stairs, and Kara can’t stay still. In seconds, she’s in her bedroom, the door closed behind her. Kara’s gasping, sitting on her knees, her hands into her floor as she leans forward, trying to make sense.
“What the frak is wrong with me?” She cries without concern for the sounds she makes, just letting herself be. There’s something about that man she just let leave, and nothing she does can make her understand it. There’s a pull, like they’ve met before, like in another life they shared a soul and someone cruelly split them in two. It’s far different than what she feels for Zak. For this, there’s no words.
Kara’s like that for a long time, even after her tears have dried and her eyes have lost focus on the floor. She’s never been sure of who she is outside of a cockpit, but now she’s even less sure than before. What did she almost do to Zak, to the man who loves her? How betrayed would he feel if he ever knew what she’d practically begged for while he slept a couple of feet away? She’s felt shame of various levels all throughout her life, but this takes the cake. Tops the list. Finally, Kara has something good in her life, and like everything else, she ruins it just the same.
Zak comes stumbling in hours later and finds Kara asleep on the bedroom floor. He laughs, still drunk, and rather than try to pull her up into bed with him, he tugs the blanket off her bed, curls himself around her, and falls asleep until morning.
-
Sunrise comes and Kara groans, rolling over into the hard wall of Zak’s chest. She lets herself enjoy it for the moment until the night comes back to her in clips. On her lips and tongue, Kara swears she can still taste Lee. So she does the only thing she knows how to do, presses her mouth to Zak’s neck, works her hand inside his jeans until he’s waking with a moan despite his hangover. Kara straddles his legs.
“Want you to frak me,” she says plainly, desperate to bury the thoughts of his brother with new memories of him. Kara continues to stroke, finally popping the button of his pants for an easier reach.
“My head feels like it’s going to explode.”
“Don’t care, Zak.”
“Should we get off the floor first?”
Kara shakes her head, trying not to lose her focus as she attempts to get him hard. If he’s not inside of her soon, she’s going to lose it. Zak joins in the festivities with enough incentive, helping her to pull his underwear and jeans down low enough on his hips to get himself free. Any more movement than that, he doesn’t have the energy for. Kara takes her own pants and briefs off, and without preamble, impales herself on him and his newfound hardness. It’s slow and lazy and Kara doesn’t get release, but for now, it’s enough. It has to be.
-
In Lee’s absence, life returns to normal. Kara makes a vow with herself not to think of Zak’s brother as anything more than a stranger and a Viper jock. The events of that night never happened as far as she’s concerned. If she tells it to herself enough times, she’s sure she’ll start to believe it as fact rather than fiction. Is one brief moment in time enough to ruin what she’s been building for months with Zak? It would’ve been a frak, a quick frak, that’s all. She knows it, believes it, and reminds herself of all the reasons why she’s in love with the person she sees day in and day out.
Zak insists Lee come to visit a few more times, and Kara’s surprised by how little there is between her and his brother. Lee, it seems, is following her own rules as well, and pretending their incident on the table never occurred. For awhile, they’re a trio, a group of friends that go to the bar and play pyramid in one of the parks on the other side of Delphi. There’s a movie, even a weekend trip to their grandfather’s house out by the lake, and somewhere along the way it all stops being so difficult. As long as Zak’s near, her mind never wanders, so Kara never lets him stray far from her.
-
They return to her apartment from a late night on campus, a date with the sims in the final weeks before his flight test, and as usual, Zak stays at her place. He’ll catch hell for it eventually, for not being around one very early morning when there’s a drill or something similar, but until then, he’ll continue to take that risk. Kara showers first and when Zak finishes his, he catches her propped up in bed, drowning herself in a small notebook he’s seen her with from time to time.
“What’re you writing?”
“Mm, nothing,” she says sleepily, closing the book around her pen and setting it to the side. Out of sight. Out of mind.
“Can’t get away with it that easy.” Zak snatches it up in his grasp and she only pretends to put up a fight in trying to grab it away from him. He’s determined, though, and Kara relents quickly, though she’s looking sheepish when he glances back to her. “Can I?”
She nods in response, and with her permission, Zak opens to the page where the pen is wedged, reading over the freshly inked words. “Methodically smoking my cigarette. Every breath I breathe out the day. With every delicious sip I drink away the night. Stroking my hair to the beat of his heart. Watching a boy turn into a man.” At first, he isn’t sure what he’s seeing, brows furrowing as he takes them in again, this time silently in his own head. When he looks to her, his eyes are watered. “This is about me?”
Kara’s afraid of the expression he wears, but soon she realizes it’s not sadness, not in the least. “It’s always about you,” she says quietly, and what happened with his brother has become the furthest thing from her mind. Between that memory and her, she’s erected a wall, and she won’t let it hurt her or Zak anymore. This is the man she loves.
Zak leans into her, the book tossed aside, and captures her lips with his own. It’s hot and heavy, and just as his hand’s about to press at her breast, he stops, pulling away as he shakes his head.
“Zak?”
“What am I going to do if I fail basic flight?” Her written words have only been a temporary suspension from the true troubles that plague his own mind. He’s at the bottom of the class, he knows it, even with how much work they’ve put in together. In some ways, he thinks it might be freeing to fail out, to finally be without the obligation and have an excuse to pursue life elsewhere. But that sting of failure, of disappointment in his father’s and brother’s eyes, Zak knows it’s worth a life lived by someone else’s rules than to have to actually feel those gazes upon him.
“You won’t.” Kara inclines herself into him instead, stroking his cheek. She’s had her own similar worries as well, but has pushed them aside in the hope that the future will bring what he needs. “You’re a good pilot, Zak, you just need to get a feel for it.” Kara knows it isn’t something one can earn over time, it’s something you have or you don’t. But if anyone can find it for him, if anyone in the history of the universe can bring it out in someone else, she knows it’s her. “Maybe I’m being too much of a distraction.”
“I’d have flunked out months ago if it wasn’t for you.”
“Everything you have, you’ve earned it.” She isn’t just speaking about flying.
Zak pulls at her arms until they’re chest to chest, mouth open as he feels her tongue trace across his lower lip then dip into him. He can’t remember what life was like before her and doesn’t want to try. In a few weeks, he’ll be finished, whether he passes his flight test or not. Either way, whatever the damage and repercussions, he’ll have her. Once and for all they won’t be forced to keep their relationship to themselves. There will be nothing to make this any less than what it is.
He watches as she sits up and pulls her shirt off, bare breasted as she lets the item of clothing fall where it may. The way she looks at him, has looked at him ever since that first night, makes him pause. Zak knows how lucky he is. He’s always known, even growing up in a house of privilege thanks mostly to his mother’s family and the money she comes from. He’s not wanted for much in his life except his father, though Lee filled that role for him as best as his older brother could. With Kara though, he’s found that final piece of his life, and there isn’t a chance in hell he’s about to let it go.
Kara’s smiling coquettishly, just waiting for him to be tempted to make the first move, something he’s proven in the past he can’t ever resist when she’s taken most of her clothes off. There’s a chill in the air and it bathes her skin, but she doesn’t care or think about it because just the touch of his hand to her wrist makes her feel warm. “What?” She asks, drawn in.
“Will you marry me?”
Her first instinct is to laugh, and she does, because to her there’s no way he could be serious. What they have, it’s perfect, and for once in her life Kara knows what it’s like to be happy. Genuinely happy. Never before has she thought she’d be the marrying type, the word hardly even existing on her radar. The only examples of marriage she’s ever seen up close haven’t been the happiest, and Kara knows that even his own parents’ marriage suffered a similar fate. Still, there’s a feeling in her gut she can’t quite place when she hears the word in his own voice in her head, repeating it over and over. Marry.
“I’m serious,” Zak sits up and now all parts of their skin are in contact, their legs, their arms. “I want to marry you.”
He touches her face, palm over her cheek and thumb under her eye, and Kara doesn’t understand his action until she realizes her skin’s wet with tears she didn’t even know she’d shed.
“Why would you want to marry me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Her tears are reflected in his brown eyes and he makes no move to brush them away, unable to take his attention from Kara. “I know I’m young-we’re young-but I already know. I know I’m going to be with you for the rest of my life, so why do I have to wait?”
“You’re crazy,” she whispers. It’s all the volume she can get out.
“Yeah, but so are you. It works.”
Kara laughs again, this time it’s smaller and not a knee jerk reaction to the unknown. All she does is nod into his hand still at her cheek. “Okay.” If she thinks about it, she’ll never agree to it in the end, but this is one part of her life she knows she can’t talk herself out of. She just has to feel it. “I’ll marry you, Zak. Okay.”
He kisses her mouth. Her jaw. Her neck. The patch of skin behind her ear. Each closed eyelid. Even her hair, just listening to her laughter tinged with her tears. “You’ll be my wife,” he says, elated, and pulls back just enough to take a look at her face. “I’ll be your husband.”
Kara nods along to each of his statements. She feels detached from herself, floating outside her body as she listens to him prattle on about the future he’s been planning without her. She doesn’t even care, suddenly she wants it all.
Zak pushes her back until she’s lying across their bundle of blankets and sheets and like so many times before, he’s above her looking down. “I can ask for leave from wherever I get posted while you’re off between classes.” He kisses the underside of one of her breasts. “We’ll get married down by the river outside Caprica City where my grandfather used to take Lee and I fishing. Go on holiday for as long as we can get away. Somewhere warm?” Zak asks and kisses her navel, eyes on her.
He’s like a child, the excitement pouring off of him and it’s infectious. “Canceron. Take me to the beaches there.” Just like that, she’s participating in the dream too.
“Canceron.” Zak nods in affirmation and the decision’s made. Whether they’re married in a month or a year, Canceron is where they’ll go. “We can get our own place, Kara. A little bigger. A house maybe.” How they’d afford it, he doesn’t know. Pilot salaries don’t exactly pay a ton, especially low ranking. But this is the dream, and money doesn’t matter right now.
“A house?” She strokes over his hair.
“Mmhmm.” Zak dips his head down and kisses low on her belly, just above the waistband of her underwear. “We’ll have children, too.” They’ve never talked about it, not in the slightest except the brief moment in time a few months earlier when she’d mentioned having to get her birth control shot again.
“You want them?” There’s a thread of worry in her voice, but she keeps it back. For the whole of her sexually active life, her priority has been avoiding that outcome altogether. It’s an odd thought to consider anything else, all her issues with her mother and her father aside. For now, the hurt that’s been brought on her in the past doesn’t matter. Being with him is like starting over.
“Only if you do.”
She doesn’t want the idea to die out just yet so she smiles and pushes him on. “Girls? Boys?”
“I don’t care. A million of them. I want them to look like you, want to hold them in my arms, fall asleep night after night with my hand on your stomach, fight with you about names.” He’s known from a young age that he wants to be a father, but it surprises him how easy all the details come out without no prior conscious thought. “I won’t miss their lives like my father did.” Zak moves back over her and it’s almost like he’s drunk, intoxicated on the decision they’ve made.
“No, you won’t.”
“Frak,” he says all of a sudden, and sits up, straddling her hips on his knees. “I’ll get you a real ring, Kara, but for now…” Zak pulls at the ring on his pinky, the plain silver band he’s worn with him for most of his life.
“I don’t need another,” she protests.
“You deserve it.” He takes her left hand and slides the loop of metal onto her ring finger, but it’s far too loose and with a large gap of space remaining. “Frak that,” he laughs, embarrassed for how little he’s prepared.
Kara finishes the process for him and moves it over to her thumb where it fits snug. She won’t lose it if it’s there. Her hand forms into a fist and her other one curls around it, holding it to her chest like it’s something precious and to be protected.
Zak takes her in, sprawled across the bed, her short hair in disarray around her. This is the woman he’s going to spend the rest of his life with. “Kara Adama.”
All she can do is smile. “Zak and Kara Adama.”
-
On Monday, she finally gives him a call sign. She calls him River in honor of part of the dream he’s painted for them. It’s a name, that unlike most others, he doesn’t mind to bear.
-
The rest of his classmates are celebrating, rushing out the door to head to the nearest bar downtown. It’s the middle of the day, but it’s tradition, their superior officers turning the other way, allowing the moment of happiness where they can get it. Graduation is around the corner for those who have passed, and soon enough they’ll all be learning of their assignments, however far away from home it may put them.
Zak’s on the phone as soon as it’s free, dialing up the number of where he knows he can reach his mother. She’s happy, although Zak detects that hint of something else in her voice. Another man in her life she’s lost to the fleet. His father’s the next one to call, and he waves off his friends as they yell and beg with him to get going, but in the end he just blindly promises to meet them there when he finishes. There isn’t a beer in the world good enough to make him miss out on the call he’s making. He’s not surprised that he can’t connect to his father in the end; the call to his quarters on Galactica goes unanswered. He tries for the ship in general, but he’s informed his father’s in the middle of a shift in the CIC on the battlestar and can’t be interrupted by private calls. It’s a familiar disappointment.
He’s talking with Lee when there’s a knock at the door, and his eyes lift up to catch the sight of the one person he didn’t expect. Kara. “Listen, Lee, I’ve got to go. You know how it is-got to meet some friends. I promise not to get picked up for a drunk and disorderly.” Zak’s focus is on the woman that’s been his fiancee for all of a few weeks as she approaches. Everything he has right now, he owes to her. “Thanks, it means a lot,” he continues, “Maybe I’ll start breaking your records now. Love you. See you at graduation.”
Zak sets the phone on the receiver and without hesitation, throws his arms around Kara, lifting her feet off the ground as he hugs her tight. She squeals in his arms, laughing, her head tossed back as she shares in his jubilation. “We did it,” he finally says, lowering her to the ground as he kisses her hard. When he pulls back, she’s smiling so bright it’s like all the suns of the Twelve Colonies combined into one. It’s a sight she reserves for him. This is why he loves her.
“You did it,” Kara corrects him and there’s a softness to her eyes that Zak immediately recognizes: pride. “How’s it feel, River?”
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispers against her ear, kissing the lobe.
“You’ve got to celebrate.”
His hand seeks out hers, fingers tangled together as his thumb soothes over her own and the metal band that now sits there, the same one that he used to wear. In a show of bravery, she’s not removed it since she put it on. Though there’s little chance someone will notice that the ring he wore is gone and has since reappeared on her hand, it still means the world to him to see it. “I’m celebrating with you first. I can be late.”
Kara glances to the door and the empty bunk beds around them. Before she can look back, he’s already undressing her.
They make love in the time that follows. Afterward, still breathing heavy, Zak drags his finger along the edge of her ear, memorizing her exactly as she is. He needs to commit this, all of this, to memory. Kara pushes him onto his back and supports her weight on her arm as she participates in his process too, her fingerprint brushing against his lower lip before she kisses between his brows in the gentlest move of the afternoon.
“I want you to tell me the truth about something,” Zak says as he watches her cross from his bed towards his open locker. This is the very first time she’s seen where he sleeps and spends his time when he’s not with her.
She knows what he’s asking before he even finishes. Kara drinks from his bottle of water, turning away from the picture hanging in his locker of her and him and his brother. “You passed,” her wrist rubs away the extra drops of water from her mouth, shoulders shrugging as she tries to play it cool. “By the skin of your teeth, but you passed.”
“I don’t want any special treatment. Not from my father, certainly not from you.” As he thinks back to the day before, specifically the minutes of his final qualifying test, Zak knows he shouldn’t have come out with a passing mark. At least on his end, he’s counted the mistakes he felt in his own flying. He can do the math, add them up. There were one too many maneuvers gone wrong for him to ever have earned his wings on his own. If she tells him otherwise, though, he’ll believe it. Chalk it up to a head too cloudy with nerves to remember it correctly and trust her judgement.
Kara doesn’t even hesitate as she returns to his bed, kneeling beside him. Thank the Lords that he’s got the bottom bunk. “Zak, I’m a flight instructor. I’m not going to send you to Vipers if I don’t think you’ve got the chops, okay?” This happiness he’s wearing, she knows he’s earned it and that she’s given it to him. She’s already replayed back his flight test in her head and on video a thousand times the prior night when making her final grades. It was close, she knows. On the cusp. How could she break his heart for something so close? How could she spend her life with him, knowing she was the one to take this away? Before she’d fallen asleep alone the night before, she’d made peace with her choice. She would pass him, give him what he deserved. Maybe this is the one thing in her life she's ever done right.
Zak nods, and like her, he’s found his own peace with it. “Okay.”
With both of their consciences cleared, Zak makes love to her again and fills his head with the sounds of her crying out around him.
-
While she gets dressed afterward, Zak writes a letter to his father and gives it to her to take a look at. In it, she reads, he invites his father to his graduation, confesses the nature of their relationship, and mentions that he and her have a surprise for him. He’ll tell him about it when he sees him next.
Zak bends down to where she sits, kisses her cheek as she folds up the letter for him. “He’ll love you.”
-
Bill Adama misses his son’s graduation in the end. It breaks Zak’s heart that his father can’t find the time to see him get his wings. It isn’t just that burn, though, it’s the sting left by the fact that his father isn’t there to meet the woman to be his wife either. He settles for introducing her to his mother and an evening of drinks between him, Kara, and Lee. They’ll celebrate without the Commander. His absence doesn’t ache so much with her and his brother beside him.
-
Zak gets his assignment to serve aboard the Battlestar Solaria the week after he receives his wings and Lieutenant Junior Grade pins. It’s also the same day he and Kara go out together locally for the first time, unconcerned with being caught for their relationship. He’s not her student now, and she’s sure they’ve covered their tracks enough so there’s no proof that their relationship started long before his graduation. They celebrate together and Kara tells him about her days on the Triton and just what she did to get kicked off. Zak promises not to follow in her footsteps.
They have a few weeks before he has to leave and she has to start training her new class of nuggets, so they let themselves just get lost in one another as long as they can. If they’re going to be spending months apart, they have to make up for the time missed now. For awhile they consider eloping, making their marriage permanent before he goes away, but even they don’t tempt the Gods. Being caught at dinner together shortly after graduation is one thing, but to laugh in the faces of their superior officers with a marriage certificate is another thing entirely.
They’ll settle for the ring on her finger and the promise that when he returns home, they’ll do it then. Nothing big, she makes him promise. Something small with a priestess to bless their union. It isn’t something Zak or his family really believes in, but he knows how much it means to her, and he would give her anything she asked for, whether it was within his means or not. If she wants a blessing from the Lords of Kobol for their marriage, she’ll get it.
When the day comes for him to leave, Kara can’t make herself begin to consider the reality of it. She lays in bed watching him pack-he’s long since moved in all his belongings and even started chipping in on the rent-unable to help him along. If she does, she rationalizes, it’s like she’s getting rid of him, and the last thing she wants him to do is go.
“We can go play tackle pyramid. Break your leg, get you some time off.”
Zak does his best to neatly fold both sets of his duty blues up so they won’t wrinkle while in transit. “Are you going to take care of me?”
“In every way.” Kara smiles and keeps her eyes on him as their closet slowly empties out. He won’t be taking everything with him. There’s no need for him to have any civilian wear while he’s up there, but there will still be a gap of space where he used to belong.
“What if I’m pregnant? Can’t you tell them I’m bed ridden and need you?”
“You’re not, are you?” He knows she’s joking, but still has to ask.
“No, but we’ve got twenty minutes. We could practice… a few times.”
It gives him pause, and pushing another set of tanks into his bag, the corner of his mouth quirks. He pulls at his belt, releasing the piece of metal that locks it into place. “Let’s hurry then.”
-
Kara can still smell both of them on her skin when they pull up at the transfer station. He’ll have a long few days ahead of him, traveling from one planet to the next before he finally ends up on the Solaria with the other new additions to the ship’s crew. They’ve cut it close and there’s no time to waste, so they gather his duffel and cut across the parking lot to where the other bodies linger, waiting to board the military ships sitting on the airstrip.
“You’ll be okay,” she reassures him, straightening the collar of his green fatigues for him. It’s mostly for her benefit though, and when she looks up to Zak, her eyes are coated in a thick sheen of tears.
“I will. And so will you.” His fingers push through her hair, resting against her scalp. “I’m coming back. Just a few months.” It’s become their mantra over the last few days, a way to cope with the inevitable. He takes one of her hands with his other, repeats the familiar pattern of stroking over the ring at her thumb. “I’ll always be with you. You’ve got my ring.”
Kara’s fingers curl into a fist around his, squeezing his hand tighter than she’s ever held the stick of a Viper. He’ll be safe. She trained him herself. He knows what he’s doing. He’ll be safe. “I’ve got something for you,” she chokes out and releases his hand to pull something from her pocket. It’s a small sheet of paper, folded in half.
Zak doesn’t have to read it to know what it is. It’s that poem she wrote months ago. “I’ll keep it with me every time I fly,” he says and folds it again, slipping it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “So you’ll be with me too.”
She breaks at that, her face crinkling as she loses what little restraint she once held over herself for the day. There’s no stopping the heavy sobs, the tears, the sound of her cries from the back of her throat as she buries her face into him. He pulls her close and it only makes it worse, reminded of the feel of his arms around her that she won’t have until Gods know when, until the powers that be grant him leave to return home. There’s an irrational fear inside her, created by the experiences of her past, that if she lets him go he won’t ever come back. But Zak isn’t her father, he keeps his promises, and in six months time at most, he’ll be with her again. They’ll have phone calls and letters to tide them over in the mean time. It’ll have to do.
They’re stuck like that until the intercom makes the call for the ship he’s been waiting for. He’s the one to pull back, but it doesn’t last long because he has to feel her lips against his one more time.
“You’ve got to go,” Kara uses the sleeves of her shirt to wipe at her eyes.
“I’ve got to go.” He says the words but doesn’t follow through, kissing her again until the final warning sounds. “I love you Kara Thrace.”
She raises her voice and shouts, hoping it carries over the distance already between them. “I love you Zak Adama.”
Zak smiles, lifts his hand, and waves. Then, he’s gone.
-
She gets a call from him when he arrives on Solaria, but he doesn’t have long. They’re sending him on a mission in a few days, he says, to break him into the fleet. Kara wishes him luck, and because it’s tradition, she doesn’t tell him to be safe. She tells him good hunting.
Later in the week, Kara wakes in the middle of the night, her heart pounding for a reason she can’t explain. On the fringes of her mind she can remember an unsettling dream, recalls the feel of her skin burning and the pain accompanying it. The sweat coating her skin suddenly makes sense. She cuts across her bedroom and pulls one of Zak’s shirts off the hanger in the closet, slips her arms through the sleeves and buttons it up over her otherwise undressed form. There’s no falling asleep even with the scent of him surrounding her, so she takes out a pad of paper from her nightstand and starts to write down her current stream of thoughts. Another letter to seal up and mail like the few she’s already written in the week he’s been gone. They’re in the mail and won’t reach him for days, but it offers relief, like he’s there beside her even when he’s not.
Kara tells him about the painting she finally started for him. He’d requested it so long ago and only in his absence has she found the time to start painting what comes to her when she dreams about him and the promise of the life they’ve got coming to them both. The letter keeps her up until morning when Kara finally abandons it and rests her head into the pillow Zak had been using as his own.
Just as she’s about to reach sleep, she hears the distant ring of the phone. Though she tries to ignore it, she can’t. It isn’t the loud shrill of the ringer that’s keeping her awake, it’s something else, a sudden queasiness in her gut as she listens. She forces herself up, limbs heavy with exhaustion carrying her out towards the kitchen where the phone rests on its cradle. On her way, the fingers of her left hand curl up, rubbing against the metal of his ring, a comfort she finds herself seeking more and more since Zak left her behind.
She picks up the phone and tries not to notice the tremor in her hand. “Hello?”
There’s silence on the other end until she hears the quiver of a shaky breath. “Kara?”
It’s Lee and just by the one word, she can tell something’s wrong. There’s strain in his voice.
“Yeah, Lee?” She hears it but it doesn’t sound like her voice. Kara’s not sure how she knows. Maybe it’s the hour at which he’s calling or the fact that he’s calling at all when he knows his brother isn’t there. They’ve become friends, but mostly by way of the person they share in common. Something’s happened. She wishes to the Gods she didn’t know, but she does. One by one, every dream she and Zak talked about is ripped away. First the children, then the house. There’s no trip to Canceron, no priestess to marry them. ‘Down by the river,’ he’d argued for. He won’t be coming back in three months or six months or a year. Kara’s body knows he won’t be coming back. Not ever.
“There’s been an accident. Zak… He’s dead, Kara. His ship crashed four hours ago. He’s gone.”
She doesn’t bother to hang up the phone and later she’ll wonder why she didn’t cry. As she steps away from the phone dangling from its cord, she can barely hear Lee’s voice fading out, his words lost on deaf ears. To her right she sees his painting on the floor, half finished. It’ll never be done now, because she always saw it in the hallway of whatever apartment or home they’d claim for their own. Now there’s no reason for it, no purpose if he isn’t there to hang it himself.
Beside it there’s an older painting, concentric circles of yellow and red and blue, the familiar mandala she’s painted her whole life. At the top of her stairs there’s a painting of similar design, and rotting in garbage dumps across the Colonies there’s more. She’s left a trail of them her entire life.
Kara grabs a few small containers of paint in her arms, carries them to the nearby table. Her movements become less controlled, more frantic as each second ticks by, and as she’s pouring globs of thick paint into old metal take out trays, her hands are shaking. She doesn’t dare stop, and on the barest wall of her apartment, Kara draws a large sweeping circle of yellow paint with the biggest brush she owns. The edges are uneven but she pays it no mind, it isn’t about precision here. The brush isn’t fast enough for her, so she dips her hand into the yellow paint, completes the path she wants. Red follows. Blue. Swirls of color drip on her floor, down her arms and bare legs, and on the white shirt that belongs to Zak and is buttoned up around her. She sees nothing else.
She outlines each inner circle in black and before she knows it, she’s stretching her arm as high as it will go, the tip of her finger smearing letter after letter in black paint along the wall. Kara steps back, drinking in the mix of color and letters, words belonging to the poem she’s written long ago and the only other copy of which is crushed against Zak’s corpse somewhere. Wherever he is.
To her left, Kara sees someone beside her and she tilts her head in their direction. How they got in without her hearing or why they’re there at all, she can’t even begin to think about. This slip of time won’t be in her consciousness later anyway. He’s a man of average height, thin and wiry. Blue eyes and blonde hair. A face she doesn’t know, but in the years to come, she will. She’s not alarmed by his presence, doesn’t even care, just relaxes in the calm he seems to give her.
“He’ll be waiting for you,” the man says, and nods his head towards the fresh paint on her walls. “When you go, don't be scared, Kara Thrace, he’ll be on the other side to take you.”
Kara looks towards the wall, then back to where the man stood, but he’s gone now, like he never existed at all. All at once she can see the next few years of her life before her eyes. There’s a funeral. An old battlestar, long past her prime. Tears in her eyes every night she falls asleep. There’s Lee, back from the dead himself. The end of the worlds, but she doesn’t even care. The feel of flying. An ache in her knee. Making love in the sand and dirt to a man she already knows, felt was torn from the same cloth in a previous life. A marriage down by another river on a grey planet she doesn’t recognize. The cage of a familiar prison and blood spilled at her hands day in and day out. Then there’s the mandala, swirling and churning, alive before her. Kara closes her eyes and she can feel herself go in, a pull at every inch of her skin as she’s drawn to it. And on the other side, Zak’s there, smiling just like he has a million times before. Welcoming her home.
The tears finally fall when she can feel his arms around her, hear his voice in her ears. There’s nothing about any of this she’ll remember tomorrow, but she wants to take it with her. She falls to her knees and with her eyes clenching tight and her chest heaving, Kara finally finds the words.
“I’m coming Zak, I’m coming.”
author:
apodixis
spoilers: All seasons
pairings: kara/zak, brief hints at kara/lee
overall fic rating: NC-17
total word count: 17,700
notes: Not sure if many people are going to be interested in this since I know almost everyone I have added is a die hard Kara/Lee shipper, but here it is anyway. We only got to know Zak Adama through a few flashbacks and a couple conversations in the series. Somewhere along the way I started to love him more than was probably intended and decided to write a piece of the history he shares with Kara. I've tried to incorporate nearly every concrete detail we know about his life, but I've had to make some guesses/take some creative liberties on some points to make sense of it all.
summary: An ode to Kara Thrace and Zak Adama. How they met, who they were, and how they fell in love, told through a series of glimpses into their lives.
other sections: Part 1
“When I graduate,” Zak starts, his arm around her, Kara’s head on his shoulder as he holds her close, “we wont have to hide anymore.” He’s been dreaming about that day, although there’s always been the worry that maybe this only works because it’s a secret. Everything about that thought changed tonight, though, both of their bloodstreams swimming with their confessions of how deep their affections run.
“You’ll go away.” Kara strokes the hand of his arm around her, fingers tracing over the lengths of his own and over the silver ring around his smallest finger. “And I’ll be here.” There’s sadness in her voice at the idea. Never before has she thought aloud about what it’ll really mean in a few months when they’re torn apart.
“I’ll come home when I can. To you.” By now, Kara’s heard the story of his family, of his parent’s less than happy marriage. He doesn’t know what the future holds for them, but he promises himself he won’t repeat the mistakes he’s seen in his mother and father. Zak wants to make his father proud, wants to make Lee proud, and he will. With Kara’s help, he’ll finally be a Viper pilot, but after that, he’ll be hers. Flying will be part of his life, not his whole life. “You won’t be stuck here forever, either. They’ll give you another chance on a battlestar.”
With him, she doesn’t feel the need to buck the rules. Maybe once and for all, she can fall in line just enough to put her life back together and get back up to the stars. His reassurance is suddenly all she needs.
“Besides, it was good you frakked up. Never would have met me.” There’s amusement in his voice.
She tilts her head up to him, smile across her face. “It was worth it.”
His fingers dance across her skin to her breast and there’s nothing sexual about his touch. It’s comforting in a way she never knew existed. Kara turns her head into him a little further, kisses the side of his chest, wherever she can reach.
“My brother’s going to be around in a few weeks, I was thinking that maybe you should meet him.”
“The infamous hotshot Viper pilot, Lee Adama?” Kara teases the man in his absence.
“Yeah, that jerk.” He doesn’t mean anything by it and Kara knows. If anything’s true about Zak, it’s how much he worships the ground his older brother walks on.
“You sure?”
“We can put it off if you want. I know it’s a big step, but if you’re worried he’d tell someone…”
“No.” Kara shifts until she’s on her side and can look to him easier. Her arm stretches over his chest, and her fingers trace small shapes across his skin. “I don’t think that. I’m not good with families, Zak. I was an only child, my Dad left when I was a kid. Mama-” Kara stops, closes her eyes tight to take a breath, only opening them when she’s got the strength to go on. It’s the most she’s ever talked about her family to him or anyone. “She died a few years ago. I’ve been on my own most of my life.”
“Not anymore.” Zak palms her cheek, a reminder of how things have changed.
“Yeah,” she repeats, “not anymore.”
-
The stir fry’s burning on the stove when the doorbell rings.
She heads to the stairs, jogging up. “Coming!” Kara calls and then she’s at the door, pulling it open to reveal the man behind it. There’s a smile on her lips before she can help it, and it’s not just because she’s been eagerly waiting for this moment. Lee’s handsome, in a way that’s so unlike his brother. She’s seen a photo or two of him, but the differences were never so apparent as they are now. Where Zak’s soft, Lee’s is full of sharp angles, a face no man or woman could deny. Zak’s skin is darker, caramel in color, and Lee’s is an entirely different hue. The most striking of all his features is the eyes, bright blue in a color that barely seems real, especially when compared to how dark Zak’s are. Kara’s not sure what she expected, but it isn’t this.
“You must be,” they both repeat at the same time, and they smile a little brighter. Her giggle wins out, feeling like a fool. “Sorry, I’m Kara. Come on in.” It’s only then that she realizes the flowers in his hands, a gift that makes her feel far too much like an adult for her tastes, but makes her insides warm anyway. “You didn’t have to do that. I’ll take those and put them in some water.”
They make their way down the stairs and Kara’s in an overwhelmed haze, her head bubbling with all the little things left to do before they sit down to eat. There’s food to stir, places to set, still a small mess to clean up. While she’s fluttering about in her own world for the briefest of time, Zak finally makes his appearance from the bedroom, greeting his brother. It makes her smile, a pang of jealousy washing through her at the camaraderie between them. The way Zak looks, though, his arm around his brother and Lee’s around him, it’s a kind of happiness so unlike to what he shares with her. It’s just different.
Over dinner, they get to know each other, the three of them emptying glass after glass of wine, the small stash in the liquor cabinet dwindling down as the hours go. There’s something about Lee, Kara thinks, even as he vehemently debates the merits of voting and the system. He’s just like a politician, except maybe not yet so jaded and worked over by the process he claims to love.
“Honey,” Kara tilts her head back towards Zak, “I think I’m starting to like your brother.”
Afterward, they talk Vipers, trading their own little brags about the tricks and stunts they’ve pulled in the past. It’s not a conversation for Zak, so it’s good he happens to be a kind of lightweight when it comes to holding his liquor, and ends up passing out across Kara’s couch.
On their own and three sheets to the wind, Kara tells Lee how she’s not afraid of dying, but afraid of being forgotten. It’s a whole lot more than she’s ever admitted to Zak in the months they’ve been together, and even intoxicated, Kara has no idea why she’s telling Lee. Just that she is, just that it feels right, just that it feels like he needs to know.
She’s vibrant and bold, a force to be reckoned with. Lee’s never seen her fly, but he wants to, even if, like he fears, she is far better than he’ll ever be. Kara’s like a storm, swirling round and picking up things in her wake, and all he knows is that he wants to be part of it. She’s alive in ways he’s never known before, never even felt a hint of until he’d seen her through that doorway of her apartment, until they huddled together sharing secrets, fears, and shots. Already he’s certain he’d give up every other moment of his life if he could have one wish: for her to not belong to his brother.
Lee tries to shove away the attraction, beautiful in a way that is more than skin deep. He pushes away the draw he feels to her… and then she’s daring him from her own drunken stupor, to take her, right there on that table. “Double dog dare?” He laughs as he repeats her words. Nothing makes sense, but he lets instinct guide him, crawling over her as she backs up along the table, sprawled out like a Gods damned feast.
Like him, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. It’s like that night in the bar all over again, half of her saying no while the other half is screaming: Yes, Gods yes. Except this time it isn’t Zak’s hand on her knee, his smile across from her. It’s his brother between her thighs and Kara can’t think about how only hours earlier, Zak had been there, pounding himself inside of her while she cried out for him. There’s just something there with Lee, something she can’t explain.
Their lips touch and it’s like fire, her body a mix of overwhelming heat and chills, skin breaking out in goosebumps. He tastes like wine and ambrosia, a hint of saltiness leftover from the dinner she’d made and he’d eaten gratefully. Nothing’s going to stop her, she wants to feel him inside of her, feel how deep he can go, how his mouth feels pulling at her breast, his hands all over her skin.
Her arm moves back to steady herself a little more, comes in contact with one of their glasses, and even before it hits the floor, Kara can feel the world drop out from under them.
“Something’s broken,” Zak calls out, half asleep, from across the room after the glass shatters on the floor. He slumps back down, returns to his slumber.
Lee pulls away instantly and so does she, and that heat that was there before is replaced by guilt and shame. They both feel suddenly sober, a stark contrast to only a moment earlier. She gets his coat for him as she wobbles on unsteady legs, her hand extended between them.
“It was nice to meet you, Lee Adama.”
“Likewise, Kara Thrace.”
They stare across at one another, neither wanting to let the other go, but Zak’s sleeping a few feet away. There’s no way for it to work or ever make sense, not that either of them even know what the hell it is they feel between them. It’s something, though. Something that they both finally and reluctantly let go of.
She listens for the sound of the apartment door shutting after he slowly climbs the stairs, and Kara can’t stay still. In seconds, she’s in her bedroom, the door closed behind her. Kara’s gasping, sitting on her knees, her hands into her floor as she leans forward, trying to make sense.
“What the frak is wrong with me?” She cries without concern for the sounds she makes, just letting herself be. There’s something about that man she just let leave, and nothing she does can make her understand it. There’s a pull, like they’ve met before, like in another life they shared a soul and someone cruelly split them in two. It’s far different than what she feels for Zak. For this, there’s no words.
Kara’s like that for a long time, even after her tears have dried and her eyes have lost focus on the floor. She’s never been sure of who she is outside of a cockpit, but now she’s even less sure than before. What did she almost do to Zak, to the man who loves her? How betrayed would he feel if he ever knew what she’d practically begged for while he slept a couple of feet away? She’s felt shame of various levels all throughout her life, but this takes the cake. Tops the list. Finally, Kara has something good in her life, and like everything else, she ruins it just the same.
Zak comes stumbling in hours later and finds Kara asleep on the bedroom floor. He laughs, still drunk, and rather than try to pull her up into bed with him, he tugs the blanket off her bed, curls himself around her, and falls asleep until morning.
-
Sunrise comes and Kara groans, rolling over into the hard wall of Zak’s chest. She lets herself enjoy it for the moment until the night comes back to her in clips. On her lips and tongue, Kara swears she can still taste Lee. So she does the only thing she knows how to do, presses her mouth to Zak’s neck, works her hand inside his jeans until he’s waking with a moan despite his hangover. Kara straddles his legs.
“Want you to frak me,” she says plainly, desperate to bury the thoughts of his brother with new memories of him. Kara continues to stroke, finally popping the button of his pants for an easier reach.
“My head feels like it’s going to explode.”
“Don’t care, Zak.”
“Should we get off the floor first?”
Kara shakes her head, trying not to lose her focus as she attempts to get him hard. If he’s not inside of her soon, she’s going to lose it. Zak joins in the festivities with enough incentive, helping her to pull his underwear and jeans down low enough on his hips to get himself free. Any more movement than that, he doesn’t have the energy for. Kara takes her own pants and briefs off, and without preamble, impales herself on him and his newfound hardness. It’s slow and lazy and Kara doesn’t get release, but for now, it’s enough. It has to be.
-
In Lee’s absence, life returns to normal. Kara makes a vow with herself not to think of Zak’s brother as anything more than a stranger and a Viper jock. The events of that night never happened as far as she’s concerned. If she tells it to herself enough times, she’s sure she’ll start to believe it as fact rather than fiction. Is one brief moment in time enough to ruin what she’s been building for months with Zak? It would’ve been a frak, a quick frak, that’s all. She knows it, believes it, and reminds herself of all the reasons why she’s in love with the person she sees day in and day out.
Zak insists Lee come to visit a few more times, and Kara’s surprised by how little there is between her and his brother. Lee, it seems, is following her own rules as well, and pretending their incident on the table never occurred. For awhile, they’re a trio, a group of friends that go to the bar and play pyramid in one of the parks on the other side of Delphi. There’s a movie, even a weekend trip to their grandfather’s house out by the lake, and somewhere along the way it all stops being so difficult. As long as Zak’s near, her mind never wanders, so Kara never lets him stray far from her.
-
They return to her apartment from a late night on campus, a date with the sims in the final weeks before his flight test, and as usual, Zak stays at her place. He’ll catch hell for it eventually, for not being around one very early morning when there’s a drill or something similar, but until then, he’ll continue to take that risk. Kara showers first and when Zak finishes his, he catches her propped up in bed, drowning herself in a small notebook he’s seen her with from time to time.
“What’re you writing?”
“Mm, nothing,” she says sleepily, closing the book around her pen and setting it to the side. Out of sight. Out of mind.
“Can’t get away with it that easy.” Zak snatches it up in his grasp and she only pretends to put up a fight in trying to grab it away from him. He’s determined, though, and Kara relents quickly, though she’s looking sheepish when he glances back to her. “Can I?”
She nods in response, and with her permission, Zak opens to the page where the pen is wedged, reading over the freshly inked words. “Methodically smoking my cigarette. Every breath I breathe out the day. With every delicious sip I drink away the night. Stroking my hair to the beat of his heart. Watching a boy turn into a man.” At first, he isn’t sure what he’s seeing, brows furrowing as he takes them in again, this time silently in his own head. When he looks to her, his eyes are watered. “This is about me?”
Kara’s afraid of the expression he wears, but soon she realizes it’s not sadness, not in the least. “It’s always about you,” she says quietly, and what happened with his brother has become the furthest thing from her mind. Between that memory and her, she’s erected a wall, and she won’t let it hurt her or Zak anymore. This is the man she loves.
Zak leans into her, the book tossed aside, and captures her lips with his own. It’s hot and heavy, and just as his hand’s about to press at her breast, he stops, pulling away as he shakes his head.
“Zak?”
“What am I going to do if I fail basic flight?” Her written words have only been a temporary suspension from the true troubles that plague his own mind. He’s at the bottom of the class, he knows it, even with how much work they’ve put in together. In some ways, he thinks it might be freeing to fail out, to finally be without the obligation and have an excuse to pursue life elsewhere. But that sting of failure, of disappointment in his father’s and brother’s eyes, Zak knows it’s worth a life lived by someone else’s rules than to have to actually feel those gazes upon him.
“You won’t.” Kara inclines herself into him instead, stroking his cheek. She’s had her own similar worries as well, but has pushed them aside in the hope that the future will bring what he needs. “You’re a good pilot, Zak, you just need to get a feel for it.” Kara knows it isn’t something one can earn over time, it’s something you have or you don’t. But if anyone can find it for him, if anyone in the history of the universe can bring it out in someone else, she knows it’s her. “Maybe I’m being too much of a distraction.”
“I’d have flunked out months ago if it wasn’t for you.”
“Everything you have, you’ve earned it.” She isn’t just speaking about flying.
Zak pulls at her arms until they’re chest to chest, mouth open as he feels her tongue trace across his lower lip then dip into him. He can’t remember what life was like before her and doesn’t want to try. In a few weeks, he’ll be finished, whether he passes his flight test or not. Either way, whatever the damage and repercussions, he’ll have her. Once and for all they won’t be forced to keep their relationship to themselves. There will be nothing to make this any less than what it is.
He watches as she sits up and pulls her shirt off, bare breasted as she lets the item of clothing fall where it may. The way she looks at him, has looked at him ever since that first night, makes him pause. Zak knows how lucky he is. He’s always known, even growing up in a house of privilege thanks mostly to his mother’s family and the money she comes from. He’s not wanted for much in his life except his father, though Lee filled that role for him as best as his older brother could. With Kara though, he’s found that final piece of his life, and there isn’t a chance in hell he’s about to let it go.
Kara’s smiling coquettishly, just waiting for him to be tempted to make the first move, something he’s proven in the past he can’t ever resist when she’s taken most of her clothes off. There’s a chill in the air and it bathes her skin, but she doesn’t care or think about it because just the touch of his hand to her wrist makes her feel warm. “What?” She asks, drawn in.
“Will you marry me?”
Her first instinct is to laugh, and she does, because to her there’s no way he could be serious. What they have, it’s perfect, and for once in her life Kara knows what it’s like to be happy. Genuinely happy. Never before has she thought she’d be the marrying type, the word hardly even existing on her radar. The only examples of marriage she’s ever seen up close haven’t been the happiest, and Kara knows that even his own parents’ marriage suffered a similar fate. Still, there’s a feeling in her gut she can’t quite place when she hears the word in his own voice in her head, repeating it over and over. Marry.
“I’m serious,” Zak sits up and now all parts of their skin are in contact, their legs, their arms. “I want to marry you.”
He touches her face, palm over her cheek and thumb under her eye, and Kara doesn’t understand his action until she realizes her skin’s wet with tears she didn’t even know she’d shed.
“Why would you want to marry me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Her tears are reflected in his brown eyes and he makes no move to brush them away, unable to take his attention from Kara. “I know I’m young-we’re young-but I already know. I know I’m going to be with you for the rest of my life, so why do I have to wait?”
“You’re crazy,” she whispers. It’s all the volume she can get out.
“Yeah, but so are you. It works.”
Kara laughs again, this time it’s smaller and not a knee jerk reaction to the unknown. All she does is nod into his hand still at her cheek. “Okay.” If she thinks about it, she’ll never agree to it in the end, but this is one part of her life she knows she can’t talk herself out of. She just has to feel it. “I’ll marry you, Zak. Okay.”
He kisses her mouth. Her jaw. Her neck. The patch of skin behind her ear. Each closed eyelid. Even her hair, just listening to her laughter tinged with her tears. “You’ll be my wife,” he says, elated, and pulls back just enough to take a look at her face. “I’ll be your husband.”
Kara nods along to each of his statements. She feels detached from herself, floating outside her body as she listens to him prattle on about the future he’s been planning without her. She doesn’t even care, suddenly she wants it all.
Zak pushes her back until she’s lying across their bundle of blankets and sheets and like so many times before, he’s above her looking down. “I can ask for leave from wherever I get posted while you’re off between classes.” He kisses the underside of one of her breasts. “We’ll get married down by the river outside Caprica City where my grandfather used to take Lee and I fishing. Go on holiday for as long as we can get away. Somewhere warm?” Zak asks and kisses her navel, eyes on her.
He’s like a child, the excitement pouring off of him and it’s infectious. “Canceron. Take me to the beaches there.” Just like that, she’s participating in the dream too.
“Canceron.” Zak nods in affirmation and the decision’s made. Whether they’re married in a month or a year, Canceron is where they’ll go. “We can get our own place, Kara. A little bigger. A house maybe.” How they’d afford it, he doesn’t know. Pilot salaries don’t exactly pay a ton, especially low ranking. But this is the dream, and money doesn’t matter right now.
“A house?” She strokes over his hair.
“Mmhmm.” Zak dips his head down and kisses low on her belly, just above the waistband of her underwear. “We’ll have children, too.” They’ve never talked about it, not in the slightest except the brief moment in time a few months earlier when she’d mentioned having to get her birth control shot again.
“You want them?” There’s a thread of worry in her voice, but she keeps it back. For the whole of her sexually active life, her priority has been avoiding that outcome altogether. It’s an odd thought to consider anything else, all her issues with her mother and her father aside. For now, the hurt that’s been brought on her in the past doesn’t matter. Being with him is like starting over.
“Only if you do.”
She doesn’t want the idea to die out just yet so she smiles and pushes him on. “Girls? Boys?”
“I don’t care. A million of them. I want them to look like you, want to hold them in my arms, fall asleep night after night with my hand on your stomach, fight with you about names.” He’s known from a young age that he wants to be a father, but it surprises him how easy all the details come out without no prior conscious thought. “I won’t miss their lives like my father did.” Zak moves back over her and it’s almost like he’s drunk, intoxicated on the decision they’ve made.
“No, you won’t.”
“Frak,” he says all of a sudden, and sits up, straddling her hips on his knees. “I’ll get you a real ring, Kara, but for now…” Zak pulls at the ring on his pinky, the plain silver band he’s worn with him for most of his life.
“I don’t need another,” she protests.
“You deserve it.” He takes her left hand and slides the loop of metal onto her ring finger, but it’s far too loose and with a large gap of space remaining. “Frak that,” he laughs, embarrassed for how little he’s prepared.
Kara finishes the process for him and moves it over to her thumb where it fits snug. She won’t lose it if it’s there. Her hand forms into a fist and her other one curls around it, holding it to her chest like it’s something precious and to be protected.
Zak takes her in, sprawled across the bed, her short hair in disarray around her. This is the woman he’s going to spend the rest of his life with. “Kara Adama.”
All she can do is smile. “Zak and Kara Adama.”
-
On Monday, she finally gives him a call sign. She calls him River in honor of part of the dream he’s painted for them. It’s a name, that unlike most others, he doesn’t mind to bear.
-
The rest of his classmates are celebrating, rushing out the door to head to the nearest bar downtown. It’s the middle of the day, but it’s tradition, their superior officers turning the other way, allowing the moment of happiness where they can get it. Graduation is around the corner for those who have passed, and soon enough they’ll all be learning of their assignments, however far away from home it may put them.
Zak’s on the phone as soon as it’s free, dialing up the number of where he knows he can reach his mother. She’s happy, although Zak detects that hint of something else in her voice. Another man in her life she’s lost to the fleet. His father’s the next one to call, and he waves off his friends as they yell and beg with him to get going, but in the end he just blindly promises to meet them there when he finishes. There isn’t a beer in the world good enough to make him miss out on the call he’s making. He’s not surprised that he can’t connect to his father in the end; the call to his quarters on Galactica goes unanswered. He tries for the ship in general, but he’s informed his father’s in the middle of a shift in the CIC on the battlestar and can’t be interrupted by private calls. It’s a familiar disappointment.
He’s talking with Lee when there’s a knock at the door, and his eyes lift up to catch the sight of the one person he didn’t expect. Kara. “Listen, Lee, I’ve got to go. You know how it is-got to meet some friends. I promise not to get picked up for a drunk and disorderly.” Zak’s focus is on the woman that’s been his fiancee for all of a few weeks as she approaches. Everything he has right now, he owes to her. “Thanks, it means a lot,” he continues, “Maybe I’ll start breaking your records now. Love you. See you at graduation.”
Zak sets the phone on the receiver and without hesitation, throws his arms around Kara, lifting her feet off the ground as he hugs her tight. She squeals in his arms, laughing, her head tossed back as she shares in his jubilation. “We did it,” he finally says, lowering her to the ground as he kisses her hard. When he pulls back, she’s smiling so bright it’s like all the suns of the Twelve Colonies combined into one. It’s a sight she reserves for him. This is why he loves her.
“You did it,” Kara corrects him and there’s a softness to her eyes that Zak immediately recognizes: pride. “How’s it feel, River?”
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispers against her ear, kissing the lobe.
“You’ve got to celebrate.”
His hand seeks out hers, fingers tangled together as his thumb soothes over her own and the metal band that now sits there, the same one that he used to wear. In a show of bravery, she’s not removed it since she put it on. Though there’s little chance someone will notice that the ring he wore is gone and has since reappeared on her hand, it still means the world to him to see it. “I’m celebrating with you first. I can be late.”
Kara glances to the door and the empty bunk beds around them. Before she can look back, he’s already undressing her.
They make love in the time that follows. Afterward, still breathing heavy, Zak drags his finger along the edge of her ear, memorizing her exactly as she is. He needs to commit this, all of this, to memory. Kara pushes him onto his back and supports her weight on her arm as she participates in his process too, her fingerprint brushing against his lower lip before she kisses between his brows in the gentlest move of the afternoon.
“I want you to tell me the truth about something,” Zak says as he watches her cross from his bed towards his open locker. This is the very first time she’s seen where he sleeps and spends his time when he’s not with her.
She knows what he’s asking before he even finishes. Kara drinks from his bottle of water, turning away from the picture hanging in his locker of her and him and his brother. “You passed,” her wrist rubs away the extra drops of water from her mouth, shoulders shrugging as she tries to play it cool. “By the skin of your teeth, but you passed.”
“I don’t want any special treatment. Not from my father, certainly not from you.” As he thinks back to the day before, specifically the minutes of his final qualifying test, Zak knows he shouldn’t have come out with a passing mark. At least on his end, he’s counted the mistakes he felt in his own flying. He can do the math, add them up. There were one too many maneuvers gone wrong for him to ever have earned his wings on his own. If she tells him otherwise, though, he’ll believe it. Chalk it up to a head too cloudy with nerves to remember it correctly and trust her judgement.
Kara doesn’t even hesitate as she returns to his bed, kneeling beside him. Thank the Lords that he’s got the bottom bunk. “Zak, I’m a flight instructor. I’m not going to send you to Vipers if I don’t think you’ve got the chops, okay?” This happiness he’s wearing, she knows he’s earned it and that she’s given it to him. She’s already replayed back his flight test in her head and on video a thousand times the prior night when making her final grades. It was close, she knows. On the cusp. How could she break his heart for something so close? How could she spend her life with him, knowing she was the one to take this away? Before she’d fallen asleep alone the night before, she’d made peace with her choice. She would pass him, give him what he deserved. Maybe this is the one thing in her life she's ever done right.
Zak nods, and like her, he’s found his own peace with it. “Okay.”
With both of their consciences cleared, Zak makes love to her again and fills his head with the sounds of her crying out around him.
-
While she gets dressed afterward, Zak writes a letter to his father and gives it to her to take a look at. In it, she reads, he invites his father to his graduation, confesses the nature of their relationship, and mentions that he and her have a surprise for him. He’ll tell him about it when he sees him next.
Zak bends down to where she sits, kisses her cheek as she folds up the letter for him. “He’ll love you.”
-
Bill Adama misses his son’s graduation in the end. It breaks Zak’s heart that his father can’t find the time to see him get his wings. It isn’t just that burn, though, it’s the sting left by the fact that his father isn’t there to meet the woman to be his wife either. He settles for introducing her to his mother and an evening of drinks between him, Kara, and Lee. They’ll celebrate without the Commander. His absence doesn’t ache so much with her and his brother beside him.
-
Zak gets his assignment to serve aboard the Battlestar Solaria the week after he receives his wings and Lieutenant Junior Grade pins. It’s also the same day he and Kara go out together locally for the first time, unconcerned with being caught for their relationship. He’s not her student now, and she’s sure they’ve covered their tracks enough so there’s no proof that their relationship started long before his graduation. They celebrate together and Kara tells him about her days on the Triton and just what she did to get kicked off. Zak promises not to follow in her footsteps.
They have a few weeks before he has to leave and she has to start training her new class of nuggets, so they let themselves just get lost in one another as long as they can. If they’re going to be spending months apart, they have to make up for the time missed now. For awhile they consider eloping, making their marriage permanent before he goes away, but even they don’t tempt the Gods. Being caught at dinner together shortly after graduation is one thing, but to laugh in the faces of their superior officers with a marriage certificate is another thing entirely.
They’ll settle for the ring on her finger and the promise that when he returns home, they’ll do it then. Nothing big, she makes him promise. Something small with a priestess to bless their union. It isn’t something Zak or his family really believes in, but he knows how much it means to her, and he would give her anything she asked for, whether it was within his means or not. If she wants a blessing from the Lords of Kobol for their marriage, she’ll get it.
When the day comes for him to leave, Kara can’t make herself begin to consider the reality of it. She lays in bed watching him pack-he’s long since moved in all his belongings and even started chipping in on the rent-unable to help him along. If she does, she rationalizes, it’s like she’s getting rid of him, and the last thing she wants him to do is go.
“We can go play tackle pyramid. Break your leg, get you some time off.”
Zak does his best to neatly fold both sets of his duty blues up so they won’t wrinkle while in transit. “Are you going to take care of me?”
“In every way.” Kara smiles and keeps her eyes on him as their closet slowly empties out. He won’t be taking everything with him. There’s no need for him to have any civilian wear while he’s up there, but there will still be a gap of space where he used to belong.
“What if I’m pregnant? Can’t you tell them I’m bed ridden and need you?”
“You’re not, are you?” He knows she’s joking, but still has to ask.
“No, but we’ve got twenty minutes. We could practice… a few times.”
It gives him pause, and pushing another set of tanks into his bag, the corner of his mouth quirks. He pulls at his belt, releasing the piece of metal that locks it into place. “Let’s hurry then.”
-
Kara can still smell both of them on her skin when they pull up at the transfer station. He’ll have a long few days ahead of him, traveling from one planet to the next before he finally ends up on the Solaria with the other new additions to the ship’s crew. They’ve cut it close and there’s no time to waste, so they gather his duffel and cut across the parking lot to where the other bodies linger, waiting to board the military ships sitting on the airstrip.
“You’ll be okay,” she reassures him, straightening the collar of his green fatigues for him. It’s mostly for her benefit though, and when she looks up to Zak, her eyes are coated in a thick sheen of tears.
“I will. And so will you.” His fingers push through her hair, resting against her scalp. “I’m coming back. Just a few months.” It’s become their mantra over the last few days, a way to cope with the inevitable. He takes one of her hands with his other, repeats the familiar pattern of stroking over the ring at her thumb. “I’ll always be with you. You’ve got my ring.”
Kara’s fingers curl into a fist around his, squeezing his hand tighter than she’s ever held the stick of a Viper. He’ll be safe. She trained him herself. He knows what he’s doing. He’ll be safe. “I’ve got something for you,” she chokes out and releases his hand to pull something from her pocket. It’s a small sheet of paper, folded in half.
Zak doesn’t have to read it to know what it is. It’s that poem she wrote months ago. “I’ll keep it with me every time I fly,” he says and folds it again, slipping it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “So you’ll be with me too.”
She breaks at that, her face crinkling as she loses what little restraint she once held over herself for the day. There’s no stopping the heavy sobs, the tears, the sound of her cries from the back of her throat as she buries her face into him. He pulls her close and it only makes it worse, reminded of the feel of his arms around her that she won’t have until Gods know when, until the powers that be grant him leave to return home. There’s an irrational fear inside her, created by the experiences of her past, that if she lets him go he won’t ever come back. But Zak isn’t her father, he keeps his promises, and in six months time at most, he’ll be with her again. They’ll have phone calls and letters to tide them over in the mean time. It’ll have to do.
They’re stuck like that until the intercom makes the call for the ship he’s been waiting for. He’s the one to pull back, but it doesn’t last long because he has to feel her lips against his one more time.
“You’ve got to go,” Kara uses the sleeves of her shirt to wipe at her eyes.
“I’ve got to go.” He says the words but doesn’t follow through, kissing her again until the final warning sounds. “I love you Kara Thrace.”
She raises her voice and shouts, hoping it carries over the distance already between them. “I love you Zak Adama.”
Zak smiles, lifts his hand, and waves. Then, he’s gone.
-
She gets a call from him when he arrives on Solaria, but he doesn’t have long. They’re sending him on a mission in a few days, he says, to break him into the fleet. Kara wishes him luck, and because it’s tradition, she doesn’t tell him to be safe. She tells him good hunting.
Later in the week, Kara wakes in the middle of the night, her heart pounding for a reason she can’t explain. On the fringes of her mind she can remember an unsettling dream, recalls the feel of her skin burning and the pain accompanying it. The sweat coating her skin suddenly makes sense. She cuts across her bedroom and pulls one of Zak’s shirts off the hanger in the closet, slips her arms through the sleeves and buttons it up over her otherwise undressed form. There’s no falling asleep even with the scent of him surrounding her, so she takes out a pad of paper from her nightstand and starts to write down her current stream of thoughts. Another letter to seal up and mail like the few she’s already written in the week he’s been gone. They’re in the mail and won’t reach him for days, but it offers relief, like he’s there beside her even when he’s not.
Kara tells him about the painting she finally started for him. He’d requested it so long ago and only in his absence has she found the time to start painting what comes to her when she dreams about him and the promise of the life they’ve got coming to them both. The letter keeps her up until morning when Kara finally abandons it and rests her head into the pillow Zak had been using as his own.
Just as she’s about to reach sleep, she hears the distant ring of the phone. Though she tries to ignore it, she can’t. It isn’t the loud shrill of the ringer that’s keeping her awake, it’s something else, a sudden queasiness in her gut as she listens. She forces herself up, limbs heavy with exhaustion carrying her out towards the kitchen where the phone rests on its cradle. On her way, the fingers of her left hand curl up, rubbing against the metal of his ring, a comfort she finds herself seeking more and more since Zak left her behind.
She picks up the phone and tries not to notice the tremor in her hand. “Hello?”
There’s silence on the other end until she hears the quiver of a shaky breath. “Kara?”
It’s Lee and just by the one word, she can tell something’s wrong. There’s strain in his voice.
“Yeah, Lee?” She hears it but it doesn’t sound like her voice. Kara’s not sure how she knows. Maybe it’s the hour at which he’s calling or the fact that he’s calling at all when he knows his brother isn’t there. They’ve become friends, but mostly by way of the person they share in common. Something’s happened. She wishes to the Gods she didn’t know, but she does. One by one, every dream she and Zak talked about is ripped away. First the children, then the house. There’s no trip to Canceron, no priestess to marry them. ‘Down by the river,’ he’d argued for. He won’t be coming back in three months or six months or a year. Kara’s body knows he won’t be coming back. Not ever.
“There’s been an accident. Zak… He’s dead, Kara. His ship crashed four hours ago. He’s gone.”
She doesn’t bother to hang up the phone and later she’ll wonder why she didn’t cry. As she steps away from the phone dangling from its cord, she can barely hear Lee’s voice fading out, his words lost on deaf ears. To her right she sees his painting on the floor, half finished. It’ll never be done now, because she always saw it in the hallway of whatever apartment or home they’d claim for their own. Now there’s no reason for it, no purpose if he isn’t there to hang it himself.
Beside it there’s an older painting, concentric circles of yellow and red and blue, the familiar mandala she’s painted her whole life. At the top of her stairs there’s a painting of similar design, and rotting in garbage dumps across the Colonies there’s more. She’s left a trail of them her entire life.
Kara grabs a few small containers of paint in her arms, carries them to the nearby table. Her movements become less controlled, more frantic as each second ticks by, and as she’s pouring globs of thick paint into old metal take out trays, her hands are shaking. She doesn’t dare stop, and on the barest wall of her apartment, Kara draws a large sweeping circle of yellow paint with the biggest brush she owns. The edges are uneven but she pays it no mind, it isn’t about precision here. The brush isn’t fast enough for her, so she dips her hand into the yellow paint, completes the path she wants. Red follows. Blue. Swirls of color drip on her floor, down her arms and bare legs, and on the white shirt that belongs to Zak and is buttoned up around her. She sees nothing else.
She outlines each inner circle in black and before she knows it, she’s stretching her arm as high as it will go, the tip of her finger smearing letter after letter in black paint along the wall. Kara steps back, drinking in the mix of color and letters, words belonging to the poem she’s written long ago and the only other copy of which is crushed against Zak’s corpse somewhere. Wherever he is.
To her left, Kara sees someone beside her and she tilts her head in their direction. How they got in without her hearing or why they’re there at all, she can’t even begin to think about. This slip of time won’t be in her consciousness later anyway. He’s a man of average height, thin and wiry. Blue eyes and blonde hair. A face she doesn’t know, but in the years to come, she will. She’s not alarmed by his presence, doesn’t even care, just relaxes in the calm he seems to give her.
“He’ll be waiting for you,” the man says, and nods his head towards the fresh paint on her walls. “When you go, don't be scared, Kara Thrace, he’ll be on the other side to take you.”
Kara looks towards the wall, then back to where the man stood, but he’s gone now, like he never existed at all. All at once she can see the next few years of her life before her eyes. There’s a funeral. An old battlestar, long past her prime. Tears in her eyes every night she falls asleep. There’s Lee, back from the dead himself. The end of the worlds, but she doesn’t even care. The feel of flying. An ache in her knee. Making love in the sand and dirt to a man she already knows, felt was torn from the same cloth in a previous life. A marriage down by another river on a grey planet she doesn’t recognize. The cage of a familiar prison and blood spilled at her hands day in and day out. Then there’s the mandala, swirling and churning, alive before her. Kara closes her eyes and she can feel herself go in, a pull at every inch of her skin as she’s drawn to it. And on the other side, Zak’s there, smiling just like he has a million times before. Welcoming her home.
The tears finally fall when she can feel his arms around her, hear his voice in her ears. There’s nothing about any of this she’ll remember tomorrow, but she wants to take it with her. She falls to her knees and with her eyes clenching tight and her chest heaving, Kara finally finds the words.
“I’m coming Zak, I’m coming.”