BSG Fic - Reparation, 14/?
Title: Reparation
Author: becisvolatile
Part: 14/?
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Lee/Kara, Bill, Roslin, Helo, Sharon, Cottle, Anders, Dee, Leoben, Racetrack, Seelix.
Word Count: 5400+
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,
Spoilers: Up to and including S3
Summary: Either she’d wanted Lee gone, or she’d just watched him leave. Whichever the case, the endgame remained unchanged.
Lee was gone.
Beta: Angylinni does her thing and makes me look semi-literate.
Previous Chapters:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Gods, she didn’t even know why she was crying.
No, wait, she knew. It’s just that the reasons were so many, she couldn’t pin down any single one and point to it accusingly. It wasn’t the kiss. It wasn’t the way he’d thrown her down on the bed. It wasn’t even the sharp stabbing in her knee, as if the bones of her leg were grinding together unmediated by cartilage.
He was gone. Gone and gone and gone. Wasn’t that what she wanted? Wasn’t that what she’d been gunning for?
No. Not even a little. But there was no difference between making something happen and letting something happen. Either she’d wanted Lee gone, or she’d just watched him leave. Whichever the case, the endgame remained unchanged.
Lee was gone.
Oh, he’d said it wasn’t over, but it didn’t matter. As far as she was concerned, it had to be over.
He’d wanted to die for her? He’d wanted to share her burdens? He wanted to give her space?
Gods help her but she wanted those things too. How long could she keep letting Lee chip away at himself for her, could she let him take on everything? Gods, what she’d just learned about her own frakking body? That alone was too much.
It was time she forced her mind to turn to things that mattered. Maybe not to her, but to the Fleet.
Cylons, Earth, lies and why the frak someone wanted her pregnant? Those were things that she could no longer avoid. Those were the things that Kara was going to have to invest her time into.
*****
Laura had joked often about expecting to wake up dead, but she’d taken to greeting every morning with mild surprise and suspicion. Surely not much longer.
“Madame President,” the Marine - Cutter? - nodded, “You’re looking well.”
He’d accompanied Kara Thrace to Colonial One. Kara, however, lacked his tact and narrowed her eyes as she regarded Laura, “You look like crap.”
“Refreshing as ever, Starbuck.”
Kara shrugged, “You want me to fawn?”
“Gods, no. Who has time for that? Let’s be honest.”
Kara nodded, but stood very still in front of the seat Laura had offered her, despite leaning heavily on the walking stick in her hand. Kara had no intention of making her stay a long one, which made Laura all the more curious as to why Kara had been so adamant that she be received that very morning. “Honest? There are five unrevealed Cylons in the fleet.”
“Of that I am aware,” Laura shifted, adjusting her pencil skirt about her knees.
“I have the identity of four of them.” Kara’s eyes drifted to the corner of the room and Laura realized her slip. Tory’s presence, given her poorly covered affair with Kara’s husband, may have been in bad taste.
“Why do I think you won’t be sharing that with me today?”
Kara shrugged, “You don’t know what I know. This is… older than you think. It reaches back.”
“I don’t doubt that this is all predestined, Kara. I know you don’t fail to see the design here.”
“Yes.” Kara’s eyes flickered, almost as if she was finally accepting the truth of her own words, “And my belief is that these four… maybe even the fifth are… destined to help. Guides. Catalysts. They aren’t done.”
Laura sat back into her seat. She could very well have Kara thrown from the nearest airlock. The Marine at her side may not help, but there were people who would still do as she asked…
“I wouldn’t,” Kara’s voice dropped. “You mean a lot to these people, but I mean no less than you. We’re bound in this. You may lead them to Earth, Roslin, but you won’t get there without me.”
“You came here to remind me of that?”
“I’ve come to ask for your help.”
Laura felt years of diplomacy rise to cover her delicate snort, “And, like the swell, aid will be at their backs. Offering momentum and direction, but threatening like the descending crest, promising the wrath of Poseidon.”
“What?” The one word was sharp and Kara’s voice broke around it.
“Pythia. It’s from the book of Pythia. You want my help, Kara, aren’t you afraid of the cost?”
Even as she asked, Laura noted that, no, Kara didn’t really seem concerned. Kara Thrace was a woman accustomed to settling old debts. Even though, if Bill was right, she and Lee had far from settled their own score.
“You should be more afraid of the cost if I’m not given what I need.”
“And what do you need?”
“Unlimited access to the Leoben.”
Again, Laura had to hide her reaction. She stifled a mirthless laugh before speaking. “I understand we’re running short on those. I mean, between you and Apollo executing them.”
“That would be why I need you to… persuade the Admiral. Because you understand.”
It weighed heavily on her. Yes, she understood. But she understood many things. Leoben was there for a reason, that much Kara seemed certain of. But the Leoben had never left the Fleet, or Kara, unscathed. Could she really persuade Bill to compromise Kara’s safety for something that may, or may not, help them find Earth? Perhaps she could strike a bargain. The four Cylons for access to Leoben. One look at Kara told her that it wasn’t a likely outcome.
“If your Cylons harm the Fleet…” she began, but Kara was already moving from the room.
“It won’t come to that.”
“If it does… don’t think your special destiny will save your ass.”
*****
Cutter was damn near ready to wet his pants. The president had outright threatened Starbuck. Had promised pain… and… Gods, but maybe Starbuck had it coming.
“Four Cylons?” he whispered, desperate for her to deny it.
Kara turned in her seat and Cutter clutched a little tighter at his harness. Frak, he hated flying in small crafts. Raptors were no exception.
“You afraid of Cylons now?”
He passed a hand over his jaw, clean shaven in deference to the morning’s presidential audience. “Why the frak did you have to take me with you?”
“You don’t strike me as the sort to share what I just said around the water cooler.”
“I never imagined I’d be punished for discretion.”
Kara shrugged and gripped a little tighter at the controls. Cutter slid his eyes to her once more…. “But if I were the type to stand around a water cooler…”
“What?”
“You’ve got a stalker.”
“Ah, frak me. Look, Lee is just being…”
He held up a hand to cut her off. Adama wasn’t stalking her. The Major was frakking dogging her. Thrace didn’t take two steps without that man at her heels. Rumor was that they’d called it quits just after her accident two days earlier, but you wouldn’t know it to watch him magically appear and hold up walls wherever she was.
“I was talking about the other one.”
“Helo’s being a pain in the ass… He’s pissy about the knee. Thinks it’s his fault because he-”
Whoa. Cutter reached out and drummed his fingers against his knee as he spoke, “The other one.”
“What?”
“The nugget.”
Kara groaned a little. “No frakking way.”
“Yeah, my height, Raptor pilot? Played Pyramid on Caprica?”
“Anders. My husband.”
Cutter really tried not to laugh. He tried so freaking hard. After all, Thrace had rank… but she also had a Viper-wreck of a love-life and Cutter was suddenly feeling as though he’d dodged one hell of a bullet the night he’d turned the Mighty Starbuck down.
Hey, he had to have something to soften the blow of spending the past two hours alongside the hottest thing he’d ever had the privilege of passing up.
*****
Kara straddled the chair and considered him. He’d always expected her to come. He hadn’t expected that she’d take so much time, or even that she’d be unescorted.
She looked well, even though she’d favored one leg. She didn’t seem to be suffering at all from her-
“I’m pregnant.” Her voice was flat and her eyes accusing.
Click, click, whirr. The dates added up, even though her body had been traumatized and she’d only given into him the once… He smiled, well aware how much she hated to see the triumph written on his face.
“I’d tell you everything is going to be okay, Kara. I’m not one to shrug off my responsibilities but…” He held his hands wide to encompass the cell around them.
“I wouldn’t worry. The figures are ambiguous enough. It could actually be a child born in wedlock. A human child.” There was something she wasn’t saying. But Leoben’s mind was already beyond the cell. Hadn’t the Hybrid said that? Her destiny… a child. His child.
“I need…” Kara paused and tilted her head to the side, making it clear that she had no desire to be in the cell with him. “There are complications. I need to know what I am to combat them.”
He moved closer to the edge of his cot, eyes falling to his knees as he considered what she had said. It could be a ruse, probably was. Humans always liked to gain the upper hand by giving them what they thought they wanted. Hadn’t Kara done as much when she’d kissed a past incarnation of himself as she drove a blade deep into his gut?
Out of the corner of his eye he watched her hand disappear behind the back of the chair to pass over her abdomen. She realized his eyes had followed her hand and leaned forward, crossing her arms.
Not a ruse.
“Those suits of yours,” he began, “They’re made to withstand so much. But being blown up… well, that much pressure on the body? When we got to you, Kara, you were little more than goo held together by your flight suit. Not dead, though. Well, that’s a lie. Technically, yes, dead. And by your own means of medicine? Well beyond saving. You can’t repair what’s been torn to pieces and pulped. But you can replace it. If you’ve got the right parts.”
“So what, you slapped me together with a couple Boomers? A D’anna? A couple Leoben kidneys?”
“Your death was anticipated.” The chair creaked and he was sure she shuffled it back a little, “The Hybrid foresaw it.”
“You know, I dreamed about you.” The admission caught him by surprise. For a second he was unreasonably pleased, but as she continued, it didn’t last. “Before I died. You were everything. You guided me through so much. Made me face so much. In my dream we… we didn’t frak. We made love and I’d never wanted anything so much.”
Was she finally confessing that she felt for him? Genuinely?
“But it wasn’t you. It wasn’t anything. Maybe it was… Khronos,” she smiled a little bleakly at her own flight of fancy, “Making me move on and let go.”
“You came to me.” He tried not to make the words sound so desperate. “You came to me. We released you from your cell and you came to me.”
Her eyes closed and fluttered, as though she was on the brink of some great discovery that she couldn’t quite pin down, but she opened them before long, something sad, but not defeated in her eyes. “I went to the nearest airlock, Gods, I remember that now. I was…” she touched a finger to her lip and swallowed before continuing, “I was in so much pain, and there were pins and plates and… you hadn’t sealed half of the operation sites. You were still - constructing. But I made it. Gods, I frakking made it halfway through that filthy frakking ship and I found an airlock.”
“You very nearly bled out. We’d been so careful to only use your own, cloned, blood, but you’d spread it everywhere. We ran out and had to use our own synthetic brands. We’d wanted you whole and human. Your fate seemed to hinge on that. Your head, even your heart - with repair - we replaced the ovary that we’d harvested on Caprica, the one we’d used to cultivate your replacement parts, we even managed to save the one you’d possessed during the crash. And you wanted to vent yourself into space. If it’s any consolation, I did petition for appropriate pain killers, be we never did really stock them. What would be the point? If the pain was that great, we’d just finish ourselves off and regenerate. We had nothing to offer you and I think that contributed to your blacking out the memory.”
Kara shook her head, as if there were still things she didn’t understand, “If you were so bent on keeping me… wholly natural, why the fertility drugs?”
Leoben let his eyes drop to the floor. He’d suffered for that. They’d near boxed him for his interference, both the chemical and sexual. How had they not seen the wisdom? They had proof of the Hybrid’s validity. She had said Kara would die and be revived at their hands and she had, so why did they not believe that Kara would conceive? He’d only sought to help nature. “That was my doing.”
Kara paused and, once again, he knew he’d underestimated her. “They let me go after that, didn’t they? I was a point of contention.”
“You were a liability. You tried to vent yourself and you compromised our Basestar. They deemed you more valuable set onto discovering the final five.”
She absorbed the information and searched his face for a moment before pressing further, “When did… when did we-”
“Don’t,” he cut her off, “You may think that I never looked after your interests, but I promise you, in this count I am. Don’t look to remember that instance, Kara. You’ve forgotten it for a reason.”
*****
Cutter held Kara up at the exit from the brig, “Pregnant, Starbuck? To a Cylon? But you were throwing back shots with your ration at lun-”
“I’m not pregnant,” she clipped as she passed him.
“But you said-”
“I said what he needed to hear to feel that he could tell me what I wanted to know.”
“And now you know?”
That stopped her in her tracks; she rocked back on her heels, considering the question. “Is it insane that I feel lighter knowing all this? I mean, I’m frakking spare parts and Cylon junk and finally, I actually feel… okay?”
Cutter shrugged, “I read this thing once. They grew an ear on the back of a mouse and tried to sew it onto this guy that had lost his. It didn’t take but… if it had? I think he’d have felt okay too. I mean it’s still all you, right?”
Kara looked down at her body and grinned back up at him, “Well, you missed your chance to find out, didn’t you?”
*****
Dee rocked back onto her heels.
Surely she’d heard it wrong… she’d spent too much of her night wandering around the Battlestar avoiding, well, everyone. Now her lack of sleep was catching up with her, because damned if she hadn’t just passed hack to hear the words “Pregnant” and “Starbuck” in quick succession. But she had. Oh, she had.
Lee’s? No. Not that. The dates just didn’t line up. Sam’s? It was possible… or maybe her time with the Cylons?
It didn’t matter though, and for a brief moment Dee felt sorry for Kara. Pregnant. The Mighty Starbuck had finally been hoist by her own petard. Kara never had understood that sex had more than one purpose.
*****
Sam was propped up against one wall of the gym, Lee against the other. Both were pretending to take a prolonged period of recovery after a few punishing sets. Both were eyeing each other as though they’d very much like to take their issues outside.
As in airlock outside.
Lee pushed off from the wall and Sam did the same, meeting him in the middle of the room. They stood, their toes nudging the vacant sparring mat, and exchanged a glance that should have cleared the room, but only really served to pique the interest of the bored.
“Adama,” Sam muttered, quietly enough that only Lee could hear him.
“You? You call me Sir.”
Sam looked very much like he wanted to call Lee any number of things, but none of them were “Sir”.
“You’ve been following her,” Lee observed quietly.
“You left her,” Sam accused. “The whole frakking Fleet knows that she damn near died out there and you packed your bags before she was even out of the Life Station.”
“You’ve been misinformed.” Lee shifted onto the mat and Sam followed suit, “I told you once that you were done with Kara. I meant it.”
“Was that before or after you stepped into the room where I’d just frakked-”
Lee smacked the rest of the words from Sam’s mouth. Sam launched himself at Lee, taking the shorter man to the mat. It wasn’t long until Lee had a moment of advantage and reared up on top of Sam, pulling back his fist to-
Someone grabbed the back of his sweatshirt and yanked, trying to haul him to his feet. In his ear he could hear Helo hissing the one word, “Probation!” and that was enough to make him let go. For now. If he was caught in a fist-fight, his ass would be back in hack before he knew it. And that wasn’t a place he could afford to be again.
Not when he finally had a plan of attack. Not when he’d finally resolved to give Kara her space in private, while marking her every public moment with his presence. Just to remind her that he was there. That he cared. That he wasn’t going anywhere.
He had to wonder if she was making any headway with her… ah, head, but it had been two days. How much clarity could she have found? Trouble? Sure. She could be up to her ass in that in a nanosecond, but self-actualization? He wasn’t holding his breath. He’d even reconsidered the seven day deadline he’d given the separation. If she hadn’t come to him by then, well, frak it. He’d go to her and get on his mother-frakking knees and beg.
*****
Gym. She needed some time in the gym. Too much thinking was doing her head in. Because, you know, with telling a Cylon that you were about to bear his love-child and all, she was feeling a little in over her head.
Leoben would freak when he found out it wasn’t real. Hell, she’d been amazed that he’d bought it in the first place. But, oh, then hadn’t she eventually come to consider Kasey as her own? Cylon frakker was about to learn how shitty it was to have the shoe on the other foot.
Someone stepped out of the gym and held the hatch open for Kara, she nodded once and stepped in, hoping no one noticed how quickly she’d ditched the knee brace.
A couple things happened at once. First, a large arm shot out, catching her around the neck and dragging her to the side. Helo, “Heads up,” he said beside her ear.
But she didn’t need the warning. Sam was down on the mat, spitting out what surely couldn’t be a tooth and Lee was moving away, his back to her as he moved over to do some bag work.
“Uhm.”
“Don’t look at me,” Helo shrugged, “They didn’t come to blows because they finally decided that they both wanted my body. I can tell you that much.”
“I’ll leave,” Kara turned back towards the hatch, might even have made those few steps, if it weren’t for the fact that Lee had called to her.
She moved a little quicker. It was only Helo’s voice that stopped her. “If you keep moving, I will disown you. Throw him a frakking bone.”
She turned on Helo, ignoring Lee. “You don’t know frak.”
“I know that man’s sleeping on a rack three down from Anders and facing a lifetime of probation all because he wants what’s best for you.”
“He has no idea what’s best for me.”
“Oh, so you’ve discussed this with him then?” Helo’s voice took on a falsely pleasant tone, “I mean, what else am I to assume? Because I’m sure you’d never judge his motives without actually finding out what they are. You’re too balanced for that sort of thing.”
“I hate it when you use your brain.”
He shrugged and held his hands wide, “It’s a curse, being as smart as I am.”
Kara snorted and shouldered past him. Dear gods, she was actually going to talk to Lee. She crossed the mat to his corner of the gym.
“What?”
What? She’d never said she was going to be civil. Something nagged at her; he seemed almost relieved that she’d even addressed him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said as he stepped up to her. Kara scanned the gym and noticed that their corner was conspicuously empty. Irritation ate at her as she started to move, testing her theory that people were steering clear in anticipation of more blows. She moved to the lockup cage where the gloves and pads were kept, noting that people seemed to observe some sort of three meter force field around them. Lee was right on her heels. “Damn it, Kara, you’re meant to be taking it easy.”
She picked up a set of gloves, bending them in her hands to test if she’d picked up a pair that was stuffed with old rags. Some were still awaiting the reinforcement and if she’d grabbed on of those pairs, her knuckles would be blue before the session was over. “I will take it easy,” she said without bothering to look up at him.
His breath was hot in her ear as he snorted and pushed her to the side, reaching into the cage himself to pull out a set of pads.
“What are you doing?” she snapped, making sure to keep her back to him as she tucked the gloves underneath one elbow and drew the long red ribbons of her knuckle strapping from the waistband of her shorts, where she’d tucked them.
“Making sure you take it easy,” Lee said as he kept to her heels and followed her across the gym to a clear corner behind a rack of free weights.
“I though you were giving me space,” Kara commented as she dropped the gloves by her feet and hooked the first ribbon onto her thumb and proceeded to wind it up her wrist, then back down and over her knuckles before tucking the end in at her palm.
“You, yeah. But I’m not giving anyone else space to frak this up for us.”
“Oh,” she nodded sagely, “making sure everyone knows I’m Lee Adama’s whore, right? The woman shacked up in his quarters. Wouldn’t they be disappointed if they knew the truth?”
Lee looked like he was about to bite his tongue off with the exertion of not speaking. She shook her head gently as she wrapped her other hand and held it out for him to tuck in. Kara just wished he’d say whatever it was that he was thinking. Yell a little, give her an in to help him work through their mess and realize that it wasn’t going to happen.
He let go of her hand and she flexed them gently before stooping to pick up her gloves. Lee stood just to her side, pulling on the pads as if the simple activity meant the world. Maybe it did, maybe it was stopping him from letting loose and just telling her to go frak herself… which, Kara figured, he had every right to do.
He turned his head to the side and ran his tongue over his teeth, fortifying himself, before smacking the pads together once and pointing to the clearing to indicate they were about to start, “You want to warm up?”
“I ran here.”
Lee looked briefly like something was lodged in his throat but he got over it quickly. “I want a thirty second rip, ten jabs, ten crosses, uppercuts until failure. You want your guard?”
Kara screwed up her face, “You plan on hitting me in the face?” she asked skeptically. The pads weren’t used to hit people.
“No, but I figure it might shut you up.”
With a snort, Kara advanced on Lee, gloves upturned, shoulders dropped and gait wide as she delivered a rapid-fire round of rips to the general vicinity of his gut, or what would have been his gut if the pads weren’t right there. Lee watched a clock over Kara’s shoulder and lifted the pads when the thirty second mark hit, changing his footing to brace against Kara’s hard hits.
She broke out into a sweat almost immediately, the twisting motion of her body already taking its toll on her knee. But there was no way she’d let Lee know she was in pain. She threw more of her weight into the punches, determined to make sure Lee was the one who walked away from the session with fatigued arms. She finished her cross jabs and Lee shifted the pads to face downwards. She shifted again and dropped into a set of uppercuts. Until failure. She was damn close already, but for Lee? She’d keep going until she passed out. He didn’t need to know that she wasn’t up to her usual standards. She redoubled her efforts as he started speaking. Technique, mostly, things she already knew. Things everybody already knew. His voice, low and patient, made it a little easier to slip out of the pain and into the mindlessness of hard physical activity.
“Drop your shoulders into it; roll it through the abs, Kara. Make it work and put some power into it. Drive it up to the chin. That’s it. Good girl.”
She didn’t feel good. She felt like an ass. Combatant to the last. How long was Lee going to keep being so frakking nice? The gently spoken advice shifted, he stepped back to indicate that he was through taking the uppercut, in that same measured voice he rattled off another combination, “Jab, cross, jab, right elbow ascending, left hook.”
She moved to an aggressive stance, right foot forward, striking out with a jab and throwing her weight behind the cross jab, before snaking out quickly again. Lee leaned back as she bought her right elbow up, her stomach stretched with the arch of her body and the glove moved gently past her own ear before she moved her left arm across her own body in a neat hook.
Kara didn’t fail to notice that the combination held nothing taxing on her knee, no kicks, no strenuous cardio interruptions, no decoys, nothing that required rapid stance shifts, no push ups… She shut up and took it as a gift before continuing the combination again. After the fifth time, Lee spoke. “Talk to me, Kara.”
She was having trouble breathing and he wanted to talk? Frak it. She’d done silence with him. Maybe he needed to hear what was on her mind, what she was sure he didn’t want to hear? Maybe that would be enough to send him packing?
She looked around, satisfied that their apparent quarantine zone was intact and spoke quietly, “Five Cylons. I know of four.”
Lee nodded, he’d heard that much. What she said next? He hadn’t heard.
Jab. “Tyrol.” Cross. “President’s aide.” Jab. “Tigh.” Elbow. Hook. “Sam.”
Lee fumbled the pads, missing Kara’s next hook and fixing wide eyes on her for a second. She had to give him credit. It was seconds before he was shrugging it off and lifting the pads again. “That it?” he asked.
Jab. Cross. Jab.
“That not enough for you?” Kara could tell he was fighting a mighty battle to not freak out there and then. “You could tell your father.”
“If it was important, you would have done that already.”
Elbow. Hook.
Kara shrugged, by all rights Lee should be marching her in the general direction of the CIC. “What an overabundance of faith, Lee, aren’t you afraid I’m frakking with you?”
“I don’t know.” Jab. Cross. Jab. “Are you?”
She dropped her arms and shook her head gently, “No. Not now.”
Lee’s eyes slid to the side to make sure they were still out of earshot, “You think this is the right thing?”
Gods, he almost sounded like… he wanted to know why. He wanted to know where her head was on this.
A weight in her mind shifted, “I do. For now.”
It seemed enough for Lee; he nodded once, smacked the pads together again and dropped them into a low side position. “Sixty hooks.”
Faith. He’d just given her faith. Kara shut her eyes for a moment, sucked in a lungful of air, then let it go slowly and when she thought she’d let it all go, she pushed a little harder until her lungs were truly empty. Just let it go.
She moved in to start the hooks. Being near her own height, Lee made for a great partner. Typically, where it felt comfortable for him to hold the pads was just the right height for her to strike them. Sparring with Helo was always tricky for that reason. Not that they didn’t manage, it just meant that both had to work a little harder to keep the pads in the right place. She hooked into the pads a few times. Left, right, left. Her arms crossing her body to strike at Lee. The movement called for a twist through her entire midsection, she found it jarring on the knee.
He watched her silently for a few seconds before stepping back and dropping the pads at his feet. Kara stood, frozen on the spot as he walked around her, coming to rest with his body flush against her back.
Uhm.
Kara blew out another long breath.
She felt one hand settle on her left hip as his voice began in her ear. Frak, he was close. “Here.” Two fingers of his other hand tapped against the underside of her ass, “Bend your knee into the hook.” He ran his fingers down until they reached the back of her knee, pressing against her clammy skin until it buckled and bent, just as he’d asked. He hooked his own foot around the ankle of that same leg, “Turn your ankle out as you do it. Your weight will shift; most of your upper body strength will be behind your hook now. It’ll halve the impact on your knee.”
“Teaching me how to fight?” she asked a little testily as she tested his advice and delivered a much more powerful swing.
“No. You’ve got that covered, Kara.” Frak, he was talking so close into her ear that she could damn near feel his lips against her earlobe, “I’m teaching you how to make sure it doesn’t hurt in the morning.”
Kara tensed.
Oh. Oh, Lee. Master of doubletalk. Well, he could go frak himself. What did he know? So much for making him run.
She stepped away from his body and tugged the gloves from her hands, throwing them down beside the pads. “I’m tired. I think I’m done for the day.” But the tone conveyed something more like, “Thanks, Lee, for frakking that up.” Even though she knew damn well it wasn’t his fault. She just…
Didn’t he understand that she always had the hurt coming? She needed it. Who was he to try and spare her the consequences of her own actions?
That was why they were never going to happen, Kara decided as she limped from the gym, leaving Lee confused in her wake.
*****
Dee found Lee slamming a pair of boxing gloves back into the storage cage. “Bad session?” she asked with a smile as she reached up to hang from the cage door.
He turned to Dee with a venomous gaze, but it softened instantly. He’d never intentionally wounded her, that much Dee knew very well. “I’m sorry, Dee. It was a bad session. Unless it’s important, I’m probably not the man you want to be talking to right now.”
Dee dropped the smile and let her arm fall from the cage. She fixed Lee with a sympathetic gaze that quickly shifted into business, “Actually, Lee, it is very important.”
Author: becisvolatile
Part: 14/?
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Lee/Kara, Bill, Roslin, Helo, Sharon, Cottle, Anders, Dee, Leoben, Racetrack, Seelix.
Word Count: 5400+
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,
Spoilers: Up to and including S3
Summary: Either she’d wanted Lee gone, or she’d just watched him leave. Whichever the case, the endgame remained unchanged.
Lee was gone.
Beta: Angylinni does her thing and makes me look semi-literate.
Previous Chapters:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Gods, she didn’t even know why she was crying.
No, wait, she knew. It’s just that the reasons were so many, she couldn’t pin down any single one and point to it accusingly. It wasn’t the kiss. It wasn’t the way he’d thrown her down on the bed. It wasn’t even the sharp stabbing in her knee, as if the bones of her leg were grinding together unmediated by cartilage.
He was gone. Gone and gone and gone. Wasn’t that what she wanted? Wasn’t that what she’d been gunning for?
No. Not even a little. But there was no difference between making something happen and letting something happen. Either she’d wanted Lee gone, or she’d just watched him leave. Whichever the case, the endgame remained unchanged.
Lee was gone.
Oh, he’d said it wasn’t over, but it didn’t matter. As far as she was concerned, it had to be over.
He’d wanted to die for her? He’d wanted to share her burdens? He wanted to give her space?
Gods help her but she wanted those things too. How long could she keep letting Lee chip away at himself for her, could she let him take on everything? Gods, what she’d just learned about her own frakking body? That alone was too much.
It was time she forced her mind to turn to things that mattered. Maybe not to her, but to the Fleet.
Cylons, Earth, lies and why the frak someone wanted her pregnant? Those were things that she could no longer avoid. Those were the things that Kara was going to have to invest her time into.
*****
Laura had joked often about expecting to wake up dead, but she’d taken to greeting every morning with mild surprise and suspicion. Surely not much longer.
“Madame President,” the Marine - Cutter? - nodded, “You’re looking well.”
He’d accompanied Kara Thrace to Colonial One. Kara, however, lacked his tact and narrowed her eyes as she regarded Laura, “You look like crap.”
“Refreshing as ever, Starbuck.”
Kara shrugged, “You want me to fawn?”
“Gods, no. Who has time for that? Let’s be honest.”
Kara nodded, but stood very still in front of the seat Laura had offered her, despite leaning heavily on the walking stick in her hand. Kara had no intention of making her stay a long one, which made Laura all the more curious as to why Kara had been so adamant that she be received that very morning. “Honest? There are five unrevealed Cylons in the fleet.”
“Of that I am aware,” Laura shifted, adjusting her pencil skirt about her knees.
“I have the identity of four of them.” Kara’s eyes drifted to the corner of the room and Laura realized her slip. Tory’s presence, given her poorly covered affair with Kara’s husband, may have been in bad taste.
“Why do I think you won’t be sharing that with me today?”
Kara shrugged, “You don’t know what I know. This is… older than you think. It reaches back.”
“I don’t doubt that this is all predestined, Kara. I know you don’t fail to see the design here.”
“Yes.” Kara’s eyes flickered, almost as if she was finally accepting the truth of her own words, “And my belief is that these four… maybe even the fifth are… destined to help. Guides. Catalysts. They aren’t done.”
Laura sat back into her seat. She could very well have Kara thrown from the nearest airlock. The Marine at her side may not help, but there were people who would still do as she asked…
“I wouldn’t,” Kara’s voice dropped. “You mean a lot to these people, but I mean no less than you. We’re bound in this. You may lead them to Earth, Roslin, but you won’t get there without me.”
“You came here to remind me of that?”
“I’ve come to ask for your help.”
Laura felt years of diplomacy rise to cover her delicate snort, “And, like the swell, aid will be at their backs. Offering momentum and direction, but threatening like the descending crest, promising the wrath of Poseidon.”
“What?” The one word was sharp and Kara’s voice broke around it.
“Pythia. It’s from the book of Pythia. You want my help, Kara, aren’t you afraid of the cost?”
Even as she asked, Laura noted that, no, Kara didn’t really seem concerned. Kara Thrace was a woman accustomed to settling old debts. Even though, if Bill was right, she and Lee had far from settled their own score.
“You should be more afraid of the cost if I’m not given what I need.”
“And what do you need?”
“Unlimited access to the Leoben.”
Again, Laura had to hide her reaction. She stifled a mirthless laugh before speaking. “I understand we’re running short on those. I mean, between you and Apollo executing them.”
“That would be why I need you to… persuade the Admiral. Because you understand.”
It weighed heavily on her. Yes, she understood. But she understood many things. Leoben was there for a reason, that much Kara seemed certain of. But the Leoben had never left the Fleet, or Kara, unscathed. Could she really persuade Bill to compromise Kara’s safety for something that may, or may not, help them find Earth? Perhaps she could strike a bargain. The four Cylons for access to Leoben. One look at Kara told her that it wasn’t a likely outcome.
“If your Cylons harm the Fleet…” she began, but Kara was already moving from the room.
“It won’t come to that.”
“If it does… don’t think your special destiny will save your ass.”
*****
Cutter was damn near ready to wet his pants. The president had outright threatened Starbuck. Had promised pain… and… Gods, but maybe Starbuck had it coming.
“Four Cylons?” he whispered, desperate for her to deny it.
Kara turned in her seat and Cutter clutched a little tighter at his harness. Frak, he hated flying in small crafts. Raptors were no exception.
“You afraid of Cylons now?”
He passed a hand over his jaw, clean shaven in deference to the morning’s presidential audience. “Why the frak did you have to take me with you?”
“You don’t strike me as the sort to share what I just said around the water cooler.”
“I never imagined I’d be punished for discretion.”
Kara shrugged and gripped a little tighter at the controls. Cutter slid his eyes to her once more…. “But if I were the type to stand around a water cooler…”
“What?”
“You’ve got a stalker.”
“Ah, frak me. Look, Lee is just being…”
He held up a hand to cut her off. Adama wasn’t stalking her. The Major was frakking dogging her. Thrace didn’t take two steps without that man at her heels. Rumor was that they’d called it quits just after her accident two days earlier, but you wouldn’t know it to watch him magically appear and hold up walls wherever she was.
“I was talking about the other one.”
“Helo’s being a pain in the ass… He’s pissy about the knee. Thinks it’s his fault because he-”
Whoa. Cutter reached out and drummed his fingers against his knee as he spoke, “The other one.”
“What?”
“The nugget.”
Kara groaned a little. “No frakking way.”
“Yeah, my height, Raptor pilot? Played Pyramid on Caprica?”
“Anders. My husband.”
Cutter really tried not to laugh. He tried so freaking hard. After all, Thrace had rank… but she also had a Viper-wreck of a love-life and Cutter was suddenly feeling as though he’d dodged one hell of a bullet the night he’d turned the Mighty Starbuck down.
Hey, he had to have something to soften the blow of spending the past two hours alongside the hottest thing he’d ever had the privilege of passing up.
*****
Kara straddled the chair and considered him. He’d always expected her to come. He hadn’t expected that she’d take so much time, or even that she’d be unescorted.
She looked well, even though she’d favored one leg. She didn’t seem to be suffering at all from her-
“I’m pregnant.” Her voice was flat and her eyes accusing.
Click, click, whirr. The dates added up, even though her body had been traumatized and she’d only given into him the once… He smiled, well aware how much she hated to see the triumph written on his face.
“I’d tell you everything is going to be okay, Kara. I’m not one to shrug off my responsibilities but…” He held his hands wide to encompass the cell around them.
“I wouldn’t worry. The figures are ambiguous enough. It could actually be a child born in wedlock. A human child.” There was something she wasn’t saying. But Leoben’s mind was already beyond the cell. Hadn’t the Hybrid said that? Her destiny… a child. His child.
“I need…” Kara paused and tilted her head to the side, making it clear that she had no desire to be in the cell with him. “There are complications. I need to know what I am to combat them.”
He moved closer to the edge of his cot, eyes falling to his knees as he considered what she had said. It could be a ruse, probably was. Humans always liked to gain the upper hand by giving them what they thought they wanted. Hadn’t Kara done as much when she’d kissed a past incarnation of himself as she drove a blade deep into his gut?
Out of the corner of his eye he watched her hand disappear behind the back of the chair to pass over her abdomen. She realized his eyes had followed her hand and leaned forward, crossing her arms.
Not a ruse.
“Those suits of yours,” he began, “They’re made to withstand so much. But being blown up… well, that much pressure on the body? When we got to you, Kara, you were little more than goo held together by your flight suit. Not dead, though. Well, that’s a lie. Technically, yes, dead. And by your own means of medicine? Well beyond saving. You can’t repair what’s been torn to pieces and pulped. But you can replace it. If you’ve got the right parts.”
“So what, you slapped me together with a couple Boomers? A D’anna? A couple Leoben kidneys?”
“Your death was anticipated.” The chair creaked and he was sure she shuffled it back a little, “The Hybrid foresaw it.”
“You know, I dreamed about you.” The admission caught him by surprise. For a second he was unreasonably pleased, but as she continued, it didn’t last. “Before I died. You were everything. You guided me through so much. Made me face so much. In my dream we… we didn’t frak. We made love and I’d never wanted anything so much.”
Was she finally confessing that she felt for him? Genuinely?
“But it wasn’t you. It wasn’t anything. Maybe it was… Khronos,” she smiled a little bleakly at her own flight of fancy, “Making me move on and let go.”
“You came to me.” He tried not to make the words sound so desperate. “You came to me. We released you from your cell and you came to me.”
Her eyes closed and fluttered, as though she was on the brink of some great discovery that she couldn’t quite pin down, but she opened them before long, something sad, but not defeated in her eyes. “I went to the nearest airlock, Gods, I remember that now. I was…” she touched a finger to her lip and swallowed before continuing, “I was in so much pain, and there were pins and plates and… you hadn’t sealed half of the operation sites. You were still - constructing. But I made it. Gods, I frakking made it halfway through that filthy frakking ship and I found an airlock.”
“You very nearly bled out. We’d been so careful to only use your own, cloned, blood, but you’d spread it everywhere. We ran out and had to use our own synthetic brands. We’d wanted you whole and human. Your fate seemed to hinge on that. Your head, even your heart - with repair - we replaced the ovary that we’d harvested on Caprica, the one we’d used to cultivate your replacement parts, we even managed to save the one you’d possessed during the crash. And you wanted to vent yourself into space. If it’s any consolation, I did petition for appropriate pain killers, be we never did really stock them. What would be the point? If the pain was that great, we’d just finish ourselves off and regenerate. We had nothing to offer you and I think that contributed to your blacking out the memory.”
Kara shook her head, as if there were still things she didn’t understand, “If you were so bent on keeping me… wholly natural, why the fertility drugs?”
Leoben let his eyes drop to the floor. He’d suffered for that. They’d near boxed him for his interference, both the chemical and sexual. How had they not seen the wisdom? They had proof of the Hybrid’s validity. She had said Kara would die and be revived at their hands and she had, so why did they not believe that Kara would conceive? He’d only sought to help nature. “That was my doing.”
Kara paused and, once again, he knew he’d underestimated her. “They let me go after that, didn’t they? I was a point of contention.”
“You were a liability. You tried to vent yourself and you compromised our Basestar. They deemed you more valuable set onto discovering the final five.”
She absorbed the information and searched his face for a moment before pressing further, “When did… when did we-”
“Don’t,” he cut her off, “You may think that I never looked after your interests, but I promise you, in this count I am. Don’t look to remember that instance, Kara. You’ve forgotten it for a reason.”
*****
Cutter held Kara up at the exit from the brig, “Pregnant, Starbuck? To a Cylon? But you were throwing back shots with your ration at lun-”
“I’m not pregnant,” she clipped as she passed him.
“But you said-”
“I said what he needed to hear to feel that he could tell me what I wanted to know.”
“And now you know?”
That stopped her in her tracks; she rocked back on her heels, considering the question. “Is it insane that I feel lighter knowing all this? I mean, I’m frakking spare parts and Cylon junk and finally, I actually feel… okay?”
Cutter shrugged, “I read this thing once. They grew an ear on the back of a mouse and tried to sew it onto this guy that had lost his. It didn’t take but… if it had? I think he’d have felt okay too. I mean it’s still all you, right?”
Kara looked down at her body and grinned back up at him, “Well, you missed your chance to find out, didn’t you?”
*****
Dee rocked back onto her heels.
Surely she’d heard it wrong… she’d spent too much of her night wandering around the Battlestar avoiding, well, everyone. Now her lack of sleep was catching up with her, because damned if she hadn’t just passed hack to hear the words “Pregnant” and “Starbuck” in quick succession. But she had. Oh, she had.
Lee’s? No. Not that. The dates just didn’t line up. Sam’s? It was possible… or maybe her time with the Cylons?
It didn’t matter though, and for a brief moment Dee felt sorry for Kara. Pregnant. The Mighty Starbuck had finally been hoist by her own petard. Kara never had understood that sex had more than one purpose.
*****
Sam was propped up against one wall of the gym, Lee against the other. Both were pretending to take a prolonged period of recovery after a few punishing sets. Both were eyeing each other as though they’d very much like to take their issues outside.
As in airlock outside.
Lee pushed off from the wall and Sam did the same, meeting him in the middle of the room. They stood, their toes nudging the vacant sparring mat, and exchanged a glance that should have cleared the room, but only really served to pique the interest of the bored.
“Adama,” Sam muttered, quietly enough that only Lee could hear him.
“You? You call me Sir.”
Sam looked very much like he wanted to call Lee any number of things, but none of them were “Sir”.
“You’ve been following her,” Lee observed quietly.
“You left her,” Sam accused. “The whole frakking Fleet knows that she damn near died out there and you packed your bags before she was even out of the Life Station.”
“You’ve been misinformed.” Lee shifted onto the mat and Sam followed suit, “I told you once that you were done with Kara. I meant it.”
“Was that before or after you stepped into the room where I’d just frakked-”
Lee smacked the rest of the words from Sam’s mouth. Sam launched himself at Lee, taking the shorter man to the mat. It wasn’t long until Lee had a moment of advantage and reared up on top of Sam, pulling back his fist to-
Someone grabbed the back of his sweatshirt and yanked, trying to haul him to his feet. In his ear he could hear Helo hissing the one word, “Probation!” and that was enough to make him let go. For now. If he was caught in a fist-fight, his ass would be back in hack before he knew it. And that wasn’t a place he could afford to be again.
Not when he finally had a plan of attack. Not when he’d finally resolved to give Kara her space in private, while marking her every public moment with his presence. Just to remind her that he was there. That he cared. That he wasn’t going anywhere.
He had to wonder if she was making any headway with her… ah, head, but it had been two days. How much clarity could she have found? Trouble? Sure. She could be up to her ass in that in a nanosecond, but self-actualization? He wasn’t holding his breath. He’d even reconsidered the seven day deadline he’d given the separation. If she hadn’t come to him by then, well, frak it. He’d go to her and get on his mother-frakking knees and beg.
*****
Gym. She needed some time in the gym. Too much thinking was doing her head in. Because, you know, with telling a Cylon that you were about to bear his love-child and all, she was feeling a little in over her head.
Leoben would freak when he found out it wasn’t real. Hell, she’d been amazed that he’d bought it in the first place. But, oh, then hadn’t she eventually come to consider Kasey as her own? Cylon frakker was about to learn how shitty it was to have the shoe on the other foot.
Someone stepped out of the gym and held the hatch open for Kara, she nodded once and stepped in, hoping no one noticed how quickly she’d ditched the knee brace.
A couple things happened at once. First, a large arm shot out, catching her around the neck and dragging her to the side. Helo, “Heads up,” he said beside her ear.
But she didn’t need the warning. Sam was down on the mat, spitting out what surely couldn’t be a tooth and Lee was moving away, his back to her as he moved over to do some bag work.
“Uhm.”
“Don’t look at me,” Helo shrugged, “They didn’t come to blows because they finally decided that they both wanted my body. I can tell you that much.”
“I’ll leave,” Kara turned back towards the hatch, might even have made those few steps, if it weren’t for the fact that Lee had called to her.
She moved a little quicker. It was only Helo’s voice that stopped her. “If you keep moving, I will disown you. Throw him a frakking bone.”
She turned on Helo, ignoring Lee. “You don’t know frak.”
“I know that man’s sleeping on a rack three down from Anders and facing a lifetime of probation all because he wants what’s best for you.”
“He has no idea what’s best for me.”
“Oh, so you’ve discussed this with him then?” Helo’s voice took on a falsely pleasant tone, “I mean, what else am I to assume? Because I’m sure you’d never judge his motives without actually finding out what they are. You’re too balanced for that sort of thing.”
“I hate it when you use your brain.”
He shrugged and held his hands wide, “It’s a curse, being as smart as I am.”
Kara snorted and shouldered past him. Dear gods, she was actually going to talk to Lee. She crossed the mat to his corner of the gym.
“What?”
What? She’d never said she was going to be civil. Something nagged at her; he seemed almost relieved that she’d even addressed him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said as he stepped up to her. Kara scanned the gym and noticed that their corner was conspicuously empty. Irritation ate at her as she started to move, testing her theory that people were steering clear in anticipation of more blows. She moved to the lockup cage where the gloves and pads were kept, noting that people seemed to observe some sort of three meter force field around them. Lee was right on her heels. “Damn it, Kara, you’re meant to be taking it easy.”
She picked up a set of gloves, bending them in her hands to test if she’d picked up a pair that was stuffed with old rags. Some were still awaiting the reinforcement and if she’d grabbed on of those pairs, her knuckles would be blue before the session was over. “I will take it easy,” she said without bothering to look up at him.
His breath was hot in her ear as he snorted and pushed her to the side, reaching into the cage himself to pull out a set of pads.
“What are you doing?” she snapped, making sure to keep her back to him as she tucked the gloves underneath one elbow and drew the long red ribbons of her knuckle strapping from the waistband of her shorts, where she’d tucked them.
“Making sure you take it easy,” Lee said as he kept to her heels and followed her across the gym to a clear corner behind a rack of free weights.
“I though you were giving me space,” Kara commented as she dropped the gloves by her feet and hooked the first ribbon onto her thumb and proceeded to wind it up her wrist, then back down and over her knuckles before tucking the end in at her palm.
“You, yeah. But I’m not giving anyone else space to frak this up for us.”
“Oh,” she nodded sagely, “making sure everyone knows I’m Lee Adama’s whore, right? The woman shacked up in his quarters. Wouldn’t they be disappointed if they knew the truth?”
Lee looked like he was about to bite his tongue off with the exertion of not speaking. She shook her head gently as she wrapped her other hand and held it out for him to tuck in. Kara just wished he’d say whatever it was that he was thinking. Yell a little, give her an in to help him work through their mess and realize that it wasn’t going to happen.
He let go of her hand and she flexed them gently before stooping to pick up her gloves. Lee stood just to her side, pulling on the pads as if the simple activity meant the world. Maybe it did, maybe it was stopping him from letting loose and just telling her to go frak herself… which, Kara figured, he had every right to do.
He turned his head to the side and ran his tongue over his teeth, fortifying himself, before smacking the pads together once and pointing to the clearing to indicate they were about to start, “You want to warm up?”
“I ran here.”
Lee looked briefly like something was lodged in his throat but he got over it quickly. “I want a thirty second rip, ten jabs, ten crosses, uppercuts until failure. You want your guard?”
Kara screwed up her face, “You plan on hitting me in the face?” she asked skeptically. The pads weren’t used to hit people.
“No, but I figure it might shut you up.”
With a snort, Kara advanced on Lee, gloves upturned, shoulders dropped and gait wide as she delivered a rapid-fire round of rips to the general vicinity of his gut, or what would have been his gut if the pads weren’t right there. Lee watched a clock over Kara’s shoulder and lifted the pads when the thirty second mark hit, changing his footing to brace against Kara’s hard hits.
She broke out into a sweat almost immediately, the twisting motion of her body already taking its toll on her knee. But there was no way she’d let Lee know she was in pain. She threw more of her weight into the punches, determined to make sure Lee was the one who walked away from the session with fatigued arms. She finished her cross jabs and Lee shifted the pads to face downwards. She shifted again and dropped into a set of uppercuts. Until failure. She was damn close already, but for Lee? She’d keep going until she passed out. He didn’t need to know that she wasn’t up to her usual standards. She redoubled her efforts as he started speaking. Technique, mostly, things she already knew. Things everybody already knew. His voice, low and patient, made it a little easier to slip out of the pain and into the mindlessness of hard physical activity.
“Drop your shoulders into it; roll it through the abs, Kara. Make it work and put some power into it. Drive it up to the chin. That’s it. Good girl.”
She didn’t feel good. She felt like an ass. Combatant to the last. How long was Lee going to keep being so frakking nice? The gently spoken advice shifted, he stepped back to indicate that he was through taking the uppercut, in that same measured voice he rattled off another combination, “Jab, cross, jab, right elbow ascending, left hook.”
She moved to an aggressive stance, right foot forward, striking out with a jab and throwing her weight behind the cross jab, before snaking out quickly again. Lee leaned back as she bought her right elbow up, her stomach stretched with the arch of her body and the glove moved gently past her own ear before she moved her left arm across her own body in a neat hook.
Kara didn’t fail to notice that the combination held nothing taxing on her knee, no kicks, no strenuous cardio interruptions, no decoys, nothing that required rapid stance shifts, no push ups… She shut up and took it as a gift before continuing the combination again. After the fifth time, Lee spoke. “Talk to me, Kara.”
She was having trouble breathing and he wanted to talk? Frak it. She’d done silence with him. Maybe he needed to hear what was on her mind, what she was sure he didn’t want to hear? Maybe that would be enough to send him packing?
She looked around, satisfied that their apparent quarantine zone was intact and spoke quietly, “Five Cylons. I know of four.”
Lee nodded, he’d heard that much. What she said next? He hadn’t heard.
Jab. “Tyrol.” Cross. “President’s aide.” Jab. “Tigh.” Elbow. Hook. “Sam.”
Lee fumbled the pads, missing Kara’s next hook and fixing wide eyes on her for a second. She had to give him credit. It was seconds before he was shrugging it off and lifting the pads again. “That it?” he asked.
Jab. Cross. Jab.
“That not enough for you?” Kara could tell he was fighting a mighty battle to not freak out there and then. “You could tell your father.”
“If it was important, you would have done that already.”
Elbow. Hook.
Kara shrugged, by all rights Lee should be marching her in the general direction of the CIC. “What an overabundance of faith, Lee, aren’t you afraid I’m frakking with you?”
“I don’t know.” Jab. Cross. Jab. “Are you?”
She dropped her arms and shook her head gently, “No. Not now.”
Lee’s eyes slid to the side to make sure they were still out of earshot, “You think this is the right thing?”
Gods, he almost sounded like… he wanted to know why. He wanted to know where her head was on this.
A weight in her mind shifted, “I do. For now.”
It seemed enough for Lee; he nodded once, smacked the pads together again and dropped them into a low side position. “Sixty hooks.”
Faith. He’d just given her faith. Kara shut her eyes for a moment, sucked in a lungful of air, then let it go slowly and when she thought she’d let it all go, she pushed a little harder until her lungs were truly empty. Just let it go.
She moved in to start the hooks. Being near her own height, Lee made for a great partner. Typically, where it felt comfortable for him to hold the pads was just the right height for her to strike them. Sparring with Helo was always tricky for that reason. Not that they didn’t manage, it just meant that both had to work a little harder to keep the pads in the right place. She hooked into the pads a few times. Left, right, left. Her arms crossing her body to strike at Lee. The movement called for a twist through her entire midsection, she found it jarring on the knee.
He watched her silently for a few seconds before stepping back and dropping the pads at his feet. Kara stood, frozen on the spot as he walked around her, coming to rest with his body flush against her back.
Uhm.
Kara blew out another long breath.
She felt one hand settle on her left hip as his voice began in her ear. Frak, he was close. “Here.” Two fingers of his other hand tapped against the underside of her ass, “Bend your knee into the hook.” He ran his fingers down until they reached the back of her knee, pressing against her clammy skin until it buckled and bent, just as he’d asked. He hooked his own foot around the ankle of that same leg, “Turn your ankle out as you do it. Your weight will shift; most of your upper body strength will be behind your hook now. It’ll halve the impact on your knee.”
“Teaching me how to fight?” she asked a little testily as she tested his advice and delivered a much more powerful swing.
“No. You’ve got that covered, Kara.” Frak, he was talking so close into her ear that she could damn near feel his lips against her earlobe, “I’m teaching you how to make sure it doesn’t hurt in the morning.”
Kara tensed.
Oh. Oh, Lee. Master of doubletalk. Well, he could go frak himself. What did he know? So much for making him run.
She stepped away from his body and tugged the gloves from her hands, throwing them down beside the pads. “I’m tired. I think I’m done for the day.” But the tone conveyed something more like, “Thanks, Lee, for frakking that up.” Even though she knew damn well it wasn’t his fault. She just…
Didn’t he understand that she always had the hurt coming? She needed it. Who was he to try and spare her the consequences of her own actions?
That was why they were never going to happen, Kara decided as she limped from the gym, leaving Lee confused in her wake.
*****
Dee found Lee slamming a pair of boxing gloves back into the storage cage. “Bad session?” she asked with a smile as she reached up to hang from the cage door.
He turned to Dee with a venomous gaze, but it softened instantly. He’d never intentionally wounded her, that much Dee knew very well. “I’m sorry, Dee. It was a bad session. Unless it’s important, I’m probably not the man you want to be talking to right now.”
Dee dropped the smile and let her arm fall from the cage. She fixed Lee with a sympathetic gaze that quickly shifted into business, “Actually, Lee, it is very important.”