Watching You Without Me. (Part 1/2)
title: Watching You Without Me. (Part 1/2)
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Mini-Series, and the episode "Black Market"
pairings: kara/lee
overall fic rating: NC-17
total word count: 13,500
notes: This is a continuation to the short piece I wrote for the December 4, 2011 challenge in the_applecart, originally posted here. Thanks to sci_fi_shipper for the prompt! I have included the initial piece in this posting for anyone who hasn't read it yet.
summary: In an AU where the cylons never attacked, Kara and Lee reunite on the Battlestar Galactica Museum five years after its decommissioning.
Kara hesitated at the entrance to the senior pilots’ quarters, a room that she had occupied for nearly two years prior to the old girl’s decommissioning. There were a lot of memories there, just like the rest of the walls and pathways held, and as she gazed in through the open hatchway, she felt transported back to the days when she had called this place home. She stepped in to the room and the first thing she noticed was just how different her footsteps sounded compared to the sense memory in her head. It was her lack of military issued boots, having come to Galactica for the first time not dressed like a soldier. It wasn’t just her shoes that were off, though, but the feel of smooth fabric against her skin in contrast to the roughness of fatigues and uniform, her hair past her shoulders instead of cropped tight and short.
Her hand ran along the table still left in the middle of the room for posterity’s sake, fingers slipping to skim just an inch of the underside to feel for a very specific set of carvings left behind. She wasn’t sure what the Colonial Fleet had done to the aging battlestar after it was clear of all crew and personnel, if they had gone in and replaced a number of the most dilapidated items or simply just given everything a good washing for all the tourists. Fingerprints caught eventually and Kara crouched down, pushing aside one of the matching chairs to crawl underneath. It was dark, but enough light filtered in to let her find what she was looking for.
There, scratched into the ceiling the table made were a handful of names, all done with varying degrees of finesse. There was Dipper’s carved in steady block letters, Jolly’s barely scratched in at all. Duck’s hung close to Nora’s own neat name and it brought a smile to her cheeks to remember how the couple used to be back then, unsure of if they had anything at all while carefully skirting around the frat regs. It was three years ago when she was invited to their wedding, and only the previous year when she received a photo and birth announcement in the mail, showcasing the daughter born to the two Viper pilots she called friends. Her own call sign was towards the center of the underside of the table and she squinted to make it out in the dark. Starbuck.
The sound of footsteps alerted her to the fact that while she was on her trip down memory lane another person had entered, leaving her not as alone as she had once been. Most people tended to stick to the guided tours of the Battlestar Galactica, preferring to have someone point out all the interesting nooks and crannies of the ship while keeping them from getting lost in the A-shaped hallways of the ship. She had opted for the self guided tour, not needing to even take a map from the person behind the desk when she’d paid her entrance fee. Whomever had joined her had thought much of the same.
“This is where the pilots sleep,” the voice said as he circled the room, rounding the table.
Kara remained unmoving beneath the table, not sure how to crawl out without both making a fool of herself and startling the other person occupying the same space. She watched the heavy and slow footsteps, listening to them narrate aloud. It struck her as odd, a person talking to themselves in the middle of the dying ship, but a second later it was made astoundingly clearer.
“Down!” A childs’ voice rang out.
“You can’t run off, you remember what happened in the flight pod?” The man’s voice asked the child he carried in his arms. They had narrowly avoided disaster as the young boy had darted away and knocked down the velvet ropes, not understanding their meaning, and towards the more delicate relics. A passing tour guide had nearly had a coronary at the sight.
“Down!”
Kara could hear the struggle between father and son, the child presumably squirming to get free, determined as anything, while his father held on tight to reign him in. The boy won out in the end, though, because soon there was the extra pitter patter of feet echoing in the tiny bunk room and she could finally see the child himself, dressed in a pair of tiny blue jeans and a grey jacket. He immediately ran for the nearest closet door, tugging roughly on it until it opened, peering inside.
“Nothing here,” he stated with disappointment.
“No one’s lived here for a long time,” his father answered.
There was something familiar to the voice, but Kara, still tucked beneath the table, couldn’t place a finger on it.
“Where did they go?”
His father seemed to contemplate it for awhile, the boy moving on from the closet in an attempt to climb up onto one of the racks and the neatly made bed. “Some went to other battlestars, some went home to their families, some went to other planets.”
Kara continued to watch, the little boy bouncing on his knees on the bed, though it failed to give off any kind of bounce, much unlike the one he probably had at home. He was a bundle of energy, going from bouncing to throwing himself down on the bed like he was one of the people that had lived there in years and decades past. He rolled from side to side for a moment before coming to the edge where he stopped, eyes directly on her and where she was under the table. Eyelids widening, his hand raised and pointed. “Daddy! There’s a lady under there!”
“What?” For a second he imagined the kind of things that he knew soldiers tended to have plastered on their bunk room walls after months lonely out in space. How the crew that turned the battlestar into a museum could have missed pulling off one of these undressed magazine clippings from a table or chair, he didn’t know.
“A lady!”
She was busted. Just as she was about to climb out and reveal herself, the larger figure bent down on one knee, pulling a chair out to get a look.
“Kara?” The man asked.
She was frozen in place as he came into view and suddenly she knew why he had sounded familiar to her those moments before. At the end of the table was the face of Lee Adama, his features a twisted mix of shock and amusement. Kara let a smile take over for her, unable to keep it down when put in his line of sight. “Hi, Lee.”
“Kara… what are you… why are you under there?”
The sound of tinier feet rang out again and soon enough the space created next to Lee by the removal of a chair was filled with the little boy, dipping his head and body just enough to get a look in. “I told you, Dad,” he said with pride.
Lee took his son’s hand as he stood and stepped back, allowing Kara some clearance when she crawled out, her hands immediately going to try to fix her clothing from the rumpled mess she’d turned into. “I was looking at the names underneath, we carved them the day before we left,” she reported as her hands brushed back her hair. With herself a fraction more put together she lifted her eyes to fully regard him this time, able to take in the details of his face properly with the room fully illuminated. He was older, there was no question of it, but she realized that it was mostly because when she thought of Lee Adama, she thought of him from over seven years ago, the time before and surrounding his brother’s death. They had crossed paths on that very battlestar for only a few minutes on the day of the decommissioning, but it hadn’t been long enough to put a new image of him permanently into her head.
His head nodded as he took in her words and explanation, an awkward tension settling between them. He had thought of her over the last five years, since seeing her behind the bars of the jail cell, never truly knowing what had become of her. Lee knew his father would have known, but even after they had begun talking again after the birth of Joseph, he was never quite sure how to bring her name up without giving away the truth of a number of things between them.
“Long time,” she said, almost shy, though her gaze then shifted down to the boy with a hand curled into the fabric of his father’s slacks, looking up at her with curiosity.
She had heard Lee had become a father, perhaps six months after Galactica had been pulled from service, but never expected to come face to face with the product of his loins. Adama had showed her a photo when she saw him a few months after the birth. Preserved forever down on paper, had been Lee Adama, smiling wider than she’d ever seen before with his newborn son swaddled in his arms. Her chest had clenched with jealousy when she saw it, for a number of reasons she wasn’t sure she would ever be ready to deal with. Now there that child was, grown and a few months shy of five years old, the spitting image of his father, although his hair was blonder than she had ever seen on Lee himself.
“Hi,” she offered to the child with a raise of her hand.
He smiled and pulled himself in a little closer towards his father for protection. “Hi.”
“Joseph,” Lee started, looking down to his son then across at the only other adult in the room. “This is Kara. Kara, this is Joseph. Kara’s a friend of mine and your Uncle Zak.” He kept the details simple for the boy, not wanting to delve further into the reality of things.
The mention of Zak made her smile, finally enough distance between his death and her currently to take away some of the complete overwhelming pain she used to feel. He had been dead before this child was born and yet, Lee had continued to keep his brother’s memory alive. For that, she was happy. She extended her hand to the boy, surprised to find that he understood the gesture and placed his smaller one in hers. With a shake that sealed their introduction, Kara motioned towards the bunk he had been previously playing in as she stepped closer to it. “This was my bunk.”
“You’re a pilot?”
“Uh-huh,” she nodded and her face beamed with the pride she always felt when saying that to someone for the first time. “I’m even better than your dad.”
Joseph looked skeptical as he looked back up to his father, though Lee was already shaking his head in denial. “You wish, Starbuck.”
Kara smirked, her cheeks feeling the hint of heat at how well she knew the usual exchange of words between them already. It was like no time had passed, except it had, and there was one tiny human between them that attested to it.
“What are you up to these days?” Lee ventured to ask her, leaning down to scoop up his son, holding him to his hip for support.
Her shoulders rolled up in a shrug as she moved away from where her bunk had been, though she didn’t close the distance between them. “I was on Pegasus for awhile, then training nuggets on Picon. Now I’m back here.”
“Teaching?”
“Teaching.” It had been a position she’d been offered again years ago, but had turned it down due to the associations she had with the base near Delphi. That had been where she trained Zak, where she’d fallen in love, and where she’d been when she lost it all even quicker. Seven years later and only now did Kara feel ready to finally start healing and letting things go. “Your Dad told me you’ve got some cushy office job with the Fleet now.”
“Not exactly what I wanted to be doing.”
“I remember.”
“But I get to be with Joseph when it’s my turn and the pay is…” His words trailed off.
“Disgustingly good?”
He held back his laugh though some of it made it through. “Something like that.” His hand raised to rub at his son’s back, feeling the boy start to doze against his shoulder.
“It was good to see you, but I should let you go, probably getting past his nap time-do kids that age still take naps?” How little she knew about children came out.
“Mmhmm,” Lee nodded, his weight shifting gently back and forth on his feet, the soft rocking motion he learned on his first day as a father coming out as he tried to help coax his son to sleep.
Kara watched the pair they made, taking in all the differences in the man he was now and the man he had been back then. He’d been legally an adult, a fine soldier and officer, but he had been little more than a boy back in the days when she and Lee shared a friendship. Now, though, he was grown up, as much as anyone ever could be. She turned to leave, but paused her movements as Lee spoke again.
“Kara-wait.”
“Yeah?” She turned to look at him again, thankful for another reason to drink his presence in one more time.
“Did you eat?”
It took a moment for his question to sink in and in response, she shook her head. “No, not yet.”
He closed the gap of space between them, leading the way out the hatch, though he didn’t leave without making sure she was at his side. “I heard the food’s better than it used to be.”
For the first time since she set foot inside Galactica, she wasn’t plagued by memories, both bad and good. All she saw was him. “Yeah? Somehow I don’t believe it.”
-
It was a few weeks before they saw each other again after their run-in on the decommissioned Battlestar Galactica. This time, they were planet side, both within the atmosphere of Caprica. Kara sat on her knees on lush green grass, a cellophane bundle of mixed flowers laid out before her in offering. She was there for Gods knew how long, alternating between quiet contemplation and speaking to herself in a soft tone, before she leaned forward and kissed the carved stone in front of her. Instead of pulling back right away, she placed her palm against the gravestone as well, her forehead resting into it like it made her closer to the person beneath her own body. With her eyes shut, Kara lost track of time and the world around her, surrendering herself and what little control she had to the elements.
When she finally did pull away, she wasn’t alone anymore, something she could easily tell by the shadow cast by the person beside her. Kara didn’t need to turn her head to know who it was, though it could have been a number of people. A breeze cut through the air and caught the scent of his familiar cologne, her nostrils breathing in the whisper of who the man was. In any other moment of vulnerability, she may have been embarrassed, but not like this and not with him.
Lee was the first one to speak, and he didn’t do so until he kneeled down beside her, his own wrapped dozen or so of flowers on the grass. “I haven’t seen you here on his birthday before,” and he hadn’t, in all the years since his brother’s death. Come hell or high water, no matter where he was in the universe, Lee had always made sure to take his leave during the couple of days that coincided with his brother’s birthday just to visit him and be close.
She cleared her throat, eyes still stuck on the name before them both, Zakary Adama. “First time I was nearby for it.” That wasn’t completely the truth of it either, though it was the easy answer. Kara hadn’t been brave enough to visit him many times before, especially not on the anniversary of the day he left the worlds and the day he came into it. Closing in on a decade since his departure, she was only now ready to begin gaining some closure on the matter. It wasn’t that the pain was any less, no, she felt the ache of his death in her just as solidly as she did the day the news came to her. It just became easier to deal with, to realize and accept that it would be with her as long as she lived, and that she would have to go on with herself anyway.
Next to her, Lee leaned in like she had just done before, lips touching briefly into the stone bearing his late brother’s name. He pulled back and sighed loudly, his body visibly slumping once his ritual was over with. Lee knew he could stay there forever like that, feeling the warm sun on his face and the moisture of the grass seeping into the knees of his pants, knowing his brother was just a few feet below him. He didn’t though, instead moving to lie down on the grass upon his back, both arms tucked up beneath his head as he laid parallel to his brother’s coffin.
Kara blinked as she watched his sudden shift, then gave in and mirrored his actions until she was beside him, eyes shut to the sky with her forearms crossed underneath the back of her skull. She didn’t expect to see anyone there even though it was Zak’s birthday, but she was glad for it. To be reminded that there was someone that still felt his loss after seven years was both comforting and depressing at the same time. Comforting to not be alone, but depressing because she never would have wished the pain she felt on anyone else. She had only known Zak for a year when he died, Lee had been his brother since the day Zak was born. For the man beside her, it was a different kind of loss, but shared just the same.
“Do you remember that time we all went out to my grandfather’s cabin for a few days?” Lee asked.
“And the shower stopped working halfway through so we had to bathe in the lake?” There was already a hint of a laugh to her words. “That girl you brought made you take her to catch a bus home, she was so mad.”
“It’s not like it was my fault…”
“Things were better without her.” Opening her eyes, she squinted against the sun and turned her head to regard him. “Whatever happened to her?”
“Nothing. We were barely seeing each other at all, I just didn’t want to be the third wheel so I asked her to come.”
Kara said nothing, but corrected the angle of her neck until she was looking back up towards the cloudless sky, eyes closed just enough to protect them from the harsh brightness of the sun that burned nearby.
“You came out all the way from Delphi?”
She nodded, mostly to herself. “Had the day off.”
Lee pushed himself up onto his elbows, leaning back on them as he surveyed the rows of grave sites around them. He could remember the day they buried Zak there, even down to the smell of the air and the temperature of it on his skin, the look on Kara’s face as she stoically tried to play the soldier instead of the lover, and the weight of the anger that burned in his chest at his father. That was years ago, though, a lifetime away.
“I should probably get going,” Kara said as she pulled herself into a seated position. It wasn’t that she wanted to go and the tone of voice she used indicated her reluctance.
One arm of his stretched forward, tips of his fingers brushing at small flecks of brown and green, little bits of dirt and grass that clung to her back and the visible portion of the seat of her pants. It was a move made on pure instinct, acting as if she was an extension of himself and looking to remove the detritus, and only when he saw her head turn did Lee realize what he’d done. The worst of it was that he wasn’t apologetic, at least not internally, for breaking the unspoken rules of personal space and barriers that existed between most people. Kara’s eyes were on him, Lee’s own meeting hers, as his skin lingered against her back, trying to will himself to pull away. It was an innocent gesture, at least it had started that way, but now faced with the burning gaze from her, he felt his own temperature start to boil. “You’ve got a long drive. Let me make you dinner.” His words carried a boldness he hadn’t felt in years.
Kara could still feel the light pressure of his hand to her back, and every square centimeter of her that he had touched felt the echo of his skin previously on her. It scared her how much he could work her over with only the gentlest of movements, and though she would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought of him over the last few years, she was genuinely surprised at how much her skin beneath her clothing responded to him like he was familiar. More familiar than he ever should have been.
A moment ago they had been talking about Zak, thinking about the way their lives had once been when they were still practically children instead of Lee now having his own, and suddenly the thing furthest from her mind was the man buried down beneath them. Years ago, she would have pulled away from him and what she knew a touch like that meant out of guilt and honoring his brother’s memory, but the will and power of it had been lost to her seven years out. Kara nodded, the angle at which her head was turned causing her cheek to gently rub against her shoulder. “Okay.”
-
Kara followed him all the way back to the small home he kept. Her car, bulkier and barely still holding itself together, was in perfect contrast to Lee’s own smaller and more practical sedan, and as she stared at the license plate affixed to the back of his vehicle the entire way there, she couldn’t help but realize even something like the cars they chose to drive were the perfect comparison for who they were as people. He was safe and dependable, and she… she was none of those things, or at least she hadn’t ever been before. When she wasn’t busy thinking about how odd her car would look parked behind his in the middle of the suburbs where he of course lived, Kara’s time was occupied with trying to not let herself lose her nerve for whatever the night was supposed to be. It was just dinner, that was all they had said and agreed to, but unlike on the Battlestar, dining in the mess hall that she’d eaten in for years before, there was no buffer of his sleeping son between them or the presence of other tourists lined up to pretend to be soldiers for a single meal. What she was both worried and excited for was everything else unsaid between the lines.
She put her car into park behind his in the empty driveway, pulling reflexively at the emergency break though it had stopped working years ago. Lee got out of his in front of her, hand raised in a wave, the expression on his face something of surprise-like he was shocked to see that she hadn’t actually turned off at another exit, cut bait and run. She was sure he had kept an eye on her from his rearview mirror the entire time though, and the fact that he actually did the speed limit so he didn’t lose her behind the other cars on the roadways both made her smile and infuriated her. Like she was as a Viper pilot, she tended to have a heavy foot when it came to the gas pedal of her car.
“You drive like an old man,” she said with a smile as she climbed down from the extra height her vehicle sat at. “Just not your Old Man.”
“I don’t know how both of you haven’t had your licenses pulled for how many tickets you’ve probably gotten.” Lee led the way up the front path.
“I haven’t been here long enough for it, but I’ll probably have to call in some favors eventually.” She looked up to the house as they approached. It seemed odd for him to have it for himself, though she began to wonder if this had been the house he had shared with Gianne and Joseph before things hadn’t worked out. She didn’t really want to know the answer to it.
“See this walk?” His hand gestured to the stones upon which they stood, keys jingling in his hand as he did so. “I laid it myself.”
“Wow, Lee, you’ve gotten domestic.” Her eyebrows rose, looking to her feet as she suddenly felt the need to tread softer. She could imagine Lee on his hands and knees for a weekend out in front of the home, digging up the dirt, laying down the cement and fitting the stones all into place. It would have taken him longer than the average person, she thought, because by the perfect edges and interlocking pieces, Lee would have made sure every inch of it was in the proper place before being happy with his work. “Where’s Joseph?”
The front door opened with a light push to it, and he stepped in, holding it open for her as she followed inward to take in the details. There were photos on the walls, mostly of Joseph in varying stages of growth, turning from the tiny infant he started off as and down into what looked like a pre-school portrait.
“With his Mom. I’ve got him tomorrow for the weekend.” With both of their keys set aside on the nearby table, Lee turned to find her attention elsewhere. “That one was from earlier this year. He was so scared on the first day, Gianne and I were both there with him, showing him into his classroom and putting his coat away in his cubby and he just followed us around crying the whole time, I thought we--”
Her focus was on him as he spoke, rather than the picture, studying the new expressions he wore when he talked of his son. She’d seen a lot of the looks he gave over the years, in fact, up until this moment, Kara would have said she’d seen them all. These, though, they were all new, showing a kind of happiness and serenity she knew she had never experienced.
“Sorry.” Lee blushed and ducked his head, hand rubbing at his scalp to hide himself away.
“No, it’s okay,” she insisted, her hand gently tugging at his wrist, giving him permission not to be shy or ashamed. “I like hearing about him.”
He softened as she spoke. It had been easy to think of Kara Thrace as Starbuck and nothing else, but this was one of those moments she was devastatingly honest with him, whether she knew it or not. “It’s nothing really, we just thought we would have to take him home with us because he was so inconsolable.”
“What happened?” Her voice gave away her genuine interest.
“He made a friend. A girl there who wanted him to sit next to her at their table and he forgot all about us.”
Her lips spread wide across her face, quiet laughter leaving the back of her throat. “So he’s like all Adama men, then? Just takes a pretty girl and they’ll do whatever she wants.”
Lee’s cheeks warmed further, not looking across to her in hopes she wouldn’t do the same. “Doomed to follow the rest of us.”
The moment passed, bringing them back to the present and away from the series of thoughts that plagued them both. “Bathroom?” She asked in a shyer voice than she had only a minute before.
“Down the hall, on the right.”
She followed the succinct directions, shutting the door and locking it behind her to seal herself away. After flushing the toilet, Kara rinsed her hands and took a look at herself in the mirror. Gods, she was a mess, her hair windblown and in slight disarray, her hands trying to quickly finger-comb it all back into some kind of proper place. She splashed some water over her face, drying her skin with the nearby hand towel neatly hung in place. Kara was careful to leave everything where she found it, not wanting to be the usual tornado that she was, leaving a mess in her wake wherever she went. When she’d finally found the courage to step back outside the bathroom, she followed the only sounds in the home to the kitchen to find Lee standing at the refrigerator. Both doors were pulled open as he stared in, as if waiting for some of the contents to jump out at him.
“Drink?” He asked with a lift of his head, reaching to the door to pull out a pair of beers.
Kara nodded back to him and when he popped the caps off of both of them, she took one of the offered bottles, bringing the opening of it to her lips. “I probably shouldn’t have agreed to come here for dinner,” she said after swallowing down a mouthful. “I remember how bad of a cook you used to be.”
“Hey-” Lee said, sipping at his own drink and then setting it down on the counter. “I’ve improved! I do make some delicious macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets for Joseph.”
She stifled a laugh, biting into her lower lip as she did so. Her eyebrows rose skeptically. “And would this mac’n’cheese happen to come from a box, and these chicken nuggets come frozen?” It wasn’t as though she had been anything of a good cook, but teasing him hadn’t lost its luster.
“Don’t doubt how good frozen food can be.”
“I’m not, I’m not,” she shook her head and took another long sip, the side of her hand drawn over her lips to wipe away the excess moisture. “Listen, anything is good compared to the stuff I eat for lunch on base or whatever the frak that slop is they serve you on battlestars. Mac’n’cheese and chicken nuggets it is.” She tipped the neck of her bottle towards him, a challenge should he rise to the occasion.
Continue to Part Two.
author:
apodixis
spoilers: Mini-Series, and the episode "Black Market"
pairings: kara/lee
overall fic rating: NC-17
total word count: 13,500
notes: This is a continuation to the short piece I wrote for the December 4, 2011 challenge in the_applecart, originally posted here. Thanks to sci_fi_shipper for the prompt! I have included the initial piece in this posting for anyone who hasn't read it yet.
summary: In an AU where the cylons never attacked, Kara and Lee reunite on the Battlestar Galactica Museum five years after its decommissioning.
Kara hesitated at the entrance to the senior pilots’ quarters, a room that she had occupied for nearly two years prior to the old girl’s decommissioning. There were a lot of memories there, just like the rest of the walls and pathways held, and as she gazed in through the open hatchway, she felt transported back to the days when she had called this place home. She stepped in to the room and the first thing she noticed was just how different her footsteps sounded compared to the sense memory in her head. It was her lack of military issued boots, having come to Galactica for the first time not dressed like a soldier. It wasn’t just her shoes that were off, though, but the feel of smooth fabric against her skin in contrast to the roughness of fatigues and uniform, her hair past her shoulders instead of cropped tight and short.
Her hand ran along the table still left in the middle of the room for posterity’s sake, fingers slipping to skim just an inch of the underside to feel for a very specific set of carvings left behind. She wasn’t sure what the Colonial Fleet had done to the aging battlestar after it was clear of all crew and personnel, if they had gone in and replaced a number of the most dilapidated items or simply just given everything a good washing for all the tourists. Fingerprints caught eventually and Kara crouched down, pushing aside one of the matching chairs to crawl underneath. It was dark, but enough light filtered in to let her find what she was looking for.
There, scratched into the ceiling the table made were a handful of names, all done with varying degrees of finesse. There was Dipper’s carved in steady block letters, Jolly’s barely scratched in at all. Duck’s hung close to Nora’s own neat name and it brought a smile to her cheeks to remember how the couple used to be back then, unsure of if they had anything at all while carefully skirting around the frat regs. It was three years ago when she was invited to their wedding, and only the previous year when she received a photo and birth announcement in the mail, showcasing the daughter born to the two Viper pilots she called friends. Her own call sign was towards the center of the underside of the table and she squinted to make it out in the dark. Starbuck.
The sound of footsteps alerted her to the fact that while she was on her trip down memory lane another person had entered, leaving her not as alone as she had once been. Most people tended to stick to the guided tours of the Battlestar Galactica, preferring to have someone point out all the interesting nooks and crannies of the ship while keeping them from getting lost in the A-shaped hallways of the ship. She had opted for the self guided tour, not needing to even take a map from the person behind the desk when she’d paid her entrance fee. Whomever had joined her had thought much of the same.
“This is where the pilots sleep,” the voice said as he circled the room, rounding the table.
Kara remained unmoving beneath the table, not sure how to crawl out without both making a fool of herself and startling the other person occupying the same space. She watched the heavy and slow footsteps, listening to them narrate aloud. It struck her as odd, a person talking to themselves in the middle of the dying ship, but a second later it was made astoundingly clearer.
“Down!” A childs’ voice rang out.
“You can’t run off, you remember what happened in the flight pod?” The man’s voice asked the child he carried in his arms. They had narrowly avoided disaster as the young boy had darted away and knocked down the velvet ropes, not understanding their meaning, and towards the more delicate relics. A passing tour guide had nearly had a coronary at the sight.
“Down!”
Kara could hear the struggle between father and son, the child presumably squirming to get free, determined as anything, while his father held on tight to reign him in. The boy won out in the end, though, because soon there was the extra pitter patter of feet echoing in the tiny bunk room and she could finally see the child himself, dressed in a pair of tiny blue jeans and a grey jacket. He immediately ran for the nearest closet door, tugging roughly on it until it opened, peering inside.
“Nothing here,” he stated with disappointment.
“No one’s lived here for a long time,” his father answered.
There was something familiar to the voice, but Kara, still tucked beneath the table, couldn’t place a finger on it.
“Where did they go?”
His father seemed to contemplate it for awhile, the boy moving on from the closet in an attempt to climb up onto one of the racks and the neatly made bed. “Some went to other battlestars, some went home to their families, some went to other planets.”
Kara continued to watch, the little boy bouncing on his knees on the bed, though it failed to give off any kind of bounce, much unlike the one he probably had at home. He was a bundle of energy, going from bouncing to throwing himself down on the bed like he was one of the people that had lived there in years and decades past. He rolled from side to side for a moment before coming to the edge where he stopped, eyes directly on her and where she was under the table. Eyelids widening, his hand raised and pointed. “Daddy! There’s a lady under there!”
“What?” For a second he imagined the kind of things that he knew soldiers tended to have plastered on their bunk room walls after months lonely out in space. How the crew that turned the battlestar into a museum could have missed pulling off one of these undressed magazine clippings from a table or chair, he didn’t know.
“A lady!”
She was busted. Just as she was about to climb out and reveal herself, the larger figure bent down on one knee, pulling a chair out to get a look.
“Kara?” The man asked.
She was frozen in place as he came into view and suddenly she knew why he had sounded familiar to her those moments before. At the end of the table was the face of Lee Adama, his features a twisted mix of shock and amusement. Kara let a smile take over for her, unable to keep it down when put in his line of sight. “Hi, Lee.”
“Kara… what are you… why are you under there?”
The sound of tinier feet rang out again and soon enough the space created next to Lee by the removal of a chair was filled with the little boy, dipping his head and body just enough to get a look in. “I told you, Dad,” he said with pride.
Lee took his son’s hand as he stood and stepped back, allowing Kara some clearance when she crawled out, her hands immediately going to try to fix her clothing from the rumpled mess she’d turned into. “I was looking at the names underneath, we carved them the day before we left,” she reported as her hands brushed back her hair. With herself a fraction more put together she lifted her eyes to fully regard him this time, able to take in the details of his face properly with the room fully illuminated. He was older, there was no question of it, but she realized that it was mostly because when she thought of Lee Adama, she thought of him from over seven years ago, the time before and surrounding his brother’s death. They had crossed paths on that very battlestar for only a few minutes on the day of the decommissioning, but it hadn’t been long enough to put a new image of him permanently into her head.
His head nodded as he took in her words and explanation, an awkward tension settling between them. He had thought of her over the last five years, since seeing her behind the bars of the jail cell, never truly knowing what had become of her. Lee knew his father would have known, but even after they had begun talking again after the birth of Joseph, he was never quite sure how to bring her name up without giving away the truth of a number of things between them.
“Long time,” she said, almost shy, though her gaze then shifted down to the boy with a hand curled into the fabric of his father’s slacks, looking up at her with curiosity.
She had heard Lee had become a father, perhaps six months after Galactica had been pulled from service, but never expected to come face to face with the product of his loins. Adama had showed her a photo when she saw him a few months after the birth. Preserved forever down on paper, had been Lee Adama, smiling wider than she’d ever seen before with his newborn son swaddled in his arms. Her chest had clenched with jealousy when she saw it, for a number of reasons she wasn’t sure she would ever be ready to deal with. Now there that child was, grown and a few months shy of five years old, the spitting image of his father, although his hair was blonder than she had ever seen on Lee himself.
“Hi,” she offered to the child with a raise of her hand.
He smiled and pulled himself in a little closer towards his father for protection. “Hi.”
“Joseph,” Lee started, looking down to his son then across at the only other adult in the room. “This is Kara. Kara, this is Joseph. Kara’s a friend of mine and your Uncle Zak.” He kept the details simple for the boy, not wanting to delve further into the reality of things.
The mention of Zak made her smile, finally enough distance between his death and her currently to take away some of the complete overwhelming pain she used to feel. He had been dead before this child was born and yet, Lee had continued to keep his brother’s memory alive. For that, she was happy. She extended her hand to the boy, surprised to find that he understood the gesture and placed his smaller one in hers. With a shake that sealed their introduction, Kara motioned towards the bunk he had been previously playing in as she stepped closer to it. “This was my bunk.”
“You’re a pilot?”
“Uh-huh,” she nodded and her face beamed with the pride she always felt when saying that to someone for the first time. “I’m even better than your dad.”
Joseph looked skeptical as he looked back up to his father, though Lee was already shaking his head in denial. “You wish, Starbuck.”
Kara smirked, her cheeks feeling the hint of heat at how well she knew the usual exchange of words between them already. It was like no time had passed, except it had, and there was one tiny human between them that attested to it.
“What are you up to these days?” Lee ventured to ask her, leaning down to scoop up his son, holding him to his hip for support.
Her shoulders rolled up in a shrug as she moved away from where her bunk had been, though she didn’t close the distance between them. “I was on Pegasus for awhile, then training nuggets on Picon. Now I’m back here.”
“Teaching?”
“Teaching.” It had been a position she’d been offered again years ago, but had turned it down due to the associations she had with the base near Delphi. That had been where she trained Zak, where she’d fallen in love, and where she’d been when she lost it all even quicker. Seven years later and only now did Kara feel ready to finally start healing and letting things go. “Your Dad told me you’ve got some cushy office job with the Fleet now.”
“Not exactly what I wanted to be doing.”
“I remember.”
“But I get to be with Joseph when it’s my turn and the pay is…” His words trailed off.
“Disgustingly good?”
He held back his laugh though some of it made it through. “Something like that.” His hand raised to rub at his son’s back, feeling the boy start to doze against his shoulder.
“It was good to see you, but I should let you go, probably getting past his nap time-do kids that age still take naps?” How little she knew about children came out.
“Mmhmm,” Lee nodded, his weight shifting gently back and forth on his feet, the soft rocking motion he learned on his first day as a father coming out as he tried to help coax his son to sleep.
Kara watched the pair they made, taking in all the differences in the man he was now and the man he had been back then. He’d been legally an adult, a fine soldier and officer, but he had been little more than a boy back in the days when she and Lee shared a friendship. Now, though, he was grown up, as much as anyone ever could be. She turned to leave, but paused her movements as Lee spoke again.
“Kara-wait.”
“Yeah?” She turned to look at him again, thankful for another reason to drink his presence in one more time.
“Did you eat?”
It took a moment for his question to sink in and in response, she shook her head. “No, not yet.”
He closed the gap of space between them, leading the way out the hatch, though he didn’t leave without making sure she was at his side. “I heard the food’s better than it used to be.”
For the first time since she set foot inside Galactica, she wasn’t plagued by memories, both bad and good. All she saw was him. “Yeah? Somehow I don’t believe it.”
-
It was a few weeks before they saw each other again after their run-in on the decommissioned Battlestar Galactica. This time, they were planet side, both within the atmosphere of Caprica. Kara sat on her knees on lush green grass, a cellophane bundle of mixed flowers laid out before her in offering. She was there for Gods knew how long, alternating between quiet contemplation and speaking to herself in a soft tone, before she leaned forward and kissed the carved stone in front of her. Instead of pulling back right away, she placed her palm against the gravestone as well, her forehead resting into it like it made her closer to the person beneath her own body. With her eyes shut, Kara lost track of time and the world around her, surrendering herself and what little control she had to the elements.
When she finally did pull away, she wasn’t alone anymore, something she could easily tell by the shadow cast by the person beside her. Kara didn’t need to turn her head to know who it was, though it could have been a number of people. A breeze cut through the air and caught the scent of his familiar cologne, her nostrils breathing in the whisper of who the man was. In any other moment of vulnerability, she may have been embarrassed, but not like this and not with him.
Lee was the first one to speak, and he didn’t do so until he kneeled down beside her, his own wrapped dozen or so of flowers on the grass. “I haven’t seen you here on his birthday before,” and he hadn’t, in all the years since his brother’s death. Come hell or high water, no matter where he was in the universe, Lee had always made sure to take his leave during the couple of days that coincided with his brother’s birthday just to visit him and be close.
She cleared her throat, eyes still stuck on the name before them both, Zakary Adama. “First time I was nearby for it.” That wasn’t completely the truth of it either, though it was the easy answer. Kara hadn’t been brave enough to visit him many times before, especially not on the anniversary of the day he left the worlds and the day he came into it. Closing in on a decade since his departure, she was only now ready to begin gaining some closure on the matter. It wasn’t that the pain was any less, no, she felt the ache of his death in her just as solidly as she did the day the news came to her. It just became easier to deal with, to realize and accept that it would be with her as long as she lived, and that she would have to go on with herself anyway.
Next to her, Lee leaned in like she had just done before, lips touching briefly into the stone bearing his late brother’s name. He pulled back and sighed loudly, his body visibly slumping once his ritual was over with. Lee knew he could stay there forever like that, feeling the warm sun on his face and the moisture of the grass seeping into the knees of his pants, knowing his brother was just a few feet below him. He didn’t though, instead moving to lie down on the grass upon his back, both arms tucked up beneath his head as he laid parallel to his brother’s coffin.
Kara blinked as she watched his sudden shift, then gave in and mirrored his actions until she was beside him, eyes shut to the sky with her forearms crossed underneath the back of her skull. She didn’t expect to see anyone there even though it was Zak’s birthday, but she was glad for it. To be reminded that there was someone that still felt his loss after seven years was both comforting and depressing at the same time. Comforting to not be alone, but depressing because she never would have wished the pain she felt on anyone else. She had only known Zak for a year when he died, Lee had been his brother since the day Zak was born. For the man beside her, it was a different kind of loss, but shared just the same.
“Do you remember that time we all went out to my grandfather’s cabin for a few days?” Lee asked.
“And the shower stopped working halfway through so we had to bathe in the lake?” There was already a hint of a laugh to her words. “That girl you brought made you take her to catch a bus home, she was so mad.”
“It’s not like it was my fault…”
“Things were better without her.” Opening her eyes, she squinted against the sun and turned her head to regard him. “Whatever happened to her?”
“Nothing. We were barely seeing each other at all, I just didn’t want to be the third wheel so I asked her to come.”
Kara said nothing, but corrected the angle of her neck until she was looking back up towards the cloudless sky, eyes closed just enough to protect them from the harsh brightness of the sun that burned nearby.
“You came out all the way from Delphi?”
She nodded, mostly to herself. “Had the day off.”
Lee pushed himself up onto his elbows, leaning back on them as he surveyed the rows of grave sites around them. He could remember the day they buried Zak there, even down to the smell of the air and the temperature of it on his skin, the look on Kara’s face as she stoically tried to play the soldier instead of the lover, and the weight of the anger that burned in his chest at his father. That was years ago, though, a lifetime away.
“I should probably get going,” Kara said as she pulled herself into a seated position. It wasn’t that she wanted to go and the tone of voice she used indicated her reluctance.
One arm of his stretched forward, tips of his fingers brushing at small flecks of brown and green, little bits of dirt and grass that clung to her back and the visible portion of the seat of her pants. It was a move made on pure instinct, acting as if she was an extension of himself and looking to remove the detritus, and only when he saw her head turn did Lee realize what he’d done. The worst of it was that he wasn’t apologetic, at least not internally, for breaking the unspoken rules of personal space and barriers that existed between most people. Kara’s eyes were on him, Lee’s own meeting hers, as his skin lingered against her back, trying to will himself to pull away. It was an innocent gesture, at least it had started that way, but now faced with the burning gaze from her, he felt his own temperature start to boil. “You’ve got a long drive. Let me make you dinner.” His words carried a boldness he hadn’t felt in years.
Kara could still feel the light pressure of his hand to her back, and every square centimeter of her that he had touched felt the echo of his skin previously on her. It scared her how much he could work her over with only the gentlest of movements, and though she would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought of him over the last few years, she was genuinely surprised at how much her skin beneath her clothing responded to him like he was familiar. More familiar than he ever should have been.
A moment ago they had been talking about Zak, thinking about the way their lives had once been when they were still practically children instead of Lee now having his own, and suddenly the thing furthest from her mind was the man buried down beneath them. Years ago, she would have pulled away from him and what she knew a touch like that meant out of guilt and honoring his brother’s memory, but the will and power of it had been lost to her seven years out. Kara nodded, the angle at which her head was turned causing her cheek to gently rub against her shoulder. “Okay.”
-
Kara followed him all the way back to the small home he kept. Her car, bulkier and barely still holding itself together, was in perfect contrast to Lee’s own smaller and more practical sedan, and as she stared at the license plate affixed to the back of his vehicle the entire way there, she couldn’t help but realize even something like the cars they chose to drive were the perfect comparison for who they were as people. He was safe and dependable, and she… she was none of those things, or at least she hadn’t ever been before. When she wasn’t busy thinking about how odd her car would look parked behind his in the middle of the suburbs where he of course lived, Kara’s time was occupied with trying to not let herself lose her nerve for whatever the night was supposed to be. It was just dinner, that was all they had said and agreed to, but unlike on the Battlestar, dining in the mess hall that she’d eaten in for years before, there was no buffer of his sleeping son between them or the presence of other tourists lined up to pretend to be soldiers for a single meal. What she was both worried and excited for was everything else unsaid between the lines.
She put her car into park behind his in the empty driveway, pulling reflexively at the emergency break though it had stopped working years ago. Lee got out of his in front of her, hand raised in a wave, the expression on his face something of surprise-like he was shocked to see that she hadn’t actually turned off at another exit, cut bait and run. She was sure he had kept an eye on her from his rearview mirror the entire time though, and the fact that he actually did the speed limit so he didn’t lose her behind the other cars on the roadways both made her smile and infuriated her. Like she was as a Viper pilot, she tended to have a heavy foot when it came to the gas pedal of her car.
“You drive like an old man,” she said with a smile as she climbed down from the extra height her vehicle sat at. “Just not your Old Man.”
“I don’t know how both of you haven’t had your licenses pulled for how many tickets you’ve probably gotten.” Lee led the way up the front path.
“I haven’t been here long enough for it, but I’ll probably have to call in some favors eventually.” She looked up to the house as they approached. It seemed odd for him to have it for himself, though she began to wonder if this had been the house he had shared with Gianne and Joseph before things hadn’t worked out. She didn’t really want to know the answer to it.
“See this walk?” His hand gestured to the stones upon which they stood, keys jingling in his hand as he did so. “I laid it myself.”
“Wow, Lee, you’ve gotten domestic.” Her eyebrows rose, looking to her feet as she suddenly felt the need to tread softer. She could imagine Lee on his hands and knees for a weekend out in front of the home, digging up the dirt, laying down the cement and fitting the stones all into place. It would have taken him longer than the average person, she thought, because by the perfect edges and interlocking pieces, Lee would have made sure every inch of it was in the proper place before being happy with his work. “Where’s Joseph?”
The front door opened with a light push to it, and he stepped in, holding it open for her as she followed inward to take in the details. There were photos on the walls, mostly of Joseph in varying stages of growth, turning from the tiny infant he started off as and down into what looked like a pre-school portrait.
“With his Mom. I’ve got him tomorrow for the weekend.” With both of their keys set aside on the nearby table, Lee turned to find her attention elsewhere. “That one was from earlier this year. He was so scared on the first day, Gianne and I were both there with him, showing him into his classroom and putting his coat away in his cubby and he just followed us around crying the whole time, I thought we--”
Her focus was on him as he spoke, rather than the picture, studying the new expressions he wore when he talked of his son. She’d seen a lot of the looks he gave over the years, in fact, up until this moment, Kara would have said she’d seen them all. These, though, they were all new, showing a kind of happiness and serenity she knew she had never experienced.
“Sorry.” Lee blushed and ducked his head, hand rubbing at his scalp to hide himself away.
“No, it’s okay,” she insisted, her hand gently tugging at his wrist, giving him permission not to be shy or ashamed. “I like hearing about him.”
He softened as she spoke. It had been easy to think of Kara Thrace as Starbuck and nothing else, but this was one of those moments she was devastatingly honest with him, whether she knew it or not. “It’s nothing really, we just thought we would have to take him home with us because he was so inconsolable.”
“What happened?” Her voice gave away her genuine interest.
“He made a friend. A girl there who wanted him to sit next to her at their table and he forgot all about us.”
Her lips spread wide across her face, quiet laughter leaving the back of her throat. “So he’s like all Adama men, then? Just takes a pretty girl and they’ll do whatever she wants.”
Lee’s cheeks warmed further, not looking across to her in hopes she wouldn’t do the same. “Doomed to follow the rest of us.”
The moment passed, bringing them back to the present and away from the series of thoughts that plagued them both. “Bathroom?” She asked in a shyer voice than she had only a minute before.
“Down the hall, on the right.”
She followed the succinct directions, shutting the door and locking it behind her to seal herself away. After flushing the toilet, Kara rinsed her hands and took a look at herself in the mirror. Gods, she was a mess, her hair windblown and in slight disarray, her hands trying to quickly finger-comb it all back into some kind of proper place. She splashed some water over her face, drying her skin with the nearby hand towel neatly hung in place. Kara was careful to leave everything where she found it, not wanting to be the usual tornado that she was, leaving a mess in her wake wherever she went. When she’d finally found the courage to step back outside the bathroom, she followed the only sounds in the home to the kitchen to find Lee standing at the refrigerator. Both doors were pulled open as he stared in, as if waiting for some of the contents to jump out at him.
“Drink?” He asked with a lift of his head, reaching to the door to pull out a pair of beers.
Kara nodded back to him and when he popped the caps off of both of them, she took one of the offered bottles, bringing the opening of it to her lips. “I probably shouldn’t have agreed to come here for dinner,” she said after swallowing down a mouthful. “I remember how bad of a cook you used to be.”
“Hey-” Lee said, sipping at his own drink and then setting it down on the counter. “I’ve improved! I do make some delicious macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets for Joseph.”
She stifled a laugh, biting into her lower lip as she did so. Her eyebrows rose skeptically. “And would this mac’n’cheese happen to come from a box, and these chicken nuggets come frozen?” It wasn’t as though she had been anything of a good cook, but teasing him hadn’t lost its luster.
“Don’t doubt how good frozen food can be.”
“I’m not, I’m not,” she shook her head and took another long sip, the side of her hand drawn over her lips to wipe away the excess moisture. “Listen, anything is good compared to the stuff I eat for lunch on base or whatever the frak that slop is they serve you on battlestars. Mac’n’cheese and chicken nuggets it is.” She tipped the neck of her bottle towards him, a challenge should he rise to the occasion.
Continue to Part Two.