Word Count:
Date: 10/26/05
Series: Season 2
Rating: M
Category: Relationship
Pairing/Focus: Lee/Kara
Warnings:
Summary: Lee loses Kara, and finds her again. Speculation
on why the Cylons keep telling Starbuck she has a "special destiny."
Spoilers/Disclaimers: Mentions of stuff through S2, pure spec
on my part; Not mine, etc.
She came back dead.
Starbuck was hauling ass away from Cylon-infested Picon with one hundred and fifty-eight survivors crowded into a heavy raider. The viper squadron managed to keep pursuing Cylons from blowing Starbuck's ship out of space. Lee wasn't flying; the Admiral told Lee he was needed in CIC to run tactical as Starbuck executed her crazy rescue plan. (After getting the Caprica and Sagittaron survivors out alive, her exact words were, "Picon should be a snap.") But when Lee heard Kat say Starbuck was all clear, that the enemy raiders had been destroyed, he sighed in relief and listened with happiness to the victory cheer swell up around him.
Then he heard Starbuck mutter over the open channel, her voice subdued and serious (she's never subdued or serious, thought Lee in a flash of panic), "Lee, I love you."
Next came the Chief's voice, yelling into the com, telling CIC that Starbuck had crashed hard into the deck.
Lee did not hear the Chief's frantic report. He was running by then. Starbuck had just said she loved him. That could only mean one thing.
He got to the ship - by now, a wreck - and the Chief had already managed to get the main hatch open. Lee had no eyes for the shivering, terrified civilians in the hull. He saw only the pilot, sitting at the controls, motionless. Almost calmly. "Starbuck!" he screamed. He reached her and put his hand on her shouler; she fell over. He noticed the pool of blood surrounding her seat as he hauled her out of the chair, out of the ship. He had her on the ground, on her back, and shouted in her face. "STARBUCK!"
"She was hit in the stomach," someone said. Lee looked up. One of the Picon survivors. A man in his early 50s. "She was shot as we were boarding. I don't know how she managed to pilot us out of there, but she did, bleeding to death the whole time."
Lee doesn't remember any of the next ten, twenty minutes. He remembers arguing, using as loud a voice as he's ever used, fighting with Cottle (Lee doesn't remember what he was trying to get Cottle to do or not do), following Starbuck - she was on a stretcher - to Life Station. These are sounds and images that form a massive blur in Lee's memory. The next thing he remembers with clarity is saying:
"Then please, please, just leave me alone with her. Please, I'm begging you." He said this to Cottle. He recalls that he was crying.
Cottle and the other medics, as well as the somber group of deck hands and pilots who had been trailing Lee, left.
Lee looked down upon her body. Apollo gazed upon the corpse of Starbuck. He stayed there a long time.
He did not know. he did not know he did not
then he knew. He knew what to do.
He picked up the phone and called for Helo and Cally. They showed up. Lee gave a few orders. Apollo held Starbuck's cold hand waiting for the orders to be carried out.
Helo and Cally returned with what Lee needed: all the thread they could find, a pair of sewing needles, and a near-antique silk parachute stolen from what would have been the Galactica's Aeronautical History wing, had it been allowed to retire into museumhood. Then Helo and Cally left.
Apollo filled a bucket with warm water and found a sponge. First he stripped Starbuck down, surveyed the mess of blood at her midsection, the bruises on other parts of her, the tattoos. Her flesh. Then he bathed her body until it was clean. He was thinking of literature, of stories of fallen warriors, of how their bodies would be annointed before burial. Lee had no scented oils for her, but he could do this. This he could do.
He cut the white silk parachute into two pieces, and began to sew. He sat in a low stool beside her just-washed nakedness and sewed her shroud. To imagine putting her to rest in a dress uniform, or, gods forbid, formalwear of some kind, was ridiculous. Lee didn't quite know why, but this was right. A shroud it would be, like in ancient times, and he would make it for her.
When the shroud was done, he couldn't bring himself to sew her up in it. Instead, he sat - all night, in fact - and continued to hold her hand, the white silk half-enclosing her. He did not speak to her. He did not sleep. He grew cold, almost as cold as she, and held her hand.
The clock told him it was five in the "morning," and his father walked in. Admiral Adama took in the sight before him - the partial covering, the loose threads, the grieving man, the dead woman - and ripped the gold braid from the right sleeve of his dress uniform. "Use this to close it," he said. "The funeral is in one hour."
Probably better that way, Lee thought. Better to do it soon, *now*, go through it quickly since it has to be gone through. But was there any getting "through?" Lee felt as if he was entering a dark tunnel that had no end.
He shredded his father's gold braid and threaded it through the eye of a needle. Part of Starbuck's shroud was sewn together with those remnants.
They sent her coffin out to space with no speeches. Words were past everybody. There was no music. Lee had thought of playing something of her father's, but rummaging through her locker, sorting through her music collection, was beyond him. It seemed as if the entire ship stood at attention as they jettisoned her. The hundred and fifty-eight survivors, for whose lives Starbuck had traded her own, were there. Even the President was there.
Lee was sure Roslin hadn't meant him to overhear what she said to the Admiral about Starbuck's funeral:
"You know why so many were in attendance?" Roslin asked Adama. The Old Man shook his head. His blue eyes were wet. "Because now they're frightened."
"They weren't before?" Adama asked.
"Captain Thrace was a talisman for them - proof that they could face these incredible odds and still come out intact. Now that she's gone...."
Lee walked away then. He was conscious of becoming a different man, a different...entity, with each step. He felt his normal human functions closing down. From now on, there would be the outside, his duty, his decisions, and then there would be the wall. Nothing would penetrate that wall. Behind the wall, Lee was not sure what he would keep, but he knew that she, the memory of her, would be one of them. All of the conversations they never finished, would never finish, the loose threads, would be kept there behind the wall. And no one would get behind that wall again. Maybe not even himself.
Part 2
He broke up with Dee without saying a word. It was the very fact that he couldn't speak to her, and not just to her, but to anyone, in the days and weeks after Starbuck's death unless the conversation were clearly related to his duties as an officer, that ended things.
He felt only gratitude when Dee came to his office one day and simply, silently, returned the presents he'd given to her during the months they'd dated. He would have protested that she should feel free to keep them. He would have, if he'd been able to speak in language that wasn't giving or acknowledging orders.
He didn't allow himself to feel much in that first month after they launched Starbuck into space inside a silk shroud and a coffin - the wall he put up was a mile thick, and held through almost everything - but when emotion did punch its way through, it was mostly regret. Had he really spent the last few months of Kara's life in a relationship with somebody else? It seemed impossible. He'd been laughing and snuggling with some other woman, and all that time, his minutes with Kara were running down, their number getting smaller. He frittered them all away on someone who was just, they both knew, keeping him company. And Kara's last words had been for him. She used her dying breath to tell him that she loved him. He'd known, but the knowledge was buried deep down. He'd thought it would take years and too much forgiveness than either he or Starbuck possessed to surface it. Then, suddenly, Starbuck was bleeding her life out and there it was. He hadn't said it back. He knew that her saying it was signal enough about the pain she was in, the brink she was on, and he was running a split second after her last proclamation. But if he'd known then that he'd be too late getting to her, if he'd just have spoken into the headset before her final landing....
I love you too, Kara.
It would have been the last thing she heard.
*****
The first month passed, and Lee knew they were all worried about him, but he wasn't worried. He was numb and stoic, but he didn't especially think that was a cause for concern. He was still going, he hadn't closed down, he carried his responsibilities with the precision and leadership necessary. He was every bit the pilot, CAG, and Major he'd ever been.
He just wasn't a man anymore.
He knew there was a difference between functioning and living. But he felt zero compunction to make the others feel better by trying to get from wherever he was to "normal." Frak them. What did it matter whether he was the same as before? He was doing what they required, giving them what they needed from him, wasn't he? He wasn't worried about himself, why should they worry about him?
Then he started seeing things. He started seeing her.
Glimpses, at first, in the corridors. As if she was walking twenty paces ahead of him, rounding the corner just when he caught sight of the back of her head, her ponytail swaying, her flight suit disappearing as Lee's steps unconsciously sped up. Of course, whenever he turned those corners, she wasn't there.
Then, she was. He saw her sitting at the back of the briefing room, for only an instant. He saw her laughing at the triad table, sitting just a little outside the circle of officers playing a heated game. Once, he saw her naked in the shower stall directly in front of where he was shaving. He dropped the razor and craned his neck to get a better view of her. But nothing. The shower wasn't even running. Lee touched his hand to the tiles and felt them to be dry.
Her voice started coming to him...it began in his dreams but filled up the first moments of wakefulness...Lee, Lee, Lee. She said his name with such...love. She spoke to him as if she loved him.
Of course she loves you, idiot, Lee chastised himself. Didn't she tell you so? He wanted to say it back, except he could never find her, never really see her for more than a fraction of a second at a time....
He understand that he was going crazy when he did finally see her, hear her, for a significant amount of time. It was in his office, on a rare night when he had no shifts in a Viper or in CIC. He decided to give in a little to his need to spend some time with her, with things that reminded him of her. He lit a cigar and nursed a bottle of the Chief's swill and dwelled on memories without apology.
"Lee," she said and sat beside him.
"Kara," he breathed. She was in her tanks, fatigues, and combat boots: her usual off-duty attire. Her hair was loose and hung almost to her shoulders. She was smiling.
"You're..." he said.
"Dead?" she finished for him. Her smile got even wider. That look on her face always meant trouble. How Lee had longed to be in that kind of trouble again. "That doesn't mean I'm not real," Kara said. She laid her hand on top of his. It was warm. Lee remembered clutching her hand all night, the night she had died. And now, the skin of her palm, her fingers...she was so warm. "Don't I feel real?" she asked in that voice, that voice which, at that particular pitch, could make him hard even without physical contact.
"Yes," he ground out. "But it's not...it doesn't make any...."
"Sense?" She always could finish his sentences if she cared to, they knew each other's minds like they had telepathy. "What good is sense? What about your senses, what do they tell you?" She moved closer, until her side pressed up against his. He felt his cock swell and lengthen.
"That you're here, with me," Lee said. He felt himself surrender to her, to the feel and heat of her. He gave himself up to the madness of the dream. He reached up and held her face, drew her in close and kissed her long, deep, and hard. She kissed him back, breathed heavily against him when their lips parted. Her breath smelled so sweet, he listened for the sound of her exhalations and put his palm on her heart. He felt it beating. He had to have her.
"Kara, I..." He wanted to apologize for his roughness, his urgency, even as he pressed her down into the cot, began working up the hems of her shirts.
"Shhh, I want it, so much. I want you," she said, and nothing had ever felt so right.
When they were both naked, Lee slid inside her and was immediately enclosed in her hot wetness. "Gods...." he said before he began to stroke in and out of her, sensuous and strong and loving. "Gods, Kara, I love you."
"Me, too," she said. He dared a look at her face - she was real, she was right there, he was making love to her and nothing could ever be so good - he saw her face and his heart melted. She was grinning with pleasure. With glee. She was as happy as he was. For once in their lives, they were in the same place.
For once in our lives....
Lee didn't dwell on his thoughts. Kara was speaking, compelling him to listen to her, always. "How many times were we together like this?" she asked.
Lee was so close, speeding up his thrusts, he was going to come so hard, and so was she, he felt her shivering on the inside....
"Twice," he managed to answer, as he began frakking her in earnest, so hard, Gods, he was so hard....Both times before had been in anger and frustration and hadn't felt like this, so full and lush....
"It wasn't enough," said Kara.
They came apart together. Lee felt himself surge in her and fill her up, and smiled and cried a little as she rained kisses all over his face, his chest. He stayed inside her long enough to feel the last of her breathtaking spasms around his cock, then he withdrew and gathered her body close. He fell asleep in her arms.
When he woke, he was alone. Where did she...?
But he knew where she'd gone, and when.
He'd made love to a ghost.
Lee began to worry about himself.
Part 3
Starbuck showed up every now and then, and it alternately put Lee's broken soul back together, and tore it apart all over again.
On morning, Lee went running and she joined him. She appeared from nowhere and kept pace at his side just like she sometimes did when she was alive. She cracked jokes in her acerbic way, making fun of everyone, teasing Lee about his tightass love of regulations and his overly precise stride. Lee only stopped laughing at her barbs when he saw Gaeta looking at him like he'd lost his mind. Which of course he had, going for his morning jog with a specter of his best friend.
Starbuck's appearances were fine with Lee - more than fine, completely frakking welcome and Lee reveled in her - when Lee was all by himself, but when she sat next to him in the mess, or started talking to him while he was conversing with other people, it made him fear that he'd never be functionally sane again. He tried to ignore her sly, suggestive taunting, her sarcastic jabs, but when the hell had Starbuck ever been easy to ignore? She was larger than life. Even now that she was dead - she was larger than life itself, more present and more real to Lee than any other person on the Galactica.
He made love to her more than once in the CAG office. He couldn't help himself. There she was and sometimes she was naked, sometimes she was wearing nothing but one of his tanks....She was always so willing and wanting....Lee let himself sink into her warmth and wetness and find paradise for the few moments he had after he got off duty and before he got some sleep....And she was always gone when he awoke, drowsy and sated and even more alone, and even more mad, than he'd been before....
He didn't question that. He refused to. At the worst, it was his imagination fulfilling his longest-held fantasy: a sexual relationship with Kara that was loving, not confusing or angry or tormented. As long as his grief-driven imagination didn't hurt anyone or affect his ability to do his jobs, Lee felt he was well within his rights to enjoy his ghost lover.
But one day, she showed up in the war room. Lee was with Adama, Tigh, Gaeta, and Chief Tyrol, planning out another raid for tylium on another Cylon-held planet, this one even better secured than the last one that Lee had effectively infiltrated and overtaken, and Tigh was running the show, suggesting a detachment of five Vipers break off from engaging the defending raiders head-on to make a run for the planet. Lee had a gut feeling Tigh's plan wouldn't work, but was waiting to hear out his plan. But Starbuck had no such patience.
"Oh my Gods," she said from the corner of the room. "That moron is going to get five pilots killed and five birds destroyed for nothing. Lee, you have to stop him."
The meeting went on, Lee biting his lip to keep from responding to Starbuck's prompts.
"Lee, you know he's completely off his frakking rocker. Come on, be a CAG, hell, be a man!" In a flash, she wasn't in the corner of the room, but right beside him, yelling in his ear. "Major Adama, I request that you do your duty and put an end to this bullshit, Sir!"
"Starbuck, that's enough!" Lee shouted back.
Even before he finished shouting, he felt the appalled stares of the others. Lee looked around the room and saw shock, pity, and heartbreak staring back at him.
"Son...?" Adama began.
Lee left the room without excusing himself.
Starbuck appeared to him again in the corridor. "You shouldn't let Tigh get away with foisting his half-assed ideas on you and the Admiral. Especially not on this mission, it's too important."
Lee wanted desperately to argue with her; it was just like the old days (The days when she was alive to be argued with, Lee thought), but he fought hard not to say a word to the shadow of Kara that kept on haunting him. He couldn't help but throw her a murderous glare at one point, though, and that shut her up. Just as it had before. She disappeared.
Fine, good, Lee thought, but didn't feel it. He never really felt relieved when GhostKara left him, even now when he was furious with her. He was still frowning when he turned away from the empty spot she'd been and saw Gaius Baltar staring at him with a quizzical and alarmed expression on his face.
"Something you wanted, Doctor?" Lee asked in a tone that meant Frak off.
Baltar never had been great at picking up on Lee's signals. "Yes, actually, Major, I....This may be a very strange question," Baltar said, drawing close enough to Lee so that no one could readily hear their conversation, "but just now, were you...did you happen to...see, or...or hear someone who...wasn't...entirely, or, exactly...really there?"
Lee felt the breath go out of his body. How did you know? he thought, but he didn't say it. Though he may as well have said it - the doctor's face registered comprehension and understanding.
Baltar said, "Was...The person you saw, or thought you saw...Was it a woman? Was she a...a lovely blonde, by any chance?" This last, he asked in a tortured whisper.
Oh, what is this, another way to twist the knife in me over Kara? Lee thought with disgust. He'd never forgotten or forgiven Baltar over that Colonial Day incident. "You know perfectly well which lovely blonde I saw," Lee spat out. He started to stride away from the Doctor's distasteful mockery of him, but Baltar's next words stopped him.
"Ah - Starbuck. Yes, of course," Baltar said without a hint of antangonism. "That's...quite interesting."
"Interesting?" Lee asked Baltar over his shoulder. "Interesting in what way?"
"Well, of course, it could be your grief. Which I completely and totally understand, and my sympathies, naturally," added Baltar hastily. "Or...it could mean something very interesting about Starbuck." Baltar walked off, frowning as if in serious thought, and left Lee puzzled and annoyed.
The next time Starbuck appeared to him was the breaking point.
It was in a firefight. Lee managed to blow a raider apart just in time to fly through the wreckage and Starbuck's voice sounded clear as crystal in his comm: "Apollo, pull up hard, now, now, now!" Apollo did as Starbuck said - he knew better than to disobey her in a battle - and saw that he'd avoided crashing into another raider by inches. He flipped his ship around and shot the second raider out of the sky and Starbuck said, "Good shot, Apollo!"
"All thanks to you, Starbuck," he answered, high over the kill.
Then he remembered he was on an open channel.
When he got back into the hanger and out of his Viper, his father was waiting for him on the deck.
"I'm taking you off active duty," the Admiral said somberly. "You'll still be CAG, but no flying until...."
"Fine," Lee said, too embarrassed and angry at himself to protest. He thrust his helmet at Tyrol and marched back to his office without waiting for words of comfort and empathy to pour out of his father.
He waited for her to appear again. Waited for it and dreaded it.
It happened a few hours later. He was trying, and failing of course, to catch some sleep. He felt her arm drape over him from behind, her legs curl behind his legs. Her hair teased his ear and the side of his face; her voice, mesmerizing as always, murmured, "Sorry if I got you in trouble today, Major." Then she planted a kiss on his neck, bit his lobe just enough to get him hard in a flash.
He clambered out of the cot. He hoped when he was standing that when he turned back she would be gone, but he wasn't that lucky. He never was, when it came to her.
"Oh, come on," she said. She was only wearing her tanks and her panties. Her legs were bare, stretched out like that, her head propped up on her hand, a welcoming smile on her face. She looked sexy and seductive on his cot - Gods, he'd pictured her being there, just like that, a thousand times when she was alive. He'd jerked off more times than he could count to that very image. That was probably why his imagination conjured up this picture of her.
"You look so glum" she said. "I can fix that." When Lee didn't go any closer to her, her smile went away. "What is it?" she asked, concerned.
"You can't keep coming to me like this," Lee said. His voice was raspy. His heart was beating so fast - triple time. How could he be so ripped up about this, about breaking up with a ghost?
"Why not? Because of one slip-up? Okay, maybe two," she admitted, in that way Starbuck had of only admitting she might be wrong in the most grudging way.
Lee said nothing. She got up from the cot and came closer to him. When she would have embraced him, Lee stepped - more like stumbled - away from her.
"I, I mean it," he said haltingly. "This has, it has to stop."
"Are you serious?" she asked. When he met her eyes, it almost sent him to his knees to see that she was on the verge of tears. "Are you really sending me away?"
Lee looked down and told himself not to look in her eyes again. He nodded, deciding speech at this point would be too much to manage.
"Lee Adama, are you really turning me away when...when this is all we can have?" Oh Gods, Gods, there it was, that note in Kara's voice that made him want to kill whoever was hurting her. More often than not, though, that person was himself, and it was still true now, even though she was dead. "Lee, why? Why do you keep rejecting me?"
Oh, Kara, I'm not, I could never reject you, I could never reject you when you were really here....But even as Lee thought the words, he knew they weren't really true. Even though she'd never openly offered herself to him, there were a million ways in which she left the door open just a crack to him, and he'd always refused to walk through....
"You wouldn't let us be together when I was...before," she said, "and even now...even now you don't want me?" Her voice was very small, and wounded, like an injured animal...Gods, it was murder to hear.
"That's not it, that's not it," Lee said, unable to help himself from saying it aloud. "You never knew how much I wanted you...too much for our own good...."
"You never knew what was good for you, and certainly not what was good for me." Another bout of silence, then she said, "Fine. Fine. After this, you'll never see me again. I hope you'll be happy when you've gotten your wish."
I wish for you to be alive.... "Kara," Lee said, his voice breaking. He thought he owed it to his own memory of her, if this was the last time he'd ever see even a ghost image of her before him, that he owed it to her to make this his final declaration to her: "Kara, I love you."
He looked at her and she'd never looked more devastated. The tears spilled out of her eyes as she said, "I don't see how that could possibly be true." Then she was gone. As if she'd never been there.
That was when Lee began to drink.
Part 4
No one could talk to him; no one even tried. Everyone on Galactica knew what they'd get if they tried speaking to the CAG on anything besides the most essential matters: a hard stare, a shrug, a slinking away of his gaze from yours. It had been like that for almost two months, but for the last week, ever since the Admiral grounded him, it had been worse. Now the CAG was drunk and they all knew it. And there was still no talking to him, and nothing they could do. He just seemed to be disappearing further and faster into his grief over Starbuck, and he wouldn't accept a lifeline if it were thrown to him.
For all those reasons, it surprised Helo when Apollo reached out to him one day.
"Did you ever frak her?" Apollo asked. Helo heard him over his shoulder in the bunkroom, turned and saw the once-proud, formerly well-groomed Major Adama slouching in the doorway. The Major obviously hadn't shaved in a week, since he was taken off Viper duty indefinitely. Helo wondered if he'd showered since then. He hoped so, since it appeared he was about to enter into conversation with the man.
"Did I ever frak who?" Helo asked.
"You know who," Apollo said. And Helo did. He also knew why Apollo was asking.
"Never," Helo answered honestly. "Not even when we were both so trashed we couldn't remember each other's names. We were always just friends."
Apollo stared at Helo for a few moments, as if assessing the truth of what the Lieutenant had just said. Seeming to be satisfied, Apollo said, "Okay. Come with me."
Helo didn't have shift for another three hours and had planned on getting some rack time and some visiting time with Sharon in there, but he guessed it wasn't meant to be. He and the CAG had never gotten along since Apollo held a gun to Sharon's head, but Starbuck had had some kind of soft spot for Apollo, and Helo figured he owed it to his dead friend to look after the man if given the chance.
Helo followed Apollo to an empty supply room and was surprised when Apollo produced a bottle of actual ambrosia - not just the rotgut Chief and his knuckle-draggers brewed up - from his pocket. "Amazing what you can still trade for," said the CAG. Helo thought with a surprising bit of remorse at how Apollo used to keep himself immaculate even under the worst of circumstances, how he used to put his uniform to rights even after hand-to-hand combat. Now Apollo was just...sloppy.
Apollo took a long, hard swig from the bottle, then handed it to Helo. "Here," he said. Apparently, Helo was about to get just as sloppy, with his superior officer's full knowledge and consent.
Well, hell, he deserved a good drink, they all did. Helo took a healthy gulp of the amber liquid and exhaled afterwards. Damn, but that felt good. He handed the bottle back.
"Now, talk," said the CAG.
"Look, Major...," Helo started, unsure of what was expected of him.
"I'm Lee. And you're Karl. I'll forget who your girlfriend is if you just...talk to me. I can't listen to myself anymore, I'm driving myself crazy."
Karl nodded. "Too many voices talking at you?" he guessed.
Lee shook his head vigorously. "Too few. Too few voices. It's damn quiet in here. The silence is killing me."
After that cryptic statement, Karl decided it was just better to keep Apollo company than leave him alone. This is for you, Kara, thought Karl. "Okay, I'll talk." He slid down till he sat on the cold floor of the supply closet; Lee did the same against the opposite wall. "Do you want me to talk about Starbuck, or not talk about her?"
"I don't know," Lee said. "I don't know if there's a right answer to that."
Gods, but the CAG was in desperate straits. "Okay, I'll just talk, and you tell me if you want me to switch topics. How's that?"
Lee nodded.
Helo talked, and kept on talking, and they met up the next time they were both off-shift, and Helo talked some more. It went on like that for another week. Helo didn't know where Lee got all his booze. Sometimes it was the Chief's stuff, but other times it was the real thing. Apollo must have found something Tigh needed badly; that was the only stash of booze left on the whole ship, Karl thought. Karl drank some of it, but not half so much as Lee did. Mostly, he just talked and tried to make sure the Major was engaged, if even mildly. He tried to get Lee to talk, too, though that rarely worked.
One day, the Admiral summoned Helo to his private quarters. "How's he doing?" the Old Man asked.
"Sir..." Helo paused, wondering how to answer truthfully, without giving the Old Man cause for even more concern than he was already feeling over his son. "If there ever was an officer in need of shore leave, it's the Major," Helo said finally. "I just wish we had a way to give him some R&R, Sir."
Adama gave Helo a look that would have been a glower from any other officer, but Helo had served under the Old Man for years, now, and knew that look to be a hopeful one. "As a matter of fact, we may have just found a way, Lieutenant."
Helo dared a half-smile. "What do you mean, Sir?" he asked, knowing whatever Adama was going to say next, it would be good news.
"Apparently, we've stumbled onto a planet. With an oxygen atmosphere. Fit for human life."
"No sh-really, Sir?" Helo responded, avoiding profanity in front of the Admiral just barely.
"Not only that, but it appears there are a few thousand humans living there now," Adama said.
Helo let his half-smile grow into a full one. "Earth?!" he exclaimed.
"No, not Earth," Adama replied, and Helo's joy collapsed just a little. "This planet has very little advanced technology, and hasn't discovered space travel yet. It's also very small, no more than four thousand inhabitants. We're assuming that Earth, being the thirteenth colony, will be more populated and more technologically developed."
"So if this isn't Earth, where did these people come from?" asked Helo.
"We're not sure. They could have splintered off centuries ago from the twelve colonies; perhaps their ancestors purposefully broke off contact with the rest of civilization and regressed their technology to go back to an earlier, simpler way of living," said the Admiral.
Helo had heard of such things happening. "Could be. Anyway," he said, "what does this have to do with your...with the CAG, Sir?"
"I'm going to send down several teams to investigate the planet undercover. I want them to blend in with the population, find out their history, their culture...and I want you and Apollo to be one of those teams." Adama said the last bit quite meaningfully.
"Ah, I see," Helo said. "We're going to be the team...without much of a mission."
"That's correct," the Admiral said. "I've noticed Lee lets you close to him these days. You're the only one. As you said, what he badly needs is rest and relaxation. I want you to take him down there, make sure he sees the ocean, the sun, and doesn't do any damage to himself. When our other ground teams have gathered enough intel, we'll call you and Apollo back."
Ocean. Sun. All of a sudden, Helo felt guilty that he'd actually enjoy this babysitting mission. "Aye aye, Sir. Thank you for this assignment, Sir."
"Thank you, Helo," said Adama. Helo was glad that, despite his involvement with a cylon - one who looked just like the model that had put two bullets in Adama - the admiral had never lost faith in him. "Lee just hasn't been himself since...."
"For your sake, Apollo's, and hers, Sir, I'll do my best with him," Helo said, saving the Admiral from having to say much more.
They saluted, and Helo exited.
Helo and Apollo boarded a raptor the next morning. They were one of six pairs. All the other teams carried intelligence-gathering equipment; not them. They only had their comms, the clothes on their backs, which they hoped would pass for local, and a few items that might be tradable. The other five teams fanned out immediately after the raptor landed, and Karl and Lee were on their own.
*****
Lee admits the wind feels good against his skin. He hasn't felt wind since...since Kobol, and Kara was with him then to experience it.
Of course he wishes she were here now. He always wishes she were with him. How could she think that he doesn't want her....But that wasn't her, Lee has to remind himself. That was a ghost. Still, he feels like shit every time he remembers the tears on her face when he told her to go. He can't stand thinking that any incarnation of Kara would believe he doesn't need her desperately.
Since Kara's ghost stopped haunting him on the Galactica, Lee has stopped looking for her, but now he and Helo are on this tiny planet, seeing other humans they've never seen before, and Lee can't help but search for her in the crowd. They're in some kind of marketplace, and it's bustling with activity. People carrying baskets and filling them up with greens, root vegetables, fruits, bread.
"It's amazing how similar humans are everywhere," Helo says at Lee's right shoulder. "Except these ones are a millennia or two behind our times."
It's true; it's like stepping into a history book. Everyone wears the kind of clothing that Lee's seen in picture books from the middle times, long tunics and dresses that almost touch the ground. Simple, hardy fabrics that look handwoven. There aren't machines anywhere, at least not what Lee would call machines. Everything's made of wood and stone, and the only metal they've seen are knives.
These people haven't ever seen a battlestar, or a Cylon, or war on the scale of nuclear holocaust. They've never known what it is to watch an entire planet destroyed. They can't even comprehend that. Lee is glad for them, and he takes in the sight of children holding on to their mothers' hands, farmers selling their produce, with a kind of happiness - not happiness for himself, he's not sure he'll ever have that again, but a kind of joy for them, that they have this peaceful existence.
Lee's jostled slightly from behind; they've reached a busier, more crowded part of the marketplace. He sees a flash of gold amidst all the bobbing heads and automatically follows it with his eyes. It's strange, but he feels closer to her, feels her spirit or soul or essence, more strongly on this planet than he has since...since he last saw her ghost on the ship. He almost laughs at himself, thinking one of the women on this small, lost planet will bear any resemblance to her.
But there's something in the way the golden-haired woman walks. Her shoulders straight and back, she's got such a confident stride, and the color of her hair is almost exact, pulled back in a low ponytail that leaves some strands around the face. If only he could see her face. Starbuck would never wear a dress like that, of course, lilac-colored with long sleeves like that; Lee's never seen her in a dress except for the one time, long ago.
Why doesn't she turn around? Lee wonders, and before he knows it his legs are moving. He's pushing through the crowd to keep that blonde head in his sights. If only she'd stop and buy something. Lee is mindful of whether the woman belongs to anyone, if a small boy comes and tugs on her skirt, or if a man puts a possessive arm around her, but no, the woman stays alone, shopping by herself among the various stalls, but never stopping at one.
Finally, at the stand that sells something like turnips, she halts, picks one up, half turns to view her finding in better light, and puts in the basket that hangs from her arm, and there, Lee can see her face.
Gods, it can't be. It can't be, but it is.
"Kara!" he shouts. "KARA!" he shouts again, with all his might. The crowd stills for just a moment; Lee sounded like a wild animal even to himself. Even she looks up at the crazed sound; their eyes meet. Those are her eyes, hazel with the edges of green, and that mouth, wide and expressive, and that face. It's her it's her it's her.
"Kara! Kara!" Lee pushes his way bodily, using more force than he should because he can't really control himself, and at last he reaches her, and he wasn't delusional and this isn't a dream. He's six inches from her and it's Kara, alive, alive!
"Kara," he pants, winded from his effort to get to her, from his amazement, his elation.
"Yes," she says, calmly, a very slight, but amused, smile on her face and in her eyes. "My name is Kara."
Part 5
"Yes," she says, calmly, a very slight, but amused, smile on her face and in her eyes. "My name is Kara."
Lee smiles back at her so widely he thinks his face might break, it's so unused to happiness.
Lee swallows. He feels his smile turn downward, his forehead start to frown. Kara is dead, he tells himself. Kara is dead! This isn't her. When she died, I spent the entire night holding her cold hand.
He takes the hand of the woman in front of him and she lets him. Lee makes himself feel, consciously, how warm she is. When I blink, this illusion will be gone, and this woman will not be Kara, will not be Starbuck. The simple fact is, this woman is alive and Starbuck is not. Starbuck's hand was cold and dead and the hand in Lee's is pulsing with heat.
He blinks.
And again.
"Is something wrong?" she asks.
Lee reaches up the hand that isn't holding hers and wipes his eyes, but when that hand drops, the woman hasn't turned into someone else. It's still that face, that form, that he has loved for so long that he couldn't burn it out of his mind if he tried - and he admits to trying, over these last two weeks, trying to buy back his own sanity with alcohol-induced forgetfulness. It didn't work.
And now, it doesn't have to. Kara is right in front of him, puzzled and getting suspicious of him not saying anything. So he speaks.
"Kara," Lee breathes, "you're alive."
"Yes," she says, and now she's looking at him askance, like she doesn't know whether to trust him or not. Of course, he's acting like he's out of his mind, which he very well could be, so he doesn't blame her for being suspect.
"I'm alive," she continues, "and I can see that you're confused about whether that's a good thing or not."
"I'm not," Lee says abruptly. One thing he's going to make damn sure of, even if this is another ghost, is to make sure she never feels rejected or unwanted by him ever again. "I'm not confused. It's a good thing." He's still holding her hand, he realizes - Gods, I'm touching her live flesh - and he squeezes her fingers, trying to communicate his gladness. He smiles at her; lets the rejoicing in his heart overcome the confusion in his mind, at least for the moment. "Your being alive is a very, very good thing. I was sure you were dead."
She inhales deeply and exhales. She doesn't remove her hand from his clasp, but she doesn't squeeze his back, either. "I thought so," she says.
"What do you mean?" Lee asks. She sounds just like Starbuck, on the verge of figuring something out.
"I mean, no one's shown up here looking for me. No family, nothing. I thought, maybe my people believe I'm dead. Maybe that's why they're not looking for me," she says.
"Wait, you mean you...?" Lee can't finish, he's trying to process too many things at once. Not the least of which is the fact that the woman he buried in space more than two months ago is breathing and blinking right in front of him. And they're still loosely holding hands.
"I don't remember anything. Except my name. I woke up in the woods outside this village - oh, Gods, it's been sixteen days now - and I didn't know how I got there, or where I'd come from, or who I'd come from. But I remembered that my name is Kara, and I just had a feeling that if I had people, they'd search for me. I've made some friends here, they've been kind enough to help me out, give me a place to sleep. So, since I woke up two weeks ago, I've just been...waiting."
Two weeks. Sixteen days. Sixteen days ago, Lee told someone - something - who looked exactly like the woman talking to him now that he couldn't see her anymore. The thing disappeared, and that very day, this - Kara - showed up in a forest on a small inhabited planet that no one in the fleet knew existed.
What the frak is going on? Lee is verging on panic.
"But you know me?" Kara asks. "I know you?"
Lee tugs her by the hand closer to him, into a strong embrace. She feels like Kara. He puts his nose against her hair. She smells like Kara. She's hugging him back. He's being held by her.
It doesn't matter, he decides. I don't give a frak.
"Yes, you know me. You know me," he says. "I'm Lee. I'm your friend."
She pulls back. She's pleased. She's been waiting to be recognized for more than two weeks, and here he is, giving her just what she wanted. It's one of the very few times in his life when Lee has felt that he is giving Kara exactly what she wants. He vows he's going to focus on that feeling, and replicate it, as much as possible from now on.
"So you thought I was dead, huh?" she asks, grinning without sarcasm or mischief. She's just happy. Happy to see him.
Gods, he is so happy to see her. "I thought you were dead," he says, and even as he says it, it feels like a nightmare falling away after a long, troubled sleep. Waking is so good, this reality is so much better than what he's been calling existence for months....
"Well, I'm not dead. Are you going to take me home now, wherever that is?" she asks with hope in her eyes.
"Apollo!" calls Helo. Lee vaguely recalls that when he started pushing through the crowd to get to Kara, he and Helo got separated. Lee turns and sees the lieutenant jogging towards him. Towards them - him and Kara. What will Helo say?
Then Lee has a sudden, certain realization in his gut that Helo will be the last person to say anything.
"Apollo...what...?" Helo sees her face. His eyes shift between Lee and Kara and he's the picture of confusion.
"I found her," Lee says calmly, smiling. "It's Kara."
"Hi," says Kara, a little shyly, and Lee makes the introductions.
"Kara, this is Karl. He's your friend, too."
"Hi Karl," she amends. And she steps nervously forward, gives Helo a quick hug.
"But," says Helo when she steps back, "it's...it's impossible."
"Nope!" Kara says brightly. "I'm not dead!" She reaches up and feels the back of her head for something. "I keep feeling around for a bump - I must have taken a pretty rough fall, to get a case of amnesia this bad. But I can't find any signs of an accident - I guess I have a hard head, huh?"
Lee laughs. "You have no idea."
"Are there any other people with you? People I would know?" Kara asks, looking over Lee's shoulder on her tiptoes.
Lee and Karl look at each other, and Lee knows they're both thinking of the ten other people on the planet from the Galactica. "No," Lee says quickly. "We're here alone."
"You're not from this village, right? I mean, we're not from here, right? Because no one here knows me. And the other villages - my name's been sent to all three of them, and it seems like no one's heard of me in any of them," Kara says. "So, where are we from?"
Helo gives Lee a kind of desperate look, and Lee answers, "We're actually from a village that no one here's ever heard of. We come from a long way off, much farther than the four villages."
Lee almost hits Helo when Helo involuntarily looks skyward. Kara says, "Oh. We're from up there, then."
Lee swallows hard. He and Helo exchange worried glances.
"Up from the mountains, right?" Kara continues. Her gaze follows Helo's line of sight from a moment earlier and Lee sees what she thought Helo was seeing: the ridge of jagged-peaked mountains in the distance, a citadel of stone that effectively limits how far the human settlements can fan out. "Everyone says those mountains aren't fit for human life, but I knew, I just had this feeling, that a group of people could live at that altitude if they only had stronger shelters, better tools. So we must be that group, right?"
"Right," says Lee. He's concentrating fully on Kara's face, but out of the corner of his eye he can see Helo staring at him like he's crazy.
"Will we make the journey back today?" Kara asks eagerly.
"That journey's far too long and arduous to attempt today," Lee says. "We'll need some time to prepare for it. Karl and I will need to get some rest first, and try to re-supply, before we can consider a trip back." Lee knows he's not making any sense to Helo, but the Lieutenant isn't disputing anything he's saying, and for that he's grateful.
He just needs to buy them some time. Some time that he can spend with Kara.
Kara looks disappointed, then brightens. "Do you want to come to my place, then? It's not much, just a shack, really, but you can rest there. And we can talk. I want to learn all about you. Rediscover who you are, and all that!"
She sounds playful, but Lee doesn't when he says, "That's what I want, too. Yeah, let's go to your place."
*****
It really is a shack. It's a two-room shed, built for storing ploughs or large tools, maybe, that probably wasn't used for years before Kara moved in. Kara tells the story: A couple of villagers took her in for a few days, but when it looked like no one was coming for her, they suggested she take over the abandoned shed, and helped get her set up. Lee looks around. A table, some chairs, a straw-filled mattress with some decent blankets, equipment to clean and cook and garden with, is all of Kara's existence. A few other villagers have donated a few clothes to her, tailored them to fit her. Someone has shown her how to bake bread for herself. The vendors at the market have been generously putting her bills on a kind of tab, "which I hope I'll be able to pay off, as soon as I figure out what kind of work I'm good for," Kara says ruefully, obviously embarrassed to have been living off of people's kindness for two weeks.
"You're good at cards," says Helo before he can stop himself, and Lee's glare shuts him up.
"We have some things we can trade, to get your debts paid," Lee says.
"But then I'll just owe you instead of them," Kara says, shrugging off the offer.
"You'll never owe me. I owe you my life already." Now it's Lee who's said too much, and Helo who's giving out the hard stare.
"What does that mean?" asks Kara, smiling and frowning at the same time.
Helo puts his pack down loudly enough to draw attention to himself. "So, where do I sleep? Got any extra blankets?"
The distraction works. Kara says, "I was thinking I'd go next door and ask my neighbors for their spare cots and blankets. Then we can put them in here," she says, gesturing to the space in front of the hearth, in the front room. "I sleep in the other room. Sorry to put you in the front, which gets draftier at night, but you'll have the fire to keep you warm, and for the neighbors' sake, I just can't have two handsome strangers sleeping in the same room as me!" she says, laughing a little.
"This'll work," Helo says. "I'll go ask the neighbors, if you like. I'll explain who we are - that we're friends of yours, from your, ah, your home village."
"Oh, no, I'll go...," Kara starts.
"He'll go," says Lee. "Stay and talk with me for a while." He tugs at her hand and she doesn't pull away. They've shared more casual touches in the last hour than they ever did when she was - when they were on Galactica. And she doesn't even know him.
Kara hesitates, but she must see the need in Lee's expression, because to Karl she says, "Okay, then, if you don't mind. It's the house to the left. Their names are Evie and Jonas."
Helo nods and leaves.
Kara and Lee sit in the chairs at her small, functional table and she says, "I have so many questions. About you, about myself."
"Is it okay if we talk about you first?" Lee asks. He doesn't know what he'll say when she starts asking her questions, and he wants to put that off for as long as he can. Besides, he really is curious, more than curious, to know about her life here, on this hidden, backward, unexpected little world.
"Sure, but there isn't much to tell," Kara says.
"Just tell me the ordinary things. What you do every day. What it's like for you here," Lee pleads softly.
Kara begins to describe her life, which is the only life she remembers. Lee is filled with something like nostalgic joy listening to her talk about it. What she tells him of is a world so far removed from the daily, fear-ridden grind of the Galactica, he can hardly believe it's real. Here, she doesn't operate vessels that can kill people. She doesn't spend sleepless nights wondering, worrying about dozens of pilots or thousands of civilians depending on her. She doesn't run from one emergency to the next, scraping together miracles with bits of wire and sheer adrenaline. And the people she's with here, these villagers, they don't spend every minute of their day trying to keep from collapsing from exhaustion, anxiety, malnutrition, madness.
She wakes up in the morning, she tells him, and stokes the dying embers of the fire in the hearth. She has to keep the fire burning even in the day, for as long she's home, because she refuses to wear a cloak indoors, and the place is damned cold. Next she gets some bread baking, which she's terrible at but she's getting slightly better, she thinks. Whatever she bakes is her main sustenance for the day. Next, she helps Evie and Jonas tend their garden, which isn't yielding enough produce for two people, let alone three, so Kara doesn't take any of their vegetables, even though they offer to share. "They do so much for me, the least I can do is keep my hands off of their food," she says. She figures she'll take her chances getting produce on loan from the marketplace, even though she's nervous about how she'll manage to pay her bills. She spends her day chopping firewood for the fire, and trying to help out the other villagers who've helped her by doing some manual labor for them, if there are things she can do. She's so unfamiliar with their implements and methods, she's not terribly useful, and she just knows she was not meant to do the women's work, sewing and weaving and all of that. She plays with the children sometimes, which she enjoys, and at night, a neighbor or two will come by and talk for a bit about small matters, or invite her over to share a meal. She only goes if she senses the family can really afford to be so generous. Then she goes to bed, lying awake for a while imagining who she is, where she comes from, before falling asleep.
Lee understands this world has its own precariousness - food is scarce for some, and survival is a matter of physical work, of farming and milling and doing hard labor. But it's...peaceful. They don't live in a state of war. This is what it is to live in a world of peace.
"I like the sound of your life here," Lee says when she's finished talking.
She rolls her eyes. "It's not as idyllic as it sounds. If you had to really live it...."
"Maybe I'll get that chance," Lee says. "At least for the next few days, right?"
"Right," Kara says, looking at Lee with open curiosity.
Then Helo returns, bearing cots, blankets, and pillows.
******
After finishing off Kara's homemade bread, which tastes very good to the two men, who've been living on bad synthetic food for too long, Helo suggests he and Lee go for a short walk, familiarize themselves with the neighborhood. Kara says she'll set up their cots while they're gone. Lee's tempted to stay and watch Kara be domestic, but Helo is insistent, and they start walking.
Helo gets right to it without preamble. Lee acknowledges if Helo has ever been anything, it's direct.
"She was dead, and now she's not," Helo says.
"I know," Lee says.
"You know what it means, right?" asks Helo.
Apollo turns and faces him. "You're the last person to criticize me for making this decision, Lieutenant."
Helo assumes a slightly more military stance. "What exactly is the decision you've made, Major?" he asks.
"I've decided that we're not going to tell the Fleet that we've found Starbuck," says Lee, and he starts walking again, and so does Helo.
"Because...," Helo begins, but it's not a question. Lee can tell that Helo grasps the decision perfectly well, and just wants to hear Apollo say it aloud.
"Because you know better than anyone," Lee says, "what they'll do to her if they find out she's a Cylon."