BSG fic: Bridging the Gaps (pg)
Title: Bridging the Gaps
Author: sabaceanbabe
Rating: PG
Word count: about 4,200
Pairing and characters: Lee/Kara, Helo, Zarek
Spoilers: general for s1 and 2, up to Home 2
Author’s note: This was written for widget285 for the BSG Hiatus Ficathon. The request was Lee; Lee/Kara; Lee/Zarek (gen or slash); … if someone wants to write a fic that’s set between “Home, pt. 2” and “Final Cut,” I wouldn’t complain; spoilers to: Pegasus 2.10; 3 things wanted: angst, backstory, interesting use of secondary characters; 3 things not wanted: babies, excessive sap, characters acting like 12 year old girls. I tried to hit on as many of these points as possible without it sounding contrived, so hopefully I succeeded and you like your fic. This is a serious departure for me, since this has nothing to do with Helo/Sharon but is all about Lee/Kara (well, and just plain Lee). A big “THANK YOU” goes to leda13, ancarett, and weissman for the beta (and to ancarett for the title, ‘cause I just couldn’t come up with a decent name for this puppy). You guys are the bestest. :)
Widget, man, I hope you like it.
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Lee was on the hangar deck at shift change, looking for Tyrol, when he was distracted from his search by the arrival of several of his pilots returning from CAP, chief among them Kara. But then, it seemed Kara distracted him whenever she appeared, so that was nothing new.
“Damn, Helo. I thought you were qualified in that thing,” she was saying with a smirk and a light punch to Agathon’s arm, perfectly aimed for the new Viper patch on his sleeve. According to the man’s service profile, he was qualified in a Viper and, since they currently had a greater need for Viper pilots than Raptor pilots, or even Raptor ECOs, Lee had assigned Helo and Hotdog as Kara’s wingmen for the CAP this morning. As Lee watched, the other pilots unaware of his presence, Helo conspicuously massaged his arm and stuck his tongue out at Kara. She laughed. “Maybe later, Raptorboy.”
“Do you believe her?” Helo turned to Hotdog, his tone outraged. “Bawls me out for covering up her sloppy flying in one breath and propositions me in the next.” Helo rolled his eyes, a look of long-suffering patience on his handsome face. Hotdog looked uncomfortable.
Unconsciously, Lee frowned. He had to wonder just what kind of relationship Kara and Helo shared, seeing them like this. They had been on Galactica together for two years and Lee well knew how upset she had been when Agathon had been reported missing in action, presumed dead, even if no one else had seen it.
Poor Hotdog didn’t know what to make of the pair of them and Lee wasn’t surprised when Kara laughed at his unease. None of the nuggets, with the notable exception of Kat, were comfortable enough with the Great Starbuck to tease her like that - sloppy flying, my ass - and not even Kat was comfortable with Helo. They all tended to give him a wide berth, not knowing what to think of a man who could love a toaster.
For that matter, Lee didn’t know what to think of him, either. He hoped Helo could be trusted; Kara swore that he could be, but then, she’d trusted Sharon, too. That isn’t fair, Adama. Kara isn’t the only one who trusted her. The appearance of another copy, one that claimed the Cylons didn’t control her, even though she was a Cylon…
Lee’s attention was drawn back to the trio when Hotdog ran after the Chief, who had just entered the hangar. Well, at least I know where Tyrol is, now, he thought. Kara and Helo were still talking, their expressions serious, the teasing gone.
“…gave me a clean bill of health. What about you, Kara? Was he able to figure out what the Cylons did to you?”
A chill wind blasted through Lee. He knew Kara had been injured on Caprica, held by the Cylons for a brief time, but this was the first time he’d heard that the Cylons might have done something to her, harmed her in some way more profound than a bullet in her side. He stopped, torn between alerting them to his presence and continuing to eavesdrop, seemingly the only way he was going to learn anything about what had happened to his friend when she’d been back home.
She looked away from Helo with a grimace. “I haven’t seen the old quack.”
“What? Kara, what the frak? They performed some kind of surg-” She hit him in the arm again, this time a real blow, accompanied by a hurried look around to see who might have overheard their conversation. Her eyes landed on Lee, her mobile features shading from unease to guilt to anger, and he felt himself flush, caught.
He raised an eyebrow, silently dared her to answer Helo’s comment. She glared up at Helo and said, enunciating her words like a staccato hail of bullets, “Karl. Shut. The frak. Up.” She looked back at Lee, then, one brow raised, daring him to say something. She had donned her best Triad face and now the only thing he could read was the defiant challenge that she wanted him to see; Lee knew she had disobeyed the Commander’s orders by not getting checked out, but he got the feeling that had nothing to do with her response to Agathon.
Agathon’s gaze drifted from Lee and then back to Kara. “Go to Cottle, Kara. Don’t be stupid.” Lee couldn’t decide if the man was stupid himself for baiting her like that or if he was smarter than anyone gave him credit for. Either way, the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice said that he was clearly concerned about her, about what the toasters might have done to her, and suddenly Lee was worried.
“Captain Adama, please report to CIC. Apollo, report to CIC.”
The sound of Dee’s voice over the intercom distracted him and when he returned his attention to Kara and Helo, Kara was gone, leaving Lee and Helo staring at each other. Lee nodded, turned and left, all thought of speaking to the Chief forgotten.
***
Lee could hear the bar on Cloud Nine before he ever got near it. Even through layers of thick soundproofing, the place was so crowded, so busy that the rumble of voices could be heard nearly a click away. It figured that he’d pick such a busy “night” to get away and be alone for a bit. All he wanted was to be someplace where he didn’t know anyone, where he could relax instead of being constantly on, even if that meant being in a room full of strangers.
Before opening the door, he glanced down at his borrowed civilian attire, although borrowed wasn’t precisely the right word. The clothes he wore now hadn’t been borrowed from anyone in particular so much as requisitioned from ship’s stores, having been left behind by pilots and crew Lee privately believed were so much luckier than those who had survived. He knew nothing of the man who had once laid claim to the trousers and sweater that he now wore, nor did he want to.
A solid wall of sound and smell hit him when he finally stepped through the door, not at all an unpleasant thing. It had been years since he’d been in a bar like this, his only intention to get drunk and maybe let some woman take advantage of him. In fact, if he recalled it correctly, the last time had been on Picon with Kara and some friends from the flight academy, back in her teaching days. He smiled at the memory, almost wishing that she were with him now. But that wouldn’t help, since she was part of the problem from which he wanted - needed - to distance himself, if only for a few hours.
Praying that he wouldn’t see Tom Zarek, whom he’d been avoiding all day, Lee scanned the crowd once his vision adjusted to the murky gloom, the result of a cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke through which the relatively dim overhead lights filtered combined with the nighttime mode of the ship’s cycle. Haunting music swirled around him and pulled him fully into the room.
Three faces jumped out at him: a pretty woman with honey blonde hair who elbowed her way to the bar; an ebony-skinned man playing a piano in the corner, clearly so caught up in melody and descant that he was no longer aware of anyone or anything else; and Karl Agathon, seated at a small table near the pianist. He felt as though, if they existed at all, the gods were laughing at him.
His first thought was to slip as quickly through the crowd as he could to the opposite side of the room, away from Agathon. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone who would recognize him, have expectations of him. But then he changed his mind, decided he wasn’t disappointed to find Agathon here, after all. The man knew Kara, knew most, if not all, of what had happened to her on Caprica. He might be willing to answer questions…
Lee made his way to the bar, slid in beside the pretty woman he’d noticed a moment before, close enough to be certain that she was soft in all the right places. She spared a quick glance for him as she left with her drink and he smiled at her. A whiff of her perfume penetrated the smoky atmosphere as she drifted away.
“What’ll you have, son?”
Lee looked at the bartender, a tiny woman, probably about his father’s age. “Give me a bottle of whatever he’s having,” he gestured toward Agathon, who sipped at an amber-colored liquid, lost in thought, “and a glass.”
“Aquavit it is,” she said with a raised brow and a smile as she turned to retrieve his order. Lee’s eyes roamed over the bottles behind the bar; there wasn’t much selection and it would only get worse as time dragged on. “Here you go.” She winked at him. “He’s already turned away a couple of pretty ladies… Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
Lee laughed and shook his head, accepting the full bottle and the empty glass. The woman could believe whatever she wanted. “What do I owe you?” Money was becoming less and less common in such transactions as people began to realize that they needed soap or socks more, but it wasn’t extinct yet.
“What do you have?”
“Couple of jubals and a bar of chocolate.”
Her eyes brightened at that. “Mmm… I’ll take the chocolate and we’ll call it even.”
Lee dug into his pocket and pulled out a slightly softened bar of dark chocolate that he’d saved from Kobol. He’d intended to share it with Kara, if they ever got some simultaneous down time, but it hadn’t happened yet and it was going to a good cause - liquor to hopefully loosen Agathon’s tongue so Lee could get some answers.
He made his way over to Agathon’s table, hooked the only empty chair with his foot, and sat. The other man looked up at that, one brow raised, but he didn’t say anything. Lee smiled and poured a finger of aquavit into his glass, then refilled Agathon’s. He imagined that he could feel the bartender watching them and was truly amused for the first time since they’d come back from Kobol.
“Did you want something?” Helo finally asked, leaning back in his chair, not offering any kind of deference to a superior officer. The almost prickly attitude reminded Lee of Kara and he wondered again just how close the two of them were, a little ashamed of himself for the jealousy he felt.
“What? No salute? No ‘sir?’” He took a drink, watched Helo over the rim of his glass.
The man offered up a sardonic smile. “Nope. Not in the mood.” His eyes never left Lee’s as he swirled the liquor around in his own glass. “I’m off duty.”
Lee noticed for the first time that Helo also wore civilian clothes. “Looks like we’re both looking for a little anonymity. So what do I call you, anyway? Karl? Helo? Something else?”
“Why are you here, Adama?”
“Are you always so rude?”
“No, but then I didn’t sit here uninvited.” He sucked at his cheeks for a second, then, “Helo.” It was said with a short laugh, but the amusement in his eyes quickly faded, replaced by pain. “Since my sister’s gone now, Kara’s the only one who uses Karl.”
Lee sighed, leaned into the table. “I forget sometimes that you lost people you cared about, too.” Helo shot him a quizzical look, but Lee knew there was no need for him to expand on that thought - Helo had come back from Caprica with a Cylon, willingly. There were quite a few who would never forgive him for it. He sipped at his drink. “Tell me what happened on Caprica.” Helo’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. “I know Kara was taken by the Cylons. What’d they do to her?”
Helo shook his head. “No. I know you’re her friend, Captain, but that isn’t my story to tell. Ask her yourself.” He tossed off the rest of the alcohol in his glass and placed it carefully on the table.
I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Lee closed his eyes for a moment. “We’re off-duty, remember? It’s Lee.” Opening them again, he poured another splash into Helo’s glass, which elicited a humorless snort of laughter.
“Trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage, Lee?” Nevertheless, he accepted the liquor, took another drink.
“Look, Kara’s my friend and I’m worried about her.”
“I appreciate that, Lee, I really do.” For the first time, Helo’s face relaxed into something a little more friendly. “But I won’t betray her trust.”
Lee opened his mouth to protest, to order Helo to tell him what happened or he’d charge him with insubordination, but almost immediately he thought better of it. Helo could rightly refuse the order on any number of different points; more importantly, though, Lee realized that he didn’t want to issue that kind of order. Kara’s words that Helo was one of the good guys rang through his head.
“Frak.” He took another swig of aquavit, welcoming the burn. “You know what happened to her, though…”
Helo’s gaze was steady. “Some of it, not all.” He sighed. “Talk to her, Lee. If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you.”
Before Lee could respond, another voice interrupted, accompanied by the creak of leather and the smell of once-expensive aftershave. “Well, well, what do we have here?”
“Zarek.”
“Captain.” Zarek nodded at Lee before turning to Helo. “Lieutenant, I’m surprised you’re not at your little girlfriend’s side.” From the corner of his eye, Lee saw Helo stiffen and wondered what Zarek’s game was this time. “I understand her new situation isn’t exactly… comfortable?”
Helo stood, finished the aquavit in his glass, and gave Zarek a smirk worthy of Kara at her nastiest. “Damn sight more comfortable than your boyfriend’s.” Lee almost choked on his drink as he watched Zarek’s face turn red; his friend Meier was currently on a slab in the Galactica’s morgue. Helo rapped his knuckles twice on the table. “I’ll see you later, Lee. I think I need a little fresh air.”
Lee watched Helo walk away with the deliberate steps of a man who’s had too much to drink to be completely steady, but not enough to become numb. As he neared the other end of the bar, the blonde Lee had noticed earlier reached out a hand to stop him. She said something to him and Helo gestured back to the table he had just left, made a comment to her, and she smiled at Lee. Helo saluted him, the effect ruined by the smirk on his face and the civilian attire, and left.
Belatedly, Lee realized that Zarek was waiting expectantly. “I’m sorry. You said something?” He’d much rather the woman at the bar be the one standing next to him than Tom Zarek.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Zarek apparently repeated, not waiting a second time for an answer as took hold of Helo’s abandoned chair.
“Actually, I do.” The last person he wanted to talk to right now was Tom Zarek. He took another drink. Okay, maybe the last person he wanted to talk to was Ellen Tigh, but Zarek was right there with her on Lee’s List of People to Avoid.
Zarek ignored Lee’s response as he sat and leaned toward Lee, cradling the glass he’d carried from the bar between both hands. He smiled that smile of his that said nobody understood him, that he was perfectly harmless and a fine fellow, and said, “I’ve been looking for you, Captain.”
“And I’ve been avoiding you.” He wished the man would take the hint and leave so that he could pursue the pretty girl at the bar, but his luck never ran that smoothly.
“All right, Captain, I’ll get right to it then. I want Meier’s body released into my custody.”
“Why?”
Meier’s body, along with that of Zarek’s other henchman, whose name Lee didn’t recall - apparently, neither does Zarek - was awaiting an autopsy, not to determine cause of death because, in both cases, they had died from gunshot wounds, but rather to determine whether or not anything odd had happened to their biological systems on Kobol. After all, the planet had been abandoned for a reason and Lee’s father didn’t believe the explanation extended by the scriptures. Lee thought that a good part of the Old Man’s reasoning behind keeping the bodies had more to do with Zarek than with Kobol, anyway.
“Because there is no good reason for Zeus to hold them,” Zarek was saying, “and if anyone can sway the mighty Zeus, it is his son, Apollo.”
Damn, but the man’s mode of speech irritated the frak out of him sometimes. “You know, Tom, I really don’t care. My father thinks an autopsy should be done and it’s not my place to tell him no.”
“We both know they died of Cylon treachery.”
“I’ll give you the treachery part.” He swirled his drink, watched the fingers of the liquor as they clung to the sides of the glass, remembered the whispered conversations between Meier and Zarek on the Astral Queen and then on the surface of Kobol, conversations that invariably stopped as soon as Lee was in earshot.
Zarek sighed and released his glass, left it sitting on the table as he leaned back in his chair, much as Helo had done earlier. “I want his body because he was my friend. He has- He had no one else, just me and his fellow ex-slaves to care for him. I merely want him to have a proper funeral.”
Lee didn’t believe that for a second. A glance away from Zarek told him that she was still at the bar, still looking his way every now and then, and Lee had the sudden intense desire to know the color of her eyes. He felt Zarek’s glare. Looking down at his glass, he saw that it was still half full and stood. “If you’ll excuse me, Tom, there’s someone I have to meet.”
“We’re not finished here, Apollo.” Lee could hear the frustration in his voice.
Looking down at him, thinking about how Zarek and his buddy Meier had conspired to kill him and yet now the man had the balls to ask him for a favor, he said, “Yeah, Tom, we are finished.”
Glass in hand, Lee left Zarek the rest of the bottle, if he wanted it, and headed to the bar. She smiled as he made his approach and Lee was happy to discover that her eyes were green.
***
Lee’s skull felt tight as he made his way down the corridor to Senior Officers’ Quarters and his bed. It had been a long time since he’d had that much to drink and he was reminded that he wasn’t a kid anymore, able to do whatever he wanted to his body and bounce right back the next morning. It had been worth it, though, just to get away from things for a while.
It was early, about 0530, and most of his roommates would either be in the showers or the mess hall, preparing for their shift. He should be able to make it in, grab clean underwear and uniform, and hit the showers without anyone bothering him, although he was sure it was too much to ask that his absence had gone unnoticed. He winced at the thought of Kara’s mockery, which was inevitable.
Pushing open the hatch, Lee stepped into the room and there she was. Her hair was wet and she wore nothing but a towel as she stared into her locker. She lifted a hand to trace a finger over the photograph taped to the mirror on the locker door; she hadn’t heard the hatch open, which wasn’t like her. From where he stood, he could see that it was the picture of her and Zak, himself off to the side, and it startled him to realize that it wasn’t Zak she was thinking of, but rather him - it was the image of a younger Lee Adama that her finger caressed.
He must have made a sound then, the scrape of a boot on the deck, something, because she whirled around to face him, slamming the locker door shut with a loud bang. The look in her eyes, the sadness that was there and then gone, made his chest feel tight. “Lee!”
The image of Kara as she was now blurred with the Kara of a few years ago, the day they’d met. He had stumbled across her at his mother’s house, picking at the keys of the old piano in the parlor while she waited for Zak and the big meet-the-family dinner. Lee had startled her then, too, with similar results; she had slammed the piano lid shut as though it had burned her and there had been a look of almost panic in her eyes.
As he watched, the familiar mask came down over her face, obscuring whatever emotion he’d thought was there. “Look what the cat dragged in.” Her eyes raked over him, taking in civilian attire and the stubble on his cheeks and chin, then darted over to his unslept-in rack. “Why, Lee Adama. I didn’t know you had it in you. Was she pretty?”
“Shut up, Kara.” Lee swung the hatch closed and went over to his own locker to grab shampoo, soap, and a towel.
“Anybody I know?”
“Which part of ‘shut up’ did you not understand?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. Did you at least get some sleep? I’m scheduled to teach today, but I could take your rotation on CAP if you need me to…”
The offer was genuine, as was the concern. “I made the schedule, remember?” he said with a smile. “Thanks, Kara, but I’m okay to fly CAP.”
She shrugged and began to dress. Rather than heading for the showers, Lee sat on his bunk, the bundle of supplies forgotten in his hand. Helo’s words rolled in his head, Talk to her, Lee. If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you. “Kara… What happened back there, on Caprica?”
He expected a glib none of your business and so was surprised when she sat down next to him, not quite touching. She wore underwear and tanks now, smelled shower-damp and clean. His eyes met hers and she shifted a bit to get more comfortable. The chain of her dogtags swung freely, but then caught on the fabric of her outer tank. Without thinking, Lee reached out to free the snagged metal, the ring that held the pair of tags together hooked into the material.
“Where’s your other tag?”
“Somewhere outside of Delphi.” She took the remaining tag from him, pulled her tanks away from her chest, and dropped the chain and it’s lone identification tag between her breasts and he knew that today wouldn’t be the day he’d get answers, either.
His eyes met hers again, those beautiful, defiant brown eyes. “Will you go see Doc Cottle?” He left the rest of the question unspoken - for me?
She looked down at her hands, twisted the silver ring that she always wore on her thumb. Lee couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t seen that ring on her hand. “Why?”
“Because the Cylons held you for two days and I’m worried about you.”
She looked back up at him then. “You’re worried about me, Lee, or the CAG is worried?” There was an edge in her voice that he couldn’t identify.
“I’m worried, Kara. Me, not the CAG.”
“I don’t want to know what they did to me.” Her haunted look threatened to escalate his worry to outright fear.
“I know, Kara, but I need to know.”
“Why?”
“Because I- Because you’re my friend. And I don’t have many of those left.”
She looked at him for what seemed like forever and he knew a million thoughts flitted behind her opaque eyes. Finally, “All right. I’ll see him this afternoon.” She leaned into him then, the serious look on her face morphing into a smirk and a wrinkled nose. “Now go get that shower, Adama. You smell like cheap perfume.” To emphasize her point, she gave him a shove that tumbled him off the bunk.
Lee caught himself before he hit the deck as his towel and the things wrapped in it tumbled. The soap skittered toward Kara and she stopped it with a bare foot, kicked it back to him. Gathering his things to bundle them up again, he shot her a look. “Just like that? You were ordered to go see the doc days ago, but now you’ll go see him this afternoon?”
She cocked her head, again with the Triad face, stood. “Don’t over think it, Adama.” She stepped over his towel and returned to her locker to finish dressing, ignoring him now.
He shook his head and wrapped up the shampoo and soap, his spirits lighter than they’d been. He wouldn’t call her on it, but Lee knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she had changed her mind about Cottle because of him.
And now I must begin my Racetrack fic for the BSG Secondary Characters ficathon. :P
Author: sabaceanbabe
Rating: PG
Word count: about 4,200
Pairing and characters: Lee/Kara, Helo, Zarek
Spoilers: general for s1 and 2, up to Home 2
Author’s note: This was written for widget285 for the BSG Hiatus Ficathon. The request was Lee; Lee/Kara; Lee/Zarek (gen or slash); … if someone wants to write a fic that’s set between “Home, pt. 2” and “Final Cut,” I wouldn’t complain; spoilers to: Pegasus 2.10; 3 things wanted: angst, backstory, interesting use of secondary characters; 3 things not wanted: babies, excessive sap, characters acting like 12 year old girls. I tried to hit on as many of these points as possible without it sounding contrived, so hopefully I succeeded and you like your fic. This is a serious departure for me, since this has nothing to do with Helo/Sharon but is all about Lee/Kara (well, and just plain Lee). A big “THANK YOU” goes to leda13, ancarett, and weissman for the beta (and to ancarett for the title, ‘cause I just couldn’t come up with a decent name for this puppy). You guys are the bestest. :)
Widget, man, I hope you like it.
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Lee was on the hangar deck at shift change, looking for Tyrol, when he was distracted from his search by the arrival of several of his pilots returning from CAP, chief among them Kara. But then, it seemed Kara distracted him whenever she appeared, so that was nothing new.
“Damn, Helo. I thought you were qualified in that thing,” she was saying with a smirk and a light punch to Agathon’s arm, perfectly aimed for the new Viper patch on his sleeve. According to the man’s service profile, he was qualified in a Viper and, since they currently had a greater need for Viper pilots than Raptor pilots, or even Raptor ECOs, Lee had assigned Helo and Hotdog as Kara’s wingmen for the CAP this morning. As Lee watched, the other pilots unaware of his presence, Helo conspicuously massaged his arm and stuck his tongue out at Kara. She laughed. “Maybe later, Raptorboy.”
“Do you believe her?” Helo turned to Hotdog, his tone outraged. “Bawls me out for covering up her sloppy flying in one breath and propositions me in the next.” Helo rolled his eyes, a look of long-suffering patience on his handsome face. Hotdog looked uncomfortable.
Unconsciously, Lee frowned. He had to wonder just what kind of relationship Kara and Helo shared, seeing them like this. They had been on Galactica together for two years and Lee well knew how upset she had been when Agathon had been reported missing in action, presumed dead, even if no one else had seen it.
Poor Hotdog didn’t know what to make of the pair of them and Lee wasn’t surprised when Kara laughed at his unease. None of the nuggets, with the notable exception of Kat, were comfortable enough with the Great Starbuck to tease her like that - sloppy flying, my ass - and not even Kat was comfortable with Helo. They all tended to give him a wide berth, not knowing what to think of a man who could love a toaster.
For that matter, Lee didn’t know what to think of him, either. He hoped Helo could be trusted; Kara swore that he could be, but then, she’d trusted Sharon, too. That isn’t fair, Adama. Kara isn’t the only one who trusted her. The appearance of another copy, one that claimed the Cylons didn’t control her, even though she was a Cylon…
Lee’s attention was drawn back to the trio when Hotdog ran after the Chief, who had just entered the hangar. Well, at least I know where Tyrol is, now, he thought. Kara and Helo were still talking, their expressions serious, the teasing gone.
“…gave me a clean bill of health. What about you, Kara? Was he able to figure out what the Cylons did to you?”
A chill wind blasted through Lee. He knew Kara had been injured on Caprica, held by the Cylons for a brief time, but this was the first time he’d heard that the Cylons might have done something to her, harmed her in some way more profound than a bullet in her side. He stopped, torn between alerting them to his presence and continuing to eavesdrop, seemingly the only way he was going to learn anything about what had happened to his friend when she’d been back home.
She looked away from Helo with a grimace. “I haven’t seen the old quack.”
“What? Kara, what the frak? They performed some kind of surg-” She hit him in the arm again, this time a real blow, accompanied by a hurried look around to see who might have overheard their conversation. Her eyes landed on Lee, her mobile features shading from unease to guilt to anger, and he felt himself flush, caught.
He raised an eyebrow, silently dared her to answer Helo’s comment. She glared up at Helo and said, enunciating her words like a staccato hail of bullets, “Karl. Shut. The frak. Up.” She looked back at Lee, then, one brow raised, daring him to say something. She had donned her best Triad face and now the only thing he could read was the defiant challenge that she wanted him to see; Lee knew she had disobeyed the Commander’s orders by not getting checked out, but he got the feeling that had nothing to do with her response to Agathon.
Agathon’s gaze drifted from Lee and then back to Kara. “Go to Cottle, Kara. Don’t be stupid.” Lee couldn’t decide if the man was stupid himself for baiting her like that or if he was smarter than anyone gave him credit for. Either way, the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice said that he was clearly concerned about her, about what the toasters might have done to her, and suddenly Lee was worried.
“Captain Adama, please report to CIC. Apollo, report to CIC.”
The sound of Dee’s voice over the intercom distracted him and when he returned his attention to Kara and Helo, Kara was gone, leaving Lee and Helo staring at each other. Lee nodded, turned and left, all thought of speaking to the Chief forgotten.
***
Lee could hear the bar on Cloud Nine before he ever got near it. Even through layers of thick soundproofing, the place was so crowded, so busy that the rumble of voices could be heard nearly a click away. It figured that he’d pick such a busy “night” to get away and be alone for a bit. All he wanted was to be someplace where he didn’t know anyone, where he could relax instead of being constantly on, even if that meant being in a room full of strangers.
Before opening the door, he glanced down at his borrowed civilian attire, although borrowed wasn’t precisely the right word. The clothes he wore now hadn’t been borrowed from anyone in particular so much as requisitioned from ship’s stores, having been left behind by pilots and crew Lee privately believed were so much luckier than those who had survived. He knew nothing of the man who had once laid claim to the trousers and sweater that he now wore, nor did he want to.
A solid wall of sound and smell hit him when he finally stepped through the door, not at all an unpleasant thing. It had been years since he’d been in a bar like this, his only intention to get drunk and maybe let some woman take advantage of him. In fact, if he recalled it correctly, the last time had been on Picon with Kara and some friends from the flight academy, back in her teaching days. He smiled at the memory, almost wishing that she were with him now. But that wouldn’t help, since she was part of the problem from which he wanted - needed - to distance himself, if only for a few hours.
Praying that he wouldn’t see Tom Zarek, whom he’d been avoiding all day, Lee scanned the crowd once his vision adjusted to the murky gloom, the result of a cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke through which the relatively dim overhead lights filtered combined with the nighttime mode of the ship’s cycle. Haunting music swirled around him and pulled him fully into the room.
Three faces jumped out at him: a pretty woman with honey blonde hair who elbowed her way to the bar; an ebony-skinned man playing a piano in the corner, clearly so caught up in melody and descant that he was no longer aware of anyone or anything else; and Karl Agathon, seated at a small table near the pianist. He felt as though, if they existed at all, the gods were laughing at him.
His first thought was to slip as quickly through the crowd as he could to the opposite side of the room, away from Agathon. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone who would recognize him, have expectations of him. But then he changed his mind, decided he wasn’t disappointed to find Agathon here, after all. The man knew Kara, knew most, if not all, of what had happened to her on Caprica. He might be willing to answer questions…
Lee made his way to the bar, slid in beside the pretty woman he’d noticed a moment before, close enough to be certain that she was soft in all the right places. She spared a quick glance for him as she left with her drink and he smiled at her. A whiff of her perfume penetrated the smoky atmosphere as she drifted away.
“What’ll you have, son?”
Lee looked at the bartender, a tiny woman, probably about his father’s age. “Give me a bottle of whatever he’s having,” he gestured toward Agathon, who sipped at an amber-colored liquid, lost in thought, “and a glass.”
“Aquavit it is,” she said with a raised brow and a smile as she turned to retrieve his order. Lee’s eyes roamed over the bottles behind the bar; there wasn’t much selection and it would only get worse as time dragged on. “Here you go.” She winked at him. “He’s already turned away a couple of pretty ladies… Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
Lee laughed and shook his head, accepting the full bottle and the empty glass. The woman could believe whatever she wanted. “What do I owe you?” Money was becoming less and less common in such transactions as people began to realize that they needed soap or socks more, but it wasn’t extinct yet.
“What do you have?”
“Couple of jubals and a bar of chocolate.”
Her eyes brightened at that. “Mmm… I’ll take the chocolate and we’ll call it even.”
Lee dug into his pocket and pulled out a slightly softened bar of dark chocolate that he’d saved from Kobol. He’d intended to share it with Kara, if they ever got some simultaneous down time, but it hadn’t happened yet and it was going to a good cause - liquor to hopefully loosen Agathon’s tongue so Lee could get some answers.
He made his way over to Agathon’s table, hooked the only empty chair with his foot, and sat. The other man looked up at that, one brow raised, but he didn’t say anything. Lee smiled and poured a finger of aquavit into his glass, then refilled Agathon’s. He imagined that he could feel the bartender watching them and was truly amused for the first time since they’d come back from Kobol.
“Did you want something?” Helo finally asked, leaning back in his chair, not offering any kind of deference to a superior officer. The almost prickly attitude reminded Lee of Kara and he wondered again just how close the two of them were, a little ashamed of himself for the jealousy he felt.
“What? No salute? No ‘sir?’” He took a drink, watched Helo over the rim of his glass.
The man offered up a sardonic smile. “Nope. Not in the mood.” His eyes never left Lee’s as he swirled the liquor around in his own glass. “I’m off duty.”
Lee noticed for the first time that Helo also wore civilian clothes. “Looks like we’re both looking for a little anonymity. So what do I call you, anyway? Karl? Helo? Something else?”
“Why are you here, Adama?”
“Are you always so rude?”
“No, but then I didn’t sit here uninvited.” He sucked at his cheeks for a second, then, “Helo.” It was said with a short laugh, but the amusement in his eyes quickly faded, replaced by pain. “Since my sister’s gone now, Kara’s the only one who uses Karl.”
Lee sighed, leaned into the table. “I forget sometimes that you lost people you cared about, too.” Helo shot him a quizzical look, but Lee knew there was no need for him to expand on that thought - Helo had come back from Caprica with a Cylon, willingly. There were quite a few who would never forgive him for it. He sipped at his drink. “Tell me what happened on Caprica.” Helo’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. “I know Kara was taken by the Cylons. What’d they do to her?”
Helo shook his head. “No. I know you’re her friend, Captain, but that isn’t my story to tell. Ask her yourself.” He tossed off the rest of the alcohol in his glass and placed it carefully on the table.
I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Lee closed his eyes for a moment. “We’re off-duty, remember? It’s Lee.” Opening them again, he poured another splash into Helo’s glass, which elicited a humorless snort of laughter.
“Trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage, Lee?” Nevertheless, he accepted the liquor, took another drink.
“Look, Kara’s my friend and I’m worried about her.”
“I appreciate that, Lee, I really do.” For the first time, Helo’s face relaxed into something a little more friendly. “But I won’t betray her trust.”
Lee opened his mouth to protest, to order Helo to tell him what happened or he’d charge him with insubordination, but almost immediately he thought better of it. Helo could rightly refuse the order on any number of different points; more importantly, though, Lee realized that he didn’t want to issue that kind of order. Kara’s words that Helo was one of the good guys rang through his head.
“Frak.” He took another swig of aquavit, welcoming the burn. “You know what happened to her, though…”
Helo’s gaze was steady. “Some of it, not all.” He sighed. “Talk to her, Lee. If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you.”
Before Lee could respond, another voice interrupted, accompanied by the creak of leather and the smell of once-expensive aftershave. “Well, well, what do we have here?”
“Zarek.”
“Captain.” Zarek nodded at Lee before turning to Helo. “Lieutenant, I’m surprised you’re not at your little girlfriend’s side.” From the corner of his eye, Lee saw Helo stiffen and wondered what Zarek’s game was this time. “I understand her new situation isn’t exactly… comfortable?”
Helo stood, finished the aquavit in his glass, and gave Zarek a smirk worthy of Kara at her nastiest. “Damn sight more comfortable than your boyfriend’s.” Lee almost choked on his drink as he watched Zarek’s face turn red; his friend Meier was currently on a slab in the Galactica’s morgue. Helo rapped his knuckles twice on the table. “I’ll see you later, Lee. I think I need a little fresh air.”
Lee watched Helo walk away with the deliberate steps of a man who’s had too much to drink to be completely steady, but not enough to become numb. As he neared the other end of the bar, the blonde Lee had noticed earlier reached out a hand to stop him. She said something to him and Helo gestured back to the table he had just left, made a comment to her, and she smiled at Lee. Helo saluted him, the effect ruined by the smirk on his face and the civilian attire, and left.
Belatedly, Lee realized that Zarek was waiting expectantly. “I’m sorry. You said something?” He’d much rather the woman at the bar be the one standing next to him than Tom Zarek.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Zarek apparently repeated, not waiting a second time for an answer as took hold of Helo’s abandoned chair.
“Actually, I do.” The last person he wanted to talk to right now was Tom Zarek. He took another drink. Okay, maybe the last person he wanted to talk to was Ellen Tigh, but Zarek was right there with her on Lee’s List of People to Avoid.
Zarek ignored Lee’s response as he sat and leaned toward Lee, cradling the glass he’d carried from the bar between both hands. He smiled that smile of his that said nobody understood him, that he was perfectly harmless and a fine fellow, and said, “I’ve been looking for you, Captain.”
“And I’ve been avoiding you.” He wished the man would take the hint and leave so that he could pursue the pretty girl at the bar, but his luck never ran that smoothly.
“All right, Captain, I’ll get right to it then. I want Meier’s body released into my custody.”
“Why?”
Meier’s body, along with that of Zarek’s other henchman, whose name Lee didn’t recall - apparently, neither does Zarek - was awaiting an autopsy, not to determine cause of death because, in both cases, they had died from gunshot wounds, but rather to determine whether or not anything odd had happened to their biological systems on Kobol. After all, the planet had been abandoned for a reason and Lee’s father didn’t believe the explanation extended by the scriptures. Lee thought that a good part of the Old Man’s reasoning behind keeping the bodies had more to do with Zarek than with Kobol, anyway.
“Because there is no good reason for Zeus to hold them,” Zarek was saying, “and if anyone can sway the mighty Zeus, it is his son, Apollo.”
Damn, but the man’s mode of speech irritated the frak out of him sometimes. “You know, Tom, I really don’t care. My father thinks an autopsy should be done and it’s not my place to tell him no.”
“We both know they died of Cylon treachery.”
“I’ll give you the treachery part.” He swirled his drink, watched the fingers of the liquor as they clung to the sides of the glass, remembered the whispered conversations between Meier and Zarek on the Astral Queen and then on the surface of Kobol, conversations that invariably stopped as soon as Lee was in earshot.
Zarek sighed and released his glass, left it sitting on the table as he leaned back in his chair, much as Helo had done earlier. “I want his body because he was my friend. He has- He had no one else, just me and his fellow ex-slaves to care for him. I merely want him to have a proper funeral.”
Lee didn’t believe that for a second. A glance away from Zarek told him that she was still at the bar, still looking his way every now and then, and Lee had the sudden intense desire to know the color of her eyes. He felt Zarek’s glare. Looking down at his glass, he saw that it was still half full and stood. “If you’ll excuse me, Tom, there’s someone I have to meet.”
“We’re not finished here, Apollo.” Lee could hear the frustration in his voice.
Looking down at him, thinking about how Zarek and his buddy Meier had conspired to kill him and yet now the man had the balls to ask him for a favor, he said, “Yeah, Tom, we are finished.”
Glass in hand, Lee left Zarek the rest of the bottle, if he wanted it, and headed to the bar. She smiled as he made his approach and Lee was happy to discover that her eyes were green.
***
Lee’s skull felt tight as he made his way down the corridor to Senior Officers’ Quarters and his bed. It had been a long time since he’d had that much to drink and he was reminded that he wasn’t a kid anymore, able to do whatever he wanted to his body and bounce right back the next morning. It had been worth it, though, just to get away from things for a while.
It was early, about 0530, and most of his roommates would either be in the showers or the mess hall, preparing for their shift. He should be able to make it in, grab clean underwear and uniform, and hit the showers without anyone bothering him, although he was sure it was too much to ask that his absence had gone unnoticed. He winced at the thought of Kara’s mockery, which was inevitable.
Pushing open the hatch, Lee stepped into the room and there she was. Her hair was wet and she wore nothing but a towel as she stared into her locker. She lifted a hand to trace a finger over the photograph taped to the mirror on the locker door; she hadn’t heard the hatch open, which wasn’t like her. From where he stood, he could see that it was the picture of her and Zak, himself off to the side, and it startled him to realize that it wasn’t Zak she was thinking of, but rather him - it was the image of a younger Lee Adama that her finger caressed.
He must have made a sound then, the scrape of a boot on the deck, something, because she whirled around to face him, slamming the locker door shut with a loud bang. The look in her eyes, the sadness that was there and then gone, made his chest feel tight. “Lee!”
The image of Kara as she was now blurred with the Kara of a few years ago, the day they’d met. He had stumbled across her at his mother’s house, picking at the keys of the old piano in the parlor while she waited for Zak and the big meet-the-family dinner. Lee had startled her then, too, with similar results; she had slammed the piano lid shut as though it had burned her and there had been a look of almost panic in her eyes.
As he watched, the familiar mask came down over her face, obscuring whatever emotion he’d thought was there. “Look what the cat dragged in.” Her eyes raked over him, taking in civilian attire and the stubble on his cheeks and chin, then darted over to his unslept-in rack. “Why, Lee Adama. I didn’t know you had it in you. Was she pretty?”
“Shut up, Kara.” Lee swung the hatch closed and went over to his own locker to grab shampoo, soap, and a towel.
“Anybody I know?”
“Which part of ‘shut up’ did you not understand?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. Did you at least get some sleep? I’m scheduled to teach today, but I could take your rotation on CAP if you need me to…”
The offer was genuine, as was the concern. “I made the schedule, remember?” he said with a smile. “Thanks, Kara, but I’m okay to fly CAP.”
She shrugged and began to dress. Rather than heading for the showers, Lee sat on his bunk, the bundle of supplies forgotten in his hand. Helo’s words rolled in his head, Talk to her, Lee. If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you. “Kara… What happened back there, on Caprica?”
He expected a glib none of your business and so was surprised when she sat down next to him, not quite touching. She wore underwear and tanks now, smelled shower-damp and clean. His eyes met hers and she shifted a bit to get more comfortable. The chain of her dogtags swung freely, but then caught on the fabric of her outer tank. Without thinking, Lee reached out to free the snagged metal, the ring that held the pair of tags together hooked into the material.
“Where’s your other tag?”
“Somewhere outside of Delphi.” She took the remaining tag from him, pulled her tanks away from her chest, and dropped the chain and it’s lone identification tag between her breasts and he knew that today wouldn’t be the day he’d get answers, either.
His eyes met hers again, those beautiful, defiant brown eyes. “Will you go see Doc Cottle?” He left the rest of the question unspoken - for me?
She looked down at her hands, twisted the silver ring that she always wore on her thumb. Lee couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t seen that ring on her hand. “Why?”
“Because the Cylons held you for two days and I’m worried about you.”
She looked back up at him then. “You’re worried about me, Lee, or the CAG is worried?” There was an edge in her voice that he couldn’t identify.
“I’m worried, Kara. Me, not the CAG.”
“I don’t want to know what they did to me.” Her haunted look threatened to escalate his worry to outright fear.
“I know, Kara, but I need to know.”
“Why?”
“Because I- Because you’re my friend. And I don’t have many of those left.”
She looked at him for what seemed like forever and he knew a million thoughts flitted behind her opaque eyes. Finally, “All right. I’ll see him this afternoon.” She leaned into him then, the serious look on her face morphing into a smirk and a wrinkled nose. “Now go get that shower, Adama. You smell like cheap perfume.” To emphasize her point, she gave him a shove that tumbled him off the bunk.
Lee caught himself before he hit the deck as his towel and the things wrapped in it tumbled. The soap skittered toward Kara and she stopped it with a bare foot, kicked it back to him. Gathering his things to bundle them up again, he shot her a look. “Just like that? You were ordered to go see the doc days ago, but now you’ll go see him this afternoon?”
She cocked her head, again with the Triad face, stood. “Don’t over think it, Adama.” She stepped over his towel and returned to her locker to finish dressing, ignoring him now.
He shook his head and wrapped up the shampoo and soap, his spirits lighter than they’d been. He wouldn’t call her on it, but Lee knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she had changed her mind about Cottle because of him.
And now I must begin my Racetrack fic for the BSG Secondary Characters ficathon. :P