Ripped Away
Title: Ripped Away
Author: kdblue
Summary: Kara comes back from New Caprica missing someone.
Characters: Lee/Kara Others as I needed them.
Rating: G
Warnings: Babies!
Beta Thanks: thegreenkitty & keeleycl
Author Notes: This was written as a gift for lotus79 for pilots_presents. I’m reposting for archiving purposes.
Ripped Away
The last raptor slowly opens its door, and survivors spill out all but sliding down the wing as though they’re still being chased off the planet. Then they slow. That’s when Lee Adama, commander of the former Battlerstar Pegasus, realizes that he hasn’t seen her. There’s an involuntary wince and he feels Dee, his wife, take his hand.
There’s a slow motion starting from the back of the raptor. Someone being carried, limp out of the bird. He can’t tell at first who is it, but Sam Anders is the one carrying. Funny, he hadn’t noticed until now that Sam was unaccounted for.
As carefully as Sam moves down the wing of the raptor, Lee steps away from Dee. Their hands fall apart.
It’s her. It’s Kara. Lee knows before he can see her face shrouded by long blonde hair. She’s dead weight in her husband’s arms. Sam rolls her with a thud onto a waiting gurney and backs away as a medic wheels the gurney off to Life Stations.
Lee’s about to follow her gurney until a hand clamps down firm on his shoulder. It stops him from moving. His body convulses as it absorbs the potential energy and twists to watch her go.
“Don’t.” He hears Helo say behind him. It takes all the effort Lee Adama has not to follow anyway.
*** *** ***
*** *** ***
Kara Thrace wakes up screaming in a back corner of the Galactica’s sick bay. Two medics come rushing at the growling and crashing. The former viper jock Starbuck pushes over all of the equipment near her bed. Confusion and fear, anger and determination bubble across her muscles. The rage slams the bed against the wall over and over, waking the patients around her. Until the bed rebounds hard enough that when it hits her wracked body, she falls to the deck.
“Where is she? Find her! Frakking find her.”
Sedated again by one of the medics. Lifted back to the bed by a marine.
Kara Thrace whimpers herself to sleep, repeating her and mine.
Soft restraints are wrapped around Starbuck’s now limp limbs with a sympathetic smirk. To keep her safe. To keep those around her safe. Safe. There doesn’t seem to be anything safe since the exodus.
Cottle grumbles and shakes his head, pulls out a cigarette. He wiggles the restraint at her left ankle, disappointed when his least favorite patient doesn’t kick at him.
Tied to the ward bed, Kara’s panicked screams turn to incoherent sobs when next she wakes. She’s sedated again, more quickly this time so as not to upset the women in the bed near her. The other women from the cylon prison.
The doctor lights his cigarette. The Admiral is waiting. It’s a general debrief request, but the doctor knows which patient shines above all the others for Bill Adama. The doctor passes filled cots, the writhing injured, the children crying behind curtains. He tries to gather the right words to explain the young woman in the back corner. Still sedated. Sedated again. Thrashing in between. Calling out for someone lost.
William Adama stands at the edge the ward. His hands behind his back surveying the carnage and swelling chaos as the lights lower for evening. He doesn’t have time to wait. But he will.
“And Starbuck?” the Admiral cuts to the chase.
“They did a number on her.” Cottle drifts his focus back towards her curtained off cubical. The Admiral’s gaze follows. “She’s upsetting the other women. No surprise.”
“She’s looking for someone?”
The doctor nods once. “Won’t tell anyone anything. Keeps asking for him though.” Doc Cottle nods towards the younger Adama obscured by the form of his father.
The younger man’s chin drops to his chest. His eyes close. Color rises in his cheeks whether from deep shame or innocent embarrassment it doesn’t matter. He’s clearly blushing when the elder men turn to him. His breath shudders as he brings his eyes to meet those of his father’s, his superior officer’s. He doesn’t know which. The mix of disappointment and expectation that greet him doesn’t clarify anything.
“Be careful.” Doc Cottle warns as Lee Adama strides away. As though there is nothing in the sterile white bay but the bed in the back behind the curtain.
*** *** ***
Lee hasn’t seen her since she came off the raptor. He’s been busy. He has a wife. There are a million good reasons. He tries not to think that one of the best is the pain it causes in his chest to think her broken this way. Starbuck is strong. His Kara is fighter.
Defeated. Kara Thrace is staring at the ceiling above her bed. Awake. Not struggling with the restraints at her wrists and ankles. Lee wants to make a joke about something, anything. All he can manage is sweeping the pity off his face. She’ll figure a way to smack him for that cuffed or not.
He has something for her. Lee Adama still has rank and status even without a ship to command. He leans into the marine at the edge of the cubicle. “Take the restraints off.” He says it loud enough for Kara to hear. She doesn’t react even when the marine pops the locks and moves away.
“You came.” Her voice is quiet but not week. It nearly makes him smile.
“Of course.”
“They’ll put them back on when you leave you know.” There’s that bitterness he’s grown to love. She pulls herself to sitting and rubs at her wrists. She moves enough that he could sit at the edge of the bed. Close enough that they’d almost touch.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He nods. Doesn’t move from his standing position next to her bed. He folds his hands behind his back, at ease.
*** *** ***
“How could you not know?” Bill Adama balks.
“Baggy clothing? She never came to see me about it.” Cottle shakes his head, winces his creased face as he continues to breach confidentiality.
“So you think she…”
“I don’t know what I think. She’s not saying.” The doctor glances down at the blank spaces on the file in his hands. “I’m hoping she’ll tell your son.”
*** *** ***
“So.” It’s been a while since either of them spoke. When he finally does, her face drops. The spell broken.
“They took her, Lee.” Kara’s voice is barely above a whisper as though someone might be listening.
“Who Kara? Who’d they…? Who’d the cylons take?”
“They said she wasn’t the right one. But she was perfect, Lee. I knew. I could see. I knew she was perfect.” She chews at her bottom lips. She’s trying not to cry.
“We’ll figure it out.” Tension fills the muscles from shoulder to shoulder as he fights the urge to take her up in his arms. It won’t look right for him to hold her. She might hit him. Instead, he tries to smile, to reassure. “I promise.”
His beautiful broken Starbuck nods just enough. Lids cover her bright hazel eyes, dimmed with unshed tears. Lee Adama wishes he knew who she was so he could be her Apollo again. Heal the frayed pieces of her. With careful hesitation, he reaches out to brush a tear, fix her hair as it falls in her face.
*** *** ***
*** *** ***
Karl ‘Helo’ Agathon sits in the mess listening to the chatter around him. The re-integration is not going well. Those who lived through the occupation and those who stayed with the fleet are divided. He finds he doesn’t blame either side.
Surveying the room, Helo sees Apollo, Commander Adama, Lee - not sure what to call him anymore - standing at the edge of the tables. He’s alone, not carrying a tray for food. Just staring almost blankly at the people at the center of the room.
Before Helo can get up from the table, Lee Adama has disappeared from the mess. Leaving his tray on a nearby table, Helo raises to follow. When he finds an empty hall, he stops, makes a jerking turn and heads to Life Stations.
*** *** ***
The patients are fewer, but the open, white room with its sterile smell still teems with bodies in motion. Medics weaving through the cots. Patients waving, waxing and waning with pain. Days after the escape the sick bay continues to be one of the busiest areas of the ship.
The cordoned off back corner should be a bastion in the swirl. But a constant hum rolls out from it, occasionally accented by shouts. The privacy curtains sway with bursts of angry energy.
Helo waves off the marine guard with a dismissive hand. He takes a breath and ducks into the cubicle. He watches, silent and still as stone.
His friend doesn’t look at him. Back in restraints, Kara Thrace trains her eyes on the ceiling tiles and doesn’t look away. Her lips purse, slip in and out from her teeth so he knows that she knows that he’s there.
“So Starbuck.”
“So, Mr. OX.” Comes the quick sarcastic retort.
“Heard you’re upsetting the other patients.”
“Why the frak are you here, Karl?” She interrupts.
He crosses his arms and begins to pace the length of her bed. He ignores her annoyed glare, pivoting on his heel at the toe of the bed. He stops. “Kara.” He shakes his head, drops his eyes to his boots.
“You could frakking help me, you know.” She spits. “Or do you think I’m lying too.”
“I don’t think you’re lying.”
“But just like everybody else you don’t frakking do anything!” She’s shouting and trashing. She tugs the restraints hard enough that the bed jumps and clatters.
“Calm down, Kara. Please.” He says, reaching out a hand to reassure her.
“No!” She growls, bears her teeth at him, whips her face away towards the wall. After one more good crash and bang of the bed, she goes completely quiet. Like she’s alone again.
Kara counts to 50. Helo’s gone when she checks.
Then unvoiced tears roll down her cheeks and dry there as she falls asleep.
When she wakes up her husband, Sam Anders is standing at the foot of her bed. His face stern. His fists tight at his sides. “How are yah, Kara?”
“Get out.” Her jaw is clenched as she speaks. She doesn’t know why he’s come to see her. Wishes he would go. The salt from her tears is still on her cheek, crunching in the corners of her eyes.
“I’m worried about you.” His words sound weird to her ears. Forced. Tense like his shoulders. “I worried before too.”
“Before what?” She grits out when he doesn’t reply, stares dumbly at her. “That’s what I thought. Just get the frak away from me.”
“I stood by you.” He finally says.
“You called me a whore. You just didn’t kick me out of the tent when you said it. Way to stand by me, Sammy.”
The pyramid player goes slack in front of her. The look on his face is pure confusion. He moves away from the bed, shaking his head. Like he doesn’t know what’s going on.
*** *** ***
Helo leads the way through the maze of “tents” in Dogsville. The starboard hangar bay brims with life and smells, cooking pots and at least one overflowing head. Lee Adama winces as he thinks about the living conditions here. The noise is almost unbearable. He wonders if it ever stops.
Cpt. Agathon seems right at home skirting around children, careful not to disturb the curtains and rugs that form walls here. He doesn’t notice the way their uniforms are watched as they pass open spaces. It’s hard for Lee not to stop and apologize.
But they’re on a mission. Some good information from one of the other detainees at the cylon prison goads them to a home way in the back. There’s a woman who birthed one baby but came out of the prison with two.
“This should be it,” Helo nods. They stop in front of a tent, three sides canvass, one side battlestar wall, a highly prized domicile. They look back and forth at each other for a moment before Apollo slowly pulls the door aside. He would knock but can’t figure how.
“Hello!” someone inside calls. An older woman by the voice.
“My name is Lee Adama. I’m looking for…” The words drift off as he surveys the space. It’s sad, a plank cot off to the side, a box over turned for a table at the center, another partition that keeps moving after the woman steps up to the officers.
“We’re looking for a baby.” As XO, Karl has been coordinating the evacuees. He’s more comfortable in Dogsville. Strides right into the room and stands with his hands behind his back, waiting.
“Ah, the little girl.” The woman nods. She pulls back the swinging curtain behind her to reveal a young woman sitting with two babies on her lap. One larger and probably older with barely visible blonde hair. The other is tiny with thick dark curls. The young woman opens her mouth but is quieted by a shake of the head. Then she nods and rolls the smaller baby away from her body.
The older woman quickly closes the ‘door’ as she turns with the tiny child and offers it to Cpt. Agathon, who swerves away so Lee must step up and take the bundle. When he looks down into his arm all he can see are two hazel eyes peeking up at him. A lump grows in his throat and he thinks he can’t breath because of it. He hears Karl saying something to the woman, thinks he hands her something, but the world of Lee Adama has been reduce to the pair of eyes in his arms. Hers.
*** *** ***
Shifting his weight from foot to foot, it’s killing Lee that the baby has to stop and get checked out by Cottle before he can take her to Kara. There are tests to be run though. To make sure the little girl is who they think she is. To find out who else she belongs to.
Helo has gone ahead to see Kara. After hearing about the baby, she’s been calm. Her restraints removed.
Lee keeps himself occupied by trying to figure out what they’ll do with Kara and her little girl now. Once the baby is cleared, they’re no reason to keep them in the sick bay. He sighs. Thinks he knows where there might be a tiny room for them near the other family quarters.
He’s interrupted by Cottle’s face snarled before him. Annoyed that he can’t carry a baby and smoke no doubt. “Well, she’s fifty percent Thrace and fifty percent…”
“Just…” He shakes his head as he takes the wiggling baby. A free arm flails as he pulls her close. “Just Kara’s.” He’s biting the inside of his lips. He’s not ready to hear the rest of it so he walks away before Cottle can say more.
*** *** ***
Lee Adama steps through the gap in the curtains, carefully balancing the tightly wrapped babe in his arms. He’s having a hard time walking without tripping into everything in his path, because he’d rather be watching her. Her eyes sparkle up at him, hazel and warm like her mother’s.
She must be about two, maybe three months old. If Kara wasn’t getting prenatal care, she could have been early, small when she was born. She’s so tiny that it wouldn’t surprise him. Born while Kara was in the detention center either way. Taken from her mother.
Lee wonders what her name is.
Until he looks up and sees Kara has seen him. Her face takes his breath away. Her eyes sparkle green and flecked in gold just like the baby’s. Her mouth pulls from an impatient line to a halting smile, genuine and beautiful. Finally, she raises her arms out to him. He transfers the little girl without hesitation. Stepping back giving mom and baby space.
With a gentle finger, Kara Thrace traces the edge of her daughter’s hair and follows down the side of her round cheek. The slight anticipatory smile on her face grows warm and confident for a moment. Then she jerks her attention to Lee.
“She’s mine.” She states.
“Yeah.” Lee nods to her.
“Cottle checked.” Once again it’s not a question.
“He did.” Neither of them says anything more on the subject. Lee takes another stride back and feels the curtain against his hands.
“Hey, Pip.” She whispers. “I told you. I made you a promise that I’d get you back. I don’t break my promises.” She glances up, meeting Lee’s eyes. He moves towards the bed, meeting her smile.
“She’s beautiful, Kara.” The swell of pride within him knocks the wind out of his words. They come out too breathy. It makes him blush.
“This is Pip.” Starbuck beams back at him.
“Pip? Is that her name?”
Kara twists her bottom lip between her teeth and half shrugs. “I didn’t… It’s what I called her before she was born. I called her Pip Squeak because she would have been so small.”
He stifles a chuckle for fear she’ll quit talking. Kara’s eyes have drifted back to the baby, Pip, who has freed a hand from her swaddle. Waving happily at her mother’s long blonde strands of hair. “Pip.” He mouths and takes another half pace forward.
“I didn’t really name her. They took her. Kept saying she was the wrong baby and they didn’t need her. I knew she was perfect, Lee.”
“She is perfect.” He reaches out a single finger and grazes her fist as it flails. He lets her mouth and nose, so much like Kara’s, mesmerize him as she wiggles a second hand out of her blanket and grabs at air. He’s grinning like a fool and doesn’t care who knows it, just for a moment. Then shouts from outside the curtain bring him back to Life Stations and the Galactica and cylons and…
And he thinks he’s going to cry. He keeps his gaze trained on Pip. Blinking to dry his eyes.
“In my mind, I just kept calling her Pip. In case, I didn’t… So she wouldn’t be so real.”
“Yeah.” Back in the real world again, Lee snaps his head back into order. Tries to remember all the details that need to be take care of before Kara and Pip can leave the ward. “Uh, I have to go. Get things ready for you two in your new home. I’ll be back.”
“Oh.” The disappointment in her voice cuts him. He leaves more quickly then he should. Which probably cuts back.
*** *** ***
Dee, his wife, stands up from the table abruptly as he brings the hatch closed behind him. Lee Adama hopes that his disappointment isn’t washing across his face the way it’s filling his head. He feels like he hasn’t been alone in years. The last place he wants company right now is home. He needs a place to think. To figure all of this out.
“What’s going on, Lee?” Her voice is so genuine that it hurts his ears.
“It’s my job. You know that. The refugees. Integration. You know that, Dee.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth he knows he needs to stay quiet next time. He sounds defensive. He is defensive. He’s mixed up, churning all over.
“You’re helping Kara Thrace.” She spits out each syllable. They bounce around the small married quarters. “I thought you were taking your father’s offer to be CAG again.”
“I haven’t given him and answer.” That’s not a lie. He rubs his eyes, drags his hand down his face. “Kat’s doing a fine job.”
“So what are you going to do? Spend all your time with Kara and that baby she found.”
“It’s her baby!” He’s shouting, and it hurts his head.
“How does anyone know that? Everyone knows she didn’t come back the same from that planet.” The venom is dripping. The accusations make his stomach want to revolt.
Very calmly without moving his eyes from the hatch, he answers his wife. “Cottle, um, tested. She’s Kara’s baby.”
“She kicked her husband out of Life Stations, yet you still visit.”
“She’s Kara’s, Dee.” His voice drops lower, barely a whisper.
“She’s yours, Lee.” She grinds out the words.
He doesn’t say anything. Saying it would make it true. He doesn’t trust that it won’t also break the spell. Kara will remember that she runs from him. That he doesn’t save her. He won’t have anything then.
So he reaches out for the hatch and hears his wife. “I think I should go.”
Out in the hall, he stares at the gray walls, their worn glass marred with scratches and nicks. The door to his married life locks behind him, and Lee Adama realizes he has no where to go. He’s not sure he’s a pilot. Bunk space is too tight everywhere. He peers up and down the corridor. Lost in a familiar land.
His feet move without him thinking. He scrubs madly at his face as he walks. Gathering himself as best he can. Until he comes to the hatch at the corner. Frozen before it, he reaches out a hand. He assigned the cabin, he knows the override code.
It’s smaller then the other married billets. It’s silent. He sinks into the couch and hopes for clarity. His head lolls back against the wall and his eyes fall shut.
He’s tired. Exhausted.
He must have fallen asleep because the hatch squeaking open wakes him.
His father is framed by the open hatch.
“I’ve just spoken with your wife.” The older man strides easily into the billet. Pulls the hatch tight behind him and fills the empty space of the room as he gazes down at his son.
Lee only nods in reply. He doesn’t move from the small couch and doesn’t raise his eyes to meet the man before him whether it’s the Admiral or his father.
Much to Lee Adama’s surprise, his father sinks into the couch next to him. “She’s hurt and confused, son.”
“She’s not the only one.” His eyes focus hard on a spot on the decking between their feet.
Bill continues. “I spoke to Cottle. He said you…”
“Don’t.” Lee interrupts his father. Taking a slow breath, he lifts his chin and turns his head. “I knew as soon as she asked for me.” The words come out small but without apology which is all he can really ask for.
“So you know what you need to do then.” The Admiral stands from the couch and whips towards the door. Lee wishes it was half that simple. This is him and Kara. They are a lot of things. None are simple.
*** *** ***
*** *** ***
Pip sleeps in her little bed. Sucking on her thumb as though the whole of the universe is at peace. Lee touches her head, her thick dark hair. And smiles, sadly.
Kara’s behind him curled into the blankets on the double bunk. He hopes she’s nearly asleep. She needs to sleep. He turns to check. Say good-night before leaving. Although he has no idea where he’s going to go for the night.
Her hazel eyes glint against the silvery sheen of the blankets that are pulled around her head. She’s watching him. Watching him watching the baby.
“Shh. You should be asleep.”
“Is she ok?”
“Yeah.” He stops. Feeling studied by her wakeful yet sleepy eyes. “She’s perfect.”
“She is.”
“I should go. I’ll be back. Tomorrow.” His hand stretches out to touch her hair. But comes up short and
hovers between them.
“Stay.” It isn’t a plea or a question or a demand or an order. Just a word plain and simple hanging in the air, waiting for a response.
For a moment he freezes. He’s supposed to go. But duty calls. Bringing everything into place. All at once he answers by stripping to his boxers. The only sound in the billet is the drop of cloth to the deck below his feet. He scrambles over her and slides into the bed.
Before Lee Adama can think what to do next, Kara Thrace tells him. Rolling her body into his, her head tucks under his chin.
Peering over Kara’s head, he sees the crib just inside the little alcove. Lee knows he won’t fall asleep any time soon, but he relaxes clinging to Kara, watching Pip. Trying to feel guilty. But the tension that has been holding him together is waning fast. He doesn’t want to deal with anything outside these walls. He just wants safe and warm, like Pip. Almost like home.
Author: kdblue
Summary: Kara comes back from New Caprica missing someone.
Characters: Lee/Kara Others as I needed them.
Rating: G
Warnings: Babies!
Beta Thanks: thegreenkitty & keeleycl
Author Notes: This was written as a gift for lotus79 for pilots_presents. I’m reposting for archiving purposes.
Ripped Away
The last raptor slowly opens its door, and survivors spill out all but sliding down the wing as though they’re still being chased off the planet. Then they slow. That’s when Lee Adama, commander of the former Battlerstar Pegasus, realizes that he hasn’t seen her. There’s an involuntary wince and he feels Dee, his wife, take his hand.
There’s a slow motion starting from the back of the raptor. Someone being carried, limp out of the bird. He can’t tell at first who is it, but Sam Anders is the one carrying. Funny, he hadn’t noticed until now that Sam was unaccounted for.
As carefully as Sam moves down the wing of the raptor, Lee steps away from Dee. Their hands fall apart.
It’s her. It’s Kara. Lee knows before he can see her face shrouded by long blonde hair. She’s dead weight in her husband’s arms. Sam rolls her with a thud onto a waiting gurney and backs away as a medic wheels the gurney off to Life Stations.
Lee’s about to follow her gurney until a hand clamps down firm on his shoulder. It stops him from moving. His body convulses as it absorbs the potential energy and twists to watch her go.
“Don’t.” He hears Helo say behind him. It takes all the effort Lee Adama has not to follow anyway.
*** *** ***
*** *** ***
Kara Thrace wakes up screaming in a back corner of the Galactica’s sick bay. Two medics come rushing at the growling and crashing. The former viper jock Starbuck pushes over all of the equipment near her bed. Confusion and fear, anger and determination bubble across her muscles. The rage slams the bed against the wall over and over, waking the patients around her. Until the bed rebounds hard enough that when it hits her wracked body, she falls to the deck.
“Where is she? Find her! Frakking find her.”
Sedated again by one of the medics. Lifted back to the bed by a marine.
Kara Thrace whimpers herself to sleep, repeating her and mine.
Soft restraints are wrapped around Starbuck’s now limp limbs with a sympathetic smirk. To keep her safe. To keep those around her safe. Safe. There doesn’t seem to be anything safe since the exodus.
Cottle grumbles and shakes his head, pulls out a cigarette. He wiggles the restraint at her left ankle, disappointed when his least favorite patient doesn’t kick at him.
Tied to the ward bed, Kara’s panicked screams turn to incoherent sobs when next she wakes. She’s sedated again, more quickly this time so as not to upset the women in the bed near her. The other women from the cylon prison.
The doctor lights his cigarette. The Admiral is waiting. It’s a general debrief request, but the doctor knows which patient shines above all the others for Bill Adama. The doctor passes filled cots, the writhing injured, the children crying behind curtains. He tries to gather the right words to explain the young woman in the back corner. Still sedated. Sedated again. Thrashing in between. Calling out for someone lost.
William Adama stands at the edge the ward. His hands behind his back surveying the carnage and swelling chaos as the lights lower for evening. He doesn’t have time to wait. But he will.
“And Starbuck?” the Admiral cuts to the chase.
“They did a number on her.” Cottle drifts his focus back towards her curtained off cubical. The Admiral’s gaze follows. “She’s upsetting the other women. No surprise.”
“She’s looking for someone?”
The doctor nods once. “Won’t tell anyone anything. Keeps asking for him though.” Doc Cottle nods towards the younger Adama obscured by the form of his father.
The younger man’s chin drops to his chest. His eyes close. Color rises in his cheeks whether from deep shame or innocent embarrassment it doesn’t matter. He’s clearly blushing when the elder men turn to him. His breath shudders as he brings his eyes to meet those of his father’s, his superior officer’s. He doesn’t know which. The mix of disappointment and expectation that greet him doesn’t clarify anything.
“Be careful.” Doc Cottle warns as Lee Adama strides away. As though there is nothing in the sterile white bay but the bed in the back behind the curtain.
*** *** ***
Lee hasn’t seen her since she came off the raptor. He’s been busy. He has a wife. There are a million good reasons. He tries not to think that one of the best is the pain it causes in his chest to think her broken this way. Starbuck is strong. His Kara is fighter.
Defeated. Kara Thrace is staring at the ceiling above her bed. Awake. Not struggling with the restraints at her wrists and ankles. Lee wants to make a joke about something, anything. All he can manage is sweeping the pity off his face. She’ll figure a way to smack him for that cuffed or not.
He has something for her. Lee Adama still has rank and status even without a ship to command. He leans into the marine at the edge of the cubicle. “Take the restraints off.” He says it loud enough for Kara to hear. She doesn’t react even when the marine pops the locks and moves away.
“You came.” Her voice is quiet but not week. It nearly makes him smile.
“Of course.”
“They’ll put them back on when you leave you know.” There’s that bitterness he’s grown to love. She pulls herself to sitting and rubs at her wrists. She moves enough that he could sit at the edge of the bed. Close enough that they’d almost touch.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He nods. Doesn’t move from his standing position next to her bed. He folds his hands behind his back, at ease.
*** *** ***
“How could you not know?” Bill Adama balks.
“Baggy clothing? She never came to see me about it.” Cottle shakes his head, winces his creased face as he continues to breach confidentiality.
“So you think she…”
“I don’t know what I think. She’s not saying.” The doctor glances down at the blank spaces on the file in his hands. “I’m hoping she’ll tell your son.”
*** *** ***
“So.” It’s been a while since either of them spoke. When he finally does, her face drops. The spell broken.
“They took her, Lee.” Kara’s voice is barely above a whisper as though someone might be listening.
“Who Kara? Who’d they…? Who’d the cylons take?”
“They said she wasn’t the right one. But she was perfect, Lee. I knew. I could see. I knew she was perfect.” She chews at her bottom lips. She’s trying not to cry.
“We’ll figure it out.” Tension fills the muscles from shoulder to shoulder as he fights the urge to take her up in his arms. It won’t look right for him to hold her. She might hit him. Instead, he tries to smile, to reassure. “I promise.”
His beautiful broken Starbuck nods just enough. Lids cover her bright hazel eyes, dimmed with unshed tears. Lee Adama wishes he knew who she was so he could be her Apollo again. Heal the frayed pieces of her. With careful hesitation, he reaches out to brush a tear, fix her hair as it falls in her face.
*** *** ***
*** *** ***
Karl ‘Helo’ Agathon sits in the mess listening to the chatter around him. The re-integration is not going well. Those who lived through the occupation and those who stayed with the fleet are divided. He finds he doesn’t blame either side.
Surveying the room, Helo sees Apollo, Commander Adama, Lee - not sure what to call him anymore - standing at the edge of the tables. He’s alone, not carrying a tray for food. Just staring almost blankly at the people at the center of the room.
Before Helo can get up from the table, Lee Adama has disappeared from the mess. Leaving his tray on a nearby table, Helo raises to follow. When he finds an empty hall, he stops, makes a jerking turn and heads to Life Stations.
*** *** ***
The patients are fewer, but the open, white room with its sterile smell still teems with bodies in motion. Medics weaving through the cots. Patients waving, waxing and waning with pain. Days after the escape the sick bay continues to be one of the busiest areas of the ship.
The cordoned off back corner should be a bastion in the swirl. But a constant hum rolls out from it, occasionally accented by shouts. The privacy curtains sway with bursts of angry energy.
Helo waves off the marine guard with a dismissive hand. He takes a breath and ducks into the cubicle. He watches, silent and still as stone.
His friend doesn’t look at him. Back in restraints, Kara Thrace trains her eyes on the ceiling tiles and doesn’t look away. Her lips purse, slip in and out from her teeth so he knows that she knows that he’s there.
“So Starbuck.”
“So, Mr. OX.” Comes the quick sarcastic retort.
“Heard you’re upsetting the other patients.”
“Why the frak are you here, Karl?” She interrupts.
He crosses his arms and begins to pace the length of her bed. He ignores her annoyed glare, pivoting on his heel at the toe of the bed. He stops. “Kara.” He shakes his head, drops his eyes to his boots.
“You could frakking help me, you know.” She spits. “Or do you think I’m lying too.”
“I don’t think you’re lying.”
“But just like everybody else you don’t frakking do anything!” She’s shouting and trashing. She tugs the restraints hard enough that the bed jumps and clatters.
“Calm down, Kara. Please.” He says, reaching out a hand to reassure her.
“No!” She growls, bears her teeth at him, whips her face away towards the wall. After one more good crash and bang of the bed, she goes completely quiet. Like she’s alone again.
Kara counts to 50. Helo’s gone when she checks.
Then unvoiced tears roll down her cheeks and dry there as she falls asleep.
When she wakes up her husband, Sam Anders is standing at the foot of her bed. His face stern. His fists tight at his sides. “How are yah, Kara?”
“Get out.” Her jaw is clenched as she speaks. She doesn’t know why he’s come to see her. Wishes he would go. The salt from her tears is still on her cheek, crunching in the corners of her eyes.
“I’m worried about you.” His words sound weird to her ears. Forced. Tense like his shoulders. “I worried before too.”
“Before what?” She grits out when he doesn’t reply, stares dumbly at her. “That’s what I thought. Just get the frak away from me.”
“I stood by you.” He finally says.
“You called me a whore. You just didn’t kick me out of the tent when you said it. Way to stand by me, Sammy.”
The pyramid player goes slack in front of her. The look on his face is pure confusion. He moves away from the bed, shaking his head. Like he doesn’t know what’s going on.
*** *** ***
Helo leads the way through the maze of “tents” in Dogsville. The starboard hangar bay brims with life and smells, cooking pots and at least one overflowing head. Lee Adama winces as he thinks about the living conditions here. The noise is almost unbearable. He wonders if it ever stops.
Cpt. Agathon seems right at home skirting around children, careful not to disturb the curtains and rugs that form walls here. He doesn’t notice the way their uniforms are watched as they pass open spaces. It’s hard for Lee not to stop and apologize.
But they’re on a mission. Some good information from one of the other detainees at the cylon prison goads them to a home way in the back. There’s a woman who birthed one baby but came out of the prison with two.
“This should be it,” Helo nods. They stop in front of a tent, three sides canvass, one side battlestar wall, a highly prized domicile. They look back and forth at each other for a moment before Apollo slowly pulls the door aside. He would knock but can’t figure how.
“Hello!” someone inside calls. An older woman by the voice.
“My name is Lee Adama. I’m looking for…” The words drift off as he surveys the space. It’s sad, a plank cot off to the side, a box over turned for a table at the center, another partition that keeps moving after the woman steps up to the officers.
“We’re looking for a baby.” As XO, Karl has been coordinating the evacuees. He’s more comfortable in Dogsville. Strides right into the room and stands with his hands behind his back, waiting.
“Ah, the little girl.” The woman nods. She pulls back the swinging curtain behind her to reveal a young woman sitting with two babies on her lap. One larger and probably older with barely visible blonde hair. The other is tiny with thick dark curls. The young woman opens her mouth but is quieted by a shake of the head. Then she nods and rolls the smaller baby away from her body.
The older woman quickly closes the ‘door’ as she turns with the tiny child and offers it to Cpt. Agathon, who swerves away so Lee must step up and take the bundle. When he looks down into his arm all he can see are two hazel eyes peeking up at him. A lump grows in his throat and he thinks he can’t breath because of it. He hears Karl saying something to the woman, thinks he hands her something, but the world of Lee Adama has been reduce to the pair of eyes in his arms. Hers.
*** *** ***
Shifting his weight from foot to foot, it’s killing Lee that the baby has to stop and get checked out by Cottle before he can take her to Kara. There are tests to be run though. To make sure the little girl is who they think she is. To find out who else she belongs to.
Helo has gone ahead to see Kara. After hearing about the baby, she’s been calm. Her restraints removed.
Lee keeps himself occupied by trying to figure out what they’ll do with Kara and her little girl now. Once the baby is cleared, they’re no reason to keep them in the sick bay. He sighs. Thinks he knows where there might be a tiny room for them near the other family quarters.
He’s interrupted by Cottle’s face snarled before him. Annoyed that he can’t carry a baby and smoke no doubt. “Well, she’s fifty percent Thrace and fifty percent…”
“Just…” He shakes his head as he takes the wiggling baby. A free arm flails as he pulls her close. “Just Kara’s.” He’s biting the inside of his lips. He’s not ready to hear the rest of it so he walks away before Cottle can say more.
*** *** ***
Lee Adama steps through the gap in the curtains, carefully balancing the tightly wrapped babe in his arms. He’s having a hard time walking without tripping into everything in his path, because he’d rather be watching her. Her eyes sparkle up at him, hazel and warm like her mother’s.
She must be about two, maybe three months old. If Kara wasn’t getting prenatal care, she could have been early, small when she was born. She’s so tiny that it wouldn’t surprise him. Born while Kara was in the detention center either way. Taken from her mother.
Lee wonders what her name is.
Until he looks up and sees Kara has seen him. Her face takes his breath away. Her eyes sparkle green and flecked in gold just like the baby’s. Her mouth pulls from an impatient line to a halting smile, genuine and beautiful. Finally, she raises her arms out to him. He transfers the little girl without hesitation. Stepping back giving mom and baby space.
With a gentle finger, Kara Thrace traces the edge of her daughter’s hair and follows down the side of her round cheek. The slight anticipatory smile on her face grows warm and confident for a moment. Then she jerks her attention to Lee.
“She’s mine.” She states.
“Yeah.” Lee nods to her.
“Cottle checked.” Once again it’s not a question.
“He did.” Neither of them says anything more on the subject. Lee takes another stride back and feels the curtain against his hands.
“Hey, Pip.” She whispers. “I told you. I made you a promise that I’d get you back. I don’t break my promises.” She glances up, meeting Lee’s eyes. He moves towards the bed, meeting her smile.
“She’s beautiful, Kara.” The swell of pride within him knocks the wind out of his words. They come out too breathy. It makes him blush.
“This is Pip.” Starbuck beams back at him.
“Pip? Is that her name?”
Kara twists her bottom lip between her teeth and half shrugs. “I didn’t… It’s what I called her before she was born. I called her Pip Squeak because she would have been so small.”
He stifles a chuckle for fear she’ll quit talking. Kara’s eyes have drifted back to the baby, Pip, who has freed a hand from her swaddle. Waving happily at her mother’s long blonde strands of hair. “Pip.” He mouths and takes another half pace forward.
“I didn’t really name her. They took her. Kept saying she was the wrong baby and they didn’t need her. I knew she was perfect, Lee.”
“She is perfect.” He reaches out a single finger and grazes her fist as it flails. He lets her mouth and nose, so much like Kara’s, mesmerize him as she wiggles a second hand out of her blanket and grabs at air. He’s grinning like a fool and doesn’t care who knows it, just for a moment. Then shouts from outside the curtain bring him back to Life Stations and the Galactica and cylons and…
And he thinks he’s going to cry. He keeps his gaze trained on Pip. Blinking to dry his eyes.
“In my mind, I just kept calling her Pip. In case, I didn’t… So she wouldn’t be so real.”
“Yeah.” Back in the real world again, Lee snaps his head back into order. Tries to remember all the details that need to be take care of before Kara and Pip can leave the ward. “Uh, I have to go. Get things ready for you two in your new home. I’ll be back.”
“Oh.” The disappointment in her voice cuts him. He leaves more quickly then he should. Which probably cuts back.
*** *** ***
Dee, his wife, stands up from the table abruptly as he brings the hatch closed behind him. Lee Adama hopes that his disappointment isn’t washing across his face the way it’s filling his head. He feels like he hasn’t been alone in years. The last place he wants company right now is home. He needs a place to think. To figure all of this out.
“What’s going on, Lee?” Her voice is so genuine that it hurts his ears.
“It’s my job. You know that. The refugees. Integration. You know that, Dee.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth he knows he needs to stay quiet next time. He sounds defensive. He is defensive. He’s mixed up, churning all over.
“You’re helping Kara Thrace.” She spits out each syllable. They bounce around the small married quarters. “I thought you were taking your father’s offer to be CAG again.”
“I haven’t given him and answer.” That’s not a lie. He rubs his eyes, drags his hand down his face. “Kat’s doing a fine job.”
“So what are you going to do? Spend all your time with Kara and that baby she found.”
“It’s her baby!” He’s shouting, and it hurts his head.
“How does anyone know that? Everyone knows she didn’t come back the same from that planet.” The venom is dripping. The accusations make his stomach want to revolt.
Very calmly without moving his eyes from the hatch, he answers his wife. “Cottle, um, tested. She’s Kara’s baby.”
“She kicked her husband out of Life Stations, yet you still visit.”
“She’s Kara’s, Dee.” His voice drops lower, barely a whisper.
“She’s yours, Lee.” She grinds out the words.
He doesn’t say anything. Saying it would make it true. He doesn’t trust that it won’t also break the spell. Kara will remember that she runs from him. That he doesn’t save her. He won’t have anything then.
So he reaches out for the hatch and hears his wife. “I think I should go.”
Out in the hall, he stares at the gray walls, their worn glass marred with scratches and nicks. The door to his married life locks behind him, and Lee Adama realizes he has no where to go. He’s not sure he’s a pilot. Bunk space is too tight everywhere. He peers up and down the corridor. Lost in a familiar land.
His feet move without him thinking. He scrubs madly at his face as he walks. Gathering himself as best he can. Until he comes to the hatch at the corner. Frozen before it, he reaches out a hand. He assigned the cabin, he knows the override code.
It’s smaller then the other married billets. It’s silent. He sinks into the couch and hopes for clarity. His head lolls back against the wall and his eyes fall shut.
He’s tired. Exhausted.
He must have fallen asleep because the hatch squeaking open wakes him.
His father is framed by the open hatch.
“I’ve just spoken with your wife.” The older man strides easily into the billet. Pulls the hatch tight behind him and fills the empty space of the room as he gazes down at his son.
Lee only nods in reply. He doesn’t move from the small couch and doesn’t raise his eyes to meet the man before him whether it’s the Admiral or his father.
Much to Lee Adama’s surprise, his father sinks into the couch next to him. “She’s hurt and confused, son.”
“She’s not the only one.” His eyes focus hard on a spot on the decking between their feet.
Bill continues. “I spoke to Cottle. He said you…”
“Don’t.” Lee interrupts his father. Taking a slow breath, he lifts his chin and turns his head. “I knew as soon as she asked for me.” The words come out small but without apology which is all he can really ask for.
“So you know what you need to do then.” The Admiral stands from the couch and whips towards the door. Lee wishes it was half that simple. This is him and Kara. They are a lot of things. None are simple.
*** *** ***
*** *** ***
Pip sleeps in her little bed. Sucking on her thumb as though the whole of the universe is at peace. Lee touches her head, her thick dark hair. And smiles, sadly.
Kara’s behind him curled into the blankets on the double bunk. He hopes she’s nearly asleep. She needs to sleep. He turns to check. Say good-night before leaving. Although he has no idea where he’s going to go for the night.
Her hazel eyes glint against the silvery sheen of the blankets that are pulled around her head. She’s watching him. Watching him watching the baby.
“Shh. You should be asleep.”
“Is she ok?”
“Yeah.” He stops. Feeling studied by her wakeful yet sleepy eyes. “She’s perfect.”
“She is.”
“I should go. I’ll be back. Tomorrow.” His hand stretches out to touch her hair. But comes up short and
hovers between them.
“Stay.” It isn’t a plea or a question or a demand or an order. Just a word plain and simple hanging in the air, waiting for a response.
For a moment he freezes. He’s supposed to go. But duty calls. Bringing everything into place. All at once he answers by stripping to his boxers. The only sound in the billet is the drop of cloth to the deck below his feet. He scrambles over her and slides into the bed.
Before Lee Adama can think what to do next, Kara Thrace tells him. Rolling her body into his, her head tucks under his chin.
Peering over Kara’s head, he sees the crib just inside the little alcove. Lee knows he won’t fall asleep any time soon, but he relaxes clinging to Kara, watching Pip. Trying to feel guilty. But the tension that has been holding him together is waning fast. He doesn’t want to deal with anything outside these walls. He just wants safe and warm, like Pip. Almost like home.