We used to wait. (Chapter 13/?)
title: We used to wait. (Chapter 13/?)
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: 7,879
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 once again posted 12 + 13 close together, so make sure you read both!
The cylon prisoners, on return from the algae planet, had been locked away deep in Galactica’s brig. Baltar had been given space in hack as well, far removed from the Three and Two. The last thing anyone wanted was for the two cylon models to conspire with the barely human traitor, and as such they were kept in the quarters that had once belonged to Sharon Agathon. It was deemed to be the stronger, safer, and better guarded of the jail facilities, and since their arrival they had been kept under close marine guard and surveillance. Adama had allowed Leoben some medical attention when he was first brought in and one of the less experienced medics patched him up, only doing the minimal amount for his injuries. No one was about to let Cottle into the same room with the cylon, out of fear the Two would snap and harm one of humanity’s only remaining medical practitioners. Time had passed, however, and Leoben healed well enough, with both of them subsisting on the same algae fed diet as the rest of the fleet. Despite the fact that their only company was each other, D’Anna and Leoben hadn’t said much of anything throughout their stay and that much left everyone else fearing the worst.
Sam nodded to the marine at the doorway as he stepped in. They were friends, in fact had been drinking at the newly established Joe’s Bar the night before and because of it, Sam knew he wasn’t very likely to stop the ensign from going about his business. Anders approached the enclosure, looking in at the two skinjobs kept like caged animals. It reminded him of a pet store from back on Caprica, with people walking by and watching the creatures kept inside as they tried to pretend they weren’t held captive. He picked the phone off of its cradle and knocked one end of it against part of the wiring on his side of the glass. D’Anna tilted her head up to the commotion, noticing his eyes locked on her. With a glance to her brother who was either asleep or in meditation along his cot, she stood up and met Anders at the wall, picking the receiver up with her cuffed hands.
“Come to interrogate me, have we? I already said I won’t talk to anyone who isn’t the Admiral.” She was smug for someone with so little to call her own. Sam wondered for a moment why she and the other cylon didn’t just kill one another and allow for the downloading process to happen. Perhaps they weren’t sure if they were in range of a resurrection ship and actually feared death for once. Or perhaps they both did want to be there.
“No one sent me.” He stared across to her, a challenge in his voice. It was still strange to look at this woman, someone he’d see on the news for years prior to the Fall. She had been a cylon that entire time.
“Then I’m not interested.” She made move to release the phone from her hand.
“Wait!” Sam interjected and she paused her actions, curious at just what he had to say. “I came to ask you about the Final Five.”
D’Anna gave a hmph as she shook her head. “I don’t know anything about them.”
“You see, that’s where I know you’re lying. I heard you in that temple, you were there for a reason. You thought you’d be able to see them. Why?”
She paused, not sure if she wanted to give away what little information she had. It was a bad tactical move on her part, but the curiosity as to why this man was asking outweighed all the rest. “I’ve been having visions of them each time I download, of the five remaining cylons. The hybrid on our ship told me they would be revealed to me at the temple.” Her face grew stern. “They didn’t show up.”
“I don’t understand-how do you not know who they are? Haven’t you seen them?”
“They aren’t like the rest of us. There aren’t just copies of them doing all the work like us. We were programmed not to think about them. Someone did that for a reason, but I defied my programming.” There was a note of pride in her words as she spoke. She was a cylon, a pretty devout one at that, and still she was proud of something so very unlike a cylon. She was proud to be an individual.
“What do you know about them?”
“I’m beginning to think someone did send you to interrogate me…” Her words trailed off. “There’s nothing to know. They don’t want to be found and they won’t show themselves to us.”
“Do they know who they are?”
“You mean, are they sleepers like Boomer was? I’ve no idea. And why are you so interested in finding out who they are?” D’Anna took the control away from him that he’d been wielding.
Though it was an obvious question, it was one he didn’t prepare himself for. “I was just curious.” He returned the phone to the holder and walked away, not willing to potentially out himself for whatever he was if she chose to pry.
From the window, D’Anna stood with the phone still in hand as she watched Sam leave. “Right.”
-
Across the ship, in the quarters formally reserved for Major Kara Thrace and Ensign Samuel Anders, Captain Lee Adama sat with his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were shut like he was in a form of meditation, and he was. But instead of asking the Gods for safe passage for the rest of his people to Earth, he was silently praying he came out of the next ten minutes with both of his ears and a distinct lack of spilled blood. Kara came back into the room, fists on her hips as she eyed him as he sat in the low backed chair like a child, forced into the corner in a time out by his mother. Kara had never endured that kind of punishment for her wrongdoings. When she was little, her father had always rescued her from her mother’s discipline and when her father had left, she was more used to greeting the feel of her mother’s open hand on her cheek to teach her a lesson. Regardless, she tapped her barefoot on the cool metal flooring, desperately longing for the carpeting she used to have in her quarters on Pegasus. This was certainly a downgrade.
“Don’t look so scared.” Kara teased him with a smile on her face, though he couldn’t tell with his eyes tightly closed. Her bandages had come completely off a few days before, though the skin and muscles weren’t what they had been at one point. Cottle had ordered her to a strict regimen of physical therapy on her hands and she had grudgingly listened, though she told herself it was only to get her back into her Viper as soon as possible. She ran her fingers through the swath of hair that were her lengthening bangs, simply enjoying the feel of it for the first time in forever. “I’m doing you a favor, Lee. I’m surprised Tigh hasn’t thrown you in hack yet for this mess.”
Lee kept quiet and still, but cracked a smile as she talked. “Excuse me for being a little busy with hauling algae and saving you from our favorite psychopathic cylon.” There was humor in his voice. Though they hadn’t really talked about Leoben since she’d come back, he knew well enough that they had at least returned to the point where they could joke with one another about it.
“Excuses.” Her word faded as she disappeared into the small bathroom, then returned, clippers that she’d borrowed in hand. “You don’t want to know what I had to do to get these.” There was a hint of something in her voice that reminded Lee of how she sounded when she was trying to get him to forget about paperwork and undress her instead. Since her declaration regarding her marriage, he had fallen awfully behind in his duties.
“Just do it already.” Lee was still in the same spot, having not moved even an inch. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Kara with his life, because he absolutely did when she was out in a Viper or he needed someone with a good shot to have his back. He just didn’t trust her with this, especially not when her hands were only just learning proper function again. The promise had been made though, and she intended to make him keep it.
She stepped behind him and draped the towel over his shoulders, before turning the mechanized sheers on. The soft buzz filled the room and with one hand, Kara secured his head in position. “No moving, Captain.” Kara ordered with her best CAG voice, something he had grown familiar with again over the last few days as she slowly took the position back from him. Though she wouldn’t be flying just yet, she had argued there was no reason why she couldn’t boss her nuggets around and fill out a roster just fine. With the proper attachment for length on the clippers, she ran it through the hair on the side of his head. She felt Lee hold his breath. “Gods, Lee. You’re such a frakking baby.”
“No talking, just focus.” He gave his order right on back to her. She was his superior, but there was no fear in her pulling rank on him in the quarters they retreated to when they needed a small amount of privacy together. They’d kept their bunks, of course, but tended to end up within these walls more often than not. Lee was even beginning to wonder when the masses would catch on, not interested in fending off those rumors quite yet. This was just theirs right now. He didn’t want to share it with anyone.
Kara kept working, tongue stuck out of just the corner of her mouth in a habit stemming back to her childhood. “Did you hear about Hera?”
“Mmhmm,” he said, opting for the sound rather than the nod of his head as he felt her starting on the other side. “I’m not really surprised about it, but I am at the same time. Roslin would do something like that.”
“I understand why she would think taking Hera away was a good idea…” Her thought came to a pause as she changed the plastic piece out for another that would allow for increased length at the top of his head. “…But taking away a baby from its parents? I wasn’t too thrilled on the idea of a half cylon child, but even I wouldn’t have the brass to do that.” She stopped, considering her words. “Not to Helo. Not to Athena.”
“But back then, she was just another Sharon. If it happened now, I don’t think it would go down the same way. Maybe I’m putting too much stock in the President.”
Kara ran the clippers over the top his head in smooth, steady motions. “I can’t imagine how it was for Helo. There he is, just trying to keep things together down in Dogsville with the new Sagitarrons brought on board. Arguing with those people to try to get them to let the doctors even help them and that woman just shows up for treatment with Hera. Parading her around and calling her Isis. Thank the Gods Laura didn’t have the foresight to make up a fake birthdate too. I think Karl would have thought he was going crazy if it wasn’t for that clue.”
“It isn’t anyone else’s fault, though. Roslin told the woman some story and let her adopt Hera. It wasn’t exactly legal, but we haven’t really had the proper paperwork for anything since the end of the worlds.” That much was very true. While during those first few months while they fled from the cylons everyone had tried to maintain their normal lives as much as possible, that entire charade had long since gone out the window. Now they were scraping by, and barely at that. “Hera’s with her parents now, that’s what matters.”
“Have you seen your father recently? What Laura did cut him pretty deep, Lee.”
“Roslin and my father? Don’t make me think about it.” That inner child in him was again brought out.
With a final pass over his scalp, Kara turned the handheld machine off and set it on the table close by. Her hands ran over his hair, short and tightly cut, relishing the tickling sensation it gave her healing nerves. Just about the only thing she would miss about that hair was the feel of her hands pushing through it. She stepped around to his front and tugged the towel off, balling it up so the freshly cut scraps of hair wouldn’t litter the floor of the room. He opened his eyes to her, having held them closed the entire process. “You look so young, I almost feel bad about frakking you this morning.”
His lips upturned as he uncrossed his arms and ran his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t be sure of the look of it without a mirror close by, but it felt right, at least. Lee hadn’t been a fan of his outgrown hair either, he just couldn’t be previously bothered to find the time and effort to get it done. As much as he teased Kara and feared the outcome of letting her do this for him, he did appreciate it. Moments like these were the rare times he was allowed to see another side of Kara that reminded him so much of the girl he had met all those years ago. The girl he had known when Zak was still alive and not the even more tormented version she’d turned into once the accident had claimed his brother’s life. “You would never feel bad about that.”
A coquettish roll of her eyes and smile was given to him as she stepped away to clean up the mess she’d created. “I could. Maybe.”
Lee went to the bathroom to look in the mirror and assess the damage. His own image surprised himself. It wasn’t the man he’d been seeing in the mirror since he’d left New Caprica. It wasn’t even the man he’d seen during the year of peace they’d had down there, when he hadn’t been getting his hair cut nearly as short as it was now. It was the strangest feeling and all he could do was stare at himself, blinking as he ran his hand over his face and then over his hair.
“Do you approve, Captain?” She appeared behind him, resting her chin on his shoulder while her hands slipped around his middle to meet on his stomach.
“Well it isn’t as good…” He started, but felt her teeth gently bite into his shoulder. Lee laughed and shook his head, catching her eyes through their reflection in the mirror.
Her hand pushed under the bottom of his tanks, caressing the hard plane of muscle and thin line of hairs that started below his navel and disappeared down past his waistband. “You don’t have CAP for another two hours, Lee. I know because I made the schedule myself.” Kara’s voice sang into his ears, his body already warming at the very thought of what she was suggesting.
“Don’t you have physical therapy soon?”
With her eyes still locked on his own in the mirror, she kissed his shoulder and side of his neck. “If we put my hands to good use first, I can be late.” As if to strengthen her case, her palm ran along the front of his trousers. Lee needed no further convincing and turned around in her loose grasp, hoisting her up in his arms as he took her back to bed.
-
Afterwards, with no regard for the time, Lee lay beside her, both of them completely exposed. His head rested against her stomach and his fingers traced shapeless patterns across the skin of her hip. The time since she’d made her decision about Sam felt like an absolute dream to him and he knew it was the same for her. This was everything he ever wanted, and nothing, not even a breath of it disappointed him. Perhaps the only point of contention had been on whether or not they let the people around them know about what was happening between them, but they both agreed in the end not to say a word. At least for now.
Kara’s hand slid along his shoulder, repeating a circuit that brought her digits up along his neck and over his scalp, then returning in a loop. She was memorizing him so when she was alone in her bunk late at night to keep up appearances, she would be able to think of him with every accurate little detail. Already she was starting to properly commit to memory all the freckles along his skin, though she favored some more than others. There was one along his hip she had been particularly fond of and every time her mouth trailed that far south, she had to stop to appreciate it.
Unbeknownst to either of them, Lee had already done much of the same with every discolored freckle and mole that was scattered across her pale skin. And just like Kara, Lee had many favorites, like the one on her inner thigh right at the junction of leg meeting pelvis. The first time he’d seen it, he knew that he was one of only a few men who had ever come to notice such a tiny little thing on her. Getting so intimate with that bit of flesh was not something every man she’d been with had done and Lee took comfort in that. Now before each time he tasted her between her thighs, Lee kissed over that freckle in a silent moment of private adoration for her.
His fingers continued their patterns, eventually getting sidetracked to trace over the pair of scars on her left side. He recognized the higher one as the gunshot she wrote about in her report when she settled down after her return from Caprica. It also bore a striking resemblance to the mark on his shoulder, left behind after she’d unintentionally caught him in her friendly fire back on Cloud 9. The second scar though, that was the one that scared him. That night on New Caprica, he hadn’t gotten close enough to this region of her in the darkness, not that he would have noticed it with the alcohol in him. But now he’d noticed it, and all he could hear in his head was Leoben’s echoing voice in that detention cell, telling Lee about what he had done to Kara back on that planet. The pad of his index finger traced over the line of the silver scar, trying to conjure up any other reason for it. He wanted Leoben to be lying more than anything else. “Tell me about this one.”
Kara glanced to him from where her upper body was barely propped up on the two pillows afforded the bed in her quarters. This was a game they had begun to play on occasion after they were satiated and exhausted. He would trace over the series of scars on her knee and ask about them, then she would regale him with stories of her days as a teenager when she thought pyramid would be her life. It would be her turn afterwards and she would ask about some faint line on his elbow. Lee would return the favor to tell her about the time when he was six and at Grandpa Joe’s cabin on the lake. He got scared of the fish they’d just pulled in on his line and he had fallen onto a rock amidst the commotion and excitement. They had other scars though, more recent ones, and both understood that they were off limits in an informal agreement. He didn’t ask about the scar on her abdomen. She didn’t ask about the couple she knew were fresh from New Caprica. Until now, neither of them had broken the rules.
What Kara really didn’t want to talk about was what had transpired on Caprica those years before. Most of the time, she thought she put it behind her, but every rare glance of it she got brought up a whole world of emotions she assumed were long since buried. “Mm, how about you get on up here instead. I can make it worth your while, Apollo.”
He lifted his head as his body twisted so he could take her into view. “I want to know.”
“You really don’t, Lee.” She shook her head faintly. This was one of the moments when she preferred Sam, though it was for a rather cowardly reason. Sam always let things go and Lee had the habit of quite the opposite.
Lee crawled up to her, kissing his way there until his head rested on the same pillow she occupied. They were close now, perhaps even too close, with their noses a hairsbreadth apart as they faced one another. “I want to know.” Gently, he repeated the words and cupped her warm cheek, still pink with the aftereffects of their time together. Starbuck was a hard sell when it came to things like this, but he was doing his best.
Kara shut her eyes and let out a deep breath that warmed his skin. It served both to steady herself and buy her some time. “When I got shot on Caprica, I passed out. I woke up in a hospital there by myself. There was a doctor, or at least he said he was, but now I know he was one of the fourth models.”
Lee listened, not prodding her along so she could tell it at her own pace. Her words pained him, especially the mention of the specific cylon who kept her in his care. Leoben had said the same thing. The likelihood of Leoben’s words just being another lie began to dwindle.
“They sewed up the gunshot and took care of me. Then I woke up one day with that scar and he wouldn’t tell me what it was really from. I overhead him talking to another cylon, one of the blonde ones, in the hallway about it.”
Lee leaned in to kiss her cheek, providing the comfort that would help her along.
“I saw Cottle after Kobol. They took the ovary out… for Gods know what. To experiment on, to try to grow little half cylons in one of their farms. I don’t frakking know.”
The anger and hurt swam under his skin. He knew what happened on Caprica couldn’t have been easy to deal with, but when she returned to the Astral Queen, he never would have suspected something of that nature. All of a sudden, that torn look on her face as she sat in the locker room bouncing that pyramid ball made a whole lot more sense. “You’ve still got the other one.”
“I’m not ever having kids, so it doesn’t even matter. It’s the thought that it was taken from me at all that bothers me.”
Lee never would have expected it from himself, but his heart broke a little at her mention of children. He hadn’t ever wanted them and never thought of them for more than a handful of passing moments in his life. Even with Gianne, especially with Gianne, he hadn’t been able to see himself as a father, which was why he was so surprised with the hollow ache he felt in himself at her casual admission. “Not even down the line, on Earth?”
Kara opened her eyes and looked at him. “I’m doing humanity a favor by not continuing my gene pool.” Now uncomfortable with the intimacy between them at such a close space, she turned her head to look back towards the ceiling. “If you think I’m going to settle down with you now or something, Lee… just give everything up to be your barefoot and pregnant girlfriend, you should just leave right now.”
“Did I even say that?” Lee picked his head up off of the pillow, letting his elbow prop him up. “Gods you try to pick a fight with me over everything, Kara.”
“It was what you were getting at.”
“No, it wasn’t.” He was stern as he spoke stiffly. “I was seeing a girl a few months before the cylons showed up, her name was Gianne.”
Kara nodded absently. “I remember, your father mentioned your mother telling him about it once. She thought you two were going to get married, or so I heard.”
His mother would be the one to make that assumption. Gods he hadn’t even thought about his own mother in months. “We weren’t, it was just something we had when I was planet side, but,” he sighed with a shake of his head. He hadn’t told anyone about this other than Shevon, another black mark on his sad existence. “She got pregnant and I left.”
Her head turned sharply to look at him. “Never would’ve thought Mr. By-the-book would have the balls to walk away.”
“I’m not proud of what I did. I just… panicked. I didn’t want to be a father and certainly not with a woman I was just biding my time with. I don’t know what I would’ve done in the end, but it didn’t matter anyway, because they both died that day with everyone else. I can’t even say in hindsight I would have stepped up to do my job, because I know who I am, or at least who I was back then. Now when I think about Earth and if we ever get there, when I think about having the chance to not run or fight for our lives anymore and to just be whoever the frak Lee Adama really is, I think maybe I want that. I could want to be a father. Maybe one day it’ll change for you too.”
Kara watched him from where she lay. They were closer than they ever had been before, but she still wasn’t used to him being so open with her about things like this. Out of the two of them, he was always the one to bend first, that much was true, but since he’d returned from New Caprica, things had changed. Since she’d made her vague sort of commitment to him in this very room, he’d only become even more open. She would never say it aloud, but it meant a tremendous amount to her to know she was trusted with someone else’s secrets. “Do you miss her?”
Lee’s eyes came back to her quickly. “I miss everyone sometimes.” It was the understatement of the millenium. When the attacks had first happened, all anyone seemed to talk about was those that they’d lost. Then they all quickly realized their existence was walking a fine line and making do with what they had was far more important than mourning all they had lost. “Sometimes I think about what would have happened if the world didn’t end. I’d be a father by now. I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.” That part seemed to sadden him the most, because it took such an abstract idea of a baby and made it real. Not just a child, but a son or a daughter.
She saw the look in his eyes as he mentioned it and this time it was her turn to cup his cheek despite how irritated she’d been with him only a few minutes earlier. “You would’ve gone back to her and done the right thing, you would’ve been a father.” Her words were for both of them. For him because she knew he needed the reassurance that he would have done the right thing for his child. Lee needed the comfort of knowing there wasn’t such a huge hole in his character. And for Kara, the words put distance between her own father and the type of man Lee was. Her father had left, she wouldn’t let herself think of Lee in a similar way.
“I miss everyone,” he said just above a whisper. “But I wouldn’t be with you if all of this hadn’t happened. I always wanted you.” There was a brutal kind of honesty in his words.
“Lee…” It was something of a warning to him, not wanting to dredge up the past and how things had transpired between them when she was still with his brother. It was also because what he said struck particularly deep inside of her. She had always wanted him as well, but that was something she would never admit. She loved Zak too much to admit aloud how she felt back then.
“I love you.”
Kara nodded as he said it, pushing herself up on her own elbow to lean in and kiss him. She didn’t need to say it in return, he knew. “Maybe someday.” Her eyes found his. “When we’re on Earth, maybe we’ll have a few.” Later, she would look back at this moment and shake her head at herself for being so sentimental with him.
“Maybe,” Lee repeated and kissed her again.
-
The following evening, after a steaming bowl of algae for dinner, Lee brought Kara to Joe’s Bar. She’d been there before in passing to see Lee’s hard work and dream come to fruition once it had opened. The Kara of yore would have loved nothing more than to be down at that bar every night, pounding back shots and playing triad with the rest of the pilots and crew. Since her turn at Commander and especially since their passage through the radiation cloud, Kara found herself abstaining from most of the debauchery that had defined her life. She could still get drunk with the best of them, but at some point most of the desire for it had left her. It hadn’t been something she’d thought on recently, but she idly wondered when she had in fact gotten so soft.
The bar was busy, packed even, but that was to be expected for that time of night and the fact that it was still considered to be brand new by all their standards. Then again, their standards of new were very loose these days. Having a pair of socks without holes was good enough to be considered new. Kara said her hellos to the familiar faces she passed, some were merely her fellow pilots, but every now and again there was a member of crew that had served under her and done her proud, especially during the exodus and rescue.
“Shouldn’t you be at home, Helo?” Kara smirked at him while peering down at his cards from the triad game he was currently engaged in. “Athena’s got a pretty good right hook with your name on it, I bet.”
“Nice to see you around again, ‘buck.” Helo ignored her friendly jabs as he looked to her, then made a deliberate motion of looking to Lee standing beside her. “And Captain, what a surprise to see you two together.”
Kara’s cheeks warmed. Most of the crew were oblivious, or at least pretending to be. Helo, on the other hand, had never managed to get that memo, as one of his favorite past times was teasing Starbuck in addition to calling her out when no one else would. She knew he would never outright bring her relationship to the forefront of conversation around everyone else, but it didn’t stop him from having his fun with it. She let her eyes shift to the rest of the table where Duck and a few other crew sat, cards in hand and their pile of collateral in the middle. “His cards are crap, he’s got nothing.” She winked to them and stepped away, heading for the bar.
“Frak you, Starbuck!” Helo called behind her, a heavy laugh in his words.
Lee had stepped away amidst the teasing shared between Karl and Kara. While he was friends with Helo, they weren’t as close as he knew Kara was with him, so Lee let the two of them duke it out punch for punch. He was at the bar when Kara approached, her hand slyly sliding over his backside for only a moment. Lee turned back to her with a smile, a pair of glasses in his hands. “What if you had the wrong person?”
The cup meant for her was taken from his hands and she sipped at it once. “I couldn’t miss that bald spot I accidentally gave you when you let me cut your hair.”
His hand rose immediately, trying to feel for a place where the length was noticeably uneven. Her wide smile told him he’d been played and with his own smile, he spoke. “Very funny.”
“You should’ve seen your face.”
Lee downed a mouthful of his drink of choice before giving a nod of his head towards the other end of the bar. “I’ve got something for you.” Were they alone, he would have taken her hand and pulled her there himself. He pushed through the crowd of people lingering around the bar for their drinks, looking back occasionally to make sure she followed.
Ahead, Kara could see a clearing of space despite the dense population. Only when she arrived at where Lee had stopped, did she understand it. Before her was just about the most rickety piano she’d ever laid her eyes on. There were clear water marks on the top where someone had rested a perspiring beverage for an extended period of time. Under one of the legs, she could see a wedge of scrap metal stuck to even it out so it didn’t teeter when being played. It was a horrible looking thing, but also one of the last in the universe.
“Don’t get excited - it’s barely in tune. Believe it or not, we don’t have a piano tuner on any of these ships.” It was said with humor but there was an undercurrent of sadness to it. “I found it on the Prometheus.”
Kara raised her brow to him. “I’m sure your father wouldn’t be happy to know you used the black market for such a big ticket item.” They all used it from time to time, though it was one of the most unspoken things amongst the crew. It was fine for acquiring small items like soap or clothing, but an item like this tended to be easily noticed.
His shoulders shrugged and he placed his hand on top of the discolored wood. “Helo told me your father played piano.” Lee wasn’t sure just how of a forbidden topic her father was, so he broached it slowly. “Cottle said it would be good for your hands.”
Her hands pulled in closer to her chest at the very mention, even with the glass still in her grasp. She was torn on what he’d done for her. Kara hadn’t played the piano in years, decades almost. Once her father left, her mother had put an end to any talk of it and certainly an end to playing it. That piano of her fathers had sat in their living room for years, untouched and neglected. Why her mother didn’t just get rid of it, she had absolutely no idea. When she was older and would get home from school before her mother would get home from her dayshift, she used to pull the cover off the keys and ghost her fingers over the notes. Actually pressing them was too scary for her, both because of how it made her miss her father that much more but because of the fear that Socrata would return early and find her daughter in the middle of tapping out a few notes. All of that aside, her heart was full to the brim at what Lee had done. She’d never told him about her father or about playing when she was young, but he’d taken something he learned about her from Helo and run with it. Joe’s Bar didn’t need a piano, Lee had done this just for her.
“I can’t play,” Kara lied.
Lee’s brow furrowed. He hadn’t expected that. Maybe she wouldn’t have remembered much, but he had been certain with a pianist for a father, Kara would have at some point learned to play. “I took a few lessons when I was young, I’ll help you.”
Him helping her had been the theme of the last few months. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate it, just that it made her uncomfortable to allow it. “I don’t remember, Lee. At all.”
The change in her stance on the piano pleased him, despite the walls she was putting up. It was something. Lee set his glass down on the piano top and sat on the left side of the bench. His index finger dragged across the white keys quickly, letting the notes sound out in the crowded room. No one seemed to notice or care. Lee would wait her out.
She watched him, biting her lip in silent decision making. Her glass soon joined Lee’s up top and Kara sat beside him, though her hands remained in her lap. Lee couldn’t help but feel like she was physically afraid of it and he wondered just what had happened to cause it. “You weren’t lying about this being out of tune.”
“I thought about opening it up and trying my hand at it, but…” An exaggerated cringe fell over his features. Lee was good with fixing a Viper, but trying to fine tune an old instrument when he knew he was practically tone deaf? Not a good idea at all. He pressed a C key, tapping it a few times before moving on to nearby notes. It was one of the few things he remembered off the top of his head, a simple children’s song he had learned with his mother at only a few years old. “Music was never my specialty.” His shoulder bumped into hers.
“No kidding,” Kara smiled mostly to herself. She raised a hand to the keys but hesitated, pausing the movement in mid air only an inch or so off from the keys. With a sudden breath of courage, she finished the motion and rested her fingers against a series of white keys, though not with enough force to actually make them resound. “You should have heard my father play.” Kara offered the comment out of the blue.
Lee nodded as his fingers continued to pluck out notes.
“He played at the opera house in Caprica City before I was born. For awhile I listened to the recording of it everyday after he left.” Her voice was a mixture of happiness and sadness as she watched the tips of her fingers drag just along the shiny white surface. “He was away a lot to play, but when he was home, he’d sit me down at the piano with him to try to teach me. He had more patience than all of Caprica.” She wasn’t quite sure what was pushing her to share these details of her life with him, perhaps she still felt she owed him from his own admissions the day before.
“Do you remember any of it?”
“Not well.” Her hands rested on her lap and next to her, Lee feared she had already given up. “Everything he wrote was too difficult, so he’d make up all these little things for me that he knew I could do. We had this one song we worked on for the longest time to play together.” Kara stopped, the silence existing for a deceptively long period of time.
Lee’s own movements stopped as well and for the first time since she sat beside him, he turned his head to catch sight of her. “Teach it to me.”
“I can’t, I don’t remember it well enough.” She spoke quickly and it gave away that they were just excuses, and not even good ones at that.
“What you don’t remember, we can sound out.” Lee was determined to not let the night end in failure for them here. It wasn’t even about how much trouble it was to get this piano on board or what it had cost him to get it. It was about getting something for her. This was for her, since Lee knew she wouldn’t have accepted anything like this from him under other circumstances.
Her hands drew back to the keys, both of them this time, and once her fingers were in a familiar position she pressed at them lightly, listening for the familiar sound of them being in harmony together. It was difficult with the background noise, but she was thankful for it nonetheless, as it brought less attention towards her and Lee and the corner they had tucked themselves away into. “Like this,” she said and moved to take his own hands and position them an octave lower on the appropriate notes. Her fingers covered his own and she pressed down until the proper chord rang out. After the initial test, she repeated the process, this time banging out some kind of rhythm.
“I think I understand. Show me what’s next.” Lee wasn’t about to let this fall through his fingers just yet. As long as she was willing to sit here with him, so would he. Kara’s hands tested out the next set of notes, struggling to find the proper blend and balance. When she was sure of it, she repeated the process of manipulating his fingers and pushing them downward. Lee caught on quick enough, mixing the first chord into the next in the rhythm she’d set for him.
On her half of the keyboard, Kara plucked at a few of the keys on their own, eyes shut to help her head focus. She wasn’t on Galactica or in Joe’s Bar. She wasn’t a pilot or in the military. She was seven years old and sitting beside her father, her feet not even touching the floor. She could sense the way their home smelt at the time, the warm temperature so unlike the chill of Galactica’s air. More than anything, there was peace inside of her as she listened to her father explain away what they were doing. Just as she’d shown Lee how to play the right notes, her father’s hand directed hers over her own keys.
She came back to herself soon enough and Kara’s fingers tapped at the series of notes until the familiar tune rang out. A nod of her head was given to Lee and he started his own half of the song until she joined in, both of them moving achingly slow together to make sure it was perfect.
-
From a seat at the bar, Samuel Anders looked up. There were plenty of voices and clinking of glasses around him, but the sound of music cut through it all. Tory, the woman he’d been drinking with, lifted her head at nearly the same moment and looked out to the crowd of people. He left his drink behind and stumbled through the people to try to find its source. She followed behind him, not even entirely sure why.
Ellen Tigh sat atop her husband’s lap, laughing loudly and vibrantly as her arm curled around his neck. They’d spent the better part of the night drinking, one of their favorite past times. She wasn’t the same Ellen that had left for New Caprica, everyone knew that place had changed her just as much as it had her husband, but she was still very much herself. Tigh laughed with her and the rumbling of his chest shook them both. Ellen kissed against his ear, nibbling on the flesh there perhaps a little too provocatively for their surroundings but she was never one to care. Though she was lost in the moment, she stopped suddenly and raised her head. “Do you hear that, Saul?”
Tigh focused for a moment. “I haven’t heard a piano playing in forever.”
“I know that song.” Though she was enjoying the time with her husband, she stood from his lap and tugged at his hand to pull him from his seat along with her. She took the bottle of Chief-brewed hooch they’d purchased along with her, tugging Saul along the way.
Galen was drinking alone at a table in the back of the bar when he heard the notes ringing in his ears. It had been a particularly bad night with Cally and he’d retreated here despite the hour he had to be up in the morning. He was determined to ignore everything, from the people around him down to that frakking music that tugged at him. Try as he might to stay in his seat, something inside of him won out. The rest of his glass was downed in a single gulp before he stood and followed the sound.
Sam paused just behind where his wife sat with Lee Adama. Everything in him burned at the betrayal he felt, though he knew he had given her permission and well wishes on her journey to be with him. Boy, he suddenly regretted that decision. What became more important than the fact that she was with the other man, was what the two of their huddled bodies were playing together, each time a little faster and more confident. Every loop extended the music a second or so longer as Kara banged out a few more familiar notes as they came back to her.
Why did the music sound so familiar? It wasn’t just the pull of an old favorite tune he hadn’t heard on the radio in years. It wasn’t some old childhood song. There was something about it, like it was on the edge of his mind but he couldn’t quite recall it. Like it was just outside his peripheral vision and every time he turned his head to catch it, it had moved just enough away to never be seen. A word on the tip of his tongue, never to be figured out. He didn’t move to say anything or disturb the couple together, more intimate in their behavior than he had ever felt with Kara, even the day they got married.
He looked up from where his eyes had burned holes into the backs of their bodies to see a number of other equally enthralled faces standing amongst the edge of the crowd of oblivious bodies. Ellen and Saul Tigh. Galen Tyrol. Beside him, Tory stood, eyes locked on the piano though she looked distant, as if trying to recall something deep within herself. Sam thought nothing of it at first. A coincidence. Then he counted. Himself, one. Tory, two. Ellen, three. Saul, four. And the Chief? The man that had also been called to that temple on the algae planet? The Chief made five.
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: 7,879
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 once again posted 12 + 13 close together, so make sure you read both!
The cylon prisoners, on return from the algae planet, had been locked away deep in Galactica’s brig. Baltar had been given space in hack as well, far removed from the Three and Two. The last thing anyone wanted was for the two cylon models to conspire with the barely human traitor, and as such they were kept in the quarters that had once belonged to Sharon Agathon. It was deemed to be the stronger, safer, and better guarded of the jail facilities, and since their arrival they had been kept under close marine guard and surveillance. Adama had allowed Leoben some medical attention when he was first brought in and one of the less experienced medics patched him up, only doing the minimal amount for his injuries. No one was about to let Cottle into the same room with the cylon, out of fear the Two would snap and harm one of humanity’s only remaining medical practitioners. Time had passed, however, and Leoben healed well enough, with both of them subsisting on the same algae fed diet as the rest of the fleet. Despite the fact that their only company was each other, D’Anna and Leoben hadn’t said much of anything throughout their stay and that much left everyone else fearing the worst.
Sam nodded to the marine at the doorway as he stepped in. They were friends, in fact had been drinking at the newly established Joe’s Bar the night before and because of it, Sam knew he wasn’t very likely to stop the ensign from going about his business. Anders approached the enclosure, looking in at the two skinjobs kept like caged animals. It reminded him of a pet store from back on Caprica, with people walking by and watching the creatures kept inside as they tried to pretend they weren’t held captive. He picked the phone off of its cradle and knocked one end of it against part of the wiring on his side of the glass. D’Anna tilted her head up to the commotion, noticing his eyes locked on her. With a glance to her brother who was either asleep or in meditation along his cot, she stood up and met Anders at the wall, picking the receiver up with her cuffed hands.
“Come to interrogate me, have we? I already said I won’t talk to anyone who isn’t the Admiral.” She was smug for someone with so little to call her own. Sam wondered for a moment why she and the other cylon didn’t just kill one another and allow for the downloading process to happen. Perhaps they weren’t sure if they were in range of a resurrection ship and actually feared death for once. Or perhaps they both did want to be there.
“No one sent me.” He stared across to her, a challenge in his voice. It was still strange to look at this woman, someone he’d see on the news for years prior to the Fall. She had been a cylon that entire time.
“Then I’m not interested.” She made move to release the phone from her hand.
“Wait!” Sam interjected and she paused her actions, curious at just what he had to say. “I came to ask you about the Final Five.”
D’Anna gave a hmph as she shook her head. “I don’t know anything about them.”
“You see, that’s where I know you’re lying. I heard you in that temple, you were there for a reason. You thought you’d be able to see them. Why?”
She paused, not sure if she wanted to give away what little information she had. It was a bad tactical move on her part, but the curiosity as to why this man was asking outweighed all the rest. “I’ve been having visions of them each time I download, of the five remaining cylons. The hybrid on our ship told me they would be revealed to me at the temple.” Her face grew stern. “They didn’t show up.”
“I don’t understand-how do you not know who they are? Haven’t you seen them?”
“They aren’t like the rest of us. There aren’t just copies of them doing all the work like us. We were programmed not to think about them. Someone did that for a reason, but I defied my programming.” There was a note of pride in her words as she spoke. She was a cylon, a pretty devout one at that, and still she was proud of something so very unlike a cylon. She was proud to be an individual.
“What do you know about them?”
“I’m beginning to think someone did send you to interrogate me…” Her words trailed off. “There’s nothing to know. They don’t want to be found and they won’t show themselves to us.”
“Do they know who they are?”
“You mean, are they sleepers like Boomer was? I’ve no idea. And why are you so interested in finding out who they are?” D’Anna took the control away from him that he’d been wielding.
Though it was an obvious question, it was one he didn’t prepare himself for. “I was just curious.” He returned the phone to the holder and walked away, not willing to potentially out himself for whatever he was if she chose to pry.
From the window, D’Anna stood with the phone still in hand as she watched Sam leave. “Right.”
-
Across the ship, in the quarters formally reserved for Major Kara Thrace and Ensign Samuel Anders, Captain Lee Adama sat with his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were shut like he was in a form of meditation, and he was. But instead of asking the Gods for safe passage for the rest of his people to Earth, he was silently praying he came out of the next ten minutes with both of his ears and a distinct lack of spilled blood. Kara came back into the room, fists on her hips as she eyed him as he sat in the low backed chair like a child, forced into the corner in a time out by his mother. Kara had never endured that kind of punishment for her wrongdoings. When she was little, her father had always rescued her from her mother’s discipline and when her father had left, she was more used to greeting the feel of her mother’s open hand on her cheek to teach her a lesson. Regardless, she tapped her barefoot on the cool metal flooring, desperately longing for the carpeting she used to have in her quarters on Pegasus. This was certainly a downgrade.
“Don’t look so scared.” Kara teased him with a smile on her face, though he couldn’t tell with his eyes tightly closed. Her bandages had come completely off a few days before, though the skin and muscles weren’t what they had been at one point. Cottle had ordered her to a strict regimen of physical therapy on her hands and she had grudgingly listened, though she told herself it was only to get her back into her Viper as soon as possible. She ran her fingers through the swath of hair that were her lengthening bangs, simply enjoying the feel of it for the first time in forever. “I’m doing you a favor, Lee. I’m surprised Tigh hasn’t thrown you in hack yet for this mess.”
Lee kept quiet and still, but cracked a smile as she talked. “Excuse me for being a little busy with hauling algae and saving you from our favorite psychopathic cylon.” There was humor in his voice. Though they hadn’t really talked about Leoben since she’d come back, he knew well enough that they had at least returned to the point where they could joke with one another about it.
“Excuses.” Her word faded as she disappeared into the small bathroom, then returned, clippers that she’d borrowed in hand. “You don’t want to know what I had to do to get these.” There was a hint of something in her voice that reminded Lee of how she sounded when she was trying to get him to forget about paperwork and undress her instead. Since her declaration regarding her marriage, he had fallen awfully behind in his duties.
“Just do it already.” Lee was still in the same spot, having not moved even an inch. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Kara with his life, because he absolutely did when she was out in a Viper or he needed someone with a good shot to have his back. He just didn’t trust her with this, especially not when her hands were only just learning proper function again. The promise had been made though, and she intended to make him keep it.
She stepped behind him and draped the towel over his shoulders, before turning the mechanized sheers on. The soft buzz filled the room and with one hand, Kara secured his head in position. “No moving, Captain.” Kara ordered with her best CAG voice, something he had grown familiar with again over the last few days as she slowly took the position back from him. Though she wouldn’t be flying just yet, she had argued there was no reason why she couldn’t boss her nuggets around and fill out a roster just fine. With the proper attachment for length on the clippers, she ran it through the hair on the side of his head. She felt Lee hold his breath. “Gods, Lee. You’re such a frakking baby.”
“No talking, just focus.” He gave his order right on back to her. She was his superior, but there was no fear in her pulling rank on him in the quarters they retreated to when they needed a small amount of privacy together. They’d kept their bunks, of course, but tended to end up within these walls more often than not. Lee was even beginning to wonder when the masses would catch on, not interested in fending off those rumors quite yet. This was just theirs right now. He didn’t want to share it with anyone.
Kara kept working, tongue stuck out of just the corner of her mouth in a habit stemming back to her childhood. “Did you hear about Hera?”
“Mmhmm,” he said, opting for the sound rather than the nod of his head as he felt her starting on the other side. “I’m not really surprised about it, but I am at the same time. Roslin would do something like that.”
“I understand why she would think taking Hera away was a good idea…” Her thought came to a pause as she changed the plastic piece out for another that would allow for increased length at the top of his head. “…But taking away a baby from its parents? I wasn’t too thrilled on the idea of a half cylon child, but even I wouldn’t have the brass to do that.” She stopped, considering her words. “Not to Helo. Not to Athena.”
“But back then, she was just another Sharon. If it happened now, I don’t think it would go down the same way. Maybe I’m putting too much stock in the President.”
Kara ran the clippers over the top his head in smooth, steady motions. “I can’t imagine how it was for Helo. There he is, just trying to keep things together down in Dogsville with the new Sagitarrons brought on board. Arguing with those people to try to get them to let the doctors even help them and that woman just shows up for treatment with Hera. Parading her around and calling her Isis. Thank the Gods Laura didn’t have the foresight to make up a fake birthdate too. I think Karl would have thought he was going crazy if it wasn’t for that clue.”
“It isn’t anyone else’s fault, though. Roslin told the woman some story and let her adopt Hera. It wasn’t exactly legal, but we haven’t really had the proper paperwork for anything since the end of the worlds.” That much was very true. While during those first few months while they fled from the cylons everyone had tried to maintain their normal lives as much as possible, that entire charade had long since gone out the window. Now they were scraping by, and barely at that. “Hera’s with her parents now, that’s what matters.”
“Have you seen your father recently? What Laura did cut him pretty deep, Lee.”
“Roslin and my father? Don’t make me think about it.” That inner child in him was again brought out.
With a final pass over his scalp, Kara turned the handheld machine off and set it on the table close by. Her hands ran over his hair, short and tightly cut, relishing the tickling sensation it gave her healing nerves. Just about the only thing she would miss about that hair was the feel of her hands pushing through it. She stepped around to his front and tugged the towel off, balling it up so the freshly cut scraps of hair wouldn’t litter the floor of the room. He opened his eyes to her, having held them closed the entire process. “You look so young, I almost feel bad about frakking you this morning.”
His lips upturned as he uncrossed his arms and ran his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t be sure of the look of it without a mirror close by, but it felt right, at least. Lee hadn’t been a fan of his outgrown hair either, he just couldn’t be previously bothered to find the time and effort to get it done. As much as he teased Kara and feared the outcome of letting her do this for him, he did appreciate it. Moments like these were the rare times he was allowed to see another side of Kara that reminded him so much of the girl he had met all those years ago. The girl he had known when Zak was still alive and not the even more tormented version she’d turned into once the accident had claimed his brother’s life. “You would never feel bad about that.”
A coquettish roll of her eyes and smile was given to him as she stepped away to clean up the mess she’d created. “I could. Maybe.”
Lee went to the bathroom to look in the mirror and assess the damage. His own image surprised himself. It wasn’t the man he’d been seeing in the mirror since he’d left New Caprica. It wasn’t even the man he’d seen during the year of peace they’d had down there, when he hadn’t been getting his hair cut nearly as short as it was now. It was the strangest feeling and all he could do was stare at himself, blinking as he ran his hand over his face and then over his hair.
“Do you approve, Captain?” She appeared behind him, resting her chin on his shoulder while her hands slipped around his middle to meet on his stomach.
“Well it isn’t as good…” He started, but felt her teeth gently bite into his shoulder. Lee laughed and shook his head, catching her eyes through their reflection in the mirror.
Her hand pushed under the bottom of his tanks, caressing the hard plane of muscle and thin line of hairs that started below his navel and disappeared down past his waistband. “You don’t have CAP for another two hours, Lee. I know because I made the schedule myself.” Kara’s voice sang into his ears, his body already warming at the very thought of what she was suggesting.
“Don’t you have physical therapy soon?”
With her eyes still locked on his own in the mirror, she kissed his shoulder and side of his neck. “If we put my hands to good use first, I can be late.” As if to strengthen her case, her palm ran along the front of his trousers. Lee needed no further convincing and turned around in her loose grasp, hoisting her up in his arms as he took her back to bed.
-
Afterwards, with no regard for the time, Lee lay beside her, both of them completely exposed. His head rested against her stomach and his fingers traced shapeless patterns across the skin of her hip. The time since she’d made her decision about Sam felt like an absolute dream to him and he knew it was the same for her. This was everything he ever wanted, and nothing, not even a breath of it disappointed him. Perhaps the only point of contention had been on whether or not they let the people around them know about what was happening between them, but they both agreed in the end not to say a word. At least for now.
Kara’s hand slid along his shoulder, repeating a circuit that brought her digits up along his neck and over his scalp, then returning in a loop. She was memorizing him so when she was alone in her bunk late at night to keep up appearances, she would be able to think of him with every accurate little detail. Already she was starting to properly commit to memory all the freckles along his skin, though she favored some more than others. There was one along his hip she had been particularly fond of and every time her mouth trailed that far south, she had to stop to appreciate it.
Unbeknownst to either of them, Lee had already done much of the same with every discolored freckle and mole that was scattered across her pale skin. And just like Kara, Lee had many favorites, like the one on her inner thigh right at the junction of leg meeting pelvis. The first time he’d seen it, he knew that he was one of only a few men who had ever come to notice such a tiny little thing on her. Getting so intimate with that bit of flesh was not something every man she’d been with had done and Lee took comfort in that. Now before each time he tasted her between her thighs, Lee kissed over that freckle in a silent moment of private adoration for her.
His fingers continued their patterns, eventually getting sidetracked to trace over the pair of scars on her left side. He recognized the higher one as the gunshot she wrote about in her report when she settled down after her return from Caprica. It also bore a striking resemblance to the mark on his shoulder, left behind after she’d unintentionally caught him in her friendly fire back on Cloud 9. The second scar though, that was the one that scared him. That night on New Caprica, he hadn’t gotten close enough to this region of her in the darkness, not that he would have noticed it with the alcohol in him. But now he’d noticed it, and all he could hear in his head was Leoben’s echoing voice in that detention cell, telling Lee about what he had done to Kara back on that planet. The pad of his index finger traced over the line of the silver scar, trying to conjure up any other reason for it. He wanted Leoben to be lying more than anything else. “Tell me about this one.”
Kara glanced to him from where her upper body was barely propped up on the two pillows afforded the bed in her quarters. This was a game they had begun to play on occasion after they were satiated and exhausted. He would trace over the series of scars on her knee and ask about them, then she would regale him with stories of her days as a teenager when she thought pyramid would be her life. It would be her turn afterwards and she would ask about some faint line on his elbow. Lee would return the favor to tell her about the time when he was six and at Grandpa Joe’s cabin on the lake. He got scared of the fish they’d just pulled in on his line and he had fallen onto a rock amidst the commotion and excitement. They had other scars though, more recent ones, and both understood that they were off limits in an informal agreement. He didn’t ask about the scar on her abdomen. She didn’t ask about the couple she knew were fresh from New Caprica. Until now, neither of them had broken the rules.
What Kara really didn’t want to talk about was what had transpired on Caprica those years before. Most of the time, she thought she put it behind her, but every rare glance of it she got brought up a whole world of emotions she assumed were long since buried. “Mm, how about you get on up here instead. I can make it worth your while, Apollo.”
He lifted his head as his body twisted so he could take her into view. “I want to know.”
“You really don’t, Lee.” She shook her head faintly. This was one of the moments when she preferred Sam, though it was for a rather cowardly reason. Sam always let things go and Lee had the habit of quite the opposite.
Lee crawled up to her, kissing his way there until his head rested on the same pillow she occupied. They were close now, perhaps even too close, with their noses a hairsbreadth apart as they faced one another. “I want to know.” Gently, he repeated the words and cupped her warm cheek, still pink with the aftereffects of their time together. Starbuck was a hard sell when it came to things like this, but he was doing his best.
Kara shut her eyes and let out a deep breath that warmed his skin. It served both to steady herself and buy her some time. “When I got shot on Caprica, I passed out. I woke up in a hospital there by myself. There was a doctor, or at least he said he was, but now I know he was one of the fourth models.”
Lee listened, not prodding her along so she could tell it at her own pace. Her words pained him, especially the mention of the specific cylon who kept her in his care. Leoben had said the same thing. The likelihood of Leoben’s words just being another lie began to dwindle.
“They sewed up the gunshot and took care of me. Then I woke up one day with that scar and he wouldn’t tell me what it was really from. I overhead him talking to another cylon, one of the blonde ones, in the hallway about it.”
Lee leaned in to kiss her cheek, providing the comfort that would help her along.
“I saw Cottle after Kobol. They took the ovary out… for Gods know what. To experiment on, to try to grow little half cylons in one of their farms. I don’t frakking know.”
The anger and hurt swam under his skin. He knew what happened on Caprica couldn’t have been easy to deal with, but when she returned to the Astral Queen, he never would have suspected something of that nature. All of a sudden, that torn look on her face as she sat in the locker room bouncing that pyramid ball made a whole lot more sense. “You’ve still got the other one.”
“I’m not ever having kids, so it doesn’t even matter. It’s the thought that it was taken from me at all that bothers me.”
Lee never would have expected it from himself, but his heart broke a little at her mention of children. He hadn’t ever wanted them and never thought of them for more than a handful of passing moments in his life. Even with Gianne, especially with Gianne, he hadn’t been able to see himself as a father, which was why he was so surprised with the hollow ache he felt in himself at her casual admission. “Not even down the line, on Earth?”
Kara opened her eyes and looked at him. “I’m doing humanity a favor by not continuing my gene pool.” Now uncomfortable with the intimacy between them at such a close space, she turned her head to look back towards the ceiling. “If you think I’m going to settle down with you now or something, Lee… just give everything up to be your barefoot and pregnant girlfriend, you should just leave right now.”
“Did I even say that?” Lee picked his head up off of the pillow, letting his elbow prop him up. “Gods you try to pick a fight with me over everything, Kara.”
“It was what you were getting at.”
“No, it wasn’t.” He was stern as he spoke stiffly. “I was seeing a girl a few months before the cylons showed up, her name was Gianne.”
Kara nodded absently. “I remember, your father mentioned your mother telling him about it once. She thought you two were going to get married, or so I heard.”
His mother would be the one to make that assumption. Gods he hadn’t even thought about his own mother in months. “We weren’t, it was just something we had when I was planet side, but,” he sighed with a shake of his head. He hadn’t told anyone about this other than Shevon, another black mark on his sad existence. “She got pregnant and I left.”
Her head turned sharply to look at him. “Never would’ve thought Mr. By-the-book would have the balls to walk away.”
“I’m not proud of what I did. I just… panicked. I didn’t want to be a father and certainly not with a woman I was just biding my time with. I don’t know what I would’ve done in the end, but it didn’t matter anyway, because they both died that day with everyone else. I can’t even say in hindsight I would have stepped up to do my job, because I know who I am, or at least who I was back then. Now when I think about Earth and if we ever get there, when I think about having the chance to not run or fight for our lives anymore and to just be whoever the frak Lee Adama really is, I think maybe I want that. I could want to be a father. Maybe one day it’ll change for you too.”
Kara watched him from where she lay. They were closer than they ever had been before, but she still wasn’t used to him being so open with her about things like this. Out of the two of them, he was always the one to bend first, that much was true, but since he’d returned from New Caprica, things had changed. Since she’d made her vague sort of commitment to him in this very room, he’d only become even more open. She would never say it aloud, but it meant a tremendous amount to her to know she was trusted with someone else’s secrets. “Do you miss her?”
Lee’s eyes came back to her quickly. “I miss everyone sometimes.” It was the understatement of the millenium. When the attacks had first happened, all anyone seemed to talk about was those that they’d lost. Then they all quickly realized their existence was walking a fine line and making do with what they had was far more important than mourning all they had lost. “Sometimes I think about what would have happened if the world didn’t end. I’d be a father by now. I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.” That part seemed to sadden him the most, because it took such an abstract idea of a baby and made it real. Not just a child, but a son or a daughter.
She saw the look in his eyes as he mentioned it and this time it was her turn to cup his cheek despite how irritated she’d been with him only a few minutes earlier. “You would’ve gone back to her and done the right thing, you would’ve been a father.” Her words were for both of them. For him because she knew he needed the reassurance that he would have done the right thing for his child. Lee needed the comfort of knowing there wasn’t such a huge hole in his character. And for Kara, the words put distance between her own father and the type of man Lee was. Her father had left, she wouldn’t let herself think of Lee in a similar way.
“I miss everyone,” he said just above a whisper. “But I wouldn’t be with you if all of this hadn’t happened. I always wanted you.” There was a brutal kind of honesty in his words.
“Lee…” It was something of a warning to him, not wanting to dredge up the past and how things had transpired between them when she was still with his brother. It was also because what he said struck particularly deep inside of her. She had always wanted him as well, but that was something she would never admit. She loved Zak too much to admit aloud how she felt back then.
“I love you.”
Kara nodded as he said it, pushing herself up on her own elbow to lean in and kiss him. She didn’t need to say it in return, he knew. “Maybe someday.” Her eyes found his. “When we’re on Earth, maybe we’ll have a few.” Later, she would look back at this moment and shake her head at herself for being so sentimental with him.
“Maybe,” Lee repeated and kissed her again.
-
The following evening, after a steaming bowl of algae for dinner, Lee brought Kara to Joe’s Bar. She’d been there before in passing to see Lee’s hard work and dream come to fruition once it had opened. The Kara of yore would have loved nothing more than to be down at that bar every night, pounding back shots and playing triad with the rest of the pilots and crew. Since her turn at Commander and especially since their passage through the radiation cloud, Kara found herself abstaining from most of the debauchery that had defined her life. She could still get drunk with the best of them, but at some point most of the desire for it had left her. It hadn’t been something she’d thought on recently, but she idly wondered when she had in fact gotten so soft.
The bar was busy, packed even, but that was to be expected for that time of night and the fact that it was still considered to be brand new by all their standards. Then again, their standards of new were very loose these days. Having a pair of socks without holes was good enough to be considered new. Kara said her hellos to the familiar faces she passed, some were merely her fellow pilots, but every now and again there was a member of crew that had served under her and done her proud, especially during the exodus and rescue.
“Shouldn’t you be at home, Helo?” Kara smirked at him while peering down at his cards from the triad game he was currently engaged in. “Athena’s got a pretty good right hook with your name on it, I bet.”
“Nice to see you around again, ‘buck.” Helo ignored her friendly jabs as he looked to her, then made a deliberate motion of looking to Lee standing beside her. “And Captain, what a surprise to see you two together.”
Kara’s cheeks warmed. Most of the crew were oblivious, or at least pretending to be. Helo, on the other hand, had never managed to get that memo, as one of his favorite past times was teasing Starbuck in addition to calling her out when no one else would. She knew he would never outright bring her relationship to the forefront of conversation around everyone else, but it didn’t stop him from having his fun with it. She let her eyes shift to the rest of the table where Duck and a few other crew sat, cards in hand and their pile of collateral in the middle. “His cards are crap, he’s got nothing.” She winked to them and stepped away, heading for the bar.
“Frak you, Starbuck!” Helo called behind her, a heavy laugh in his words.
Lee had stepped away amidst the teasing shared between Karl and Kara. While he was friends with Helo, they weren’t as close as he knew Kara was with him, so Lee let the two of them duke it out punch for punch. He was at the bar when Kara approached, her hand slyly sliding over his backside for only a moment. Lee turned back to her with a smile, a pair of glasses in his hands. “What if you had the wrong person?”
The cup meant for her was taken from his hands and she sipped at it once. “I couldn’t miss that bald spot I accidentally gave you when you let me cut your hair.”
His hand rose immediately, trying to feel for a place where the length was noticeably uneven. Her wide smile told him he’d been played and with his own smile, he spoke. “Very funny.”
“You should’ve seen your face.”
Lee downed a mouthful of his drink of choice before giving a nod of his head towards the other end of the bar. “I’ve got something for you.” Were they alone, he would have taken her hand and pulled her there himself. He pushed through the crowd of people lingering around the bar for their drinks, looking back occasionally to make sure she followed.
Ahead, Kara could see a clearing of space despite the dense population. Only when she arrived at where Lee had stopped, did she understand it. Before her was just about the most rickety piano she’d ever laid her eyes on. There were clear water marks on the top where someone had rested a perspiring beverage for an extended period of time. Under one of the legs, she could see a wedge of scrap metal stuck to even it out so it didn’t teeter when being played. It was a horrible looking thing, but also one of the last in the universe.
“Don’t get excited - it’s barely in tune. Believe it or not, we don’t have a piano tuner on any of these ships.” It was said with humor but there was an undercurrent of sadness to it. “I found it on the Prometheus.”
Kara raised her brow to him. “I’m sure your father wouldn’t be happy to know you used the black market for such a big ticket item.” They all used it from time to time, though it was one of the most unspoken things amongst the crew. It was fine for acquiring small items like soap or clothing, but an item like this tended to be easily noticed.
His shoulders shrugged and he placed his hand on top of the discolored wood. “Helo told me your father played piano.” Lee wasn’t sure just how of a forbidden topic her father was, so he broached it slowly. “Cottle said it would be good for your hands.”
Her hands pulled in closer to her chest at the very mention, even with the glass still in her grasp. She was torn on what he’d done for her. Kara hadn’t played the piano in years, decades almost. Once her father left, her mother had put an end to any talk of it and certainly an end to playing it. That piano of her fathers had sat in their living room for years, untouched and neglected. Why her mother didn’t just get rid of it, she had absolutely no idea. When she was older and would get home from school before her mother would get home from her dayshift, she used to pull the cover off the keys and ghost her fingers over the notes. Actually pressing them was too scary for her, both because of how it made her miss her father that much more but because of the fear that Socrata would return early and find her daughter in the middle of tapping out a few notes. All of that aside, her heart was full to the brim at what Lee had done. She’d never told him about her father or about playing when she was young, but he’d taken something he learned about her from Helo and run with it. Joe’s Bar didn’t need a piano, Lee had done this just for her.
“I can’t play,” Kara lied.
Lee’s brow furrowed. He hadn’t expected that. Maybe she wouldn’t have remembered much, but he had been certain with a pianist for a father, Kara would have at some point learned to play. “I took a few lessons when I was young, I’ll help you.”
Him helping her had been the theme of the last few months. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate it, just that it made her uncomfortable to allow it. “I don’t remember, Lee. At all.”
The change in her stance on the piano pleased him, despite the walls she was putting up. It was something. Lee set his glass down on the piano top and sat on the left side of the bench. His index finger dragged across the white keys quickly, letting the notes sound out in the crowded room. No one seemed to notice or care. Lee would wait her out.
She watched him, biting her lip in silent decision making. Her glass soon joined Lee’s up top and Kara sat beside him, though her hands remained in her lap. Lee couldn’t help but feel like she was physically afraid of it and he wondered just what had happened to cause it. “You weren’t lying about this being out of tune.”
“I thought about opening it up and trying my hand at it, but…” An exaggerated cringe fell over his features. Lee was good with fixing a Viper, but trying to fine tune an old instrument when he knew he was practically tone deaf? Not a good idea at all. He pressed a C key, tapping it a few times before moving on to nearby notes. It was one of the few things he remembered off the top of his head, a simple children’s song he had learned with his mother at only a few years old. “Music was never my specialty.” His shoulder bumped into hers.
“No kidding,” Kara smiled mostly to herself. She raised a hand to the keys but hesitated, pausing the movement in mid air only an inch or so off from the keys. With a sudden breath of courage, she finished the motion and rested her fingers against a series of white keys, though not with enough force to actually make them resound. “You should have heard my father play.” Kara offered the comment out of the blue.
Lee nodded as his fingers continued to pluck out notes.
“He played at the opera house in Caprica City before I was born. For awhile I listened to the recording of it everyday after he left.” Her voice was a mixture of happiness and sadness as she watched the tips of her fingers drag just along the shiny white surface. “He was away a lot to play, but when he was home, he’d sit me down at the piano with him to try to teach me. He had more patience than all of Caprica.” She wasn’t quite sure what was pushing her to share these details of her life with him, perhaps she still felt she owed him from his own admissions the day before.
“Do you remember any of it?”
“Not well.” Her hands rested on her lap and next to her, Lee feared she had already given up. “Everything he wrote was too difficult, so he’d make up all these little things for me that he knew I could do. We had this one song we worked on for the longest time to play together.” Kara stopped, the silence existing for a deceptively long period of time.
Lee’s own movements stopped as well and for the first time since she sat beside him, he turned his head to catch sight of her. “Teach it to me.”
“I can’t, I don’t remember it well enough.” She spoke quickly and it gave away that they were just excuses, and not even good ones at that.
“What you don’t remember, we can sound out.” Lee was determined to not let the night end in failure for them here. It wasn’t even about how much trouble it was to get this piano on board or what it had cost him to get it. It was about getting something for her. This was for her, since Lee knew she wouldn’t have accepted anything like this from him under other circumstances.
Her hands drew back to the keys, both of them this time, and once her fingers were in a familiar position she pressed at them lightly, listening for the familiar sound of them being in harmony together. It was difficult with the background noise, but she was thankful for it nonetheless, as it brought less attention towards her and Lee and the corner they had tucked themselves away into. “Like this,” she said and moved to take his own hands and position them an octave lower on the appropriate notes. Her fingers covered his own and she pressed down until the proper chord rang out. After the initial test, she repeated the process, this time banging out some kind of rhythm.
“I think I understand. Show me what’s next.” Lee wasn’t about to let this fall through his fingers just yet. As long as she was willing to sit here with him, so would he. Kara’s hands tested out the next set of notes, struggling to find the proper blend and balance. When she was sure of it, she repeated the process of manipulating his fingers and pushing them downward. Lee caught on quick enough, mixing the first chord into the next in the rhythm she’d set for him.
On her half of the keyboard, Kara plucked at a few of the keys on their own, eyes shut to help her head focus. She wasn’t on Galactica or in Joe’s Bar. She wasn’t a pilot or in the military. She was seven years old and sitting beside her father, her feet not even touching the floor. She could sense the way their home smelt at the time, the warm temperature so unlike the chill of Galactica’s air. More than anything, there was peace inside of her as she listened to her father explain away what they were doing. Just as she’d shown Lee how to play the right notes, her father’s hand directed hers over her own keys.
She came back to herself soon enough and Kara’s fingers tapped at the series of notes until the familiar tune rang out. A nod of her head was given to Lee and he started his own half of the song until she joined in, both of them moving achingly slow together to make sure it was perfect.
-
From a seat at the bar, Samuel Anders looked up. There were plenty of voices and clinking of glasses around him, but the sound of music cut through it all. Tory, the woman he’d been drinking with, lifted her head at nearly the same moment and looked out to the crowd of people. He left his drink behind and stumbled through the people to try to find its source. She followed behind him, not even entirely sure why.
Ellen Tigh sat atop her husband’s lap, laughing loudly and vibrantly as her arm curled around his neck. They’d spent the better part of the night drinking, one of their favorite past times. She wasn’t the same Ellen that had left for New Caprica, everyone knew that place had changed her just as much as it had her husband, but she was still very much herself. Tigh laughed with her and the rumbling of his chest shook them both. Ellen kissed against his ear, nibbling on the flesh there perhaps a little too provocatively for their surroundings but she was never one to care. Though she was lost in the moment, she stopped suddenly and raised her head. “Do you hear that, Saul?”
Tigh focused for a moment. “I haven’t heard a piano playing in forever.”
“I know that song.” Though she was enjoying the time with her husband, she stood from his lap and tugged at his hand to pull him from his seat along with her. She took the bottle of Chief-brewed hooch they’d purchased along with her, tugging Saul along the way.
Galen was drinking alone at a table in the back of the bar when he heard the notes ringing in his ears. It had been a particularly bad night with Cally and he’d retreated here despite the hour he had to be up in the morning. He was determined to ignore everything, from the people around him down to that frakking music that tugged at him. Try as he might to stay in his seat, something inside of him won out. The rest of his glass was downed in a single gulp before he stood and followed the sound.
Sam paused just behind where his wife sat with Lee Adama. Everything in him burned at the betrayal he felt, though he knew he had given her permission and well wishes on her journey to be with him. Boy, he suddenly regretted that decision. What became more important than the fact that she was with the other man, was what the two of their huddled bodies were playing together, each time a little faster and more confident. Every loop extended the music a second or so longer as Kara banged out a few more familiar notes as they came back to her.
Why did the music sound so familiar? It wasn’t just the pull of an old favorite tune he hadn’t heard on the radio in years. It wasn’t some old childhood song. There was something about it, like it was on the edge of his mind but he couldn’t quite recall it. Like it was just outside his peripheral vision and every time he turned his head to catch it, it had moved just enough away to never be seen. A word on the tip of his tongue, never to be figured out. He didn’t move to say anything or disturb the couple together, more intimate in their behavior than he had ever felt with Kara, even the day they got married.
He looked up from where his eyes had burned holes into the backs of their bodies to see a number of other equally enthralled faces standing amongst the edge of the crowd of oblivious bodies. Ellen and Saul Tigh. Galen Tyrol. Beside him, Tory stood, eyes locked on the piano though she looked distant, as if trying to recall something deep within herself. Sam thought nothing of it at first. A coincidence. Then he counted. Himself, one. Tory, two. Ellen, three. Saul, four. And the Chief? The man that had also been called to that temple on the algae planet? The Chief made five.