We used to wait. (Chapter 7/?)
title: We used to wait. (Chapter 7/?)
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Through all seasons, though this takes place in an AU starting at the very end of season 2.
pairings: kara/lee, kara/sam
overall fic rating: R/NC-17
word count: 5,326
notes: See http://apodixis.livejournal.com/685.html for more information.
summary: If God isn't leading the fleet to Earth, can they ever find it?
“I need to know what happened between you and the cylon that goes by the name of Leoben Conoy.”
Kara froze in place even before Lee finished his delivery. As soon as he’d said cylon, she knew the rest. There would be only one such model he would bring up in relation to her. It chilled her deep into her bones despite how warm she had felt only a second before, her skin and clothes still damp with her own sweat. The next few seconds of her reaction were critical, she knew that, so she swallowed down over the lump in her throat and tried her best at playing the usual version of herself.
“You mean the one that said he hid a nuke on a ship to cover his own ass?” As if she could forget the time she spent with that specific cylon. He crept into her thoughts more than she cared to admit. The things he’d said to her, they still stung inside.
Lee’s eyes squinted slightly as he watched her, sizing her up. Despite the year of silence between them and all the secrets they kept from one another, at the very core of her, he knew Kara Thrace. Sometimes she thought she was so slick, so well guarded when she pushed Starbuck to the forefront and Kara back to protect her. But Lee knew better.
“The one Roslin had you interrogate,” he clarified, though he knew she didn’t need the help.
She played with her bag, tugging it into her lap, pretending to search for something inside to further feign her disinterest and casual tone. “Go read the report, then. Everyone else has.”
Lee approached and his hands quickly snatched the bag from her grasp, letting it limply hang at his side. He loomed above her, eyes burning down onto her own. “I’ve read the frakking report. I know how you write yours, you include what you think is necessary and cut out all the rest, Kara. I’m asking about what you didn’t put in there.”
Kara reacted as he expected, fury overtaking her. She stood up and reached for her bag but he was ready for it, turning and twisting his body, arm extending behind him to keep it from her.
“Well I don’t know what to tell you, Apollo,” she ground out his call sign with the building anger inside of her. He’d used her first name on an appeal and she was letting him know it wasn’t going to work. “Everything that happened, everything that toaster and I talked about, was in the report.”
He released the bag to the ground behind him, heaving it with just the slightest bit of extra force. “I know you’re lying. You can’t keep saying something to make it true, Kara. I saw you after you interrogated him and I know it wasn’t as cut and dry as you made it. He said something and it messed with you.”
She had given up on the bag, even though it lay a step behind him now, crumpled on the floor. Her right hand went to his chest, fingers spread and pressed to his shirt though she made no move to push him. “Why do you care now? That happened almost two years ago, Lee. And now, suddenly you care now?”
Lee could feel the accusation in her tone. It was true, he hadn’t pressed her for the details of it back then. With Starbuck, it tended to be a good idea to let her have her secrets. Now more than ever, he felt that wasn’t necessarily the truth with her. Sometimes, maybe she wanted someone to push back, wanted to make sure they were worth it before she let them in. It was a theory he was working on and about to find out if it was true or not.
“Because,” he paused, eyes shifting away from her, his hand coming to gently grasp her wrist and tug it away from his chest. He allowed himself to hold her hand for as long as he could get away with it, hoping she wasn’t aware of the way his thumb gently rubbed a singular circle across the back. “I’m not writing a report on what happened when I was down on New Caprica. I wasn’t enlisted technically, so I’ve got no duty to do so. I know my father’s going to ask eventually, and he can throw me in hack for however long he wants, I’m not writing a frakking report on things I’d rather forget.”
Her anger washed itself away as he spoke. She was enthralled now, needing him to continue. “Lee…” Kara raised her hand, this time not in anger, but this time to coax him on. Her fingers were gentler as they slid along his forearm, gripping the clothed skin there.
“I don’t want to do this here.” His arm twisted in her grasp, letting his own hand fold into hers as he lead the way, grabbing her bag on the way out. In another time, she would have teased him for such a simple gesture of holding her hand, but even Starbuck knew it wasn’t the time or the place. Kara followed him blindly, thankful for the empty halls at that hour, only coming to a stop when he pulled her into the CAG’s office, a room that had once belonged to him.
Lee released her hand when they were confined to the familiar space, dropping her bag to the middle of the floor as he walked across the width of the room. He distracted himself by observing the wall hangings, the items on the desk, remaining silent as he did so. Kara stood behind him, unsure of what was happening, but not quite ready to speak her mind about it.
“When the cylons showed up, all hell broke lose. Centurions were in the streets, the people were panicked. Baltar surrendered and we all thought we were going to die right then. They weren’t looking to kill us, though, at least not right away. They said they wanted to live with us, make amends for what happened with the 12 Colonies.” He continued to speak with his back to her, studying a particular photo on the wall.
“We set up a resistance right away. Tried to contact the fleet like the contingency plan stated, but the signals were jammed, as you know. Still, we gathered what weapons we could and hid them, tried to recruit people to the cause, but so few people wanted to even try. Everyone had families by then, no one wanted to risk them. I don’t know how the Chief made it through those months sane, worrying about Cally and Nicholas.” Lee turned to her, finding her in the same spot as when he’d walked away minutes before. He was in control of himself, but just barely, as indicated by the extra thick layer of tears over his eyes. “I couldn’t have done it. If it were my wife, my child on the line, I would’ve done whatever the cylons asked to keep them safe.”
Kara knew there was shame in the last of his words. “Lee, almost everyone would have done the same.” They were hollow encouragement to him.
“It doesn’t matter, I was on my own anyway. It took a few weeks for the cylons to get all the names together of the people who were there. I tried to stay out of sight as much as I could, but it didn’t matter. If someone was on that planet, they knew about it.”
“Maybe you should sit down.” His unsteady pacing made her nervous.
“I’m fine, just let me finish or I never will.”
Kara took the seat instead on the small couch in the room, a piece of furniture that she had slept on many times.
“They started grabbing people after awhile. People who crossed a skinjob or were caught with weapons, people they didn’t want working up the rest of the population. That’s where Tigh lost the eye, you know.” It alarmed her how casually he delivered the statement.
“About a month in I went to sleep one night and woke up in one of their detention centers. I still don’t have an idea how I got there. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. I’m the Admiral’s son, it had to happen. They would’ve been stupid not to use it. I just kept waiting, sitting and waiting and starving. No one came, not the Shelley Godfrieds, not the Sharons, not until one of the Leobens, your Leoben showed up. He didn’t ask me a frakking thing about the fleet, Kara. Nothing about my father or how to find everyone. Do you know what he asked me?” Lee turned back to look at her now. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “He asked me where he could find you.”
Kara had to look away from the weight of his gaze on her. She felt guilty for it, felt guilty that he’d been forced into a situation yet again because of something she’d done. “Lee… I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. We didn’t even think he would download when we airlocked him, we were so far out.”
“I dont want you to be sorry, Kara. I want you to tell me what happened to make him so obsessed with seeing you again.”
He had her between a rock and a hard place now and she cursed him inwardly. How could she look at him and refuse to talk about what had occurred almost two years prior? She laid her elbows to rest on her knees, spine hunched forward as her head came to rest in her hands. Despite how much she still thought about the things the cylon had said to her, she never thought she’d have to admit them to anyone else. She stayed like that for nearly a minute, the room echoing in complete silence until Lee came towards her, sitting at her side.
“Kara,” he barely spoke above a whisper and watched her. She was a grown woman so desperately trying to pull in on herself like a child would, dying to disappear.
“He knew things about me. At first it was all just nonsense. Talking about streams and patterns and the Gods versus his one God. About my destiny and how I’d find Kobol and bring us to Earth. He knew my name and said he saw it, saw me coming to him. I didn’t really think anything of it at first, he could’ve seen my face somewhere or known my voice. Someone could’ve said something while he passed by.” She sat up, fingers slyly wiping away moisture from under her eyes.
“I tortured him to get him to talk and we argued for awhile. But then,” Kara shook her head, keeping her eyes dead ahead. “My mother lost it after my father left. She used to say that suffering was good for the soul and she was damn sure I’d have the best one.” Kara extended her arm out between them, opening her fist and flexing her fingers before them. Lee’s eyes followed instinctively, watching her as each digit stretched and relaxed repeatedly. “When I was younger, I put some rubber bugs all over her shoes to get back at her for hitting me. She’d always been afraid of insects since before I was born, since the cylon war. She screamed her frakking head off and tried to kill them, but it just made it worse, sending them jumping all over. When she realized what I’d done, she grabbed my hand, held it in the door jam and slammed the door.”
The crooked irregularities he always overlooked before became clear as day across her fingers. For a moment, Lee regretted making her talk about something she’d obviously been keeping inside of her for most of her life. Had she told Zak about this? He sincerely doubted it. Even Zak’s pleasant demeanor couldn’t have taken such news with a grain of salt and let it go.
Kara closed her hand, drawing it back to herself and resting it in her lap. Her other hand curled around it, as if nursing the fresh wounds she’d felt when she was only a child. “Leoben knew the ways she’d hurt me, the things she’d said. My mother’s been dead for a long time, Lee. Now you’re the only other person who has ever heard about it.”
She turned her head, finally locking eyes with him. Everything he’d experienced on New Caprica had the sound turned down on it as he was witness to the complete horror written across her eyes.
“How did he know?” It was a rhetorical question, but Lee wished he had the answer for her.
“I don’t know, Kara. I don’t know how.”
Her back eased into the couch cushions, head shaking shallowly as she thought everything over. “What happened with Leoben when he found out I wasn’t there?”
The question was a shock to his system. Her revelations had driven the earlier talking points from his thoughts entirely. “It’s not important. They kept me there for a few weeks and released me before you came back.” There had been a million more questions on his mind to ask her based on the events of his stay in the detention center, but they didn’t seem so necessary anymore.
Had she not felt so completely raw and defeated, her abrasive personality would have pushed him to continue. He was the one who had started this, after all. Lee was the one who brought up the cylon from her past and subsequently her less than perfect childhood. Not forcing him to keep going was a protective measure for herself as well, she knew, as it meant less of a chance for her to divulge another item on her long list of things Kara Thrace didn’t talk to anyone about.
They sat like that for the longest time, former friends and lovers barely breathing beside one another. Every so often, Lee could hear the quietest of sniffles from her and it made his heart ache all over again. Gods, he was sorry. Sorry that he’d brought it up, sorry that he made her tell him, sorry that she had been a child and endured so much pain. He had a less than stellar childhood, but it didn’t compare at all to even this little glimpse he’d gotten of her own. He saw her as a child in his head, tiny and blonde. How could anyone have done that to her, especially her own mother?
Lee reached for her hand, the one with the slightest indications of a traumatic childhood event, warming her hand between both of his own. She looked to him as he did so, unable to say a word. He folded his fingers into her own like they were interlocking pieces and drew them both up. His attention was taken from her face as he focused on the pale skin of her hand, leaning in to kiss at each curled digit in slow succession.
Nearby, Kara watched, absolutely drawn in. The tears that had been pooled in her eyes for the last fifteen minutes finally spilled forward and her free hand hurried to wipe them away before he noticed.
She was too late, however, and Lee’s other hand stretched across to cup her cheek, thumb smoothing just under her eye to rub away some of the tears. The rest of him leaned into her and both his hands gave up their current positions to slide around her, hugging himself against her. Kara surprised herself by doing the same without even a thought to it. Her head tucked in against his neck, breathing him in as she clenched her eyes tightly shut.
He held her, a hand stroking up and down her back and along the length of her braid in slow, repetitive motions.
A soft cry broke from her throat and she found herself not caring about it for once. “I missed you.”
Lee breathed out a sigh against her. “I missed you, too.” He kissed her hair, pulling back slowly and reluctantly, his lips dropping to the outer shell of her ear. The trail of haphazard kisses continued, a couple placed to her jaw, her cheek, the healing cut on her brow that he’d bandaged that first night back.
Kara let her fingers tangle in his hair, resting against the warmth of his scalp, allowing him to show her the affection she’d dreamed about for the past year. She pulled back just enough to look at him, her other hand coming to rest on his cheek as she mimicked the same way his hand had been on her own cheek moments before. Lee drew his hand to rest over hers and he turned into her palm, kissing the heel of it.
Looking at him like that, Kara no longer felt like she was on Galactica. She could almost smell the air of New Caprica, feel the gust of wind on her back.
“After everything that’s happened, how can you even stand to be here with me?” Kara’s voice was small and quiet, despite the privacy the room afforded them. She was afraid of his answer, but not sure which one.
His hands were quick to cup at both sides of her cheeks, his blue eyes softening instantly as they held the gaze of her own. “I can’t stop. I’ve tried and I can’t. I don’t even want to.”
Kara faltered, another short lived cry forcing itself out of her throat, unrestrained. She had to look away from him for just a second to gain some measure of control over herself. “I don’t understand. I’m a cancer, Lee. My mother always said that and even Leoben knew it. I would ruin you.”
For months, Lee had thought over what he’d done wrong after Kara’s impromptu marriage. What had he done to her that night that could have driven her even further into Anders’ arms? It ate away at him for a year on that planet, breeding a new level of anger inside of him, even for himself, and he was no stranger to hatred. But with just a few words, every ounce of that anger dissipated. He understood, he finally understood.
“It isn’t conditional, Kara. How I feel about you, it doesn’t depend on anything else.” It had to be a foreign concept to her. Her mother’s love depended on whatever she had deemed proper behavior. Her father had left and shown her that she wasn’t worth sticking around for. Zak died and he knew Kara still held all the blame on herself, whether it was warranted or not. Even with Sam, the love they had between them depended on what was basically a suicide mission to return for him.
Kara said nothing. Instead, she leaned into him, pushing him back until he was lying across the length of the couch. It was a tight fit but she joined him alongside, her arm curled across his chest in a way that very much mirrored how she’d fallen asleep against him on the sand and dirt of New Caprica. It was familiar to Lee and his arm fitted around her to hold her close, keeping her from accidentally rolling off the edge and onto the floor. Her head tucked just under his chin and Lee knew the last time he’d felt this at peace had been the last time she had laid with him like this. He went into it with eyes open this time, though, not expecting her to be there when he woke up.
-
The morning shift reveille sounded over Galactica’s speakers. Lee woke slowly, the muscles in his shoulders and neck heavy with ache. His head wove together the details of his current location, even before he opened his eyes. He’d fallen asleep with Kara in the CAG’s office in the middle of the night cycle. Lee stretched the arm that had once been curled under her. It was empty. He sighed as he turned his face in towards his shoulder, taking in the familiar scent she left along the fabric of his shirt. With great reluctance, Lee opened his eyes, blinking a few times as he adjusted to what little light barely illuminated the room.
Kara’s back was pressed against the couch from where she sat on the floor and Lee could barely hear the rustle of paper in her hands. He rolled onto his side from his back, not entirely sure he wasn’t dreaming it. Maybe his mind was giving him a break for once. Instead of dreaming about being locked in that cell for weeks, he was given reprieve as he thought about the blonde that got away. The cushions squeaked just barely as he moved and Kara’s torso twisted, catching sight of him.
A halfhearted smile was thrown his way and her eyes left him to glance at the clock on the wall. “I missed my chance to shower before this mornings pilots’ brief because you slept so late.” She wasn’t angry. It was too early for him to figure out exactly what her tone of voice was, but he knew it wasn’t actually anger.
“You didn’t have to stay. I do know my way back from here.”
Kara quickly shook her head, averting her eyes for only a moment before she looked back up to him. “No, this time I had to stay.”
-
She didn’t stay much longer afterward and the only other words exchanged between them before she did leave were that of goodbye. As Lee rolled onto his back on the couch, he knew the lack of dialogue didn’t even matter. Kara stayed until morning. He tried not to read too much into it, since he knew she was still legally tied to Sam. And him, he wasn’t sure if he even had anything with Dee anymore. She had been happy to pick up where things left when he returned to Galactica, but Lee knew he wasn’t the same person any longer.
For months after Kara’s marriage, he was relatively content to drown his sorrow inside of Dee. It had helped for awhile, but never fully healed the burn left by the other woman. He felt a sense of obligation to her now because she had stood by him when he tried to make a life for himself on the planet. Even before that, Dualla had been the one at his bedside while he recovered from the gunshot and tried to put himself back together. As poorly as he had been held together back then, he knew Dee was responsible for keeping those last bits of him from falling fully apart.
As always, Lee was back to not knowing where he stood with Kara. She had shared a deep part of herself with him hours before, and it would either work to tie her to him a little more, or cause her to pull back from him because he knew of her weakness. With Starbuck, it could go either way.
Later today, Lee would go to his father and let him know he wanted his wings back, as promised to Kara. The thought of the smile that would be on his father’s face when he heard, caused Lee’s own lips to pull back in a grin. It would be his last day as a civilian and he sought to enjoy it by taking in as much sleep as possible. He closed his eyes and willed himself not to think of the things he’d omitted from his conversation with Kara earlier that morning.
He had no such luck.
-
Trying to keep track of time in a windowless room had proved fairly difficult for Lee, and after the first handful of days, he’d given up entirely. There was nothing to base time off of in there, except perhaps when he felt the pull of his body to sleep. But with food being brought in at irregular intervals and his body feeling the weakness of slight malnourishment, his sleep schedule could no longer be trusted.
He laid on the pile of blankets he’d been given to sleep on, arms folded up beneath his head when he heard the door open. Lee prayed it was just the drop off of something to eat, but when he didn’t hear the familiar slide of a plastic bowl or plate across the cement floor, he knew better. He kept still even as the door closed and he heard someone approach.
“Why hasn’t Zeus come down from his mountain for you, Apollo?” Leoben spoke, his voice eerily calm.
Lee didn’t say a word, instead kept quiet as he feigned sleep, as per their routine.
“I know what you’re doing, Lee Adama. You think you can protect her, but she doesn’t need protecting. Kara’s destiny is here with me, I’ve seen it, and not even you can interfere.”
“You don’t have a frakking clue about her if you think she’d actually follow you anywhere,” Lee gave up his ruse and sat up, leaning back against the wall made from the same cement as the floor. “You’re a machine.”
Leoben pulled his lips tightly together, hands in his pockets. He was the definition of cool and collected, unlike some of the other models who were often bested by their rather human-like tempers. But this was part of his model, he knew that much from what he had heard about Kara’s interaction with this specific one in a previous body, as well as another version entirely that had talked with his father at Ragnar Anchorage.
“Do you know why you’re still alive? Because I have a use for you right now. Some of my sisters and brothers don’t feel the same way about you, Apollo.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
Leoben approached the door of the cell, knocked twice, and let out a whistle. The door didn’t open straight away, and Lee knew that the cylon wasn’t just intending on leaving as usual. His eyes stayed on the door, and though he’d never admit to it, real fear coiled up inside of him. A moment later the door opened, and in stepped two more Leobens, identical to the one already in his cell, save for the particular items of clothing they wore. It was one thing to run into copies of the various models throughout New Caprica, it was another thing to see a group of them side by side. It was still surreal to him.
“Last time I saw Starbuck, we spent a lot of our time together talking. Sometimes the talking was done with my head underwater.” The original Leoben was speaking to him, but Lee couldn’t take his eyes off the bucket of water carried between the other two and set in the center of the room. “I told her that this has all happened before, and it will all happen again. The roles change, Lee Adama. Last time, she was the interrogator and now it’s me.” He seemed almost regretful to say the words, though his brothers didn’t show the same remorse. Maybe it was true that these cylons could be different from one another. Sharon had made her own choices as well. Perhaps they really weren’t all slaves to their programming.
The other two Leobens moved for him swiftly and Lee had nowhere to go, though he didn’t go very willingly. He struggled in their grasp, but the kind of strength they had was unimaginable. Every pull he gave away from one of them was compensated by the other tugging even harder, dragging him on his knees towards the metal bucket before him. They forced him into a kneeling position, but he found no relief in it with their hands painfully pulling his arms up and behind him.
“I don’t want to do this, but I need to find her and I think you know where she’s hiding.” He nodded his head to one of the identical cylons and he released his hold on one of Lee’s arms, taking the opportunity to plant his fist firmly across his jaw. Lee’s head whipped to the side on impact, his head gone fuzzy as the two of them forced him into the water before he’d even taken a breath. He choked on the water filling his mouth, unable to stop his panic as his body resisted the pressure on the back of his head and shoulders. Just when he felt like his lungs were a second away from filling with fluid, he was pulled away from the water and released. Lee immediately collapsed to the concrete, gagging and nearly vomiting what little sustenance currently in his shrunken stomach.
When his body’s violent reaction calmed down, he continued to lay on the cool floor, wanting nothing more than to be absorbed into it. His heart pounded and lungs heaved. Even with his eyes shut, he could tell that Leoben was crouched beside him.
“I won’t hurt her. She’ll be safe with us. Don’t you understand? She has a path and I’m meant to be her guide. I know you want it to be you, but it’s not. I love her, and one day she’s going to say it back and mean it. You can’t stop it.” His voice was gentle and delicate, like speaking to a child. In other circumstances, it would’ve been a comforting tone, but as Lee lay soaked in water and his own blood, there was nothing comforting about it at all.
“She’s not here. You saw frakking wrong.” He ground out the words with all the energy he had left. When he felt the pull on his arms, Lee knew what was coming. Another hit was delivered, this time to the gut, and his face was shoved back into the water before he even had time to double over.
When he was pulled out the second time, Leoben was already speaking. “Did she ever tell you what happened on Caprica? The fours, they’re the doctors of all of us. One of them took out her ovary and preserved it for me. It was almost lost in the destruction, but we managed to recover it.”
Lee’s ears were ringing as he tried to focus on what Leoben was saying. Caprica? Did he mean New Caprica or Caprica before the attacks? Did he mean when she returned the first time or the second time? “What the frak did you do to her?” He yelled despite the complete lack of energy, his palms going to the floor as he tried to push himself up. Lee reached for Leoben, hoping to inflict any kind of damage on him, but he was grabbed back by four other hands.
Leoben continued on as if nothing had happened. “When she comes back to me, we’ll use it to start a family.”
“She’s not coming back! She’s gone, a million light years from here by now and you’re never going to see her again. You know she’s not here, you just can’t accept that maybe you were wrong. If you were wrong about her being here, then maybe everything else you think you’ve seen is wrong too. You can’t see the Gods damned future, nobody can. You just downloaded wrong, your file got corrupt. You’re a copy of a frakking copy, Leoben. Just kill me already, she isn’t going to come running to save me because she isn’t, frakking, here.”
Across from him, Leoben sighed and his brothers once again pushed Lee’s head back under the surface of the water.
-
Lee woke with a start. The office was empty and the clock on the wall told him it was nearing lunch time. He could still smell Kara on the collar of his shirt and it brought him all the comfort in the worlds.
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Through all seasons, though this takes place in an AU starting at the very end of season 2.
pairings: kara/lee, kara/sam
overall fic rating: R/NC-17
word count: 5,326
notes: See http://apodixis.livejournal.com/685.html for more information.
summary: If God isn't leading the fleet to Earth, can they ever find it?
“I need to know what happened between you and the cylon that goes by the name of Leoben Conoy.”
Kara froze in place even before Lee finished his delivery. As soon as he’d said cylon, she knew the rest. There would be only one such model he would bring up in relation to her. It chilled her deep into her bones despite how warm she had felt only a second before, her skin and clothes still damp with her own sweat. The next few seconds of her reaction were critical, she knew that, so she swallowed down over the lump in her throat and tried her best at playing the usual version of herself.
“You mean the one that said he hid a nuke on a ship to cover his own ass?” As if she could forget the time she spent with that specific cylon. He crept into her thoughts more than she cared to admit. The things he’d said to her, they still stung inside.
Lee’s eyes squinted slightly as he watched her, sizing her up. Despite the year of silence between them and all the secrets they kept from one another, at the very core of her, he knew Kara Thrace. Sometimes she thought she was so slick, so well guarded when she pushed Starbuck to the forefront and Kara back to protect her. But Lee knew better.
“The one Roslin had you interrogate,” he clarified, though he knew she didn’t need the help.
She played with her bag, tugging it into her lap, pretending to search for something inside to further feign her disinterest and casual tone. “Go read the report, then. Everyone else has.”
Lee approached and his hands quickly snatched the bag from her grasp, letting it limply hang at his side. He loomed above her, eyes burning down onto her own. “I’ve read the frakking report. I know how you write yours, you include what you think is necessary and cut out all the rest, Kara. I’m asking about what you didn’t put in there.”
Kara reacted as he expected, fury overtaking her. She stood up and reached for her bag but he was ready for it, turning and twisting his body, arm extending behind him to keep it from her.
“Well I don’t know what to tell you, Apollo,” she ground out his call sign with the building anger inside of her. He’d used her first name on an appeal and she was letting him know it wasn’t going to work. “Everything that happened, everything that toaster and I talked about, was in the report.”
He released the bag to the ground behind him, heaving it with just the slightest bit of extra force. “I know you’re lying. You can’t keep saying something to make it true, Kara. I saw you after you interrogated him and I know it wasn’t as cut and dry as you made it. He said something and it messed with you.”
She had given up on the bag, even though it lay a step behind him now, crumpled on the floor. Her right hand went to his chest, fingers spread and pressed to his shirt though she made no move to push him. “Why do you care now? That happened almost two years ago, Lee. And now, suddenly you care now?”
Lee could feel the accusation in her tone. It was true, he hadn’t pressed her for the details of it back then. With Starbuck, it tended to be a good idea to let her have her secrets. Now more than ever, he felt that wasn’t necessarily the truth with her. Sometimes, maybe she wanted someone to push back, wanted to make sure they were worth it before she let them in. It was a theory he was working on and about to find out if it was true or not.
“Because,” he paused, eyes shifting away from her, his hand coming to gently grasp her wrist and tug it away from his chest. He allowed himself to hold her hand for as long as he could get away with it, hoping she wasn’t aware of the way his thumb gently rubbed a singular circle across the back. “I’m not writing a report on what happened when I was down on New Caprica. I wasn’t enlisted technically, so I’ve got no duty to do so. I know my father’s going to ask eventually, and he can throw me in hack for however long he wants, I’m not writing a frakking report on things I’d rather forget.”
Her anger washed itself away as he spoke. She was enthralled now, needing him to continue. “Lee…” Kara raised her hand, this time not in anger, but this time to coax him on. Her fingers were gentler as they slid along his forearm, gripping the clothed skin there.
“I don’t want to do this here.” His arm twisted in her grasp, letting his own hand fold into hers as he lead the way, grabbing her bag on the way out. In another time, she would have teased him for such a simple gesture of holding her hand, but even Starbuck knew it wasn’t the time or the place. Kara followed him blindly, thankful for the empty halls at that hour, only coming to a stop when he pulled her into the CAG’s office, a room that had once belonged to him.
Lee released her hand when they were confined to the familiar space, dropping her bag to the middle of the floor as he walked across the width of the room. He distracted himself by observing the wall hangings, the items on the desk, remaining silent as he did so. Kara stood behind him, unsure of what was happening, but not quite ready to speak her mind about it.
“When the cylons showed up, all hell broke lose. Centurions were in the streets, the people were panicked. Baltar surrendered and we all thought we were going to die right then. They weren’t looking to kill us, though, at least not right away. They said they wanted to live with us, make amends for what happened with the 12 Colonies.” He continued to speak with his back to her, studying a particular photo on the wall.
“We set up a resistance right away. Tried to contact the fleet like the contingency plan stated, but the signals were jammed, as you know. Still, we gathered what weapons we could and hid them, tried to recruit people to the cause, but so few people wanted to even try. Everyone had families by then, no one wanted to risk them. I don’t know how the Chief made it through those months sane, worrying about Cally and Nicholas.” Lee turned to her, finding her in the same spot as when he’d walked away minutes before. He was in control of himself, but just barely, as indicated by the extra thick layer of tears over his eyes. “I couldn’t have done it. If it were my wife, my child on the line, I would’ve done whatever the cylons asked to keep them safe.”
Kara knew there was shame in the last of his words. “Lee, almost everyone would have done the same.” They were hollow encouragement to him.
“It doesn’t matter, I was on my own anyway. It took a few weeks for the cylons to get all the names together of the people who were there. I tried to stay out of sight as much as I could, but it didn’t matter. If someone was on that planet, they knew about it.”
“Maybe you should sit down.” His unsteady pacing made her nervous.
“I’m fine, just let me finish or I never will.”
Kara took the seat instead on the small couch in the room, a piece of furniture that she had slept on many times.
“They started grabbing people after awhile. People who crossed a skinjob or were caught with weapons, people they didn’t want working up the rest of the population. That’s where Tigh lost the eye, you know.” It alarmed her how casually he delivered the statement.
“About a month in I went to sleep one night and woke up in one of their detention centers. I still don’t have an idea how I got there. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. I’m the Admiral’s son, it had to happen. They would’ve been stupid not to use it. I just kept waiting, sitting and waiting and starving. No one came, not the Shelley Godfrieds, not the Sharons, not until one of the Leobens, your Leoben showed up. He didn’t ask me a frakking thing about the fleet, Kara. Nothing about my father or how to find everyone. Do you know what he asked me?” Lee turned back to look at her now. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “He asked me where he could find you.”
Kara had to look away from the weight of his gaze on her. She felt guilty for it, felt guilty that he’d been forced into a situation yet again because of something she’d done. “Lee… I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. We didn’t even think he would download when we airlocked him, we were so far out.”
“I dont want you to be sorry, Kara. I want you to tell me what happened to make him so obsessed with seeing you again.”
He had her between a rock and a hard place now and she cursed him inwardly. How could she look at him and refuse to talk about what had occurred almost two years prior? She laid her elbows to rest on her knees, spine hunched forward as her head came to rest in her hands. Despite how much she still thought about the things the cylon had said to her, she never thought she’d have to admit them to anyone else. She stayed like that for nearly a minute, the room echoing in complete silence until Lee came towards her, sitting at her side.
“Kara,” he barely spoke above a whisper and watched her. She was a grown woman so desperately trying to pull in on herself like a child would, dying to disappear.
“He knew things about me. At first it was all just nonsense. Talking about streams and patterns and the Gods versus his one God. About my destiny and how I’d find Kobol and bring us to Earth. He knew my name and said he saw it, saw me coming to him. I didn’t really think anything of it at first, he could’ve seen my face somewhere or known my voice. Someone could’ve said something while he passed by.” She sat up, fingers slyly wiping away moisture from under her eyes.
“I tortured him to get him to talk and we argued for awhile. But then,” Kara shook her head, keeping her eyes dead ahead. “My mother lost it after my father left. She used to say that suffering was good for the soul and she was damn sure I’d have the best one.” Kara extended her arm out between them, opening her fist and flexing her fingers before them. Lee’s eyes followed instinctively, watching her as each digit stretched and relaxed repeatedly. “When I was younger, I put some rubber bugs all over her shoes to get back at her for hitting me. She’d always been afraid of insects since before I was born, since the cylon war. She screamed her frakking head off and tried to kill them, but it just made it worse, sending them jumping all over. When she realized what I’d done, she grabbed my hand, held it in the door jam and slammed the door.”
The crooked irregularities he always overlooked before became clear as day across her fingers. For a moment, Lee regretted making her talk about something she’d obviously been keeping inside of her for most of her life. Had she told Zak about this? He sincerely doubted it. Even Zak’s pleasant demeanor couldn’t have taken such news with a grain of salt and let it go.
Kara closed her hand, drawing it back to herself and resting it in her lap. Her other hand curled around it, as if nursing the fresh wounds she’d felt when she was only a child. “Leoben knew the ways she’d hurt me, the things she’d said. My mother’s been dead for a long time, Lee. Now you’re the only other person who has ever heard about it.”
She turned her head, finally locking eyes with him. Everything he’d experienced on New Caprica had the sound turned down on it as he was witness to the complete horror written across her eyes.
“How did he know?” It was a rhetorical question, but Lee wished he had the answer for her.
“I don’t know, Kara. I don’t know how.”
Her back eased into the couch cushions, head shaking shallowly as she thought everything over. “What happened with Leoben when he found out I wasn’t there?”
The question was a shock to his system. Her revelations had driven the earlier talking points from his thoughts entirely. “It’s not important. They kept me there for a few weeks and released me before you came back.” There had been a million more questions on his mind to ask her based on the events of his stay in the detention center, but they didn’t seem so necessary anymore.
Had she not felt so completely raw and defeated, her abrasive personality would have pushed him to continue. He was the one who had started this, after all. Lee was the one who brought up the cylon from her past and subsequently her less than perfect childhood. Not forcing him to keep going was a protective measure for herself as well, she knew, as it meant less of a chance for her to divulge another item on her long list of things Kara Thrace didn’t talk to anyone about.
They sat like that for the longest time, former friends and lovers barely breathing beside one another. Every so often, Lee could hear the quietest of sniffles from her and it made his heart ache all over again. Gods, he was sorry. Sorry that he’d brought it up, sorry that he made her tell him, sorry that she had been a child and endured so much pain. He had a less than stellar childhood, but it didn’t compare at all to even this little glimpse he’d gotten of her own. He saw her as a child in his head, tiny and blonde. How could anyone have done that to her, especially her own mother?
Lee reached for her hand, the one with the slightest indications of a traumatic childhood event, warming her hand between both of his own. She looked to him as he did so, unable to say a word. He folded his fingers into her own like they were interlocking pieces and drew them both up. His attention was taken from her face as he focused on the pale skin of her hand, leaning in to kiss at each curled digit in slow succession.
Nearby, Kara watched, absolutely drawn in. The tears that had been pooled in her eyes for the last fifteen minutes finally spilled forward and her free hand hurried to wipe them away before he noticed.
She was too late, however, and Lee’s other hand stretched across to cup her cheek, thumb smoothing just under her eye to rub away some of the tears. The rest of him leaned into her and both his hands gave up their current positions to slide around her, hugging himself against her. Kara surprised herself by doing the same without even a thought to it. Her head tucked in against his neck, breathing him in as she clenched her eyes tightly shut.
He held her, a hand stroking up and down her back and along the length of her braid in slow, repetitive motions.
A soft cry broke from her throat and she found herself not caring about it for once. “I missed you.”
Lee breathed out a sigh against her. “I missed you, too.” He kissed her hair, pulling back slowly and reluctantly, his lips dropping to the outer shell of her ear. The trail of haphazard kisses continued, a couple placed to her jaw, her cheek, the healing cut on her brow that he’d bandaged that first night back.
Kara let her fingers tangle in his hair, resting against the warmth of his scalp, allowing him to show her the affection she’d dreamed about for the past year. She pulled back just enough to look at him, her other hand coming to rest on his cheek as she mimicked the same way his hand had been on her own cheek moments before. Lee drew his hand to rest over hers and he turned into her palm, kissing the heel of it.
Looking at him like that, Kara no longer felt like she was on Galactica. She could almost smell the air of New Caprica, feel the gust of wind on her back.
“After everything that’s happened, how can you even stand to be here with me?” Kara’s voice was small and quiet, despite the privacy the room afforded them. She was afraid of his answer, but not sure which one.
His hands were quick to cup at both sides of her cheeks, his blue eyes softening instantly as they held the gaze of her own. “I can’t stop. I’ve tried and I can’t. I don’t even want to.”
Kara faltered, another short lived cry forcing itself out of her throat, unrestrained. She had to look away from him for just a second to gain some measure of control over herself. “I don’t understand. I’m a cancer, Lee. My mother always said that and even Leoben knew it. I would ruin you.”
For months, Lee had thought over what he’d done wrong after Kara’s impromptu marriage. What had he done to her that night that could have driven her even further into Anders’ arms? It ate away at him for a year on that planet, breeding a new level of anger inside of him, even for himself, and he was no stranger to hatred. But with just a few words, every ounce of that anger dissipated. He understood, he finally understood.
“It isn’t conditional, Kara. How I feel about you, it doesn’t depend on anything else.” It had to be a foreign concept to her. Her mother’s love depended on whatever she had deemed proper behavior. Her father had left and shown her that she wasn’t worth sticking around for. Zak died and he knew Kara still held all the blame on herself, whether it was warranted or not. Even with Sam, the love they had between them depended on what was basically a suicide mission to return for him.
Kara said nothing. Instead, she leaned into him, pushing him back until he was lying across the length of the couch. It was a tight fit but she joined him alongside, her arm curled across his chest in a way that very much mirrored how she’d fallen asleep against him on the sand and dirt of New Caprica. It was familiar to Lee and his arm fitted around her to hold her close, keeping her from accidentally rolling off the edge and onto the floor. Her head tucked just under his chin and Lee knew the last time he’d felt this at peace had been the last time she had laid with him like this. He went into it with eyes open this time, though, not expecting her to be there when he woke up.
-
The morning shift reveille sounded over Galactica’s speakers. Lee woke slowly, the muscles in his shoulders and neck heavy with ache. His head wove together the details of his current location, even before he opened his eyes. He’d fallen asleep with Kara in the CAG’s office in the middle of the night cycle. Lee stretched the arm that had once been curled under her. It was empty. He sighed as he turned his face in towards his shoulder, taking in the familiar scent she left along the fabric of his shirt. With great reluctance, Lee opened his eyes, blinking a few times as he adjusted to what little light barely illuminated the room.
Kara’s back was pressed against the couch from where she sat on the floor and Lee could barely hear the rustle of paper in her hands. He rolled onto his side from his back, not entirely sure he wasn’t dreaming it. Maybe his mind was giving him a break for once. Instead of dreaming about being locked in that cell for weeks, he was given reprieve as he thought about the blonde that got away. The cushions squeaked just barely as he moved and Kara’s torso twisted, catching sight of him.
A halfhearted smile was thrown his way and her eyes left him to glance at the clock on the wall. “I missed my chance to shower before this mornings pilots’ brief because you slept so late.” She wasn’t angry. It was too early for him to figure out exactly what her tone of voice was, but he knew it wasn’t actually anger.
“You didn’t have to stay. I do know my way back from here.”
Kara quickly shook her head, averting her eyes for only a moment before she looked back up to him. “No, this time I had to stay.”
-
She didn’t stay much longer afterward and the only other words exchanged between them before she did leave were that of goodbye. As Lee rolled onto his back on the couch, he knew the lack of dialogue didn’t even matter. Kara stayed until morning. He tried not to read too much into it, since he knew she was still legally tied to Sam. And him, he wasn’t sure if he even had anything with Dee anymore. She had been happy to pick up where things left when he returned to Galactica, but Lee knew he wasn’t the same person any longer.
For months after Kara’s marriage, he was relatively content to drown his sorrow inside of Dee. It had helped for awhile, but never fully healed the burn left by the other woman. He felt a sense of obligation to her now because she had stood by him when he tried to make a life for himself on the planet. Even before that, Dualla had been the one at his bedside while he recovered from the gunshot and tried to put himself back together. As poorly as he had been held together back then, he knew Dee was responsible for keeping those last bits of him from falling fully apart.
As always, Lee was back to not knowing where he stood with Kara. She had shared a deep part of herself with him hours before, and it would either work to tie her to him a little more, or cause her to pull back from him because he knew of her weakness. With Starbuck, it could go either way.
Later today, Lee would go to his father and let him know he wanted his wings back, as promised to Kara. The thought of the smile that would be on his father’s face when he heard, caused Lee’s own lips to pull back in a grin. It would be his last day as a civilian and he sought to enjoy it by taking in as much sleep as possible. He closed his eyes and willed himself not to think of the things he’d omitted from his conversation with Kara earlier that morning.
He had no such luck.
-
Trying to keep track of time in a windowless room had proved fairly difficult for Lee, and after the first handful of days, he’d given up entirely. There was nothing to base time off of in there, except perhaps when he felt the pull of his body to sleep. But with food being brought in at irregular intervals and his body feeling the weakness of slight malnourishment, his sleep schedule could no longer be trusted.
He laid on the pile of blankets he’d been given to sleep on, arms folded up beneath his head when he heard the door open. Lee prayed it was just the drop off of something to eat, but when he didn’t hear the familiar slide of a plastic bowl or plate across the cement floor, he knew better. He kept still even as the door closed and he heard someone approach.
“Why hasn’t Zeus come down from his mountain for you, Apollo?” Leoben spoke, his voice eerily calm.
Lee didn’t say a word, instead kept quiet as he feigned sleep, as per their routine.
“I know what you’re doing, Lee Adama. You think you can protect her, but she doesn’t need protecting. Kara’s destiny is here with me, I’ve seen it, and not even you can interfere.”
“You don’t have a frakking clue about her if you think she’d actually follow you anywhere,” Lee gave up his ruse and sat up, leaning back against the wall made from the same cement as the floor. “You’re a machine.”
Leoben pulled his lips tightly together, hands in his pockets. He was the definition of cool and collected, unlike some of the other models who were often bested by their rather human-like tempers. But this was part of his model, he knew that much from what he had heard about Kara’s interaction with this specific one in a previous body, as well as another version entirely that had talked with his father at Ragnar Anchorage.
“Do you know why you’re still alive? Because I have a use for you right now. Some of my sisters and brothers don’t feel the same way about you, Apollo.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
Leoben approached the door of the cell, knocked twice, and let out a whistle. The door didn’t open straight away, and Lee knew that the cylon wasn’t just intending on leaving as usual. His eyes stayed on the door, and though he’d never admit to it, real fear coiled up inside of him. A moment later the door opened, and in stepped two more Leobens, identical to the one already in his cell, save for the particular items of clothing they wore. It was one thing to run into copies of the various models throughout New Caprica, it was another thing to see a group of them side by side. It was still surreal to him.
“Last time I saw Starbuck, we spent a lot of our time together talking. Sometimes the talking was done with my head underwater.” The original Leoben was speaking to him, but Lee couldn’t take his eyes off the bucket of water carried between the other two and set in the center of the room. “I told her that this has all happened before, and it will all happen again. The roles change, Lee Adama. Last time, she was the interrogator and now it’s me.” He seemed almost regretful to say the words, though his brothers didn’t show the same remorse. Maybe it was true that these cylons could be different from one another. Sharon had made her own choices as well. Perhaps they really weren’t all slaves to their programming.
The other two Leobens moved for him swiftly and Lee had nowhere to go, though he didn’t go very willingly. He struggled in their grasp, but the kind of strength they had was unimaginable. Every pull he gave away from one of them was compensated by the other tugging even harder, dragging him on his knees towards the metal bucket before him. They forced him into a kneeling position, but he found no relief in it with their hands painfully pulling his arms up and behind him.
“I don’t want to do this, but I need to find her and I think you know where she’s hiding.” He nodded his head to one of the identical cylons and he released his hold on one of Lee’s arms, taking the opportunity to plant his fist firmly across his jaw. Lee’s head whipped to the side on impact, his head gone fuzzy as the two of them forced him into the water before he’d even taken a breath. He choked on the water filling his mouth, unable to stop his panic as his body resisted the pressure on the back of his head and shoulders. Just when he felt like his lungs were a second away from filling with fluid, he was pulled away from the water and released. Lee immediately collapsed to the concrete, gagging and nearly vomiting what little sustenance currently in his shrunken stomach.
When his body’s violent reaction calmed down, he continued to lay on the cool floor, wanting nothing more than to be absorbed into it. His heart pounded and lungs heaved. Even with his eyes shut, he could tell that Leoben was crouched beside him.
“I won’t hurt her. She’ll be safe with us. Don’t you understand? She has a path and I’m meant to be her guide. I know you want it to be you, but it’s not. I love her, and one day she’s going to say it back and mean it. You can’t stop it.” His voice was gentle and delicate, like speaking to a child. In other circumstances, it would’ve been a comforting tone, but as Lee lay soaked in water and his own blood, there was nothing comforting about it at all.
“She’s not here. You saw frakking wrong.” He ground out the words with all the energy he had left. When he felt the pull on his arms, Lee knew what was coming. Another hit was delivered, this time to the gut, and his face was shoved back into the water before he even had time to double over.
When he was pulled out the second time, Leoben was already speaking. “Did she ever tell you what happened on Caprica? The fours, they’re the doctors of all of us. One of them took out her ovary and preserved it for me. It was almost lost in the destruction, but we managed to recover it.”
Lee’s ears were ringing as he tried to focus on what Leoben was saying. Caprica? Did he mean New Caprica or Caprica before the attacks? Did he mean when she returned the first time or the second time? “What the frak did you do to her?” He yelled despite the complete lack of energy, his palms going to the floor as he tried to push himself up. Lee reached for Leoben, hoping to inflict any kind of damage on him, but he was grabbed back by four other hands.
Leoben continued on as if nothing had happened. “When she comes back to me, we’ll use it to start a family.”
“She’s not coming back! She’s gone, a million light years from here by now and you’re never going to see her again. You know she’s not here, you just can’t accept that maybe you were wrong. If you were wrong about her being here, then maybe everything else you think you’ve seen is wrong too. You can’t see the Gods damned future, nobody can. You just downloaded wrong, your file got corrupt. You’re a copy of a frakking copy, Leoben. Just kill me already, she isn’t going to come running to save me because she isn’t, frakking, here.”
Across from him, Leoben sighed and his brothers once again pushed Lee’s head back under the surface of the water.
-
Lee woke with a start. The office was empty and the clock on the wall told him it was nearing lunch time. He could still smell Kara on the collar of his shirt and it brought him all the comfort in the worlds.