BSG Fic - Reparation, 12/?
Title: Reparation
Author: becisvolatile
Part: 12/?
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Lee/Kara, Bill, Roslin, Helo, Sharon, Cottle, Anders, Dee, Leoben, Racetrack, Seelix.
Word Count: 4400+
Category: Novella
Genre: Romance, Angst, Action with Romance, PWP, Drama
Archiving: The Fallout Shelter, Apollo/Starbuck Fan Fic, Beyond Insane all others please ask
Warnings: Language, violence, sexual content, gratuitous sex, Spoilers: Up to and including S3
Summary: “Never mattered who got there first, not with Kara. It was the poor bastard who hung around that mattered.”
Beta: Angylinni is made of awesome. And is soon to owe me some RPF.
Previous Chapters:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Dee wasn’t sure how she felt. She’d never really wished Kara ill. She just hadn’t liked Kara helping herself to her husband. Not that it mattered anymore because, oh frak, Kara Thrace was gone. Really gone. Even the Admiral wouldn’t jump back toward a Basestar to retrieve Kara.
Would he?
Dee eyed him as he gripped the center console and dipped his head as the words sank in. The entire CIC paused and she bristled, this level of gravity was a luxury the control staff rarely allowed themselves. But Kara was always the exception. Maybe more so because it was the second time the command had been rocked by the news of her demise.
With a heavy sigh she turned back to the incoming reports from the Fleet, all present and accounted for, except -
“Sir.” She alerted the Colonel, aware that half the CIC was still locked in a moment of silence that no one was willing to break until the Admiral moved. “Sir, I have the Mutem Wia in my sights, but they’re making no attempt to contact. There’s a chance that their communications tower was taken out by the Raider debris that… that damaged Starbuck’s Viper. Should we deploy-”
Tigh held up a hand and shook his head, “It’ll keep, Petty Officer. Call in Racetrack, we need to know what happened out there and-”
“Dee,” the Admiral stood straight and turned to her, cutting across his XO, “I need Helo on the line.”
Dee turned back to her console and cast her voice throughout the Battlestar, “Pass the word to Captain Agathon, Captain Agathon to contact the CIC immediately. Repeat, Captain Agathon to contact the CIC.”
She reached for the handset before it buzzed once and answered it, “CIC.”
“Captain Agathon here.” Dee wasn’t certain, but Helo had been on downtime when the Basestar had jumped in, he’d never even made it into the fight. She cleared her throat and held out the handset for the Admiral before shamelessly following the one-sided conversation that followed.
“Helo, son, I need you to listen carefully.” He spoke with urgency despite leaning heavily against Dee’s workstation. “I need you to find Lee. I need you to find him and occupy him. Keep him away from the crew; keep him away from the hangar deck. I need your word that you won’t leave him alone for a second until I direct you otherwise.”
There was a pause as Helo spoke. The Admiral’s face hardened as he answered, “No. No, sending Kara… isn’t possible.”
He closed his eyes as Helo asked the inevitable. What’s happened to Kara?
“Now isn’t the time. Just… just go to Lee.”
*****
Helo wanted to hit something. Hard.
Oh, he knew he was the only person left to keep Lee at bay… but… something told him it was time to be mourning. Why else was he being sent to detain Lee, if not to protect him from his own grief? Lee had survived Kara’s death once, he wouldn’t take it as well a second time. Especially not if they were together, which Hot Dog’s black eye, resulting from cornering Kara with the ill-planned question “So… you and the CAG?”, was any suggestion. Although, Helo wasn’t sure her reaction hadn’t been something as simple as offering the pilot a physical reminder that she was the CAG.
Helo turned first towards the hangar bay, if Kara had been out there Lee would be preparing for her to taxi in. If he was quick enough, he’d catch Lee on the way there. He kicked it up to a jog. A post-jump crew was wired enough; putting a less than stable Lee into the equation wasn’t going to help anyone. He caught Lee just shy of the hangar bay and knew it was him instantly by the tension stacked between his shoulder blades. Lee was doing his best not to run.
It was wrong. It was so frakking wrong. All he really wanted to do was find Sharon and give her a godsdamned good reason not to play the way Kara always had in the air. Could he even look Lee in the eye and just pretend that a great chunk of both their hearts was just… gone? He was going to find out.
“Hey, Lee! Man I got this thing I need to talk to you about.” He called out to Lee’s back and the other man turned back, waving him away as he replied.
“I’ll catch you in a minute, I wanted to sit in on the debriefing and-”
“It’s important.” Gods. Helo’s cut churned, he’d never lied easily, especially not when what he was hiding was eating so massively at him. Maybe…
Maybe she was still back there. How many times had they just left her to the Cylons? Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe he and Lee could get down to the Raptors and-
Lee nodded once and turned back, “What is it?”
Helo blinked once and cleared his head, “Not here. Can we go to your office? It’s personal.”
Lee’s face flashed with irritation, “Look, I just need to hear how it went out there and then I’ll meet you there.”
Helo held up his hand and offered a weak smile. “Successful jump, man. We’re alive, aren’t we?”
Lee nodded once and smiled.
Helo felt a piece of his soul wither.
*****
Margaret ran her hands up her arms and shook her head, “I don’t… I don’t… maybe it was… she made a call, said there was debris going my way but I couldn’t see it. It was coming from - frak, I don’t know where. But then Starbuck is there rolling under me, taking the brunt of it against her carriage. Said she was fine and then we’re inbound and she wasn’t there. She didn’t even -” She cleared her throat and looked up to the Admiral. There was the strangest mix of impatience and acceptance in his eyes. He wanted answers, but knew that he’d be waiting a while. “She didn’t seem scared. Just pissed that I couldn’t see it. Told me to open my eyes and when I couldn’t, she said ‘Frak it, I got you.’ That’s it. I swear.”
“And no one,” his voice was so hard Margaret winced, “No one saw anything?”
“Sir,” Hot Dog spoke up this time, “We just wanted to come home.”
With a resigned nod, the Admiral turned on his heel and left.
*****
It was no small smack in the face that the only thing Helo could think of to keep Lee from Kara was… Kara. He followed Lee into his quarters and watched the other man sit before moving a chair to conveniently place him between Lee and the hatch. Helo took a second to survey the room and tried to find an idea. The bed was made. Tightly. The sofa had a pillow and a throw resting across the arm and Helo gathered they hadn’t exactly been blissful in their extramarital bed. It wasn’t ideal, but he was pretty sure Lee would take the bait.
“I have a friend with problems.”
Lee’s eyebrows jumped in question, “Flight problems?”
Helo shook his head.
“Legal?”
He shook it again and spoke, “This friend is… she’s not enjoying something she used to enjoy. Excel at, even.”
That got Lee’s attention. His hands fell to the arms of his chair and Helo realized his mistake as Lee clutched the chair so tightly his forearms flexed, “And how did you find out about her problem?”
Helo held up his hands, “Not that way. I swear it to the Gods, man, never that way.”
“Never?” Lee seemed to want confirmation, and on top of the half-truths and moot conversations Helo just didn’t think he could outright lie to him on that count.
“Not since before Zak.” And maybe just once after. Twice. Five times and maybe a sixth, but he wasn’t sure that counted as intercourse and wasn’t compelled to discuss the technicalities of frakking Kara. Besides, he had a wife and kid, no need to be getting his ass thrown out an airlock before his time.
Lee released the arms of the chair and fell back into it, his face hardening. “Frak me.”
“You asked.”
“You could have lied.”
“Why should I? If you’d asked Kara, she’d have told you about it herself. It was only ever… fun. You know, for those days going off base seemed like too much effort.”
“Zak hated you, you know. Kara’s ‘Frakker ECO mate’, guess he saw what I didn’t.”
“I’m pretty sure Kara came clean with him on that count pretty early on. I remember her being pissed because Zak had wanted to know how many there’d been before him. You should have seen her at the bar that night, knocking them back and muttering about an ‘alphabetized, indexed and cross-referenced list’.”
Lee seemed a little calmer at the mental image of Kara in her element. Drunk off her ass and mad at the world. “Zak never did get it,” Lee said to no one in particular, “Never mattered who got there first, not with Kara. It was the poor bastard who hung around that mattered.”
Helo couldn’t argue. “And you were planning on hanging around?” he asked softly.
Lee’s eyebrows drew together as he shifted the tense, “I plan on hanging around, yeah.”
Helo silently cursed himself for his slip and recovered badly as he fumbled to speak again, “Yeah. Yeah and - uh - that’s sort of the thing. I just… wanted to know things were being handled. On your end. I mean. You know. With her problem.”
Lee looked away and Helo watched his jaw jump in frustration. For a moment shock overcame him and he forgot he was talking about a woman who was, in all likeliness, dead. “Frak, Lee. It’s been… you’ve been out of hack a week and not once?”
“Eight days,” he clipped.
“You sure it just didn’t happen and you weren’t paying attention?”
Lee sank a little further into his seat and Helo almost felt sorry for him, “I was paying attention.”
Suddenly, Helo felt a lot worse. Lee had been paying attention and now… Now they were just waiting for someone to come and tell Lee that he’d taken his eye off the ball for a handful of minutes and lost everything.
*****
The Admiral was focused on the chart of the zone they’d left behind as if will alone could force it to offer up their lost pilot. Dee bristled with irritation. Kara was dead and there were things to do.
“Sir.” She called to the Colonel because all comments addressed to the Admiral had been ignored thus far. “Sir, the hangar is asking for a clearance to take three of the Vipers out of rotation for maintenance. Colonial One wants to know if the President will be returning today and the Mutem Wia has started offering up basic light sequences to nearby ships, distress signals they think, but hardly anyone can recognize them because no one out in the fleet reads light sequences anymore and it’s likely the Mutem Wia has them wrong anyway. We need to send help, they could be in trouble.”
Tigh nodded once, letting his eyes slide to the bent figure by the center console before nodding, “Get a party together, Dualla.”
But the Admiral made no move and Dee felt her lips compress into a thin line, “Plans should be made for a memorial.”
Kara was dead and in wartime it was best to bury the dead as they died. Nothing ruined the efficiency of a Battlestar like corpses hanging around and letting off a stink. Even if they were metaphorical corpses.
“Give it time,” Tigh barked.
Dee turned back from her console, “But I really think-”
Finally the Admiral spoke. “You’re relieved of duty, Petty Officer. Get out of my sight.”
By the time Dee made it out of the CIC, mild irritation had slid right into outright seething. Kara Thrace was dead and she was the only person who seemed able to accept it. What the frak had they lost anyway? The woman had hardly been a great thinker. She hadn’t single-handedly been responsible for the Fleet. Average at flying - Lee had always been better.
Kara Thrace had been a drunk and an unpaid whore.
Dee had known all along that Kara would only outrun her fate for so long. She wasn’t going to be made to feel ashamed for being the only person sane enough to have seen the writing on the wall all along.
Surely Lee would see reason? If anyone had even bothered to tell him. In fact, it really wasn’t fair that Lee hadn’t yet been informed that he was no doubt returned to CAG status. With that in mind Dee shifted course for her old quarters, reminding herself that this had nothing at all to do with the mild elation she felt at being the last woman left standing.
*****
So he’d given Kara her space. He’d taken the sofa after the second night and when she’d retaliated by taking the floor, he’d moved himself back to the bed and left the sofa to her. They’d kept up their uneasy truce. While Kara spent her days acting as CAG, Lee spent his running through potential pilot candidates with a fine-toothed comb. When night came, given Kara hadn’t landed herself a CAP, they’d put aside their paperwork and stare at each other for a handful of minutes until Lee would say “I love you”, prompting Kara to get up and turn the lights off.
Sometimes he’d do more than watch. He’d look and think and imagine then take himself to the shower, knowing that Kara knew damn well that all she ever had to do was follow. And if she had, she’d have found him enduring his own personal hell - back against the cold tiles, fist around his cock and her name on his lips.
But she never followed and he never forced the point. He had nothing but time and Kara seemed content to leave him to it.
But that afternoon had confirmed how desperate Lee was to get back up in the air. He’d been on his way to beg, if need be, for her support when he petitioned his father to fly again. Of course, that had been before Helo had shoe-horned him back into his room and parked himself between Lee and the door.
And suddenly, all he could think about was how his father probably wouldn’t let him off with something as simple as “unauthorized discharge of a firearm” for wrestling Helo the ground and choking the mother-frakking life out of him.
He frowned as he realized how the depth of his own ties with Kara had gone unmarked by his father so long. There were some things a person could know and not want to realize, like the fact that Kara and Helo had been together in the past. Maybe more than once.
It was tough enough that Helo had always had her confidence, now he also knew what Kara smelled like and the way she sort of stuttered her words during sex before giving up all attempts to communicate verbally. Lee was about to give up the mental anguish and just take a couple swings to leave them square when someone cracked the hatch. Dee leaned into the room, “Lee?”
Helo was up and out of his seat before she’d even finished, his hand spread across the hatch and pressing it shut.
Helo liked Dee about as much as Kara had, and that was long before he’d even looked at her. Helo had once confessed, after just a little too much of Caprica’s special brew that to him Dee was like nails on a chalkboard. Innocuous enough when you looked at it, but turn on the sound and shove it in his ear and something about the forced calm didn’t sit well with him.
“Lee!” Dee called as Helo pressed even harder against the door, “I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am about-”
Helo had shut the door and was about to dog it when Lee spoke, “What the hell are you doing? She could be coming on my father’s word or-”
“She isn’t.”
“Just let her in, Helo.” Lee’s voice was just shy of menacing.
“Can’t do it.”
“I said, let her in.”
“If it’s your father, he’ll ring. Dee can wait.”
Something was seriously wrong. Dee was sorry? About what?
Lee narrowed his eyes and realized that Helo was all too desperate to keep Lee in the room. What the frak could be so bad that they needed to quarantine Lee from the rest of the ship?
His stomach sank.
Kara.
Oh Gods. His mind revolted, unwilling to move beyond uttering her name over and over again. At some point, it stopped being in his head and started spilling from his mouth. He stumbled toward Helo and gripped at his shoulders, pulling his face down to his own.
“What happened?” His voice barely broke through the looping of her name.
Helo clenched his eyes shut and turned his head to the side, prompting Lee to strike out and grip his chin in his hand and turn Helo’s face back towards his own.
“What the frak happened?”
It was the tears that confirmed it, guilty and unshed, balancing precariously in Helo’s eyes as he spoke.
“They jumped without her.”
*****
It wasn’t… right. Tyrol had spent the last hour on deck trying to bend his mind around it and no matter how he twisted it; it just didn’t make sense that Kara would be restored to the Fleet, only to be hunted down again and singled out for… death.
Sam had told him shortly after her return that it meant big things. That Kara was one of them and things would start to make sense.
But if Kara was gone, they were back where they started. With her around, Earth had been their aim and Sam had even talked him around to thinking that she was on their side… and that their side wasn’t necessarily the Cylon side. She hadn’t been everything, but she’d been something. A speck of hope stacked up against a mountain of frak-only-knew how much trouble.
He smacked an open hand against the side of a Raptor and wondered if now wasn’t just the time to come clean and let things happen. Maybe Cally would under-
Someone was making a whole lot of frakking noise on the deck. It wasn’t like the deck was a quiet place, but in the past hour only the sounds of industry had rattled and buzzed around him. No one had been willing to speak. Except the frakkers tearing up his thoughtful silence with yells and wordless screams of frustration. He stepped back from the Raptor and moved quickly to the source of the noise. As soon as he had figured out what the problem was, he wondered if it wasn’t too late to haul ass in the other direction.
Helo sprawled across the deck, propelled by the force of Lee’s push, but he didn’t stay down for long before rising once more to his feet and getting up in the Major’s face. “Don’t be an idiot,” he spat.
“Get out of my way!” And again, Apollo’s hands were against Helo’s chest, pushing him out of the way. They staggered across the deck that way for awhile; Helo falling back, sometimes to the floor but never relenting and always pushing right back at Apollo, trying to stop him from…
Well, he could guess. Raptor, Adama, missing Kara. He didn’t need to be a Cylon to compute that.
“Get the frak out of my way, Agathon!”
“This is helping no one, Lee.” Tyrol almost admired Helo in that moment. Apollo was a scary sonofabitch when he wanted to be and he didn’t seem willing to make any sort of compromises. Still Helo was there, down and up, down and up, always bouncing back to try and talk reason into a man who no longer even knew the meaning of the word.
“It’s helping her! I will not leave her to this!”
It hung unsaid in the hangar that “this” had already happened, had probably happened as soon as she’d been left behind. If Apollo had a mind to retrieve her, he had to know that there was probably very little left to retrieve.
“Lee, it’s been…” Helo trailed of guiltily as the other man paused in his warpath.
“How long?”
“Over an hour. Be a realist, man, that long? One Viper against a Cylon fleet?”
Apollo smacked Helo out of the way once more. “Then I go alone.”
Tyrol had caught up with the men and was compelled to speak up, “You won’t be going at all, Sir. I have orders to prohibit you from doing just that thing.”
Finally it seemed to break through to him that he wasn’t going anywhere. Apollo was in a tracksuit, clearly having come recently from the gym. His flight suit was slung over his shoulder, his helmet hanging loosely at his side, held between shaking fingers. He turned his eyes to Helo and spoke so lowly that only Tyrol and Helo could hear him. “This isn’t a choice. This isn’t some frakking goose chase. This is Kara. How many times have I left her? Caprica, that frakking moon, New Caprica…”
“She left the Fleet, Lee. It was her choice.”
“She left me. Never the Fleet.” Lee spoke on instinct, clearly regretting the words as soon as they’d left his mouth. “She always came back, Helo,” he hissed, “But I can’t risk that she won’t. I can’t… I don’t want to die waiting for her.”
Something in what he said struck a chord in Helo and Tyrol was forced to wonder who’d charged Kara’s best friend with the task of stopping Lee from mounting a rescue mission. It had been a stupid idea, that much was clear as Helo drew his own sidearm and turned toward Tyrol with an apologetic shrug. “Two Raptors, Chief, and you can have your deck back.”
*****
Well.
Frak.
Frakfrakfrakfrak.
Frak.
Her mind cycled over and, really, that was all she could come up with. It had seemed like such a masterstroke. Hey, she was pretty sure that if she tried she could still move her hands… so maybe it was a masterstroke.
Of course she’d be a little more confident in the knowledge that she wasn’t out of her frakking mind if she’d been backed up on her insane call.
But no. Apparently ramming her Viper up the ass of the nearest, biggest ship she could find and piggybacking her way through the jump didn’t really count for much if no one was coming to get her. Gods, she couldn’t even remember its name. The… M… Metatarsi? Mute Minor? What the frak was it that made people want to outdo each other in terms of pretentious wanking when naming a vessel?
Kara rolled her eyes and felt an explosion of pain somewhere deep in her skull. If she was ever charged with the naming of a ship she’d name it something like “Big Frakker.” Because she was classy like that.
She reached up gingerly to turn on her helmet light (nice to know she could still use her arms) before quickly turning it off. Consciousness did not agree with her. It’s not like it helped her see past her nose anyway. It was dark, shades of grey and jagged shapes. By her best guess she’d been lucky and hit her mark, lodging her Viper somewhere in the guts of the cattle mover’s gaping starboard loading bay. How long she’d been unconscious, she couldn’t guess. All she knew was that if someone didn’t come and get her soon, her banging headache was going to be the least of her worries. She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath.
She needed to put out a call. The ship had to be blocking her beacons, their convergent signals would only show up under the signature of the strongest and she was willing to bet that the carrier had more oomph than her Viper.
She reached out and fumbled briefly before opening a channel to whoever the frak was listening. Nearest vessel, CIC… it didn’t matter as long as someone answered.
*****
Helo had to admit that his heart had never been in keeping Lee from Kara. Not really.
But he wasn’t sure how he felt about leaving his wife and child. They’d understand… but… loyalties warred in his gut before he spoke across the wire to Lee, “Spooling now, Lee. We’ve got Galactica jammed but it won’t be long before they launch alert Vipers. We need to jump now, last known coordinates. We need a game plan.”
“Save Kara.” Lee’s voice invited no argument.
“I was thinking of something a little less likely to get us killed.”
“Shoot Cylons and then save Kara.”
“Right, fantastic, I’ll take their squadrons, you take the Basestar. We’ll be home by dinner.”
“Be fast, stay low and hopefully they won’t-”
“Believe that we’re actually stupid enough to jump back into their midst for her?”
“Something like that.”
Helo made sure that his groan carried to Lee. “We’re going to die.”
There was a moment of pause before Lee spoke quietly, “You’re right.”
Silence buzzed and Helo’s mind raced. Was that an admission of defeat?
“Open a channel with Galactica,” Lee continued gently, “tell them you’re coming back in. Now harm, no foul.”
“And you?”
“She’s still out there. That’s where I need to be.”
Helo shook his head, then realized Lee couldn’t see him. He reached out to open a channel with Galactica. “-pollo and Helo, do not jump. I repeat, do not jump.”
Nothing shy of what he’d expected, “Lee, there has to be another-”
Something in the static of Galactica’s transmission caught his attention. “Lee, open your line. NOW!”
Helo listened, and took Lee’s silence for attention too. He could hardly believe it, but it didn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. Her voice cut through space and struck into the chests of everyone listening.
“This is Starbuck. Can anyone hear me? Galactica, come in. This is Starbuck. Staaaarrrrrrbuuuuuuck. Seriously, guys, stop frakking around and come get me.”
Author: becisvolatile
Part: 12/?
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Lee/Kara, Bill, Roslin, Helo, Sharon, Cottle, Anders, Dee, Leoben, Racetrack, Seelix.
Word Count: 4400+
Category: Novella
Genre: Romance, Angst, Action with Romance, PWP, Drama
Archiving: The Fallout Shelter, Apollo/Starbuck Fan Fic, Beyond Insane all others please ask
Warnings: Language, violence, sexual content, gratuitous sex, Spoilers: Up to and including S3
Summary: “Never mattered who got there first, not with Kara. It was the poor bastard who hung around that mattered.”
Beta: Angylinni is made of awesome. And is soon to owe me some RPF.
Previous Chapters:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Dee wasn’t sure how she felt. She’d never really wished Kara ill. She just hadn’t liked Kara helping herself to her husband. Not that it mattered anymore because, oh frak, Kara Thrace was gone. Really gone. Even the Admiral wouldn’t jump back toward a Basestar to retrieve Kara.
Would he?
Dee eyed him as he gripped the center console and dipped his head as the words sank in. The entire CIC paused and she bristled, this level of gravity was a luxury the control staff rarely allowed themselves. But Kara was always the exception. Maybe more so because it was the second time the command had been rocked by the news of her demise.
With a heavy sigh she turned back to the incoming reports from the Fleet, all present and accounted for, except -
“Sir.” She alerted the Colonel, aware that half the CIC was still locked in a moment of silence that no one was willing to break until the Admiral moved. “Sir, I have the Mutem Wia in my sights, but they’re making no attempt to contact. There’s a chance that their communications tower was taken out by the Raider debris that… that damaged Starbuck’s Viper. Should we deploy-”
Tigh held up a hand and shook his head, “It’ll keep, Petty Officer. Call in Racetrack, we need to know what happened out there and-”
“Dee,” the Admiral stood straight and turned to her, cutting across his XO, “I need Helo on the line.”
Dee turned back to her console and cast her voice throughout the Battlestar, “Pass the word to Captain Agathon, Captain Agathon to contact the CIC immediately. Repeat, Captain Agathon to contact the CIC.”
She reached for the handset before it buzzed once and answered it, “CIC.”
“Captain Agathon here.” Dee wasn’t certain, but Helo had been on downtime when the Basestar had jumped in, he’d never even made it into the fight. She cleared her throat and held out the handset for the Admiral before shamelessly following the one-sided conversation that followed.
“Helo, son, I need you to listen carefully.” He spoke with urgency despite leaning heavily against Dee’s workstation. “I need you to find Lee. I need you to find him and occupy him. Keep him away from the crew; keep him away from the hangar deck. I need your word that you won’t leave him alone for a second until I direct you otherwise.”
There was a pause as Helo spoke. The Admiral’s face hardened as he answered, “No. No, sending Kara… isn’t possible.”
He closed his eyes as Helo asked the inevitable. What’s happened to Kara?
“Now isn’t the time. Just… just go to Lee.”
*****
Helo wanted to hit something. Hard.
Oh, he knew he was the only person left to keep Lee at bay… but… something told him it was time to be mourning. Why else was he being sent to detain Lee, if not to protect him from his own grief? Lee had survived Kara’s death once, he wouldn’t take it as well a second time. Especially not if they were together, which Hot Dog’s black eye, resulting from cornering Kara with the ill-planned question “So… you and the CAG?”, was any suggestion. Although, Helo wasn’t sure her reaction hadn’t been something as simple as offering the pilot a physical reminder that she was the CAG.
Helo turned first towards the hangar bay, if Kara had been out there Lee would be preparing for her to taxi in. If he was quick enough, he’d catch Lee on the way there. He kicked it up to a jog. A post-jump crew was wired enough; putting a less than stable Lee into the equation wasn’t going to help anyone. He caught Lee just shy of the hangar bay and knew it was him instantly by the tension stacked between his shoulder blades. Lee was doing his best not to run.
It was wrong. It was so frakking wrong. All he really wanted to do was find Sharon and give her a godsdamned good reason not to play the way Kara always had in the air. Could he even look Lee in the eye and just pretend that a great chunk of both their hearts was just… gone? He was going to find out.
“Hey, Lee! Man I got this thing I need to talk to you about.” He called out to Lee’s back and the other man turned back, waving him away as he replied.
“I’ll catch you in a minute, I wanted to sit in on the debriefing and-”
“It’s important.” Gods. Helo’s cut churned, he’d never lied easily, especially not when what he was hiding was eating so massively at him. Maybe…
Maybe she was still back there. How many times had they just left her to the Cylons? Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe he and Lee could get down to the Raptors and-
Lee nodded once and turned back, “What is it?”
Helo blinked once and cleared his head, “Not here. Can we go to your office? It’s personal.”
Lee’s face flashed with irritation, “Look, I just need to hear how it went out there and then I’ll meet you there.”
Helo held up his hand and offered a weak smile. “Successful jump, man. We’re alive, aren’t we?”
Lee nodded once and smiled.
Helo felt a piece of his soul wither.
*****
Margaret ran her hands up her arms and shook her head, “I don’t… I don’t… maybe it was… she made a call, said there was debris going my way but I couldn’t see it. It was coming from - frak, I don’t know where. But then Starbuck is there rolling under me, taking the brunt of it against her carriage. Said she was fine and then we’re inbound and she wasn’t there. She didn’t even -” She cleared her throat and looked up to the Admiral. There was the strangest mix of impatience and acceptance in his eyes. He wanted answers, but knew that he’d be waiting a while. “She didn’t seem scared. Just pissed that I couldn’t see it. Told me to open my eyes and when I couldn’t, she said ‘Frak it, I got you.’ That’s it. I swear.”
“And no one,” his voice was so hard Margaret winced, “No one saw anything?”
“Sir,” Hot Dog spoke up this time, “We just wanted to come home.”
With a resigned nod, the Admiral turned on his heel and left.
*****
It was no small smack in the face that the only thing Helo could think of to keep Lee from Kara was… Kara. He followed Lee into his quarters and watched the other man sit before moving a chair to conveniently place him between Lee and the hatch. Helo took a second to survey the room and tried to find an idea. The bed was made. Tightly. The sofa had a pillow and a throw resting across the arm and Helo gathered they hadn’t exactly been blissful in their extramarital bed. It wasn’t ideal, but he was pretty sure Lee would take the bait.
“I have a friend with problems.”
Lee’s eyebrows jumped in question, “Flight problems?”
Helo shook his head.
“Legal?”
He shook it again and spoke, “This friend is… she’s not enjoying something she used to enjoy. Excel at, even.”
That got Lee’s attention. His hands fell to the arms of his chair and Helo realized his mistake as Lee clutched the chair so tightly his forearms flexed, “And how did you find out about her problem?”
Helo held up his hands, “Not that way. I swear it to the Gods, man, never that way.”
“Never?” Lee seemed to want confirmation, and on top of the half-truths and moot conversations Helo just didn’t think he could outright lie to him on that count.
“Not since before Zak.” And maybe just once after. Twice. Five times and maybe a sixth, but he wasn’t sure that counted as intercourse and wasn’t compelled to discuss the technicalities of frakking Kara. Besides, he had a wife and kid, no need to be getting his ass thrown out an airlock before his time.
Lee released the arms of the chair and fell back into it, his face hardening. “Frak me.”
“You asked.”
“You could have lied.”
“Why should I? If you’d asked Kara, she’d have told you about it herself. It was only ever… fun. You know, for those days going off base seemed like too much effort.”
“Zak hated you, you know. Kara’s ‘Frakker ECO mate’, guess he saw what I didn’t.”
“I’m pretty sure Kara came clean with him on that count pretty early on. I remember her being pissed because Zak had wanted to know how many there’d been before him. You should have seen her at the bar that night, knocking them back and muttering about an ‘alphabetized, indexed and cross-referenced list’.”
Lee seemed a little calmer at the mental image of Kara in her element. Drunk off her ass and mad at the world. “Zak never did get it,” Lee said to no one in particular, “Never mattered who got there first, not with Kara. It was the poor bastard who hung around that mattered.”
Helo couldn’t argue. “And you were planning on hanging around?” he asked softly.
Lee’s eyebrows drew together as he shifted the tense, “I plan on hanging around, yeah.”
Helo silently cursed himself for his slip and recovered badly as he fumbled to speak again, “Yeah. Yeah and - uh - that’s sort of the thing. I just… wanted to know things were being handled. On your end. I mean. You know. With her problem.”
Lee looked away and Helo watched his jaw jump in frustration. For a moment shock overcame him and he forgot he was talking about a woman who was, in all likeliness, dead. “Frak, Lee. It’s been… you’ve been out of hack a week and not once?”
“Eight days,” he clipped.
“You sure it just didn’t happen and you weren’t paying attention?”
Lee sank a little further into his seat and Helo almost felt sorry for him, “I was paying attention.”
Suddenly, Helo felt a lot worse. Lee had been paying attention and now… Now they were just waiting for someone to come and tell Lee that he’d taken his eye off the ball for a handful of minutes and lost everything.
*****
The Admiral was focused on the chart of the zone they’d left behind as if will alone could force it to offer up their lost pilot. Dee bristled with irritation. Kara was dead and there were things to do.
“Sir.” She called to the Colonel because all comments addressed to the Admiral had been ignored thus far. “Sir, the hangar is asking for a clearance to take three of the Vipers out of rotation for maintenance. Colonial One wants to know if the President will be returning today and the Mutem Wia has started offering up basic light sequences to nearby ships, distress signals they think, but hardly anyone can recognize them because no one out in the fleet reads light sequences anymore and it’s likely the Mutem Wia has them wrong anyway. We need to send help, they could be in trouble.”
Tigh nodded once, letting his eyes slide to the bent figure by the center console before nodding, “Get a party together, Dualla.”
But the Admiral made no move and Dee felt her lips compress into a thin line, “Plans should be made for a memorial.”
Kara was dead and in wartime it was best to bury the dead as they died. Nothing ruined the efficiency of a Battlestar like corpses hanging around and letting off a stink. Even if they were metaphorical corpses.
“Give it time,” Tigh barked.
Dee turned back from her console, “But I really think-”
Finally the Admiral spoke. “You’re relieved of duty, Petty Officer. Get out of my sight.”
By the time Dee made it out of the CIC, mild irritation had slid right into outright seething. Kara Thrace was dead and she was the only person who seemed able to accept it. What the frak had they lost anyway? The woman had hardly been a great thinker. She hadn’t single-handedly been responsible for the Fleet. Average at flying - Lee had always been better.
Kara Thrace had been a drunk and an unpaid whore.
Dee had known all along that Kara would only outrun her fate for so long. She wasn’t going to be made to feel ashamed for being the only person sane enough to have seen the writing on the wall all along.
Surely Lee would see reason? If anyone had even bothered to tell him. In fact, it really wasn’t fair that Lee hadn’t yet been informed that he was no doubt returned to CAG status. With that in mind Dee shifted course for her old quarters, reminding herself that this had nothing at all to do with the mild elation she felt at being the last woman left standing.
*****
So he’d given Kara her space. He’d taken the sofa after the second night and when she’d retaliated by taking the floor, he’d moved himself back to the bed and left the sofa to her. They’d kept up their uneasy truce. While Kara spent her days acting as CAG, Lee spent his running through potential pilot candidates with a fine-toothed comb. When night came, given Kara hadn’t landed herself a CAP, they’d put aside their paperwork and stare at each other for a handful of minutes until Lee would say “I love you”, prompting Kara to get up and turn the lights off.
Sometimes he’d do more than watch. He’d look and think and imagine then take himself to the shower, knowing that Kara knew damn well that all she ever had to do was follow. And if she had, she’d have found him enduring his own personal hell - back against the cold tiles, fist around his cock and her name on his lips.
But she never followed and he never forced the point. He had nothing but time and Kara seemed content to leave him to it.
But that afternoon had confirmed how desperate Lee was to get back up in the air. He’d been on his way to beg, if need be, for her support when he petitioned his father to fly again. Of course, that had been before Helo had shoe-horned him back into his room and parked himself between Lee and the door.
And suddenly, all he could think about was how his father probably wouldn’t let him off with something as simple as “unauthorized discharge of a firearm” for wrestling Helo the ground and choking the mother-frakking life out of him.
He frowned as he realized how the depth of his own ties with Kara had gone unmarked by his father so long. There were some things a person could know and not want to realize, like the fact that Kara and Helo had been together in the past. Maybe more than once.
It was tough enough that Helo had always had her confidence, now he also knew what Kara smelled like and the way she sort of stuttered her words during sex before giving up all attempts to communicate verbally. Lee was about to give up the mental anguish and just take a couple swings to leave them square when someone cracked the hatch. Dee leaned into the room, “Lee?”
Helo was up and out of his seat before she’d even finished, his hand spread across the hatch and pressing it shut.
Helo liked Dee about as much as Kara had, and that was long before he’d even looked at her. Helo had once confessed, after just a little too much of Caprica’s special brew that to him Dee was like nails on a chalkboard. Innocuous enough when you looked at it, but turn on the sound and shove it in his ear and something about the forced calm didn’t sit well with him.
“Lee!” Dee called as Helo pressed even harder against the door, “I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am about-”
Helo had shut the door and was about to dog it when Lee spoke, “What the hell are you doing? She could be coming on my father’s word or-”
“She isn’t.”
“Just let her in, Helo.” Lee’s voice was just shy of menacing.
“Can’t do it.”
“I said, let her in.”
“If it’s your father, he’ll ring. Dee can wait.”
Something was seriously wrong. Dee was sorry? About what?
Lee narrowed his eyes and realized that Helo was all too desperate to keep Lee in the room. What the frak could be so bad that they needed to quarantine Lee from the rest of the ship?
His stomach sank.
Kara.
Oh Gods. His mind revolted, unwilling to move beyond uttering her name over and over again. At some point, it stopped being in his head and started spilling from his mouth. He stumbled toward Helo and gripped at his shoulders, pulling his face down to his own.
“What happened?” His voice barely broke through the looping of her name.
Helo clenched his eyes shut and turned his head to the side, prompting Lee to strike out and grip his chin in his hand and turn Helo’s face back towards his own.
“What the frak happened?”
It was the tears that confirmed it, guilty and unshed, balancing precariously in Helo’s eyes as he spoke.
“They jumped without her.”
*****
It wasn’t… right. Tyrol had spent the last hour on deck trying to bend his mind around it and no matter how he twisted it; it just didn’t make sense that Kara would be restored to the Fleet, only to be hunted down again and singled out for… death.
Sam had told him shortly after her return that it meant big things. That Kara was one of them and things would start to make sense.
But if Kara was gone, they were back where they started. With her around, Earth had been their aim and Sam had even talked him around to thinking that she was on their side… and that their side wasn’t necessarily the Cylon side. She hadn’t been everything, but she’d been something. A speck of hope stacked up against a mountain of frak-only-knew how much trouble.
He smacked an open hand against the side of a Raptor and wondered if now wasn’t just the time to come clean and let things happen. Maybe Cally would under-
Someone was making a whole lot of frakking noise on the deck. It wasn’t like the deck was a quiet place, but in the past hour only the sounds of industry had rattled and buzzed around him. No one had been willing to speak. Except the frakkers tearing up his thoughtful silence with yells and wordless screams of frustration. He stepped back from the Raptor and moved quickly to the source of the noise. As soon as he had figured out what the problem was, he wondered if it wasn’t too late to haul ass in the other direction.
Helo sprawled across the deck, propelled by the force of Lee’s push, but he didn’t stay down for long before rising once more to his feet and getting up in the Major’s face. “Don’t be an idiot,” he spat.
“Get out of my way!” And again, Apollo’s hands were against Helo’s chest, pushing him out of the way. They staggered across the deck that way for awhile; Helo falling back, sometimes to the floor but never relenting and always pushing right back at Apollo, trying to stop him from…
Well, he could guess. Raptor, Adama, missing Kara. He didn’t need to be a Cylon to compute that.
“Get the frak out of my way, Agathon!”
“This is helping no one, Lee.” Tyrol almost admired Helo in that moment. Apollo was a scary sonofabitch when he wanted to be and he didn’t seem willing to make any sort of compromises. Still Helo was there, down and up, down and up, always bouncing back to try and talk reason into a man who no longer even knew the meaning of the word.
“It’s helping her! I will not leave her to this!”
It hung unsaid in the hangar that “this” had already happened, had probably happened as soon as she’d been left behind. If Apollo had a mind to retrieve her, he had to know that there was probably very little left to retrieve.
“Lee, it’s been…” Helo trailed of guiltily as the other man paused in his warpath.
“How long?”
“Over an hour. Be a realist, man, that long? One Viper against a Cylon fleet?”
Apollo smacked Helo out of the way once more. “Then I go alone.”
Tyrol had caught up with the men and was compelled to speak up, “You won’t be going at all, Sir. I have orders to prohibit you from doing just that thing.”
Finally it seemed to break through to him that he wasn’t going anywhere. Apollo was in a tracksuit, clearly having come recently from the gym. His flight suit was slung over his shoulder, his helmet hanging loosely at his side, held between shaking fingers. He turned his eyes to Helo and spoke so lowly that only Tyrol and Helo could hear him. “This isn’t a choice. This isn’t some frakking goose chase. This is Kara. How many times have I left her? Caprica, that frakking moon, New Caprica…”
“She left the Fleet, Lee. It was her choice.”
“She left me. Never the Fleet.” Lee spoke on instinct, clearly regretting the words as soon as they’d left his mouth. “She always came back, Helo,” he hissed, “But I can’t risk that she won’t. I can’t… I don’t want to die waiting for her.”
Something in what he said struck a chord in Helo and Tyrol was forced to wonder who’d charged Kara’s best friend with the task of stopping Lee from mounting a rescue mission. It had been a stupid idea, that much was clear as Helo drew his own sidearm and turned toward Tyrol with an apologetic shrug. “Two Raptors, Chief, and you can have your deck back.”
*****
Well.
Frak.
Frakfrakfrakfrak.
Frak.
Her mind cycled over and, really, that was all she could come up with. It had seemed like such a masterstroke. Hey, she was pretty sure that if she tried she could still move her hands… so maybe it was a masterstroke.
Of course she’d be a little more confident in the knowledge that she wasn’t out of her frakking mind if she’d been backed up on her insane call.
But no. Apparently ramming her Viper up the ass of the nearest, biggest ship she could find and piggybacking her way through the jump didn’t really count for much if no one was coming to get her. Gods, she couldn’t even remember its name. The… M… Metatarsi? Mute Minor? What the frak was it that made people want to outdo each other in terms of pretentious wanking when naming a vessel?
Kara rolled her eyes and felt an explosion of pain somewhere deep in her skull. If she was ever charged with the naming of a ship she’d name it something like “Big Frakker.” Because she was classy like that.
She reached up gingerly to turn on her helmet light (nice to know she could still use her arms) before quickly turning it off. Consciousness did not agree with her. It’s not like it helped her see past her nose anyway. It was dark, shades of grey and jagged shapes. By her best guess she’d been lucky and hit her mark, lodging her Viper somewhere in the guts of the cattle mover’s gaping starboard loading bay. How long she’d been unconscious, she couldn’t guess. All she knew was that if someone didn’t come and get her soon, her banging headache was going to be the least of her worries. She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath.
She needed to put out a call. The ship had to be blocking her beacons, their convergent signals would only show up under the signature of the strongest and she was willing to bet that the carrier had more oomph than her Viper.
She reached out and fumbled briefly before opening a channel to whoever the frak was listening. Nearest vessel, CIC… it didn’t matter as long as someone answered.
*****
Helo had to admit that his heart had never been in keeping Lee from Kara. Not really.
But he wasn’t sure how he felt about leaving his wife and child. They’d understand… but… loyalties warred in his gut before he spoke across the wire to Lee, “Spooling now, Lee. We’ve got Galactica jammed but it won’t be long before they launch alert Vipers. We need to jump now, last known coordinates. We need a game plan.”
“Save Kara.” Lee’s voice invited no argument.
“I was thinking of something a little less likely to get us killed.”
“Shoot Cylons and then save Kara.”
“Right, fantastic, I’ll take their squadrons, you take the Basestar. We’ll be home by dinner.”
“Be fast, stay low and hopefully they won’t-”
“Believe that we’re actually stupid enough to jump back into their midst for her?”
“Something like that.”
Helo made sure that his groan carried to Lee. “We’re going to die.”
There was a moment of pause before Lee spoke quietly, “You’re right.”
Silence buzzed and Helo’s mind raced. Was that an admission of defeat?
“Open a channel with Galactica,” Lee continued gently, “tell them you’re coming back in. Now harm, no foul.”
“And you?”
“She’s still out there. That’s where I need to be.”
Helo shook his head, then realized Lee couldn’t see him. He reached out to open a channel with Galactica. “-pollo and Helo, do not jump. I repeat, do not jump.”
Nothing shy of what he’d expected, “Lee, there has to be another-”
Something in the static of Galactica’s transmission caught his attention. “Lee, open your line. NOW!”
Helo listened, and took Lee’s silence for attention too. He could hardly believe it, but it didn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. Her voice cut through space and struck into the chests of everyone listening.
“This is Starbuck. Can anyone hear me? Galactica, come in. This is Starbuck. Staaaarrrrrrbuuuuuuck. Seriously, guys, stop frakking around and come get me.”