Finding Purpose (8/?)
Title: Finding Purpose (8/?)
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: 3, 025
Beta:
tracyj23
Disclaimer: I am merely borrowing them. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: This fic is AU after Epiphanies.
Finding Purpose 8
Kara woke up to the sound of Lee swearing under his breath as he stumbled down the ladder from her bunk. She grinned wryly-he didn’t do hangovers well.
As she listened to him fumble around in his locker, she moved her leg to straighten it. Her knee protested with a sharp pang and she bit back a groan. Rolling onto her back, she shifted her position and alleviated some of the pain-not much, but it seemed to be enough.
A devilish grin ghosted across her face as she realized that having moved, she could now see out through the gap between the curtain and the edge of the bunk. She watched silently as Lee rummaged through his locker some more before stripping out of his boxers and stepping in to a new pair.
It was a guilty pleasure that Kara had. She wrote it off as having reached the end of the worlds and only having so many men left to admire. She was a woman after all, and since she wasn’t getting any she might as well look her share, even if that meant staring at her best friend’s ass, his very nice ass…
She closed her eyes and forced her thoughts back onto a slightly more appropriate path. She would let herself look, but nothing else. It really wasn’t the smartest pact she had ever made with herself; it tested her willpower way too much. But going any further than looking would be a disaster. Not only would it ruin their friendship-she cringed as she remembered how Colonial Day had ended-but it would also mean betraying the only person who had ever truly loved her.
Her thoughts drifted back to the conversation that she’d had with Lee only hours before. What he’d told her still hadn’t sunk it. How was she just supposed to find out the truth and then be completely okay with it? For years she had blamed herself. Hell, she had known that it was her fault. But wasn’t it still, at least partially? It was wrong to pass Zak, period. Whether or not he would have been retested didn’t mean anything.
Kara’s head began to pound and she had to bite her tongue to stop from screaming in frustration as a million different ‘what ifs’ ran through her mind. The man that she’d loved had died, and she had played a part in his death-that much would never change.
A single tear escaped from her eye and rolled down her cheek. She brushed it away angrily. It was confusing, too confusing. Gods, thinking about it in a semi-hungover state probably wasn’t making it any better. Eventually she’d come to terms with it, and that would have to be enough.
***
Lee did his best to ignore the pounding in his head as he changed into his flight suit, but he was doing a crappy job of it. He rarely drank as much as he had the night before, and now he remembered why. Even the slightest movements made it feel like someone was drilling in to the base of his skull at an excruciatingly slow rate, forcing him to feel every increment of pressure.
Unable to take it any longer, Lee bent over and began to search through the contents at the bottom of his locker. He was hoping that by some miracle he’d still have a bottle of painkillers left somewhere, even though he was almost certain that he’d used them up nearly two weeks ago, after his first workout since the resurrection ship had been destroyed. That had hurt, but not nearly as much as this.
He felt the sudden urge to blame Kara, but he knew it was just his tired and hungover body talking. It wasn’t really her fault; it wasn’t like he couldn’t have stopped her from refilling his glass at any time. Come to think of that, why hadn’t he? Lee let out a quiet groan-because it was Kara, that’s why. He could rarely, if ever, say no to her, even when she wasn’t asking explicitly.
“Damn it!” Lee said, forgetting the need to be quiet. There was nothing at the bottom of his locker except a spare pair of boots and some stuff that had fallen off the shelf.
“Shut up,” he heard Kara growl from his right. “Some people are trying to sleep.”
He nearly laughed as he realized that he wasn’t the only cranky person in the room.
“Morning sunshine,” he said sarcastically.
She pulled back the bunk curtain half way so that she could glare at him properly. “Do you have to be so loud?” she asked, a downright peeved look plastered on her face.
Lee shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t care,” he said, his voice dropping a level despite his words. “Besides, I’m pretty sure it’s revenge anyway.”
“Revenge for what?” Kara asked, looking thoroughly pissed now.
“For this,” he said, pointing at his head. “For the hangover from hell.”
She smirked at him, an action he met with a half mocking glare. Or at least he tried to, but that turned into a grimace of pain when maintaining the glare hurt too much. He thought he saw a sympathetic look pass over Kara’s face, though he might have been mistaken because by the time the thought had crossed his mind the look was gone.
Lee brought one hand up to massage at his temple, squinting his eyes shut as he did so. When he opened them again, all he saw was a small white thing coming straight for his face. He reacted automatically, moving his head to the side and bringing his hand up to catch whatever it was.
Turning it over in his hand he saw that it was a bottle of pills, painkillers to be specific, very strong painkillers. His gazed shifted to Kara who was still lying in his bunk.
“Here,” he said quietly, making to throw them back at her.
“No,” she said, looking up at him. “Take one.”
He shook his head. “I can’t,” he said quietly. “Kara, they’re for your knee.”
This time it was Kara who shrugged. “So.”
“So…” Lee said, drawing out his word to get his point across. “So, I can’t take them.”
“Why not?” Kara asked in an agitated voice, pushing herself up into a sitting position. “They’re painkillers Lee, they kill pain. Knee pain, headache pain, hangover pain… any pain.”
He winced involuntarily as Kara’s voice got louder. “No,” he said sternly. “I’m not taking any.”
“Well why the hell not?” Kara questioned. “When I run out I can go get more from Cottle. You can’t.”
She did have a point…
“Plus CAP will be a bitch,” she stated.
Okay, she had two points.
He looked down at the container in his hands, turning it over a few times as he thought about it. He really shouldn’t…
“Lee, take the gods damned pill before I shove it down your throat!”
His eyebrows rose automatically as he turned to look at her, an amused smile on his face. Only Kara could be sitting in his bunk, hair still tousled from sleep while she threatened him and fixed him with a glare like there was no tomorrow.
“Fine,” he said, trying his best to withhold a smirk, avoiding dwelling on the images that thinking of Kara in his bunk brought to mind. He took one pill and promptly swallowed it before tossing the container back at Kara, narrowly missing her head.
She picked it up from where it had landed on the mattress. She pulled out one pill for herself before setting the container back on the shelf beside her. Lee watched as she painfully swallowed the pill without water. He wasn’t sure how she hadn’t managed to master that yet, especially given how many times she’d landed herself in a situation that required her to take some sort of medication.
“What?” she asked angrily as she realized that he was staring at her.
Lee held back a chuckle. “Nothing,” he said, faking sincerity as he began to buckle up his flight suit.
She rolled her eyes at him and he had to fight back another laugh. Who the hell knew that fighting with your best friend could be so much fun? But then, they weren’t really fighting, though they’d been known to do that too.
“What are you smiling at?” Kara asked as she levered herself out of bed. Lee couldn’t help but think that it looked painful, and another wave of guilt washed over him.
“Lee?”
“Sorry,” he said, breaking out of his thoughts. “Just thinking.”
She gave him a wary look, but didn’t question him on it, and for that he was grateful. He reached into his locker and pulled out his gloves from the top shelf.
“What do you want me to do today?” she asked suddenly, opening up her locker and pulling out a fresh pair of tanks.
Lee shrugged. “I don’t know. You did the flight schedules yesterday right?” he asked.
Kara nodded.
“I guess you can start working on the maintenance reports for Tigh,” Lee said. It was technically his job, but since she was grounded the Old Man had delegated some extra duties to Kara, including taking care of some of Lee’s paperwork, deeming that it was too much for him alone. There were a lot of extra CAPs he now had to organize so that they could recover the tyllium they needed.
“’Kay,” Kara said through a yawn. “Then the chief needs to see me about something.”
Lee closed his locker door and turned to look at Kara. “About what?”
Kara shrugged. “I don’t know, he mentioned it last night.”
Lee tried to remember back, but honestly couldn’t recall the Chief saying anything of the sort. Actually, now that he thought about it, there were more than a few parts that were blurry and hard to recollect.
“You’d better go,” Kara said, turning to look at him.
“Huh?” he asked, his mind still not fully functioning.
She hobbled over to him and grabbed his wrist, bringing it up in front of his face. It took a few moments for his brain to ignore the feeling that touching Kara brought, but when he did he glanced at his watch.
“Shit,” he swore as he darted across the room for the hatch. He could hear Kara laughing at him as he exited the bunkroom at almost full speed-he had about three minutes to make it down to the hanger bay.
***
Lee entered into the pilot’s head a few hours later, desperately wanting a shower. He liked flying, but he hated the way he felt when he came off a rotation-too warm and sweaty, enough so that the rubber-like material of his flight suit seemed to suction onto any inch of bare skin that it could find.
Thankfully CAP had been completely uneventful. He wasn’t sure if he could have handled anything other than a basic rotation in his condition. The painkillers that Kara had given him had helped, but his head was still throbbing.
However, with the exception of his physical condition, he felt good, and that in itself was odd. He couldn’t remember the last time that he had felt completely okay, and he knew he had Kara to thank for that.
Lee sighed as he stripped out of his flight gear and headed for the nearest empty shower stall. He didn’t know what he’d do without her. She’d been there for him when no one else had, and he’d told her things that he thought were secrets he would carry with him to his grave. He really didn’t deserve Kara, but he was glad that he had her as a friend. She meant a hell of a lot to him, more than he would ever let himself admit.
He turned the water on and stepped under the spray, quickly working to wash away the grime before he was due for a shift in CIC. It was quite possibly the shortest shower that he’d ever taken, with maybe the exception of the first few days after the cylon attacks. He wished that he had time for a longer one, but he still needed to grab something to eat and make it down to CIC before the shift change.
Somehow he did manage to accomplish all that, and entered into CIC only minutes before he was supposed to relieve the Admiral. He wasn’t surprised to see his father standing next to the dradis console, but he was surprised to see the president standing next to him.
“Captain Apollo,” she said brightly as she spotted him.
“Madam President,” he responded automatically, taking the time to salute his father before moving to stand beside her. “What brings you to Galactica?” he asked, hoping that he wasn’t supposed to know the answer to that already.
She smiled softly at him. “The admiral and I were just going to go over some of the information from the latest raptor recon missions.”
Lee nodded his head; of course she would be involved in that. They had recently started scouting all of the nearby systems, determining which ones, if any, had valuable resources that they might be able to use. For the first time they had the luxury of doing this, seeing as the cylons weren’t showing up practically every other day. It relieved a lot of pressure from the fleet.
“Have you decided where we’re going to jump next?” Lee asked, briefly glanced down at the scattered reports on the console.
It was his father who answered. “No. We’re waiting for Racetrack and Beehive to return, then we’ll have all of the information.”
Lee nodded. “Didn’t they just jump a few minutes ago?” he asked, looking up at the wall clock. He was sure that was what had been on the schedule.
Adama nodded. “Yes. But the president and I have other things to discuss.”
Lee nodded.
“We’ll be in the conference room. When Racetrack jumps back tell her to meet us there with whatever information she has.”
“Yes, sir,” Lee said briskly, responding automatically to the Admiral’s authoritative tone.
“You have the deck.”
Lee nodded again; stepping aside for the president to collect the remaining reports she’d been looking at. Just as she gathered them all up in her arms, Lee caught a small flash of something appearing on the dradis screen above him. Looking up he saw that it had a colonial signal. What the frak?
“It’s Racetrack sir,” the petty officer on duty said, though which ‘sir’ she was referring to, Lee didn’t know. He could only assume that it was his father.
“She shouldn’t be back yet. Something happened,” Adama said, sharing a concerned look with his son.
Lee felt his heart rate increase as the adrenaline kicked in. Something was going on, he could feel it.
“Patch her through over the speakers,” his father ordered, moving back to the dradis console and taking up his ‘commanding’ stance.
Lee listened carefully, trying to make out Racetrack’s frantic words over the connection.
“Galactica, Racetrack. We found a frakking cylon fleet.”
The tension in all of CIC suddenly increased with her words.
“I don’t think they saw us, but we got a pretty good look at them. There are two base stars and another ship. I don’t know what the third thing is, but I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“Another resurrection ship?” the president asked, her voice tense with worry.
“No,” Lee responded quietly. “I don’t think so.”
“It isn’t very big… I just, I don’t know. I think we might have got a few recon photos though. I can’t be sure, we jumped out of there as soon as we could.”
Lee watched as his father picked up phone from underneath the planning table, effectively breaking off the direct connection from the raptor to the speakers.
“You did the right thing Lieutenant,” he said reassuringly. “I need you to land and bring your surveillance package to the tactical room immediately.”
***
Less than ten minutes later Lee found himself waiting in the tactical room along with the president, Colonel Tigh, his father and a technician. So much for his shift in CIC-Gaeta was taking it now.
Lee stood at attention near the central table, silently wishing that Racetrack would hurry up. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the hatch opened and Lt. Edmonson walked in.
“Sirs,” she said, saluting in their general direction.
She walked over and handed the surveillance camera to the technician and he got to work, attaching it to the projector to see if they had indeed managed to capture any shots of the ship.
It wasn’t long before a blurry picture showed up on the screen. You could tell that it was a ship, but that was about it. Then the technician must have done something to resolve the picture, because it suddenly came into focus.
Lee could practically feel the blood rush from his face, not so much out of fear, but because it forced him to remember a day he would rather forget.
“Lee,” his father said, his voice full of concern. It was enough to bring him back to the present.
“Sorry sir,” he said quietly, but he didn’t remove his gaze from the picture. He couldn’t recall that whole block of time very well, but he was fairly certain that was what he thought it was.
“What is it?” the president asked gravely. Lee could feel her walking to stand beside him, giving her a better view of the screen.
“Captain,” the admiral said, his voice utterly commanding. “Do you recognize this ship?”
“I…” He thought he did, but he couldn’t be sure, and this wasn’t a time for maybes. “Get Captain Thrace down here right now,” he ordered, his voice taking on a hard edge as he looked over at the technician.
The man nodded his head and placed the page over the intercom. Lee didn’t know for sure, but he knew that Kara would.
TBC
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