BSG Fic - Reparation, 9/?
Title: Reparation
Author: becisvolatile
Part: 9/?
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Lee/Kara, Bill, Roslin, Helo, Sharon, Cottle, Anders, Dee, Leoben, Racetrack, Seelix.
Word Count: 5500+
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: Gods know, Kara, you’re still shattered and destroyed somewhere out in space waiting to reform and run back to Lee.
Authors Note: Special thanks to Angylinni for reminding me that compound sentences are not, in fact, the handiwork of Satan. Also thanks for your continued time and feedback, it means a lot that so many of you are keeping up with this fic!
Previous Chapters:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
“Wow,” Kara mused, drumming her fingertips against the lectern as she stared down at him. “All this time, I felt so guilty for frakking with you. I guess you were pretty frakked up from the start, though.”
“I never knew.”
“I’ll bet.” She shrugged as she dropped her hand to the handgun on her thigh.
Sam took a few steps closer to her, “You’re going to shoot me?”
“Not quite.” Kara withdrew the gun and handed it butt first down to the machine who had once claimed her as a wife. Sam took it with a frown, holding the weight uncertainly in his hands. It wasn’t because he wasn’t used to guns, he just didn’t know what she expected.
“If you’re a Cylon, Darling, this is the part where you blow my mother-frakking brains out.”
Sam’s face fell as he balanced the gun in the palm of his hand, “I thought… I thought this was it. I thought we were finally the same.”
Kara crossed her arms and leaned even more casually over the lectern. She had to force nonchalance because damned if her heart didn’t very nearly ache for the… whatever he was… standing in front of her. “Frak me, Sam. You really thought I was a Cylon?”
“Lee did.”
“Lee’s in hack for losing his godsdamned mind. He pulled a Cally on some Cylon ass.”
“You did it first, Kara, the whole ship knows that.”
Kara snorted, “I promise you that ‘Starbuck did it first’ is not the sort of defense you want in your corner. Do as I say, Sam, not as I do.”
She moved around the lectern and dropped down to the floor beside him, holding out her hand for her gun. Sam promptly returned it to her, letting his hand rest over hers just a little longer than necessary.
She moved to the front row of seats and sat down, resting her wrists on her knees and looked up at Sam. “If I asked you to come with me to the nearest airlock, would you? Or would I have to kick your ass all the way there?”
Sam almost smiled. “You know I always did things your way.”
“Including die?”
“You want me to die?”
She hesitated as she reached down and holstered her handgun, “In the last five minutes, I magically remembered that there are four Cylons on this ship ―all people of some consequence. I don’t know what I want. I just want it all to make sense. I mean… you? Frak me. That’s…”
“Massive,” Sam supplied as he limped to her side and dropped into the seat next to her.
She was quiet for as long as she could stand it. Sam seemed almost unwilling to talk. “I want to know what you’re thinking, Kara.”
“I’m thinking I should be mad. I should be… hurting something. I’m thinking I owe Helo an apology.”
“I don’t know what I am, Kara, but I know that I’m loyal. I swear it to you.”
Kara slid her eyes to him, “Caprica. New Caprica. All of it. None of it. It doesn’t mean anything now.”
“It means something to me. It means this is bigger than us. It means there’s a plan.”
“Yeah,” Kara cleared her throat, “But whose?”
San shrugged and they fell back into silence. A handful of minutes passed before Kara started chuckling softly.
“You’re laughing?”
She lifted a hand to wipe one tear from her eye, “Frakkin’ Tigh. Oh man, that is priceless. I mean… really.”
“What are you going to do?”
Kara stood and twisted to look back down at Sam, “I’ll vent you eventually, don’t doubt it.”
“Eventually?”
“You’re linked to finding Earth. It’s a bitch, but I think I’m going to need you.”
It was Sam’s turn to laugh, “That would be a first, Kara.”
*****
Four days into Lee’s sentence and the Admiral knew that he had to cave to his son’s persistent requests. He received constant reports, each more disheartening than the last.
Lee isn’t eating.
Lee isn’t moving.
Lee won’t stop doing push ups.
Lee has collapsed from exhaustion.
Lee won’t shut the frak up.
Lee and the Leoben are taunting each other from their respective cells.
Frak it. He’d gone down there to smack Lee’s head in. He wasn’t too old to be taken to task. Gods knew, maybe he should have done it years ago.
But as it turned out, Lee was all too happy to behave - on one condition. He wanted to see Kara. Regularly. Lee gave a feeble excuse about needing to brief her on stepping in as CAG, Bill saw it for what it was. His son wanted to see Kara and it was his job to decide which would be more detrimental - Lee being denied access to her, or Kara being forced to see Lee. Neither sounded like a good idea, but at least one of them held the ghost of the promise of a possible resolution.
“It’s important,” he explained to Kara, not looking up from his navigation charts.
She stood beside him in the CIC shaking her head, her voice flat and very clearly inviting no argument, “I’ve got a full schedule, Sir. Raptor test flights, then I’m on CAP tonight. It’s not possible.”
“You’ll make time, Starbuck. He was the acting CAG and you’ve been absent for a while. There are things he needs to tell you.”
“I’ve read his notes.”
Bill reached out and braced his hands against the center console. He was going to need to approach this from a new angle. “Captain Thrace,” he said simply, “Before your CAP tonight you will have logged one visit to Major Adama. This visit will be no shorter than fifteen minutes. You will then repeat this visit once every three days. And that,” he looked up at her with a level gaze, “is an order.”
Kara’s jaw clenched and Saul chortled, dark liquid sloshing from the mug in his hand as he smacked her on the shoulder, “You have your orders, Starbuck.”
She turned her eyes to him and gave him a small, stiff smile, “It’s been a long watch for you, Sir,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “You’ve been working so hard, you’re practically a machine.”
Saul dropped his mug altogether as Kara turned on her heel and stalked from the CIC.
*****
Lee woke to find Kara staring at him. She was straddling a chair a few feet from the bars of his cell, flicking her eyes to her watch. He sat up and reached for his tanks, but couldn’t bring himself to pull them on. Not if it meant losing sight of her for one second. He was so sure that if that happened, she’d be gone when he opened his eyes again.
“Kara, you came,” he said quietly. So many hours spent imagining what he’d say when she finally came to him and when it finally happened, all his words had flown out the airlock. He really just wanted to look at her. In the scheme of things, he’d only really accepted that she was back - was human - a handful of days before. Since that time, he’d spent only moments with her, all of them tense and violent.
Something eased in his chest to see her sitting there alive and still.
“It’s good to…” it sounded lame even to his own ears. Kara didn’t want to hear that it was good to see her. By the looks of her, she didn’t want to hear anything. “My father ordered you here, didn’t he?”
Kara focused more intently on her watch.
Lee sat up and stood, his bare feet hitting the cold floor. He’d been given a change of clothes and wore only a pair of low-slung track pants. Pride made him bristle at the fact that she couldn’t even bring herself to look at him in his relative state of undress. But then, she’d seen it all before hadn’t she?
Was probably seeing it even now. Sam was now under her command, right? Frak it, he’s promised himself he’d be patient and take his kicks. He wouldn’t stop at this. “You don’t want to talk to me Kara, that’s fine. Great even, because I need to say this.”
She didn’t budge.
“I love you.”
She flinched.
“I love you and I know what I did to you was inexcusable. But I swear to you, I will find a place to start. I will find a way to-”
Kara stood and pushed her chair aside. “Time is up, Lee. Thanks for the talk, but next time you open your mouth around me, it had better be to talk about our birds and pilots. Because this?” She quickly motioned between her chest and his. “I already covered this. I told you once that we’re done here.”
*****
Leoben Conoy stood at the glass of his cell, only just able to hear the exchange between the pilots. He frowned for a minute, too bad that she didn’t have to pass his cell to get to Adama’s.
“Well,” he eventually called, aware that Lee could just hear his voice, “That was heartening.”
He smiled as he leaned back against the glass and slid down the wall into a lazy crouch. In a cell not far from his he could hear the crash of the Major’s only chair being thrown against a wall.
*****
Seven days in the brig and she knew he’d be thankful. She tugged once at the sleeve of her jacket and stepped up to sign herself in for the visit.
The Marine at the small desk frowned down at his schedule, “You ain’t up for a visit, Ma’am.”
Dee rolled her eyes and threw down the pen, without bothering to sign in, “I don’t have to be. I’m Major Adama’s wife; I have every right to be here.” She continued past the Marine to Lee’s cell.
He was sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in a clean track suit with his feet planted firmly on the floor. His spine was stiff as his eyes snapped from the floor to her face. For the briefest second he looked like someone had told him his Viper had gone down in flames.
“Not pleased to see me?” she asked softly, casting her eyes to the floor in a measure designed to make him feel like an ass.
“Anastasia, no, I mean, of course. You know… any visitor is welcome.” He said the words, but that didn’t stop his eyes from flicking past her to the entrance of the brig.
“Some more than others?” she asked.
“Kara’s coming. Meant to be, actually. She was supposed to show up four hours ago. We have a standing… arrangement. She was meant to be here before dinner.”
Dee looked down at her watch and shrugged, “I wouldn’t count on it, she went out on CAP with Sam in a Raptor thirty minutes ago. I cleared them for launch before my shift finished. They’ve been out a couple times in the last two days.”
“He’s flying now?”
Dee shrugged, she wasn’t lying. Sam and Kara had been racking up some hours out in the Raptor. Rumor was that reconciliation was in the pipelines. “I guess Cottle cleared the leg. I heard Kara and your father; she was keen to get him out in a Raptor. I guess they’re trying to put their marriage back on track. He’s spending his nights with her, that’s the scuttlebutt anyway. Hot Dog said he was in there for two hours last night, which everyone knows is as close to a long term commitment those two have ever come.”
Lee stood and crossed the room. He seemed to be moving to a bottle of water, but Dee couldn’t shake the feeling that he just wanted to stop her from seeing his reaction. Something close to indigestion flared in her guts. “But you do have me tonight. I can keep you company.”
Lee turned and offered her a bracing smile, “Yeah, sure. Great.”
She smiled and searched for a chair. The Marine behind her shot her a bored look before she shifted one eyebrow in his direction, signaling to him that she wanted his chair. He begrudgingly pushed it in her direction and dropped himself back onto the edge of his desk.
“I uh… had a question,” Dee said as she dropped into the chair.
Lee opened the bottle of water and took a sip before saying, “Sure.”
“Our place. I… was wondering if you wanted me to drop in. Maybe bring you some things while you’re here.”
Lee stopped drinking almost immediately. He placed the cap back on the bottle and his face swam with something near concern. “Dee, actually, you can’t go to my quarters anymore. Kara is staying there. After everything… I figured it was the least I could do.”
“Everything?” Dee stuttered. Even after Kara had reconciled so quickly with her husband, Lee was still the first to her defense! “What? What has Kara Thrace been through that she didn’t have coming?”
“Careful Anastasia. Whatever I’ve done to you… however I failed you, Kara shouldn’t be a part of our history.”
“And yet she is, because she’s always been there.”
Lee picked up his bottle of water again and shrugged, his eyes never leaving her face, “You left me, so I guess Kara isn’t your concern anymore.”
Dee stood quickly. She didn’t need this crap. Lee wasn’t… there were other men. “She’ll eat you alive and spit you out. That’s all she ever does. You are nothing but a bad taste in her mouth.”
Lee shrugged yet again, “Maybe. Maybe I deserve it. But don’t dwell on it, Dualla. Because Kara’s been charitable of late, you might have noticed that.”
There was something in the way he regarded her that told Dee Lee knew something of her clash with Kara in the showers. She hurried to leave the brig, but wasn’t quick enough to miss the Marine’s comment to Lee.
“Captain Thrace is a frakking ball-breaking bitch, but I liked her more than that one.”
*****
Kara came to a halt outside of the brig, stopping to catch her breath. She knocked once and looked up as the Marine, Cutter - that was his name - looked from her to his watch.
“How am I doing for time?” she asked.
“Another twenty minutes and I was going to have to report it.”
She shrugged, “Time to spare then.”
He stepped back and let her in, “You want my chair, Sir?” he offered.
Kara shook her head, “Nah, been on my ass for the last three hours, you keep it.”
“The other one wanted my chair.”
“Other one?”
“Dualla.”
Well, what the frak had she expected? That it wouldn’t hurt so much to hear that he was seeing his wife again? A voice in her head asked easily.
She slowed as she approached Lee’s cell. This had gone so well last time.
Or not.
She was determined to do it right this time. No bloodshed. No slipping. She couldn’t afford it. What she was doing… what needed her attention now had nothing to do with Lee. No matter how much Lee had to do with her.
One look at his face told her that bloodshed was pretty much the only thing guaranteed by these compulsory meetings. She unzipped her flight suit and pushed it off her shoulders, rolling them once before dropping her hands to tie the loose sleeves around her waist.
What a frakking bust. The whole night was just a mess. What did she think she was doing? Plastering herself to Sam’s side, never leaving him to have a second’s peace. Not that he minded in the least. Hell, she’d been blocking out his soul-searching eyes all frakking day. But that wasn’t why she spent so much time with him. She wasn’t fully sure what her reasons were. Maybe she was guilty, terrified, he was running around Galactica squishing G4 against the bulkheads?
Maybe she was hoping he’d trigger another breakthrough? He’d been with her when she’d recalled the Cylons, so why not the way to earth? Or even what happened after her crash? Was it such a stretch to imagine he’d trigger more memories… visions?
She shook the thoughts from her head. Didn’t matter any more anyway, she had others to take out on test runs, Sam would have to wait for her downtime. And the CAG didn’t get any downtime. She moved closer to Lee’s cell and grabbed at the bars above her head as she rested her body weight against the cell and peered in at Lee with her head cocked to the side. Apparently, she wasn’t going to have to worry about not talking to him.
He didn’t seem to want to talk to her. Fine. She turned and let her back rest against the bars. Fifteen minutes of her own personal hell and then she had five uninterrupted hours of rack time. Of course she was lying to herself when she said “uninterrupted” because sleeping in the bed where Lee had again and again frakked Dualla was hardly peaceful. Apparently, fresh sheets didn’t erase ghosts and overactive imaginations. But it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go. She needed the attached office and she wasn’t going to give the Old Man any reason to think she couldn’t handle it.
Kara glanced down at her watch. Nine minutes.
“How’s Sam?” Lee spoke and Kara froze. Frak, he was standing right at the bars behind her back. It would take nothing for him to reach through and touch her. She couldn’t hack that. But then, she couldn’t stand to lose face by stepping away.
“I outlined our topics of conversation, Major. Sam isn’t one of them.”
“Unless I’m mistaken, he is. He’s a Raptor pilot these days, so I can ask how his training is doing.” Gods she could feel his breath rushing past her ear and she felt beyond vulnerable. She couldn’t help but conjure memories of the last time he’d been this close to her. Her stomach rolled and her pulse kicked up.
“He’s been out a few times now. Can’t catch a trap for shit. No head for finer ship-side maneuvers.”
“Takes a certain type of man to touch just right on the finer details of flying. You’ve got to feel your way. I guess Anders just doesn’t… feel his way like some of us can.”
Wow, Lee Adama, Boy Scout and master of the double entendre. That was new. Kara wasn’t sure, but she could have sworn Lee’s finger brushed over her bare arm where her bridal tattoo had once been.
She pushed away from the bars, “He manages. And he makes up for it in dedication. Power. Commitment. He has a skill for bold tactical moves and he has an uncanny ability to get his head around the scope of the playing field. A sixth sense, I guess. He knows how to back his fellow pilots up. Maybe he gets it from all the Pyramid games, who knows?”
Lee fell back from the bars and stared down at his bare feet. The tanks flung over his chair suggested he’d been fully dressed earlier that day, but had stripped down to nothing more than those godsdamned hanging-on-for-their-life track pants.
Three minutes. Gods, she watched as Lee turned away and paced to the far wall before turning back to her. This time it was his turn to lean casually against the cell as he gripped one bar above his head. He said nothing, but seemed to be content to just watch the post-flight sweat drying on her skin.
Kara suddenly wanted to pull her flight suit back up. “Is there a point to these meetings, Lee? Because so far you’ve said nothing useful to me.”
“You know there’s a point, Kara,” his eyes seemed a little flatter as he stopped gazing at her body and locked eyes with hers, “You just don’t want to see it. But that’s okay. I have time and you have to be here. I’ll see you in three days.”
“That’s it?” Kara asked, glancing down at her watch and realizing that she was free to go.
“There is something else.”
“What?”
“I love you. And you’re going to hear it every three days until you believe it.”
“What if I don’t buy your crap before your time in here is up?”
“Then you get to hear it more often. Hell, hang around Kara; you can hear it as often as you want.”
“Frak you, Lee,” came her reflexive and inelegant reply.
Lee turned back to Kara and nodded once, his face dark and stiff, “I know. Trust me, it’s no easier for me to say it than it is for you to hear it. Doesn’t change things, Kara.”
Kara felt her top lip curl as she turned to leave the brig, Lee’s voice following her, “Tell Sam I’d be more than happy to help him with his traps when I get out.”
*****
Sam found Kara bent over a roughly drafted CAP roster; she didn’t immediately register his presence, so he took a few moments to just watch her. He knew he should have cleared his throat or made a noise, anything to alert her to the fact that he’d let himself into her - frak, Lee’s - quarters.
Gods, he was hanging on by a thread. For a couple days there she’d… wanted something from him. Wanted to be around him. But now? He was just that big frakking time bomb that she kept in her peripheral vision. What would it take to get her to remember the man she’d married? The man she’d always wanted in her bed? The man she’d built a life with on New Caprica?
“Do you remember,” he asked, watching her quietly as he closed the hatch behind his back, “three months before the Cylon occupation? On New Caprica, I mean. Before I got too sick. You… you skipped a period and we thought - I thought - it meant something big. Man, I thought it all fell into place. We’d set up a world, rough around the edges maybe, but our own world and we were going to have a kid and start fighting to make our world a good place. As good as we could possibly make it. You have no idea how often I think about those two weeks. You know, I don’t think my best season at the top of my game before the resistance, before you and any of it, I don’t think even that stacked up to how amazing it felt to think you were walking around with a part of me inside of you. It was so… permanent. More than a tattoo, more than stuttered vows, it was a frakking life that we’d made.”
Kara pushed her rosters aside and sat down at the desk, reaching out for another ration. She’d been eating a lot lately. Sam was pleased to see it. “It was crappy nutrition, Sam. I was dropping half my food rations in Roslin’s back pocket for the kids. So were you.”
“But for two weeks it was possible,” Sam insisted, moving up to the desk to lean against it while he peered down at Kara.
“Come on Sam, we both know I’m not equipped to have kids. One ovary, too many blunt traumas to the stomach. Gods and… now? I don’t even know what’s going on down there. I mean,” she tugged her tanks up to peer down at her own belly. A few angry red grazes and splits featured across her skin resting on top of swollen bruises, but the scars he’d traced with his hands and mouth were gone… “I don’t know what I mean. But we? Were never going to have kids. Gods, you’re a frakking Cylon. I mean, can you even… well I guess it is possible. Tryol did it, didn’t he?”
“That’s not what I’m getting at, Kara.” He sat down on the desk and reached for her hand. She struggled at first, tried to pull away, but Sam had always had her in terms of physical strength and now, for once, he had the advantage in terms of determination too. He circled her wrist with his thumb and forefinger and just stared down at the place where antique script had once proclaimed her public property, “I feel no less human knowing that I’m not human, Kara. I want you to understand that. I get mad. I am scared. I get hard when I think about you at night, and, yeah, I’ve frakked other women because it feels good. Tell me you haven’t been doing the same? For a day or two there you faced off against the possibility that you were a Cylon and what did you do? You dragged out every frakking human flaw you could find and lined them up for everyone to see. When your ‘special destiny’ came into play, you forced yourself to be human. You thought if you were less than what you are then maybe God, or the Gods, would spare you. I think I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m here to help you fulfill your destiny.”
“That’s what Leoben said.” Kara tried a little more forcefully to drag her hand from his, “right before he frakked with my head.”
“Maybe he meant it. Maybe he wasn’t frakking with your head.”
Kara shook her head and stood and Sam took the opportunity to tug her a little closer. Perched on the edge of the desk as he was, his face was roughly at the same level as hers. For the briefest moment he could see her eyes flash with panic. She thought he was going to kiss her.
Sam lifted his spare hand and smoothed it over her brow and back over her hair before lifting her arm and dropping to the side to plant a kiss against her skin, right where her tattoo had once been. He couldn’t stop himself from parting his lips and darting his tongue along one tense muscle as he drew in her taste and resolved that even if he was a Cylon, he was different. Cylons didn’t taste fate.
But he could.
*****
Cutter was on guard again and Kara almost felt sorry for him. She suspected the reason he kept drawing the short straw had something to do with him not being fazed by Lee or Leoben. Poor bastard was being punished for having balls. Kara could relate. She gave him a nod as she stepped into the brig.
“Not expecting you today, Captain,” he said as he stood to attention and she waved him down.
“I have a summons to Colonial One tomorrow. I figure if I do this today this gives me four days in the clear, right?”
Cutter shrugged, “If it adds up, I don’t have to report it. Just… I don’t know if he’s expecting you. Or anyone.”
Kara paused and frowned, “What do you mean?” As she spoke, a strangled cry issued from Lee’s cell. She glanced quickly in the direction of the cell and turned back to Cutter, “Is he hurt?”
“Not physically.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Sounds like crying.”
Kara narrowed her eyes at the Marine, “You’re a smartass, you know that? Open his cell and go grab a cup of coffee. Take your time.”
“Last guy that did that got shot at by your Major.”
“Hmm, Lee’s a crappy shot.” She tapped one finger against her sidearm, “I’m not.”
Cutter rolled his eyes and threw the cell keys at her, “Just don’t leave any marks, okay? Man’s already on the frakking edge.”
Kara snorted and jabbed her thumb at the door, not bothering to wait until he left before turning towards Lee’s cell. Crying. Frakking crying. She wanted to run. Really, really run. Be anywhere else. Crying frakked with her head. She hated it. She felt embarrassed for people when they cried. Mostly because she spent days mentally tearing strips off herself after any sort of crying jag. So why the frak was she walking into what was surely a private moment for Lee?
Because she mother-frakking could.
Because she’d lain herself open to him, promised him Earth and been taken down for it. He wanted to say sorry? Wanted to say he loved her? Fine. But first he’d understand how it was to be wide open and have the one person you expected to cover you deliver the first blow.
Kara stopped at the bars and peered in at him. What she saw stopped her dead. He sat with his back against the bars, gripping at a small photograph. His shoulders shuddered with mostly silent tears. Every few moments he’d grunt or hiss with the exertion of crying so quietly. She couldn’t see his face, but knew that his eyes were full of tears and things she didn’t want to see. She stepped closer and looked down at the photograph in his hands. Was it too late to turn back? She wondered.
Never had she hated the sight of her own face so much. She wanted to reach through the bars and tear the frakking picture from his hands. First, she was struck by just what a frakking liar he was. Sam had told her how they’d laid her to rest, put up her image in the memorial hallway and let her go.
But Lee had never let her go. He’d had a second photograph. One that he must have been carrying with him all that time. He’d hidden his grief so well. She’d told him that she wanted her best friend to have mourned her and now it looked like she had just that. Why did she suddenly feel so terrified?
Maybe, a clear and unmistakable voice whispered in her head, seeing Lee mourn you makes you have to accept that you died. Gods know, Kara, you never mourned yourself. Gods know, you’re still shattered and destroyed somewhere out in space waiting to reform and run back to Lee. Gods know, that if Lee’s still mourning you, maybe you aren’t as alive as you think you are.
Gods knew, maybe, but Kara didn’t. There was so much she didn’t know. She rattled the keys and Lee scrambled, turning and coming to his knees at the same time to see her standing there. “Gods,” he choked, “Kara…” She wondered how it was that even now he couldn’t believe that she was standing there, very much alive.
She reached through the bars and ran one thumb over the jut of his cheekbone, smearing a fat tear over his cheek and down past his rough jaw. “You didn’t believe me Lee, and that hurt. You’ll never know how much that hurt,” she said quietly, “But you want to know what really pisses me off? Me. I am beyond pissed that I didn’t believe myself. Didn’t have faith in myself. That I let so many people take so much from me, when I didn’t have anything left to give.”
She drew her hand back quickly, stumbling back out of reach when Lee grabbed for her. “Kara,” he dropped his voice in a plea and she shook her head. “Kara, no.”
Her eyes fell to the picture that had fallen by his knees. “I don’t know who the poor bitch in the picture is, Lee. But she must have been frakking special for you to mourn her so deeply. I mean, I’m your best friend and… look how well you treated me. Hold on to your photo,” Kara nodded to the picture and whistled softly, “Because girls like that don’t exist in the real world. Can’t exist. She’s gone, you know that. Otherwise you wouldn’t still be missing her.”
Lee rose to his feet, raking one hand over his eyes as he smacked another against the bars of his cell. Hard. But he said nothing.
With shaky hands, Kara turned to unlock his cell. She toed the door open and stood on the threshold. He moved from the bars until he stood directly across from her, but made no attempt to step out of his cell.
Kara didn’t realize how deeply the scene had affected her until she tried to speak and could barely get the words out for the low faltering notes in her voice, “You don’t get to mourn me, Lee. If you didn’t do it when I died, you sure as frak don’t do it now.”
He lifted his face to hers and shook his head gently, “Maybe I didn’t really lose you until…” He couldn’t finish what he’d been meaning to say. Instead he took a breath and spoke again, “Two nights ago Sam spent two hours in my room with you.”
Kara blinked once but was never one to miss an opportunity, “And last night he spent three,” she snapped.
She’d gone too far of course, knew it as soon as she tasted blood in her mouth.
He’d frakking hit her. Just like that. He hadn’t moved from his cell, just quickly extended his arm and driven out his fist, smacking it into her mouth. If it weren’t for the sting, she might have missed it altogether. His jaw flexed and Kara reached up to run two fingers along her bottom lip. They came away shining with blood.
“You love me now, Lee?” she asked as she held up her bloodied fingertips for inspection.
*****
Author: becisvolatile
Part: 9/?
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Lee/Kara, Bill, Roslin, Helo, Sharon, Cottle, Anders, Dee, Leoben, Racetrack, Seelix.
Word Count: 5500+
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: Gods know, Kara, you’re still shattered and destroyed somewhere out in space waiting to reform and run back to Lee.
Authors Note: Special thanks to Angylinni for reminding me that compound sentences are not, in fact, the handiwork of Satan. Also thanks for your continued time and feedback, it means a lot that so many of you are keeping up with this fic!
Previous Chapters:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
“Wow,” Kara mused, drumming her fingertips against the lectern as she stared down at him. “All this time, I felt so guilty for frakking with you. I guess you were pretty frakked up from the start, though.”
“I never knew.”
“I’ll bet.” She shrugged as she dropped her hand to the handgun on her thigh.
Sam took a few steps closer to her, “You’re going to shoot me?”
“Not quite.” Kara withdrew the gun and handed it butt first down to the machine who had once claimed her as a wife. Sam took it with a frown, holding the weight uncertainly in his hands. It wasn’t because he wasn’t used to guns, he just didn’t know what she expected.
“If you’re a Cylon, Darling, this is the part where you blow my mother-frakking brains out.”
Sam’s face fell as he balanced the gun in the palm of his hand, “I thought… I thought this was it. I thought we were finally the same.”
Kara crossed her arms and leaned even more casually over the lectern. She had to force nonchalance because damned if her heart didn’t very nearly ache for the… whatever he was… standing in front of her. “Frak me, Sam. You really thought I was a Cylon?”
“Lee did.”
“Lee’s in hack for losing his godsdamned mind. He pulled a Cally on some Cylon ass.”
“You did it first, Kara, the whole ship knows that.”
Kara snorted, “I promise you that ‘Starbuck did it first’ is not the sort of defense you want in your corner. Do as I say, Sam, not as I do.”
She moved around the lectern and dropped down to the floor beside him, holding out her hand for her gun. Sam promptly returned it to her, letting his hand rest over hers just a little longer than necessary.
She moved to the front row of seats and sat down, resting her wrists on her knees and looked up at Sam. “If I asked you to come with me to the nearest airlock, would you? Or would I have to kick your ass all the way there?”
Sam almost smiled. “You know I always did things your way.”
“Including die?”
“You want me to die?”
She hesitated as she reached down and holstered her handgun, “In the last five minutes, I magically remembered that there are four Cylons on this ship ―all people of some consequence. I don’t know what I want. I just want it all to make sense. I mean… you? Frak me. That’s…”
“Massive,” Sam supplied as he limped to her side and dropped into the seat next to her.
She was quiet for as long as she could stand it. Sam seemed almost unwilling to talk. “I want to know what you’re thinking, Kara.”
“I’m thinking I should be mad. I should be… hurting something. I’m thinking I owe Helo an apology.”
“I don’t know what I am, Kara, but I know that I’m loyal. I swear it to you.”
Kara slid her eyes to him, “Caprica. New Caprica. All of it. None of it. It doesn’t mean anything now.”
“It means something to me. It means this is bigger than us. It means there’s a plan.”
“Yeah,” Kara cleared her throat, “But whose?”
San shrugged and they fell back into silence. A handful of minutes passed before Kara started chuckling softly.
“You’re laughing?”
She lifted a hand to wipe one tear from her eye, “Frakkin’ Tigh. Oh man, that is priceless. I mean… really.”
“What are you going to do?”
Kara stood and twisted to look back down at Sam, “I’ll vent you eventually, don’t doubt it.”
“Eventually?”
“You’re linked to finding Earth. It’s a bitch, but I think I’m going to need you.”
It was Sam’s turn to laugh, “That would be a first, Kara.”
*****
Four days into Lee’s sentence and the Admiral knew that he had to cave to his son’s persistent requests. He received constant reports, each more disheartening than the last.
Lee isn’t eating.
Lee isn’t moving.
Lee won’t stop doing push ups.
Lee has collapsed from exhaustion.
Lee won’t shut the frak up.
Lee and the Leoben are taunting each other from their respective cells.
Frak it. He’d gone down there to smack Lee’s head in. He wasn’t too old to be taken to task. Gods knew, maybe he should have done it years ago.
But as it turned out, Lee was all too happy to behave - on one condition. He wanted to see Kara. Regularly. Lee gave a feeble excuse about needing to brief her on stepping in as CAG, Bill saw it for what it was. His son wanted to see Kara and it was his job to decide which would be more detrimental - Lee being denied access to her, or Kara being forced to see Lee. Neither sounded like a good idea, but at least one of them held the ghost of the promise of a possible resolution.
“It’s important,” he explained to Kara, not looking up from his navigation charts.
She stood beside him in the CIC shaking her head, her voice flat and very clearly inviting no argument, “I’ve got a full schedule, Sir. Raptor test flights, then I’m on CAP tonight. It’s not possible.”
“You’ll make time, Starbuck. He was the acting CAG and you’ve been absent for a while. There are things he needs to tell you.”
“I’ve read his notes.”
Bill reached out and braced his hands against the center console. He was going to need to approach this from a new angle. “Captain Thrace,” he said simply, “Before your CAP tonight you will have logged one visit to Major Adama. This visit will be no shorter than fifteen minutes. You will then repeat this visit once every three days. And that,” he looked up at her with a level gaze, “is an order.”
Kara’s jaw clenched and Saul chortled, dark liquid sloshing from the mug in his hand as he smacked her on the shoulder, “You have your orders, Starbuck.”
She turned her eyes to him and gave him a small, stiff smile, “It’s been a long watch for you, Sir,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “You’ve been working so hard, you’re practically a machine.”
Saul dropped his mug altogether as Kara turned on her heel and stalked from the CIC.
*****
Lee woke to find Kara staring at him. She was straddling a chair a few feet from the bars of his cell, flicking her eyes to her watch. He sat up and reached for his tanks, but couldn’t bring himself to pull them on. Not if it meant losing sight of her for one second. He was so sure that if that happened, she’d be gone when he opened his eyes again.
“Kara, you came,” he said quietly. So many hours spent imagining what he’d say when she finally came to him and when it finally happened, all his words had flown out the airlock. He really just wanted to look at her. In the scheme of things, he’d only really accepted that she was back - was human - a handful of days before. Since that time, he’d spent only moments with her, all of them tense and violent.
Something eased in his chest to see her sitting there alive and still.
“It’s good to…” it sounded lame even to his own ears. Kara didn’t want to hear that it was good to see her. By the looks of her, she didn’t want to hear anything. “My father ordered you here, didn’t he?”
Kara focused more intently on her watch.
Lee sat up and stood, his bare feet hitting the cold floor. He’d been given a change of clothes and wore only a pair of low-slung track pants. Pride made him bristle at the fact that she couldn’t even bring herself to look at him in his relative state of undress. But then, she’d seen it all before hadn’t she?
Was probably seeing it even now. Sam was now under her command, right? Frak it, he’s promised himself he’d be patient and take his kicks. He wouldn’t stop at this. “You don’t want to talk to me Kara, that’s fine. Great even, because I need to say this.”
She didn’t budge.
“I love you.”
She flinched.
“I love you and I know what I did to you was inexcusable. But I swear to you, I will find a place to start. I will find a way to-”
Kara stood and pushed her chair aside. “Time is up, Lee. Thanks for the talk, but next time you open your mouth around me, it had better be to talk about our birds and pilots. Because this?” She quickly motioned between her chest and his. “I already covered this. I told you once that we’re done here.”
*****
Leoben Conoy stood at the glass of his cell, only just able to hear the exchange between the pilots. He frowned for a minute, too bad that she didn’t have to pass his cell to get to Adama’s.
“Well,” he eventually called, aware that Lee could just hear his voice, “That was heartening.”
He smiled as he leaned back against the glass and slid down the wall into a lazy crouch. In a cell not far from his he could hear the crash of the Major’s only chair being thrown against a wall.
*****
Seven days in the brig and she knew he’d be thankful. She tugged once at the sleeve of her jacket and stepped up to sign herself in for the visit.
The Marine at the small desk frowned down at his schedule, “You ain’t up for a visit, Ma’am.”
Dee rolled her eyes and threw down the pen, without bothering to sign in, “I don’t have to be. I’m Major Adama’s wife; I have every right to be here.” She continued past the Marine to Lee’s cell.
He was sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in a clean track suit with his feet planted firmly on the floor. His spine was stiff as his eyes snapped from the floor to her face. For the briefest second he looked like someone had told him his Viper had gone down in flames.
“Not pleased to see me?” she asked softly, casting her eyes to the floor in a measure designed to make him feel like an ass.
“Anastasia, no, I mean, of course. You know… any visitor is welcome.” He said the words, but that didn’t stop his eyes from flicking past her to the entrance of the brig.
“Some more than others?” she asked.
“Kara’s coming. Meant to be, actually. She was supposed to show up four hours ago. We have a standing… arrangement. She was meant to be here before dinner.”
Dee looked down at her watch and shrugged, “I wouldn’t count on it, she went out on CAP with Sam in a Raptor thirty minutes ago. I cleared them for launch before my shift finished. They’ve been out a couple times in the last two days.”
“He’s flying now?”
Dee shrugged, she wasn’t lying. Sam and Kara had been racking up some hours out in the Raptor. Rumor was that reconciliation was in the pipelines. “I guess Cottle cleared the leg. I heard Kara and your father; she was keen to get him out in a Raptor. I guess they’re trying to put their marriage back on track. He’s spending his nights with her, that’s the scuttlebutt anyway. Hot Dog said he was in there for two hours last night, which everyone knows is as close to a long term commitment those two have ever come.”
Lee stood and crossed the room. He seemed to be moving to a bottle of water, but Dee couldn’t shake the feeling that he just wanted to stop her from seeing his reaction. Something close to indigestion flared in her guts. “But you do have me tonight. I can keep you company.”
Lee turned and offered her a bracing smile, “Yeah, sure. Great.”
She smiled and searched for a chair. The Marine behind her shot her a bored look before she shifted one eyebrow in his direction, signaling to him that she wanted his chair. He begrudgingly pushed it in her direction and dropped himself back onto the edge of his desk.
“I uh… had a question,” Dee said as she dropped into the chair.
Lee opened the bottle of water and took a sip before saying, “Sure.”
“Our place. I… was wondering if you wanted me to drop in. Maybe bring you some things while you’re here.”
Lee stopped drinking almost immediately. He placed the cap back on the bottle and his face swam with something near concern. “Dee, actually, you can’t go to my quarters anymore. Kara is staying there. After everything… I figured it was the least I could do.”
“Everything?” Dee stuttered. Even after Kara had reconciled so quickly with her husband, Lee was still the first to her defense! “What? What has Kara Thrace been through that she didn’t have coming?”
“Careful Anastasia. Whatever I’ve done to you… however I failed you, Kara shouldn’t be a part of our history.”
“And yet she is, because she’s always been there.”
Lee picked up his bottle of water again and shrugged, his eyes never leaving her face, “You left me, so I guess Kara isn’t your concern anymore.”
Dee stood quickly. She didn’t need this crap. Lee wasn’t… there were other men. “She’ll eat you alive and spit you out. That’s all she ever does. You are nothing but a bad taste in her mouth.”
Lee shrugged yet again, “Maybe. Maybe I deserve it. But don’t dwell on it, Dualla. Because Kara’s been charitable of late, you might have noticed that.”
There was something in the way he regarded her that told Dee Lee knew something of her clash with Kara in the showers. She hurried to leave the brig, but wasn’t quick enough to miss the Marine’s comment to Lee.
“Captain Thrace is a frakking ball-breaking bitch, but I liked her more than that one.”
*****
Kara came to a halt outside of the brig, stopping to catch her breath. She knocked once and looked up as the Marine, Cutter - that was his name - looked from her to his watch.
“How am I doing for time?” she asked.
“Another twenty minutes and I was going to have to report it.”
She shrugged, “Time to spare then.”
He stepped back and let her in, “You want my chair, Sir?” he offered.
Kara shook her head, “Nah, been on my ass for the last three hours, you keep it.”
“The other one wanted my chair.”
“Other one?”
“Dualla.”
Well, what the frak had she expected? That it wouldn’t hurt so much to hear that he was seeing his wife again? A voice in her head asked easily.
She slowed as she approached Lee’s cell. This had gone so well last time.
Or not.
She was determined to do it right this time. No bloodshed. No slipping. She couldn’t afford it. What she was doing… what needed her attention now had nothing to do with Lee. No matter how much Lee had to do with her.
One look at his face told her that bloodshed was pretty much the only thing guaranteed by these compulsory meetings. She unzipped her flight suit and pushed it off her shoulders, rolling them once before dropping her hands to tie the loose sleeves around her waist.
What a frakking bust. The whole night was just a mess. What did she think she was doing? Plastering herself to Sam’s side, never leaving him to have a second’s peace. Not that he minded in the least. Hell, she’d been blocking out his soul-searching eyes all frakking day. But that wasn’t why she spent so much time with him. She wasn’t fully sure what her reasons were. Maybe she was guilty, terrified, he was running around Galactica squishing G4 against the bulkheads?
Maybe she was hoping he’d trigger another breakthrough? He’d been with her when she’d recalled the Cylons, so why not the way to earth? Or even what happened after her crash? Was it such a stretch to imagine he’d trigger more memories… visions?
She shook the thoughts from her head. Didn’t matter any more anyway, she had others to take out on test runs, Sam would have to wait for her downtime. And the CAG didn’t get any downtime. She moved closer to Lee’s cell and grabbed at the bars above her head as she rested her body weight against the cell and peered in at Lee with her head cocked to the side. Apparently, she wasn’t going to have to worry about not talking to him.
He didn’t seem to want to talk to her. Fine. She turned and let her back rest against the bars. Fifteen minutes of her own personal hell and then she had five uninterrupted hours of rack time. Of course she was lying to herself when she said “uninterrupted” because sleeping in the bed where Lee had again and again frakked Dualla was hardly peaceful. Apparently, fresh sheets didn’t erase ghosts and overactive imaginations. But it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go. She needed the attached office and she wasn’t going to give the Old Man any reason to think she couldn’t handle it.
Kara glanced down at her watch. Nine minutes.
“How’s Sam?” Lee spoke and Kara froze. Frak, he was standing right at the bars behind her back. It would take nothing for him to reach through and touch her. She couldn’t hack that. But then, she couldn’t stand to lose face by stepping away.
“I outlined our topics of conversation, Major. Sam isn’t one of them.”
“Unless I’m mistaken, he is. He’s a Raptor pilot these days, so I can ask how his training is doing.” Gods she could feel his breath rushing past her ear and she felt beyond vulnerable. She couldn’t help but conjure memories of the last time he’d been this close to her. Her stomach rolled and her pulse kicked up.
“He’s been out a few times now. Can’t catch a trap for shit. No head for finer ship-side maneuvers.”
“Takes a certain type of man to touch just right on the finer details of flying. You’ve got to feel your way. I guess Anders just doesn’t… feel his way like some of us can.”
Wow, Lee Adama, Boy Scout and master of the double entendre. That was new. Kara wasn’t sure, but she could have sworn Lee’s finger brushed over her bare arm where her bridal tattoo had once been.
She pushed away from the bars, “He manages. And he makes up for it in dedication. Power. Commitment. He has a skill for bold tactical moves and he has an uncanny ability to get his head around the scope of the playing field. A sixth sense, I guess. He knows how to back his fellow pilots up. Maybe he gets it from all the Pyramid games, who knows?”
Lee fell back from the bars and stared down at his bare feet. The tanks flung over his chair suggested he’d been fully dressed earlier that day, but had stripped down to nothing more than those godsdamned hanging-on-for-their-life track pants.
Three minutes. Gods, she watched as Lee turned away and paced to the far wall before turning back to her. This time it was his turn to lean casually against the cell as he gripped one bar above his head. He said nothing, but seemed to be content to just watch the post-flight sweat drying on her skin.
Kara suddenly wanted to pull her flight suit back up. “Is there a point to these meetings, Lee? Because so far you’ve said nothing useful to me.”
“You know there’s a point, Kara,” his eyes seemed a little flatter as he stopped gazing at her body and locked eyes with hers, “You just don’t want to see it. But that’s okay. I have time and you have to be here. I’ll see you in three days.”
“That’s it?” Kara asked, glancing down at her watch and realizing that she was free to go.
“There is something else.”
“What?”
“I love you. And you’re going to hear it every three days until you believe it.”
“What if I don’t buy your crap before your time in here is up?”
“Then you get to hear it more often. Hell, hang around Kara; you can hear it as often as you want.”
“Frak you, Lee,” came her reflexive and inelegant reply.
Lee turned back to Kara and nodded once, his face dark and stiff, “I know. Trust me, it’s no easier for me to say it than it is for you to hear it. Doesn’t change things, Kara.”
Kara felt her top lip curl as she turned to leave the brig, Lee’s voice following her, “Tell Sam I’d be more than happy to help him with his traps when I get out.”
*****
Sam found Kara bent over a roughly drafted CAP roster; she didn’t immediately register his presence, so he took a few moments to just watch her. He knew he should have cleared his throat or made a noise, anything to alert her to the fact that he’d let himself into her - frak, Lee’s - quarters.
Gods, he was hanging on by a thread. For a couple days there she’d… wanted something from him. Wanted to be around him. But now? He was just that big frakking time bomb that she kept in her peripheral vision. What would it take to get her to remember the man she’d married? The man she’d always wanted in her bed? The man she’d built a life with on New Caprica?
“Do you remember,” he asked, watching her quietly as he closed the hatch behind his back, “three months before the Cylon occupation? On New Caprica, I mean. Before I got too sick. You… you skipped a period and we thought - I thought - it meant something big. Man, I thought it all fell into place. We’d set up a world, rough around the edges maybe, but our own world and we were going to have a kid and start fighting to make our world a good place. As good as we could possibly make it. You have no idea how often I think about those two weeks. You know, I don’t think my best season at the top of my game before the resistance, before you and any of it, I don’t think even that stacked up to how amazing it felt to think you were walking around with a part of me inside of you. It was so… permanent. More than a tattoo, more than stuttered vows, it was a frakking life that we’d made.”
Kara pushed her rosters aside and sat down at the desk, reaching out for another ration. She’d been eating a lot lately. Sam was pleased to see it. “It was crappy nutrition, Sam. I was dropping half my food rations in Roslin’s back pocket for the kids. So were you.”
“But for two weeks it was possible,” Sam insisted, moving up to the desk to lean against it while he peered down at Kara.
“Come on Sam, we both know I’m not equipped to have kids. One ovary, too many blunt traumas to the stomach. Gods and… now? I don’t even know what’s going on down there. I mean,” she tugged her tanks up to peer down at her own belly. A few angry red grazes and splits featured across her skin resting on top of swollen bruises, but the scars he’d traced with his hands and mouth were gone… “I don’t know what I mean. But we? Were never going to have kids. Gods, you’re a frakking Cylon. I mean, can you even… well I guess it is possible. Tryol did it, didn’t he?”
“That’s not what I’m getting at, Kara.” He sat down on the desk and reached for her hand. She struggled at first, tried to pull away, but Sam had always had her in terms of physical strength and now, for once, he had the advantage in terms of determination too. He circled her wrist with his thumb and forefinger and just stared down at the place where antique script had once proclaimed her public property, “I feel no less human knowing that I’m not human, Kara. I want you to understand that. I get mad. I am scared. I get hard when I think about you at night, and, yeah, I’ve frakked other women because it feels good. Tell me you haven’t been doing the same? For a day or two there you faced off against the possibility that you were a Cylon and what did you do? You dragged out every frakking human flaw you could find and lined them up for everyone to see. When your ‘special destiny’ came into play, you forced yourself to be human. You thought if you were less than what you are then maybe God, or the Gods, would spare you. I think I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m here to help you fulfill your destiny.”
“That’s what Leoben said.” Kara tried a little more forcefully to drag her hand from his, “right before he frakked with my head.”
“Maybe he meant it. Maybe he wasn’t frakking with your head.”
Kara shook her head and stood and Sam took the opportunity to tug her a little closer. Perched on the edge of the desk as he was, his face was roughly at the same level as hers. For the briefest moment he could see her eyes flash with panic. She thought he was going to kiss her.
Sam lifted his spare hand and smoothed it over her brow and back over her hair before lifting her arm and dropping to the side to plant a kiss against her skin, right where her tattoo had once been. He couldn’t stop himself from parting his lips and darting his tongue along one tense muscle as he drew in her taste and resolved that even if he was a Cylon, he was different. Cylons didn’t taste fate.
But he could.
*****
Cutter was on guard again and Kara almost felt sorry for him. She suspected the reason he kept drawing the short straw had something to do with him not being fazed by Lee or Leoben. Poor bastard was being punished for having balls. Kara could relate. She gave him a nod as she stepped into the brig.
“Not expecting you today, Captain,” he said as he stood to attention and she waved him down.
“I have a summons to Colonial One tomorrow. I figure if I do this today this gives me four days in the clear, right?”
Cutter shrugged, “If it adds up, I don’t have to report it. Just… I don’t know if he’s expecting you. Or anyone.”
Kara paused and frowned, “What do you mean?” As she spoke, a strangled cry issued from Lee’s cell. She glanced quickly in the direction of the cell and turned back to Cutter, “Is he hurt?”
“Not physically.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Sounds like crying.”
Kara narrowed her eyes at the Marine, “You’re a smartass, you know that? Open his cell and go grab a cup of coffee. Take your time.”
“Last guy that did that got shot at by your Major.”
“Hmm, Lee’s a crappy shot.” She tapped one finger against her sidearm, “I’m not.”
Cutter rolled his eyes and threw the cell keys at her, “Just don’t leave any marks, okay? Man’s already on the frakking edge.”
Kara snorted and jabbed her thumb at the door, not bothering to wait until he left before turning towards Lee’s cell. Crying. Frakking crying. She wanted to run. Really, really run. Be anywhere else. Crying frakked with her head. She hated it. She felt embarrassed for people when they cried. Mostly because she spent days mentally tearing strips off herself after any sort of crying jag. So why the frak was she walking into what was surely a private moment for Lee?
Because she mother-frakking could.
Because she’d lain herself open to him, promised him Earth and been taken down for it. He wanted to say sorry? Wanted to say he loved her? Fine. But first he’d understand how it was to be wide open and have the one person you expected to cover you deliver the first blow.
Kara stopped at the bars and peered in at him. What she saw stopped her dead. He sat with his back against the bars, gripping at a small photograph. His shoulders shuddered with mostly silent tears. Every few moments he’d grunt or hiss with the exertion of crying so quietly. She couldn’t see his face, but knew that his eyes were full of tears and things she didn’t want to see. She stepped closer and looked down at the photograph in his hands. Was it too late to turn back? She wondered.
Never had she hated the sight of her own face so much. She wanted to reach through the bars and tear the frakking picture from his hands. First, she was struck by just what a frakking liar he was. Sam had told her how they’d laid her to rest, put up her image in the memorial hallway and let her go.
But Lee had never let her go. He’d had a second photograph. One that he must have been carrying with him all that time. He’d hidden his grief so well. She’d told him that she wanted her best friend to have mourned her and now it looked like she had just that. Why did she suddenly feel so terrified?
Maybe, a clear and unmistakable voice whispered in her head, seeing Lee mourn you makes you have to accept that you died. Gods know, Kara, you never mourned yourself. Gods know, you’re still shattered and destroyed somewhere out in space waiting to reform and run back to Lee. Gods know, that if Lee’s still mourning you, maybe you aren’t as alive as you think you are.
Gods knew, maybe, but Kara didn’t. There was so much she didn’t know. She rattled the keys and Lee scrambled, turning and coming to his knees at the same time to see her standing there. “Gods,” he choked, “Kara…” She wondered how it was that even now he couldn’t believe that she was standing there, very much alive.
She reached through the bars and ran one thumb over the jut of his cheekbone, smearing a fat tear over his cheek and down past his rough jaw. “You didn’t believe me Lee, and that hurt. You’ll never know how much that hurt,” she said quietly, “But you want to know what really pisses me off? Me. I am beyond pissed that I didn’t believe myself. Didn’t have faith in myself. That I let so many people take so much from me, when I didn’t have anything left to give.”
She drew her hand back quickly, stumbling back out of reach when Lee grabbed for her. “Kara,” he dropped his voice in a plea and she shook her head. “Kara, no.”
Her eyes fell to the picture that had fallen by his knees. “I don’t know who the poor bitch in the picture is, Lee. But she must have been frakking special for you to mourn her so deeply. I mean, I’m your best friend and… look how well you treated me. Hold on to your photo,” Kara nodded to the picture and whistled softly, “Because girls like that don’t exist in the real world. Can’t exist. She’s gone, you know that. Otherwise you wouldn’t still be missing her.”
Lee rose to his feet, raking one hand over his eyes as he smacked another against the bars of his cell. Hard. But he said nothing.
With shaky hands, Kara turned to unlock his cell. She toed the door open and stood on the threshold. He moved from the bars until he stood directly across from her, but made no attempt to step out of his cell.
Kara didn’t realize how deeply the scene had affected her until she tried to speak and could barely get the words out for the low faltering notes in her voice, “You don’t get to mourn me, Lee. If you didn’t do it when I died, you sure as frak don’t do it now.”
He lifted his face to hers and shook his head gently, “Maybe I didn’t really lose you until…” He couldn’t finish what he’d been meaning to say. Instead he took a breath and spoke again, “Two nights ago Sam spent two hours in my room with you.”
Kara blinked once but was never one to miss an opportunity, “And last night he spent three,” she snapped.
She’d gone too far of course, knew it as soon as she tasted blood in her mouth.
He’d frakking hit her. Just like that. He hadn’t moved from his cell, just quickly extended his arm and driven out his fist, smacking it into her mouth. If it weren’t for the sting, she might have missed it altogether. His jaw flexed and Kara reached up to run two fingers along her bottom lip. They came away shining with blood.
“You love me now, Lee?” she asked as she held up her bloodied fingertips for inspection.
*****