Beauty and the Beast: A Frakked-Up Fairy Tale
Title: Beauty and the Beast (2/2)
Author: innibis
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 9,376
Pairing: Kara/Lee
Genre: Completely AU
Disclaimer: I am not RDM or any of his cohorts. I do not lay claim to BSG in any way, shape or form; especially the finale.
A/N: Ah, workerbee73, a beta who can be trusted to see the beauty in the beast.
Part I
Beauty and the Beast
“Phelan’s right,” Kara said, laughing in spite of herself at the forced casual walk she and Apollo were taking around and around the farmers market. “We really don’t blend.” She bumped her shoulder into Apollo’s and he rolled his eyes in agreement.
“Well, while we’re here, we might as well stock up for the week,” he said, shaking out a large canvass bag and making a beeline for a stand.
“Oh no you don’t,” Kara said following on his heels. “I hate cauliflower.”
“Haven’t seen you cooking the meals,” he said, picking through the vegetables.
“Excuse me for not wanting to encroach on your domain,” she shot back, taking the sleeve of his t-shirt and pulling him away from the offending cauliflower and pointing him in the direction of the green beans. “You pour wine and listen to music and chop things. You commune with boiling water.”
He let out a startled laugh, grinning at her with humor filled eyes and Kara stopped dead in her tracks at the transformation from distant to touchable. “Come on Kara,” he said, wrapping a hand loose and easy around her wrist and tugging, “let’s find you some vegetables so you can grow up to be a big strong pilot.” She grinned up at him almost involuntarily at the use of her first name and his hand tightened briefly on her wrist as his eyes flashed with heated interest. “Green beans it is,” he said softly, clearing his throat and stepping back. He let her wrist fall and she followed him to the next stand, looking around the square while he dug through the piles of beans.
A familiar figure caught her eye. “Lee,” she hissed sharply, adrenaline spiking in her veins, “I swear to the gods that’s Sharon by the tomatoes. Don’t move!” she admonished as he began a very unsubtle turn. “Just look at me and use your peripheral vision.”
He turned more slowly, clutching green beans in one of his hands and looked at Kara. “I think I see her, but she’s just on the edge. Do you think she’ll recognize you?”
“I have no idea,” Kara said.
Lee thrust his handful of beans into the bag and put both hands on Kara’s shoulders, turning her a little so that he could get a better look. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that’s exactly who I saw before. I doubt we’re both wrong.”
“It’s her,” Kara said grimly. “It’s definitely her, or her model at any rate.”
“Alright,” Lee said turning back to the vendor and making a hasty purchase. He made a show of tucking more green beans into the bag, talking swiftly and quietly. “My thought is that it’s too risky to follow her back to the compound because chances are good that she knows exactly who you are.”
“Agreed,” Kara said. “Want to keep an eye on her here and see who she came with? Some other model is probably less dangerous. Plus it would be a good idea to know what as many models look like as possible.”
“Probably,” Lee nodded. “I really don’t want her to see you-how do you feel about going back to wait in the jeep?” Kara glared. “Yeah,” Lee said ruefully, “that’s what I thought.”
“Over there,” Kara said, motioning with her chin toward an enormous tree, the area underneath partially obscured from the square by thick hanging vines. Lee grabbed her hand and laced their fingers together, keeping Kara’s back to the cylon and strolling towards the tree. He parted the vines and they stepped through them. Kara cuddled up close to his side and Lee wrapped an arm around her shoulders, so that they looked like a couple enjoying a private conversation if anyone looked their way.
“We have a pretty good view of the center of the square.” Lee was pressed close enough that his voice vibrated through her. “Let’s just hope she doesn’t move.”
They waited in silence for long minutes, until Sharon was joined by an older man and a woman. “That’s your blonde, right?” she asked.
“Yup,” Lee said, and Kara committed her face to memory as her heart ratcheted up at the proof that there were still cylons among them. “I’ve never seen that man before though.”
“Me neither,” she said. The cylons, all carrying baskets full of food, conferred with one another for an extended period of time before turning together and walking out of the square and disappearing. “Holy shit,” Kara said shakily. Lee’s arm dropped from her shoulders, but he remained standing close. “It’s not that I didn’t believe you,” Kara said, “it’s just that - there they are.”
“Yeah,” Lee said, running a hand through his hair and blowing out a long slow breath. “Same here. Getting your confirmation makes it much more real. I wonder if anyone knows anything about that man. Too bad we didn’t think to bring a camera.”
“I can draw him,” Kara said. “I’ll draw him and we can send it to Fleet Headquarters and see if they know anything.”
“That’s a great idea,” Lee said. He looked at the mostly empty bag in his hands. “I don’t suppose we can finish shopping first?”
“Yeah, let’s finish up here and that get back to the fortress or whatever you call it.”
“I call it home,” Lee said.
* * *
“Aaron Doral,” Kara read off the information she’d obtained from Fleet Headquarters from her sketch of him. That guy actually contracted as a PR guy for the fleet. He committed suicide during the war.”
“That’s it?” Lee asked, reading over her shoulder.
“That’s all they’ve got,” Kara confirmed. “Seems like a lot of his information was erased from the system somehow. Covering his tracks?”
Lee’s head thumped forward and on to her shoulder, groaning a little, “Or clerical error - I’d say that’s just as likely.”
“True,” Kara reached up and patted the top of his head, shivering a little as his warm breath rushed down her back. She leaned forward to look more closely at the computer and Lee stood up straight and began pacing behind her. “So, what do we do with this information?”
“Keep an eye out for him and the people he talks to?” Lee said. “Figure out who the cylons in the town are as best we can without alerting anyone. We have really good feelers in the weapons supply chain and things don’t seem to be escalating. Certainly no nukes have been acquired, we’d have heard about that one.”
“So what, play it cool and gather what we can before going in guns blazing?” Kara asked, spinning her chair around to face Lee.
“There are only two of us,” he said. “As good as we are, it isn’t all that prudent to run in blind.”
“No shit,” Kara said. “And here I was thinking I’d go up against an unknown enemy with my knife between my teeth and a grenade in my pocket.”
“You brought grenades?” Lee’s face lit up
* * *
Kara stared at the seven faces she had hanging on the wall of the office. Calling it an office was a stretch, but, despite the precious stones inlaid in the desk, it was equipped with computers and all the things necessary to maintain a small, jungle surrounded bureaucracy. Lee was out getting mail and running errands, something Kara didn’t do very often since the Sharon model cylon was the one most seen in the town and Lee had been a fixture before the cylons had come to the area, so they clearly weren’t overly concerned about him. She had been living in the castle for two months, and they had made slow but steady progress on the cylons, identifying models by sight and getting sketchy information back from the fleet. They hadn’t been successful in following the skinjobs yet, but mostly because they were being careful and trying not to spook them.
In the meantime, Kara and Lee spent most mornings out by the pool, the afternoons in the office and a few evenings a week at Phelan’s. It was an oddly comfortable situation. Lee vacillated somewhere between prickly acquaintance and genuine friend, but Kara could give as good as she got and was learning to know when to just let him stew, when to pick a fight and when to say something outrageous to make him laugh. Fortunately, the good days outweighed the bad, and in matters professional she’s never worked with anyone better suited to her intuitive style than Apollo and his meticulous logic.
She heard the front door close with a boom and Lee lope up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Hey, Kara,” he said as he strode into the office. “Any news about the seventh suspected cylon?”
“Nothing,” Kara said. “I think they’re done humoring us, to be honest.”
“Humoring us?” Lee asked absently, thumbing through the mail.
“C’mon Lee, the replies have been as brief as possible from the beginning. Out of sight, out of mind.”
He looked up sharply, “They’re cylons.”
“They’re brass and we’re screw ups in the middle of nowhere,” she countered.
He flopped into the chair next to hers, scowling, but his face broke into a smile a few seconds later.
“Letter from Shaw?” Kara asked. She was still unclear about the nature of Shaw’s relationship with Lee. She just knew that letters, emails and calls from the small lieutenant made Lee smile, and there was an ugly corner of her heart that resented the hell out of that.
“Yeah,” Lee said, smile still firmly in place.
“What is she to you?” Kara asked. “She can’t know about Shevon.” She didn’t want to piss him off, but Kara was curious.
“I haven’t been with Shevon in awhile,” Lee frowned at her, “Not since you got here.”
“Well, you’ve been pretty busy,” Kara said. “You don’t have to answer, I was just curious.”
“No, it’s fine,” Lee said, considering. “Kendra and I were never really together. We were more than friends with benefits, but knew that it wasn’t going to be a long term romance or anything like that.” He tilted his head and smiled, eyes distant. “She’s the only one who cared about whether I lived or died. The only one who made me stay in touch. The only person who got really angry on my behalf and who never blamed me for the Orion. She’s my friend,” he said finally. “I trust her.”
“That’s what she said,” Kara said. “Exactly what she said - that you are a friend and that she trusts you. Is that all it is?”
Lee focused all his consideration on her, “Is that all? Kara, when all is said and done, having someone you can count on is all that matters.”
Kara blinked at the sudden lump in her throat. “Yes, well-” she tried to think of somebody, anybody, who inspired such blind faith in her life. “Did you find out anything about the gun running?”
Lee looked at her closely, but answered. “I saw Brian, one of Phelan’s guys, in town. He said to come by tonight, that they have some information about it.”
“Okay,” Kara nodded. It was still strange to her that they went to one of the club of the Market’s most notorious bosses and considered it a safe place for information gathering, but this was another world entirely, where everyone lived on the wrong side of law and order, and were only discernable by the varying shades of gray.
“From what he said, the flow of weapons has slowed down.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Could be,” Lee said nudging her foot with his. “Or it could be that they suspect that someone’s on to them.”
* * *
“Oh gross,” Kara whispered, flicking a hairy spider off Lee’s sweaty back.
“It’s the jungle, what did you expect tracking through it would be like?” He hissed.
“You could say thank you for getting an enormous, man eating bug off you.”
“Shhh! He isn’t that far ahead of us.”
Kara rolled her eyes and pushed in front of Lee. He pressed a hand against the small of her back and she turned her head to see him shaking his head ruefully. “Days like this, I really miss flying,” he said softly and then dropped his arm.
She swung her hand back, letting their fingers tangle quickly in understanding before disengaging. Up ahead, the lone cylon, a Simon model, tramped through the woods, seemingly without concern. It was the first real opportunity that had taken to discover the location of the compound, having found the suspected model, one unknown to both of them, disappearing alone and on foot into the jungle.
The twig snapping was the only warning she had before she was suddenly on her back and pinned by one of the young, male cylon models. “Kara Thrace,” it said into her face in a disgustingly intimate tone. And then he was gone, hauled off her by one supremely pissed off Lee Adama.
“You don’t touch her,” he growled, both hands full of cylon shirt as it struggled to get to her, almost whimpering in obscene need.
Revulsion whipped up Kara’s spine, and she pulled her kbar from her boot and held the knife to its throat. “How do you know me, cylon?” she spat.
It reached for her with both hands, filling with flesh, sliding them down her arms before Lee got both arms around it and forced his hands down. “You are mine; I have seen it in the stars,” he said.
Kara unceremoniously slit his throat. “Oh gross,” Lee said, and she looked up sharply to find him half grinning at her and dropping the body to the ground. His face changed in an instant. “Hit the deck!” he yelled, and Kara dropped hard and fast to the forest floor without thinking twice. She heard two shots fired and looked up in panic to see Lee without a mark on him, just cylon blood on his hands. She turned to see the cylon model that they had been following bleeding out on the ground.
“Well frak.” she said. "We’re going to have to find someone else to follow now."
“And we’re going to have to do it more quietly,” Lee answered. “Are you okay?” He held out a hand and she let him pull her up. He kept hold of her hand and looked her over carefully.
“I’m fine, but we need to get out of here right now.”
Lee nodded and began an easy jog back toward the town, her hand still in his.
* * *
“How does he know who I am?” Kara asked, completely creeped out now that the rush of adrenaline was gone. “Thank you,” she added when Lee handed her a dripping bottle of ale, dropping next to her to dangle bare legs into the pool.
He took a long slow sip of his own drink. “I don’t like it,” he said finally. “I can’t think of any possible positive reason for him knowing and wanting you.” His face was stormy as he looked sightlessly into the trees.
Kara hooked her ankle around his in the water. Lee looked at her in surprise, but she just stared straight ahead. “Well, he’s dead now at any rate. One less to worry about.”
“Yeah, but now we’ve confirmed that people are onto them. It isn’t like we hid the bodies,” Lee said gloomily. “Now what?”
They sat in companionable silence. “Maybe we lay low for a bit,” Kara suggested. “Much lower then we’ve been doing. Lull them into a sense of security.”
“We have no idea what kind of timeframe we’re working under,” Lee countered.
“No,” Kara admitted, “but we’re pretty damn sure that they don’t have a nuke yet, remember? This was your argument months ago.”
“True,” Lee said, sliding his foot briefly up Kara’s calf before re-linking their ankles. “But in the meantime, they’ve been amassing a very sizeable weapons cache - who knows how much they have? I really don’t like the idea of letting them continue unchecked, especially now that we’ve alerted them to our presence.”
“We aren’t really in a position to do anything else,” Kara argued. “The Fleet’s all but ignoring us, we aren’t authorized to tell Phelan or anybody else the skinjobs exist, let alone that they’re living in the woods. Right now, all we can count on is you and me.”
“I guess,” Lee said, making Kara unaccountably angry.
She pulled her feet out of the water and stood up abruptly. “Let’s go see Phelan,” she said shortly. He looked up, confused. “Well, if you don’t want to lay low, let’s bring our cylon sketches and see if we can find anything out over there. In all our secrecy, we’ve never done basic detective work, never asked around, maybe it’ll give us a fresh perspective.”
“Okay,” Lee said standing up, a puzzled frown on his face. “Kara, are you-”
“Go get dressed Apollo,” she cut him off as she began walking towards the house. “Meet me in front of the fountain in twenty minutes.”
* * *
She felt his eyes on her all night long as she flitted around the club, talking and flirting and bull dozing her way through anyone and everyone, showing the sketches, laughing loudly, drinking too much, placing indiscriminate, lingering touches on arms, thighs, chests, and still he watched her.
A hand closed in a vise around her bicep. “What game are you playing, Captain Thrace?” Phelan demanded in her ear as he led her away from the crowd. He hadn’t called her that in awhile.
“What are you talking about?” she demanded, wrenching her arm away.
“You have Apollo all twisted up, paying attention to everyone one but him.”
“I am gathering information,” she said. “We do it all the time."
“Nice try,” Phelan said warningly. “Fight, frak, I don’t care, but don’t play with him.”
Kara scowled, “What are you, his father?”
“No,” Phelan said, and for the first time Kara truly saw the menacing potential of one of the Black Market’s most powerful bosses. “His father left him to rot, as did the rest of your polite society. He was bleeding out in plain sight, but he pulled his own ass together when no one else would help him.”
“With drugs and hookers,” Kara spat.
“With whatever he could hang on to when the world wouldn’t stop spinning.” Phelan said, stepping back with a sneer. “And then you come along; make our boy smile again. Even Shevon doesn’t mind the lack of business because it’s good to see him relax.”
Kara said evenly, “It really isn’t your business, Phelan, for all that you consider him one of yours.”
He studied her closely before nodding. “He isn’t an easy man, Kara. We all know that. But he is a good man, and that has to count for something in this world.”
“It counts for a lot,” Kara said. “I just don’t have it in me to coddle and coax him into trusting me.”
“He does trust you, more than I’ve ever seen him trust anyone.” Phelan said, surprised. “Surely you know that.”
“Sometimes,” Kara said.
He patted her arm. “Take it from someone who’s seen Lee at his absolute worse, on a bad dragon trip, waist deep in whores of both sexes and screaming for his brother,” he paused, and Kara could see him trying to read her face, gauging if the information put her off. She maintained her expression, heart breaking for her friend. “You’re good together,” he finished. “And you know I’m picky when it comes to my people.”
“Lee is one of your people,” she snorted but Phelan interrupted her.
“Don’t question that,” he said warningly. “He’s had my back in some difficult situations when he could have stayed home and minded his own business, like a lot of the people around here do.” Kara opened her mouth to question, but he stopped her again, “and it’s none of your damn business. What happened between me and him will stay between me and him.”
“Fine,” she said shortly. “Then what happens between me and Lee stays between me and Lee as well, Boss.”
Kara gave Phelan another quelling glance before shifting away from him and through the crowd. Most of Lee’s secrets were seemingly laid bare to her - open to be sorted over and picked apart and she felt a shudder of revulsion at the thought of anyone knowing all the ugly parts of her soul like that. Maybe that was the problem.
She squared her shoulders and made her way to Lee’s side, snagging two shots along the way. She tilted her head toward a quiet corner. “It occurs to me,” she said, “that I know everything about the worst thing that ever happened to you, your most shameful moment. Everyone does. It was just splashed all over every newspaper, and then your father quasi-adopted me as a replacement, and then I was sent down here and told about your drug and prostitute coping mechanism.”
“Nice,” Lee said wincing, “is this why you’ve been ignoring me all night?”
“No,” Kara said, “but on the whole trust issue, I guess I figured out that you trust me as much as you can, as someone who knows the worst about you but likes you anyway but that I haven’t told you a damn thing about the worst thing that ever happened to me. I’ve had the luxury of keeping my shame a secret,” she paused. “And don’t think I’m going to forgive you for taking on the role as the emotionally mature one in this friendship.”
“Hey,” Lee protested.
“Oh, please,” Kara cuffed the back of his head. “You’re a walking basket case.” She handed him a glass and clinked hers against it. They shot the ambrosia together and then Kara took a deep breath and a leap of faith. “Now let me tell you a little story about letting my mother die alone.”
* * *
It had turned out that there were people that the cylons talked to on a regular basis, people they even had standing appointments with, so Kara had found out at Phelan’s. Kara had the raptor hovering over the castle, far enough from town that they wouldn’t see it, waiting for Lee to talk to her. The frequency crackled to life, “Subject has left the chapel and is headed toward his vehicle.”
“Copy that Apollo, what’s the bastard driving?”
“A bright red truck, can’t miss it, it’s parked in the square.”
Kara started to fly slowly toward town not wanting to alert the cylon to her presence early. She kept the altitude higher than optimal viewing because she didn’t want the sound of the engine alerting people to her presence. “Okay, Starbuck, he’s leaving the square, taking a left on Fenton Road.” Kara sped up a little, just in time to see the red truck disappearing into the jungle on the well worn road. She followed along the narrow track, losing the vehicle for miles at a time as it disappeared and reappeared, just trusting that she could read the narrow space between the trees well enough until finally, she came upon a break in the jungle large enough to see the truck pull into an ungraceful cinderblock of a building mostly hidden by the shadows of trees and dense vines. It was a damn shame that she was flying an unarmed bird - they didn’t load weapons on aircraft that weren’t flying CAP, training or combat flights. She noted the GPS and wrote down the coordinates before turning tail and flying home.
She had been high enough that no one should have heard her, fast enough to not be in sight more than humanly possible, but there was still a decent chance that she had been spotted. There was no helping that though. As Lee had said, they had no idea about timeframe, about the plan or much of anything really. The only thing that was certain was that there was an enormous compound full of cylons collecting weapons, and that was all Kara really needed know.
* * *
They stared at each other gleefully over dinner in victory after having called Admiral Cain with the whole story. It was all so easy, just send a single aircraft in the dead of night and blow the frak out of the building. Lee was still a little concerned with the after details, like the supply chain and what if there were cylons somewhere else, doing the same thing, but Kara thought he was borrowing trouble.
“So, we should spend the whole day tomorrow by the pool,” Kara decided. “No recon, no Phelan’s, just us being lazy.”
“Sounds good,” Lee said grinning. “Assuming they didn’t see us, we should have a pretty stress free day.”
Kara threw a roll at him. “Stop raining on my parade, I’m sure we’re fine. It’s almost over.”
Lee’s smile faltered. “Yeah. I guess it’s the end of the Starbuck and Apollo adventure.”
“Lee, you’re not getting rid of me that easily,” she hesitated, before speaking softly, quickly. “I’m up for orders in six months or so, and after single handedly saving the worlds, they should give me my pick of assignments. I’ll just get them to write me orders to here.”
Lee’s face was unreadable, “You’d want to stay down here?”
“We can do a lot of good down here.”
“They probably won’t let you, but I really appreciate the thought,” Lee smiled.
Kara shot her hand out across the table and grabbed his. “They can’t blame you forever, Lee. You weren’t wrong.”
“Kara,” he squirmed. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s a huge deal,” she corrected. “And - and I want you to know that I think you did the right thing. I think you offered your honest opinion and saved Delphi.”
“I killed a lot of people. My brother -”
“Your brother died in a viper saving Caprica,” Kara said clearly. “He was a hero who made the ultimate sacrifice for the Colonies. Don’t take that away from him. From what I know about Zak, he wouldn’t blame you.”
“No,” Lee smiled sadly, turning his hand to lace his fingers with hers. “No, he didn’t.”
* * *
Lee dropped a bundle of letters on Kara’s head. “Mail call.” She rolled over and glared balefully up at him, silhouetted against the bright sky. “I would be more intimidated if you weren’t half asleep,” he said. He took off his shirt to bask in the sun, tilting his face up.
Kara’s eyes had just closed again when she yelped at the feel of an ice cold water bottle rolled across her bare stomach. Her arm shot out and caught Lee’s wrist, half-heartedly bending it backward in warning. “And now?”
“Suitably cowed,” he said, and she laughed in surprise, a little breathless, as she felt his teeth close lightly, playfully, over the heel of her hand.
“Truce?” she asked.
“Mmph,” Lee said, and they disengaged, Lee to fall back into a drowsy stretch and Kara to go through her mail. She squinted at an official looking letter.
“Any calls from Fleet?” she asked, idly opening the envelope.
“Nothing. Kind of make you wonder what they do all day if this doesn’t warrant their immediate attention.”
“Huh,” Kara said, sitting up reading the invitation. “Looks like I’ll be talking to a whole lot of the brass very shortly.”
* * *
“I have to go,” Kara said, watching with frustration as Lee’s face almost imperceptibly shifted, feature by feature, into pleasant blankness. “It’s your dad’s retirement, I have to be there.”
“I understand,” Lee said.
“No, you don’t,” she said sharply. “If you did, you wouldn’t be looking at me like that.”
“Kara,” Lee said, taking both of her hands in his, grip warm, eyes cool, “I understand. I don’t like it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get it.”
She nodded reluctantly, twisting her hands to grasp his wrists. Silently cursing at the deeply entrenched defense mechanism that had him automatically waiting for the worst thing to happen. “I’m coming back.” Lee nodded, staring down at their hands. “Lee,” Kara said, and he looked up, meeting her eyes. “I’m coming back.”
“Of course you are,” he half smiled, “We have a job to finish.”
Kara pulled her hands free and grabbed his shoulders, digging her fingers in hard. “We do,” she acknowledged, pushing herself recklessly past the barriers they still had built between them, “but we already talked about this - if you think I’m leaving you down here to bask by a pool sipping frozen daiquiris on your own, you are out of your mind.”
He took a deep breath and his smile was sudden, blinding. Beautiful. Familiar in spite of its rarity like the polite disinterested expression could never be. “I’ll keep the blender cold for you.”
“Do you think you can stay out of trouble for a week without me here to watch your back?”
Lee leaned in close, hands barely resting on her hips, breath ghosting against her lips, eyes going hot, voice dropping deep, “Trouble is not nearly as much fun without you.”
Kara’s heart stuttered. She nudged her nose gently against Lee’s, the thrill of promise singing through her veins as he bumped back and skidded along her cheek, lips brushing against her earlobe in a not quite kiss. “Hold that thought,” she said softly.
He pulled back to look in her eyes. “Make the wait worth my while?” He asked, face open.
“Naturally,” Kara said, her cocksure grin making him laugh, like she had hoped it would. She hugged him briefly, and he pulled her in hard before letting her go. She picked her bag up off the floor and slung it over her shoulder, pausing before turning to leave. “Seriously. Be careful. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Seven days,” Lee said easily. “Two days to Galactica, two days back, one day for the retirement ceremony and two for you to brief the brass and get some missiles on your raptor. I’ve been living here for five years. Cylons or no cylons, I think I can handle a little time on my own. Just don’t be late.”
“Way to jinx it,” Kara muttered, squashing down a sense of unease at leaving a man behind, leaving a friend behind. Leaving Lee behind. She would be back. Seven days.
* * *
The retirement ceremony was stupendously boring, as was the party after. At least she had been allowed to fly the Old Man’s lovingly restored viper as part of the festivities, able to make faces at the speeches in the privacy of the cockpit.
She was introduced to plenty of brass, most of whom had been instrumental in banishing Lee to the ends of the solar system, and found herself trying to shake off a sense of irritation at Adama for laughing with them, talking with those who had used his son as a scapegoat, for standing by when they did it. Kara looked down at her flight suit and was irritated with herself for flying Adama’s old viper as some sort of son substitute. She harnessed her frustration into something more productive, like taking advantage of the open bar.
“How is he?” a soft accent in a firm voice.
“Hi, Shaw. I’m fine, thank you, how are you?” Kara asked, frustration finding a target in the lovely, contained woman who had had Lee’s body, and who still had his friendship and his unwavering trust. Shaw just looked at her. “He’s doing pretty well, actually,” she said, giving in because anything else would make her feel foolish.
“Good,” Shaw answered. “And how are you, Captain Thrace?”
“I’m good,” Kara said, slightly surprised that she meant it. “Aside from being stuck here when there are more important things to be doing.” And more important people to be doing them with. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“I was picked up as Cain’s aide last month.”
“Good for you,” Kara said. It would never have been her choice, but being an Admiral’s aide was a great tic in the box of career building. Shaw nodded her acknowledgement and slid onto the bar stool next to her and looked at Kara closely for a long time, her lips curving. “What?” Kara demanded sharply.
“So,” Shaw grinned fully. “You and Adama.”
“Shut up,” Kara muttered and then motioned to the bartender for two shots of ambrosia.
* * *
“Hey, it’s me,” Kara said to Lee’s voicemail. “The bastards have moved the last debriefing back again. It’ll be tomorrow now,” Kara frowned, “and even if it doesn’t happen, I’ll still be leaving tomorrow, 1800 at the latest, so I’ll be home in three days. See you then,” she paused. “Apollo, I really wish you would frakking pick up your phone.” Kara ended the call, putting down the receiver with a soft click. Ten days and she was still in meetings on the Galactica. Lee hadn’t answered the phone. Not once in the four days she had been trying to catch him, to tell him she’d be late, to let him know that she wasn’t leaving him to rot in that cylon infested jungle by himself.
* * *
“We will be suspending your mission in Sagittaron, Captain Thrace. You may return to your post with our thanks for helping us out in such a delicate situation.”
“What?” Kara demanded. “No! There are cylons in that jungle with a supply chain of weapons going through as fast as water through a frakking fire hose. Cylons, sir!”
“We appreciate your dedication, but nothing you have told us is conclusive.”
“Conclusive!” Kara felt like screaming, “I’ve seen the bastards.”
“Yes,” said a white haired admiral, one of the seven sitting on the board, “So you say, but very few people have really seen the human models, sketches and photographs alone can be mistaken in high stress situations.”
“I worked with a skinjob for two years,” she said in disbelief. “I was standing in CIC when she shot Admiral Adama. I know what Boomer looks like.”
One of the admirals spoke sharply, her eyes hard, “The cylon threat was neutralized five and a half years ago. I believe that you believe what you saw, but it is the conclusion of this body that Captain Adama is simply trying to find his way back into the good graces of the fleet and the Colonies.”
“You are going to get us all killed.” Kara gritted, rising from her seated position at the round table.
“That’s enough, Kara!” Bill Adama spoke, and it felt like a slap to her face.
“I don’t think so, Admiral,” Kara said coldly, glaring at him before turning to address the rest of the table. “I can’t tell if this is still some ill-conceived vendetta against a frakking captain or if you are so far into denial that you are willing to let the worlds blow up just to prove yourselves right.”
“You are out of line, Captain.”
“You’re out of line, sir,” Kara snapped. “I am going back to Sagittaron and Captain Adama and I are going to break up the cylon ring.”
“You will do no such thing,” a Gemenese Admiral said. “Think long and hard about this, Captain, are you really willing to throw away your career on the say-so of an officer who not only is responsible for the deaths of the Orion wing, but who has taken to recreational drug use and the solicitation of prostitutes?”
Kara began to laugh, feeling the harsh ugly barks roll out of her and into the affronted silence of the conference room. “You’re unbelievable,” she choked through the suffocating waves of near hysteria. “Frakking out of your minds. Where did you get that information from, one of the child pimps you have locked up? Who the frak cares? Lee Adama could have just let everything go - let it all just roll under the bridge. Instead, he’s dismantled the more disgusting elements of the black market, eliminated some of this solar system’s most prolific gun runners and is now trying to make you, make you, stop a new cylon invasion. If I were him, I’d’ve walked in there and offered to help them burn Fleet Headquarters down to the ground with all of you inside.” She looked over at Admiral Cain, who was tight lipped but held her gaze steadily. Kara would have bet good money that Cain hadn’t voted to suspend, but she was remaining silent nevertheless. And then there was the Old Man.
“Captain Thrace,” Bill Adama spoke in a weary tone, “report back to your ship. Your CO is expecting you. You have CAPs to fly."
“You miserable bastards,” Kara said with feeling before stalking out of the room.
* * *
“Captain Thrace, come back with that raptor, you don’t want to get into any more trouble than you already are.” Bill Adama’s voice drifted over the frequency and into her ear.
“Sorry, sir,” Kara said tightly, betrayal wrapped firmly around her heart, “That’s just not gonna happen.”
“Damnit, Kara!” the Old Man’s voice held an edge of desperation, “You know I fought for the mission to continue, but they voted against me. As the other admirals pointed out, the last time someone put their trust in Lee we lost the Orion’s wing. I lost Zak. I love Lee, but he is not worth you ruining your career.”
“The last time someone put their trust in Lee, he saved her life,” Kara said, “And he’s worth a hell of a lot.”
“You can’t let your personal feelings for him get in the way of your judgment. You should know better.”
“You should know better because he’s your son,” she hissed in anger, dialing the first jump point back to Sagittaron. “And in case you didn’t notice it, I’m backing him up on it. If his word isn’t good enough for you, then why isn’t mine?” She waited in the dark of space, watching the Galactica and her familiar, scarred hide.
“Report back to the ship, Captain. Now.” Kara closed her eyes briefly, hating to disappoint Adama, even now, even while he was brutally disappointing her.
“Good-bye, sir,” she said firmly. “I’ll send you a postcard when Lee and I are done saving the worlds.” She jumped.
* * *
Kara landed the raptor and practically sprinted out the hatch. The door to the castle was hanging open on a single hinge. “Frak!” she whispered furiously, pulling out her sidearm and flicking off the safety.
Her echoing steps and the running water of the fountain were the only sounds in the place. “Lee!” she called. “You left the door open.” She moved carefully up the stairs, listening hard, but could hear nothing.
Kara searched from the top down and found no one. She did find Lee’s weapons though, and shattered glass in the kitchen, and a rising sense of panic.
The sudden, booming chimes of the doorbell startled her into a gasp, and she moved quickly and quietly into the foyer, weapon first. Phelan was standing in front of the fountain, both hands up.
“I saw the raptor fly in and came as soon as I could,” Phelan said.
“Where’s Lee?” Kara asked, moving closer, weapon trained on the Boss.
“That’s what I came here to tell you, Thrace,” Phelan said. “Put the gun down.”
“How do I know you didn’t sell him out?”
“Oh you managed to do that yourselves,” Phelan said angrily. “All your inelegant poking and unsubtle prodding, not deigning to tell me the score so that I could help; and then you left him out here alone in this isolated castle. This is not a game,” he ended on a shout. “Gun runners are some mean motherfrakkers and you two are babes in the woods when it comes to dealing with this shit.”
She lowered her weapon. “It’s just. . . I was late,” she said, by way of apology.
“I’m a little worried about him too,” Phelan said gruffly. “Now, will you tell me what the frak is going on?”
* * *
“So if you know where he is, why didn’t you go get him?” Kara demanded, sliding extra clips of ammo into her tac vest.
Phelan glowered at her. “Unlike you and your missing boyfriend, I don’t like running into situations without all the information. And since you chose to keep me out of the loop about the frakking cylons until this moment, it’s a good thing I didn’t.”
“And you’re sure he’s still alive?” Kara demanded, adjusting the strap of her thigh holster so that she wouldn’t be forced to look into Phelan’s eyes or think to hard about the question.
“They called in a doctor yesterday, one of Shevon’s regulars, and he treated Adama for fairly minor injuries - scrapes, bruises, looks like he’s been roughed up, but nothing permanent. I doubt they’d bother with a doctor if they wanted to kill him right away. Son of an admiral, even a disgraced one, is worth more alive than dead.”
Kara nodded, letting out a shaky breath. “Okay. I need a building layout, number of people inside--’’
“Not my first dance,” Phelan said dryly. “I know what you need.”
* * *
Kara moved through the halls of the compound she and Lee had discovered, feeling like an avenging angel, slipping into the calm hum, riding the charge of danger and leashing her fear into honed edge. She was built for war. Her comrades moved more silently then she did, thieves and smugglers being used to the machinations of stealth and hiding in shadows, whereas Kara had always masked herself with loud words and large gestures, but, she noted with satisfaction, she cut throats as effectively as any of them.
Cylon blood was as red as a human’s, a fact that she had realized when she had witnessed Boomer’s perfunctory suicide. It felt like human blood too, as yet another blonde cylon model slid noiselessly down the wall, spilling the sticky liquid over her hands.
She glanced over at the slim, short man next to her, Brian, one of Phelan’s most trusted lieutenants. He nodded significantly at the door in front of them. Lee was in there. She nodded her understanding, indicating that she would go in high and he should go in low, and he flashed her a thumb’s up before turning to talk in complicated sign language to the other members of their fire team. Gods, what a motley crew, but they were good. Very good.
And then she was at the door, pulling her sidearm as she tucked her kbar in her belt, moving towards it, testing the knob, finding that it turned easily. She had half a second to count the thirteen cylons and one shirtless, bruised Lee Adama tied to a chair in the center of the room before they all started shooting.
Having only killed five off the mark, Kara and the others were forced to drop their guns as they moved further into the room. They were in too close quarters in for shooting and were going to start hitting each other. She slipped into the calm of the fray, blade back in hand, and swung into a loose limbed, soft kneed stance, using short, economic stabs to open cylon flesh, to spill rich, red blood on the floor. She was untouchable, unattainable, invulnerable in the pale static of her head, able to anticipate moves and read eyes the way she never could without the truth of destruction raining around her.
The cylons had overcome their surprise and were fighting back with skill and strength, but Phelan’s crew fought dirtier and smarter, and Kara fought harder than she ever remembered fighting in her life, even back on the playgrounds of her childhood, back before she knew better, wasting her time defending the honor of her mother. She slid her knife between the ribs of one of the male cylons and into the place where humans tended to have hearts, twisting to make it hurt, and then kicked him to the ground. She spun to find more, but saw only allies standing.
Bits and blurts of sound started bleeding through, heralding her slow return to normalcy. She blinked carefully and regulated her breathing, watching her team meticulously cleaning their weapons and searching cylon bodies for money or jewelry - the spoils of war. She couldn’t look at Lee in anything but pieces, right knee, left shoulder, a foot, an ear. There were bruises everywhere underneath the rope, but nothing looked broken from where she was standing.
Brian touched her arm, told her that he and the others were going to search the rest of the compound and, with an emotional intuition entirely lacking in all of the Marine teams Kara had ever worked with, he closed the door behind him, leaving her alone with Lee.
With the blood of their enemies striped across her cheek, dripping from her knife, the adrenalin of battle still coursing through her veins, Kara raised her head to meet Lee's eyes. Instead of accusation she saw acceptance, trust opposed to betrayal. The relief that shot through her nearly forced her to her knees. Instead, she walked toward the chair. The ropes were tied tightly, biting into his bare chest and arms, wrapped multiple times around him from shoulders to hips and again at the ankles, binding him, holding him down, containing him, twisting him into a motionless, wordless shape that didn't suit.
Kara carefully wiped her blade off on her shirt and moved closer. Lee raised a single, questioning eyebrow, expressive even when there was a gag that seemed to cover half his face and she felt the left side of her mouth quirk up in response. "I told you not to get into trouble," she said leaning in close but not touching. "You never did follow orders very well, did you?" Lee's other brow lifted in disbelief and Kara grinned fully, heart pounding. Her voice sunk deeper, a raspy growl in her throat, and Lee's eyes darkened as he started to strain against his ropes again. "If you stay very, very still, Captain, I'll free you. Think you can let go of your inner control freak for me?" He froze and then relaxed completely, and that was answer enough for her.
Kara brought her knife up so that he could see it and moved it slowly toward his face and, taking care not to push, not to mar the strong, clean lines of his jaw and cheekbone, slid the thin blade between the press of the cloth and his flesh. Their eyes caught and held, her pulse fluttered, as their one point of contact rasped against stubble before tearing cloth slowly until Lee's mouth was free. Kara kept the flat of her knife against his skin for a moment, an extension of her hand, her self, sharp and shiny and prone to cut. He didn’t say a word, just stared at her with disconcertingly open blue eyes.
Her breath caught at his stillness, she could taste the quiet in the air, heavy on her tongue, nearly drunk on the knowledge that she could do whatever she wanted to Lee right in that moment and he would let her, wouldn’t even say a word. Kara smoothed the knife down his cheek, traced the tip lightly along his jaw to the center of his chin. She leaned in and placed a soft, closed mouth kiss to his lips, moving to stand directly in front of him when she pulled away. His eyes never left hers.
Carefully, she slid the blade, bumping over Lee's chin, skimming down the column of his throat, tracing over his upper chest until it rested against the rope that trapped him. Kara broke Lee's gaze to look where the ties cut into his flesh, wincing. "Gods, Lee," She said, pulling herself out of the breathless silence of trust to purposely and quickly saw the binding from his body. The ropes fell from him, and Kara dropped the knife after cutting the ties from his legs to trace her shaking fingers over angry red stripes on his skin.
"Kara." She looked up at the half whispered word, pulled back into the strange peace of a moment ago when she looked into his eyes. "I'm fine," Lee said. "I'm fine." She swallowed, nodded, and slid her hands up his biceps, pressing into the solid bulk of Apollo's shoulders, still strong enough to carry the weight of the world. His hands were restrained behind his back, wrists bound together, making the muscles in his arms more apparent, pushing his chest a little forward. She looked up when Lee's head tilted, a smile playing across his mouth at her distraction.
"Did I say you could talk, Captain?" She growled low in her throat, suddenly, fiercely wanting the control he had offered up, wanting his submission to her whims, his trust in her motives. The faint curve of his lips remained but he stayed obediently quiet. Kara dragged her hands over his shoulders until they met at his neck, circled it, squeezed lightly to see how far Lee'd let her go. He didn’t flinch, but she felt him swallow tightly against her thumbs where they pressed into the hollow of his throat and she saw that he was afraid.
He was afraid of this, giving up his tightly won, closely worn control, but he would do anything for her, let her do anything to him. The knowledge hummed through her that she could choke him right now and he wouldn’t move. She had never asked for this kind of responsibility, but the gods were not in the habit of asking her what she wanted.
Kara released her hold on Lee's neck, stepping back and standing straight. She picked up her knife from the floor, taking the time to circle its blood-stained steel around Lee's navel before switching it closed and tucking it into her boot. Quickly stripping off her filthy shirt, Kara watched as a terrible, painful need swept over his face, the look of someone who had wanted without being able to have for too long.
She moved forward, grasped his shoulders again and straddled his lap, sealing his mouth with hers in one full, wet swoop. There was no time for sweet words or confessions, she didn't even know if there was any gentleness to be had between them, but his teeth bit down on her lip and she invaded his mouth with her tongue and pressed as closely to his bare chest as possible, gasping at the heat of his abused skin against hers. She felt his arms shaking with the strain of not being able to touch her, felt the heat and hardness where she ground down against him, felt his panting breath, his desperate lips, his pleading stare, as they kissed with their eyes open.
She tore herself away from his mouth, scrambling down to her knees and unbuttoning his pants with shaking hands. Kara pulled his erection free and leaned in and dragged her tongue up the hot length of him before sucking him into her mouth, tilting her face up in time to see Lee's eyes close, his mouth open and wet and red and she almost stopped what she was doing right then to taste his lips again. But he throbbed warm and hard and alive, so, so alive that she bent to the task. Inhaling his scent, tasting his skin, nothing artful, no teasing games or false starts, just you're here, I'm here, I'm Kara, you're Lee, my mouth, your skin, and this is all that matters. Hearing him gasping, hearing him muttering above her, "please, please, please." Without looking, just breathing more heavily into his body, she pulled the knife from her boot again, pulling her mouth free, pushing intimately closer, face buried in his chest, she reached around and felt for the ropes around his wrists, cutting him free even as he continued to beg, "please, please, please."
She may have sliced his wrists a little, couldn’t bring herself to care as his hands, which had to be numb and aching were suddenly grabbing at her face and yanking her up and into another kiss as the knife clattered to the ground again. They scrabbled down her body, fingers bumping over ribs and digging into her hips before he uttered a final, "please" against her mouth and she nodded because gods yes, anything. Anything at all. Their hands tangled as they freed her from her pants and Kara was totally out of patience. Frak the boots. She stood, shoved her trousers to her ankles and turned her back to Lee, his tongue sliding up her spine as she slid down his body and onto his length.
They both froze. Kara's head thrown back and her mouth stretched wide, Lee's head dropped forward, face pressed between her shoulder blades. Then he hesitantly slid both arms around her, snaking one under her bra to cup her bare breast and the other across her middle, sliding his fingers gently up and down the spot where waist flared into hip. He pressed a series of full mouthed kisses in a line from her left shoulder blade to her right shoulder blade before leaning his forehead against the nape of her neck and breathing "Kara" into her skin.
And she began to rock. Sliding up and down languidly, facing a room full of dead bodies of the people she had killed to save a monster, Kara felt her own demons recede as she whispered his name into the air. "Lee."
* * *
The moonlight painted shadows across Kara’s wet skin as she slipped through the water with easy strokes, entirely nude. Lee sighed his appreciation, sitting on the side of the pool with his feet dangling in, drinking champagne directly from the bottle. She emerged from under the water, blonde hair sleek and silver in the bright night, pulling herself half out of the pool, hands braced on his knees. He tilted his head down, pressing lush, open mouthed kisses to her lips, cupping his hands underneath her elbows to pull her higher, closer, burying his face into the juncture of neck and shoulder. Blowing deliberately down her body, making her flesh ripple with goose bumps.
She laughed. The breathless laugh that never failed to shoot straight to his heart and groin in equal, dizzying measure. “Afraid to get a little wet?”
He let her slide down his body, reveling in the feel of her as she dragged down his skin to stand on her own feet in the pool again. “Just thought we should talk first,” he said. “Short conversation,” he hastily added when she narrowed her eyes.
“What’s there to talk about? The compound was cleared, that supply chain dismantled, the jackasses finally released pictures of the skinjobs to the public to prevent something like this from happening again, Phelan gave us a hell of a lot of booze to celebrate. It’s just you and me, Lee. I say we enjoy it.”
He tangled his fingers in her hair, leaning down to press his lips to the crown of her head. “What about us?” he asked, feeling needy and foolish to be asking such a question at such a time, but not quite able to help it. He wanted to laze idly in this pool, in this jungle, with this woman for the rest of his life, but things hadn’t been easy, or good, or even real in such a long time.
“What about us?” Kara asked, idly running a finger from his knee to his foot and pressing a kiss to the inside of his calf. “I told a few Admirals, including your father, to take a flying leap. I’ve been assured that, should I be allowed to remain in the service, they’re going to exile me with you anyway.”
“And. . . that would be okay with you?”
Kara shook her head in disbelief before taking Lee’s hands and yanking him into the pool. She dunked him hard and he swallowed water as he laughed into her kisses.
fin
Author: innibis
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 9,376
Pairing: Kara/Lee
Genre: Completely AU
Disclaimer: I am not RDM or any of his cohorts. I do not lay claim to BSG in any way, shape or form; especially the finale.
A/N: Ah, workerbee73, a beta who can be trusted to see the beauty in the beast.
Part I
Beauty and the Beast
“Phelan’s right,” Kara said, laughing in spite of herself at the forced casual walk she and Apollo were taking around and around the farmers market. “We really don’t blend.” She bumped her shoulder into Apollo’s and he rolled his eyes in agreement.
“Well, while we’re here, we might as well stock up for the week,” he said, shaking out a large canvass bag and making a beeline for a stand.
“Oh no you don’t,” Kara said following on his heels. “I hate cauliflower.”
“Haven’t seen you cooking the meals,” he said, picking through the vegetables.
“Excuse me for not wanting to encroach on your domain,” she shot back, taking the sleeve of his t-shirt and pulling him away from the offending cauliflower and pointing him in the direction of the green beans. “You pour wine and listen to music and chop things. You commune with boiling water.”
He let out a startled laugh, grinning at her with humor filled eyes and Kara stopped dead in her tracks at the transformation from distant to touchable. “Come on Kara,” he said, wrapping a hand loose and easy around her wrist and tugging, “let’s find you some vegetables so you can grow up to be a big strong pilot.” She grinned up at him almost involuntarily at the use of her first name and his hand tightened briefly on her wrist as his eyes flashed with heated interest. “Green beans it is,” he said softly, clearing his throat and stepping back. He let her wrist fall and she followed him to the next stand, looking around the square while he dug through the piles of beans.
A familiar figure caught her eye. “Lee,” she hissed sharply, adrenaline spiking in her veins, “I swear to the gods that’s Sharon by the tomatoes. Don’t move!” she admonished as he began a very unsubtle turn. “Just look at me and use your peripheral vision.”
He turned more slowly, clutching green beans in one of his hands and looked at Kara. “I think I see her, but she’s just on the edge. Do you think she’ll recognize you?”
“I have no idea,” Kara said.
Lee thrust his handful of beans into the bag and put both hands on Kara’s shoulders, turning her a little so that he could get a better look. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that’s exactly who I saw before. I doubt we’re both wrong.”
“It’s her,” Kara said grimly. “It’s definitely her, or her model at any rate.”
“Alright,” Lee said turning back to the vendor and making a hasty purchase. He made a show of tucking more green beans into the bag, talking swiftly and quietly. “My thought is that it’s too risky to follow her back to the compound because chances are good that she knows exactly who you are.”
“Agreed,” Kara said. “Want to keep an eye on her here and see who she came with? Some other model is probably less dangerous. Plus it would be a good idea to know what as many models look like as possible.”
“Probably,” Lee nodded. “I really don’t want her to see you-how do you feel about going back to wait in the jeep?” Kara glared. “Yeah,” Lee said ruefully, “that’s what I thought.”
“Over there,” Kara said, motioning with her chin toward an enormous tree, the area underneath partially obscured from the square by thick hanging vines. Lee grabbed her hand and laced their fingers together, keeping Kara’s back to the cylon and strolling towards the tree. He parted the vines and they stepped through them. Kara cuddled up close to his side and Lee wrapped an arm around her shoulders, so that they looked like a couple enjoying a private conversation if anyone looked their way.
“We have a pretty good view of the center of the square.” Lee was pressed close enough that his voice vibrated through her. “Let’s just hope she doesn’t move.”
They waited in silence for long minutes, until Sharon was joined by an older man and a woman. “That’s your blonde, right?” she asked.
“Yup,” Lee said, and Kara committed her face to memory as her heart ratcheted up at the proof that there were still cylons among them. “I’ve never seen that man before though.”
“Me neither,” she said. The cylons, all carrying baskets full of food, conferred with one another for an extended period of time before turning together and walking out of the square and disappearing. “Holy shit,” Kara said shakily. Lee’s arm dropped from her shoulders, but he remained standing close. “It’s not that I didn’t believe you,” Kara said, “it’s just that - there they are.”
“Yeah,” Lee said, running a hand through his hair and blowing out a long slow breath. “Same here. Getting your confirmation makes it much more real. I wonder if anyone knows anything about that man. Too bad we didn’t think to bring a camera.”
“I can draw him,” Kara said. “I’ll draw him and we can send it to Fleet Headquarters and see if they know anything.”
“That’s a great idea,” Lee said. He looked at the mostly empty bag in his hands. “I don’t suppose we can finish shopping first?”
“Yeah, let’s finish up here and that get back to the fortress or whatever you call it.”
“I call it home,” Lee said.
* * *
“Aaron Doral,” Kara read off the information she’d obtained from Fleet Headquarters from her sketch of him. That guy actually contracted as a PR guy for the fleet. He committed suicide during the war.”
“That’s it?” Lee asked, reading over her shoulder.
“That’s all they’ve got,” Kara confirmed. “Seems like a lot of his information was erased from the system somehow. Covering his tracks?”
Lee’s head thumped forward and on to her shoulder, groaning a little, “Or clerical error - I’d say that’s just as likely.”
“True,” Kara reached up and patted the top of his head, shivering a little as his warm breath rushed down her back. She leaned forward to look more closely at the computer and Lee stood up straight and began pacing behind her. “So, what do we do with this information?”
“Keep an eye out for him and the people he talks to?” Lee said. “Figure out who the cylons in the town are as best we can without alerting anyone. We have really good feelers in the weapons supply chain and things don’t seem to be escalating. Certainly no nukes have been acquired, we’d have heard about that one.”
“So what, play it cool and gather what we can before going in guns blazing?” Kara asked, spinning her chair around to face Lee.
“There are only two of us,” he said. “As good as we are, it isn’t all that prudent to run in blind.”
“No shit,” Kara said. “And here I was thinking I’d go up against an unknown enemy with my knife between my teeth and a grenade in my pocket.”
“You brought grenades?” Lee’s face lit up
* * *
Kara stared at the seven faces she had hanging on the wall of the office. Calling it an office was a stretch, but, despite the precious stones inlaid in the desk, it was equipped with computers and all the things necessary to maintain a small, jungle surrounded bureaucracy. Lee was out getting mail and running errands, something Kara didn’t do very often since the Sharon model cylon was the one most seen in the town and Lee had been a fixture before the cylons had come to the area, so they clearly weren’t overly concerned about him. She had been living in the castle for two months, and they had made slow but steady progress on the cylons, identifying models by sight and getting sketchy information back from the fleet. They hadn’t been successful in following the skinjobs yet, but mostly because they were being careful and trying not to spook them.
In the meantime, Kara and Lee spent most mornings out by the pool, the afternoons in the office and a few evenings a week at Phelan’s. It was an oddly comfortable situation. Lee vacillated somewhere between prickly acquaintance and genuine friend, but Kara could give as good as she got and was learning to know when to just let him stew, when to pick a fight and when to say something outrageous to make him laugh. Fortunately, the good days outweighed the bad, and in matters professional she’s never worked with anyone better suited to her intuitive style than Apollo and his meticulous logic.
She heard the front door close with a boom and Lee lope up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Hey, Kara,” he said as he strode into the office. “Any news about the seventh suspected cylon?”
“Nothing,” Kara said. “I think they’re done humoring us, to be honest.”
“Humoring us?” Lee asked absently, thumbing through the mail.
“C’mon Lee, the replies have been as brief as possible from the beginning. Out of sight, out of mind.”
He looked up sharply, “They’re cylons.”
“They’re brass and we’re screw ups in the middle of nowhere,” she countered.
He flopped into the chair next to hers, scowling, but his face broke into a smile a few seconds later.
“Letter from Shaw?” Kara asked. She was still unclear about the nature of Shaw’s relationship with Lee. She just knew that letters, emails and calls from the small lieutenant made Lee smile, and there was an ugly corner of her heart that resented the hell out of that.
“Yeah,” Lee said, smile still firmly in place.
“What is she to you?” Kara asked. “She can’t know about Shevon.” She didn’t want to piss him off, but Kara was curious.
“I haven’t been with Shevon in awhile,” Lee frowned at her, “Not since you got here.”
“Well, you’ve been pretty busy,” Kara said. “You don’t have to answer, I was just curious.”
“No, it’s fine,” Lee said, considering. “Kendra and I were never really together. We were more than friends with benefits, but knew that it wasn’t going to be a long term romance or anything like that.” He tilted his head and smiled, eyes distant. “She’s the only one who cared about whether I lived or died. The only one who made me stay in touch. The only person who got really angry on my behalf and who never blamed me for the Orion. She’s my friend,” he said finally. “I trust her.”
“That’s what she said,” Kara said. “Exactly what she said - that you are a friend and that she trusts you. Is that all it is?”
Lee focused all his consideration on her, “Is that all? Kara, when all is said and done, having someone you can count on is all that matters.”
Kara blinked at the sudden lump in her throat. “Yes, well-” she tried to think of somebody, anybody, who inspired such blind faith in her life. “Did you find out anything about the gun running?”
Lee looked at her closely, but answered. “I saw Brian, one of Phelan’s guys, in town. He said to come by tonight, that they have some information about it.”
“Okay,” Kara nodded. It was still strange to her that they went to one of the club of the Market’s most notorious bosses and considered it a safe place for information gathering, but this was another world entirely, where everyone lived on the wrong side of law and order, and were only discernable by the varying shades of gray.
“From what he said, the flow of weapons has slowed down.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Could be,” Lee said nudging her foot with his. “Or it could be that they suspect that someone’s on to them.”
* * *
“Oh gross,” Kara whispered, flicking a hairy spider off Lee’s sweaty back.
“It’s the jungle, what did you expect tracking through it would be like?” He hissed.
“You could say thank you for getting an enormous, man eating bug off you.”
“Shhh! He isn’t that far ahead of us.”
Kara rolled her eyes and pushed in front of Lee. He pressed a hand against the small of her back and she turned her head to see him shaking his head ruefully. “Days like this, I really miss flying,” he said softly and then dropped his arm.
She swung her hand back, letting their fingers tangle quickly in understanding before disengaging. Up ahead, the lone cylon, a Simon model, tramped through the woods, seemingly without concern. It was the first real opportunity that had taken to discover the location of the compound, having found the suspected model, one unknown to both of them, disappearing alone and on foot into the jungle.
The twig snapping was the only warning she had before she was suddenly on her back and pinned by one of the young, male cylon models. “Kara Thrace,” it said into her face in a disgustingly intimate tone. And then he was gone, hauled off her by one supremely pissed off Lee Adama.
“You don’t touch her,” he growled, both hands full of cylon shirt as it struggled to get to her, almost whimpering in obscene need.
Revulsion whipped up Kara’s spine, and she pulled her kbar from her boot and held the knife to its throat. “How do you know me, cylon?” she spat.
It reached for her with both hands, filling with flesh, sliding them down her arms before Lee got both arms around it and forced his hands down. “You are mine; I have seen it in the stars,” he said.
Kara unceremoniously slit his throat. “Oh gross,” Lee said, and she looked up sharply to find him half grinning at her and dropping the body to the ground. His face changed in an instant. “Hit the deck!” he yelled, and Kara dropped hard and fast to the forest floor without thinking twice. She heard two shots fired and looked up in panic to see Lee without a mark on him, just cylon blood on his hands. She turned to see the cylon model that they had been following bleeding out on the ground.
“Well frak.” she said. "We’re going to have to find someone else to follow now."
“And we’re going to have to do it more quietly,” Lee answered. “Are you okay?” He held out a hand and she let him pull her up. He kept hold of her hand and looked her over carefully.
“I’m fine, but we need to get out of here right now.”
Lee nodded and began an easy jog back toward the town, her hand still in his.
* * *
“How does he know who I am?” Kara asked, completely creeped out now that the rush of adrenaline was gone. “Thank you,” she added when Lee handed her a dripping bottle of ale, dropping next to her to dangle bare legs into the pool.
He took a long slow sip of his own drink. “I don’t like it,” he said finally. “I can’t think of any possible positive reason for him knowing and wanting you.” His face was stormy as he looked sightlessly into the trees.
Kara hooked her ankle around his in the water. Lee looked at her in surprise, but she just stared straight ahead. “Well, he’s dead now at any rate. One less to worry about.”
“Yeah, but now we’ve confirmed that people are onto them. It isn’t like we hid the bodies,” Lee said gloomily. “Now what?”
They sat in companionable silence. “Maybe we lay low for a bit,” Kara suggested. “Much lower then we’ve been doing. Lull them into a sense of security.”
“We have no idea what kind of timeframe we’re working under,” Lee countered.
“No,” Kara admitted, “but we’re pretty damn sure that they don’t have a nuke yet, remember? This was your argument months ago.”
“True,” Lee said, sliding his foot briefly up Kara’s calf before re-linking their ankles. “But in the meantime, they’ve been amassing a very sizeable weapons cache - who knows how much they have? I really don’t like the idea of letting them continue unchecked, especially now that we’ve alerted them to our presence.”
“We aren’t really in a position to do anything else,” Kara argued. “The Fleet’s all but ignoring us, we aren’t authorized to tell Phelan or anybody else the skinjobs exist, let alone that they’re living in the woods. Right now, all we can count on is you and me.”
“I guess,” Lee said, making Kara unaccountably angry.
She pulled her feet out of the water and stood up abruptly. “Let’s go see Phelan,” she said shortly. He looked up, confused. “Well, if you don’t want to lay low, let’s bring our cylon sketches and see if we can find anything out over there. In all our secrecy, we’ve never done basic detective work, never asked around, maybe it’ll give us a fresh perspective.”
“Okay,” Lee said standing up, a puzzled frown on his face. “Kara, are you-”
“Go get dressed Apollo,” she cut him off as she began walking towards the house. “Meet me in front of the fountain in twenty minutes.”
* * *
She felt his eyes on her all night long as she flitted around the club, talking and flirting and bull dozing her way through anyone and everyone, showing the sketches, laughing loudly, drinking too much, placing indiscriminate, lingering touches on arms, thighs, chests, and still he watched her.
A hand closed in a vise around her bicep. “What game are you playing, Captain Thrace?” Phelan demanded in her ear as he led her away from the crowd. He hadn’t called her that in awhile.
“What are you talking about?” she demanded, wrenching her arm away.
“You have Apollo all twisted up, paying attention to everyone one but him.”
“I am gathering information,” she said. “We do it all the time."
“Nice try,” Phelan said warningly. “Fight, frak, I don’t care, but don’t play with him.”
Kara scowled, “What are you, his father?”
“No,” Phelan said, and for the first time Kara truly saw the menacing potential of one of the Black Market’s most powerful bosses. “His father left him to rot, as did the rest of your polite society. He was bleeding out in plain sight, but he pulled his own ass together when no one else would help him.”
“With drugs and hookers,” Kara spat.
“With whatever he could hang on to when the world wouldn’t stop spinning.” Phelan said, stepping back with a sneer. “And then you come along; make our boy smile again. Even Shevon doesn’t mind the lack of business because it’s good to see him relax.”
Kara said evenly, “It really isn’t your business, Phelan, for all that you consider him one of yours.”
He studied her closely before nodding. “He isn’t an easy man, Kara. We all know that. But he is a good man, and that has to count for something in this world.”
“It counts for a lot,” Kara said. “I just don’t have it in me to coddle and coax him into trusting me.”
“He does trust you, more than I’ve ever seen him trust anyone.” Phelan said, surprised. “Surely you know that.”
“Sometimes,” Kara said.
He patted her arm. “Take it from someone who’s seen Lee at his absolute worse, on a bad dragon trip, waist deep in whores of both sexes and screaming for his brother,” he paused, and Kara could see him trying to read her face, gauging if the information put her off. She maintained her expression, heart breaking for her friend. “You’re good together,” he finished. “And you know I’m picky when it comes to my people.”
“Lee is one of your people,” she snorted but Phelan interrupted her.
“Don’t question that,” he said warningly. “He’s had my back in some difficult situations when he could have stayed home and minded his own business, like a lot of the people around here do.” Kara opened her mouth to question, but he stopped her again, “and it’s none of your damn business. What happened between me and him will stay between me and him.”
“Fine,” she said shortly. “Then what happens between me and Lee stays between me and Lee as well, Boss.”
Kara gave Phelan another quelling glance before shifting away from him and through the crowd. Most of Lee’s secrets were seemingly laid bare to her - open to be sorted over and picked apart and she felt a shudder of revulsion at the thought of anyone knowing all the ugly parts of her soul like that. Maybe that was the problem.
She squared her shoulders and made her way to Lee’s side, snagging two shots along the way. She tilted her head toward a quiet corner. “It occurs to me,” she said, “that I know everything about the worst thing that ever happened to you, your most shameful moment. Everyone does. It was just splashed all over every newspaper, and then your father quasi-adopted me as a replacement, and then I was sent down here and told about your drug and prostitute coping mechanism.”
“Nice,” Lee said wincing, “is this why you’ve been ignoring me all night?”
“No,” Kara said, “but on the whole trust issue, I guess I figured out that you trust me as much as you can, as someone who knows the worst about you but likes you anyway but that I haven’t told you a damn thing about the worst thing that ever happened to me. I’ve had the luxury of keeping my shame a secret,” she paused. “And don’t think I’m going to forgive you for taking on the role as the emotionally mature one in this friendship.”
“Hey,” Lee protested.
“Oh, please,” Kara cuffed the back of his head. “You’re a walking basket case.” She handed him a glass and clinked hers against it. They shot the ambrosia together and then Kara took a deep breath and a leap of faith. “Now let me tell you a little story about letting my mother die alone.”
* * *
It had turned out that there were people that the cylons talked to on a regular basis, people they even had standing appointments with, so Kara had found out at Phelan’s. Kara had the raptor hovering over the castle, far enough from town that they wouldn’t see it, waiting for Lee to talk to her. The frequency crackled to life, “Subject has left the chapel and is headed toward his vehicle.”
“Copy that Apollo, what’s the bastard driving?”
“A bright red truck, can’t miss it, it’s parked in the square.”
Kara started to fly slowly toward town not wanting to alert the cylon to her presence early. She kept the altitude higher than optimal viewing because she didn’t want the sound of the engine alerting people to her presence. “Okay, Starbuck, he’s leaving the square, taking a left on Fenton Road.” Kara sped up a little, just in time to see the red truck disappearing into the jungle on the well worn road. She followed along the narrow track, losing the vehicle for miles at a time as it disappeared and reappeared, just trusting that she could read the narrow space between the trees well enough until finally, she came upon a break in the jungle large enough to see the truck pull into an ungraceful cinderblock of a building mostly hidden by the shadows of trees and dense vines. It was a damn shame that she was flying an unarmed bird - they didn’t load weapons on aircraft that weren’t flying CAP, training or combat flights. She noted the GPS and wrote down the coordinates before turning tail and flying home.
She had been high enough that no one should have heard her, fast enough to not be in sight more than humanly possible, but there was still a decent chance that she had been spotted. There was no helping that though. As Lee had said, they had no idea about timeframe, about the plan or much of anything really. The only thing that was certain was that there was an enormous compound full of cylons collecting weapons, and that was all Kara really needed know.
* * *
They stared at each other gleefully over dinner in victory after having called Admiral Cain with the whole story. It was all so easy, just send a single aircraft in the dead of night and blow the frak out of the building. Lee was still a little concerned with the after details, like the supply chain and what if there were cylons somewhere else, doing the same thing, but Kara thought he was borrowing trouble.
“So, we should spend the whole day tomorrow by the pool,” Kara decided. “No recon, no Phelan’s, just us being lazy.”
“Sounds good,” Lee said grinning. “Assuming they didn’t see us, we should have a pretty stress free day.”
Kara threw a roll at him. “Stop raining on my parade, I’m sure we’re fine. It’s almost over.”
Lee’s smile faltered. “Yeah. I guess it’s the end of the Starbuck and Apollo adventure.”
“Lee, you’re not getting rid of me that easily,” she hesitated, before speaking softly, quickly. “I’m up for orders in six months or so, and after single handedly saving the worlds, they should give me my pick of assignments. I’ll just get them to write me orders to here.”
Lee’s face was unreadable, “You’d want to stay down here?”
“We can do a lot of good down here.”
“They probably won’t let you, but I really appreciate the thought,” Lee smiled.
Kara shot her hand out across the table and grabbed his. “They can’t blame you forever, Lee. You weren’t wrong.”
“Kara,” he squirmed. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s a huge deal,” she corrected. “And - and I want you to know that I think you did the right thing. I think you offered your honest opinion and saved Delphi.”
“I killed a lot of people. My brother -”
“Your brother died in a viper saving Caprica,” Kara said clearly. “He was a hero who made the ultimate sacrifice for the Colonies. Don’t take that away from him. From what I know about Zak, he wouldn’t blame you.”
“No,” Lee smiled sadly, turning his hand to lace his fingers with hers. “No, he didn’t.”
* * *
Lee dropped a bundle of letters on Kara’s head. “Mail call.” She rolled over and glared balefully up at him, silhouetted against the bright sky. “I would be more intimidated if you weren’t half asleep,” he said. He took off his shirt to bask in the sun, tilting his face up.
Kara’s eyes had just closed again when she yelped at the feel of an ice cold water bottle rolled across her bare stomach. Her arm shot out and caught Lee’s wrist, half-heartedly bending it backward in warning. “And now?”
“Suitably cowed,” he said, and she laughed in surprise, a little breathless, as she felt his teeth close lightly, playfully, over the heel of her hand.
“Truce?” she asked.
“Mmph,” Lee said, and they disengaged, Lee to fall back into a drowsy stretch and Kara to go through her mail. She squinted at an official looking letter.
“Any calls from Fleet?” she asked, idly opening the envelope.
“Nothing. Kind of make you wonder what they do all day if this doesn’t warrant their immediate attention.”
“Huh,” Kara said, sitting up reading the invitation. “Looks like I’ll be talking to a whole lot of the brass very shortly.”
* * *
“I have to go,” Kara said, watching with frustration as Lee’s face almost imperceptibly shifted, feature by feature, into pleasant blankness. “It’s your dad’s retirement, I have to be there.”
“I understand,” Lee said.
“No, you don’t,” she said sharply. “If you did, you wouldn’t be looking at me like that.”
“Kara,” Lee said, taking both of her hands in his, grip warm, eyes cool, “I understand. I don’t like it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get it.”
She nodded reluctantly, twisting her hands to grasp his wrists. Silently cursing at the deeply entrenched defense mechanism that had him automatically waiting for the worst thing to happen. “I’m coming back.” Lee nodded, staring down at their hands. “Lee,” Kara said, and he looked up, meeting her eyes. “I’m coming back.”
“Of course you are,” he half smiled, “We have a job to finish.”
Kara pulled her hands free and grabbed his shoulders, digging her fingers in hard. “We do,” she acknowledged, pushing herself recklessly past the barriers they still had built between them, “but we already talked about this - if you think I’m leaving you down here to bask by a pool sipping frozen daiquiris on your own, you are out of your mind.”
He took a deep breath and his smile was sudden, blinding. Beautiful. Familiar in spite of its rarity like the polite disinterested expression could never be. “I’ll keep the blender cold for you.”
“Do you think you can stay out of trouble for a week without me here to watch your back?”
Lee leaned in close, hands barely resting on her hips, breath ghosting against her lips, eyes going hot, voice dropping deep, “Trouble is not nearly as much fun without you.”
Kara’s heart stuttered. She nudged her nose gently against Lee’s, the thrill of promise singing through her veins as he bumped back and skidded along her cheek, lips brushing against her earlobe in a not quite kiss. “Hold that thought,” she said softly.
He pulled back to look in her eyes. “Make the wait worth my while?” He asked, face open.
“Naturally,” Kara said, her cocksure grin making him laugh, like she had hoped it would. She hugged him briefly, and he pulled her in hard before letting her go. She picked her bag up off the floor and slung it over her shoulder, pausing before turning to leave. “Seriously. Be careful. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Seven days,” Lee said easily. “Two days to Galactica, two days back, one day for the retirement ceremony and two for you to brief the brass and get some missiles on your raptor. I’ve been living here for five years. Cylons or no cylons, I think I can handle a little time on my own. Just don’t be late.”
“Way to jinx it,” Kara muttered, squashing down a sense of unease at leaving a man behind, leaving a friend behind. Leaving Lee behind. She would be back. Seven days.
* * *
The retirement ceremony was stupendously boring, as was the party after. At least she had been allowed to fly the Old Man’s lovingly restored viper as part of the festivities, able to make faces at the speeches in the privacy of the cockpit.
She was introduced to plenty of brass, most of whom had been instrumental in banishing Lee to the ends of the solar system, and found herself trying to shake off a sense of irritation at Adama for laughing with them, talking with those who had used his son as a scapegoat, for standing by when they did it. Kara looked down at her flight suit and was irritated with herself for flying Adama’s old viper as some sort of son substitute. She harnessed her frustration into something more productive, like taking advantage of the open bar.
“How is he?” a soft accent in a firm voice.
“Hi, Shaw. I’m fine, thank you, how are you?” Kara asked, frustration finding a target in the lovely, contained woman who had had Lee’s body, and who still had his friendship and his unwavering trust. Shaw just looked at her. “He’s doing pretty well, actually,” she said, giving in because anything else would make her feel foolish.
“Good,” Shaw answered. “And how are you, Captain Thrace?”
“I’m good,” Kara said, slightly surprised that she meant it. “Aside from being stuck here when there are more important things to be doing.” And more important people to be doing them with. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“I was picked up as Cain’s aide last month.”
“Good for you,” Kara said. It would never have been her choice, but being an Admiral’s aide was a great tic in the box of career building. Shaw nodded her acknowledgement and slid onto the bar stool next to her and looked at Kara closely for a long time, her lips curving. “What?” Kara demanded sharply.
“So,” Shaw grinned fully. “You and Adama.”
“Shut up,” Kara muttered and then motioned to the bartender for two shots of ambrosia.
* * *
“Hey, it’s me,” Kara said to Lee’s voicemail. “The bastards have moved the last debriefing back again. It’ll be tomorrow now,” Kara frowned, “and even if it doesn’t happen, I’ll still be leaving tomorrow, 1800 at the latest, so I’ll be home in three days. See you then,” she paused. “Apollo, I really wish you would frakking pick up your phone.” Kara ended the call, putting down the receiver with a soft click. Ten days and she was still in meetings on the Galactica. Lee hadn’t answered the phone. Not once in the four days she had been trying to catch him, to tell him she’d be late, to let him know that she wasn’t leaving him to rot in that cylon infested jungle by himself.
* * *
“We will be suspending your mission in Sagittaron, Captain Thrace. You may return to your post with our thanks for helping us out in such a delicate situation.”
“What?” Kara demanded. “No! There are cylons in that jungle with a supply chain of weapons going through as fast as water through a frakking fire hose. Cylons, sir!”
“We appreciate your dedication, but nothing you have told us is conclusive.”
“Conclusive!” Kara felt like screaming, “I’ve seen the bastards.”
“Yes,” said a white haired admiral, one of the seven sitting on the board, “So you say, but very few people have really seen the human models, sketches and photographs alone can be mistaken in high stress situations.”
“I worked with a skinjob for two years,” she said in disbelief. “I was standing in CIC when she shot Admiral Adama. I know what Boomer looks like.”
One of the admirals spoke sharply, her eyes hard, “The cylon threat was neutralized five and a half years ago. I believe that you believe what you saw, but it is the conclusion of this body that Captain Adama is simply trying to find his way back into the good graces of the fleet and the Colonies.”
“You are going to get us all killed.” Kara gritted, rising from her seated position at the round table.
“That’s enough, Kara!” Bill Adama spoke, and it felt like a slap to her face.
“I don’t think so, Admiral,” Kara said coldly, glaring at him before turning to address the rest of the table. “I can’t tell if this is still some ill-conceived vendetta against a frakking captain or if you are so far into denial that you are willing to let the worlds blow up just to prove yourselves right.”
“You are out of line, Captain.”
“You’re out of line, sir,” Kara snapped. “I am going back to Sagittaron and Captain Adama and I are going to break up the cylon ring.”
“You will do no such thing,” a Gemenese Admiral said. “Think long and hard about this, Captain, are you really willing to throw away your career on the say-so of an officer who not only is responsible for the deaths of the Orion wing, but who has taken to recreational drug use and the solicitation of prostitutes?”
Kara began to laugh, feeling the harsh ugly barks roll out of her and into the affronted silence of the conference room. “You’re unbelievable,” she choked through the suffocating waves of near hysteria. “Frakking out of your minds. Where did you get that information from, one of the child pimps you have locked up? Who the frak cares? Lee Adama could have just let everything go - let it all just roll under the bridge. Instead, he’s dismantled the more disgusting elements of the black market, eliminated some of this solar system’s most prolific gun runners and is now trying to make you, make you, stop a new cylon invasion. If I were him, I’d’ve walked in there and offered to help them burn Fleet Headquarters down to the ground with all of you inside.” She looked over at Admiral Cain, who was tight lipped but held her gaze steadily. Kara would have bet good money that Cain hadn’t voted to suspend, but she was remaining silent nevertheless. And then there was the Old Man.
“Captain Thrace,” Bill Adama spoke in a weary tone, “report back to your ship. Your CO is expecting you. You have CAPs to fly."
“You miserable bastards,” Kara said with feeling before stalking out of the room.
* * *
“Captain Thrace, come back with that raptor, you don’t want to get into any more trouble than you already are.” Bill Adama’s voice drifted over the frequency and into her ear.
“Sorry, sir,” Kara said tightly, betrayal wrapped firmly around her heart, “That’s just not gonna happen.”
“Damnit, Kara!” the Old Man’s voice held an edge of desperation, “You know I fought for the mission to continue, but they voted against me. As the other admirals pointed out, the last time someone put their trust in Lee we lost the Orion’s wing. I lost Zak. I love Lee, but he is not worth you ruining your career.”
“The last time someone put their trust in Lee, he saved her life,” Kara said, “And he’s worth a hell of a lot.”
“You can’t let your personal feelings for him get in the way of your judgment. You should know better.”
“You should know better because he’s your son,” she hissed in anger, dialing the first jump point back to Sagittaron. “And in case you didn’t notice it, I’m backing him up on it. If his word isn’t good enough for you, then why isn’t mine?” She waited in the dark of space, watching the Galactica and her familiar, scarred hide.
“Report back to the ship, Captain. Now.” Kara closed her eyes briefly, hating to disappoint Adama, even now, even while he was brutally disappointing her.
“Good-bye, sir,” she said firmly. “I’ll send you a postcard when Lee and I are done saving the worlds.” She jumped.
* * *
Kara landed the raptor and practically sprinted out the hatch. The door to the castle was hanging open on a single hinge. “Frak!” she whispered furiously, pulling out her sidearm and flicking off the safety.
Her echoing steps and the running water of the fountain were the only sounds in the place. “Lee!” she called. “You left the door open.” She moved carefully up the stairs, listening hard, but could hear nothing.
Kara searched from the top down and found no one. She did find Lee’s weapons though, and shattered glass in the kitchen, and a rising sense of panic.
The sudden, booming chimes of the doorbell startled her into a gasp, and she moved quickly and quietly into the foyer, weapon first. Phelan was standing in front of the fountain, both hands up.
“I saw the raptor fly in and came as soon as I could,” Phelan said.
“Where’s Lee?” Kara asked, moving closer, weapon trained on the Boss.
“That’s what I came here to tell you, Thrace,” Phelan said. “Put the gun down.”
“How do I know you didn’t sell him out?”
“Oh you managed to do that yourselves,” Phelan said angrily. “All your inelegant poking and unsubtle prodding, not deigning to tell me the score so that I could help; and then you left him out here alone in this isolated castle. This is not a game,” he ended on a shout. “Gun runners are some mean motherfrakkers and you two are babes in the woods when it comes to dealing with this shit.”
She lowered her weapon. “It’s just. . . I was late,” she said, by way of apology.
“I’m a little worried about him too,” Phelan said gruffly. “Now, will you tell me what the frak is going on?”
* * *
“So if you know where he is, why didn’t you go get him?” Kara demanded, sliding extra clips of ammo into her tac vest.
Phelan glowered at her. “Unlike you and your missing boyfriend, I don’t like running into situations without all the information. And since you chose to keep me out of the loop about the frakking cylons until this moment, it’s a good thing I didn’t.”
“And you’re sure he’s still alive?” Kara demanded, adjusting the strap of her thigh holster so that she wouldn’t be forced to look into Phelan’s eyes or think to hard about the question.
“They called in a doctor yesterday, one of Shevon’s regulars, and he treated Adama for fairly minor injuries - scrapes, bruises, looks like he’s been roughed up, but nothing permanent. I doubt they’d bother with a doctor if they wanted to kill him right away. Son of an admiral, even a disgraced one, is worth more alive than dead.”
Kara nodded, letting out a shaky breath. “Okay. I need a building layout, number of people inside--’’
“Not my first dance,” Phelan said dryly. “I know what you need.”
* * *
Kara moved through the halls of the compound she and Lee had discovered, feeling like an avenging angel, slipping into the calm hum, riding the charge of danger and leashing her fear into honed edge. She was built for war. Her comrades moved more silently then she did, thieves and smugglers being used to the machinations of stealth and hiding in shadows, whereas Kara had always masked herself with loud words and large gestures, but, she noted with satisfaction, she cut throats as effectively as any of them.
Cylon blood was as red as a human’s, a fact that she had realized when she had witnessed Boomer’s perfunctory suicide. It felt like human blood too, as yet another blonde cylon model slid noiselessly down the wall, spilling the sticky liquid over her hands.
She glanced over at the slim, short man next to her, Brian, one of Phelan’s most trusted lieutenants. He nodded significantly at the door in front of them. Lee was in there. She nodded her understanding, indicating that she would go in high and he should go in low, and he flashed her a thumb’s up before turning to talk in complicated sign language to the other members of their fire team. Gods, what a motley crew, but they were good. Very good.
And then she was at the door, pulling her sidearm as she tucked her kbar in her belt, moving towards it, testing the knob, finding that it turned easily. She had half a second to count the thirteen cylons and one shirtless, bruised Lee Adama tied to a chair in the center of the room before they all started shooting.
Having only killed five off the mark, Kara and the others were forced to drop their guns as they moved further into the room. They were in too close quarters in for shooting and were going to start hitting each other. She slipped into the calm of the fray, blade back in hand, and swung into a loose limbed, soft kneed stance, using short, economic stabs to open cylon flesh, to spill rich, red blood on the floor. She was untouchable, unattainable, invulnerable in the pale static of her head, able to anticipate moves and read eyes the way she never could without the truth of destruction raining around her.
The cylons had overcome their surprise and were fighting back with skill and strength, but Phelan’s crew fought dirtier and smarter, and Kara fought harder than she ever remembered fighting in her life, even back on the playgrounds of her childhood, back before she knew better, wasting her time defending the honor of her mother. She slid her knife between the ribs of one of the male cylons and into the place where humans tended to have hearts, twisting to make it hurt, and then kicked him to the ground. She spun to find more, but saw only allies standing.
Bits and blurts of sound started bleeding through, heralding her slow return to normalcy. She blinked carefully and regulated her breathing, watching her team meticulously cleaning their weapons and searching cylon bodies for money or jewelry - the spoils of war. She couldn’t look at Lee in anything but pieces, right knee, left shoulder, a foot, an ear. There were bruises everywhere underneath the rope, but nothing looked broken from where she was standing.
Brian touched her arm, told her that he and the others were going to search the rest of the compound and, with an emotional intuition entirely lacking in all of the Marine teams Kara had ever worked with, he closed the door behind him, leaving her alone with Lee.
With the blood of their enemies striped across her cheek, dripping from her knife, the adrenalin of battle still coursing through her veins, Kara raised her head to meet Lee's eyes. Instead of accusation she saw acceptance, trust opposed to betrayal. The relief that shot through her nearly forced her to her knees. Instead, she walked toward the chair. The ropes were tied tightly, biting into his bare chest and arms, wrapped multiple times around him from shoulders to hips and again at the ankles, binding him, holding him down, containing him, twisting him into a motionless, wordless shape that didn't suit.
Kara carefully wiped her blade off on her shirt and moved closer. Lee raised a single, questioning eyebrow, expressive even when there was a gag that seemed to cover half his face and she felt the left side of her mouth quirk up in response. "I told you not to get into trouble," she said leaning in close but not touching. "You never did follow orders very well, did you?" Lee's other brow lifted in disbelief and Kara grinned fully, heart pounding. Her voice sunk deeper, a raspy growl in her throat, and Lee's eyes darkened as he started to strain against his ropes again. "If you stay very, very still, Captain, I'll free you. Think you can let go of your inner control freak for me?" He froze and then relaxed completely, and that was answer enough for her.
Kara brought her knife up so that he could see it and moved it slowly toward his face and, taking care not to push, not to mar the strong, clean lines of his jaw and cheekbone, slid the thin blade between the press of the cloth and his flesh. Their eyes caught and held, her pulse fluttered, as their one point of contact rasped against stubble before tearing cloth slowly until Lee's mouth was free. Kara kept the flat of her knife against his skin for a moment, an extension of her hand, her self, sharp and shiny and prone to cut. He didn’t say a word, just stared at her with disconcertingly open blue eyes.
Her breath caught at his stillness, she could taste the quiet in the air, heavy on her tongue, nearly drunk on the knowledge that she could do whatever she wanted to Lee right in that moment and he would let her, wouldn’t even say a word. Kara smoothed the knife down his cheek, traced the tip lightly along his jaw to the center of his chin. She leaned in and placed a soft, closed mouth kiss to his lips, moving to stand directly in front of him when she pulled away. His eyes never left hers.
Carefully, she slid the blade, bumping over Lee's chin, skimming down the column of his throat, tracing over his upper chest until it rested against the rope that trapped him. Kara broke Lee's gaze to look where the ties cut into his flesh, wincing. "Gods, Lee," She said, pulling herself out of the breathless silence of trust to purposely and quickly saw the binding from his body. The ropes fell from him, and Kara dropped the knife after cutting the ties from his legs to trace her shaking fingers over angry red stripes on his skin.
"Kara." She looked up at the half whispered word, pulled back into the strange peace of a moment ago when she looked into his eyes. "I'm fine," Lee said. "I'm fine." She swallowed, nodded, and slid her hands up his biceps, pressing into the solid bulk of Apollo's shoulders, still strong enough to carry the weight of the world. His hands were restrained behind his back, wrists bound together, making the muscles in his arms more apparent, pushing his chest a little forward. She looked up when Lee's head tilted, a smile playing across his mouth at her distraction.
"Did I say you could talk, Captain?" She growled low in her throat, suddenly, fiercely wanting the control he had offered up, wanting his submission to her whims, his trust in her motives. The faint curve of his lips remained but he stayed obediently quiet. Kara dragged her hands over his shoulders until they met at his neck, circled it, squeezed lightly to see how far Lee'd let her go. He didn’t flinch, but she felt him swallow tightly against her thumbs where they pressed into the hollow of his throat and she saw that he was afraid.
He was afraid of this, giving up his tightly won, closely worn control, but he would do anything for her, let her do anything to him. The knowledge hummed through her that she could choke him right now and he wouldn’t move. She had never asked for this kind of responsibility, but the gods were not in the habit of asking her what she wanted.
Kara released her hold on Lee's neck, stepping back and standing straight. She picked up her knife from the floor, taking the time to circle its blood-stained steel around Lee's navel before switching it closed and tucking it into her boot. Quickly stripping off her filthy shirt, Kara watched as a terrible, painful need swept over his face, the look of someone who had wanted without being able to have for too long.
She moved forward, grasped his shoulders again and straddled his lap, sealing his mouth with hers in one full, wet swoop. There was no time for sweet words or confessions, she didn't even know if there was any gentleness to be had between them, but his teeth bit down on her lip and she invaded his mouth with her tongue and pressed as closely to his bare chest as possible, gasping at the heat of his abused skin against hers. She felt his arms shaking with the strain of not being able to touch her, felt the heat and hardness where she ground down against him, felt his panting breath, his desperate lips, his pleading stare, as they kissed with their eyes open.
She tore herself away from his mouth, scrambling down to her knees and unbuttoning his pants with shaking hands. Kara pulled his erection free and leaned in and dragged her tongue up the hot length of him before sucking him into her mouth, tilting her face up in time to see Lee's eyes close, his mouth open and wet and red and she almost stopped what she was doing right then to taste his lips again. But he throbbed warm and hard and alive, so, so alive that she bent to the task. Inhaling his scent, tasting his skin, nothing artful, no teasing games or false starts, just you're here, I'm here, I'm Kara, you're Lee, my mouth, your skin, and this is all that matters. Hearing him gasping, hearing him muttering above her, "please, please, please." Without looking, just breathing more heavily into his body, she pulled the knife from her boot again, pulling her mouth free, pushing intimately closer, face buried in his chest, she reached around and felt for the ropes around his wrists, cutting him free even as he continued to beg, "please, please, please."
She may have sliced his wrists a little, couldn’t bring herself to care as his hands, which had to be numb and aching were suddenly grabbing at her face and yanking her up and into another kiss as the knife clattered to the ground again. They scrabbled down her body, fingers bumping over ribs and digging into her hips before he uttered a final, "please" against her mouth and she nodded because gods yes, anything. Anything at all. Their hands tangled as they freed her from her pants and Kara was totally out of patience. Frak the boots. She stood, shoved her trousers to her ankles and turned her back to Lee, his tongue sliding up her spine as she slid down his body and onto his length.
They both froze. Kara's head thrown back and her mouth stretched wide, Lee's head dropped forward, face pressed between her shoulder blades. Then he hesitantly slid both arms around her, snaking one under her bra to cup her bare breast and the other across her middle, sliding his fingers gently up and down the spot where waist flared into hip. He pressed a series of full mouthed kisses in a line from her left shoulder blade to her right shoulder blade before leaning his forehead against the nape of her neck and breathing "Kara" into her skin.
And she began to rock. Sliding up and down languidly, facing a room full of dead bodies of the people she had killed to save a monster, Kara felt her own demons recede as she whispered his name into the air. "Lee."
* * *
The moonlight painted shadows across Kara’s wet skin as she slipped through the water with easy strokes, entirely nude. Lee sighed his appreciation, sitting on the side of the pool with his feet dangling in, drinking champagne directly from the bottle. She emerged from under the water, blonde hair sleek and silver in the bright night, pulling herself half out of the pool, hands braced on his knees. He tilted his head down, pressing lush, open mouthed kisses to her lips, cupping his hands underneath her elbows to pull her higher, closer, burying his face into the juncture of neck and shoulder. Blowing deliberately down her body, making her flesh ripple with goose bumps.
She laughed. The breathless laugh that never failed to shoot straight to his heart and groin in equal, dizzying measure. “Afraid to get a little wet?”
He let her slide down his body, reveling in the feel of her as she dragged down his skin to stand on her own feet in the pool again. “Just thought we should talk first,” he said. “Short conversation,” he hastily added when she narrowed her eyes.
“What’s there to talk about? The compound was cleared, that supply chain dismantled, the jackasses finally released pictures of the skinjobs to the public to prevent something like this from happening again, Phelan gave us a hell of a lot of booze to celebrate. It’s just you and me, Lee. I say we enjoy it.”
He tangled his fingers in her hair, leaning down to press his lips to the crown of her head. “What about us?” he asked, feeling needy and foolish to be asking such a question at such a time, but not quite able to help it. He wanted to laze idly in this pool, in this jungle, with this woman for the rest of his life, but things hadn’t been easy, or good, or even real in such a long time.
“What about us?” Kara asked, idly running a finger from his knee to his foot and pressing a kiss to the inside of his calf. “I told a few Admirals, including your father, to take a flying leap. I’ve been assured that, should I be allowed to remain in the service, they’re going to exile me with you anyway.”
“And. . . that would be okay with you?”
Kara shook her head in disbelief before taking Lee’s hands and yanking him into the pool. She dunked him hard and he swallowed water as he laughed into her kisses.
fin