BSG Fic - Reparation, 8/?
Title: Reparation
Author: becisvolatile
Part: 8/?
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Lee/Kara, Bill, Roslin, Helo, Sharon, Cottle, Anders, Dee, Leoben, Racetrack, Seelix.
Word Count: 4700+
Category: Novella
Genre: Romance, Angst, Action with Romance, PWP, Drama
Archiving: The Fallout Shelter, Apollo/Starbuck Fan Fic, Beyond Insane all others please ask
Warnings: Language, violence, sexual content, gratuitous sex.
Spoilers: Up to and including S3
Summary: Who the frak did she think she was to be even remotely disturbed that Lee had killed Leoben? But she was more than disturbed. She was frakking destroyed.
Authors Note: Snugs to Angylinni for the beta.
Previous Chapters:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Karl Agathon didn’t put much stock in guilt. For his purposes, it was useless - he’d rather fix things as soon as he broke them. It made his future less complicated and in a world where the future wasn’t a given, he almost seemed like a dying breed.
But some burdens couldn’t be unloaded. Helo liked to think it was because he wasn’t even sure it was a burden, just the nagging thought that he’d had a hand in Kara’s downfall. But it had been so long ago and… she’d asked. Zak had been in the ground only a handful of hours when Helo had found her sitting on the edge of her bed in her small single room on base, her hands placed just so on her kneecaps. Her uniform was pressed impeccably, more so than any he’d seen.
She was sober too, which - he hated to admit - was a surprise. He’d gone looking for her that day, not sure what he would say, but pretty sure that he was the only person left to say it. Her door was open just enough for him to see her foot, so he’d stepped in without knocking, hoping that he really had gauged their friendship well enough to take such a step.
“Kara…” He’d kept his distance at the funeral. Honestly, Zak’s father aside, most people had. Even now the chain of command on base was reeling from the rush of people that had requested emergency leave in the moments after Zak’s death. Kara had been out on a training mission and none of her superior officers had relished the thought of relating the news to her or his father.
“Shut the door,” her voice was clear and the tears that he knew she had cried were gone. He shut the door and stepped as far into the room as he dared.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly as she stood and began to unfasten the buttons on her jacket, “But you’re all I got. I figured… it doesn’t matter now. He didn’t come. You did, so you’re it.”
She dropped her jacket to the floor and continued steadily with the top catch on her pants.
Helo felt as if a massive weight had settled between his shoulder blades. They’d done this before, of course, but not since Zak. However, he understood her need and sensed something near relief in the calm that settled on her. Whoever else she’d been expecting hadn’t shown, and she seemed relived. In hindsight, Helo knew that if he’d been option B, neither Kara nor the other man would have survived this guilty little frak.
Hell, he still wasn’t sure he’d survived it.
But he’d done it. Done exactly as she asked and applied himself to easing the pain in her body, even if nothing could touch the pain in her heart. It had been long and needy. Nothing short of damning for both of them, but perhaps also a little redeeming. Proof, for Kara at least, that life went on. Helo was determined to remind her of that fact, because some part of him was terrified she’d take a bottle of whatever she could get her hands on and her sidearm and simply walk off base never to return.
Afterwards, he’d held her. Not that Kara was an easy woman to hold. Her skin flushed with raw heat and his hands slipped over the sweat beading across her shoulders as she shoved at his chest, trying to push him from the bed. Eventually, though, she stilled and he was left with nothing more to do than whisper in her ear. He can’t remember everything he’d said, half sure he ran out of words and started quoting geographical instrumentation calibration techniques. For the briefest second he considered asking her to marry him. They both had woken up to the fact that the person they wanted most was beyond them. They could make it work. The sex wouldn’t be a problem.
The sheets were sticking to them and Helo was wishing he’d bothered to take off his left sock when he finally formed the words in his head. “We’ll just get married and be done with the whole frakking thing, okay?”
But he never got the chance. Two loud thuds sounded at the door as someone knocked.
That was the first time he’d met Lee Adama, not that Lee would ever know it. “Kara,” Lee had called through the door, “Kara it’s… me.”
Even through the door and the sudden realization that Kara was actually awake and clinging to him, Helo could hear the pain in that voice.
It was the voice of a man who’d lost someone. A man who mourned. But more than that, it was a voice that belied disgust. Lee Adama had come calling on his dead brother’s girl scant hours after the funeral and he hated himself for it.
Though, with Kara’s teeth having left neat marks over his left nipple, Karl wasn’t throwing stones.
So this was her option B. Kara never had done things the easy way. “Kara… I…” Lee couldn’t bring himself to finish what he was saying.
Helo looked down at the woman at his side, “I could… get out. Hide or something, if you want.”
She bit so hard at her bottom lip to hold back her cry that blood almost instantly stained her teeth pink. She managed to shake her head just once as she crawled across his chest, reaching for his arms to wrap them around her body. He held her as she started to shake, clean sweat breaking through the fine film that had settled on her skin after their first time that afternoon. He wasn’t sure what started it, either she shook and he held tighter, or he held tighter and she shook. But before long, he was holding her so tight she could barely breathe and he was unwilling to.
Lee knocked again, called her name softly once more and finally gave up.
But that had been so long ago. As Helo strode through the corridors of Galactica, asked by Sam to seek her out in the wake of his monumental frak up, Helo had to admit to himself that, for that afternoon, he had always felt guilty.
Not about the sex, though. She’d needed that. To Kara, that had been nothing more than a really sincere hug.
What Helo did feel guilty about, the bone-deep, gut-burning type of guilt, was that he hadn’t forced Kara from her bed that day. Hadn’t forced her to face up to Lee when she should have.
Even after all the time that had passed and all that had happened, he could never shake the feeling that there had been a moment that afternoon when Lee and Kara could have gotten it right and he’d watched them let it slide.
He shook the thoughts from his head; he had bigger things to see to. Right now, Kara was somewhere onboard reeling from the rejection of yet another man. Gods, Helo thought, it was a mean kick of fate that the most outwardly tough and capable person that he knew was so susceptible to hits from the people around her. Even Kara herself knew this - that was why so few people were allowed to stand by her side.
Helo sped up, he needed to find her. He found that he’d turned onto the walk leading past the holding cells. How often had he come this way when Sharon was being held? Kara wouldn’t be here, but it was a less crowded route to the senior officers’ quarters. He stopped and half turned. Was that a gunshot he’d heard? He didn’t have time to seek out answers, though, because Kara flew blindly from the direction of the holding cells. That was how he caught her - intercepting her all-out sprint by letting his body absorb the shock of her own. Gods, Kara was solid. She cried out once as he clamped his arms around her. “Frak off!” she choked and he knew that he was on dangerous ground.
Not that it mattered, he’d been here before. No doubt would be again. It was a key feature of the Kara Thrace experience. She smacked into his shoulder and he staggered back. Gods knew that Kara’s aim and skill only improved with anxiety. The more pissed and lost she was, the more likely people were to get hurt. He didn’t have time to recover as she aimed a knee at his stomach and came perilously close to being a few inches shy of her mark. He deflected the blow by cupping one hand over his groin and reaching out with the other to grab the narrow front of her outer tank. He yanked Kara forward, bringing her off balance enough to swing one arm about her waist and haul her along as he started in the direction of the brig.
He shouldered his way into the brig, dragging Kara by his hip, keeping her low and off balance so that she couldn’t pull herself together enough to strike back. He was going to throw her in a cell if he could. At least until she’d simmered down. If he had to, he’d lay down a charge for hitting a superior officer.
However, what he found as he entered the brig was enough to make him wish he’d never even bothered. It wasn’t the residual shock that smacked him in the face. Not even the smell of a messy death. It was the sound. The desperate word - name - called over and over again until Lee’s voice broke. Whatever had happened, Kara had seen it and now, Lee knew that she’d seen and was calling after her, again and again.
He wasn’t a man on edge. He’d thrown himself over that edge a while ago. Three marines tried to hold him back. Even Tigh had packed in at Lee’s side to rip the handgun from his grasp.
Helo had always had hope for the future, always believed that tomorrow was a distinct possibility, but what he saw made him reassess some long held beliefs. The Fleet’s bravest and mightiest. The strongest and most fortified. The two people he’d always figured ran on the drive to survive at any cost… and what?
What were they now? Broken. Frakked up. The officer in him knew that there was a great need to keep this under wraps. No one needed to see the pilots that they looked up to brought down so low. Lee’s cries grew louder and Kara started to find her feet, she was pulling from his grip and Helo wondered if maybe it wasn’t just a good idea to let her go. If he could hardly bear to see what was happening, he had to wonder how hard it would be for Kara.
Surely Lee hadn’t… but there was a body on the ground and Lee was the only person he could see that had drawn his sidearm. What the frak had the Cylon done to provoke him?
“Kara!” Lee was struggling against the men restraining him to look at her through the glass and wire across the viewing panel, he could see her now, Helo clutching her to his body. “I never… I wanted to make it right.” He was losing steam, defeat creeping into his voice, “You weren’t meant to see.” His final, pathetic defense.
The fight left them both at the same time. Lee slumped into the arms of the marines, letting them lead him across the room to the blood splattered bed. At Helo’s side, Kara’s body fell limp and he was forced to take her weight more fully, bringing her up in front, widening his gait in case she lost consciousness altogether and he needed to carry her. His eyes fell to Lee, who sat on the edge of the bed, dropping his head to his hands in shock.
For the first time, Helo noticed the Admiral’s presence in the room. He stepped into Helo’s line of vision, effectively blocking Kara from seeing Lee. He glanced back once at his son, then down at Kara. For the briefest moment Helo felt something that he never thought he would feel for the Admiral - pity.
The older man spoke firmly and quietly, “Helo, you need to take Starbuck away, now.”
Helo nodded, but frowned, where could he take her? There was always his own quarters and if it came down to it, that’s exactly where he would take her. But as it stood, Sharon and Hera were already asleep for the night and…
“Lee’s quarters. Take her there. It’s not ideal but,” the Admiral glanced back at his son, “I imagine they might be vacant for a while.”
*****
She ached and throbbed. Her chest rattled with grief and somewhere low in her belly, the void she’d been staving off since her last run in with Lee finally won out. Helo had left her alone in Lee’s bed and suddenly she was longing for the vile sheets of a nameless marine. Anything had to be better than the bed Lee had shared with his wife. The wife who’d left him. She remembered that… Racetrack had said as much. Gods, she didn’t even have a single neuron left to spare for that. She rolled on to her side and pulled Lee’s pillow into her face, marveling at her own masochistic streak. Even now, she couldn’t resolve to hate him all out. Not when she could barely focus on anything other than figuring out whether or not she wanted to consume whatever was left of him clinging to his sheets or throwing the bedclothes to the floor before trashing every single frakking possession he had. Not with her boot-clad feet marking his sheets as she tried to regulate her breathing. Not with her mind folding in on itself, ready to crumble under the force of too many contradictions. He’d killed for her. He didn’t want her. He’d called to her. He’d walked from her.
Who the frak did she think she was to be even remotely disturbed that Lee had killed Leoben? But she was more than disturbed. She was frakking destroyed. Out of her mind and unable to string anything more than a few thoughts together.
He’d killed.
For her.
Not for her, for her suffering.
He knew?
Kacey. He’d seen her with Kacey and, Gods, now he knew that she’d played family with frakking toasters and bought into the cozy psychosis that New Caprica had supplied in spades. Humiliation and frustration licked at her spine.
What right did he have to treat her like… a thing and then kill for what she’d been through?
No right, her mind confirmed. No right. She pushed up onto her elbows and peered around his room. A handful of rations were left in a messy stack on his desk, paperwork vied for space with endless rotation write ups. Frak, Lee had let so much go. She shifted to the edge of the bed, kicking the sheets away before dropping her feet to the ground.
Numbness had set in and Kara was beyond her own pain. She had to do something. She had to actively erase the man from her mind. This was the final block of proof that she needed. They were going to kill each other. Or get each other killed. Look how far they’d already pushed one another.
She stumbled forward, reaching out to push a few rations away from Lee’s phone, grabbing one just before it slipped from the table. Gods, how long had it been since she’d last eaten? She unwrapped one unappetizing chunk and picked up the handset, sinking her teeth into the algae as she listened to the few beeps that connected her to the CIC.
“CIC.” Just her frakking luck that Dee had the comm.
“I want the Admiral.”
She could hear as Dee fumbled with her headset, “Starbuck? You’ll have to wait.”
Kara felt her bile rise, after all this… after all she’d let slide - because, she had to face it, she owed Dee something - Dee was still trying to stonewall her, “You have two options, Dualla. You get the Admiral on the line now, or I come up there myself. I’ve had a bad day, Petty Officer, you do not want to see me right now.”
Dee didn’t reply, instead the line grew quiet and then stuttered as the call was transferred.
“Adama,” the Admiral sounded tired.
“Sir, its Starbuck here.”
“Kara?” The concern was there immediately, “Is everything-”
“I was… Is Lee capable of fulfilling his duties as CAG?”
She could hear him exhale across the line, “He has thirty days in the brig. It couldn’t be avoided, Kara. Too many people caught wind of it. He had to be held accountable. I had to hold him accountable.”
Kara nodded and then realized he couldn’t see her. “You didn’t want to?”
“Put my son in the brig for acting according to his conscience? I always put a lot of stock in gut feeling, Kara, you know that. I’m punishing Lee for acting according to conscience.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. And it wasn’t his gut he was following.” It was his heart, hung the silent addition.
In the background Kara could hear someone vying for the Admiral’s attention, “I’m sorry, Kara, was there something you needed? You can keep Lee’s quarters for as long as you want, he… wants you there.”
Kara had to resist the urge to bolt from the room, “CAG. You need a CAG and… I want to know if I’m expected to step up. It should fall to me.”
“Yes, it should. But are you up to it?”
“I don’t know, Sir, but it’s probably past time we found out. After all, you said it yourself. I’m a warrior for the Gods now; this has to be a cakewalk, right?”
She wasn’t sure how, but she could feel him smile through the line.
*****
Lee shifted on the bed and felt closer to Kara than ever. Funny, he always felt close to her in hack. Caught up in the consequences of his own actions with his brain hissing stupid, stupid, stupid, he felt a little more in tune with how she lived her life. Dyeing the Rear Admiral’s dog blue? Should be fun. Naked run through the mess hall… during a Colonial function? Ought to earn some cred.
Hitting a superior officer? No problem. Flying into a certain death? Easy.
Gods what he wouldn’t give to crack her head open and just pick through the mess in there. But, he supposed, frakking up in a style that would make her proud helped him to unravel a little of her mystery.
It was a small mercy for Lee that he’d landed one of the old cells, not the newer, fish tank, Cylon-safe models. Not that it made any real difference, he was locked up and it was driving him insane. He needed to get to Kara. Needed to explain. He’d heard her cry when he’d finished the Leoben and he knew that she wouldn’t see it the way he did. When had they ever seen the important things the same way?
She ran and he wanted nothing more than to run after her. But why?
He’d said she didn’t need saving, but the Leoben model had been too close to right. If Kara honestly didn’t need saving, then Lee was frakked because what else did he have to offer her?
Did he know what he was doing? Was he even doing it right? He was skirting. Trying to fix Kara's past. Playing with her vapor trails as if it would correct what had passed.
He had to believe it mattered to her. That she’d see it for what it was. A start. But they’d fought for so long; misstep matching misstep and Lee had to wonder if she’d even know an attempt at peace when she saw it.
Kara’s instinct was to fight. In a time of war Lee could hardly find fault there. But where Kara was concerned, he was learning that his first impulses were decidedly different to hers.
He wanted to love her until he couldn’t. And that was a scary thing. Because love fell from Kara like water beading on glass. How much could he give her before he had nothing left to give? How long would it take to wear her down and make her recognize love?
His love. Love that had always been there but never quite acknowledged. Frak, he’d screamed it and it still hadn’t been enough for her. He lay back on his bunk and rested one hand on his stomach.
He’d frakked up. In the Ready Room and now. He’d let too much slip-asked for too much faith. How could he expect her to believe she’d moved him to extremes when he hadn’t even had faith enough in her to believe that she was human?
He needed to take it slow. Give her only what she could handle and take nothing that she wouldn’t give. He’d been wrong and now he needed to redeem himself.
He drummed his fingers against his hip. It was a numbers game now. Time and effort. Attrition. He’d give and she’d take. It was really just a question of who gave in first and who was left standing.
Lee was losing time in hack and that wasn’t something he’d anticipated. He needed to get to her, or get her to come to him. Time was too precious to lose,especially with the wheels of Kara’s fate driving them all headfirst into the great unknown.
Kara could be a stubborn bitch, Lee knew that well. This was going to be hard work and pain. He supposed he’d earned nothing less.
But if it came down to strength. Lee’s love versus the fight in Kara?
Well, Lee had to console himself; whatever Kara threw at him didn’t and couldn’t matter.
He had far too much to lose.
*****
Kara looked down at the flight manual. It was her job to make sure her nuggets knew it well. But after too many years of running it front to back, she could barely muster any joy in relating to the group and tended to condense the things they’d already covered a few dozen times.
“Section twenty three. Ejections. Avoid them.” She flipped a page and sighed, “Twenty three point one, emergency transponders. Are good. Section-”
Someone cleared their throat. Loudly. Sam. Frak it. She was dying for a reason to bounce him, but he was combat ready and very aware that Kara was looking for any excuse to wash him out and neatly deal with the emotional minefield that his presence presented.
“Something wrong?” she asked without looking up from her hand-annotated manual.
“Have you ever been ejected?” Sam asked and Kara looked up, he was sprawled lazily in his chair. Funny (or tragic, depending on your spin) that he’d chosen the very chair Lee had bent her over and…
“Yes. Both in combat and training. You’ll all get to experience it in the upcoming weeks. You will be suited up, taken out in a Raptor and vented out into space. That’s the highlight of my job actually. Throwing you all out of a Raptor. Fleet requires that each pilot be able to withstand fifteen minutes exposure. That is the bare minimum. If you can’t keep it together until that time is up, you flunk.” She turned back to her manual, “Now in section twenty eight we deal with-”
Sam cleared his throat again and this time when she looked up, pinned him with hard eyes. She didn’t want to look at him. Because so far she’d so easily avoided any sort of confrontation, she hadn’t had to so much as look him in the eyes. But there and then he looked at her with eyes that managed to be both pleading and accusing. “What’s it like? Out there. Alone,” he asked and Kara considered throwing him out for merely riding her case. But a few people sat up, nodding, they wanted her to answer.
“Lonely. Terrifying, and maybe just a little beautiful. You’ll feel small and crushed and hopeless.”
“And when someone finally comes to pick you up?” Sam asked.
“It’s… like coming up for air. Its home. It’s your lifeline.”
“And when you’re out alone,” Sam ventured, catching Kara’s eyes with his own and conveying a world of meaning, “Any lifeline will do, won’t it Kara?”
And there is was. She had turned down his every request to talk, so he’d taken it upon himself to explain his actions with Seelix in a very public manner. “Sir,” she snapped, “You call me “Sir.”
“Yes Sir,” he said with a sneer as he slumped back into his seat and Kara was ready to throw him into the brig on the basis of his tone alone. Either that or finally get around to tearing off his face.
“Anders, you stay. Everyone else, dismissed.”
The class stood and signaled their obeisance. Sam remained slumped in his seat and Kara started to wonder if she hadn’t been a bad influence on him.
Kara waited until everybody filed out, her eyes dropping, then quickly averting from the small pigeon hole in the lectern. Well, frak. That one had bitten her in the ass.
The last nugget slipped from the room, damn near tripping in her haste to get out. She turned back and assessed Sam and Kara before tugging the hatch shut. Kara braced her hands against the edges of the lectern, as she had so often done and peered down at her husband. Maybe her husband? She had no idea.
“Where do we stand legally, Sam?”
He blinked twice and straightened. Of course, Kara thought, he’d probably gone seeking for the answer to that one the moment word of her survival had cropped up. “You didn’t die, Kara. So we’re still married by Colonial law.”
“And if I’m a Cylon?” She wasn’t sure why she asked it. It seemed almost like she was bent on antagonizing him. “I mean, you can’t legally bind yourself to a machine, can you? I read it once in Tauron Daily, some woman tried to marry her cow. Can’t do that, I’m damn sure you can’t marry a toaster.”
For some reason, her comments made Sam extremely uneasy. He shifted in his seat, gripping at the armrests, avoiding Kara’s gaze, “It worked for the Agathons.”
“No one’s contesting their marriage.”
“You want to contest ours, Kara?”
“I’m not that stupid, Sam. If I wanted to leave you legally I’d do it on grounds of adultery.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Take your pick.”
“Would that square you with the Gods, Kara?” He was hitting her where he knew she was the most sensitive, “I was unfaithful, so you can leave? You want to argue faith here Kara, please do. Because faith is something I never lacked. I was always what you wanted me to be. You’d frak around with Lee, you’d shut me out… and I still believed you when you said you’re human.”
Kara picked the lie for what it was. Sam was a terrible liar. So what did that mean? He thought she was a Cylon? He truly believed she was? Then why had he wanted so badly to put their marriage right? If he thought she was a Cylon why in all the worlds did he still want her?
Kara’s body damn near buckled under the force of a painful salvo of revelations. She clutched at the lectern as a moment of light and fire and searing clarity came back to her. Faces. Four… no, five. But the fifth… she couldn’t quite… it still eluded her. After a few moments, she regained control of her mind and stood at her full height. Sam had come to his feet, concern etched across his face as he looked up at her.
She felt a strange calm and clarity of purpose that was both unnerving and empowering. “Samuel T. Anders,” she said with an amused grin as she propped one elbow against the surface in front of her and leered down at him, “You are a Cylon.”
Author: becisvolatile
Part: 8/?
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Lee/Kara, Bill, Roslin, Helo, Sharon, Cottle, Anders, Dee, Leoben, Racetrack, Seelix.
Word Count: 4700+
Category: Novella
Genre: Romance, Angst, Action with Romance, PWP, Drama
Archiving: The Fallout Shelter, Apollo/Starbuck Fan Fic, Beyond Insane all others please ask
Warnings: Language, violence, sexual content, gratuitous sex.
Spoilers: Up to and including S3
Summary: Who the frak did she think she was to be even remotely disturbed that Lee had killed Leoben? But she was more than disturbed. She was frakking destroyed.
Authors Note: Snugs to Angylinni for the beta.
Previous Chapters:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Karl Agathon didn’t put much stock in guilt. For his purposes, it was useless - he’d rather fix things as soon as he broke them. It made his future less complicated and in a world where the future wasn’t a given, he almost seemed like a dying breed.
But some burdens couldn’t be unloaded. Helo liked to think it was because he wasn’t even sure it was a burden, just the nagging thought that he’d had a hand in Kara’s downfall. But it had been so long ago and… she’d asked. Zak had been in the ground only a handful of hours when Helo had found her sitting on the edge of her bed in her small single room on base, her hands placed just so on her kneecaps. Her uniform was pressed impeccably, more so than any he’d seen.
She was sober too, which - he hated to admit - was a surprise. He’d gone looking for her that day, not sure what he would say, but pretty sure that he was the only person left to say it. Her door was open just enough for him to see her foot, so he’d stepped in without knocking, hoping that he really had gauged their friendship well enough to take such a step.
“Kara…” He’d kept his distance at the funeral. Honestly, Zak’s father aside, most people had. Even now the chain of command on base was reeling from the rush of people that had requested emergency leave in the moments after Zak’s death. Kara had been out on a training mission and none of her superior officers had relished the thought of relating the news to her or his father.
“Shut the door,” her voice was clear and the tears that he knew she had cried were gone. He shut the door and stepped as far into the room as he dared.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly as she stood and began to unfasten the buttons on her jacket, “But you’re all I got. I figured… it doesn’t matter now. He didn’t come. You did, so you’re it.”
She dropped her jacket to the floor and continued steadily with the top catch on her pants.
Helo felt as if a massive weight had settled between his shoulder blades. They’d done this before, of course, but not since Zak. However, he understood her need and sensed something near relief in the calm that settled on her. Whoever else she’d been expecting hadn’t shown, and she seemed relived. In hindsight, Helo knew that if he’d been option B, neither Kara nor the other man would have survived this guilty little frak.
Hell, he still wasn’t sure he’d survived it.
But he’d done it. Done exactly as she asked and applied himself to easing the pain in her body, even if nothing could touch the pain in her heart. It had been long and needy. Nothing short of damning for both of them, but perhaps also a little redeeming. Proof, for Kara at least, that life went on. Helo was determined to remind her of that fact, because some part of him was terrified she’d take a bottle of whatever she could get her hands on and her sidearm and simply walk off base never to return.
Afterwards, he’d held her. Not that Kara was an easy woman to hold. Her skin flushed with raw heat and his hands slipped over the sweat beading across her shoulders as she shoved at his chest, trying to push him from the bed. Eventually, though, she stilled and he was left with nothing more to do than whisper in her ear. He can’t remember everything he’d said, half sure he ran out of words and started quoting geographical instrumentation calibration techniques. For the briefest second he considered asking her to marry him. They both had woken up to the fact that the person they wanted most was beyond them. They could make it work. The sex wouldn’t be a problem.
The sheets were sticking to them and Helo was wishing he’d bothered to take off his left sock when he finally formed the words in his head. “We’ll just get married and be done with the whole frakking thing, okay?”
But he never got the chance. Two loud thuds sounded at the door as someone knocked.
That was the first time he’d met Lee Adama, not that Lee would ever know it. “Kara,” Lee had called through the door, “Kara it’s… me.”
Even through the door and the sudden realization that Kara was actually awake and clinging to him, Helo could hear the pain in that voice.
It was the voice of a man who’d lost someone. A man who mourned. But more than that, it was a voice that belied disgust. Lee Adama had come calling on his dead brother’s girl scant hours after the funeral and he hated himself for it.
Though, with Kara’s teeth having left neat marks over his left nipple, Karl wasn’t throwing stones.
So this was her option B. Kara never had done things the easy way. “Kara… I…” Lee couldn’t bring himself to finish what he was saying.
Helo looked down at the woman at his side, “I could… get out. Hide or something, if you want.”
She bit so hard at her bottom lip to hold back her cry that blood almost instantly stained her teeth pink. She managed to shake her head just once as she crawled across his chest, reaching for his arms to wrap them around her body. He held her as she started to shake, clean sweat breaking through the fine film that had settled on her skin after their first time that afternoon. He wasn’t sure what started it, either she shook and he held tighter, or he held tighter and she shook. But before long, he was holding her so tight she could barely breathe and he was unwilling to.
Lee knocked again, called her name softly once more and finally gave up.
But that had been so long ago. As Helo strode through the corridors of Galactica, asked by Sam to seek her out in the wake of his monumental frak up, Helo had to admit to himself that, for that afternoon, he had always felt guilty.
Not about the sex, though. She’d needed that. To Kara, that had been nothing more than a really sincere hug.
What Helo did feel guilty about, the bone-deep, gut-burning type of guilt, was that he hadn’t forced Kara from her bed that day. Hadn’t forced her to face up to Lee when she should have.
Even after all the time that had passed and all that had happened, he could never shake the feeling that there had been a moment that afternoon when Lee and Kara could have gotten it right and he’d watched them let it slide.
He shook the thoughts from his head; he had bigger things to see to. Right now, Kara was somewhere onboard reeling from the rejection of yet another man. Gods, Helo thought, it was a mean kick of fate that the most outwardly tough and capable person that he knew was so susceptible to hits from the people around her. Even Kara herself knew this - that was why so few people were allowed to stand by her side.
Helo sped up, he needed to find her. He found that he’d turned onto the walk leading past the holding cells. How often had he come this way when Sharon was being held? Kara wouldn’t be here, but it was a less crowded route to the senior officers’ quarters. He stopped and half turned. Was that a gunshot he’d heard? He didn’t have time to seek out answers, though, because Kara flew blindly from the direction of the holding cells. That was how he caught her - intercepting her all-out sprint by letting his body absorb the shock of her own. Gods, Kara was solid. She cried out once as he clamped his arms around her. “Frak off!” she choked and he knew that he was on dangerous ground.
Not that it mattered, he’d been here before. No doubt would be again. It was a key feature of the Kara Thrace experience. She smacked into his shoulder and he staggered back. Gods knew that Kara’s aim and skill only improved with anxiety. The more pissed and lost she was, the more likely people were to get hurt. He didn’t have time to recover as she aimed a knee at his stomach and came perilously close to being a few inches shy of her mark. He deflected the blow by cupping one hand over his groin and reaching out with the other to grab the narrow front of her outer tank. He yanked Kara forward, bringing her off balance enough to swing one arm about her waist and haul her along as he started in the direction of the brig.
He shouldered his way into the brig, dragging Kara by his hip, keeping her low and off balance so that she couldn’t pull herself together enough to strike back. He was going to throw her in a cell if he could. At least until she’d simmered down. If he had to, he’d lay down a charge for hitting a superior officer.
However, what he found as he entered the brig was enough to make him wish he’d never even bothered. It wasn’t the residual shock that smacked him in the face. Not even the smell of a messy death. It was the sound. The desperate word - name - called over and over again until Lee’s voice broke. Whatever had happened, Kara had seen it and now, Lee knew that she’d seen and was calling after her, again and again.
He wasn’t a man on edge. He’d thrown himself over that edge a while ago. Three marines tried to hold him back. Even Tigh had packed in at Lee’s side to rip the handgun from his grasp.
Helo had always had hope for the future, always believed that tomorrow was a distinct possibility, but what he saw made him reassess some long held beliefs. The Fleet’s bravest and mightiest. The strongest and most fortified. The two people he’d always figured ran on the drive to survive at any cost… and what?
What were they now? Broken. Frakked up. The officer in him knew that there was a great need to keep this under wraps. No one needed to see the pilots that they looked up to brought down so low. Lee’s cries grew louder and Kara started to find her feet, she was pulling from his grip and Helo wondered if maybe it wasn’t just a good idea to let her go. If he could hardly bear to see what was happening, he had to wonder how hard it would be for Kara.
Surely Lee hadn’t… but there was a body on the ground and Lee was the only person he could see that had drawn his sidearm. What the frak had the Cylon done to provoke him?
“Kara!” Lee was struggling against the men restraining him to look at her through the glass and wire across the viewing panel, he could see her now, Helo clutching her to his body. “I never… I wanted to make it right.” He was losing steam, defeat creeping into his voice, “You weren’t meant to see.” His final, pathetic defense.
The fight left them both at the same time. Lee slumped into the arms of the marines, letting them lead him across the room to the blood splattered bed. At Helo’s side, Kara’s body fell limp and he was forced to take her weight more fully, bringing her up in front, widening his gait in case she lost consciousness altogether and he needed to carry her. His eyes fell to Lee, who sat on the edge of the bed, dropping his head to his hands in shock.
For the first time, Helo noticed the Admiral’s presence in the room. He stepped into Helo’s line of vision, effectively blocking Kara from seeing Lee. He glanced back once at his son, then down at Kara. For the briefest moment Helo felt something that he never thought he would feel for the Admiral - pity.
The older man spoke firmly and quietly, “Helo, you need to take Starbuck away, now.”
Helo nodded, but frowned, where could he take her? There was always his own quarters and if it came down to it, that’s exactly where he would take her. But as it stood, Sharon and Hera were already asleep for the night and…
“Lee’s quarters. Take her there. It’s not ideal but,” the Admiral glanced back at his son, “I imagine they might be vacant for a while.”
*****
She ached and throbbed. Her chest rattled with grief and somewhere low in her belly, the void she’d been staving off since her last run in with Lee finally won out. Helo had left her alone in Lee’s bed and suddenly she was longing for the vile sheets of a nameless marine. Anything had to be better than the bed Lee had shared with his wife. The wife who’d left him. She remembered that… Racetrack had said as much. Gods, she didn’t even have a single neuron left to spare for that. She rolled on to her side and pulled Lee’s pillow into her face, marveling at her own masochistic streak. Even now, she couldn’t resolve to hate him all out. Not when she could barely focus on anything other than figuring out whether or not she wanted to consume whatever was left of him clinging to his sheets or throwing the bedclothes to the floor before trashing every single frakking possession he had. Not with her boot-clad feet marking his sheets as she tried to regulate her breathing. Not with her mind folding in on itself, ready to crumble under the force of too many contradictions. He’d killed for her. He didn’t want her. He’d called to her. He’d walked from her.
Who the frak did she think she was to be even remotely disturbed that Lee had killed Leoben? But she was more than disturbed. She was frakking destroyed. Out of her mind and unable to string anything more than a few thoughts together.
He’d killed.
For her.
Not for her, for her suffering.
He knew?
Kacey. He’d seen her with Kacey and, Gods, now he knew that she’d played family with frakking toasters and bought into the cozy psychosis that New Caprica had supplied in spades. Humiliation and frustration licked at her spine.
What right did he have to treat her like… a thing and then kill for what she’d been through?
No right, her mind confirmed. No right. She pushed up onto her elbows and peered around his room. A handful of rations were left in a messy stack on his desk, paperwork vied for space with endless rotation write ups. Frak, Lee had let so much go. She shifted to the edge of the bed, kicking the sheets away before dropping her feet to the ground.
Numbness had set in and Kara was beyond her own pain. She had to do something. She had to actively erase the man from her mind. This was the final block of proof that she needed. They were going to kill each other. Or get each other killed. Look how far they’d already pushed one another.
She stumbled forward, reaching out to push a few rations away from Lee’s phone, grabbing one just before it slipped from the table. Gods, how long had it been since she’d last eaten? She unwrapped one unappetizing chunk and picked up the handset, sinking her teeth into the algae as she listened to the few beeps that connected her to the CIC.
“CIC.” Just her frakking luck that Dee had the comm.
“I want the Admiral.”
She could hear as Dee fumbled with her headset, “Starbuck? You’ll have to wait.”
Kara felt her bile rise, after all this… after all she’d let slide - because, she had to face it, she owed Dee something - Dee was still trying to stonewall her, “You have two options, Dualla. You get the Admiral on the line now, or I come up there myself. I’ve had a bad day, Petty Officer, you do not want to see me right now.”
Dee didn’t reply, instead the line grew quiet and then stuttered as the call was transferred.
“Adama,” the Admiral sounded tired.
“Sir, its Starbuck here.”
“Kara?” The concern was there immediately, “Is everything-”
“I was… Is Lee capable of fulfilling his duties as CAG?”
She could hear him exhale across the line, “He has thirty days in the brig. It couldn’t be avoided, Kara. Too many people caught wind of it. He had to be held accountable. I had to hold him accountable.”
Kara nodded and then realized he couldn’t see her. “You didn’t want to?”
“Put my son in the brig for acting according to his conscience? I always put a lot of stock in gut feeling, Kara, you know that. I’m punishing Lee for acting according to conscience.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. And it wasn’t his gut he was following.” It was his heart, hung the silent addition.
In the background Kara could hear someone vying for the Admiral’s attention, “I’m sorry, Kara, was there something you needed? You can keep Lee’s quarters for as long as you want, he… wants you there.”
Kara had to resist the urge to bolt from the room, “CAG. You need a CAG and… I want to know if I’m expected to step up. It should fall to me.”
“Yes, it should. But are you up to it?”
“I don’t know, Sir, but it’s probably past time we found out. After all, you said it yourself. I’m a warrior for the Gods now; this has to be a cakewalk, right?”
She wasn’t sure how, but she could feel him smile through the line.
*****
Lee shifted on the bed and felt closer to Kara than ever. Funny, he always felt close to her in hack. Caught up in the consequences of his own actions with his brain hissing stupid, stupid, stupid, he felt a little more in tune with how she lived her life. Dyeing the Rear Admiral’s dog blue? Should be fun. Naked run through the mess hall… during a Colonial function? Ought to earn some cred.
Hitting a superior officer? No problem. Flying into a certain death? Easy.
Gods what he wouldn’t give to crack her head open and just pick through the mess in there. But, he supposed, frakking up in a style that would make her proud helped him to unravel a little of her mystery.
It was a small mercy for Lee that he’d landed one of the old cells, not the newer, fish tank, Cylon-safe models. Not that it made any real difference, he was locked up and it was driving him insane. He needed to get to Kara. Needed to explain. He’d heard her cry when he’d finished the Leoben and he knew that she wouldn’t see it the way he did. When had they ever seen the important things the same way?
She ran and he wanted nothing more than to run after her. But why?
He’d said she didn’t need saving, but the Leoben model had been too close to right. If Kara honestly didn’t need saving, then Lee was frakked because what else did he have to offer her?
Did he know what he was doing? Was he even doing it right? He was skirting. Trying to fix Kara's past. Playing with her vapor trails as if it would correct what had passed.
He had to believe it mattered to her. That she’d see it for what it was. A start. But they’d fought for so long; misstep matching misstep and Lee had to wonder if she’d even know an attempt at peace when she saw it.
Kara’s instinct was to fight. In a time of war Lee could hardly find fault there. But where Kara was concerned, he was learning that his first impulses were decidedly different to hers.
He wanted to love her until he couldn’t. And that was a scary thing. Because love fell from Kara like water beading on glass. How much could he give her before he had nothing left to give? How long would it take to wear her down and make her recognize love?
His love. Love that had always been there but never quite acknowledged. Frak, he’d screamed it and it still hadn’t been enough for her. He lay back on his bunk and rested one hand on his stomach.
He’d frakked up. In the Ready Room and now. He’d let too much slip-asked for too much faith. How could he expect her to believe she’d moved him to extremes when he hadn’t even had faith enough in her to believe that she was human?
He needed to take it slow. Give her only what she could handle and take nothing that she wouldn’t give. He’d been wrong and now he needed to redeem himself.
He drummed his fingers against his hip. It was a numbers game now. Time and effort. Attrition. He’d give and she’d take. It was really just a question of who gave in first and who was left standing.
Lee was losing time in hack and that wasn’t something he’d anticipated. He needed to get to her, or get her to come to him. Time was too precious to lose,especially with the wheels of Kara’s fate driving them all headfirst into the great unknown.
Kara could be a stubborn bitch, Lee knew that well. This was going to be hard work and pain. He supposed he’d earned nothing less.
But if it came down to strength. Lee’s love versus the fight in Kara?
Well, Lee had to console himself; whatever Kara threw at him didn’t and couldn’t matter.
He had far too much to lose.
*****
Kara looked down at the flight manual. It was her job to make sure her nuggets knew it well. But after too many years of running it front to back, she could barely muster any joy in relating to the group and tended to condense the things they’d already covered a few dozen times.
“Section twenty three. Ejections. Avoid them.” She flipped a page and sighed, “Twenty three point one, emergency transponders. Are good. Section-”
Someone cleared their throat. Loudly. Sam. Frak it. She was dying for a reason to bounce him, but he was combat ready and very aware that Kara was looking for any excuse to wash him out and neatly deal with the emotional minefield that his presence presented.
“Something wrong?” she asked without looking up from her hand-annotated manual.
“Have you ever been ejected?” Sam asked and Kara looked up, he was sprawled lazily in his chair. Funny (or tragic, depending on your spin) that he’d chosen the very chair Lee had bent her over and…
“Yes. Both in combat and training. You’ll all get to experience it in the upcoming weeks. You will be suited up, taken out in a Raptor and vented out into space. That’s the highlight of my job actually. Throwing you all out of a Raptor. Fleet requires that each pilot be able to withstand fifteen minutes exposure. That is the bare minimum. If you can’t keep it together until that time is up, you flunk.” She turned back to her manual, “Now in section twenty eight we deal with-”
Sam cleared his throat again and this time when she looked up, pinned him with hard eyes. She didn’t want to look at him. Because so far she’d so easily avoided any sort of confrontation, she hadn’t had to so much as look him in the eyes. But there and then he looked at her with eyes that managed to be both pleading and accusing. “What’s it like? Out there. Alone,” he asked and Kara considered throwing him out for merely riding her case. But a few people sat up, nodding, they wanted her to answer.
“Lonely. Terrifying, and maybe just a little beautiful. You’ll feel small and crushed and hopeless.”
“And when someone finally comes to pick you up?” Sam asked.
“It’s… like coming up for air. Its home. It’s your lifeline.”
“And when you’re out alone,” Sam ventured, catching Kara’s eyes with his own and conveying a world of meaning, “Any lifeline will do, won’t it Kara?”
And there is was. She had turned down his every request to talk, so he’d taken it upon himself to explain his actions with Seelix in a very public manner. “Sir,” she snapped, “You call me “Sir.”
“Yes Sir,” he said with a sneer as he slumped back into his seat and Kara was ready to throw him into the brig on the basis of his tone alone. Either that or finally get around to tearing off his face.
“Anders, you stay. Everyone else, dismissed.”
The class stood and signaled their obeisance. Sam remained slumped in his seat and Kara started to wonder if she hadn’t been a bad influence on him.
Kara waited until everybody filed out, her eyes dropping, then quickly averting from the small pigeon hole in the lectern. Well, frak. That one had bitten her in the ass.
The last nugget slipped from the room, damn near tripping in her haste to get out. She turned back and assessed Sam and Kara before tugging the hatch shut. Kara braced her hands against the edges of the lectern, as she had so often done and peered down at her husband. Maybe her husband? She had no idea.
“Where do we stand legally, Sam?”
He blinked twice and straightened. Of course, Kara thought, he’d probably gone seeking for the answer to that one the moment word of her survival had cropped up. “You didn’t die, Kara. So we’re still married by Colonial law.”
“And if I’m a Cylon?” She wasn’t sure why she asked it. It seemed almost like she was bent on antagonizing him. “I mean, you can’t legally bind yourself to a machine, can you? I read it once in Tauron Daily, some woman tried to marry her cow. Can’t do that, I’m damn sure you can’t marry a toaster.”
For some reason, her comments made Sam extremely uneasy. He shifted in his seat, gripping at the armrests, avoiding Kara’s gaze, “It worked for the Agathons.”
“No one’s contesting their marriage.”
“You want to contest ours, Kara?”
“I’m not that stupid, Sam. If I wanted to leave you legally I’d do it on grounds of adultery.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Take your pick.”
“Would that square you with the Gods, Kara?” He was hitting her where he knew she was the most sensitive, “I was unfaithful, so you can leave? You want to argue faith here Kara, please do. Because faith is something I never lacked. I was always what you wanted me to be. You’d frak around with Lee, you’d shut me out… and I still believed you when you said you’re human.”
Kara picked the lie for what it was. Sam was a terrible liar. So what did that mean? He thought she was a Cylon? He truly believed she was? Then why had he wanted so badly to put their marriage right? If he thought she was a Cylon why in all the worlds did he still want her?
Kara’s body damn near buckled under the force of a painful salvo of revelations. She clutched at the lectern as a moment of light and fire and searing clarity came back to her. Faces. Four… no, five. But the fifth… she couldn’t quite… it still eluded her. After a few moments, she regained control of her mind and stood at her full height. Sam had come to his feet, concern etched across his face as he looked up at her.
She felt a strange calm and clarity of purpose that was both unnerving and empowering. “Samuel T. Anders,” she said with an amused grin as she propped one elbow against the surface in front of her and leered down at him, “You are a Cylon.”