FANFIC POST: "Aerilon Girls Are Easy" part 1/5 (Battlestar Galactica)
Title: Aerilon Girls Are Easy
Author: Sara C. (flowrs4ophelia)
Characters & Pairings: Lee/Kara(/Zak)
Rating: R
Summary: Without a war to bring them back together, it takes a lot for Kara and Lee to be able to forgive each other. And themselves.
Notes: This is one of several BSG WIPs that was one of my lowest priorities to finish until recent events have renewed my interest in anything relating to the Zak-Kara-Lee history. This was started long before "Daybreak" and is a totally-not-canon AU, but it's full of flashbacks and is probably inevitably going to be influenced in some small ways by the lovely, shiny new canon.
Oh, and the cracky title won't make sense until part 2, by the way. LOL.
aerilon girls are easy.
Kara is stuck in the slow, sporadically gushing flow of Delphi traffic on a weekend afternoon, her elbow hanging out the open window of her monstrous four-by-four, when she sees the faded old poster for a movie called Black Swan in the window of a little movie rental store on a corner and then looks quickly away before she can remember.
The only time she has spoken to Lee Adama since the day of the funeral was more than four months ago. He was on the Galactica for the decommissioning, and she was in a brig cell.
It made it easier than it could have been to have the bars in between them. Otherwise she might not have been able to face him.
At some point that Lee couldn't identify his life has become strained at the edges, wanting to somehow break out of the confining and orderly shape it's been neatly folded into. Wake up at this time, report for briefings, call this person, perform this mission, wash his uniform. It is all so calculated and safe.
Every once in a while, late in the night after he's had a few or even first thing in the morning when he really doesn't feel like getting up for the same old shit, this gutsy little voice creeps out from the dark inside him and says do it. Do it do it do it do it. Until one day another pilot asks him if he's still thinking about applying for duty on base in Picon and without thinking about what he's saying he responds, "Actually I've decided I'm quitting the service."
His friend is so taken aback he thinks he's kidding at first. After Lee attempts to explain, he has to ask what made him get into the military anyway if it was never what he really wanted.
"I don't know," Lee says. "I guess with the kind of family I came from, it was just what was easy."
And this is a start. But he still isn't sure if he has completely figured out what it is.
She wakes up in the morning, showers and gets dressed and brushes her teeth with the sticking thought: I think I am finished mourning him. This is how she must define her life, the stage of it. Somewhere in the back of her head she keeps track of the time since she last got laid. She lets her hair start growing out a little.
It's been over two years now, but it is still inevitable that when she thinks of being touched at all she thinks of Zak because he was her last serious one. It is sometimes unbearable how painful this can be, shocking how much she can still want him when even the most primal and meaningless urge to feel another body brings her to remember all over again, but there is a part of her that doesn't want this to ever change. It is a way of holding onto him.
There is a certain reluctance to let go in grief itself, and something about acceptance and moving on that senselessly feels cold and inhuman. When the pain of separation is the only remaining connection to someone, it can be desperately clung to despite the misery attached to it. When she thinks about it as much as Kara ever thinks about these things, the idea of healing and progressing forward still seems somehow ridiculous to her. Because her love for him hurts so much now it is holding her back, she must sever herself from him and he must be forgotten because this is the way it works.
But what happens to him? He goes down, into the dark, buried forever, frozen in time, while the girl he was going to marry stays here and her hair looks different now and she no longer belongs to him. And she will be fine without him because that's how it works. And his brother...
This isn't the way it should be. She can't stop thinking that. Maybe for others who experience loss like this, yes. But she cannot help feeling like she has never suffered enough. And so she goes on with the constant hunger and desire, the inclination to have and to be again, that sits familiarly inside her and aches. With the kind of responsibility she must live with, she figures getting used to this is the most that can be expected of her.
I think I am finished mourning him. Whatever the frak that's supposed to mean.
Lee and Kara never ended up meeting during their years at the academy, but their social circles were always connected through several people. Including one Ken Cage who knew pretty much everybody and sends Lee an invitation to his wedding that he wasn't exactly expecting.
He knows Ken probably wouldn't even have thought to send him one if he hadn't happened to run into him a few months ago at a spaceport and mention during the twenty minutes they were shooting the shit that he was about to get married, and at first Lee doesn't think he'll bother going. But after he can't seem to stop thinking about it for a while, he gives up and decides to go.
Just like he predicted, the wedding is almost more of a class reunion, crawling with familiar faces from his old days. But it's not everyone. Even though he literally can't remember anyone he knew at the academy who he doesn't see somewhere in the room at the reception, he cannot get rid of the strong sense that someone is missing.
Then he actually hears someone say it at a nearby table where everyone is laughing over something. "...He has never let that go, but I swear to gods I didn't cheat. Kara Thrace was the one who knew how to frakking rob you at cards, but I wouldn't even know how."
It's too late to tune it out and Lee hears someone saying to her with a laugh, "Starbuck didn't cheat, you were just bad."
"Oh please, that girl was paying rent with what she won at cards. When she paid her rent, gods bless her..."
Lee traces lines through the condensation on his glass, suddenly feeling amazingly foolish for being here.
He and Kara once came up with a code word they could use to cheat while playing a certain card game that involved teams. If one of them made any reference in conversation to Liz Teller of the Picon Panthers, it meant I've got a good hand so don't draw from me anymore.
The next time he had to call her, she picked up and answered, "Sing out," and instead of saying "Hi, it's me" he just identified himself by saying, "Teller."
After that it somehow evolved into an all-purpose code word and sort of an inside joke between the two of them. If one of them muttered it to the other before leaving for the bathroom for a minute while they were in a bar, it meant Don't let Zak have any more alcohol or you get to carry him inside when we take him home.
Once when the three of them went to a concert together, Kara was almost too exhausted to stay on her feet as they were slowly making their way out with the rest of the congested crowd after the show. At one point she sighed heavily and started to lean back against Lee without realizing it was him and not Zak standing directly behind her. He held her waist to steady her but then instantly drew his hands back away and said softly, "Teller," sounding just slightly uncomfortable, so that she blinked and stood up straight again. It's me.
Careful.
Kara gets a wedding invitation from an old friend named Ken Cage. An extra note written by him is added in pen on the inside along with a smiley face: "Only if you think you can behave yourself."
She smirks and mutters, "Asshole," suddenly remembering fondly several of her less polite moments from when she knew Ken that he is probably indirectly referring to. Then she thinks about who else he might be inviting if he thought to put her on the list.
Her smile slowly falls as she stands still for a while. Then she unhesitantly puts it down with the pile of junk mail and throws it away.
Three months later, Kara is taking her second leave since transferring to the Atlantia after Bill's retirement, and while she's home she decides to go surprise him with a visit. He's just Bill now, or sometimes still "Boss" when she feels like it. Whenever she shows up at his place like this he always messes with her by pretending not to be glad to see her and says something like "Great, this is all I need today" or "Glad you're here, I need somebody to shoot my neighbor's dog" in that simultaneously gruff and soft way of his, and then she just rolls her eyes and walks in like she lives there.
Today they sit together on the couch watching a game on TV and smoking cigars, Kara resting her feet up on a table over a mess of newspapers and mail. She is disappointed whenever she catches him at a time the house is actually tidy because she doesn't get to complain about it and it makes her feel like a guest. Even though she's here only occasionally, his house has started to feel more like her home on Caprica than her apartment she's had for years.
"It's funny for you to show up now," Bill eventually says, and she can somehow tell that this is something he's been waiting to say ever since she got here. "You'll never believe who was just here yesterday."
"Never believe? Hmm...the maid?" she says after pretending to ponder.
He laughs, but he soon looks serious again. "Lee."
She freezes in surprise a moment. "Did you have someone kidnap him and drag him here or something?" she says, still joking but failing to make her easiness completely convincing. "I hope they beat the shit out of him while they were at it."
"Hey. He's still my son."
"Last time I saw him that still didn't seem to mean much to him...What the frak, I thought Lee was on the Poseidon now."
"I guess he's on leave right now, too."
Kara goes still and silent again as she processes that. "He came to see you," she says, not as a question, as if she's just trying to get used to the idea by saying it.
"It wasn't the warmest reunion you can imagine. He didn't even really get to the point and say what made him come see me. We just caught up. And very deliberately avoided certain sensitive subjects."
She stays silent, trying to picture such a meeting in her mind. The idea of Lee having been right in this house the day before somehow doesn't seem real.
"He asked about you," Bill then adds casually.
Kara puts on a cold, unconcerned mask. "Did he?"
"Just asked me how your new post is working out for you and if you've been alright." He looks closely at her for a moment. "Him hating me is something I can understand. But the way you and him..."
"I don't...I don't hate him," she says uncomfortably. "I guess I just didn't see what he was really like until things got really tough. He's your son. You don't get off the hook when he's acting like a bastard because you'll always love him anyway. But I don't have to be stuck with him. He's not my family."
He just scrutinizes the look on her face for a few seconds. Then as he gets up to go the kitchen she thinks she hears him mutter, "Sure."
Later that day, Kara feels restless and goes out jogging in one of the biggest parks in Caprica City. As she tries to focus on nothing but her running steps, she can't stop hearing some things Bill said echoing in her head. "You'll never guess who was just here yesterday...I guess he's on leave now, too."
This has always been Kara's favorite park. She used to come here all the time with Zak, and sometimes also Lee. It has a very long, winding trail to run on and a huge fountain in the center with a statue of Aurora which she once got in trouble for trying to swim in when she was little.
Once when they were all here jogging together, she was first stretching and then doing sit-ups in the grass with Zak helping her by holding her feet down. When he saw the wind knock his water bottle over on the ground where it started spilling out and left her to go grab it, Lee kneeled in front of her and suddenly took his place. He said, "Teller" so she would know it was him and not be disoriented when the next sit-up brought her face-to-face with someone else who was holding her feet in place.
"Are you guys ever going to tell me what it means when you say that?" Zak asked.
"No," they both answered.
After they all chuckled a little, Lee added, "Sorry, it's just too funny when it confuses you so much."
Kara runs along the path left foot right foot left right. "Sorry it's just too funny"-
Sometimes it's alarming how well she can remember the feeling of Zak touching her, just the certain way he would smooth his thumb across her face while kissing her or drag his lips so lightly over her skin just breathing warmly against her, as if he hasn't been gone for long at all, but there are other things from that distant past that sometimes still resonate vividly. A hot, pressing crowd in the dark at a concert and an unexpected warning voice behind her, a soft deep voice she knew very well but which in that moment had some kind of shaking and wrong effect on her combined with the feeling of hands taking her waist securely, solid warmth felt through her thin T-shirt for the second they remained there. A shock to the system with a lasting effect lingering into the next moment, lingering even now and making the constant ache she has learned to live with sing sharply.
These memories are not as painful as the others but are more threatening and near. Kara runs and runs to let it slide away, her eyes steely and locked firmly on the path ahead. Lee Adama is in the city and he went to see his father. Left right left right left right. He's the one who's still alive, he's somewhere, and he's near right now. She ignores the thought and processes only the movement of her feet that unconciously grows faster, left right left right leftrightleftright, until her world fills and overflows with just her rhythmic heavy breathing and propelling steps and the bright sun pounding down on her and blindingly filling her periphery on one side.
They were together that day. They were with each other the moment they found out. That was the worst thing.
She and Lee were both off duty and at home with nothing to do, so they caught a movie along with one of his old high school buddies who was visiting in the area. Something called Black Swan that was supposed to be a good thriller with an insane twist in the end and which they knew Zak had no interest in seeing with them. She still remembers that much, but couldn't recall anything that actually happened in the movie anymore.
Then later his friend had to leave for some reason, but they were going to meet up with him again later to hit the bars. They killed time at a store because Lee had to pick up laundry detergent and coffee.
It wasn't like they were doing anything wrong, but that doesn't seem to make any difference now whenever this is what she tries to rationally tell herself. Kara sat in the shopping cart he pushed around the store with a sucker in her mouth, flipping through a sports magazine she'd taken from the front. When she said something teasing to him at one point he leaned the cart up on two wheels for a second as if he was going to throw her out of it; when this made the sucker fall out of her mouth and land sticking to a page of her magazine, they both broke into wild, loud laughter and got an annoyed glance from an old guy passing them in the aisle.
It was after he'd checked out and they were leaving that the phone in Lee's pocket rang.
Twenty minutes later, they had barely moved. They were sitting very still out in the cold on a bench outside the store, Kara sitting far on one end and turned slightly away from him. Lee had finished talking to whoever it was on the phone-some family friend Kara didn't know who was with their mother right now-after asking so many questions in a pleading kind of voice that was a stab right to her heart to hear to try to get all the hows and whys, how does somebody crash their bird in a routine mission like that, like it made any difference. Like he was asking the right person.
Now he was just holding his phone very tightly in his hand, leaning over with his arms drawn in close to himself and crossed, and she was somewhere else as she just stared off into the air seeing nothing. It was the beginning of autumn and she wasn't at all aware of the cold getting into her body, just of her engagement ring turning to ice on her finger and the memories flooding into her head. All the kinds of maneuvers he messed up on his flight test. Any one of them. And her and his brother laughing together all day and at the moment he goes down down all alone in that enclosed little ship. Those were the only hows and whys needed.
Finally she heard Lee take in a shaking breath behind her before he managed to speak. "They told my mom...it happened quickly," he said in a struggling, jagged voice. "He might not even have had a chance to see what was going to happen and be scared."
She just nodded after a while, taking in a soft gasping sort of breath, but she felt like telling him to shut up. He was the one who needed to hear things like this from someone. He was the godsdamn brother, and she was...would now never be...
"Listen, I think I should really get to the house and..." Out of the corner of her eye she saw him shift position for the first time in what felt like hours, moving forward to the edge of the bench as he rubbed his eyes. "My mother..."
She nodded again, still not moving. It didn't even occur to her that he was assuming she'd come, too, until he stayed there and kept looking at her as if waiting for more of a response.
"Kara?" he said with some unvoiced sadness, just wanting her to say something.
Turning inward to face him a little more but still not directly meeting eyes with him, she said softly, "Yeah. Go. Be with your family."
She shifted her eyes to him just long enough to glimpse the shock and deep concern in his eyes before he said, "I can't just-"
"I'm sorry." She cut him off before he could make it any worse, her voice very removed and dead-sounding, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, I just...I can't be there. It's okay, I'll get home. Just go..." With her last words her voice started trailing off, getting weaker, and her head sunk as she stared down at her lap and her hands resting there, the silver band. She didn't know how much longer she could keep from breaking down or whatever she was going to do, she might just implode into dust because she didn't deserve to exist, and she couldn't stand the thought of letting it all finally come out however it was going to come out while he was there.
Lee kept looking at her a while, then shook his head sadly and lifted his hand to touch her shoulder, trying so hard to reach out to her. "Kara..."
Before he could touch her she flinched away from him a little and said quickly but very softly, "No" without even thinking about it, as if his hand was going to burn her. It was the most painful thing she could imagine right now. Her face finally betrayed the inner depth of her devastation then, some tears welling in her eyes as she spoke in a still-quiet voice that somehow sounded begging and a little cruel at the same time. "Don't touch me. Not ever. Please go."
At hearing the words his eyes filled with a very different, regretful kind of despair. She could see he couldn't stand it, but after that was said he knew nothing more he did could do any good.
So with practically visible effort, moving in a way that she could tell just by seeing out of the corner of her eye how hard it was, he turned away from her and didn't let himself say anything more. He got up and walked off to go to his car.
He left his grocery bag sitting on the ground by the end of the bench where he'd been sitting, and for a while Kara stared at it while the chilling breeze blew the plastic around. Stupid little details like this are what she remembers, things like wind pulling at plastic bags and movie posters no longer in bright new colors triggering everything she's pushed away, Lee Adama returning in places she's not supposed to find him because she doesn't think about him. She will not.
Go to part II.
Author: Sara C. (flowrs4ophelia)
Characters & Pairings: Lee/Kara(/Zak)
Rating: R
Summary: Without a war to bring them back together, it takes a lot for Kara and Lee to be able to forgive each other. And themselves.
Notes: This is one of several BSG WIPs that was one of my lowest priorities to finish until recent events have renewed my interest in anything relating to the Zak-Kara-Lee history. This was started long before "Daybreak" and is a totally-not-canon AU, but it's full of flashbacks and is probably inevitably going to be influenced in some small ways by the lovely, shiny new canon.
Oh, and the cracky title won't make sense until part 2, by the way. LOL.
aerilon girls are easy.
Kara is stuck in the slow, sporadically gushing flow of Delphi traffic on a weekend afternoon, her elbow hanging out the open window of her monstrous four-by-four, when she sees the faded old poster for a movie called Black Swan in the window of a little movie rental store on a corner and then looks quickly away before she can remember.
The only time she has spoken to Lee Adama since the day of the funeral was more than four months ago. He was on the Galactica for the decommissioning, and she was in a brig cell.
It made it easier than it could have been to have the bars in between them. Otherwise she might not have been able to face him.
At some point that Lee couldn't identify his life has become strained at the edges, wanting to somehow break out of the confining and orderly shape it's been neatly folded into. Wake up at this time, report for briefings, call this person, perform this mission, wash his uniform. It is all so calculated and safe.
Every once in a while, late in the night after he's had a few or even first thing in the morning when he really doesn't feel like getting up for the same old shit, this gutsy little voice creeps out from the dark inside him and says do it. Do it do it do it do it. Until one day another pilot asks him if he's still thinking about applying for duty on base in Picon and without thinking about what he's saying he responds, "Actually I've decided I'm quitting the service."
His friend is so taken aback he thinks he's kidding at first. After Lee attempts to explain, he has to ask what made him get into the military anyway if it was never what he really wanted.
"I don't know," Lee says. "I guess with the kind of family I came from, it was just what was easy."
And this is a start. But he still isn't sure if he has completely figured out what it is.
She wakes up in the morning, showers and gets dressed and brushes her teeth with the sticking thought: I think I am finished mourning him. This is how she must define her life, the stage of it. Somewhere in the back of her head she keeps track of the time since she last got laid. She lets her hair start growing out a little.
It's been over two years now, but it is still inevitable that when she thinks of being touched at all she thinks of Zak because he was her last serious one. It is sometimes unbearable how painful this can be, shocking how much she can still want him when even the most primal and meaningless urge to feel another body brings her to remember all over again, but there is a part of her that doesn't want this to ever change. It is a way of holding onto him.
There is a certain reluctance to let go in grief itself, and something about acceptance and moving on that senselessly feels cold and inhuman. When the pain of separation is the only remaining connection to someone, it can be desperately clung to despite the misery attached to it. When she thinks about it as much as Kara ever thinks about these things, the idea of healing and progressing forward still seems somehow ridiculous to her. Because her love for him hurts so much now it is holding her back, she must sever herself from him and he must be forgotten because this is the way it works.
But what happens to him? He goes down, into the dark, buried forever, frozen in time, while the girl he was going to marry stays here and her hair looks different now and she no longer belongs to him. And she will be fine without him because that's how it works. And his brother...
This isn't the way it should be. She can't stop thinking that. Maybe for others who experience loss like this, yes. But she cannot help feeling like she has never suffered enough. And so she goes on with the constant hunger and desire, the inclination to have and to be again, that sits familiarly inside her and aches. With the kind of responsibility she must live with, she figures getting used to this is the most that can be expected of her.
I think I am finished mourning him. Whatever the frak that's supposed to mean.
Lee and Kara never ended up meeting during their years at the academy, but their social circles were always connected through several people. Including one Ken Cage who knew pretty much everybody and sends Lee an invitation to his wedding that he wasn't exactly expecting.
He knows Ken probably wouldn't even have thought to send him one if he hadn't happened to run into him a few months ago at a spaceport and mention during the twenty minutes they were shooting the shit that he was about to get married, and at first Lee doesn't think he'll bother going. But after he can't seem to stop thinking about it for a while, he gives up and decides to go.
Just like he predicted, the wedding is almost more of a class reunion, crawling with familiar faces from his old days. But it's not everyone. Even though he literally can't remember anyone he knew at the academy who he doesn't see somewhere in the room at the reception, he cannot get rid of the strong sense that someone is missing.
Then he actually hears someone say it at a nearby table where everyone is laughing over something. "...He has never let that go, but I swear to gods I didn't cheat. Kara Thrace was the one who knew how to frakking rob you at cards, but I wouldn't even know how."
It's too late to tune it out and Lee hears someone saying to her with a laugh, "Starbuck didn't cheat, you were just bad."
"Oh please, that girl was paying rent with what she won at cards. When she paid her rent, gods bless her..."
Lee traces lines through the condensation on his glass, suddenly feeling amazingly foolish for being here.
He and Kara once came up with a code word they could use to cheat while playing a certain card game that involved teams. If one of them made any reference in conversation to Liz Teller of the Picon Panthers, it meant I've got a good hand so don't draw from me anymore.
The next time he had to call her, she picked up and answered, "Sing out," and instead of saying "Hi, it's me" he just identified himself by saying, "Teller."
After that it somehow evolved into an all-purpose code word and sort of an inside joke between the two of them. If one of them muttered it to the other before leaving for the bathroom for a minute while they were in a bar, it meant Don't let Zak have any more alcohol or you get to carry him inside when we take him home.
Once when the three of them went to a concert together, Kara was almost too exhausted to stay on her feet as they were slowly making their way out with the rest of the congested crowd after the show. At one point she sighed heavily and started to lean back against Lee without realizing it was him and not Zak standing directly behind her. He held her waist to steady her but then instantly drew his hands back away and said softly, "Teller," sounding just slightly uncomfortable, so that she blinked and stood up straight again. It's me.
Careful.
Kara gets a wedding invitation from an old friend named Ken Cage. An extra note written by him is added in pen on the inside along with a smiley face: "Only if you think you can behave yourself."
She smirks and mutters, "Asshole," suddenly remembering fondly several of her less polite moments from when she knew Ken that he is probably indirectly referring to. Then she thinks about who else he might be inviting if he thought to put her on the list.
Her smile slowly falls as she stands still for a while. Then she unhesitantly puts it down with the pile of junk mail and throws it away.
Three months later, Kara is taking her second leave since transferring to the Atlantia after Bill's retirement, and while she's home she decides to go surprise him with a visit. He's just Bill now, or sometimes still "Boss" when she feels like it. Whenever she shows up at his place like this he always messes with her by pretending not to be glad to see her and says something like "Great, this is all I need today" or "Glad you're here, I need somebody to shoot my neighbor's dog" in that simultaneously gruff and soft way of his, and then she just rolls her eyes and walks in like she lives there.
Today they sit together on the couch watching a game on TV and smoking cigars, Kara resting her feet up on a table over a mess of newspapers and mail. She is disappointed whenever she catches him at a time the house is actually tidy because she doesn't get to complain about it and it makes her feel like a guest. Even though she's here only occasionally, his house has started to feel more like her home on Caprica than her apartment she's had for years.
"It's funny for you to show up now," Bill eventually says, and she can somehow tell that this is something he's been waiting to say ever since she got here. "You'll never believe who was just here yesterday."
"Never believe? Hmm...the maid?" she says after pretending to ponder.
He laughs, but he soon looks serious again. "Lee."
She freezes in surprise a moment. "Did you have someone kidnap him and drag him here or something?" she says, still joking but failing to make her easiness completely convincing. "I hope they beat the shit out of him while they were at it."
"Hey. He's still my son."
"Last time I saw him that still didn't seem to mean much to him...What the frak, I thought Lee was on the Poseidon now."
"I guess he's on leave right now, too."
Kara goes still and silent again as she processes that. "He came to see you," she says, not as a question, as if she's just trying to get used to the idea by saying it.
"It wasn't the warmest reunion you can imagine. He didn't even really get to the point and say what made him come see me. We just caught up. And very deliberately avoided certain sensitive subjects."
She stays silent, trying to picture such a meeting in her mind. The idea of Lee having been right in this house the day before somehow doesn't seem real.
"He asked about you," Bill then adds casually.
Kara puts on a cold, unconcerned mask. "Did he?"
"Just asked me how your new post is working out for you and if you've been alright." He looks closely at her for a moment. "Him hating me is something I can understand. But the way you and him..."
"I don't...I don't hate him," she says uncomfortably. "I guess I just didn't see what he was really like until things got really tough. He's your son. You don't get off the hook when he's acting like a bastard because you'll always love him anyway. But I don't have to be stuck with him. He's not my family."
He just scrutinizes the look on her face for a few seconds. Then as he gets up to go the kitchen she thinks she hears him mutter, "Sure."
Later that day, Kara feels restless and goes out jogging in one of the biggest parks in Caprica City. As she tries to focus on nothing but her running steps, she can't stop hearing some things Bill said echoing in her head. "You'll never guess who was just here yesterday...I guess he's on leave now, too."
This has always been Kara's favorite park. She used to come here all the time with Zak, and sometimes also Lee. It has a very long, winding trail to run on and a huge fountain in the center with a statue of Aurora which she once got in trouble for trying to swim in when she was little.
Once when they were all here jogging together, she was first stretching and then doing sit-ups in the grass with Zak helping her by holding her feet down. When he saw the wind knock his water bottle over on the ground where it started spilling out and left her to go grab it, Lee kneeled in front of her and suddenly took his place. He said, "Teller" so she would know it was him and not be disoriented when the next sit-up brought her face-to-face with someone else who was holding her feet in place.
"Are you guys ever going to tell me what it means when you say that?" Zak asked.
"No," they both answered.
After they all chuckled a little, Lee added, "Sorry, it's just too funny when it confuses you so much."
Kara runs along the path left foot right foot left right. "Sorry it's just too funny"-
Sometimes it's alarming how well she can remember the feeling of Zak touching her, just the certain way he would smooth his thumb across her face while kissing her or drag his lips so lightly over her skin just breathing warmly against her, as if he hasn't been gone for long at all, but there are other things from that distant past that sometimes still resonate vividly. A hot, pressing crowd in the dark at a concert and an unexpected warning voice behind her, a soft deep voice she knew very well but which in that moment had some kind of shaking and wrong effect on her combined with the feeling of hands taking her waist securely, solid warmth felt through her thin T-shirt for the second they remained there. A shock to the system with a lasting effect lingering into the next moment, lingering even now and making the constant ache she has learned to live with sing sharply.
These memories are not as painful as the others but are more threatening and near. Kara runs and runs to let it slide away, her eyes steely and locked firmly on the path ahead. Lee Adama is in the city and he went to see his father. Left right left right left right. He's the one who's still alive, he's somewhere, and he's near right now. She ignores the thought and processes only the movement of her feet that unconciously grows faster, left right left right leftrightleftright, until her world fills and overflows with just her rhythmic heavy breathing and propelling steps and the bright sun pounding down on her and blindingly filling her periphery on one side.
They were together that day. They were with each other the moment they found out. That was the worst thing.
She and Lee were both off duty and at home with nothing to do, so they caught a movie along with one of his old high school buddies who was visiting in the area. Something called Black Swan that was supposed to be a good thriller with an insane twist in the end and which they knew Zak had no interest in seeing with them. She still remembers that much, but couldn't recall anything that actually happened in the movie anymore.
Then later his friend had to leave for some reason, but they were going to meet up with him again later to hit the bars. They killed time at a store because Lee had to pick up laundry detergent and coffee.
It wasn't like they were doing anything wrong, but that doesn't seem to make any difference now whenever this is what she tries to rationally tell herself. Kara sat in the shopping cart he pushed around the store with a sucker in her mouth, flipping through a sports magazine she'd taken from the front. When she said something teasing to him at one point he leaned the cart up on two wheels for a second as if he was going to throw her out of it; when this made the sucker fall out of her mouth and land sticking to a page of her magazine, they both broke into wild, loud laughter and got an annoyed glance from an old guy passing them in the aisle.
It was after he'd checked out and they were leaving that the phone in Lee's pocket rang.
Twenty minutes later, they had barely moved. They were sitting very still out in the cold on a bench outside the store, Kara sitting far on one end and turned slightly away from him. Lee had finished talking to whoever it was on the phone-some family friend Kara didn't know who was with their mother right now-after asking so many questions in a pleading kind of voice that was a stab right to her heart to hear to try to get all the hows and whys, how does somebody crash their bird in a routine mission like that, like it made any difference. Like he was asking the right person.
Now he was just holding his phone very tightly in his hand, leaning over with his arms drawn in close to himself and crossed, and she was somewhere else as she just stared off into the air seeing nothing. It was the beginning of autumn and she wasn't at all aware of the cold getting into her body, just of her engagement ring turning to ice on her finger and the memories flooding into her head. All the kinds of maneuvers he messed up on his flight test. Any one of them. And her and his brother laughing together all day and at the moment he goes down down all alone in that enclosed little ship. Those were the only hows and whys needed.
Finally she heard Lee take in a shaking breath behind her before he managed to speak. "They told my mom...it happened quickly," he said in a struggling, jagged voice. "He might not even have had a chance to see what was going to happen and be scared."
She just nodded after a while, taking in a soft gasping sort of breath, but she felt like telling him to shut up. He was the one who needed to hear things like this from someone. He was the godsdamn brother, and she was...would now never be...
"Listen, I think I should really get to the house and..." Out of the corner of her eye she saw him shift position for the first time in what felt like hours, moving forward to the edge of the bench as he rubbed his eyes. "My mother..."
She nodded again, still not moving. It didn't even occur to her that he was assuming she'd come, too, until he stayed there and kept looking at her as if waiting for more of a response.
"Kara?" he said with some unvoiced sadness, just wanting her to say something.
Turning inward to face him a little more but still not directly meeting eyes with him, she said softly, "Yeah. Go. Be with your family."
She shifted her eyes to him just long enough to glimpse the shock and deep concern in his eyes before he said, "I can't just-"
"I'm sorry." She cut him off before he could make it any worse, her voice very removed and dead-sounding, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, I just...I can't be there. It's okay, I'll get home. Just go..." With her last words her voice started trailing off, getting weaker, and her head sunk as she stared down at her lap and her hands resting there, the silver band. She didn't know how much longer she could keep from breaking down or whatever she was going to do, she might just implode into dust because she didn't deserve to exist, and she couldn't stand the thought of letting it all finally come out however it was going to come out while he was there.
Lee kept looking at her a while, then shook his head sadly and lifted his hand to touch her shoulder, trying so hard to reach out to her. "Kara..."
Before he could touch her she flinched away from him a little and said quickly but very softly, "No" without even thinking about it, as if his hand was going to burn her. It was the most painful thing she could imagine right now. Her face finally betrayed the inner depth of her devastation then, some tears welling in her eyes as she spoke in a still-quiet voice that somehow sounded begging and a little cruel at the same time. "Don't touch me. Not ever. Please go."
At hearing the words his eyes filled with a very different, regretful kind of despair. She could see he couldn't stand it, but after that was said he knew nothing more he did could do any good.
So with practically visible effort, moving in a way that she could tell just by seeing out of the corner of her eye how hard it was, he turned away from her and didn't let himself say anything more. He got up and walked off to go to his car.
He left his grocery bag sitting on the ground by the end of the bench where he'd been sitting, and for a while Kara stared at it while the chilling breeze blew the plastic around. Stupid little details like this are what she remembers, things like wind pulling at plastic bags and movie posters no longer in bright new colors triggering everything she's pushed away, Lee Adama returning in places she's not supposed to find him because she doesn't think about him. She will not.
Go to part II.