Fic: Forever
Title: Forever
Author: kdbleu
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Lee, Kara, Bill, Cottle, Dee
Pairings: Lee/Kara
Summary: Lee is permanently grounded after Kara shoots him on Cloud 9 for medical reasons.
Prompt: After being shot on Cloud 9, Lee must deal with never being able to fly again.
Warnings: none.
Word Count: ~3500
Beta: nazkey with a little extra help from sci_fi_shipper. Thanks, ladies.
Forever
When Cottle comes into his office with his head tipped down to the X-ray, MIR, whatever it is, Lee Adama knows. He already knows though. He knows his full range shouldn’t be back yet, but… His range of motion is farther off than if should be. The strange dull ache that goes all the way to his bone hangs on. It’s Cottle’s look which borders on genuine concern that seals it.
Lee feels a twitch running from the corner of his eyes through his cheek and down to the corner of his mouth. He sits quietly, remembering the elation he felt the first time he blasted into the darkness of space, the first time he entered planetary atmosphere, the first time he landed on a battlestar. It’s all over. He nods very small to whatever Cottle says, trying hard not to make eye contact.
As he leaves Life Stations, he wonders if he’s still himself if he’s not Apollo too.
*** *** ***
It’s not until the first time she finds him in the gym.
It’s ridiculously early, and Kara has just enough time to squeeze in a quick workout between an overnight CAP and the morning briefing. A CAG’s work is never done. If she doesn’t get her gym time in now it’ll be tomorrow before she knows it.
Usually the gym is quiet this time of day so she can hear the speed bag rolling fast but in an off rhythm before she’s made her way through the hatch. Kara stops short and stares dumbstruck when she sees Lee pound away on the speed bag just above his head. He’s working his other arm. His right arm is held stiff and corked at his side as thought it were still in its sling. Then gradually and carefully Lee moves his right arm as though it were going to join his left arm’s work out. It doesn’t come close.
Kara winces, flashing back to Lee bleeding out on the floor of the Cloud 9 bar and the burnt powder smell from her gun. A twinge starts in her belly and grows until it engulfs her. She’s horrified to be staring at him, but she can’t make her legs move.
*** *** ***
She stands on the edges of the medical bay, frozen on the other side of the white curtain, like it’s a force field repelling her and protecting him. As much as she wants to Kara can’t move closer, but she can’t leave either. She stares at his hand curled around the edge of the bed. The first night his hand is gray and limp. Kara imagines the rest of Lee’s skin the same deathly ashen color, his eyes shut. Tubes run in and out keeping him alive.
Over the next few days, Lee’s color improves. Kara monitors carefully, making sure to stay out of the way, on her side of the curtain. Someone good and safe needs to watch out for him. Dee holds Lee’s other hand sometimes, but this one is hers. Her lips suck into her mouth as she nods, confirming. She can’t touch. Shouldn’t. It remains her touchstone. She smiles sadly and turns to leave. She runs squarely into the Old Man. Kara gasps and jumps back.
“You should sit with him. I can come back,” Bill Adama says. Kara shakes her head, her lips flat with defeat and self-denial. “He’d want to see you.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” she snaps back.
She whips away from the curtain, the bed, Lee’s nearly pink hand and doesn’t come back. She can’t look at Lee now that’s she’s voiced the lie out loud. Kara is crying by the time she reaches the senior pilot’s bunk room. It’s the first time since that night on Cloud 9, since she shot him. She shot him. She curls up in her bunk and slides the curtain shut, this one gray, to keep everyone she loves protected from her poison.
*** *** ***
“Do you need something, Captain?” Lee’s voice is stern and cold. No wonder the Pegasus crew has come to accept him after Cain and Fisk and most recently Garner’s leadership and sacrifice.
“No, sir,” Kara clips back.
“Then they gym is closed, Captain. You can come back later.”
“Yes, sir,” she repeats, and she wants to pull herself from the open hatch. Her body remains caught in the terror of responsibility. She gulps.
She did this to him.
Lee steps away from the speed bag leaving it flailing on its hook. “Did you hear me, Captain?” His tone is louder, more forcefully as he turns to her and glares.
“Yeah, umm… Sorry, Sir.”
“Then move, Captain,” he orders, but Kara doesn’t move.
“Are you capable of doing that? This one frakking, simple thing?” Lee’s moving on her, yelling as he comes. This time, not only can she not move, Kara can’t speak. Her mouth opens and hangs there.
“Don’t you frakking get it, Kara?”
“Get what?” she squeaks. They’re eye to eye now, nearly nose to nose. She’s shaking, trying to look away, trying not to be crushed under the weight of taking flight away from Lee but not having the decency to kill him too.
“That you can’t frakking come back from this! That you can’t always get away with it!”
“I didn’t… I don’t…” The only things she wants to say won’t frakking come out of her mouth. It didn’t help last time, did it? “I…”
They’re faces are so close she can feel him breath across her cheek. She misses him. It hits her all at once and that guts her as much as anything else. His eyes are dark with rage but still manage to twinkle for her. Sparks radiate back and forth between them. Suddenly it’s all she can do not to lean the millimeter more and kiss him.
And then she can move, so she runs.
*** *** ***
The folded page is on his desk when Lee comes back from his morning briefings. He sees it out of place form the rest of his papers before anything else in the room. Immediately he whips back to the marine guards stationed outside the Pegasus commander quarters. He should be angry that they let someone in while he was on duty, but he recognizes the small, erratic scrawl. He snatches up the paper but reads the three words with halting hesitation.
I’m sorry -Kara
Silently he refolds it into his pocket and takes off down the halls. When he arrives at the CAGs office and quarters, he throws open the hatch only to find it empty. The breath rushes out of him as he balances his annoyance with relief.
It’s a cramped room, filled with Kara. Clothes lie on the floor and over the back of the chair. The bunk along the back wall is sort of made but not really. At least the locker is closed and not yet overflowing. Then Lee notices, not the papers strewn across the desk, but the picture folded in half and tucked in the corner of the bulletin board above it.
Stepping in without thinking, Lee’s pulled by the image. He’s holding a pyramid ball on a bright spring day. He reaches out. Sadness and anger fill him, just like in the picture taken what seems like a lifetime ago. Lee shakes his head and sniffs. He purses his lips trying to figure out why Kara had hidden herself and Zak, why she wants to look at him over paper work.
“What the frak?” Kara yelps from the hatchway. Lee jerks away from the picture and pivots carefully towards her. He’s betrayed her privacy.
“I got your note.”
“I didn’t expect…”
He steps forward again, crowding into her space. “I know. I didn’t either.”
“Right.” Kara tips her face to his, staring deeply. Lee doesn’t blink.
For a moment, they stay just far away enough to pretend this is it.
Rocking back so she can take him all in, Kara sets her hand on Lee’s chest with her fingers fanning out to his shoulder, covering the whole of the scar. She drags her hand across the wool of his tunic to the shined gold buttons which she flips open down the line. His jacket falls, and Kara leans in to shove it off his shoulders, revealing tanks and the faint pink lines of the surgery scar. Lee cringes. That scar saved his life and tore apart the muscles taking his wings.
Kara pushes on, yanking up his tanks to find her handy work in all its glory. Her finger is cool against his skin, circling and tracing the marred skin. Her face is pinched in curiosity and sadness as her touch soothes him.
When Kara lifts her face back to him, her bright hazel eyes are rimmed with tears. She’s a million kind of beautiful, and Lee wants more than anything to kiss her to tell her that everything’s going to be ok.
“You’ll never fly?” she interrupts, almost too quiet to be heard.
“No,” Lee shakes his head.
“Are we ever going to be ok?”
“I don’t know.”
*** *** ***
Bill Adama says almost nothing. Lee thinks the silence is going to make things easier, but it stretches out and out while Bill reads Doc Cottle’s report. He’s pretty sure there aren’t too many words, few enough that his father should be done reading by now. This means he’s digesting, considering. It leaves a gaping divide between the two men with Lee trying to figure out if he’s dealing with his father or his Admiral.
Finally, Bill moves the page over the left hand side of his desk and nods. He pinches the bridge of his nose as he slowly inches his gaze back to his son. Lee can feel his whole body shake like he’s a green cadet standing at attention for the very first time. The ache in his chest radiates out to his shoulder in even pulses. They match his breathing but not the rise and fall of his father’s chest. Lee envies the calm.
“I have an assignment for you on the Pegasus…” Bill begins.
Lee is only half listening as he eyes the shining major’s pips in his father’s hand. He hears that the rank will help him navigate the command structure so damaged and stilted by Cain’s legacy, but all Lee can see is a replacement for his wings. He hopes his father finishes up before he starts to cry. Real men don’t cry.
If he can’t fly a viper is he still really a man?
*** *** ***
Lee sighs and rolls his neck sliding back into the crease of the couch as the rest of the Pegasus command staff leave his ready room after their briefing with the Admiral. Bill Adama, however, stays. Chancing a glance at his father, Lee wonders what they’re meant to talk about, if this has suddenly become some kind of social call.
“You’re adjusting well to your command, Lee,” Bill starts just a little too casually. Lee’s not ready for this. His father upsets the balance where his Admiral does not. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Lee mutters. His face tips down so any blush will be obscured by shadow, but the smile that pulls over his lips is one of pure pride. Lee thinks of all the time he spends mending the morale shattered by Cain after the Fall.
“But,” Bill pauses until Lee meets his eyes. “I’m worried how things are between you and your CAG.”
“Fine,” Lee clips. Any satisfaction left on his face falls away and is replaced by an instinctively set jaw and hard line mouth.
“I hear so much about your ease with your crew. How you’ve stepped up and lead without judgment of the past. You didn’t even look at her today.” The Admiral’s tone has changed, and there’s no mistaking where this lecture is going. “It was an accident. I want to think that getting past the past goes for the members of your crew that were on Galactica and Kara too.”
“I know it was an accident.” Lee tries to keep the loss from his voice, but it creeps in the same way the tension in the room is making his right shoulder ache all the way to the bone.
“You should talk to her.”
“I talk to her all the time. Doesn’t change anything. She’s the CAG and I’m her commander. We’re professional.”
“I thought you used to be...”
“Friends? If she were my friend she would have come to the Life Station. I was there for weeks. I didn’t see her once.” He spits the words so hard he actually looks for acid hitting the floor at his feet. But as the final words come, the bitterness fades back to the same dull disappointment he’s felt since they spoke in her office, since she touched him. She’s been holding him at arms length ever since too.
Lee doesn’t see his father stand to go, but Bill is half way to the door when Lee raises his head again. Bill glares back at his son, shrinking him further. “She was there every night while you were unconscious.”
“What?”
“I tried to get her to sit with you, but she said you wouldn’t want her there.”
Lee doesn’t know what to say to that. As mush as he thinks he should be angry at Kara for taking flying away from him, he’s found that he likes the challenges that come with command. He never would have sought out this kind of position before the cylon attacks. He’s been one of the ranking members of the Fleet for long enough that more responsibility was inevitable whether it be within the Fleet or the civilian government. So he’s hung onto her gaff as a friend.
Flying has been easy to lose. Kara’s been hard.
*** *** ***
He’s packing when Dee comes into the bunk room, laughing under every word she says and trying to tickle his sides as she reaches around for a hug. It’s all Lee can do not to throw a punch. If it were… he would. Instead, Lee slowly turns around and is met by Dee’s bright smile. It’s too bright. She’s over compensating. Her eyes have that same studied concern he grew to know while he was stuck in Life Stations, while he waited for the final verdict.
“Congratulations on your promotion, Major,” she all but giggles.
Lee slumps down on his bunk and takes her hands. “Thanks, Dee. For everything.” He meets her eyes and holds them, warm and green. Dee gazes back, adoring, and it makes Lee cringe because she’s the one who was there, the one who sat by his bed.
“You’re welcome. It was a pleasure.”
“But Dee… I can’t.” He thinks is he can just keep it simple it will be easier. Dee’s face recoils with confusion. “I can’t do this.”
“Maybe when you get back?” Her voice is filled with hope, which in turns renews the fury he’s been fighting all morning. Lee wants to lunge at her, shout something, but his shoulders slump forward and he drops Dee’s hands without another word.
“Right,” Dee mumbles as she moves slowly away and through the hatch.
He glances around the small gray hued room, catching the occasional splash of color from personal effects. Lee realizes that he’s not coming back. Not here anyway. This is where the pilots bunk. He’s not a pilot. His shoulder begins to shutter again as though cued by his loss. Lee raises his hands up over his face and presses deep into his eyes sockets until that hurt blocks out the welling tears.
*** *** ***
She manages to get from the raptor to the threshold of her office before the din of the basestar exploding completely overwhelms her. Kara Thrace could have, should have been blown to bits with it, not Kendra Shaw. But here she is, legs shaking under her weight. She doesn’t think she can force them to lift the few extra inches to cross into the little room so she remains leaned in the hatchway, struggling to catch her breath.
Foot step behind her finally propel her through the hatch. It’s him, and anger wells up to replace the residual mix of terror and relief. Kara spins on him as Lee barges in at her. He’s panting almost as hard as she is like he ran all the way from CIC, where he ordered her to stay back and die. Ire boils anew.
He looks awful. His eyes are sunken and his shoulders hunch with the weight of… of…
“Kara.”
“You frakker,” she gulps. It comes out weaker than she would have hoped, but it has the desired effect as Lee shrinks back a step without making a sound.
“What the frak, Lee?” She moves on him again, crowding him against the wall just inside the hatch. Her eyes dart through the opening. She panics, hoping he doesn’t realize he could slip out and go. Because he has to stay. Suddenly nothing matters except that she’s here and he’s here.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” he says. It’s plain and simple, almost lacking the emotion befitting the situation, and yet somehow so much more too. Kara can only stare, the way his blue eyes flicker dark and light as they gaze back at her.
“For all of it. And you may never forgive me, but I need you to know.” Lee speaks urgently this time, and when he stops there’s something about the tension in his jaw, like he wants to say something more.
“Oh, gods, Lee,” Kara gasps. Her hand comes up and sweeps over his face as though trying to erase the desperation and loss. He goes on staring at her, through her, all the way into the broken depth of her soul.
“I would have died if you hadn’t come back,” he finally whispers and the energy in his jaw dissolves, his shoulders drop, and he turns as though to leave.
Kara grabs his shoulder and whips him back to kiss him with a passion that only comes from not dying. And he kisses back, hard and strong and almost right. His hands come up and hold her head like they did so many weeks ago when she was hunting Scar. This time she relaxes into his hands, sighs into his mouth. She wants to stay.
*** *** ***
Lee wakes in the darkness of Kara’s office and quarters. He knows he should leave. He has duties, obligations all over the ship. Kara sleeps though, warm in his arms, like a child or a kitten. He can see her eyes move under through lids, and he knows it means she’s dreaming.
Her hair’s grown long. Lee smiles and moves a thick lock of hair from her forehead. She wears it sleek and pulled back most of the time, making her look grown-up and professional. Right now, loose and spread over his skin, it’s like the spun gold of fairytales. One day children will tell stories about the great Starbuck who fought the cylons all the way to Earth. Lee doesn’t care if he’s remembered at all so long as she is.
She was there every night you were unconscious. I tried to get her to sit with you, but she said you wouldn’t want her there.
His father’s words come back to Lee across the darkness. It’s only been a few days, but the sting is still there. He wouldn’t have known Kara was there when he was sleeping, but she stood a nightly vigil for him. He repays this discovery by ordering her to die. Looking back to her quiet face, Lee thinks it not worth it. Not worth fighting and dying or almost dying without this.
“I forgive you,” he whispers. The words feel ridiculous as soon as they come out of his mouth, and Lee really hopes Kara’s sleeping too soundly to hear them.
“I forgive you too,” she mumbles back and burrows further into his chest.
Outside of the fact that he’s shirking his duties and lying naked in his CAG’s bed in close to complete dereliction of duty, Lee feels like he proved himself a commander. He doesn’t want to have to do it again.
Author: kdbleu
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Lee, Kara, Bill, Cottle, Dee
Pairings: Lee/Kara
Summary: Lee is permanently grounded after Kara shoots him on Cloud 9 for medical reasons.
Prompt: After being shot on Cloud 9, Lee must deal with never being able to fly again.
Warnings: none.
Word Count: ~3500
Beta: nazkey with a little extra help from sci_fi_shipper. Thanks, ladies.
Forever
When Cottle comes into his office with his head tipped down to the X-ray, MIR, whatever it is, Lee Adama knows. He already knows though. He knows his full range shouldn’t be back yet, but… His range of motion is farther off than if should be. The strange dull ache that goes all the way to his bone hangs on. It’s Cottle’s look which borders on genuine concern that seals it.
Lee feels a twitch running from the corner of his eyes through his cheek and down to the corner of his mouth. He sits quietly, remembering the elation he felt the first time he blasted into the darkness of space, the first time he entered planetary atmosphere, the first time he landed on a battlestar. It’s all over. He nods very small to whatever Cottle says, trying hard not to make eye contact.
As he leaves Life Stations, he wonders if he’s still himself if he’s not Apollo too.
*** *** ***
It’s not until the first time she finds him in the gym.
It’s ridiculously early, and Kara has just enough time to squeeze in a quick workout between an overnight CAP and the morning briefing. A CAG’s work is never done. If she doesn’t get her gym time in now it’ll be tomorrow before she knows it.
Usually the gym is quiet this time of day so she can hear the speed bag rolling fast but in an off rhythm before she’s made her way through the hatch. Kara stops short and stares dumbstruck when she sees Lee pound away on the speed bag just above his head. He’s working his other arm. His right arm is held stiff and corked at his side as thought it were still in its sling. Then gradually and carefully Lee moves his right arm as though it were going to join his left arm’s work out. It doesn’t come close.
Kara winces, flashing back to Lee bleeding out on the floor of the Cloud 9 bar and the burnt powder smell from her gun. A twinge starts in her belly and grows until it engulfs her. She’s horrified to be staring at him, but she can’t make her legs move.
*** *** ***
She stands on the edges of the medical bay, frozen on the other side of the white curtain, like it’s a force field repelling her and protecting him. As much as she wants to Kara can’t move closer, but she can’t leave either. She stares at his hand curled around the edge of the bed. The first night his hand is gray and limp. Kara imagines the rest of Lee’s skin the same deathly ashen color, his eyes shut. Tubes run in and out keeping him alive.
Over the next few days, Lee’s color improves. Kara monitors carefully, making sure to stay out of the way, on her side of the curtain. Someone good and safe needs to watch out for him. Dee holds Lee’s other hand sometimes, but this one is hers. Her lips suck into her mouth as she nods, confirming. She can’t touch. Shouldn’t. It remains her touchstone. She smiles sadly and turns to leave. She runs squarely into the Old Man. Kara gasps and jumps back.
“You should sit with him. I can come back,” Bill Adama says. Kara shakes her head, her lips flat with defeat and self-denial. “He’d want to see you.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” she snaps back.
She whips away from the curtain, the bed, Lee’s nearly pink hand and doesn’t come back. She can’t look at Lee now that’s she’s voiced the lie out loud. Kara is crying by the time she reaches the senior pilot’s bunk room. It’s the first time since that night on Cloud 9, since she shot him. She shot him. She curls up in her bunk and slides the curtain shut, this one gray, to keep everyone she loves protected from her poison.
*** *** ***
“Do you need something, Captain?” Lee’s voice is stern and cold. No wonder the Pegasus crew has come to accept him after Cain and Fisk and most recently Garner’s leadership and sacrifice.
“No, sir,” Kara clips back.
“Then they gym is closed, Captain. You can come back later.”
“Yes, sir,” she repeats, and she wants to pull herself from the open hatch. Her body remains caught in the terror of responsibility. She gulps.
She did this to him.
Lee steps away from the speed bag leaving it flailing on its hook. “Did you hear me, Captain?” His tone is louder, more forcefully as he turns to her and glares.
“Yeah, umm… Sorry, Sir.”
“Then move, Captain,” he orders, but Kara doesn’t move.
“Are you capable of doing that? This one frakking, simple thing?” Lee’s moving on her, yelling as he comes. This time, not only can she not move, Kara can’t speak. Her mouth opens and hangs there.
“Don’t you frakking get it, Kara?”
“Get what?” she squeaks. They’re eye to eye now, nearly nose to nose. She’s shaking, trying to look away, trying not to be crushed under the weight of taking flight away from Lee but not having the decency to kill him too.
“That you can’t frakking come back from this! That you can’t always get away with it!”
“I didn’t… I don’t…” The only things she wants to say won’t frakking come out of her mouth. It didn’t help last time, did it? “I…”
They’re faces are so close she can feel him breath across her cheek. She misses him. It hits her all at once and that guts her as much as anything else. His eyes are dark with rage but still manage to twinkle for her. Sparks radiate back and forth between them. Suddenly it’s all she can do not to lean the millimeter more and kiss him.
And then she can move, so she runs.
*** *** ***
The folded page is on his desk when Lee comes back from his morning briefings. He sees it out of place form the rest of his papers before anything else in the room. Immediately he whips back to the marine guards stationed outside the Pegasus commander quarters. He should be angry that they let someone in while he was on duty, but he recognizes the small, erratic scrawl. He snatches up the paper but reads the three words with halting hesitation.
I’m sorry -Kara
Silently he refolds it into his pocket and takes off down the halls. When he arrives at the CAGs office and quarters, he throws open the hatch only to find it empty. The breath rushes out of him as he balances his annoyance with relief.
It’s a cramped room, filled with Kara. Clothes lie on the floor and over the back of the chair. The bunk along the back wall is sort of made but not really. At least the locker is closed and not yet overflowing. Then Lee notices, not the papers strewn across the desk, but the picture folded in half and tucked in the corner of the bulletin board above it.
Stepping in without thinking, Lee’s pulled by the image. He’s holding a pyramid ball on a bright spring day. He reaches out. Sadness and anger fill him, just like in the picture taken what seems like a lifetime ago. Lee shakes his head and sniffs. He purses his lips trying to figure out why Kara had hidden herself and Zak, why she wants to look at him over paper work.
“What the frak?” Kara yelps from the hatchway. Lee jerks away from the picture and pivots carefully towards her. He’s betrayed her privacy.
“I got your note.”
“I didn’t expect…”
He steps forward again, crowding into her space. “I know. I didn’t either.”
“Right.” Kara tips her face to his, staring deeply. Lee doesn’t blink.
For a moment, they stay just far away enough to pretend this is it.
Rocking back so she can take him all in, Kara sets her hand on Lee’s chest with her fingers fanning out to his shoulder, covering the whole of the scar. She drags her hand across the wool of his tunic to the shined gold buttons which she flips open down the line. His jacket falls, and Kara leans in to shove it off his shoulders, revealing tanks and the faint pink lines of the surgery scar. Lee cringes. That scar saved his life and tore apart the muscles taking his wings.
Kara pushes on, yanking up his tanks to find her handy work in all its glory. Her finger is cool against his skin, circling and tracing the marred skin. Her face is pinched in curiosity and sadness as her touch soothes him.
When Kara lifts her face back to him, her bright hazel eyes are rimmed with tears. She’s a million kind of beautiful, and Lee wants more than anything to kiss her to tell her that everything’s going to be ok.
“You’ll never fly?” she interrupts, almost too quiet to be heard.
“No,” Lee shakes his head.
“Are we ever going to be ok?”
“I don’t know.”
*** *** ***
Bill Adama says almost nothing. Lee thinks the silence is going to make things easier, but it stretches out and out while Bill reads Doc Cottle’s report. He’s pretty sure there aren’t too many words, few enough that his father should be done reading by now. This means he’s digesting, considering. It leaves a gaping divide between the two men with Lee trying to figure out if he’s dealing with his father or his Admiral.
Finally, Bill moves the page over the left hand side of his desk and nods. He pinches the bridge of his nose as he slowly inches his gaze back to his son. Lee can feel his whole body shake like he’s a green cadet standing at attention for the very first time. The ache in his chest radiates out to his shoulder in even pulses. They match his breathing but not the rise and fall of his father’s chest. Lee envies the calm.
“I have an assignment for you on the Pegasus…” Bill begins.
Lee is only half listening as he eyes the shining major’s pips in his father’s hand. He hears that the rank will help him navigate the command structure so damaged and stilted by Cain’s legacy, but all Lee can see is a replacement for his wings. He hopes his father finishes up before he starts to cry. Real men don’t cry.
If he can’t fly a viper is he still really a man?
*** *** ***
Lee sighs and rolls his neck sliding back into the crease of the couch as the rest of the Pegasus command staff leave his ready room after their briefing with the Admiral. Bill Adama, however, stays. Chancing a glance at his father, Lee wonders what they’re meant to talk about, if this has suddenly become some kind of social call.
“You’re adjusting well to your command, Lee,” Bill starts just a little too casually. Lee’s not ready for this. His father upsets the balance where his Admiral does not. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Lee mutters. His face tips down so any blush will be obscured by shadow, but the smile that pulls over his lips is one of pure pride. Lee thinks of all the time he spends mending the morale shattered by Cain after the Fall.
“But,” Bill pauses until Lee meets his eyes. “I’m worried how things are between you and your CAG.”
“Fine,” Lee clips. Any satisfaction left on his face falls away and is replaced by an instinctively set jaw and hard line mouth.
“I hear so much about your ease with your crew. How you’ve stepped up and lead without judgment of the past. You didn’t even look at her today.” The Admiral’s tone has changed, and there’s no mistaking where this lecture is going. “It was an accident. I want to think that getting past the past goes for the members of your crew that were on Galactica and Kara too.”
“I know it was an accident.” Lee tries to keep the loss from his voice, but it creeps in the same way the tension in the room is making his right shoulder ache all the way to the bone.
“You should talk to her.”
“I talk to her all the time. Doesn’t change anything. She’s the CAG and I’m her commander. We’re professional.”
“I thought you used to be...”
“Friends? If she were my friend she would have come to the Life Station. I was there for weeks. I didn’t see her once.” He spits the words so hard he actually looks for acid hitting the floor at his feet. But as the final words come, the bitterness fades back to the same dull disappointment he’s felt since they spoke in her office, since she touched him. She’s been holding him at arms length ever since too.
Lee doesn’t see his father stand to go, but Bill is half way to the door when Lee raises his head again. Bill glares back at his son, shrinking him further. “She was there every night while you were unconscious.”
“What?”
“I tried to get her to sit with you, but she said you wouldn’t want her there.”
Lee doesn’t know what to say to that. As mush as he thinks he should be angry at Kara for taking flying away from him, he’s found that he likes the challenges that come with command. He never would have sought out this kind of position before the cylon attacks. He’s been one of the ranking members of the Fleet for long enough that more responsibility was inevitable whether it be within the Fleet or the civilian government. So he’s hung onto her gaff as a friend.
Flying has been easy to lose. Kara’s been hard.
*** *** ***
He’s packing when Dee comes into the bunk room, laughing under every word she says and trying to tickle his sides as she reaches around for a hug. It’s all Lee can do not to throw a punch. If it were… he would. Instead, Lee slowly turns around and is met by Dee’s bright smile. It’s too bright. She’s over compensating. Her eyes have that same studied concern he grew to know while he was stuck in Life Stations, while he waited for the final verdict.
“Congratulations on your promotion, Major,” she all but giggles.
Lee slumps down on his bunk and takes her hands. “Thanks, Dee. For everything.” He meets her eyes and holds them, warm and green. Dee gazes back, adoring, and it makes Lee cringe because she’s the one who was there, the one who sat by his bed.
“You’re welcome. It was a pleasure.”
“But Dee… I can’t.” He thinks is he can just keep it simple it will be easier. Dee’s face recoils with confusion. “I can’t do this.”
“Maybe when you get back?” Her voice is filled with hope, which in turns renews the fury he’s been fighting all morning. Lee wants to lunge at her, shout something, but his shoulders slump forward and he drops Dee’s hands without another word.
“Right,” Dee mumbles as she moves slowly away and through the hatch.
He glances around the small gray hued room, catching the occasional splash of color from personal effects. Lee realizes that he’s not coming back. Not here anyway. This is where the pilots bunk. He’s not a pilot. His shoulder begins to shutter again as though cued by his loss. Lee raises his hands up over his face and presses deep into his eyes sockets until that hurt blocks out the welling tears.
*** *** ***
She manages to get from the raptor to the threshold of her office before the din of the basestar exploding completely overwhelms her. Kara Thrace could have, should have been blown to bits with it, not Kendra Shaw. But here she is, legs shaking under her weight. She doesn’t think she can force them to lift the few extra inches to cross into the little room so she remains leaned in the hatchway, struggling to catch her breath.
Foot step behind her finally propel her through the hatch. It’s him, and anger wells up to replace the residual mix of terror and relief. Kara spins on him as Lee barges in at her. He’s panting almost as hard as she is like he ran all the way from CIC, where he ordered her to stay back and die. Ire boils anew.
He looks awful. His eyes are sunken and his shoulders hunch with the weight of… of…
“Kara.”
“You frakker,” she gulps. It comes out weaker than she would have hoped, but it has the desired effect as Lee shrinks back a step without making a sound.
“What the frak, Lee?” She moves on him again, crowding him against the wall just inside the hatch. Her eyes dart through the opening. She panics, hoping he doesn’t realize he could slip out and go. Because he has to stay. Suddenly nothing matters except that she’s here and he’s here.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” he says. It’s plain and simple, almost lacking the emotion befitting the situation, and yet somehow so much more too. Kara can only stare, the way his blue eyes flicker dark and light as they gaze back at her.
“For all of it. And you may never forgive me, but I need you to know.” Lee speaks urgently this time, and when he stops there’s something about the tension in his jaw, like he wants to say something more.
“Oh, gods, Lee,” Kara gasps. Her hand comes up and sweeps over his face as though trying to erase the desperation and loss. He goes on staring at her, through her, all the way into the broken depth of her soul.
“I would have died if you hadn’t come back,” he finally whispers and the energy in his jaw dissolves, his shoulders drop, and he turns as though to leave.
Kara grabs his shoulder and whips him back to kiss him with a passion that only comes from not dying. And he kisses back, hard and strong and almost right. His hands come up and hold her head like they did so many weeks ago when she was hunting Scar. This time she relaxes into his hands, sighs into his mouth. She wants to stay.
*** *** ***
Lee wakes in the darkness of Kara’s office and quarters. He knows he should leave. He has duties, obligations all over the ship. Kara sleeps though, warm in his arms, like a child or a kitten. He can see her eyes move under through lids, and he knows it means she’s dreaming.
Her hair’s grown long. Lee smiles and moves a thick lock of hair from her forehead. She wears it sleek and pulled back most of the time, making her look grown-up and professional. Right now, loose and spread over his skin, it’s like the spun gold of fairytales. One day children will tell stories about the great Starbuck who fought the cylons all the way to Earth. Lee doesn’t care if he’s remembered at all so long as she is.
She was there every night you were unconscious. I tried to get her to sit with you, but she said you wouldn’t want her there.
His father’s words come back to Lee across the darkness. It’s only been a few days, but the sting is still there. He wouldn’t have known Kara was there when he was sleeping, but she stood a nightly vigil for him. He repays this discovery by ordering her to die. Looking back to her quiet face, Lee thinks it not worth it. Not worth fighting and dying or almost dying without this.
“I forgive you,” he whispers. The words feel ridiculous as soon as they come out of his mouth, and Lee really hopes Kara’s sleeping too soundly to hear them.
“I forgive you too,” she mumbles back and burrows further into his chest.
Outside of the fact that he’s shirking his duties and lying naked in his CAG’s bed in close to complete dereliction of duty, Lee feels like he proved himself a commander. He doesn’t want to have to do it again.