Word Count: 20,865
Date: 9/14/05
Series: Season 2 / Alternate Universe
Rating: M
Category: Relationship
Pairing/Focus: Lee/Kara, others
Warnings: There's an allusion to rape in this story (but it's
not really graphic or harsh or anything). Wanted people to know just in case,
though.
Summary: The Fleet has been matched up into the pairs that have
the best genetic chance to produce offspring. But could this repopulation
program actually work? And what happens when a disastrous events makes the one
woman once least likely to ever want children wonder if she could stand the
thought of giving them up?
Spoilers/Disclaimers: Season 2 spoilers thru The Farm; They're
not mine. I wish they were mine. In some cool alternate universe, they are mine.
But, alas, that universe is not the one I'm currently living in. So they're not
mine.
Lee Adama stared at the papers spread all over the desk in front of him. He had looked through each and every one at least twenty times in the past hour. He had read them back to front, top to bottom, and every other way imaginable. He had tried to think conventionally and then push it out of the box. But no matter what he did, every single one of those papers told him the same damn thing.
He had no way to help her.
Groaning, he picked up one of the papers from the top. Giving up was not an option.
“Working hard, Lee?”
Lee felt himself stiffen as the saccharine sweet tone of Ellen Tigh echoed through his office. “I’m trying to, ma’am,” he said without looking up.
“Now, Lee. Let’s stop with this whole ma’am business. It’s Ellen.” He gave a small nod in her direction before turning back to look at the papers. “Doing more work for that little baby program of Laura Roslin’s?”
“First off, there’s nothing little about the repopulation of our race. The program the President has instituted is extremely important. It also relieves the daily demands that are put on each and every person in this Fleet. It‘s a distraction and a necessity.”
“If you say so,” Ellen said with a light laugh as she stepped farther into the CAG’s office. She leaned in over his desk and picked up a sheet of paper. “The known weak points on the humano-Cylon models?” She picked up another paper. “The standard water transference protocols? What do this have to do with repopulation?”
“Nothing,” Lee said, standing up to grab the papers out of her hand. He really didn’t have time for this right now. “They’re information we need to resolve the Aerilon Sacrifice problem.”
“Oh, is that still going on?”
Lee narrowed his eyes and shook his head up and down in a small, stiff nod. “Yes, that is still going on.”
“What has it been? Two months now that those poor people have been held hostage?”
“The citizens on that small transport freighter and the people that Galactica sent have been on their for seventy-one days,” Lee corrected, the tension evident in his voice. “But I really don‘t have time to talk about that. What is it I can do for you?”
Her eyes roamed over his body without shame in an unintentional answer to his question. Lee suddenly felt uncomfortable with the fact that he had unbuttoned his dress gray jacket, but there was also some comfort in knowing that he hadn‘t completely taken it off. The women was shameless. Ellen continued to blatantly stare at him a moment longer before letting out a amused laugh. “I know what you’re thinking. What would bring the wife of the XO all the way down to the CAG’s office?”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
“Come on! I have known you practically from the day you were born.”
Lee sent her a funny look but didn’t comment. Somehow it fit that Ellen Tigh wouldn’t even remember her husband hadn’t known Bill Adama that well until Lee was almost two. And even then, William Adama was never really home all that much.
“I don’t understand why you keep treating me like such a stranger, Lee. I’ve been trying for weeks to catch you when you had some free time. I’d like to know what you’d been up to these past few years.”
Lee held up the papers in his hand while trying his best not to roll his eyes or glare at the mess of a woman standing in front of him. “I’m sorry. I have a lot to be doing. A flight schedule needs to be done, and someone has to come up with a solution to this crisis.”
“Fine. I’ll get to the point.” For a second, Lee actually thought she was going to tell him something that mattered. But then she let out that annoying little trill of a laugh and he knew better. “You would not believe what I found out from my husband the other day. He was speaking with your father about the baby… excuse me… repopulation program, and William let it slip that he had tampered with the results a little bit.”
“What?” Lee said, setting down the papers in his hand and turned to stare at her. He had to have heard her wrong.
“Oh yes. The mighty William Adama couldn’t let things stand as they were with my husband, it seems. I guess he thought his match gave Saul too much power.”
Lee let out a breath of relief and sat back down behind his desk. For a second there, he had actually thought she was going to tell him that his father tampered with his results because he had been matched with the woman in front of him. Instead this was another step in her insane quest to put her husband above all others in terms of the chain of power. “I don’t see what would have compelled my father to do that.”
“Well, I know your father has that silly fondness for that young pilot who was supposed to be married to your younger brother by now. What’s her name?”
“Kara Thrace,” Lee said, gritting his teeth.
“Yes. Kara. Turns out she was matched up with my husband and William didn’t like that. I don’t really understand the problem. Any fool could see that she has power in this Fleet. It would be a smart union on both parties.”
Lee smirked at her power-hungry nature and the way it clouded her vision. “Then you’ve never see how much your husband and Lieutenant Thrace dislike each other.”
“Right,” Ellen said, turning to sit herself squarely on the desk. Lee watched her look turn almost predatory as she crossed her legs and smiled down at him. “When Saul told me this, there was one thing that didn’t add up. If Kara was the person he was matched with, how did she end up with you instead? And that begs the question of who was your original match, Lee?”
Lee felt Ellen’s foot gently running up the side of his calf and his mind flashed back to that ‘family’ dinner they had had a few months back. His mind suddenly couldn’t quite grasp if he had ever heard who she had been matched with. He wasn’t even sure she had been matched. Was she even a part of the program? A woman like her would want to participate just to see if it could elevate her status in the Fleet. Plus, if it gave her a shot at getting her paws on any number of men in the Fleet, she wouldn’t turn that down.
No, Ellen Tigh would be a part of this.
His face went pale as he realized just who she had been paired up with.
“I see you put it together, tiger,” she said in a low tone. Lee could feel her foot slowly moving its way up his thigh. “So, here’s what I was thinking. Since that whole mess with the Aerilon Sacrifice, I figured you wouldn’t object to me asking Dr. Baltar to go through with the original match.”
Lee had never understood what it meant when people said they saw red. He could never imagine being so angry that you couldn’t even make out shapes anymore. All you saw was a great, big expanse of red.
Suddenly, he knew what it mean to be that angry. He felt it deep inside.
Throwing away any amount of tact and discretion he had had, Lee seized her foot and pushed it away so roughly that Ellen found herself grasping the desk so as not to fall off. “Get out of my office now.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, but he didn’t wait to hear her response. “I don’t have time for your middle-aged hormonal desire to prove that you can still get younger men to want you. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a crisis in the Fleet. There is a tactile team from Galactica and one hundred citizens out there who have been taken hostage by some humano-Cylon model that we didn’t even know about. And the mother of my children, mistake or not, is stuck out there with them. I’m not wasting time on you when she needs me.”
Ellen stood up slowly and walked out of the room without another word, leaving behind the vague hints at her feelings of superiority to everyone and everything. Lee sighed and lay his head down on his desk. Pissing off the XO’s wife wasn’t exactly what he needed right now.
“Something wrong, Captain?”
Lee looked up to see Crashdown hanging in the open doorway of his office. “You could say that.”
“The Aerilon Sacrifice?”
“And then some,” he said, standing up and shrugging off his jacket. The office was getting hotter with each minute he couldn’t find a solution to the biggest problem in his life.
“Do you want me to come back?” Crashdown asked, already halfway out the door.
“No,” Lee yelled, stopping the Raptor ECO in his tracks. “Come back in. I could use something to take my mind off of the total lack of solution to this problem. And something tells me with the rumors I’ve been hearing, you are coming to me with a distraction.”
Crashdown chuckled and sat down in the chair facing Lee’s desk. “Is it really that bad?”
“Rumors circulate fast on this ship. And you’ve been acting really strange for a while now.”
“Well, you know I’ve been having problems with the Chief for the past few months or so.”
“Because of Cally,” Lee said, shaking his head.
“Right. I always knew the Chief thought of her as a daughter, but I never realized it was that bad.”
“I know what you mean. Every day I thank the gods that I’m my father’s son. Because if I wasn’t, he would have hunted me down for being the man to defile his ‘daughter’ in this repopulation program.” Lee paused and scrunched up his nose. “Why does my relationship with Kara suddenly ring of inappropriate relations between siblings?”
Crashdown shook his head. “I really doesn’t. I think you two have a free pass when it comes to keeping your relationship from sounding creepy. The way Cally talks wistfully about it, you two were made for each other.”
“You’ve been talking to Cally about Starbuck and I?”
“I’ve been talking to Cally about a lot of things,” Crashdown replied, clearing his throat and sitting up in the chair. “That’s why I came to you.”
“To talk about talking to Cally?”
“Right. You see, I figured you were the expert on this ship about getting a difficult woman to come clean about how she feels.”
Lee got up out of his seat, walked around to the front of the desk, and took a seat on the edge. “All right. Start from the beginning, Crashdown, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“I presume you know that the Chief has been actively hunting me down from the moment he found out I was Cally’s match.”
“Partially thanks to my better half,” Lee said with a laugh.
“I wish I had the chance to pay her back for that someday.” Crashdown froze as he realized what he had just implied. “Oh gods, Lee. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. You’ll have the chance soon. That’s a promise.”
Crashdown nodded and kept on with his story. “Anyway, Hot Dog knew that I was having a little trouble, and he decided to help me out. Stuck his neck out to try to convince the Chief that he should talk with Cally before killing me. I don’t know what she said to him, but the Chief actually apologized to me the next day.”
“Looks like you owe Hot Dog one,” Lee pointed out.
“Already paid him back.” Crashdown tilted his head down and bit his lip while chuckling. “That lucky bastard should owe me for what I did.”
“Explain.”
“Hot Dog and I have been storage locker buddies for the past few months. I’ve been hiding from the Chief, and he’s been hiding from Sergeant Hadrian, his match for the President’s program.”
“Oh no,” Lee said, laughing and hiding his face behind his hand.
“Exactly. I figured since he helped me iron out the problem with my match, I’d help him with his. So I had a little talk with the good Dr. Baltar. Made him see the error he had made in the genetic match probabilities. Made him see that it was in the best interest of his health to try to fix his mistake.”
“So that’s why Baltar runs the other way every time you enter the room?”
“I guess I scared him a little too much.”
“So how good of a deal did you pull to shift the balance to Hot Dog owing you?”
“Well, he got matched with Racetrack. Enough said.”
Lee nodded. It was common knowledge that Racetrack was maybe the second most lusted after woman on board the Galactica. He didn’t feel ashamed to admit that considering he was currently madly in love with the one woman who was lusted after more than any other. “So what does this have to do with Cally?”
“Well, the Chief has stopped trying to kill me, so things have settled down. I guess I thought that with the forbidden part of our relationship gone, my urge to talk with Cally all the time would die down. But it hasn’t. In fact, now that I can talk to her whenever and wherever I can…”
“You want to even more.” Lee shook his head. “I did not see this one coming.”
“Neither did I.”
“With all the different people being matched up, I figured people would start developing attachments to one another. I knew something permanent might come out of a few of the matches.”
“But you didn’t think it would be Cally and me?” Lee shrugged. “So, what do I do, Captain? I need your advice on this one.”
“I find that just telling her what you feel helps.”
“You want me to go up to Cally and tell her that I would like her to be more than just the mother of my children? No disrespect, sir, but she’ll punch me in the face.”
“I find that having a good sense of when the punch is coming and being able to just take one to the face is usually a good start. I had at least ten black eyes before Starbuck could figure out why I kept letting her hit me.” Lee’s eyes began to sting as the memories started coming to the surface. He tried to push it out of the way and covered with a smirk. “And sometimes, if she really gets you good, you can hit back. Not all the time, mind you! But sometimes.”
“You think Cally will actually hit me?”
“If she likes you, then yeah, probably. But just don’t let her leave without making her understand what you’re trying to tell her. That’s really all you can do, Lieutenant.”
“And that worked for you?”
“Like a charm,” Lee said, standing up. “Now I really should get back to work. I need to do something about this jaw. Without Kara around, I can actually chew without pain. It’s not something I’d like to get used to.”
Crashdown nodded and left Lee alone to his piles of research and reconnaissance information.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Boomer paced back and forth across the laboratory of Dr. Gaius Baltar as she unconsciously rung her hands together. “I don’t understand. You said it just didn’t work?”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. That’s what I was told. Our repopulation match just didn’t work.”
“I don’t understand. I mean, you would think they would give some explanation as to why it didn’t work? Was it me? Was it you?”
Six slinked up behind Gaius and laughed lightly in his ear. “Just tell her that machines can’t copulate. “
“I can’t do that,” Gaius whispered.
“What?” Boomer said, turning to look at him.
“I was simply saying that I couldn’t ask Doctor Cottle that. I mean, isn’t it better not to know which one of us was at fault?”
Boomer shot him a look before starting the pacing again. Gaius watched helplessly as Six walked from his side and began to pace along with her. “This isn’t about pride, Doctor. This is about knowing whether or not we have the ability to naturally have babies one day.”
“Don’t take that as an invitation,” Six warned him teasingly. “She means with that young man who keeps the junk you call Vipers in the air.”
“I know she’s talking about the Chief.”
Boomer turned to look at him in horror. “Could you not just blurt that out? The fraternization policies are still in place.”
“Officially,” Gaius corrected. “It’s only a matter of time before they’re dropped. Everyone seems to be taking these genetic matches a little seriously. It’s as if the gods graced the choices themselves.”
“Or god,” Six corrected with a wicked smile.
“You’re behind this?” Gaius said, looking at where she stood over Boomer’s shoulder.
“Huh?”
“Um… you are behind me on this one, are you not, Lieutenant Valerii? We should not inquire anymore into how our match failed.”
“Well, you think it’s a bad idea, and you probably know better than I do.” Boomer turned and rubbed her head, a grimace plastered on her face.
Gaius shot a look in Six‘s direction before walking to stand beside Boomer. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. It’s just a headache. I’ve been getting them for a while.”
“Her programming is taking over,” Six said with a nonchalant shrug. “It happens time to time when we need her.”
“I think you should get some rest,” Gaius said, placing his hand on Boomer’s shoulder and guiding her to the hatchway. “Take a few well-deserved hours in your bunk.”
Boomer nodded quickly before pausing to look at him intently. “If the failure of the match was my fault, then I’m sorry, Doc.”
“It’s all right. I never really wanted children anyway,” he said.
She gave him a small smile before walking out into the traffic of the corridor.
“That was awful compassionate of you, Gaius. A very human emotion.”
“She doesn’t know she’s a Cylon. That means she’s not aware this is the life she was picked for.” Gaius turned to look at the doorway. “Something tells me that she’s going to have some awfully bad times ahead of her. A little compassion now is not that ridiculous a thing to give.”
Six walked over to stand in front of him and shook her head. “Very human, indeed.”
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Dee stood outside the door to the CAG’s office with her hand held up to knock. She had been in this position for the better part of two minutes. When deciding it was time to talk to Lee, she hadn’t realized it would be this hard to take the first step.
“You have to actually knock to get the go ahead to go in” whispered a soft voice in her ear.
She jumped and turned to throw up a quick salute. “I didn’t realize you weren’t in your office, Captain.”
“You wouldn’t have been hesitant to knock if you knew I wasn’t in there?” Lee asked, slipping past her to key the combination into the lock pad by the door. “What do you have to tell me that has you so nervous, Specialist?”
Dee shook her head at his use of rank. He knew that calling her Specialist made her mad. But he had been doing it for years.
It was amazing that no one on Galactica had ever thought to wonder why she and the CAG had such an easy-going relationship. No one had thought to actually pay attention to the two of them.
Maybe if they had, they might have picked up on the fact that Dualla and Lee had known each other for years. Then again, no one knew that Dee had served on the Battlestar Atlantia before being transferred to Commander Adama’s crew about a year and a half ago. They wouldn’t know that Dee had had a little relationship consisting of shameless flirting with the son of the great William Adama. They wouldn’t know there had been a rather interesting conversation between the two of them about what exactly the fraternization policy meant when it came to the military intelligence staff and the pilots.
Nothing had come of it, and it had all happened years ago. Now all anyone would notice is the ease that existed between the two of them. And, to be quite frank, Dee really didn’t expect anyone to notice anything about Lee and her with Starbuck around. That woman managed to unintentionally keep all attention on herself for almost every hour of every day.
“Lee, we have to talk.”
She could see Lee stiffen at her casual use of his first name. They had taken such trouble to make sure no one on Galactica picked up on their previous relationship. The memory of Lee’s reaction when he found out she was dating the President’s assistant suddenly came to mind. His reaction had been so like him. A gentlemen to the end.
Lee had called her to his office towards the end of her shift that day. He had been quick to let her know that he had no intention of ever letting Billy know about what had gone on between them. In fact, he suggested that she start increasing the frequency she referred to him in her usual cold manner. More calling him ‘sir’ or ‘Captain’ and less showing of her concern for his strained relationship with his father.
It was typical Lee behavior, putting others’ needs before his.
“Come inside, Dee,” he said, pulling her back to the present. He was holding the hatch door open for her and waiting expectantly.
“Sorry, sir,” she said, moving forward into the room.
When the hatch had clicked shut behind both of them, Lee turned to her. “What’s wrong? Is it something with Kara? Is there news?”
“No,” Dee said, shaking her head. “I just wanted to talk to you about something that I’ve been meaning to for quite a while now. You see, there’s this thing. I’ve been wondering if maybe it was bothering you-”
Lee held up his hand to interrupt. “Is this about the President’s program?”
“Yes,” Dee said, letting out the breath she had been holding in. “How did you know?”
“Because everything I’ve been doing for months that didn’t involve the situation on the Aerilon Sacrifice involves that fraking baby program. It’s turned this Fleet into a bunch of insecure teenagers.”
Dee shot him a glare. “I’ll have you know, Lee Adama, the only reason I came here to talk to you is because I’m trying to be a grown-up about all of this.”
“Uh oh,” Lee said, shaking his head. “Why do I get the feeling that I’m in trouble?”
“You’re not in trouble. I just wanted to ask you how you felt about… well… about your father and I.”
“Are you two in love?” Lee deadpanned.
Dee’s mouth hung open. “No, we are not. Where did you get that idea? Do not tell me it’s circulating Galactica.”
“No. It just seems to be the new craze. People keep falling in love with the match partners.”
“Are you talking about you and Starbuck?” Dee asked, taking a seat in one of the chairs.
“Not exactly considering she wasn’t my match,” Lee said absentmindedly. When he realized what he has said, he smacked his hand against his forehead and grimaced. “Would it be hard for you to just forget I said that?”
“No. Please explain to me now before I beat it out of you.”
Lee turned to see the look of glee on Dee’s face. She was radiating and he hadn’t even told her who his real match was yet. That would probably make her die of amusement. “My father fixed the results. I wasn’t originally matched with Kara.”
“That crafty old man,” Dee said with a laugh. “Well, do tell. Who were you and Starbuck matched with?”
“Starbuck was matched with Tigh.” Lee took a deep breath and continued, “And I was matched with his wife.”
“That Cylon wannabe?”
He was right. It looked like Dee was going to keel over from delight at the news. “Yes. Normally, I would object to someone’s tampering with official government dealings, but in this case, I really think it was the better. It saved Starbuck from having to see what a mix between her and the XO would look like.”
“And it saved you from getting sexually assaulted by Ellen Tigh.”
“Exactly.” Lee sat down in the chair behind his desk and kicked his feet up onto it. “We got off topic, though. Why did you come to talk with me, Dee?”
“I just wanted to make sure that you were okay with the Old Man and I giving our go ahead to Dr. Baltar and Doc Cottle for this repopulation program. Because, I mean, I thought that maybe with Zak and everything you might be a little uncomfortable.”
“With having a baby brother or sister?” Lee shook his head. “Never. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. And if Zak were still alive, he would be just as elated. You’re a good woman, Annie.” She smiled at the use of a nickname she hadn’t heard in years. “And it would be my honor to have your child as a sibling.”
“You’re too good to be true sometimes, Lee,” she said, smiling at him.
“Don’t I know it. Kara continually abuses that fact.”
Dee stood up out of her chair and walked over to sit on the desk. She placed her hand lightly on his knee. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m doing fine today. There’s been a lot of distractions.” Lee glanced over at the papers on the desk. “And Gaeta finally got me that information on the weaknesses of the humano-Cylons.”
“You’re not planning to do something stupid like sneak away to take on that toaster by yourself, are you?”
Lee shrugged. “It’s crossed my mind. But then I think about everything that could go wrong. I can’t risk Kara’s life like that. For now, I know she’s alive over there on the Sacrifice.”
Dee reached out to take his hand. “She’s strong, Lee. She’s not going to let some toaster posing as a human be the one to take her out.”
“I know. I just…” His words faded off for a moment as he stared down at his hands. “I’ve gotten used to having her here with me.” He looked up into Dee’s eyes. “I don’t know what I’d do if she wasn’t there anymore.”
“She’s going to be fine.”
“I just wish she was home.”
“We all do.”
The two old friends sat hand in hand for a moment, just enjoying the small peaceful silence between them.
Like all other peaceful moments on the Galactica, though, it was almost immediately interrupted by something. In this instance it was the phone.
“You should get that,” Dee said, letting go of his hand and standing up. “It might be important.”
Lee nodded and picked up the phone.
Dee watched as his face turned from surprise to worry to anger to joy and finally to complete shock. He didn’t talk much to whomever was on the other end. He just reacted. She heard him thank someone before setting the receiver down.
When he didn’t turn to tell her what had happened but just continued to stare at the telephone on his desk, she touched his shoulder lightly. “Lee?”
He twisted to look at her, and she noticed that there were tears pooling in his eyes. “She’s home, Dee. Kara’s home.”
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Kara Thrace stared out the small side window of the Raptor she was on. She had dreamed about this moment every hour of every day since she had been gone from Galactica. And now that it had come, she found herself scared to death of what it meant.
Things had happened while she was gone. It was supposed to be a standard transfer of water from one ship to the other. The typical thing that Marines oversaw if only they had enough people to properly do those kinds of things. So she had taken the small downtime that this assignment offered and suited up to be a Marine for the day.
No one knew there was a Cylon agent on board the Aerilon Sacrifice. No one knew that the thing would make a small slip-up in something he said and that she would be the one to pick up on it. No one knew that for the first time in her life, Kara would hesitate. No one knew that for the first time in her life she had something good enough to keep her from acting recklessly and without thought.
The hangar deck clicked into place as the Raptor finished raising up out of the flight tunnel. This was it.
Show time.
“How are you feeling, Starbuck?”
Kara turned to look at Racetrack and gave her a smile. “Happy to be home.” She prayed that Racetrack wouldn’t ask her anything else. She didn’t know how long she could keep this ruse up.
People came into focus as the exit ramp slowly began to lower. Kara didn’t notice any of them. She only had eyes for the one man standing front and center. He looked nervous. She had no idea why. There was no reason for him to be nervous.
Just her. She should be nervous.
Cursing, she realized her hand had gone down to unconsciously hold her stomach. She would need to stop that once she set foot off this Raptor. Someone would notice.
The ramp connected with the hangar deck with a loud bang, and Kara urged her feet to take the first step back to normality. This was what she had wanted. She wanted to return to this.
Lee didn’t waste time in waiting for her to come to him. Before she could take more than that first hard step, he was up the ramp and to her side. Sliding his hands around her waist, he pulled her into his embrace. Her name fell like a whisper off his lips as he slid his face into her hair.
“Lee,” she said, sensing the first glimmers of that old familiar feeling coming back. She let her hands wrap around him. “Oh gods. Lee.”
He pulled back to hold her head in his hands. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, sniffling slightly to hold the tears back. “I’ve been through worse.”
“You don’t have to be brave, Kara. It’s only me that can hear you.”
“We are surrounded by half the deck crew,” she said with a smirk.
“I didn’t notice.” He rested his forehead against hers and let out a small sigh. “Gods. I wish that I could kiss you right now.”
“You can’t. Not while the Fleet is still pretending the fraternization policy is in place. We‘ve already gone too far.” She tried to pull back from him, but his grip only tightened.
“I don’t give two fraks about some stupid, out-dated policy. I’m not letting you go.”
His hands moved down to hold her sides roughly in a fight to stop her from squirming away. There was a sharp shooting pain in her left side as his hand got a little too close to the fresh wound. She felt herself wince before she could realize what she was doing.
“Kara? Are you hurt?” Lee made a move to pull up her tanks, but she quickly batted his hand away.
Kara took a step back and placed her hands on her hips to prevent him from trying to take a look again. She couldn’t let him take another look. “Don’t. It’s just the normal battle wounds. I was held hostage by a Cylon on a broken-down ship for seventy days, you know.”
She saw him flinch at the harshness of her words before his jaw hardened and he gave her a rather intense look. It made her want to both take a step back and to go running into his arms. Instead she just stood in place and ducked her head down, ready for the harsh words to start flowing.
“Actually you were gone for seventy-one days if you count today. And if you want to be extremely precise, you‘ve been gone seventy-one days, nine hours, and fifty-two minutes.”
“You were counting?” she whispered. She balled her hands into fists as she continued to fight the urge to close the distance between them.
His eyes lowered for a moment before he took a breath and looked back up at her. “Of course I was.”
Kara could feel her eyes begin to well up with tears again. This was what she thought she couldn’t handle.
The shooting pains in her stomach that came and went without rhyme or reason. Those she could handle. The trauma of being holed up in a small cell for weeks on end. That she could handle. The knowledge that she could never truly let anyone know what had gone down on the Aerilon Sacrifice. She could handle. The looks, the stares, the silent questions. Could handle. The need to constantly act like nothing is wrong. The desire to just go back to the way things were even though she knew she couldn’t. The emotional upheaval. The physical pain. The constant confusion. The complete lack of understanding.
Kara could handle it all.
But there was the one thing that she could not.
It hurt so much to admit it, but it was Lee that she wouldn’t be able to handle now that she was back. It was his gentleness, his unconditional caring. It was the core of his very being that she had grown to need so much. It was the way he looked at her like he had died a little each day that they had been apart. The way he had cradled her head in his hands and smiled. The knowledge she had only had to take one step off the Raider and he was there to support her. The simple fact that she could see his eyes were as full of tears as hers were.
His love was the only thing that she couldn’t handle.
Pulling that thought to the front of her mind in order to make herself strong enough to do what had to be done, she turned from him and took her second hesitant step back out onto Galactica. Her eyes met with the rest of the people who had come down to see her return to the ship she called home as she shuffled past them. Cally was there with Crashdown standing next to her. Boomer was standing next to the Chief and shaking her head with a laugh. Her nuggets were all smiling at her proudly. Dee was standing at the back of the hangar, talking on the wireless headset she had been given. She spared a moment to give Kara a supportive smile.
Kara’s eyes caught on the Commander’s for a moment, and he gave her a small nod of recognition from where he stood talking to Gaeta. She was about to shuffle out the hangar door and down the corridor to the bunkroom where she knew that the pilots would leave her alone for a few minutes when she heard someone calling her name.
Turning back, she saw that Lee was only a few steps behind her.
“Before you go anywhere, I want you to go see Doc Cottle, Starbuck. Normal battle wounds or not, you need to be checked out.”
“I’m not going to medical.”
Lee gritted his teeth as he stopped in front of her. “Excuse me for not being clear. It was not a request, Lieutenant. It was an order from your CAG.”
She narrowed her eyes and gave him a short salute. “Yes, sir.”
His eyes flickered with what she immediately recognized as pain before he gave her a small nod and stepped back. Turning she pushed back the tears once again and began to limp her way to a place she did not want to be.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
The pain was starting to intensify as Kara sat patiently on one of the sickbay beds. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for that small fact, she probably would have ignored Lee’s little command to come down here. But the way her mind worked, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to survive another day without some sort of pain killer.
“Lieutenant Thrace. Good to have you on board again.”
She slid off the bed to stand up as Doc Cottle shuffled into her little corner. “I don’t want to beat around the bush, Doc. We both know where I’ve been. I’m sure you have a small idea of what I’ve been through. But what it comes down to is I’m in pain. A lot of pain.”
He took notice of the strain in her voice and set down the small clipboard he had been carrying. “Okay.”
“But before we do this, I just want you to know if anything that goes on this room is going to filter outside, then I’m not sticking around. Pain or no pain, I’m gone.”
“If it impedes your ability to fly or your safety in any way, I have to report it to the Commander, Lieutenant.”
“I know that. This won’t impede me in any way that concerns anyone’s safety.” Sighing, she pulled up the edges of her tanks a few inches and showed him her stomach.
Doc Cottle’s eyes went wide as he stepped in to look closer. He reached out to guide her down onto the bed. When she was settled, he carefully prodded the marks on her stomach with his hands. She hissed in pain but did not object. “This looks like you’ve been through an operation.”
“I have been,” Kara said.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, sir. A lot of my time on board the Sacrifice is a blur. At one point, the Cylon in charge got the better of me. He knocked me out and when I came to, those marks were there. My best guess is that I was out for a few days.”
“And you have no idea what they would have done to you?”
Kara shook her head. “Not a clue.”
She watched as Doc Cottle took a step back and picked up his clipboard. “I’m not sure how much you know of human anatomy, Starbuck, but with the placement of the scar-”
“I know,” she said. The tears held in so tight were beginning to sting her eyes again. “I know what it might mean.”
“I’m going to have to do some tests to see.”
“I have to know.”
“I will do what I can.”
“Doc? Just do the scans on my stomach. Don’t go digging into my history.”
Doc Cottle stared at where one of the Fleet’s strongest women sat, staring at her hands. She looked battered and as close to broken as one could get. His mind suddenly recalled rumors of past trauma in Kara Thrace’s childhood. Stories that told the listener what made Starbuck the way she was. He knew what she was asking when she told him not to dig too deep.
Kara looked up, the tears shining in her eyes. “Please.”
Doc Cottle gave her a slight nod of understanding before leaving her alone to her thoughts and the sharp pains brought about by both a scar long ago and one that was completely fresh.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Kara Thrace walked silently behind her mother as they shuffled through the streets of Caprica City. It was the middle of the workday so the streets were packed with vendors and businessmen. The flashes of movement were soothing and gave Kara something else to think about besides where she and her mother were heading.
A man smiled over at her from across the street as they stopped to wait for the traffic to allow them to cross. Kara averted her eyes, but it wasn’t quick enough. She felt her mother’s icy grip on her arm as she was yanked over into an alley.
“What do you think you’re doing? Haven‘t you learned your lesson?” Julia Thrace hissed as she slammed her daughter up against the bricks of the building. “But then I guess a little whore like you never really stops, do you?”
Kara flinched at the words as they cut into her. Her mother had been calling her that and many other things since she was old enough to understand what they meant. It was just another part of her day. But that didn’t mean they no longer hurt.
“Keep your eyes to yourself or you’re going to end up in this same damn situation again,” Julia said, letting go of her grip on her daughter. “And next time I won’t bring you to Caprica City. I’ll just beat you until it’s gone.”
Kara nodded and began to follow her mom silently through the streets again. She could not wait until she was old enough to apply for a place at the Academy on Picon. Then she would be free.
Her hand unconsciously held her stomach. It was almost as if she could feel the change inside her already. It was holding her back, and she knew it. Regardless of how much Kara knew she should be fighting her mother on this, a little piece of her was glad that the decision had been taken out of her hands. She couldn’t be held back. She had to get off this planet.
A few minutes of shuffling to keep up with her mother later, Kara found herself standing in front of the tall skyscraper that was Caprica’s prime medical facility. People were shuffling all around her and bumping her slightly as she suddenly found it hard to move. Julia Thrace stopped halfway up the stairs of the building when she realized her daughter was no longer with her. “Come on, Kara,” she hissed.
“I don’t want to do this,” Kara said, shaking her head and taking a small step back.
Her mother gave her a sweet smile, and that was when Kara knew she was really in trouble. Julia went back down the steps and stood beside her daughter. “You are not going to disgrace me by having a child when you are only sixteen. I’ve tried for years to fix whatever was wrong with you. I tried to beat out that ridiculous notion you had of following in your father’s footsteps.”
Kara’s hands unconsciously closed together at the mention of her father. Her mother didn’t know it, but sometimes when she wasn’t home, Kara still sat down at the old piano to play. Julia would be surprised if she ever found out. She had thought slamming the piano key cover down on Kara’s fingers when she was six would fix any silly notion Kara might have had at playing.
She didn’t know how strong-willed a daughter she had created, though.
Kara was ripped back to the current moment when her mother reached back and slapped her across the face. “You pay attention to me when I’m speaking, you little shit. This is all your fault. You were enough of a slut to get yourself into this trouble, and I am not going to let you frak up my life. We are going inside and you are having this done.”
Kara ducked her head and did her best to bite her tongue. It wouldn’t be right to correct her mom‘s blind assumptions. To tell her that it hadn’t been some boy from school who had gotten her in trouble. That instead it had been Julia’s latest boyfriend who had forced himself on Kara during the middle of the night. To explain that it wasn’t her desire to ever go through that again. To go through the pain of having your mouth covered by a stranger’s hand in order to muffle the screams. To feel the discomfort of someone forcing their way into your body.
The one thing Kara and Julia Thrace both seemed to correctly understand about the situation was Kara did not want this baby.
She hadn’t asked for it. There wasn’t room in her life for it.
Kara let her mother tug her into the building as her mind shifted to the one hope she had out of what was to come. In the bottom of her heart, she had a hope that maybe something would go wrong with the abortion. Maybe a tool would slip and it would end up ruining her chances of ever conceiving again. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about the possibility that she might one day turn into her mother. That was her worst fear, the one that crept into her head when she was in bed at night and the world was silent.
As the elevator rose to the clinic on the fifty-third floor, Kara allowed herself to touch her stomach one last time. There was a life inside of her. She would be lying if she said she didn’t feel a little bit excited by that idea despite the way it had gotten there. No matter how it was conceived or how much pain she went through, it was still a life. Inside of her.
And as much as she wanted to deny it, it felt right.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Ellen Tigh sat at the desk in her husband’s quarters and watched the man she had married in his current passed out position on his bed. She had given him plenty of ambrosia and plenty of reason to want to drink it all as quickly as possible. He never turned the opportunity down. That was the part she couldn’t understand. Why would a man who had so much to gain from being sober want to live in a constant state of haze?
Sighing, she picked up the phone and requested a line to one of the other ships in the Fleet.
“This is Tom Zarek. Make it quick.”
“It didn’t work.”
“Excuse me?”
“I tried to put a divide in between Artemis and her twin.”
Ellen could hear the man on the other end pause before asking, “And how is this relevant to me, Ellen?”
“Don’t be flip with me, Tom. We both know you’re starving for power in this Fleet. And the only way to do that is to bring either Adama or Roslin down. The way to Adama is easily your the first step. Roslin would be the next.”
“And if Adama were to fall right now, that leaves your husband in a rather interesting position. Convenient.”
“We can help each other, Tom.”
She could hear him think it over a moment before replying to her offer. “Very well put but I still don’t see what this all has to do with the two twin gods this Fleet worships.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t picked up on it? They are the heart of this Fleet. And they are the heart of William Adama. If their lives are in turmoil, he becomes distracted, preoccupied with fixing whatever’s wrong.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve known William for years. We‘ve never really gotten along.” She let out a small laugh. “He would do anything to keep me out of his life and the lives of his children. He went as far as to tamper with Roslin’s precious little baby program just to keep me from getting close to Lee. He’s scared. And he’s not thinking. A little push and he might lose it all together.”
“I’ll take that into consideration.”
Ellen rolled her eyes as the line cut off. Tom Zarek was a fool if he chose to ignore the obvious benefits of working alongside her. They both had agendas, and for the moment, they were working towards the same goal.
There was a light knock on the XO’s door which caused Ellen to jump slightly. “You’re early,” she muttered to herself as she stood up and walked over to open the hatch.
The blond woman at the door scowled at her briefly before pushing into the room. “You failed.”
“This is not easy. Anyway, I’m working on another option,” Ellen said, clicking the hatchway closed. “And it’s very bold of you to come here and talk of such things when you know my husband is only two feet away.”
“If he remembers my being here, just tell him that Shelly Godfrey was here to speak to him of her continued suspicions that Gaius Baltar is a Cylon. If you did your job and gave him enough drink, he’ll believe the explanation without question.” Six shook her head and sat down on the desk. “But let’s not worry about that unless we have to, okay? For now, let’s dwell on your high level of incompetence.”
“It is impossible to drive a nail between Adama and Thrace.”
“Are you saying they are invincible? Untouchable like their pathetic little gods that they believe in so blindly?”
“No. I’m not saying that. I just think that the way to drive them apart would be easier if we approached them from their precious humanity. If we used their own kind to weaken them.”
“Tom Zarek is not the way. He does not have the strength.”
“We have no other option.”
“God has another plan for them. You would do well to understand that and stay out of the way before it’s too late.”
Ellen‘s face erupted in confusion at the blond Cylon‘s words. “What other plan? I know of no other plan.”
“You are not the favored child of our god, Ten.”
“And you are?”
“I am in his favor, but I am not favored. That honor falls on the third model. He has done his part for the Fleet.”
“There are no third models in the Fleet,” Ellen protested.
“There was one copy deeply hidden. And he sacrificed his life to do what had to be done.”
“He altered her?”
“According to the way things must go, she can now no longer play a role in stopping us.” Six stood up and her mouth crept slowly in a unnerving smile. “The end of humanity is finally within our reach.”
Ellen Tigh watched the hatch door click shut and turned to stare at where her husband still lay, passed out. She would never understand humans.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Kara sat in sickbay, absent-mindedly playing with the silver ring on her left hand. It had been there for as long as she could remember. She could still remember the words Zak had said to her that day so long ago when he reached over her body in bed to pull it out of the nightstand drawer. She had balked at the idea of marrying him, but in the end, she couldn’t deny him what he wanted so greatly.
She also couldn’t forget the look of hurt on his face when she told him she didn’t want children. He had been holding her in his arms when he had started lightly running his fingers across her belly. And she had abruptly told him that she was never going to be a mother. By choice.
Zak had tried to be understanding and accept her decision. He had told her that she might change her mind someday and even if she didn’t, he would respect the choice she had made. He had been hurt, but typical to his Adama nature, he pushed that to the side in order to make her happy. He would have contently loved her for his whole life if things had gone differently. And maybe she would have changed her mind in time.
Memories of things that had never had time to happen faded away as her mind turned to things that were still possible. She had found out that Lee was taking his turn at flying CAP during the hours she was waiting for her test results to come back. He had no idea what was going on. If he knew, he would be here beside her side regardless of if she wanted him to be or not.
It was that damned Adama nature again.
That was why she knew the results of the tests Doc Cottle was running would be so important.
Because Lee had picked up on the things her mother had done to her throughout her childhood. He knew how emphatically she did not want to have children. She did not want to give herself the opportunity to turn into her mother.
And that’s also where Lee differed from Zak. That’s where the problem began.
Somehow, without her having to say it, Lee knew that she wanted to be a mother. He would fight her tooth and nail until she would admit to, too.
The irony wasn’t lost on her. It was the brother of the man she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with who was the one who really understood her.
“Lieutenant Thrace.”
She looked up at where Doc Cottle stood in front of her. Smiling bravely, she stood up. “Lay it on me, Doc.”
“Maybe you should sit back down.”
“That bad?” she joked, even though she did lower herself back down onto the hospital bed.
“Who did this to you, Lieutenant?”
“I told you I don’t know. I was knocked out. I woke up and it was done.”
“But you seem to have some idea of what they did to you. How?”
Kara’s eyes shifted away from the doctor and rested once more on her hands. “They talked of reproduction and its importance if the human race was going to survive. They spoke to me of my past. Of things I have told no one. And then they told me how my future had shifted. How it had changed.” The frustration that had been on the brink of erupting for hours finally got the better of her. “You know what. Frak this, Doc. I’m tired of waxing the touchy feely crap. Tell me what you know.”
“All right, Starbuck. The Cylons operated on you. They took out at least one of your ovaries and the other has been damaged. I can’t promise that you that your body will fix the damage that has been done to it naturally. And I can only assure you that right now the Fleet has none of the supplies I would need to fix it myself.”
She turned to look at the doctor. “What does that mean?”
“It means there’s a high chance you will never have children.”
Kara bit her lip and nodded. “That’s what I figured.”
“There’s more.”
She shook her head as she felt the tears begin to fall down. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“What?”
“I said I don’t want to hear it.”
Doc Cottle ignored her and kept talking. “The samples I took from your blood and the ones from your exam indicated that you were pre-”
“I told you to only do the scans of my abdomen,” she screamed loudly, standing up and bringing her face close to his. “I told you not dig around.”
“Lieutenant. Calm yourself.” When she didn’t move, he tried again. “Kara. Avoidance is not the way to deal with this.”
His words hit her hard. She stumbled back until the back of her thighs hit the bed. Doc Cottle stepped forward to lightly place his hands on her shoulders and push her into a seated position. “You obviously already knew about the baby.”
The tears began to fall rapidly down her cheek as she looked up at him. “You cannot tell Lee about this. You can’t.” He went to object, but the way she grasped his wrists roughly made him pause. “You can’t.”
Slowly, he nodded. “I won’t. You made me promise to not reveal anything I found unless it posed a threat to someone’s safety. I made that promise, and if you still want me to keep it, I will.”
“Thank you,” she said, letting go of his wrists to wipe the tears away. “I assume that I am cleared to fly my Viper, sir?”
“Yes. Whatever was done to you has healed over. The pain was simply resulting from the stress in your body combined with the fact that you had no downtime to recover. Pain killers should keep the sting at bay. They might make it worse at firs, but in a few days, you shouldn’t even need them.”
“Thank you.” She stood up and walked to the door before pausing to look back at him. “Doc?”
“I won’t tell the Captain.”
She gave him a small nod and stepped out the door. There were a few things she had to do. The grief would just have to wait.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Crashdown leaned up against the Viper and watched Cally working her darnedest to make it flight capable. Watching her work was like poetry in motion, he decided. It was a wonder that she didn’t always have an audience.
“Are you going to keep standing there, staring at me, or are you going to say hello, Crash?”
“Didn’t know you saw me.”
“I smelled you.”
He rolled his eyes. “I know, I know. I smell like I haven’t showered in days. You think you guys could get a new joke to throw at me. I‘m a pilot. I sweat when I‘m in that damned flight suit. Get used to it.”
Her laugh carried out from under the Viper. “No. You don’t smell like sweat. More like citrus and ginger.”
“Really?” he said, walking over and taking a seat next to her underbelly roller.
“Smells pretty damn good in fact,” she said, looking over at him. She stared at him a moment longer before wheeling out to sit up fully. He handed her a piece of cloth to wipe the oil off her hands. “Thanks. So what do I owe the pleasure, Crash?”
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
She waited a moment for him to continue. When he didn’t, she prodded, “And that would be?”
“Well, I was wondering since the Chief isn’t trying to kill me anymore if you actually still might want to spend time with me sometime. I mean, I know you‘re not the type of girl I usually talk to. But I really think it wouldn‘t be that big a deal if we were seen together outside the hangar bay. And I‘m sure that no one will find it that weird that I‘m with you all things considering. So what do you think?”
Cally scrunched up her nose. She couldn’t figure out what the frak Crashdown was trying to get at. All she knew was with every word he said, he was pissing her off more and more. “Let me get this straight. You’re trying to tell me that in normal circumstances, I’m not the kind of girl you would speak to. But because the world has ended and you really don’t have any other option, you think it would be fine if you still gave me the honor of being seen with you.”
Crashdown’s eyes widened as he saw her gritting her teeth in anger. “I think that came out wrong.”
“I think so,” she said standing up.
“Cally, wait.” He stood up to look her eye-to-eye. “I’m trying to tell you that having you as the mother of my children isn’t that upsetting.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, and he was too busy noticing the cute way she crinkled her forehead when she was angry to pick up on her fist coming towards him. He did notice it at the last second and probably could have blocked the punch easily. But Apollo’s advice suddenly resonated in his mind.
Suddenly, Crashdown understood what Lee had meant. Having this woman in front of him cause him pain was a lot better than being with anyone else who might cause him pleasure.
And that was when her fist connected with his face.
“Ow,” he said, shaking his head. He had been right to think a punch from Cally would hurt like hell. He reached his hand up to feel his lip and realized that it had been split wide open.
“You just took my punch,” she said, staring at him in astonishment.
“Yeah, I know.”
“You could have blocked that but you didn’t.”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s what a guy does when he likes a girl,” Crashdown said absentmindedly as he looked at the blood on his fingers. When he realized what he had said, he froze and looked up at her in horror.
Cally was just standing there, staring at him with her head slightly cocked to the side. After a moment, she stepped forward and lightly reached out to touch his lip. “You should really have this looked at, Lieutenant.” She gave him a small smile before stepping away to return to her repairs.
Crashdown watched her go back to work and silently reminded himself to thank Captain Adama for his good advice.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Kara stared down at the papers in front of her. It had taken a lot of work to get herself on board Colonial One and to get this documentation into her hands. For starters, she had to convince Racetrack to fly her off of Galactica without letting the CAG know. That had been a chore and a half. Thank gods the old sources of blackmail hadn’t been destroyed during her absence.
She moved the pen forward to sign her name when her hand spasmed. Gasping, she let go of the pen and immediately started rubbing her fingers. The old injury her mother had inflicted upon her hadn’t acted up in over three months. She had no idea why it was doing so now.
Biting down on her lip, Kara tried to ignore the pain as she picked the pen up once more.
“I would think about what you’re doing before you sign that, Lieutenant.”
Kara turned to look at where the President stood beside her. “I thought you were on a presidential visit to Cloud 9, sir.”
“It was canceled earlier today because of the resolution of the Aerilon Sacrifice crisis. I thought it wise to stay where I could be constant contact with the Commander should he need me.”
“Very smart of you.” Kara hardened her jaw and gave the President a large smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to-”
“Make a big mistake,” Roslin said, pulling the paper out of Kara’s hand. “Signing over the rights to the children you’ve created in the repopulation program. That is a mighty big step considering Captain Apollo was one of the enthusiastic would-be fathers I have ever seen in my life. And enthusiasm like that only comes from the notion that the woman you love is going to raise the child alongside you.”
“Permission to speak off record, sir?”
“Permission granted, Lieutenant.”
“You have no idea what the frak you’re talking about.”
Roslin took a deep breath and sighed. “I see. Well, maybe you could enlighten me.”
“I am not fit to be a mother, Madam President. It’s just not in the cards for me. I spent months trying to forget that, but it just won’t work. So I’m doing the only rational thing and stopping this mess before it can start.”
Kara did her best to look the President in the eye as Laura Roslin weighed her words. She silently prayed that the President would not press her for more details. She neither wanted to get into details about why she was not fit to be a mother nor did she want to have to admit to the real reasons she wanted to sign the paper in front of her.
Lee Adama was the type of man who desperately wanted children. He was that guy you knew who when you saw him for the first time the only thing that came to mind was perfection. But then you saw him with a child in his arms and you knew you were witnessing heaven on earth. Being a father came almost as natural to Lee as his insane duty and commitment to loyalty.
Ironically, his loyalty would be the thing to deny him the chance of any children. He loved Kara, and no matter what happened, he would not leave her. If he ever found out what the Cylons had done to her, he would simply tell her it didn’t matter.
It would be a lie.
It mattered. He wanted children more than anything in the world.
And by loving him and being herself, she had taken that away.
Leaving the only chance he had at being a father with the babies already created.
“There is more to this than you are telling me, Lieutenant.” Roslin held her gaze for a moment longer before placing the paper back onto the table. “But I will not stand in your way.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I just want to remind you that signing that paper instates a change that you cannot turn back. Once the mother has given up rights to her children, she cannot get them back unless the father grants her access.” Roslin let out a small laugh as she shook her head.
“Is there something you find funny about this?” Kara asked.
“This whole conversation is rather humorous when you take into consideration the man we are speaking of. Lee Adama is the last person in the Fleet who would deny you access to your children, Kara. He would do everything in his power to make sure you were a part of their life.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be a part of their life.”
“He will be crushed to hear that.” Roslin picked up the pen off the desk and handed it to Kara. “But again, the decision is yours.”
Kara watched Roslin make her way out of the conference room, presumably returning to her presidential duties. She thought that the conversation was over until Roslin leaned back in through the open doorway.
“I hope you know that he won’t let you go that easily, Lieutenant,” she said before disappearing for good.
Kara stared at the empty doorway and let out a deep breath. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Hoping the President didn’t mind having one of the repopulation contracts a little soiled with tears, she leaned in and signed her name on the document.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Straightening the jacket of her dress uniform, Kara took a deep breath and knocked as firm as she could on the door in front of her. Even as she heard the Commander’s voice yell for her to enter, she realized she still had no clue why she had been summoned. It was odd, knowing that you did something wrong but not knowing what exactly that was.
“Lieutenant, I’m pleased that you could join us.”
Kara was about to scold the old man for using rank when there was no one around to know otherwise when she realized that the Commander was actually not alone. Doc Cottle was sitting in one of the chairs in front of the Old Man’s desk. Her heart froze as she realized what this was all about. The Doc had lied to her. He had taken her test results straight to Adama the second she left sickbay.
“I can explain,” she said, her eyes darting away from the doctor and back to Adama.
“No, Kara. I think it is I who have to explain.” Adama gestured for her to take a seat. “You see, I called Doc Cottle in here for his advice on a decision I made a few months ago that might impact you negatively. At the time, it seemed in my best judgment to keep you out of the loop, but I’m starting to realize I’ve been selfish.”
Kara lowered herself into the seat and stared intently at the man in front of her. “I don’t understand, sir.”
“I’m going to be blunt with you. I switched your repopulation match when I saw that you were compatible with Colonel Tigh. I did it partially because I knew that there was no way you would agree to the project if he was your partner.” Adama took a deep breath. “But to be completely honest, I also did it for Lee’s sake.”
“Lee’s sake?”
“For starters, he had been matched up with Ellen Tigh, and I couldn’t let that power hungry harpy get her claws into him. She thinks that I haven’t noticed the way she looks at him, but I have.” Adama shook his head in disgust before turning back to look at Kara intently. “But mostly I know how much my son loves you. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone look at you the way that he does, Kara. And I know because of that, he would have hesitated in accepting the results of the program if you were not the one he was matched with. Lee has desperately wanted children since he was little, but I think his desire has shifted to wanting children only if it could be with you, Kara.”
Kara bit down as hard as she could on her lip and dug her fingernails into her palm. She would not cry in front of the Old Man. If Doc Cottle hadn’t told him that fact that she couldn’t have Lee’s children naturally, then she wasn’t about to let William Adama know because she couldn’t hold the tears in. Plus, the longer she could keep this to herself, the easier it would be to convince Lee that something had naturally gone wrong in their relationship when she finally found the courage to set him free..
“Kara? Are you all right?”
She nodded quickly and opened her mouth, praying that her voice held strong, when Doc Cottle raised his hand to interject. “If I might take over here, Commander.” He turned to Kara. “Commander Adama called me in here because he realized that if you and Captain Adama weren’t perfect genetic matches, the likelihood of your part in the repopulation program succeeding might be diminished.”
“Is it, Doc?”
Cottle held her eyes for a moment and then jerked his head up and down once. “Yes. Because of the genetic difference, the two of you are the least likely to produce successful offspring with the samples you gave us. I’m sorry.”
The words hit home.
That was it then. There went her last chance of every being able to have children with Lee.
The fear washed over her as she realized that she had lost all rights to cling to the man she loved. She had nothing to offer him anymore. And there was no reason to keep herself from pushing him away. It was what she had to do. It was what she felt must be done if she truly loved him.
“Thank you for telling me, sir,” she said to Adama, trying her best to smile brightly. “I can be prepared now if that’s what happens.” She forced out a laugh. “I guess I was always right. I’m just not cut out to be a mother.”
“Lieutenant,” Doc Cottle started.
“It’s okay,” she said firmly, holding his eyes. “I’ll be fine, Doc.”
She gave both men a smile as she excused herself. The Old Man’s voice made her stop a few steps from the door. “I’m sorry for causing you strife, but please don’t let this development worry you, Kara. It’s not the end of the world, by any means.”
“No, sir,” she said with a small nod before stepping out of the hatch. In her mind, she desperately wanted to scream that it might not be the end of the world at large, but it was most definitely the end of her happiness. It was the end of her world.
Her mind was so caught up on keeping her tongue in check that she didn’t notice the person standing outside the hatchway until his hand was firmly grasping her arm and yanking her down the corridor.
“Ow, Lee,” she hissed, trying to pull away. “You’re hurting me.”
He glared at her a moment before continuing to pull her down the corridor. His grip didn’t loosen. Her arm would probably bruise by morning.
Kara felt a strange feeling of fear creep up as Lee displayed a side of his personality she hadn’t seen in years. His temper was not something to be trifled with, but she had thought he had gotten control of it years earlier. He had worked so hard to keep it in check that she had no idea what could have caused this outbreak all of the sudden.
They reached the pilots’ bunkroom in record time, and Lee yanked open the hatch with his free hand and pushed her into the room. Slamming the door behind him, he pressed in a code to lock the room. She was about to ask him what the frak he thought he was doing when he caught her eyes again and the fear overtook her voice.
Lee glared at her for a moment, almost as if he were waiting for her to yell at him, before brushing past her to pick something up off the table in the middle of the room. Turning, he held it out. “Read this.”
Kara tried her best to ignore how much her hand was shaking as she took the paper from him. “Yes, sir,” she spit out sarcastically, the fear starting to transform into anger.
He glared at her. “Don’t start giving me shit, Kara. I want you to read that to me out loud, and then I want you to tell me why.”
She gave him a confused look before beginning to read the first line. “I, Lieutenant Kara Thrace, relinquish all parental rights I have to the potential offspring from the Colonial Fleet’s repopulation pro-” She glanced up at Lee for a moment, and the open, raw emotion in his eyes made her words falter.
“Keep going.”
Kara suddenly realized just how difficult explaining this to him would be.
“Keep going,” he insisted for a second time.
“No,” she said, holding the paper out for him to take back.
“Fine then. If you think you’ve read enough, then you can start explaining why Dee was waiting for me the second my Viper had docked in the hangar bay. She said that Billy sent this document over to her and asked if she could inquire whether I knew anything about it.”
The air fell silent between them as Kara debated how she could explain to him why she had relinquished her rights to their potential children. She had to do it without telling him that this whole thing was because she didn’t feel whole anymore. She knew that she was going to have to tell him at least part of the truth if he was ever going to let her release him.
The weight of Lee’s eyes bearing into her got to be too much as he patiently waited for her answer. She was going to have to give him something soon if she didn’t want to break down completely in front of his eyes.
Kara turned in to face the bunk Lee had flung her against and placed her hands gently on the ladder. She had no idea where to start. And she had no idea if this would even work. “I thought it was the right thing to do after what happened to me.”
“This is about what went down on the Aerilon Sacrifice then.”
Her hand reached up to rest on her side at the mention of the ship she had spent so much time on. She could feel the heat from her scar all the way through the layers of clothing. “The Cylons aren’t what we think they are. They aren‘t concerned with hurting and killing us. They want to understand us. They want to know what makes us hate and what makes us love. They want to understand what makes us tick.” Her stomach cramped a little bit at the memories. Wincing she turned to look at where Lee stood.
It was at that moment that she realized how stupid she had been to think she could lie to him. This was Lee. She loved him, respected him, enough to bare her wound for him to see. “It wasn’t just a normal battle scar that you saw earlier.”
When he just stared at her with hard, unfeeling eyes, she turned back to face the bunk. “They knew of the President’s repopulation program, and they wanted to understand why humans thought having children was so important. I don’t know why-” Her voice caught in her throat for a moment as the events replayed in her mind with stunning clarity. “I got sloppy. That’s what it all comes down to. I was trying to protect the civilians from the Cylon agent onboard, and I got sloppy. They caught me. I didn’t understand why they even wanted me at the time.”
Kara tried to push the emotion back down inside her. It wouldn’t help her tell her story. It would just rouse his sympathy, and she couldn’t go through with it if he started being supportive and gentle. Lee deserved to hear it from her without interruption. “They knocked me out, and I woke up to find myself in the small medical facility on the ship. I had been out for days. There was a scar on my stomach. I didn’t know what it was. And then the door opened and there were two men staring down at me. Both were familiar. It took me a few minutes to figure it out, though Things were so out of focus at first. The man who explained to me where the scar came from was the doctor who operated on me, someone I had only seen through whatever drugged haze I had been in. He didn’t have to tell me that he was a Cylon. I just knew.”
She sighed and pushed on. “The second man was the Cylon who goes by the name Leoben Conoy.”
The memory of the known Cylon made her shiver. The picture of his face in her mind was making it hard to hold back the rest of the truth from Lee. She had intended to just tell him that the Cylons were interested in how the human reproduced and so they did tests on her. It was close enough to the truth for him to believe it.
But now that she was standing in front of him, now that she could feel his eyes on her, she didn’t want to lie. She wanted to tell him how hard it had been to hear the Cylons talk about her as if she was their most important weapon. Leoben had been the closest thing she had to an ally on the Sacrifice, and suddenly she felt the need to explain that to the man currently staring at her back.
“He told me that this all has happened before and it will happen again. He said that it doesn’t matter the roles we play, interrogator or prisoner. It doesn’t matter because the players change but the story remains the same. He was being gentle with me, simply standing back and trying to make me understand. It was like I had an ally in that model. He was familiar.”
Kara shut her eyes for a moment to push the image of Leoben’s kind face out of her mind. It had all been a lie in the end. “I don’t know what I did to change that caring he showed me, but one day, his look turned cold. I have never seen someone look at me with such hatred as he did.”
Trying to hold back the tears became harder and harder each second she tried to talk. She really wanted to get through this and get away from Lee before she let her emotions show. So, as a last resort, Kara bit down on her lip to the point of drawing blood. The pain usually helped her concentrate on keeping herself in check.
“He told me that I had changed the story, though. Each time the world had gone through this cycle, I had never once been happy. And that by my being happy, I could break the chain and end the cycle. Humanity finally had the option to be free. He looked at me with such a cold compassion, if that makes any sort of sense. He said that was why they did to me what they did. They had to because this was the defining cycle. There will be no more.”
Figuring she had already said too much to try to pull away from him, Kara dragged the back of her hand across her face, pushing the tears away. It was time to put the final nail in the coffin and admit what that scar on her stomach was really about. “They took my happiness from me in the most brutal sense, Lee. They reached deep inside and took out a part of me. They took away my future and dredged up the horrors of my past. I can never dream of being a mother again. Gods. It’s what I’ve always wanted and I never even told anyone.”
The last part slipped out before Kara could catch herself. She had never admitted out loud that she wanted children. That every night since she was a little girl, she had dreamed about how hard she would work at getting it right. In all her life, it had never seemed possible.
All her life up until a few months ago, that is.
At that point, she realized that the only reason it had never seemed possible was because she hadn’t figured Lee into the equation. Here was a man who she knew she could rely on to keep her from screwing things up. Just by being there with her, he could insure that she was nothing like her own mother.
And now all hope that he could save her was gone. How could he keep her from heading down that path of self-destruction now that her possibilities were limited? Why would he want to?
Kara jumped slightly when she was torn from thoughts by his hand grasping her arm to physically turn her to face him. He stared at her, and she suddenly realized that she had been wrong before. He hadn’t been angry. The look in his eyes wasn’t cold and unfeeling. It was actually quite the opposite.
The problem, like always, had been that he felt too much. She could see that all the hardness he had been displaying was simply his way of keeping himself from reaching out to her. Lee knew that doing so would only cause her to pull back even farther. So he just stood there, so concerned for her that he was on the point of total breakdown. He had been resisting the urge to touch her, to hold her, this whole time.
Until now.
“I knew,” he said, pushing back a piece of hair that had fallen from her behind her ear. “I always knew.”
“Lee, I can’t do this,” she whispered, turning her eyes away from his. She could feel herself bordering on the edge of total meltdown as all the emotions she had been holding back intensified by a simple gesture like his touch of her hair.
“I want to see what they did to you,” he replied, ignoring her attempts to push him away with her words.
Lee kept his eyes locked with her as he brought his hands up to slowly peel her jacket off one button at a time without saying a word. Kara could feel the light pressure of his fingertips on her skin. It reminded her of the private moments of intimacy they had found together as their relationship developed in the past few months. The intimacy had always been the part that scared her.
Frankly, she was beyond scared right now. She was terrified.
Still refusing to take his eyes off of her, Lee gradually pushed the sides of her jacket apart until it slid off her shoulders. It fell to the ground with a soft thump.
Kara let out a tense breath as his hands slid down to the bottom edges of her tanks and pulled them up a few inches. Lee finally dropped his gaze from hers, and she could feel his fingers trace the scar on her stomach. She had expected him to want to see it with his own eyes and feel it with his own hands.
It caught her by surprise, however, when he suddenly dropped to his knees. She looked down at the top of his head as he leaned in to touch the small reddened skin with just a brush of his lips. Her hands reached out to cradle his head before she could stop herself.
Lee nuzzled her stomach lightly, letting out a sigh. “I wish I could do something to fix the hurt,” he whispered. “I wish I could save you from this pain.”
His words of comfort and protection were what finally sent her over the edge. She felt the tears sting as they fell violently from her eyes. It was all too much. She ached with the knowledge of what could have been.
But she was slowly dying inch by inch because of the knowledge of what almost was. The realization that if all this had not happened, Lee would now be kissing her stomach in a gesture of love for the life nestled deep inside here. The life that they had created together and whose absence hurt her somewhere deep inside.
She let go of his head with a small cry of pain and stepped away. “It’s too much. I told you that I can‘t take it. It‘s too much. It‘s too much.”
Lee looked at her with concern from his seat on the cold metal of Galactica’s floor as she emphatically shook her head and kept muttering the same words over and over. The sudden vulnerability inside of her was beginning to scare him. “It’s all right, Kara.”
“No, it’s not all right, Lee. It‘s so fraking far from all right that it hurts,” she yelled through the tears. “You don’t understand. You can‘t understand.”
“Then explain it to me. I want to understand.” When she shook her head and turned away, he got up off the floor and walked over to grab her face, roughly turning it towards his. “Don’t shut me out, Kara. I deserve more than that.”
“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” She mumbled those words over and over as Lee watched every single piece inside of her crumble. She was shutting down in front of his eyes, and there was nothing he could do about it.
When Kara’s legs finally gave out, Lee took her weight into his arms and gently crumbled with her to the ground. He pulled her in tightly to his body and whispered soothingly into her ear whatever words came to mind. It was something he had known Zak to do when Kara woke up from one of her nightmares. She struggled a little at first but finally gave in to the comfort he was offering.
When, after a few moments, her crying had become less violent, Lee reached his hand up to push the hair out of her eyes and gave her a gentle kiss. “Please let me in, Kara.”
She shook her head, and he could already feel her pulling away again. The small reprieve he had earned was quickly fading. The fear that something had inside of her had broken and he wouldn’t be able to fix it came rushing back.
“You can do this.”
“This is my burden to bear, Lee. Why can’t you just leave it at that?”
“Why do you insist on hiding your pain from me? Why is it so important for you to do this on your own?” he asked softly. “I hate to break this to you, but I am not going anywhere no matter what you’ve done or what’s been done to you. I might be scared, but I’m not going to run away to avoid the pain. I am here. I am staying.” He tightened his hold on her. “And most importantly, I am yours. Try to push me away as much as you want, but it won’t change the fact that I cannot live without you.”
His words caught on something inside of her, and she felt the tears start anew. This time she couldn’t keep the sobs inside, and she let the cries fall from her lips as her body began to shake. “I love you too much, Lee. I can’t put you through this. You mean to much to me. You don’t deserve this.” The words on her lips had already begun to fade as the emotion became too much for her. All Lee could make out was a whisper of love between sobs.
“Kara, if you love me, you will not try to bear whatever burden you have alone. I want to carry the pain with you. I want to help you.”
The tears were still falling from her eyes, but he could see something breaking inside of her as the volume of the cries died down. Some sort of resolve that had been at the source of her stubbornness melted away, and he could feel her opening up.
“I was pregnant,” she said softly. “I don’t know how. Maybe the anti-conception meds I took before the war started wore off. Maybe it was the gods’ will, but when the Cylons got to me, I was pregnant with your child. I didn’t even know. They only told me after it was too late. After the baby was gone. I didn’t know, Lee. I swear I didn‘t know. And all of the sudden there was a hole inside me. As if a piece of me had been broken off. And I didn‘t know until it was too late to fix it. I screamed. It was so cruel. I didn’t know why. What I had done to deserve it. I didn‘t know. I didn‘t know.” She burrowed her body as far into him as she could, and even though he knew she was just hiding from his eyes, he still held on as tight as he could as her sobs echoed in his ears.
Her confession suddenly made everything come into focus. Her pain. Her desire to keep this from him. To protect him. The reason why she fought so hard to keep him away.
It all made sense.
And it all hurt him like nothing ever had.
Kara had had a life inside of her when the Cylons had performed that operation. The machines had known it. Had felt the happiness growing inside of her. And they couldn’t accept it so they took it all away.
Inside, Lee could already feel himself begin to mourn for their child that never could be as he felt his eyes begin to sting with tears. He did his best to push those feelings to the side, knowing he would have time to mourn later when the woman currently in his arms was ready to share the pain. Later he would take care of the pain of losing a child and the sudden feeling of emptiness that accompanied it. When she was stronger, she would need him to give her a reason to be happy.
Right now, he just wanted to take care of her and give her a reason to keep living.
Because the Cylons were wrong if they thought that was all it took to break Kara Thrace. She was stronger than they could even comprehend. Somehow she was going to make it through this, and he wasn’t going to let her push him away until he was sure she would be all right.
He tried to turn off the emotional side of his brain and just focus on the things he knew. Kara had come off her traumatic months on the Aerilon Sacrifice and had been immediately sent to Doc Cottle by his own request. From there he could only imagine that she had been juggled from one briefing to the next. Somewhere she had found the time to take a shuttle to Colonial One and sign that contract relinquishing the rights to her potential children. And then, upon return to Galactica, she had immediately been bombarded with a request to see the Commander. During all of that, she had had no time to relax or to sleep off some of the tension of being a prisoner of war. There had been no time to try to get back the feeling of normalcy she had been denied for too long.
She desperately needed to heal, and Lee was determined to help that process begin. He wasn’t sure how. All he knew is it was going to have to be one small step at a time. The simple things first.
Scooping her into his arms, he stood up and set her on the nearest bed, placing a kiss lightly on the top of her head before pulling away. It hurt him slightly when she barely reacted to the touch of his lips on her head. “Stay right here for a moment. I’ll be back,” he whispered.
She didn’t respond with more than a half nod. He had seen many pilots go through the same thing under the stressful conditions they lived in. Everyone had a point when things got too tough to handle so the body and mind just stopped. With Kara, it was simple. The enormity of what she had been put through must have finally struck her, and it seemed her body and her mind just hadn’t been able to handle it.
He couldn’t figure out why the fact that this was Kara sitting in front of him, completely broken, scared him more than anything. She had always been fragile. But he hadn’t expected her to close off this much.
Now all Lee could do now was hope somewhere inside she understood what he was saying to her and believed him when he promised to return. Chancing one last glance back at where she sat on the bed too exhausted to move, he unlocked the door and stepped into the corridor. He immediately glanced around for a familiar face until his eyes landed on Crashdown, who was talking with a young recruit.
“Crashdown, may I have a word?” Lee said as he made his way down the corridor to stand.
Lee could see Crashdown’s eyes open wide as he got closer and the young ECO could register the pain that was obviously written all over his face. Even though hiding your emotions and your pain was a major part of being a good CAG, Lee knew he couldn’t hide what he had just gone through even if he tried. He didn’t have the energy any more.
Just as Lee knew he would, Crashdown did not comment on it. He simply nodded to Lee and told the young pilot he was speaking to that they would continue their conversation at a later time.
When they were finally alone, Lee cleared his throat and tried to pull himself together to do what had to be done. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“Anything after all that help you gave me with Cally.”
“I need this corridor clear of all personnel for the next hour or so.”
“That’s going to be hard, sir, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Get it done.” Lee knew that his tone was a little harsh, but he didn’t have time to be subtle.
Crashdown seemed a little surprised as he spit out a quick, “Yes, sir.”
“And go find Dee. I think she’s off shift right now so one of the break rooms would be your best bet. Tell her the CAG needs her to fix up something in Bunkroom F like we did when Bayou lost his wife.”
“Bayou?”
“She’ll understand what it means, Crashdown. Don’t worry.”
“Okay. I’ll clear the corridor and then go find Dee.” Crashdown paused, and Lee could see a hint of worry cross his face. “Is everything all right?”
“That’s what I’m working to figure out,” Lee said, giving Crashdown a nod before jogging back to the bunkroom hatch.
Kara was in the same exact position he had left her, staring off into empty space. She had been through so much in the past few months, and the damage to her was drastically worse than anything he could ever have dreamed up. If there was any question about whether the Cylons were justified in what they were doing, this would put an end to it. Destroying a woman like Kara Thrace, so fragile and yet so strong, was unforgivable.
Lee jogged over to Kara’s locker, pulled a few things off of one of the shelves, and shoved them into a bag. As a last minute thought, he walked over to his own locker and picked up two pairs of his sweatpants to throw on top.
Then, without a word, he crossed to where she sat and grasped her hand in order to pull her to her feet. She stood up without protest almost as if she wasn’t really aware of what was happening. It scared him slightly to see her in this state, but he knew there was nothing he could do to change it that he wasn’t already doing. Kara was still staring around blankly as he led her into the now empty corridor and down a few feet to the head.
After walking her to the empty showers, he let go of her hands to push off his flight suit and threw it to the ground. His boots followed soon after. Giving her what he hoped was a gentle smile, he took a step towards her in order to reach out to grasp the hems of her tanks. When she flinched slightly, he stopped immediately. “It’s just me, Kara. You know you can trust me. You need to take a shower and wash off whatever’s hurting you. It will feel good, I promise.”
Her eyes lost their vacant haze for a moment as she turned to look at him. She had been lost in thought, remembering how it felt to lose a child. The pain from the day eleven years ago was as fresh as the pain she was feeling this very day. The grief was so familiar it was tearing her up inside. “I’m scared,” she whispered.
Lee reached out and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “I know. I am, too.”
“I don’t want to be a burden to you.”
“You could never be,” he whispered, kissing her lightly on the lips before pulling back to smile. “I love you too much.”
Kara bit her lip, and he could see the tears beginning to form again in her eyes. Silently, he thanked the gods. Tears and crying were much better than this self-imposed shutdown of mind and body.
Lee’s hands reached forward again, and this time, as he pulled the tanks off of her body, she didn’t flinch. He took that as permission to continue and gently slipped her pants down. Lifting each foot up, he pulled them off and threw them into a pile with the other discarded clothes. Reaching behind her body, he turned on the water and waited for it to heat up as much as it could. He saw Kara modestly cover up her body while they waited and took that as a good sign. She was coherent enough to sense that there should be some awkwardness to this even if it was just the two of them.
Still praying to the gods that they help Kara through this, Lee pushed them back into the water together regardless of the fact that he was still partially clothed. He didn’t care right now about whether his clothes got wet. That wasn’t what was important.
At this exact moment and like every other moment in his life for what seemed like an eternity, it was Kara who was more important to him than anything else in the world.
With a methodical sweetness, he worked soap into her hair and slowly began to wash away the layer of dirt that had piled up. He heard her moan sweetly as his fingers massaged her scalp. Her shoulders lost a little of their tension with each passing second. He could feel her come alive under his touch.
Moving on to her body, he turned her to face him as he lathered the soap onto her skin. She shivered slightly in his arms. “Too cold?”
She faintly shook her head no, and he went back to his mission to wash away as much of the pain as he could.
He was aware this whole act of being able to take care of this strong woman he had admired for so long should be something that seemed awkward. But his love for her had taken him to places he had never dreamed of. This was just another to be added to the list. It felt right to be able to support her when there was no one else she felt she could rely on.
Lee pushed the water control off with his hand when he was finished and reached outside the stall to grab a towel. He tenderly dried her off as she stood perfectly still in front of him. Her eyes watched his every move as he worked his way over her body. He considered that yet another improvement from the blank stare he had gotten only minutes earlier.
When Kara was dry, Lee grabbed the bag he had packed off the nearby counter where he had dropped it. He held out a bra and pair of underwear, and he was pleased to have her grab them from his hands to put on. When she was done, he took out a clean tank and slid it over her body. Her hair became disheveled as her head came through the hole in the tank.
Unable to resist, he pushed her hair behind her ears and placed a small kiss on the end of her nose. He was rewarded with a small smile.
Lee pulled the pair of sweatpants out of the bag and handed them to her. She made a move to put them on before pausing to hold them up to her nose. “These smell like you,” she said quietly.
He smiled and took them out of her hand. “That’s because they are mine.”
The look of understanding spread across her face. Somehow Lee had known that at this exact moment having something that was his so close to her would be a comfort. She suddenly felt like crying all over again. What she had done to deserve a man like Lee Adama, she would never know.
Picking her up, Lee set Kara on the counter and slid first one leg of the sweatpants and then the other onto her body. She stood up and allowed him to pull them the rest of the way up. After pulling the drawstrings tight, his hands lingered on her stomach where the evidence of the Cylons’ work was blazing clear.
“You need rest,” he whispered, tearing his eyes away from the scar.
Kara gave him a timid nod and allowed herself to be led down the hall. He pushed open the hatch to one of the unused bunkrooms and was relieved to see that Dee had understood his request.
When he and Dee had served on the Atlantia together, the CAG, Stephen “Bayou” DuPris, had lost his wife to a shipping accident. She had been a pilot on board one of the colonial freighters, and there had been some mix-up in communication as the ship was docking. Bayou’s best friend on the Battlestar had asked Dualla and Lee to help her give the CAG some alone time away from the memories of his wife. Together, the three of them had ferreted out an empty bunkroom and had moved the CAG’s bedding to the new location.
Dee had remembered all that. In addition to getting the heat turned on in this unused part of the ship, she had brought the sheets and pillows off of Kara’s bed. Lee carefully laid the woman in his care onto the bunk prepared for her.
Kara looked over at where Lee stood. “You’re not leaving me, are you?”
“No,” he said, smiling at her. Without another word, he peeled the wet clothes off of his body and grabbed the other pair of sweatpants he had shoved into the bag. After slipping them on, he rested the length of his body against hers and tried to push some of the tension out of his body.
“Lee,” Kara whispered as he rested his arm across her midsection and drew out lazy patterns with his fingertips.
“Don’t talk, Kara. Just rest. You can go back to being strong and protective of me in the morning.”
He heard her agree with a gentle sigh as her breath began to slow down. His grip tightened around her as she let go of the last bit of control she had.
Just when he thought she had fallen asleep, though, he heard her softly whisper, “I love you.”
Staring at the back of her head, Lee began to wonder how they could possibly make it through this newest of obstacles. And then he found himself wondering how they could possibly not.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Billy Keikeya had searched Galactica for an hour before he found the President standing in front of the glass wall in sickbay. His search had actually been rather entertaining. He had the privilege of accidentally stumbling upon Cally and Crashdown violating the fraternization policy under a Viper. He had had a nice discussion with the Chief about how the President thought he was supposed to go about doing his job now that one of his crew was going to be the mother of his children. Billy had thought it rather funny to watch the Chief and Selix tiptoe around each other while trying to fix a Viper. And then there was the scuttlebutt circulating every corridor about where Starbuck was. She had mysteriously disappeared and no one had seen or heard from her in hours.
Sighing, Billy started crossing the floor of sickbay. Life on the Galactica was never dull. Not for a moment. He stood a few feet back from the President and watcher her as she was stared intently at several technicians who were rushing back and forth. He should have known she would be here.
“Do you think this was the right decision?” she asked him after a moment.
“Excuse me?” Billy stepped up to stand beside her.
She smiled at him out of the corner of her eye. “The repopulation program. Do you think it was the right decision?”
“I thought you had gotten over your doubts, sir.”
“About the process, yes. But the actual program?” Roslin turned to look at her young assistant. “It seems so ridiculous. If this works, there will be young children running all over the Fleet. In that sense, it will be good. The continuation of humanity is a necessity. But a lot of the matches have chosen to maintain their parental rights. It doesn’t matter for all those who are the civilian ships…”
It suddenly dawned on Billy what the President was hinting at. “But for those serving on Galactica, it won’t be so easy.”
“These people are in charge of keeping us all safe. They shouldn’t have the distraction of children, lovely as it may be. I can’t imagine why I thought to include the military in this program.”
“It gave them distraction for a little while, sir. That was your goal.”
Roslin shook her head as she turned back to stare through the window. “We can’t let these children be a distraction any more. The people on Galactica still need to put their lives on the line to keep us safe. They have to be committed enough out there to die for what’s right. It’s a harsh reality, but most of the children of these fine people will never know their parents. And I’m the one who sentenced them to that.”
“There are a lot of children in the Fleet who lost their parents in the Cylon Holocaust. This is no different. And there are plenty of civilians who will step up to care for the children without parents. Things will work out, Madam President. There’s no other option.”
“That’s a very bleak thought,” the President said with a small laugh.
“It’s reality. And in terms of you worrying about the spatial logistics of when the children arrive, this ship was running on a skeleton crew when the Cylons attacked. There are hundreds of rooms that have been sealed off because there weren’t people to fill them. Bunkrooms can house a majority of the children. Civilians who have no jobs in the Fleet can be brought on board Galactica to watch over them. The children can be partitioned off from the dangerous parts of the ship to keep them safe. And having them on board the strongest ship in the Fleet will insure that there is a next generation for us to leave behind.”
Roslin gave him a suspicious look. “You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you?”
“I figured you might start having doubts, sir. I wanted to be prepared.”
“Well done.”
Billy noted the lines of exhaustion that were beginning to show on her face before she turned back to watch the scene that was unfolding in front of them. “It’s been hard for you to wait these ten weeks for the first results.”
“It’s been impossibly hard, Billy. So much is riding on this.” She turned to give Billy a bright smile. “But imagine how much we stand to gain if this crazy repopulation idea of mine works. If even one child is created…” Her voice faded off as she continued to stare at the doctors in front of her.
“Do you think it will work then?” he asked hesitantly.
“I’m praying to the gods. Because you’re right. We need this more than anything right now.”
The President and her assistant returned to a comfortable silence, watching the doctors walk from one test area to another. Soon they would know if all this stress and worry was going to pay off. Soon.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Kara yawned as she felt herself slowly drift out of sleep. There was something cuddled up against her back, and she recognized the familiar warmth immediately. In the back of her still sleepy mind, she wondered how Lee had managed to get into bed with her without letting any of his pilots notice.
She felt his hand tighten around her as she twisted to face him. He had a habit of watching her sleep so she wasn’t surprised to see him smiling at her once she had turned.
Gods. Lee always looked so perfect in the morning. Smiling she desperately wished that it could be like this everyday. She would give almost anything to wake up with this kind of comfort at hand.
Kara was about to give into the temptation of letting herself drift back to sleep in his arms when a spring in the mattress pushed on her side, sending pain howling through her body. She winced, and she could feel Lee’s hold on her body tighten even more if that was possible.
“It hurts,” she whispered even as the pain was softening.
“I know. It’s going to hurt for a while. But I’m here.”
Her eyes flew open as the reality of where the pain had come from suddenly hit her. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be letting him get so close. She had to get away.
“Lee,” she said, panic beginning to set in as she shrugged against his hold.
“Stop it, Kara,” he said firmly.
“No.” She put her hands on his chest and pushed as hard as she could. When that failed, she started kicking. She connected with his shin and heard him grunt in pain. Lee’s hold on her didn’t weaken. “Let me go!” she screamed.
“You are going to hurt yourself even more if you don’t stop,” Lee said, pushing his body on top of hers while trying to be mindful of her fresh wound. The weight of his legs kept her feet from doing anymore damage, and her arms were effectively pinned together against his chest. “Good morning, sunshine,” he said with a laugh.
“Please, Lee. Just get off of me.”
She could feel his eyes on her face as his expression turned serious. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he seemed to accept defeat and pulled himself off of her. Much to her dismay, though, he simply shifted back down beside her and draped his arm around her stomach. “Did you get that all out of your system? Because I’m not going to wake up every morning for the rest of our lives to a fight like that.”
“Then maybe you need to find a new sleeping companion,” Kara said, staring up at the top of the bunk.
Lee’s hand reached out to turn her face to look at him. “I am only going to say this once, and I hope it will be enough. I am not going anywhere. You can push and you can yell. Hell, you can even kick. I could use a few new bruises to add to my collection. The point is none of that matters. I am not going anywhere.”
“Well, I don’t want you here,” she spit out in anger.
“Tough shit, Kara. Because I’m here and I’m staying.” Her expression filled with even more anger, but Lee chose to ignore it. “I’m not going to lie to you to you, and I’m not going to censor my words.”
“Please don’t,” she said, tongue in cheek. He was really pissing her off by putting up such a ridiculous, irrational fight.
“I’ve dreamt of being a father all my life. But sometimes dreams can’t come true. It’s a fact of life.”
Lee watched her face soften at his candid words before she wet her lips and started talking. “It can still happen for you, Lee. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Just because I can’t get pregnant doesn’t mean you can’t have kids.”
Lee sighed. He really couldn’t do this lying in bed beside her. It just wasn’t possible. So he pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. He patted the mattress softly next to him. “Come here.”
Sighing, Kara admitted defeat for the moment. She wasn’t going to be able to get him to leave her side at the moment, but she could still fight to make him see that he had to let go if he wanted to move on with his life. She tucked her legs beneath her body and moved down to the edge of the bed beside him. Without saying a word, he slipped his hand on top of hers, and they let the silence stretch between them.
“Do you remember that story you told me about your life ambition when you were twelve? You wanted to be the next pianist in the Caprica Grand Orchestra. You dreamed of being up on the stage and having the audience applaud your skill.” Lee paused and turned to look at her. “And then you turned thirteen and you discovered what it felt like to fly. All dreams of being a professional musician went out the door because of the way you felt when your uncle took you into the cockpit of his rusted-out freighter.”
Kara smiled at the memory. The forces of space had tugged at her insides and seemed to soothe all the wounds her mother had caused her. It was like flying was the key to healing her piece by piece. She still held tight to that notion to this day.
Even if she had to give up everything she loved, including the man currently holding her hand, she still had flying. That was the only comforting thought the Cylons had left her with.
“You see, you had this dream of being a musician since you were little, but then all of the sudden something rose up to take its place in your heart.” Lee squeezed her hand gently. “That’s what this is. I’ll never deny how much I want to have children. It’s been my dream. But you see, I have a bigger dream that’s taken its place. I would rather spend one hundred years without children than have to spend one day without you, Kara.”
He smiled at her. “There are times when you’re going to make me so angry I’m really going to regret how much I love you. You annoy the frak out of me all the time, Kara. But that’s what makes this so real. But it doesn’t matter because the idea of living without you scares me to death. I don’t know who I would be if I didn’t have you.”
Lee felt her head rest softly on his shoulder. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t really have to. “Besides, it’s about time that you had someone in your life who isn’t going to let you run away at the first sign of trouble. You deserve that.”
After a moment, she sniffled softly and intertwined her fingers with his. “I don’t deserve a man like you.”
“You have me all the same,” he said, reaching his free hand up to gently push the tears out of her eyes.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to stop crying,” she said with a small laugh.
“You will,” Lee said firmly. He leaned down to brush his lips across the top of her head. “I know you’ve been through a lot, Kara, and I still wish there was some way for me to take away some of the pain.”
“You already have,” she whispered.
“Good. I want you to know that we’re going to do everything in our power to try to fix whatever the Cylons did to you. But until then I want you to look on the bright side. You’ve loved flying since you were a little girl, and no matter what the Cylons did, they could not take that away from you.” He felt her head nod slightly against his shoulder. “And now that you’ve come home, you have me, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“So you’ve said numerous times.”
Laughing, Lee stood up off the bunk and held out his hand. “What say you and I make our way down to the mess hall? You must be starving by now.”
Kara could see the strength and determination in his eyes, and suddenly she realized he had been right. This burden wasn’t hers to bear alone, and having him with her was going to help dull the pain. Together, they can grieve for the things they have lost and focus on the things they still have. Smiling, she took the hand he offered. Lee pushed open the hatchway door and led her out into the corridor.
“So what’s happened on the Galactica since I’ve been gone?” she asked as they walked hand in hand.
“The XO’s wife tried to seduce me again.”
“No way,” Kara said with a grin. “That woman doesn’t take no for an answer. So what did she do?”
Lee was about to answer her question when Hot Dog came barreling around the corner towards them. “Apollo! Starbuck! The Commander wants to see you down in sickbay now.”
“Do you know what this is about?” Lee asked the young pilot.
“I have no clue, sir. The Old Man wasn’t specific. He just told me to find you as soon as I could.” Hot Dog glanced down at where Kara was holding her side. “Are you all right, sir?”
“Just your normal battle wounds, kid,” she said, showing her usual brash smile. “I’ll be back on rotation to torment you in no time.”
Hot Dog smiled and gave them a quick salute before running off in the direction he came.
“I guess we should get down to sickbay,” Lee said. “Though I have no idea why my father wants to see us there.”
“It probably has something to do with the tests Doc Cottle was running on me earlier. Or it has something to do with that damn repopulation program. Your father switched our test results, in case you didn‘t know.”
“Oh, I knew,” Lee said, shaking his head. “Ellen Tigh managed to tell me during her seduction attempt.”
Kara didn’t protest as Lee helped her slowly descend the stairs to sickbay. She had left her pain killers in the pocket of the pants Lee had stripped off her earlier, and the last dose was beginning to wear off. Since she was already going to be down in sickbay, maybe she could convince Doc Cottle to show her some sympathy.
“I’m going to have to do something about Ellen Tigh, you know,” Kara said idly as they entered sickbay through the main doors. “I wonder if you could neuter a human being.”
“Maybe she’s a toaster,” Lee suggested. “Then you could just shoot her and be done with it.”
Their conversation died out as they took notice of William Adama. He was standing at the far end of sickbay surrounded by a herd of people. The President and Billy were there along with Colonel Tigh and the entire Quorum of Twelve. Doc Cottle was standing a few steps back, smoking one of his cigars.
“You wanted to see us, sir,” Kara said, still holding tightly to Lee’s hands as they stopped in front of the large group of people.
“President?” Adama said, indicating she should step in with the explanation.
“We wanted you two to be the first to know that our repopulation program was a success.” She took a step back and gestured for them to take a look through the large glass window. “Meet the first soul of our next generation.”
Together, Kara and Lee looked down at a small monitor attached to one of the growth pods the medical team on Galactica had created. Kara gasped as she saw movement on the screen. She was actually staring at a life developing in front of her. “This is amazing,” she whispered. She looked up at Lee and was surprised to see tears forming in his eyes. “What is it?”
“Look, Kara,” he said, pointing down.
It was at that moment that she noticed the small sticker attached to the growth pod. “I don’t understand,” she said, turning to look at the Commander and then at Doc Cottle.
Commander Adama stepped forward to place his hand on her shoulder. “There was only one successful pregnancy out of all the tests this first time, Kara.” He turned to smile at his son. “And that was yours.”
Kara turned to look back at the monitor. “That’s our child?”
“Yes, it is, Lieutenant Thrace,” President Roslin said with a light laugh.
Kara gave her a smile before turning to look at the man beside her. “Lee. That’s our baby.”
The weight of her words was only really felt by a few people in the room, but the significance of the one child was understood by all.
Lee pulled Kara in tightly against him and pressed his lips lightly to hers for a brief moment. “I told you everything would be fine.”
“I love you,” Kara whispered before turning back to stare at the lines on the monitor as they showed the small heartbeat of the growing child resting inside the pod.
Suddenly, deep inside her, she finally realized the truth that had eluded her for so long. The Cylons were never going to win. They had played their last card, and it didn’t change a thing. The machines said that this was the last cycle they would be put through, and for the first time, that brought Kara relief instead of fear. Because she knew something the Cylons didn’t know.
It was the end of the world, but she was sitting there with full colors in her hand.