Finding Purpose (7/?)

[nytel]

Title: Finding Purpose (7/?)
Author: Nytel
Rating: R (eventually)
Spoilers: Up to 213 (Epiphanies)
Pairing: Kara/Lee
Genre: Angst/Romance
Summary: When your whole life gets flipped upside down, you need to find a reason to go on.
Word Count: 4,210
Beta:
tracyj23

Disclaimer: I am merely borrowing them. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: This fic is AU after Epiphanies.

Finding Purpose 7

Two weeks later, the fleet was still refining and processing tyllium. The cylons had yet to show up and even though the fleet was set to condition two, ready to jump at practically any moment, mining operations were still in full swing.

Lee knew how much additional stress his pilots were under because of the situation, and he wasn’t surprised to see the rec room packed full every night. There were numerous card games going on, and the alcohol flowed freely… very freely. Normally he would have insisted that they cut back on the excessive gambling and more importantly drinking, but not this time. They all needed a way to unwind, and he would only interfere if the pilots’ nightly escapades began to affect their flying.

Somehow Lee found himself included in the latest night of rowdiness, seated at one of the triad tables with a half-empty drink in front of him. Actually, he only needed to look to his left to find the reason for him being there. Kara had been hounding him for days to relax and take the stick out of his ass. She could be frakking persistent when she wanted to, and he had finally caved, picking tonight mainly because he didn’t have a morning rotation the next day.

Looking down at his watch, he realized that it was technically the next morning already. It was almost 0100 and it wouldn’t be long before what remained of the crew began to reluctantly file out and hit their racks. From the looks of it, nearly all of them would be nursing a hangover in the morning, himself included. It was his… he didn’t even know how many drinks he’d had.

Kara just kept pouring them and he just kept drinking them. He didn’t even think that his glass had ever made it back to being completely empty. At some point around half way or one third of the way full, Kara would fill it again. Just like now. Was she trying to get him drunk? The cards in his hands blurred in front of him - it might be too late.

She grinned just a little too widely when he picked up his glass and drank. He knew that grin. Crap, she had full colors.

“I’m out,” he said, tossing his cards down onto the table after putting his drink back down. It was probably a good decision, because he couldn’t even remember what had been in his hand.

Gaeta gave him an odd look, like he was trying to decide if he should follow Lee’s example, knowing full well that he was playing against Starbuck. In the end, Gaeta took his chance and upped the bet. Lee watched the hand play out in front of him.

Both the Chief and Racetrack folded, leaving only Gaeta against Kara. The poor man didn’t have a chance. He laid down a three on a run, and immediately Kara revealed full colors. The shit-eating Starbuck grin was plastered on her face as she raked her winnings toward her.

Gaeta just sat there, shocked that Kara had the one hand that would beat his. “Un-frakking-believable.”

***

Kara poured herself another drink as the Chief pushed his chair back from the table and stood up.

“Goodnight sirs,” he said.

“ ‘Night Chief,” she said brightly, grinning up at him as she took a gulp from her glass. The rotgut burned down her throat and almost made her cringe.

Tyrol shook his head at her behavior, but a small smile still graced his face.

“ ‘Night Chief,” Lee said. His words were no longer slurring together. She had stopped filling up his glass nearly and hour and a half before. She had been aiming to get him drunk, but not that drunk.

After Tyrol’s departure, only Lee was left at the table with her. She could practically see the wheels turning in his head. He knew that he should go catch some rack time, but then there was the fact that he had a late rotation the next… no, that day.

She smiled as he slouched down a bit in his chair, obviously not leaving. Good, she thought. She had been bugging Lee for the past three or four days to come to the rec room with her. Not only had she been missing his presence at the triad table, but she had also thought it might give her an opportunity.

Something had been eating away at him, and it seemed that he wasn’t going to open up about it, at least not without a little persuasion. She couldn’t, or more accurately wouldn’t, ask him outright. However, if she could get him to spill without asking him, then she would.

Besides, she’d known for a long time how Lee’s tongue seemed to get looser and looser the more he drank. One time they had gone to the bar with Zak and he had somehow managed to get his uptight older brother to let loose, drink a little… okay, a lot. They had all been sufficiently drunk, but Lee had been pissed out of his mind. She’d never heard him talk that much. There had been more than a few things she found out that night, things that she knew Lee wouldn’t normally be willing to divulge. She could only hope that it would work this time.

They settled into an easy silence as the stragglers left the rec room, eventually leaving only them. Kara shifted in her seat and the muscles in her knee constricted with a twinge in pain. She slid her chair back from the table a bit, and turned it so that she was facing Lee. Then she, without thinking at all, lifted her right leg and slipped it onto Lee’s lap. It was as good a resting place as any, or so she told herself.

She nearly jumped when Lee’s one hand came up to rest on her leg, drawing lazy circles with his fingertips. He must really be drunk.

***

As soon as Kara shoved her leg onto his lap, Lee’s hand seemed to be magnetically attracted to it. She looked surprised when he began to let his fingers drift over the thinning material of her cargo pants, but she didn’t say anything. Lee knew that it was completely out of line and entirely inappropriate, for more reasons than just one. Yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

A few seconds later, Kara slid down further into her chair, pushing her leg so that more of it was on him. Lee watched, almost mesmerized as she swirled the remnants of her drink in her glass, the liquid sloshing up the sides, but not quite spilling.

Something was nigglingat the back of his mind, something that he wanted to tell Kara, but had decided it was better not to. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the longer they sat there; the more the urge grew to figure out what it was, so that he could tell her. He concluded that his drunken state was responsible for this urge. But then, wouldn’t Kara be responsible? Seeing as she was the one to get him drunk in the first place? He tried to figure it out, but all the thinking was hurting his head, so he just gave up on it.

It was quiet, and as comfortable as he was just sitting there with Kara, he felt the need to say something. Maybe she had been thinking along the same lines.

“What do you miss?” she asked quietly, looking up at him with drowsy eyes.

“Huh?”

“From before,” she said. He suddenly realized what she meant: from before the end of life as they had known it.

Lee shrugged his shoulders. He missed a lot of things, and it was hard to pinpoint one, especially now. “I don’t know,” he said, honestly unable to come up with a better answer. “Why?” he added. “What do you miss?”

Kara appeared to think about it for a while, but when the words came out just a little too quickly, he knew that she had known her answer all along.

“Painting.”

He could feel one eyebrow rising up in question, a completely involuntary motion. “Painting?” He hadn’t meant to sound skeptical, but it came out that way. “I didn’t know you painted.”

She nodded her head as she continued to swirl her drink.

“Yeah,” she said quietly, a small smile gracing her face. “You should have seen my apartment. I would have taken you there.”

Lee watched as the look on her face changed completely at the same time her whole body seemed to tense. He could tell that she hadn’t meant to say the last part. He let it slide, knowing that it was much safer that way.

Then Kara began to list other stuff that she missed, the first two items being real booze and stogies. As her list grew longer and longer, Lee’s attention wandered. Why didn’t he miss anything? Surely there should be something that he missed from before. He thought about it, ignoring the pain that concentrating caused, but instead his mind began to travel down a completely different set of paths.

“I don’t miss anything,” he said, interrupting Kara’s list at shampoo. “But there’s a lot of stuff that I regret.” He couldn’t believe how bitter his voice sounded, even to his own ears.

“Like what?” Kara asked tentatively, keeping her voice quiet.

“Too much,” he whispered, not even sure if his voice had been audible.

He reached across the table for the near empty bottle of rotgut, and then raised it to his lips, taking a long drink. He’d started this; he might as well finish it.

“Breaking up with Gianne.”

Kara’s hand paused mid-swirl. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.” Her voice sounded weird, like she was straining to keep it steady.

Lee nodded his head. “Yeah.”

“Why’d you break up with her?” Kara asked after a few seconds, her voice seeming quieter than before.

Lee gulped. Did he really want to tell Kara this? Then again, she’d seen him at his absolute worst already.

“She was pregnant,” he said, dropping his eyes downward. But that didn’t really work well for avoiding Kara, seeing as her leg was still resting firmly on his lap. When he didn’t hear Kara respond in any way, he kept talking, feeling the need to explain himself.

“I was scared,” he said, surprised that he had done so. That was the first time he’d ever admitted it, even to himself. “I didn’t know if I was ready to be a father.” She still hadn’t said anything. “If I could change that, I would.”

Eventually, when the silence became too much to bear, he looked up. He was scared at what he would see in Kara’s eyes, but he was unable to stop his own actions.

Whatever he had been expecting to see, the look on her face wasn’t it. She looked… sympathetic? No, there was no way that was right. How could she sympathize with him over that, over what he’d done?

“We’ve all made mistakes,” she said with a haunted look in her eyes. It seemed like she was lost in a memory.

A few seconds later, her whole demeanor changed as she snapped out of it. “At least you regret it,” she said. “It’d be worse if you didn’t.”

He nodded. “It’s only one thing on a very long list,” he said, the bitterness creeping back into his voice again.

“What else do you regret?” Kara prompted, even though it was very unlike her to do so.

The thought that had been bugging him, the thing that he had pushed to the back of his mind, it came flooding back to the surface. The next thing he knew the words were falling out of his mouth and he wouldn’t have been able to stop them if he tried.

“It was cold,” he said, averting his eyes from Kara automatically. “It was so cold.” He nearly shuddered as he remembered the icy feeling sinking into his bones.

“Everything was just so hopeless,” he said, his voice turning completely sullen. “I mean… now that I know… about Cain, I understand why they did it, or were going to do it, but then… when it was happening, I just didn’t want to fight anymore.” He paused to take a deep breath.

“I let go of the hole in my flight suit.”

***

Kara swore that her heart stopped beating upon hearing Lee’s confession.

Previously he had told her that he didn’t want to make it back alive. He never said anything about letting go of the hole in his flight suit… taking action to end his life! The true depth of his situation finally clicked into place and she didn’t know what to do.

It was obvious that that was what had been eating away at Lee for the past few weeks. She knew better than most people how cancerous something like that could be when you kept it bottled up. She knew very well.

“I know what it’s like,” she said eventually. At her words, Lee lifted his head to look at her again. “Not wanting to live.”

A worried look descended upon his face and if she wasn’t so caught up in the conversation, she might have thought it was cute, especially with the way it made his forehead wrinkle.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, seemingly forgetting about all of his own problems for a moment.

“It was a long time ago, Lee,” she said quietly.

“When Zak died?’ he asked tentatively.

She shook her head. “Before that.”

Lee nodded, obviously waiting for her to continue. He had spilled his guts, and she supposed that made it her turn to do the same.

“I was in the amateur pyramid league, and I was good… really good. I got drafted for the pros midway through the season. Our team made it to the finals in the playoffs and … in the last five minutes, one of the players from the other team fouled.”

Kara paused to take a deep breath. She really didn’t like to think about the next part. “He body checked me into one of the goals, hard. I landed at a weird angle, and the next thing I knew … my kneecap wasn’t where it was supposed to be.” Her last words came out a bit choked, her throat having tightened up near the end.

“Pyramid was my life,” she said, looking straight at Lee. “There was nothing else left for a frak-uplike me.” Lee opened his mouth to cut her off, but she didn’t let him. “I wanted to die,” she said, the words coming out easier than she had expected them to.

“Kara,” Lee began quietly. “Did you…”

“Try to kill myself?” she asked her voice taking on a caustic tone. “Yeah.” She wasn’t going to tell him where, or how, but she had told him.

He squeezed her leg lightly, whether out of encouragement, or if it was a completely unconscious move, she couldn’t tell.

“You just… as stupid as this sounds… you need to find a reason to go on.” It did sound cheesy, but it was true. Everyone needed a reason to live.

Lee was looking at her… not oddly, just questioningly. “What was yours?”

Kara smiled. “Flying.”

***

Lee tried to return her smile, but he could only achieve a small lifting of the corners of his mouth. For the most part, his mind was still stuck on a previous part of their conversation. She had tried to kill herself.

He really didn’t know how to take that. He knew that Kara had been through more than anyone should have to in their life, but he never thought that … He held back a shudder. He realized what it felt like now, when someone close to you told you that they wanted to die. No wonder Kara had been so frakking worried about him.

“Do you… uh, do you want to talk about it?” Lee asked, having no idea how she would react to that. Kara wasn’t one to talk normally, but maybe about something this important…

Kara shook her head slightly. “No,” she said. She wasn’t mad or upset, instead oddly calm and almost detached. “It was a long time ago,” she said before pausing for a few seconds. “Besides, hashing through it once is enough.”

Her words almost managed to catch him off guard. She’d already talked about it?

“Zak?” he asked, although he was almost certain that his guess was right. Kara wasn’t close with that many people, and hadn’t been for most of her life.

Lee watched as Kara nodded her head once, the movement barely detectable. “Yeah,” she said sadly, the haunted look returning to her eyes. The feeling of the moment was broken when she raised her glass to her lips and tilted her head back, finally finishing off her drink.

“You miss him don’t you?” Lee asked, even though it was the dumbest question he could have asked.

“Of course I do,” Kara said, her look turning harsh. “I loved him Lee. I can’t just forget about him.”

“That came out wrong,” Lee added hastily. “You still think about him though, right?”

“Yeah,” Kara said, her gaze returning back to normal along with her voice. For a few minutes she just stared at the empty glass in her hand. Eventually she asked, “Do you?” Her voice was more hesitant than he had ever heard it.

It took Lee’s muddled mind a brief second to remember what they had been talking about, but when he did he nodded. “Yes,” he admitted quietly. “Things remind me of him sometimes.”

Kara gave him a small smile. “Yeah,” she said quietly, only half looking up at him. “Me too.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Lee said, clearly reading the guilt behind her eyes for what it was. “He would have passed anyway.”

“Yeah right,” she said sarcastically.

Lee sat up a little straighter, trying to figure out why the hell Kara had just said that. She had to know the truth, the way the Colonial Academy worked behind the scenes… didn’t she? He must have told her at some point, but by the way she was acting… he hadn’t.

“It wasn’t,” Lee repeated, his words becoming more forceful to try and get his point across.

“How can you say that?” she asked suddenly, her face becoming distorted with a myriad of emotions, self-digust and anger among them. “I passed him when I should have failed him. I signed his frakking death warrant!”

Lee felt his chest get tight as he listened to Kara. Gods, it wasn’t her …

“Don’t say that it wasn’t my fault.”

***

She was responsible for Zak’s death in every way possible. She knew that; she’d lived with the guilt for nearly three years and would keep living with it for the rest of her life. Lee had no right to try and lessen her penance.

“It wasn’t,” Lee said, traces of anger seeping into his voice. Great, like they needed a drunken fight.

She opened her mouth, intending to tell him to go to hell, but he held up one hand and started to talk, effectively stopping her.

“Just listen,” he demanded, reverting to his CAG voice. “Even if you had failed Zak, he would have been in that viper, and he would have crashed.”

Kara started to talk again, planning on making some comment about how being drunk obviously affected Lee’s logic more than she would have ever expected it to.

“No Kara, hear me out. If you’d failed Zak, they would have simply retested him privately, and then passed him. I’ve seen it done a half a dozen times with the children of high profile Fleet members. The son or daughter fails their flight test, or almost fails, and they’ll retest them again later. The second time with no witnesses so they can up the scores and say it was because there was ‘less stress’.”

“No,” Kara said, her voice sounding too shaky for her liking. “I passed him. I put him in that viper. I killed him.”

“No you didn’t Kara,” Lee responded quietly. “It was probably better that it happened the way it did. At least then he was passed because someone loved him, and not because of who his dad was.”

Her head was beginning to spin. Why was he doing this? Turning everything upside down by telling her?

“Why are you telling me this,” she said meeting his gaze full on. “Why now?”

“I thought you knew,” he replied quietly, squeezing her leg again lightly. “I thought that might have been the reason you passed him in the first place, because you knew that he would pass no matter what.”

“So for years I’ve been blaming myself for something that I didn’t cause?” It took all of her effort to keep her voice from cracking.

“I’m sorry Kara. I thought that you knew, or else I would have told you sooner.”

She still couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that it wasn’t her fault. There was no way that she should have passed Zak to begin with, but his death wasn’t entirely her fault. If she had failed him… not only would it have broken his heart, but it wouldn’t have even saved his life.

“Kara?” Lee asked, keeping his voice quiet. “You okay?”

What the hell was she supposed to say to that?

“I don’t know,” she said, looking down to where her fingers were playing with a stray thread on her pants. It was true, she honestly didn’t know. Should she feel happy that she had someone, or something else to blame for Zak’s death? She supposed it meant that she could let go of some of the guilt, but it would change hardly anything. He’d still be dead; she’d still miss him…

“I just… need to, um, let it sink in.”

“Okay,” Lee whispered.

She nearly jumped when his hand began to trace invisible lines on her leg again. She could feel goose bumps rising on her skin, despite the fact that there was material separating his fingers from her shin. It should have felt wrong… only it didn’t.

***

Lee watched, very worried as Kara began to stare off into space. He didn’t regret telling her - she’d needed to know - but he wished it had been easier on her. She really had loved Zak and he’d just shifted the foundation of her complete understanding and acceptance of what had happened to him.

A few minutes went by in complete and utter silence before she said something.

“That’s why you blamed your Dad.” She turned her head to look at him again.

Lee nodded. “Partially.”

“It wasn’t his fault either.”

“Not really,” Lee replied. “It’s not like he would have called and ordered them to pass Zak or something ridiculous like that.”

Kara continued to look at him, clearly awaiting a further explanation.

“But I wasn’t only blaming him because the system is frakked, I was blaming him because all of the pressure he put on us as kids too. ‘A man isn’t a man until he wears the wings of viper pilot’,” he said, mimicking his dad’s voice much like he had done when he’d come aboard Galactica before the attack.

“He said that?” Kara asked, looking at him incredulously.

“Yeah he did. But I don’t think he really realized what he was doing, as stupid as that sounds.” Lee paused for a moment. “Or maybe I just convinced myself of that so that I could forgive him.”

“You wanted to forgive him,” Kara stated. “Your dad’s a good man, Lee.”

He gave her a small smile. “I know.”

This time it was Lee who got lost in his thoughts; remembering why he’d despised his father after Zak’s death, all of the things he’d said to him after the funeral, then slowly forgiving him later, piece by piece as he made his father work for the forgiveness.

His brother’s death was something that had haunted him for a long time. But he had finally managed to let go of that after the end of the worlds.The end of the worlds… gods he was glad that Zak didn’t have to experience that, it was the only good thing about his death. It had spared him from this.

“What?” Kara asked, suddenly breaking his reverie.

“Huh?”

“You said something. Something about ‘it spared him’.”

Lee was taken aback; he hadn’t realized that he’d spoken out loud. “Zak,” he said quietly after a moment’s hesitation. “Sometimes I can’t help but be thankful that he was spared this, witnessing the near annihilation of the human race, and then having to live a life of survival.”

“He wasn’t naïve or innocent Lee,” Kara said, getting defensive once again. “He could have handled it.”

“I know that,” Lee said quickly. “I just remember how happy he was all of the time. This would have changed him.”

Kara nodded her head in reluctant agreement. “Yeah, but this has changed everyone.”

TBC

Chapter 1    Chapter 2     Chapter 3    Chapter 4    Chapter 5    Chapter 6