Oneshot - Kepéla (2/3)
The sun is coming up when they finally leave the bar, Zak is stumbling all over the street singing some old Aerilonian folk song that he doesn't know the words to, and Kara is laughing her head off and occasionally prompting him with the next line and dancing along behind him.
Lee's a little way behind them, watching their progress and chuckling to himself. He's not nearly as drunk as Zak, he suspects he's a little more drunk than Kara, not that you'd know it from the way she' spinning and hopping about in the middle of the road.
She stops suddenly and turns, her bright eyes fixing on him in the street lamp, child-like glee informing her features as she practically skips over to him and weaves their arms together, dragging him along a little faster and pulling him around and about her in mindless choreography.
He feels like she is ten different people, hard and jagged and rowdy and ruthless and scary and sparkling and joyful and warm and magnificent, and this impish creature now barrelling into him from every direction and grasping his arm to stop herself from falling off the curb is so vastly different from the menacing woman he met earlier tonight in her quarters that he can't help wandering how many more different versions of her he has yet to see.
He can't help but note that he was drawn to her then, dark and intimidating in the low light of her bedroom, and he is drawn to her now, light and laughing in the mist at dawn.
She trips over her own feet, and then stumbles over his and he catches her round the waist before she plummets backwards into the pavement and they halt for a moment as locates her balance. She's looking up at him, wide-eyed and breathless, he's leaning over her, one arm at her waist, one about her neck supporting her weight and if it weren't for the fact that she's his brother's girlfriend and it's five-thirty in the morning, he'd almost say it was romantic.
Her lips press together in a slow and winning smile.
“You saved me.” She murmurs, and he raises his eyebrows in acknowledgement. He doesn't really know what to do except keep holding her. She giggles, brings a hand to her lips and moves to stand up, he keeps his hands on her until he knows she's steady and they look at each other for what is probably a little too long.
A few feet away, Zak is still singing, he's stuck on one line that he can't get right, repeating it over and over like a stuck tape cartridge, and he and Kara must both realise at the same time because they both start laughing and shift away from each other ever so slightly.
She grins at him, eyebrows raised, and he shakes his head no, but she grabs his arm anyway and drags him over to where Zak is leant against a wall and starts singing along between giggles, poking him in the side until he joins in.
The three of them stagger back to Zak's quarters as the sun climbs slowly above the hills, and he's actually pretty glad he didn't make Zak take him straight there last night like he had wanted to do.
They put Zak to bed and he walks Kara to the door, offers his hand for her to take. She rolls her eyes at him and hefts a sigh as she pulls him into a tight hug, calling him a moron and smacking him on the shoulder for good measure. And then she's gone, out into the bright Caprica sunlight, and he's standing in the doorway smiling like an idiot.
“Kara...” He trails off, words a useless attempt at comfort in a situation like this. His palm is flat against her back, holding her loosely to him where she's curled herself into his chest.
“She called me the harbinger of death.” She makes a noise that might almost be a laugh and shrugs as though it didn't matter.
Their eyes meet. He wishes he were more help.
It's the end of his week on Caprica, he's shipping out tomorrow for the Atlas, an ageing battlestar stationed out in the Delta/Gamma system, mainly to provide extra military support for Colonial forces on Sagittaron, should another uprising seem likely.
It's not an important post and he'll more than likely have next to nothing to do, but it's about as far away from both Caprica and the Galactica as he can get, and he gets to fly a Viper, so he's feeling pretty good about it.
Zak is still trying to make him 'see sense' as they stroll across campus to meet Kara from class, they're taking him out for a goodbye lunch. But Zak stops short in the middle of some joke about Sagittaron women, and when Lee follows his gaze across the lawn to the flight simulator building, he can see why.
He's only known her a week but he could recognise Kara Thrace anywhere, at any time. The lines of her body, the shape of her face, the way her hair falls and flies, and he recognises her now, clear as day, as he takes in the sight of her legs wrapped around some guy whose hands are on her ass, kissing the living daylights out of him out in front of the flight school.
He tears his eyes away from her to look back at his brother, stumbling slightly and looking like he might throw up right there on the bright, manicured lawn of the academy. He vaguely catches a voice somewhere ringing out across the quad. The words “Helo” and “alive” and “incredible” float through the air as he watches Zak fall to pieces.
He should say something, he thinks, try to make Zak feel better. If only just to hide the fact that somehow, he feels just as devastated as the younger Adama looks, and he's really not allowed to be. But Zak is turning on his heels and heading back the way they came. With one last, lingering look at Kara Thrace, feet now firmly on the floor beaming up at the man as though he had hung her own personal sun, he follows.
He doesn't think he'll ever be seeing her again.
“Why'd you do it Kara?” He stalking after her, and he's disgusted with the venom he hears in his own voice, disgusted with him self for not having the strength not to ask her.
“Because I'm a screw-up, Lee. Try to keep that in mind.” She walks away from him without looking back. He wishes with every particle inside of him that he were strong enough not to follow her.
The first day at his new station on Picon, the captain of his squadron, Dodger, is giving him a tour of the base. It's pretty standard, bunk-rooms, mess hall, exercise yard, head. He's halfway through a yawn when he spots her; a mop of damp dirty-blonde hair under a steaming shower-head, and a laugh that's been ringing in his ears for six months.
The captain spots him looking at her and laughs, smacks him on the back and tells him not to bother.
“Starbuck's a firecracker, but she's dangerous.” He chuckles, glancing over at her like someone who knows this first hand. “If you take my advice, you'll stay well clear of that particular hot mess.”
Lee looks between them open-mouthed, back and forth, Kara to Dodger; not wanting to show himself up, but also not wanting to let her out of his sight. He doesn't know the right thing to say.
Dodge gives another chuckle and shakes his head with a weary smile. “But I can see you're not going to take my advice, so I guess I'll just leave you to it. Tour was just about done anyway.” He walks away, shaking his head and laughing to himself. Lee barely even notices him leave.
She's right there across the room, five pilots and a bench and her naked body between them, she's laughing with a couple of the other pilots, a short brunette woman, stocky-framed, and a tall, lanky guy who, despite being quite heavily muscular still manages to have the appearance of someone who's quite scrawny.
The tall guy slides an arm across Kara's back, leaning down to talk into her ear. She laughs violently, the brash sound he remembers from the dark of her bunk-room on Caprica and it goes straight to his stomach, pulling at something low inside of him. She pushes at the man's shoulder, and as he turns, a wide toothy grin spreading across his face, Lee realises he recognises him as the man that he and Zak saw Kara kissing on the lawn the day that everything fell apart.
The slow pull in his stomach gives a sharp tug and he tries to shake off the feeling that somehow he has been betrayed.
Kara's companions leave together, and his feet pull him across the room towards her, stopping at the edge of the shower area, leaning against the glass partition, ignoring the splashes of water spraying his newly polished boots, and the strange looks he's getting from almost everyone else currently in the head.
“I remember you.” He says when he finally reaches her, she probably saw him coming a mile away. The violent spray of water rains down between them and he probably said it louder than he should have, the whole world doesn't need to know their business.
She twists her head quickly, one way and then another, a lock of dampened hair clings to the front of her forehead, dropping down over one eye. She raises her brows suggestively, and grins just like she did that first morning back on Caprica when he hadn't known her, and everything he had said had been fodder for that filthy brain of hers.
“I'm pretty difficult to forget.” Her lips quirk, and her head tilts, and her grin doesn't reach her eyes. He knows she wishes that forgetting her were easier.
“I'm glad you came,” He croaks when he finally catches up to her.
“I owed him that much.” She tells him blankly,
He doesn't even cast a glance back at her. He knows he'll never see her again.
He's laying in his rack early in the morning, the sun is drifting in in lazy shafts of dawn, somewhere, out there, a bird is waking its family. He's daydreaming about vipers and stars and a pair of green eyes that have no business floating around his heart.
He hears her before he sees her, he always does. A series of doors slam, too loud for this time of day, as she barges down the corridor to the bunk-room he shares with three other second lieutenants. She barrels through the door without bothering to knock, privacy is a concept not given much consideration in the Fleet, and to Starbuck, it was probably a concept to which she never gave much credence in the first place.
“Morning boys.” She croons, hips swaying in time to the lazy grin on her face, and sweeps her eyes across all of them, laying in their racks and staring up at her through half-dazed eyes. She hops up onto his rack, a foot on either side of his legs, palms flat against the ceiling as she smiles down at him, haloed in the sunlight pouring in from the side of her.
“Hey Apollo, get your ass out of bed.” She tells him, and pushes at the glass until it slides up enough for her to stick her head out of.
He rubs a hand over his face and stifles a yawn.
“And why would I do that?” He asks, the yawn creeping through anyway, his hand sliding down to cover his mouth.
“Because.” She kicks him a little with her left ankle, and laughs low in her throat when he opens his eyes to glare at her. They've been spending a lot of time together over the last couple of months since he's been stationed here, he has yet to discover a way to intimidate her.
“Because why?” He probes, matter-of-fact and slightly patronising in that way that he knows drives her up the wall. She rolls her eyes and looks back outside.
“Because,” she tells him, kicking him again for good measure, “It's a beautiful day. Sun is shining, birds are singing.” She's practically standing on top of him at this point, hanging out of the window that overlooks his bunk. “It's a perfect day for a picnic and a pick-up game of Pyramid.”
He groans and shakes his head. It's too early for Pyramid, especially the way she plays, like her life depends on the outcome of every single point.
“Kara, go away, I need to sleep.” He turns over properly so that he's flat on his back, her body looming over him like a shadowy temple in a faraway dream. Without warning she drops onto her knees, bracing her hands against his chest and pushing down, bouncing them a little on the thin mattress.
“Lee, I need you, I've got Helo and Doomsday meeting us in twenty minutes, I need your speed if I'm gonna beat them. You have to play.” He laughs and shakes his head no. Getting in between Kara and Helo on a Pyramid court is never a good idea.
“C'mooon.” She's whining and grinning and winning the fight. She leans her head down, one hand on either side of his head, and that disobedient lock of her hair tickles the bridge of his nose. “Play with me.” She wiggles her eyebrows because she wants him to know that she's flirting but not really flirting. If he slides his eyes any lower he'll be able to see much more of her creamy skin than he ever has a right to, and she knows it. She squares her shoulders more, drawing his attention deliberately downwards.
He can't do anything but laugh and throw her off of him, going in search of his PT kit as she crows her victory over his bunk-mates, who have all been watching, enthralled, as her little game played out.
“I thought you were dead.” She blurts out, she looks like she isn't sure he's not. Her eyes are so dark, pleading with him to be real, it's almost too much for him to deal with right now.
“Well I thought you were in hack.” It's barely even a joke, it's definitely not funny, but somehow they're both laughing anyway, relief breaking over him like a wave on the beach. It strikes him that he doesn't know if he'll ever see a beach, or a wave, or a summer's day ever again, and suddenly it's too much once more; her eyes and her smile and the fact that the two of them have lived to see the end of the worlds.
“It feels good, to be wrong.” She tells him, the most earnest he has ever seen her and he thinks back to all the times when he's looked back at her as he walked away, convinced that this look would be his last. Yeah, he thinks, it feels really good.
When he walks away from her he turns back for one last glimpse, just in case
The sun is hot, the air too close as they dance and jump around the pyramid court. Helo's height no match for his speed, Doomsday's strength no match for Kara's perfect sense of timing as she bobs and weaves and generally runs circles around him.
By the time the others leave they are all drenched in sweat, and he's considering pouring the bottle of water he brought with him over the top of his head instead of down his throat as he had originally intended.
She bounces the ball of his head, calling him out for one last round. He whines about the heat and she tells him to stop being such a baby. He whines some more and then lines himself up inside the safe zone, ready to face her.
They start, he goes right, she weaves left and he spins to compensate. She's got his number though and snags his elbow as he comes out of the turn, knocking the ball to the ground and scrambling to move it into the centre zone.
He follows her there, lowers himself to where she is crouching, one leg straight out to the side of her, her grin, her stance, that glint in her eyes, predatory, right down to the bared teeth.
She's off, and he just about manages to grab her round the waist, trying to block her path to the goal. She's already thrown though and he hears the ball hit the back of the mesh even as his palm finds purchase on her hip.
She throws her head back in a silent victory, and he admires the slant of her throat laid bare for him as she does. They stand there for a little too long, breathe a little too hard. His palm is slick, and slides across her hip as her body moves with every laboured breath.
They're standing too close, they always do, he tries not to think about the way that his body always manages to find ways to be near her or touch her, but he knows she does it too. She moves in even closer to him, imperceptible to anyone who isn't so keenly aware of every inch of her as he is and tilts her head up so that they are practically eye to eye. She's breathing hard still, each exhale brushing against his nose as she waits for him.
She does this a lot, he's noticed recently. Insinuates herself into him and then just waits. Half the time he thinks she wants him to make a move, the other half he's convinced that she's just found a fairly effective method of messing with him and enjoys seeing how long it will take him to break.
Somedays he's sure he's just going to go for it, shock the hell out of her with a kiss and not let go of her until she's kissing him back, and on those days he'll look in her eyes and know that if he does, she wouldn't let go either.
But then he thinks of Zak, and the memory of his face as he watched Kara kissing someone else is like a punch straight to his gut and he knows, no matter how long it's been since they broke up, or how much he feels as though every single thread of his existence was meant to be tied to every corresponding thread in Kara's, he'll never shake the feeling that she will always, in some way, belong to his little brother.
“Lee!” Her voice has taken on a new, almost desperate quality as she calls him back to her where she sits in her Viper, waiting to launch. He turns back to her and waits. Her eyes screw shut as she summons the strength to tell him what she brought him back for.
“Zak failed basic flight.” For the second time that endless and horrible day, the worlds end. His heart pretty much stops beating as he takes in what she's telling him, listens to her tell him how much she loved his brother and what that love made her do. He feels sick. He might be sick. Why would she tell him that?
She's looking at him like he's supposed to say something. What could he say? What would he say? Why would she tell him that?
“Why,” he swallows thickly, bile rising quick and harsh in his throat as he meets her eyes, so wide and scared and familiar, “why would you tell me that?”
She holds his gaze, eyes blazing through him with guilt and disappointment and acceptance and the need to have him look at her like she's to blame for all their ills, and her lips curve into a regretful smile, her beautiful face broken with the force of all her hatred.
“It's the end of the worlds, Lee.” She shrugs, and her eyes plead him to simultaneously forgive her and damn her, “I figured I should confess my sins.”
He watches until her viper is launched out of the tube, the sound of anything he's ever believed crumbling to pieces rushing through his ears, and tries to convince himself that he wouldn't care if that was the last time he ever saw her.
As is usual, he hears her before he sees her. Short breaths, deep, almost panting but more controlled, lead him round a corner to the sight before him. Kara, doing push-ups behind the bars of a brig cell.
“This seems familiar.” How many times has he done this? How many times has he stood on one side of the bars, her on the other? Two? Ten? A hundred? How many more times before she finally gets herself kicked out of the service.
“Captain Adama sir.” Her tone is respectful, her eyes are gleaming, she's out of breath. Sometimes he forgets just how beautiful she really is, and then once in a while, usually at four in the morning from the other side of a brig cell, it will hit him and he'll be lost all over again.
“So, what's the charge this time?” He asks, inclining his head and raising his eyebrows, she knows he disapproves of a lot of the choices she makes, especially the ones that have him dragging himself out of bed to come get her when by all rights he should be enjoying the comfort of a full night's sleep in his rack.
She shrugs, nonchalant, ambivalent.
“Drunk and disorderly.” She waves her hand in dismissal and reaches across the bunk to fetch her shirt and cracks her neck on the way back up.
She's not in the mood to be lectured. Truth be told, he's not in the mood to lecture, so he mirrors her shrug with one of her own and waits for the custody sergeant to open the door.
She's quiet on the way home and he doesn't try to get her to talk. He's given up trying to get at the reasons she keeps doing this kind of thing, sometimes he thinks it's enough that he's the one she calls when she gets into trouble. And then he realises that that's kind of pathetic, actually, and tries to determine the logistics of honestly kicking yourself so hard it hurts.
All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.
Part three