Fic: The Breath Between (2/4)
Jun. 27th, 2010 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shah_of_blahFor ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
pilotsbigbang !
Title: The Breath Between
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shah_of_blah
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: All seasons
Warnings: None
Summary: Kara's return in "Crossroads" is not what it appears to be.
Word Count: 3500 this part (16k all)
Author's Notes: Many thanks to my cheerleader,stripes13 , and my beta, bellaaurora . This fic would have been much worse without their help. Also, I rejected any canon I didn't like. Deal with it.
Chapter One
More meetings follow. Tigh is conspicuously absent, though, and Lee can only assume that the Admiral has convinced him to go off duty, or at least return to CIC. The President insists that they find out what Natalie and Boomer—as representatives of the rebel faction—truly want.
“Fine,” the Admiral acquiesces, “but they’re staying in the brig and you are not going in there with them.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” the President says with a slight smile that is at odds with her prior severity.
The discussion is adjourned as they march in an awkward configuration to the holding cells. It’s doubly awkward for Lee, as Kara keeps stepping on the back of his feet.
The marines on guard duty are surprised to see the entire contingent there, but quickly make accommodations for the fleet’s leaders. Meanwhile the two cylons watch from separate cells.
“Good thing too,” Kara says, nodding to the bars dividing Boomer and Natalie, “security’s shit in here.”
Lee does his best to ignore her.
Boomer says that Ellen Tigh is being held captive. That Ellen has more information; Cavil believes she knows the key to resurrection, and Boomer believes she knows the way to Earth.
“Either way,” Natalie insists, “she’s important and we cannot leave her in Cavil’s hands. We have to do something.”
“What exactly do you propose?” Laura Roslin says, in that slow, even way Lee remembers from the day the worlds ended.
“I am proposing a joint cylon-human offensive,” Natalie says. “We have a common enemy, and neither of us can defeat Cavil’s forces on our own.”
She explains that they have reason to believe the other faction will be rallying around something called the Resurrection Hub.
“This Hub controls the functions of every Resurrection Ship in existence. Madame President,” Natalie says, “you want a reason to work with us? Vengeance. You destroy the Hub, Cylons lose their ability to download. All of us.”
No one can deny the allure of that idea.
When they are all starting to fade, Adama calls an end to the meeting. He sends the two Cylons—each with their own squad of marines—to empty quarters in an isolated corridor of C Deck. With the only Cylon holding cell occupied, this will have to do for now.
Too worn for much else, Lee calls for some rations to be brought to his quarters. He and Kara eat in silence before she yawns and declares this ‘incorporeal stuff’ to be hard work. Her accompanying grin more than makes up for the tension that’s been gnawing at him all day.
Of course, they have to argue. Lee wants her to take the bed. She came back from the dead yesterday—was it only yesterday? That’s more work than he’s done.
Kara refuses, pointing out that she took the cot in the brig while he “sat on the floor and watched, like some stalker.”
Lee feels ready to throttle her when she smiles again, slowly this time, and he realizes how good this feels. They’re standing in each others’ personal spaces, and he kind of wants to kiss her but somehow it seems important that they not—at least, not yet. Not the first night. So he simply breathes in and out when she rolls her eyes and cheerfully throws herself onto the couch.
They fall into a routine over the next few days, amidst endless planning sessions. Lee’s not CAG again—apparently his father’s initial concerns over his mental health have, shockingly enough, not been dissuaded by his recent insistence that he’d heard from Kara—and so he remains a driftless Major, pulling shifts in CIC.
When they go to the mess, Lee takes care to find an unoccupied table, and piles enough food onto his single tray for the both of them. Neither of them knows if she actually needs food or drink or sleep, but he does and for now this routine is comfortable. So Kara sits across from him as they share the processed algae. They don’t talk, since Lee is doing his best not to end up in a straightjacket. Besides, Lee doesn’t mind the quiet, not when her knee brushes against his under the table.
So they’re both more than a little startled one day when Helo claps Lee on the shoulder and slides his tray onto the table directly in front of Kara. She gives an undignified squeak and hurriedly slides out of the way just as Helo sits in her chair.
It happens a few more times before Kara starts sitting next to him, so close that she’s practically pressed up against him, and he feels lighter every time their elbows knock.
Kara isn’t with him at every moment. She never accompanies him to see the Admiral, and Lee can only assume that she doesn’t want to be there when he looks through her. Yet even with these brief absences, her presence feels constant enough. Lee doesn’t ask where she goes when he can’t see her. There’s an answer, but she doesn’t want to say it and he doesn’t want to hear it.
Still, there are some moments when he almost wishes she weren’t with him. She likes to tease him in the shower, which is just not fair when there are other pilots milling about.
“What, Lee?” she says when he barely stifles a groan. “I’m just trying to keep up to your ridiculous hygiene standards. Pass the soap, will you?”
He wonders what the other pilots see; do they see the bar of soap moving independently under the thin stream of water, or is anything that comes into contact with her rendered invisible?
He’d rather like to be invisible now.
And every night they trade places on the bed and the couch. And every night, Lee rolls over to find her pressed against him. Every night, he closes his eyes and pulls her closer. And every morning, when he opens his eyes, she’s back in her place.
~~~
Embarrassing as the shower incident was, it pales in comparison to one particularly painful meeting with Colonel Tigh.
“You know, I heard that Cylons’ spines glow during sex,” Kara says as though discussing the weather.
Lee’s fingers tighten on the reports in front of him, but thankfully Tigh keeps right on going with the plans for the proposed Cylon-human alliance.
“Helo told me. You know how he is—get a little liquor in him and he’s all kiss and tell.”
Lee doesn’t know why she thinks he needs to hear this, or why she thinks he needs to hear this now, while they’re discussing the next quadrants to cover in recon as they search for signs of Cavil and this mysterious “Hub.” Apparently the damn thing has jump capabilities, so finding it is like finding a needle that, well, can travel faster than light in an infinite field of haystacks. Still, if they can destroy the Hub then all of the resurrection ships will become obsolete. The cylons will be mortal, and just about everyone on the Galactica agrees that would be a very, very good thing.
Which is why Lee really ought to be giving this meeting his full attention, despite Kara’s warmth as she leans against the arm of his chair. It’s a little difficult, though, since she won’t stop talking.
“I don’t know if it’s really true though,” she’s saying, “since Ellen Tigh frakked half the fleet and you’d think, with odds like that, one of ‘em would’ve noticed.” She gives the XO a scrutinizing look. “I mean, they must’ve been married at least twenty years, and he never did her from behind?”
Lee breaks into a hacking cough, prompting the Colonel to stop mid-sentence and stare at him.
“Do you have a problem, Major?”
“Uh, no, sir,” Lee says, trying desperately to ignore Kara’s laughter. “I was just wondering, sir, if you really think combining the two air forces will work.”
Kara pouts beside him. “You’re no fun,” she says as he turns the conversation back to the logistics of this alliance.
When they’re mercifully released from the meeting, a still laughing Kara practically skips—as much as Kara Thrace has ever skipped in her life—out into the corridor. As he continues to glare at her, she takes to jogging backwards in front of him down the fortunately uncrowded hall. Presumably so she can continue laughing at his face.
“Gods Kara,” he grumbles, “why did you have to say that? Now I’m never going to be able to get that image out of my head.”
“Never say never, Lee!” she shouts and takes off down the corridor. Lee doesn’t bother asking himself why he chooses this moment to chase her through the ship.
Insanity is looking more promising every day.
Then there’s the day he is in CIC, meeting with Felix Gaeta to discuss possible methods of tracking the Hub, and the undesirable but potentially powerful possibility of integrating Cylon FTL technology with their own jump drives in order to drastically expand their recon possibilities.
“It is possible,” Gaeta says as though the word were poisonous, “that it would improve our drives. Theoretically, we could jump exponentially farther, and could find the Hub faster, or Earth, but…”
“Lords,” Kara says, stalking around the console to stand behind the lieutenant, leaning over his shoulder. “And I thought you had a bug up your ass.”
“We have no way to know what this will really do,” he’s saying, “if we could be introducing a virus into our system, if we’ll be able to control it, or even if the integration will work at all or just muck up our systems.”
“So we have a lot of questions,” Lee says, not looking at Kara at all. “Is there any way for us to get answers?”
Gaeta sighs over the folders spread atop his station, and Kara sighs dramatically in return.
Lee does his best to ignore her for the next few minutes, focusing all of his attention on the Lieutenant. Gaeta finally says that yes, it looks like they’re best option at this point is to try the integration with one Raptor and run a test flight. Lee is not sure why it took so long to reach this conclusion, but he soon forgets about that when Gaeta turns around to confer with another bridge officer.
And there, written in thick black marker that Lee knows will be a bitch to wash, are the words FRAK ME, I’M A TIGER.
Beside him, Kara starts cackling with laughter at Lee’s wide-eyed look. When a few of the other bridge personnel give Gaeta odd looks, Lee wonders, not for the first time, if he’s imagining things.
Still, it’s a good day.
~~~
Some days are hard. They’re full of recon missions that always come up empty, and briefings with his father or Colonel Tigh or the Cylons under house arrest that leave him feeling worn, like a damp rag that’s been twisted and wrung dry. But they’re good too, they’re so good, because even though she’s scowling as often as she’s laughing, she’s there.
The nights are the hardest. He sleeps fitfully—he hasn’t gotten a full night’s rest in just over two months—but that’s not the problem. The problem is when he wakes in the dark and feels her sleeping beside him. He feels her warmth, feels her breath, and imagines he can feel her heart beating. But in the dark, it’s easier to doubt, easier to remember her voice, aching and desperate, crying let me go. In this moment, he wants to reach out and touch her, wrap his arms around her; he thinks he wants this more than he has ever wanted anything.
But he doesn’t reach out. He doesn’t reach out because here, in the dark, the fear that his hand will meet only empty air is crippling, so crippling that he can only choke down his sobs and gasp voicelessly so that she doesn’t wake. His open eyes see little in the dark, so he closes them. The afterimage of colors bursting and fading is bright, too bright, but it’s not of light and it’s not something he can blink away.
So he breathes and she breathes and eventually he sleeps.
~~~
Kara dreams.
She’s been here before, although she’s not sure where ‘here’ is. There are lights in front of her, around her, but then they go down. There’s a voice that she’s heard before, a face that she knows. There’s a song.
Her hand touches the ejection lever. She walks forward, her best shoes soundless on the plush carpeting. The song is Lee, calling to her. She lets go, closes her eyes; there are lights but then they go out. Still he’s calling her back.
She wakes in Lee’s arms. It is not the first time this has happened, but it is the first time that his eyes have opened as she moves away.
“Kara?” he mumbles, pushing up on his elbows and, by the presence of his body, trapping her here, on this bed, between him and the bulkhead.
“Go back to sleep,” she says softly.
He ignores her, damn him. Maybe that means she’s real, if he can ignore her and she can still feel…this.
“What is it?” he says. “What did you dream?”
She looks away from his eyes and gazes instead at his palm pressed against the sheets. She can still feel the ejection lever in her grasp. Is there any reason to hide from him now when he’s the only one in her world?
“I dreamed about…before. Before I came back. I think.”
Lee pushes all the way up to sitting, legs bent in front of him. He’s serious now, and sad. He sounds beaten down when he speaks, and his eyes keep drifting from her own. “What happened to you, Kara?”
“I don’t frakking know.” She sucks in a breath and blinks away nothing in the dim room. “I wasn’t afraid.”
“Of dying?”
“Yeah. Or of living. I’m not…I didn’t mean to die. I think. It’s—I don’t know. It feels kind of distant now, or…blurry. Because I’m flying, and then I see Earth. It’s like I can feel it, like I’m standing on it and breathing it in because I just know. I know it’s Earth. And then I’m in the nebula, and there you are.” She grins then, and when her fingers brush against his it’s not entirely an accident. “Flying my wing.”
He laughs. “Don’t you think it’s the other way around, Kara? I think it’s you who was flying my wing.”
She smiles again, bites her bottom lip. “You’re dreaming, Apollo.” The smile fades. “So there’s the storm, and there’s Earth, and there’s you. But I know there had to be something between all that, I just—can’t…”
Lee doesn’t say a word, but his fingers gently wrap around her own.
“I don’t know why I was saved,” she says. “I don’t know what I have to give.”
“I do,” he says. And with his hand holding fast to her own, she knows it’s true.
When he kisses her, she sighs into his mouth, and when his hands slide over her skin she forgets everything else, forgets to worry, forgets that she’s not real because there is only this: his hands and hers, and the air they share.
If Kara had been asked what their first time in so long would have been like, she might have said frenzied, frantic, angry even. Or slow and torturous.
In reality, it is neither. If anything, it is easy, so easy that she almost can’t believe how long it’s been. They move together, and there are no whispered words, only soft sighs and smiles and laughs as they breathe each other in. When it’s over, she lies pressed against his side, their joined hands resting on his chest.
~~~
Life, such as it is, continues. They send out recon missions: Heavy Raiders with Cylon pilots and human co-pilots watching their every move, and Raptors armed with Cylon transponders and outfitted with hybridized Cylon FTL drives. These new jump drives are similar in theory to the one used for the Caprica mission, or so Gaeta claims, but far more efficient—no cables in veins anymore.
They check system after system for any sign of Cavil’s basestars or the Hub. Lee doesn’t know if they’ll ever find it, but what else can they do but keep striving forward?
Meanwhile Lee makes sure to send out twice as many Vipers on CAP now, half guarding the Fleet and half guarding the toasters.
Lee doesn’t fly though, not CAP or recon or anything else. His father doesn’t ask him—or command him—to make a decision, and Lee doesn’t know what he would choose anyway. Part of him fears what would happen if he flew again; after all, he can hardly take Kara with him in the cockpit, and he fears that flying again might end this strange spell that began with that fateful flight in the nebula.
So he pulls shifts in CIC, attends meeting after meeting, even presses their Cylon guests for more information. Kara is by his side for all of this. It’s like before, but not.
It’s not that he was unaware of these things about her, these little details in the corner of her being—from the way her tongue flicks against her teeth when she speaks, to the scent of her hair and the feel of it against his skin, to the sound of her sighs—all these little things and more. It’s not that he was unaware of them before, but now he’s allowed, and now they fill his consciousness like never before.
It makes the days easier, to say the least.
~~~
“When did they get a piano in here?”
Lee turns to look at Kara, sitting beside him at Joe’s bar. She’s twisted around on her stool, looking back to where an old stand-up piano rests unattended on the deck.
“Oh, uh…I have no idea,” he admits, looking forward as the bartender returns with the two shots Lee ordered. Lee surreptitiously slides one over to Kara. “I haven’t been down here in awhile,” he says.
She picks up the shot glass, observing the brown liquid for a moment before smoothly knocking it back. Lee can’t help admiring the line of her arm, the curve of her jaw, the soft skin of her neck in the dim light. Skin which he longs to touch, but admirably resists.
“My mom made me take lessons, you know,” Lee says. “For a couple years. I was crap at it. Hated my teacher, never wanted to practice.”
“Zak didn’t play.”
It’s not a question, but Lee answers anyway. “No, after the divorce she didn’t care so much about our extracurriculars. Let me stop; never made Zak start.”
She rolls the glass between her fingers, not looking at him. “My dad used to play.”
Lee is silent, watching her. He can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’s talked about her parents, and he’s learned not to ask. Her jaw works for a moment as though unable to form the words that come next.
“I loved it.” I loved him. “He used to sit me next to him on the bench when he played. Smell of tobacco on his breath. He taught me a few songs. I used to try so hard to get them right. Not because I was afraid he’d be angry, but because I knew he would be so proud.” She sets the glass down on the bar, and looks up at Lee, her eyes wistful. “There was this one song that he taught me—it…made me feel happy and sad all at the same time.”
Lee reaches for her hand and enjoys the fact that she lets him, that her fingers curl lightly into his. He nods in the direction of the piano. “Play it for me?”
She looks startled, shakes her head emphatically. “No way. I never played after he left. I don’t frakking remember it, and even if I did—” Her mouth snaps shut, and she gives another shake of her head.
“Hey, hey, easy, it’s okay.” He tugs her hand, pulls her closer. Kisses her and doesn’t care if anyone’s watching.
She smiles against his mouth, laughs softly into his jaw. “Nice save, Adama.” She gives him another quick kiss before pulling back. “Now put that mouth to good use and buy me another drink.”
She doesn’t mention it again until that night, sitting on their bunk while Lee finishes some reports. “Hey, Lee?”
“Hmm?”
“What happened to my stuff?”
That gets his full attention, and he turns to look at her, all thoughts of work forgotten. She’s sitting with her back to the bulkhead, dressed in just her briefs and a single tank.
“It, uh, it was auctioned off. Sam refused to take it, so….”
“You didn’t…?”
He shakes his head sharply. “I couldn’t.” Takes a deep breath. “Do you want it back?”
She frowns slightly, thinking for a moment before answering. “There is one thing….”
Chapter Three
pilotsbigbang !Title: The Breath Between
Author:
shah_of_blah Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: All seasons
Warnings: None
Summary: Kara's return in "Crossroads" is not what it appears to be.
Word Count: 3500 this part (16k all)
Author's Notes: Many thanks to my cheerleader,
stripes13 , and my beta, bellaaurora . This fic would have been much worse without their help. Also, I rejected any canon I didn't like. Deal with it.Chapter One
More meetings follow. Tigh is conspicuously absent, though, and Lee can only assume that the Admiral has convinced him to go off duty, or at least return to CIC. The President insists that they find out what Natalie and Boomer—as representatives of the rebel faction—truly want.
“Fine,” the Admiral acquiesces, “but they’re staying in the brig and you are not going in there with them.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” the President says with a slight smile that is at odds with her prior severity.
The discussion is adjourned as they march in an awkward configuration to the holding cells. It’s doubly awkward for Lee, as Kara keeps stepping on the back of his feet.
The marines on guard duty are surprised to see the entire contingent there, but quickly make accommodations for the fleet’s leaders. Meanwhile the two cylons watch from separate cells.
“Good thing too,” Kara says, nodding to the bars dividing Boomer and Natalie, “security’s shit in here.”
Lee does his best to ignore her.
Boomer says that Ellen Tigh is being held captive. That Ellen has more information; Cavil believes she knows the key to resurrection, and Boomer believes she knows the way to Earth.
“Either way,” Natalie insists, “she’s important and we cannot leave her in Cavil’s hands. We have to do something.”
“What exactly do you propose?” Laura Roslin says, in that slow, even way Lee remembers from the day the worlds ended.
“I am proposing a joint cylon-human offensive,” Natalie says. “We have a common enemy, and neither of us can defeat Cavil’s forces on our own.”
She explains that they have reason to believe the other faction will be rallying around something called the Resurrection Hub.
“This Hub controls the functions of every Resurrection Ship in existence. Madame President,” Natalie says, “you want a reason to work with us? Vengeance. You destroy the Hub, Cylons lose their ability to download. All of us.”
No one can deny the allure of that idea.
When they are all starting to fade, Adama calls an end to the meeting. He sends the two Cylons—each with their own squad of marines—to empty quarters in an isolated corridor of C Deck. With the only Cylon holding cell occupied, this will have to do for now.
Too worn for much else, Lee calls for some rations to be brought to his quarters. He and Kara eat in silence before she yawns and declares this ‘incorporeal stuff’ to be hard work. Her accompanying grin more than makes up for the tension that’s been gnawing at him all day.
Of course, they have to argue. Lee wants her to take the bed. She came back from the dead yesterday—was it only yesterday? That’s more work than he’s done.
Kara refuses, pointing out that she took the cot in the brig while he “sat on the floor and watched, like some stalker.”
Lee feels ready to throttle her when she smiles again, slowly this time, and he realizes how good this feels. They’re standing in each others’ personal spaces, and he kind of wants to kiss her but somehow it seems important that they not—at least, not yet. Not the first night. So he simply breathes in and out when she rolls her eyes and cheerfully throws herself onto the couch.
They fall into a routine over the next few days, amidst endless planning sessions. Lee’s not CAG again—apparently his father’s initial concerns over his mental health have, shockingly enough, not been dissuaded by his recent insistence that he’d heard from Kara—and so he remains a driftless Major, pulling shifts in CIC.
When they go to the mess, Lee takes care to find an unoccupied table, and piles enough food onto his single tray for the both of them. Neither of them knows if she actually needs food or drink or sleep, but he does and for now this routine is comfortable. So Kara sits across from him as they share the processed algae. They don’t talk, since Lee is doing his best not to end up in a straightjacket. Besides, Lee doesn’t mind the quiet, not when her knee brushes against his under the table.
So they’re both more than a little startled one day when Helo claps Lee on the shoulder and slides his tray onto the table directly in front of Kara. She gives an undignified squeak and hurriedly slides out of the way just as Helo sits in her chair.
It happens a few more times before Kara starts sitting next to him, so close that she’s practically pressed up against him, and he feels lighter every time their elbows knock.
Kara isn’t with him at every moment. She never accompanies him to see the Admiral, and Lee can only assume that she doesn’t want to be there when he looks through her. Yet even with these brief absences, her presence feels constant enough. Lee doesn’t ask where she goes when he can’t see her. There’s an answer, but she doesn’t want to say it and he doesn’t want to hear it.
Still, there are some moments when he almost wishes she weren’t with him. She likes to tease him in the shower, which is just not fair when there are other pilots milling about.
“What, Lee?” she says when he barely stifles a groan. “I’m just trying to keep up to your ridiculous hygiene standards. Pass the soap, will you?”
He wonders what the other pilots see; do they see the bar of soap moving independently under the thin stream of water, or is anything that comes into contact with her rendered invisible?
He’d rather like to be invisible now.
And every night they trade places on the bed and the couch. And every night, Lee rolls over to find her pressed against him. Every night, he closes his eyes and pulls her closer. And every morning, when he opens his eyes, she’s back in her place.
~~~
Embarrassing as the shower incident was, it pales in comparison to one particularly painful meeting with Colonel Tigh.
“You know, I heard that Cylons’ spines glow during sex,” Kara says as though discussing the weather.
Lee’s fingers tighten on the reports in front of him, but thankfully Tigh keeps right on going with the plans for the proposed Cylon-human alliance.
“Helo told me. You know how he is—get a little liquor in him and he’s all kiss and tell.”
Lee doesn’t know why she thinks he needs to hear this, or why she thinks he needs to hear this now, while they’re discussing the next quadrants to cover in recon as they search for signs of Cavil and this mysterious “Hub.” Apparently the damn thing has jump capabilities, so finding it is like finding a needle that, well, can travel faster than light in an infinite field of haystacks. Still, if they can destroy the Hub then all of the resurrection ships will become obsolete. The cylons will be mortal, and just about everyone on the Galactica agrees that would be a very, very good thing.
Which is why Lee really ought to be giving this meeting his full attention, despite Kara’s warmth as she leans against the arm of his chair. It’s a little difficult, though, since she won’t stop talking.
“I don’t know if it’s really true though,” she’s saying, “since Ellen Tigh frakked half the fleet and you’d think, with odds like that, one of ‘em would’ve noticed.” She gives the XO a scrutinizing look. “I mean, they must’ve been married at least twenty years, and he never did her from behind?”
Lee breaks into a hacking cough, prompting the Colonel to stop mid-sentence and stare at him.
“Do you have a problem, Major?”
“Uh, no, sir,” Lee says, trying desperately to ignore Kara’s laughter. “I was just wondering, sir, if you really think combining the two air forces will work.”
Kara pouts beside him. “You’re no fun,” she says as he turns the conversation back to the logistics of this alliance.
When they’re mercifully released from the meeting, a still laughing Kara practically skips—as much as Kara Thrace has ever skipped in her life—out into the corridor. As he continues to glare at her, she takes to jogging backwards in front of him down the fortunately uncrowded hall. Presumably so she can continue laughing at his face.
“Gods Kara,” he grumbles, “why did you have to say that? Now I’m never going to be able to get that image out of my head.”
“Never say never, Lee!” she shouts and takes off down the corridor. Lee doesn’t bother asking himself why he chooses this moment to chase her through the ship.
Insanity is looking more promising every day.
Then there’s the day he is in CIC, meeting with Felix Gaeta to discuss possible methods of tracking the Hub, and the undesirable but potentially powerful possibility of integrating Cylon FTL technology with their own jump drives in order to drastically expand their recon possibilities.
“It is possible,” Gaeta says as though the word were poisonous, “that it would improve our drives. Theoretically, we could jump exponentially farther, and could find the Hub faster, or Earth, but…”
“Lords,” Kara says, stalking around the console to stand behind the lieutenant, leaning over his shoulder. “And I thought you had a bug up your ass.”
“We have no way to know what this will really do,” he’s saying, “if we could be introducing a virus into our system, if we’ll be able to control it, or even if the integration will work at all or just muck up our systems.”
“So we have a lot of questions,” Lee says, not looking at Kara at all. “Is there any way for us to get answers?”
Gaeta sighs over the folders spread atop his station, and Kara sighs dramatically in return.
Lee does his best to ignore her for the next few minutes, focusing all of his attention on the Lieutenant. Gaeta finally says that yes, it looks like they’re best option at this point is to try the integration with one Raptor and run a test flight. Lee is not sure why it took so long to reach this conclusion, but he soon forgets about that when Gaeta turns around to confer with another bridge officer.
And there, written in thick black marker that Lee knows will be a bitch to wash, are the words FRAK ME, I’M A TIGER.
Beside him, Kara starts cackling with laughter at Lee’s wide-eyed look. When a few of the other bridge personnel give Gaeta odd looks, Lee wonders, not for the first time, if he’s imagining things.
Still, it’s a good day.
~~~
Some days are hard. They’re full of recon missions that always come up empty, and briefings with his father or Colonel Tigh or the Cylons under house arrest that leave him feeling worn, like a damp rag that’s been twisted and wrung dry. But they’re good too, they’re so good, because even though she’s scowling as often as she’s laughing, she’s there.
The nights are the hardest. He sleeps fitfully—he hasn’t gotten a full night’s rest in just over two months—but that’s not the problem. The problem is when he wakes in the dark and feels her sleeping beside him. He feels her warmth, feels her breath, and imagines he can feel her heart beating. But in the dark, it’s easier to doubt, easier to remember her voice, aching and desperate, crying let me go. In this moment, he wants to reach out and touch her, wrap his arms around her; he thinks he wants this more than he has ever wanted anything.
But he doesn’t reach out. He doesn’t reach out because here, in the dark, the fear that his hand will meet only empty air is crippling, so crippling that he can only choke down his sobs and gasp voicelessly so that she doesn’t wake. His open eyes see little in the dark, so he closes them. The afterimage of colors bursting and fading is bright, too bright, but it’s not of light and it’s not something he can blink away.
So he breathes and she breathes and eventually he sleeps.
~~~
Kara dreams.
She’s been here before, although she’s not sure where ‘here’ is. There are lights in front of her, around her, but then they go down. There’s a voice that she’s heard before, a face that she knows. There’s a song.
Her hand touches the ejection lever. She walks forward, her best shoes soundless on the plush carpeting. The song is Lee, calling to her. She lets go, closes her eyes; there are lights but then they go out. Still he’s calling her back.
She wakes in Lee’s arms. It is not the first time this has happened, but it is the first time that his eyes have opened as she moves away.
“Kara?” he mumbles, pushing up on his elbows and, by the presence of his body, trapping her here, on this bed, between him and the bulkhead.
“Go back to sleep,” she says softly.
He ignores her, damn him. Maybe that means she’s real, if he can ignore her and she can still feel…this.
“What is it?” he says. “What did you dream?”
She looks away from his eyes and gazes instead at his palm pressed against the sheets. She can still feel the ejection lever in her grasp. Is there any reason to hide from him now when he’s the only one in her world?
“I dreamed about…before. Before I came back. I think.”
Lee pushes all the way up to sitting, legs bent in front of him. He’s serious now, and sad. He sounds beaten down when he speaks, and his eyes keep drifting from her own. “What happened to you, Kara?”
“I don’t frakking know.” She sucks in a breath and blinks away nothing in the dim room. “I wasn’t afraid.”
“Of dying?”
“Yeah. Or of living. I’m not…I didn’t mean to die. I think. It’s—I don’t know. It feels kind of distant now, or…blurry. Because I’m flying, and then I see Earth. It’s like I can feel it, like I’m standing on it and breathing it in because I just know. I know it’s Earth. And then I’m in the nebula, and there you are.” She grins then, and when her fingers brush against his it’s not entirely an accident. “Flying my wing.”
He laughs. “Don’t you think it’s the other way around, Kara? I think it’s you who was flying my wing.”
She smiles again, bites her bottom lip. “You’re dreaming, Apollo.” The smile fades. “So there’s the storm, and there’s Earth, and there’s you. But I know there had to be something between all that, I just—can’t…”
Lee doesn’t say a word, but his fingers gently wrap around her own.
“I don’t know why I was saved,” she says. “I don’t know what I have to give.”
“I do,” he says. And with his hand holding fast to her own, she knows it’s true.
When he kisses her, she sighs into his mouth, and when his hands slide over her skin she forgets everything else, forgets to worry, forgets that she’s not real because there is only this: his hands and hers, and the air they share.
If Kara had been asked what their first time in so long would have been like, she might have said frenzied, frantic, angry even. Or slow and torturous.
In reality, it is neither. If anything, it is easy, so easy that she almost can’t believe how long it’s been. They move together, and there are no whispered words, only soft sighs and smiles and laughs as they breathe each other in. When it’s over, she lies pressed against his side, their joined hands resting on his chest.
~~~
Life, such as it is, continues. They send out recon missions: Heavy Raiders with Cylon pilots and human co-pilots watching their every move, and Raptors armed with Cylon transponders and outfitted with hybridized Cylon FTL drives. These new jump drives are similar in theory to the one used for the Caprica mission, or so Gaeta claims, but far more efficient—no cables in veins anymore.
They check system after system for any sign of Cavil’s basestars or the Hub. Lee doesn’t know if they’ll ever find it, but what else can they do but keep striving forward?
Meanwhile Lee makes sure to send out twice as many Vipers on CAP now, half guarding the Fleet and half guarding the toasters.
Lee doesn’t fly though, not CAP or recon or anything else. His father doesn’t ask him—or command him—to make a decision, and Lee doesn’t know what he would choose anyway. Part of him fears what would happen if he flew again; after all, he can hardly take Kara with him in the cockpit, and he fears that flying again might end this strange spell that began with that fateful flight in the nebula.
So he pulls shifts in CIC, attends meeting after meeting, even presses their Cylon guests for more information. Kara is by his side for all of this. It’s like before, but not.
It’s not that he was unaware of these things about her, these little details in the corner of her being—from the way her tongue flicks against her teeth when she speaks, to the scent of her hair and the feel of it against his skin, to the sound of her sighs—all these little things and more. It’s not that he was unaware of them before, but now he’s allowed, and now they fill his consciousness like never before.
It makes the days easier, to say the least.
~~~
“When did they get a piano in here?”
Lee turns to look at Kara, sitting beside him at Joe’s bar. She’s twisted around on her stool, looking back to where an old stand-up piano rests unattended on the deck.
“Oh, uh…I have no idea,” he admits, looking forward as the bartender returns with the two shots Lee ordered. Lee surreptitiously slides one over to Kara. “I haven’t been down here in awhile,” he says.
She picks up the shot glass, observing the brown liquid for a moment before smoothly knocking it back. Lee can’t help admiring the line of her arm, the curve of her jaw, the soft skin of her neck in the dim light. Skin which he longs to touch, but admirably resists.
“My mom made me take lessons, you know,” Lee says. “For a couple years. I was crap at it. Hated my teacher, never wanted to practice.”
“Zak didn’t play.”
It’s not a question, but Lee answers anyway. “No, after the divorce she didn’t care so much about our extracurriculars. Let me stop; never made Zak start.”
She rolls the glass between her fingers, not looking at him. “My dad used to play.”
Lee is silent, watching her. He can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’s talked about her parents, and he’s learned not to ask. Her jaw works for a moment as though unable to form the words that come next.
“I loved it.” I loved him. “He used to sit me next to him on the bench when he played. Smell of tobacco on his breath. He taught me a few songs. I used to try so hard to get them right. Not because I was afraid he’d be angry, but because I knew he would be so proud.” She sets the glass down on the bar, and looks up at Lee, her eyes wistful. “There was this one song that he taught me—it…made me feel happy and sad all at the same time.”
Lee reaches for her hand and enjoys the fact that she lets him, that her fingers curl lightly into his. He nods in the direction of the piano. “Play it for me?”
She looks startled, shakes her head emphatically. “No way. I never played after he left. I don’t frakking remember it, and even if I did—” Her mouth snaps shut, and she gives another shake of her head.
“Hey, hey, easy, it’s okay.” He tugs her hand, pulls her closer. Kisses her and doesn’t care if anyone’s watching.
She smiles against his mouth, laughs softly into his jaw. “Nice save, Adama.” She gives him another quick kiss before pulling back. “Now put that mouth to good use and buy me another drink.”
She doesn’t mention it again until that night, sitting on their bunk while Lee finishes some reports. “Hey, Lee?”
“Hmm?”
“What happened to my stuff?”
That gets his full attention, and he turns to look at her, all thoughts of work forgotten. She’s sitting with her back to the bulkhead, dressed in just her briefs and a single tank.
“It, uh, it was auctioned off. Sam refused to take it, so….”
“You didn’t…?”
He shakes his head sharply. “I couldn’t.” Takes a deep breath. “Do you want it back?”
She frowns slightly, thinking for a moment before answering. “There is one thing….”
Chapter Three
