Standard of Flight

By Crystal Wimmer

Word Count:55,933
Date: 10/29/04
Series: Mini
Rating: T
Category: Relationships
Pairing/Focus: Lee, Kara
Warnings:
Summary:
Spoilers/Disclaimers:
Author's Note:Author’s note: I want to pass on my most sincere thanks to Doc for her inspiration, permission, and encouragement in this story. Based on the concepts and relationships she introduced in her “Standard of Care” story, it gives a different perspective of many of the same events in that same time-frame. If you haven’t read Doc’s story, I highly recommend it – you don’t need it for this one, but it certainly makes it come together more clearly. Okay… on that note…

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Chapter 1

Down Time

Lords I miss running at the Academy. You wouldn’t think that a clay track and white lines would be so memorable, but damn-it they are. You just can’t get that same feel from the metal deck of a ship, however solidly that ship is built. There aren’t any shoes soft enough to absorb the shock, and after a few laps your knees and ankles let you know that you’re doing something that the human body really isn’t designed for. But it’s worth it. Even on the Galactica, where I seem to spend more time dodging people than lengthening my stride and tuning things out, a good run is the only thing that keeps me sane.

Sanity is a precious commodity on the Galactica. Lee says I keep mine by periodic adrenaline overload; I think I just don’t let things get to me. On the other hand, everyone has to have a release. He has his, too, but most people don’t see it. Someday I’ll spill the beans. Someday.

But not today. Today is for stretching my legs, reading a good book – or not so good book, and maybe getting my hands on something closer to coffee than the crap that’s started showing up in the dining hall. I think it’s some soy something-or-other; no one is certain. I also think they’re trying to poison us, but that’s another problem altogether. In any case, I’m not letting it get to me today. It’s my first day off in over a week, and the twelve-hour shifts are starting to hurt. I’m tired of being tired. I think all of us are. Today is a day for rest and recovery: a good run, as good a breakfast as I can manage, and time behind a closed curtain in quarters. No one would dare touch that curtain. They know better. This pilot bites.

Literally.

Okay, so it was only once, and it was a long time ago. I’d been on the Galactica a few weeks, and Ripper was running us ragged. He was good for that when you first started, always checking to see what you were made of and what your limitations were. He hadn’t found mine just yet, although he’d come damned close. Somehow, just as he edged closer to getting slammed, he seemed to come up with the sense to back off. And then he touched the curtain.

I’d been on back-to-back patrols, an eight and an eight, and I’d been up four hours before that to manage paperwork and the workout I usually got in. No one had bothered to mention that Kennington was down with the flu, so I didn’t know I’d be looking at twenty hours between naps. Still, I’d done more and under worse conditions, so I held it together. When I came back with a busted rotor in my primary engine, my landing was not great. It wasn’t hard, but it wasn’t really soft either. It was enough to jar my teeth and rattle my nerves. I slipped past the usual orders to get checked in Life Station and headed to bed. After all, twenty hours is a hell of a long time when you’ve had to keep your concentration steady. I was due for a break, not a two-hour wait to be poked and prodded to find out what I already knew: I was tired.

So I headed to bed, pulled my curtain, and I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. The next thing I knew, there was this incredibly bright light, even through closed eyelids, and a shadow taking away the darkness. I wasn’t awake enough to know Ripper was pulling back the curtain to make me go down to the Station. All I knew was that I was tired, daylight was annoying, and that curtain was going to close. I reached up to yank it back, and he made the mistake of trying to get me to let go of it. So I did what any girl would do in that situation; I bit the hell out of him. Lords, the havoc that caused. If there was any saving grace at all it was that Ripper spent longer in Life Station than I did, and the brig has a nice, quiet bed.

So no one messes with the curtain. Hell, even Ripper learned his lesson. He usually sent a flunkie to get me up after that if it absolutely had to be done. The pilots around me had the good sense to call my name rather than yank on my privacy. There isn’t a lot on a Battlestar; it has to be respected. I have my book, I have my lamp, and I’m going to tuck in behind that curtain for some much-needed down time. It’s looking like a pretty good day.

“How do you do this?”

His voice is slightly out of breath, but not nearly as weary as he makes it sound. Lee hasn’t been running long this time around, but he’s done it long enough that he can keep up with me. We’re near the same height, have a pretty similar stride, and unless I’m really pushing he manages to give me a run for my money. I let him think that anyway. “Wimp,” I call back to him, knowing that it will bring a smile. It does, and I’m glad about that. Lee doesn’t smile enough. I guess none of us do, but it’s hard to be happy when the world has been yanked from beneath you. More literally, blown from around you and then left light-years behind.

“Hey, you’re the one who insists this is good for me,” he grumbles. I can hear the laughter in his tone; he’s not nearly as tired as he’s putting on. Hell, he and I used to run almost three miles every morning at the Academy, around the full perimeter of the grounds and then several laps on the track. The clay track. As I jog up six stairs and dodge a Lieutenant with his nose in a report or something, I once more miss that damned clay track.

“It is good for you,” I tell him as he comes along side me. We’ve finished two circuits of the ship, and it’s time to cool down, so I slow my stride and he follows suit. “Besides, with the artificial gravity, exercise is essential if we’re going to stay healthy to colonize anyplace.”

“You’re ready to settle down?”

That question catches me off guard. No clue why I brought this up. “No,” I tell him as I slow to a walk and he paces me perfectly. “But I hope we find someplace, Earth or not. I miss oranges.”

Lee laughs and claps me on the back like a brother. If his hand stays there just a little longer than it used to, I try not to notice. Lee is a friend, and a good one. I don’t want to screw with that. “I miss bacon,” he says wistfully. “Coffee and bacon,” he corrects. “Waking up to them, I mean.”

I have to agree. “Pizza,” I say softly. Dairy products were the first thing to go after our flight from the Cylons began; no cheese, no pizza.

“Meadows,” Lee adds with a strangely soft look. Anyone else would probably miss that, but I know him pretty well. His brother and I were close; more than close. I’ve seen the meadows back behind their family house. Hell, I’ve made love in them, although I wouldn’t admit it to anyone if they paid me. Some secrets remain with Zak and I. If the memories are all I have left, then I need to keep some for myself. There aren’t many I selfishly guard, but that day in a Caprican meadow with flowers all around and Zak over and around and in me… that one is mine. I’m not sharing, even if Lee wanted to hear it. Frankly, I’m sure he doesn’t. Hearing about your little brother’s sex life is kind of like hearing about your parents’; while you know it must be there, it’s best not imagined.

“Meadows,” I echo, and my voice is not as steady as I would like. Damn, I must really be tired if a simple memory can put me near tears. I need today more than I thought.

“So, what are you doing with your day off?” he asks. It’s spooky how he does that; always knows what I’m thinking before I do. If it weren’t so reassuring, it might piss me off.

“This,” I told him simply. “Then maybe some weights, a shower, and some bunk time. I haven’t read anything except reports in longer than I can remember.”

“You’ve got books?” he asks hungrily. I should have expected that.

“I’ve got one, and you can’t have it until I’m done.” I’ll stand firm on that.

“What’s it about?”

I stick my tongue out at him, more as a distraction than anything. There’s no way I’m going to tell him that I’ve borrowed a romance novel from the Galactica’s Chief Medical Officer. Some things he doesn’t need to know. Lee is predictable as always, ruffling my hair affectionately and laughing a little. He’s pretty playful when nobody is watching. It’s a revelation for a lot of people; he’s pure tight-ass when it comes to work.

I guess he has to be, though. Carrying all the CAG responsibilities isn’t easy in peacetime, and he got it thrown at him at the beginning of a war. He didn’t know any pilot except for me, and he also came in with the disadvantages of being both the Commander’s son and at least five years younger than the average Captain. It didn’t surprise me, though. The man is driven. He takes responsibility the way most people take a presidential order. Every rule is law, and nothing is to be overlooked. He was tough on everyone at first – tougher than he had to be. But he’s eased up a bit, and the crew is starting to get used to him. It’s not as easy as it sounds. He’s most definitely a stickler, but once you know him you can see that a lot of it is a disguise for being really insecure. He falls back on the rules because he doesn’t trust himself. If he can blame the rules, then no one can blame him when it all falls apart. We all have our ways of staying sane.

But times like this – off duty and away from the crew – he’s just Lee. He’s Zak’s big brother, the Old Man’s son, and a damned good friend. That’s the place I’ve given him, anyway. It’s what I’ll allow. If there are days he pushes that envelope – times when a touch lingers or those damned blue eyes lock onto mine – then I just ignore it until he goes away. I also ignore that flash of disappointment that inevitably follows, usually accompanied by a soft smile and a downcast expression. There’s nothing more obvious than a man going from staring into your eyes to avoiding them. There’s not much that makes me more uncomfortable than that, either. He’s not a lovesick fool; don’t get that impression. He’s just lonely. We’re all lonely, and I’m familiar.

“So, workout and a book. Sounds… nice.”

I give him a glare at that, along with a punch in the arm. “It sounds damned dull, and that’s how I want it. Forty-eight hours of peace and quiet is more than I’ve seen in longer than I can remember. I’m not wasting it.

He nods. “I’m sorry about that,” he tells me. “You know I only do it because you’re the best I have. If I could trust anyone else with the rooks…”

I shush him with a wave of my hand. We’ve been through this a dozen times. While many of us are proficient pilots, I’m the only one with training to instruct. I did it for two years at the academy, before my judgment killed my fiancé and left me alone and adrift. His father took me in then, gave me a place flying for him here on the Galactica, and pulled Lords know how many strings to keep me out of prison for manslaughter if not outright murder. It wouldn’t be so surprising that he did it – after all, the Old Man and I are pretty close – but the fiancé in question happened to be his youngest son. So if what I can do in return is to fly a few extra shifts to make his remaining son’s life a little easier, then it’s a frakking small price to pay. Hell, it’s an honor to be trusted with the responsibility, and proof that the lectures on forgiveness and second chances were more than just words being thrown around.

“Any chance of getting dinner after you’ve had some down-time?” Lee asks. And there it is. Again. I avoid looking at him, instead using my top shirt to wipe sweat from my face and keep it out of my eyes. I always sweat worse after I start to cool down. Lee’s asked me to dinner, albeit less directly than his first couple of attempts. Ironically, I find it harder to say no to this approach. He’s subtle – asking as a friend – and I can accept that. He’s also good company, I enjoy being with him, and he’s familiar. That doesn’t mean I want to marry him, or even sleep with him, but it does mean that dinner would be a pretty good experience; dining hall cuisine notwithstanding.

“What time?” I ask, not giving a direct answer because I may want to give myself an out.

“Seventeen-hundred?” he asks, and his expression is somewhere between hopeful and uncertain. Who would believe Lee could be uncertain? Frak.

“Make it seventeen-thirty,” I suggest.

“You’ve got it. I’ll meet you in the Dining Hall.”

I nod as I realize that we’re at the entrance to general pilot’s quarters. We enter together, but Lee heads for a room at the back, which used to be a storage area and now serves as his office and bedroom. I stop at one of the first bunks, pull off my shirts and shorts to wash later, and head to my locker for clean underwear. Opening it, I see three smiling faces – Zak, me, and Lee. Lords, were we ever that happy? It doesn’t even feel like that picture, taken during Zak’s first year at the Academy, really has Lee and I in it. We aren’t those people anymore, I realize. But they aren’t people I want to forget. They were good people. Maybe someday at least two of them will be reborn. Until then, I remember them. I say a prayer for Zak every day, light a candle on his birthday and holidays, and beg his forgiveness with every breath I take.

Morbid thoughts, and ones that I thought I was long past. It’s my day, and I’m not wasting it on sad memories and frustrating mental circles. I just want to enjoy myself for a few minutes. I take my shower, forgetting in all my mental wanderings that I was going to hit the weight room, and settle into my bunk with Doctor Salik’s book. She promised I could keep it as long as I wanted, but things have a tendency to disappear around me so I like to return borrowed objects quickly. I never had much growing up, so having my stuff taken now isn’t that big of a deal. More than once as a child I stole from others to have what I needed – clothes, food, or medicine. I figure if anyone needs something badly enough to steal it, then they should have it. I can live without it. But I won’t put another person’s possessions in that same category. So her book stays in my locked locker along with the few things I won’t life without: my picture of the Adama brothers with me held eternally between them, safe and happy for at least one day in my life, and two small sets of underwear, because in a world of mostly male pilots the smaller uniforms are tough to track down, and a close fit is necessary to get into the flight suits. Also in there are a couple of other odds and ends that I do treasure: Zak’s last letter to me – note really – about two weeks before he died, my engagement ring, a small box of wedding invitations that I never had a chance to send out, and the gold cluster that Commander Adama awarded me shortly after the jump from Ragnar. Oh, and three fine Geminon cigars. Those are mine; those I don’t share.

Showers on the Galactica are quick. Five minutes of lukewarm water divided into one minute of getting wet before soaping and shampooing with the same liquid astringent, and four minutes to rinse the foul stuff away and try to cool down from a run. There’s just the one temperature – whatever is left from twenty-eight hundred people using the same water supply all day long and limited time for it to be heated – and no choice in soaps or shampoos. It takes a lot of the guess work out of life. Simplicity can be a good thing.

Once clean and rinsed, I towel dry, scrub my hair with that same towel before hanging it on my hook – we each have one – and slipping on the clean underwear that I keep under lock and key, hand-wash myself, and hope lasts until we can come up with something to make more uniforms from. All my hair needs is a quick combing, and then I curl up in my bunk, pull my curtain, tuck the bottom into the corners of my mattress, and flick on the rechargeable lamp to see my book. It’s time to see how the Caprican princess survives capture and enslavement by the vicious Leonian pirate. Is it totally unrealistic fluff? Hell yes, but that’s what I want. Today is for escaping reality, and this is just about as far from the current reality as anyone can go. Caprica’s gone, princesses never existed, and guys like this are killed in tragic Viper training accidents. Tucked back against my pillow, I know it’s going to be a damned good day.

Hours later, I’m awakened by a soft voice, and thankfully no bright light. Quarters are almost always bright, because someone is on shift, getting ready for shift, or coming back from shift. A glance at the book held in my floppy hand shows, by the very dim light of my nearly discharged lamp, that I’ve been asleep for almost eight hours. I had read exactly twenty-three pages before I’d gone out, and the crick in my neck was proving that I should have opted for the nap rather than the book. It’s just that free hours are so rare that I had to use them for sleeping.

“Kara?” he calls again, a little louder. I smile as I realize he’s not getting his hands anywhere near the curtain. Smart man.

“Hmm?” It’s the best I can manage.

“It’s almost eighteen-hundred,” he explains. “When you didn’t show, I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Fine,” I grumped. “I fell asleep. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he assured me, and while I could almost detect disappointment in his tone, it is steady enough as he continues. “I brought you down a tray. I have duty in about half an hour so I need to get prepped. Where do you want me to leave this?

Frak. Lee might not be a boyfriend, but I hate to have stood anyone up. “I’ll take it,” I tell him as I tug the corner of the curtain away and open the cubby to both air and light. He’s smiling a little now, although it doesn’t reach his eyes. I’ve really hurt his feelings. Damn. I’m not sure if I’m upset that I hurt him, or simply that the feelings were there to hurt. Life was getting damned complicated. It got more so as Lee passed me the plate and silverware while looking everywhere except towards me. On a hunch, I looked down to see that when I’d slid down the pillow in sleep, my shirts had risen up. Braless, I was showing a little more skin than was strictly appropriate, and Apollo the Proper was in mid-blush. Typical. I tugged the shirts down into place, set the plate on my bed, and looked him in the eye. There is something magnetic about that particular shade of blue, which is why I make an effort to ignore it. “Thanks,” I tell him. “I probably would have slept through mealtime and been sick by breakfast.”

He smiled at that. “We take care of our own,” he said simply, ruffling my sleep-tangled hair. “Eat, go back to sleep, and then go back to your book.”

I nod at that, wondering if he had caught the title while I had the curtains open. I try to convince myself that he didn’t, and then I try to convince myself that it didn’t matter. I’m not terribly successful on either count. What I don’t know is why that bothers me so much.

Chapter 2

The Risks of the Job

Two days is never enough to get over a week of sleep deprivation and overwork, but it helped. The only bad part of having a break is that when you’re forced to go back to work it seems worse than it was in the first place. But the work hasn’t changed; not in the year since the Cylons destroyed the world. A shift starts with report, moves on to maintenance, and from there goes into patrol. It’s not a new system. I tend to be assigned to the longer patrols and the training missions, so you can add at least two days a week of managing the simulators for that purpose. We lost most of our flyers in the first wave of attacks, and putting the Galactica’s defenses back together has been a long and arduous process. That explains why I get so little sleep.

Of the original Galactica pilots, we had only twenty-three who lived. Thankfully we picked up another ten from various disabled ships, and almost thirty reported in from other areas of the fleet – retired, on leave, and those who had cross-trained to other areas of the service. Most of them were qualified as nothing more than shuttle pilots, if that, but it freed up around thirty qualified, military pilots. Not all were Viper caliber – it’s a damned picky machine – but we did pretty well. As difficult as that was, the pilots were the easy part. Our Chief, Tyrol, had put together my squadron from ancient Vipers with no existing replacement parts and no current training in either function or repair. That made for an interesting few weeks as we tried to piece the old Vipers together with new parts, and salvage what new Vipers we’d been able to scrounge before the hyper-light jump. In all, it wasn’t a successful endeavor. We did the best we could, and the Chief got less sleep than any of us, but somehow we managed to get a makeshift defense field set up with a skeleton crew. Those were the worst days.

I can’t even express what the flight deck was like in those first horrible days. Half the crew was in shock, and the rest was in Life Station. As the kids – mostly straight out of secondary school – finally realized what had happened and edged out of the shock, the work got even harder. I was one of those who just worked a little harder, a little longer, and the less I thought the better. Lee was mostly the same, because he was so overwhelmed with learning a new ship, new crew, and new way of life that it was all he could do to breathe. The crews though – they were something else. Way too many of them had been lost in the initial attack, and way too many more had died afterwards in Life Station. It wasn’t just a lack of morale, but a total lack of hope. We’re still working on the hope, despite the Old Man’s rousing speech which most of us only take half-seriously. The thing is, the same vastness of space that we rely on daily to protect us from Cylon detection is the same vastness that all but eliminates the possibility of finding one planet in one solar system in one tiny corner of space. Any gambler knows that odds working for you can also work against you; you just have to recognize what they are.

But those of us who see it don’t make an issue of it. We can’t. The edge of hope that the rest of them need is as vital to them as our Vipers are to us. We need to know that we can protect the fleet, and the fleet needs to know that there’s a reason to be protected. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but if we lose that balance and people stop caring, then there just won’t be a point. We had enough suicides following our initial jumps; we don’t need any more. The human race is small enough.

I have to smack myself as I realize what a cynic I’ve become. Always practical, always reasonable, and usually ready for a fight. That’s me. But never in all my years has anyone called me a cynic. Hell, I was the fun one at the party; the one they called to get the sticks out of the mud. I still show them that, but reality has a way of slipping in when you least expect it. I guess that’s growing up. I don’t like it.

Report today came from Bell – Jerry Bellton – who is our Deputy CAG. He’s got me working with team five on the deck, and flying a six-hour patrol towards a possibly habitable planet. Sharon is going to fly the Raptor, which in turn carries the scientific team to get their samples and such to make their proclamation from. I’m flying opposite Docks, who is my usual wingman. Now Docks is a character. He has one of those goofy names – Mortimer or Montington, no one’s sure – and lives by his call sign. I can’t blame the guy. I probably would, too. Actually, I mostly do. Lee calls me Kara – and the Old Man – but my friends call me Starbuck and my co-workers call me Lieutenant Thrace, sometimes just Thrace when I’ve pissed someone off. I try to do that less now. It isn’t that I’m any more inclined to take shit from anyone, but I can’t back Lee or defend the fleet from behind the bars in the brig. What was it I’d said about growing up? It happens to the best of us. “Haul ass, Docks,” I call out as I make a final check on the electronic checklist that is demanded from every flight. It’s a simple thing – proof that we’ve checked out all the primary systems, and not exactly a failsafe, but the railing out you get from Bell when you forget it just isn’t worth the time. Then there’s that damned disappointed look from Lee on top of it. No, I’d rather do the frakking paperwork.

“Almost got it,” Docks calls back, a muffled sound at best. His head is tucked up under his Viper, so I take a walk over to see what the problem is. “Damned release valve is sticking,” he mutters as I come up behind him. Boots aren’t silent on metal flooring. Preferring the view of his Viper’s underbelly to a view of his ass, I tuck in next to him and reach for the offensive valve myself.

“Frak,” I mumble as I push his fingers out of the way and try to finagle my way into position. It’s a tight fit because my hands aren’t much smaller than the guys’. If I was a wimp, I wouldn’t have made it as a pilot. Still, I get my hand in there and wedge a nail beneath the seal of the valve. Stuck is an understatement. I’d rather have a screwdriver, but I can’t think of one small enough to fit. This seal is going to have to be replaced, if or when I get it open. The release valve is what makes sure Tylium byproducts don’t gas up the cockpit; it’s not something you want sticking during a patrol, and that’s why it’s on the checklist in the first place.

While Docks goes to get a replacement – or as near as Tyrol can come up with – I finally wedge a thumbnail into the miniscule space between seal and metal, and I pull. “Shit!”

“Starbuck?”

I barely hear Cally as she tucks up under one arm to check on me. I got the damned seal off, but that wasn’t all that came loose. Blood is streaming down the underside of my arm from where thumbnail and skin parted company, and frak nothing has ever hurt this much! I probably would have stood there shaking blood all over everyone for half the day if Cally hadn’t had some good sense. She reached for a grease rag, grubby though it was, and wrapped it tightly around my hand. It didn’t do a thing for the pain, but the sharp throb was easier to take with the majority of blood out of view. “Call the Chief!” Cally screams out, and I hear a scuffle of feet as they rush to obey. I’ve got quite a vocabulary when I’m hurting, and I have to say that Cally’s braver than most when it comes to hanging around when I let loose.

“Shit! Frakkin’ stupid valve in the damned…” I go on… and on. I have a fairly high pain threshold, or so I’ve been told, but this is something else altogether. To make matters worse, I’m feeling really light-headed. Not dizzy – not exactly – but not steady. Shit, if I pass out on the deck I’ll never live it down.

“Get her to Life Station,” Chief Tyrol proclaims as he walks up and takes a look at the blood on the deck as well as still dripping from my elbow where Cally had wrapped the injury rather than cleaning up the mess. The girl had her priorities straight, even if it does hurt like hell when she squeezes that towel tighter. She’s also got a thumb on my wrist, pushing down with a bruising strength that comes from manhandling heavy equipment all day, and she’s holding my hand up around shoulder level.

Lords, I want to argue. I can think of nothing good that has ever happened to me in a hospital. I hate doctors with a fiery passion, and techs aren’t much better. But shit this hurts, and it’s worth the indignity of tiny gowns and sharp needles to make this hurting stop. Cally keeps a both of her hands on mine as she starts walking, and then Bell is there. Who the hell knows where he came from, but I can’t help but be glad it isn’t Lee. That thought takes my mind of the pain for an instant – just an instant – as I try to remember the rotation and where he might be. My mind is a little too fuzzy though, and they’re shuffling me along like I’m going to bleed to death in the next five minutes. I think it’s overkill, but if there’s a narcotic involved I can deal with speed. Pain is not all it’s cut out to be.

It surprises the hell out of me when Bell shifts one arm beneath my legs and puts the other behind my back to lift me up like a kid and dump me on a gurney. Cally still has that frakking tight hold on me, and she’s got my arm up in the air like some morbid mummy coming to life.

“What happened?” asks a deep voice which is rapidly accompanied by a tall man with serious eyes and a strangely comforting manner.

It takes a minute before I realize he’s talking to me. He seems to be a long ways away. “It’s not a big deal,” I finally say. “I tried to loosen a valve and I think I cut myself.”

“Any body parts on-site?” he asks as he calls for some medical sounding stuff and starts unwrapping my hand. Body parts? Holy shit, did I cut it off?

“Nothing I saw,” Cally says, and a wave of gratitude washes over me. She’s the little nurse of the deck – it comes from being one of the few women there, and a natural caring that goes beyond her skill with leverage and tools – and she would have noticed. It’s damned hard to fly a Viper without a thumb, or I imagine it would be.

“You still with me, Starbuck?” the doc asks as he finally gets the towel untangled from my hand.

“Present,” I say on a gasp. The towel is off, the blood is flowing albeit not as much, and that light-headed feeling is headed towards nausea. Lords, I really hate blood.

“Cass, get an IV in,” he tells the woman who’s come up on the other side of the gurney. “Lactated ringers; this one is headed for the OR. Get a type and cross-match it when you put it in, and pull me enough for a CBC and Lytes. Call Doctor Salik, too. I want her to give me a second opinion.”

“You’re going to feel a pinch,” the blond woman – Cassie – says as she inserts an IV into the bend of my elbow. “Fourteen gauge, I went antecubital,” she says casually. If that means she just forced a hosepipe into my arm, then she’s more honest with him than with me. Pinch my ass; that damned-well hurt!

“Open it up for now,” he told her. She’s sweating, and her heart-rate is around one-twenty.”

What happens next is anyone’s guess. I don’t know if they put something in the IV, or if I was just so out-of-it that I can’t remember. In any case, the images I have are mixed and painful. Doctor Salik was there, pushing around on that sore hand and making me want to kill her. Cassie talking softly, although I don’t remember any of her words. And then I remember that the gurney started moving and I was just sure that my breakfast was going to make a quick return. And then I don’t remember a thing; not a blessed thing.

* * *

I’m laying here, and I’m wondering if I’ll ever fly again. Who would have thought I’d be worried about that when I woke up this morning? Lee should be back in a minute, and hopefully with something to take away this constant pain. Well, the physical pain anyway. The emotional battering isn’t going to get better with a little pill or shot.

Waking up hurt almost as much as going to sleep did. My hand was throbbing dully, and my head was splitting with a sharper version of the same rhythm. Every heartbeat seemed to make every part of me hurt. I squeezed open one eye, and of course the first thing I saw was my hand – or rather, the cast on my hand. Cast? Did I break something?

I turned my head, got dizzy as hell, and still didn’t see anyone around. I was in Life Station; that much was certain. “Anyone home?” I called out, and my voice was gravelly and hoarse.

“She lives,” came the dry reply. I would have looked back over my shoulder at Lee, but I didn’t think my stomach could take that much movement. “How are you feeling?” He had stood up so that he entered my field of vision, then walked down the side of the bed so that he could take my hand – my good hand. Well, aside from having a hosepipe sticking out of the arm, it was my good hand. At the very least it wasn’t throbbing in time with my heart.

I thought about making some dumb joke, or just telling him the truth: I felt like shit. But this was Lee, and I could see the worry in his eyes, feel it in the way he traced the veins of my hand as he held it in both of his. “I’ve been better,” I finally said, which was the truth but definitely not all of it. “How bad was it?”

Lee gave me a shrug that took a serious glare to get through. “You’ll be okay,” he told me. It didn’t answer my question and he knew it.

“Good to know,” I told him. “So how bad is it?”

A sigh. Blue eyes that wouldn’t meet mine. Another sigh. “It was bad,” he admitted in his own good time. “The doc said that anything on hands is a concern. But she got it all put back together and she thinks it will heal just fine. So, like I said, you’ll be okay.”

Somewhere in the explanation he had totally lost me. I catch a thumbnail on a washer and he’s talking about how the doctor thinks it will be fine? “What did I do?”

My confusion must have been pretty evident in either my voice or expression, because Lee reached back to get the chair he’d apparently been using earlier. He was settling in for the long haul, and that was not likely a good thing. “The best we can tell,” he began, “when you popped the valve open you also popped the washer off. The edge of the valve was sharp, you were putting on a lot of pressure to do it, and the damned thing cut the hell out of your hand.”

“I just thought I caught the nail,” I mumbled. It had hurt, but it hadn’t felt that bad.

He gave me half a smile. “From what the doc tells me, the nail is gone. I’ll grow back, but for now it’s history. She put in over forty stitches down the thumb and almost to your wrist. If your hand had been turned just a little bit, you could have hit a vein or artery or something. As it was, there was a lot of blood, but not nearly as much as they thought you’d lost.”

I lifted the cast up from the two pillows it was propped on. The damned white thing went from my hand, completely covering my thumb, and half-way up my arm besides. “Forty stitches?” I asked him. None of it seemed real.

“She said some were inside and some were outside. She could have used staples on some of it, but she wanted to keep the scarring down.”

“Great,” I muttered. “So, how long am I out of the cockpit?” It was my right hand – my right thumb. That meant thrusters and weapons weren’t going to get touched until the cast came off.

“She says a week or two while it heals, then they’ll start therapy to see how much motion you lost to scarring. We’ll go from there, Kara. It’s too early to say when you’ll be back on the job.”

The look on his face was downright scared, and I wasn’t sure if it was for him or me. It wasn’t good news. I was more than just a pilot on the squad; I was a teacher, a guardian, and some days a drill sergeant. From the way he was talking, it was going to be a hell of a long time before I could do what I did the best – the one thing that kept me sane when the world closed in around me. Lee had sat down, his elbows resting on the edge of the bed while his hands still held mine. He set his chin on top of our joined hands and just watched me. Was he waiting for the explosion? Was he waiting for me to break down? For all the time we’ve known one another, Lee really hadn’t been close when something in life went really bad; well, not counting when it went bad for all of us. When Zak had died, I had managed to get past the initial crap and into a numb shell before Lee made it to town for the funeral, and that was the only really traumatic thing I’d been through if we didn’t count the beginning of the war. He couldn’t know what to expect. Hell, I didn’t know what to expect. How in hell did I feel? I wasn’t even sure I could feel, except for the dull throb of my heartbeat in both my head and my hand.

“Do you think I can get anything for pain?” I ask him, not letting go of his hand.

He nods with more than a little relief. I guess he was scared that I’d go off like a rocket. I want to, but I just can’t see a point. It won’t take away the pain, and it won’t put me in the pilot’s seat.

My hand feels cold as he lets go and takes off around the curtain. With his absence I notice that it’s quiet here. The Life Station is usually a hub of activity, but at the moment it’s nearly silent. It bothers me; it’s one more thing that isn’t as it should be.

Lee is quick, and he comes back with Cassie in tow. She’s tall and blond, with curves in all the right places. She’s got a wide smile, a cute little laugh, and a nice, feminine profession. It occurs to me that Lee’s eyes are on me, and not on her, and for some reason that pleases me. I’m not going to analyze why.

“Good to see you awake again,” she says in that bright and sunshiny voice. “You look a little better than the first time.”

“This isn’t the first time?” I ask.

She shakes her head as she inserts a needle into this rubber knob in the hosepipe. I watch as she squeezes in something, and immediately my arm stings and my face feels warm. “The first time was from the anesthesia. I have to tell you, you’re not real chipper when you wake from that. Not real clean, either. I think you puked on everyone in the room.”

She’s laughing, and it’s all I can do not to be mortified. I hate being sick; I hate anyone to see it. Thank the Lords I don’t remember it. “My head hurts,” I tell her. That can’t have anything to do with my hand.

“Anesthesia,” she tells me again. “We wanted to just knock you out and use a local, but once you went under you had a tendency not to breathe. The doc decided you’d be better off with a supported airway, and of course you fought that, so we would up going general. I guess you can say that you shook up the whole Station for a while.”

“Sorry,” I tell her, but I’m really not. Well, I’m not thrilled that I’m the one who made things so difficult, but I am reassured that they were equipped to deal with it. There’s a lot to be said for a state-of-the-art medical facility. I guess the Galactica is as good as it gets.

That warm, flushed feeling has spread from my face down my arms, and thankfully both headache and throbbing hand are now comfortably numb. I try to look around and see Lee, but he’s out of view. Maybe he’s gone back to work. The last thought I had before I go out is that I am never helping Docks check his bird again.

Chapter 3

Never Better

“It’s about damned time!”

I’m looking at the roster, and finally my name is on it. I had my doubts along the way. I was in that frakking cast for almost two weeks, and when it came off my hand looked like a noodle. Thankfully, a few days with a hard rubber ball has my grip back to normal. Fine, so it was more than a few days, but it’s over now. I also had to do some stretching exercises and make sure to use the oil that Cassie slipped me to keep the scar soft and flexible. Yesterday I finally qualified back in the sims, and today it’s the real thing. Well, tonight. Close enough. I can’t wait!

Yes, I’m more than a little claustrophobic. You wouldn’t know it because I live in a tin can – or what amounts to one – but the only way I stand it is that I get out of it on a regular basis. Nothing smaller than the openness of space is adequate, in my opinion. Lords, I’ve missed it. I talked to the Old Man about it yesterday – he’s one of the few who really understands – and he was thrilled to hear that I qualified. It was the first smile I’ve seen on his face in longer than I can remember.

The Old Man and I go way back, to a time back before I learned to stay out of trouble and before he learned that there are times when trouble isn’t a bad thing. He was actually fairly instrumental in getting me out of a nowhere job and into the Academy. He was responsible for my wings. It’s amazing the power of a little faith, and that’s what he had. He saw a kid with a feel for flying, and did his best to put her in the cockpit. I hope that I never let him down.

Six months after getting into the Academy, he got me a roommate. I’d gone through three of them, each more obnoxious than the last. See, the thing is that I don’t just hop into bed with someone because we’re in the same room. With a ten to one ratio of men to women, rooming conditions seemed to keep sticking me with grabby or obnoxious men who needed to learn some manners. Finally, the Old Man pulled some strings to get his son stuck in the room with me. I wanted to kill him for that.

Well, I did at first. Lee was… everything I wasn’t. He came from a loving family, he’d had the advantages, and he followed rules as though they were his God. I tried like hell to resent that, but in time I realized that I had some things he was missing as well. The man had no clue how to have a good time. His concept of pleasure was re-reading an essay he’d done well on the semester before. He also had to work his ass off in the cockpit. He liked to fly, and he was good at it because he made himself learn it, but he wasn’t born for it. Lee’s skill comes from practice and dedication. I got my feel for flying the same way he got a loving family – pure chance. We each took our hand, and we played it well. Once we stopped trying to kill one another – or rather I stopped trying to kill him and he stopped trying to avoid me – we turned into pretty good friends. He was a lot like his dad if it came to that. We started hanging out, I started going home with him for holidays and summers, and somehow his family sort of… kept me.

Zak was Lee’s baby brother, and he was everything Lee wasn’t. He was young and brash and bright. He had more flash than substance, but he had a good heart. And for some reason – some still unknown reason – he loved me. Lords, how I fought that. One does not mess with a friend’s little brother; it isn’t done. But the kid was persistent, and even four years younger than me he managed to whittle away at defenses I didn’t know I had. I think I went out with him just to shut him up that first time, and it was all downhill from there.

Ironically, Lee found it hysterical. When Zak asked me to marry him, Lee was the first one I went to. He kissed me on the cheek, smiled that “I told you so” smile, and I knew that it would be okay. I didn’t know a thing about marriage or relationships, but if Lee thought I could do it, then I knew I could.

The truth was, I had reason for doubts. My track record with men had been beyond horrible. My first roommate had started out a fairly good friend until he cornered me against a bathroom wall after my shower. At the time, I had been pretty insecure about my place in life. The Old Man had worked so hard to get me into the Academy, and I didn’t want to screw it up, so I went along. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape and I sure wasn’t a virgin, but neither was it something I really wanted. By the end of the week he seemed to think I was his own personal property, everyone on the floor thought I was cheap, and I’d lost what I thought had been a good friend.

Roommate number two was little better. He didn’t bother with friendship, and just went straight for the passes. I put him in the infirmary, and he may never have children. Well, there are some places a man can’t put his hands and not expect a reaction! Once again, relationship ended, and sex was the cause.

That last roommate before Lee was just the opposite. He treated me like I had the plague. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but he was fairly popular and within a week everyone else seemed to be treating me like I had the plague as well. It got old, I asked for an out, and thankfully William Adama came to my rescue. Again.

Lee was proper, polite, and everything a girl could want. He was also strictly “hands off”, and that was fine with me. Sex had never really done anything good for me. It had paid for a dinner date or two, and it had satisfied curiosity, but frankly I didn’t see what the big deal was. Lee didn’t even suggest it, so the two of us built a friendship that has lasted through the end of the world.

Loving Zak was so easy, though. With Lee’s blessing and the Old Man’s encouragement, we set a date, hired a band, bought a dress… the works. At first, Zak was idealistic enough to want to wait until we were married to make love, but as reality (and youthful hormones) kicked in, we got a little ahead of the game. It really is different if you care about the person. It strengthened every feeling we had for one another. It was… perfect. It also screwed with my judgment and cost Zak his life. So much for sex being a good thing.

The Old Man forgave me, and Lee finally forgave him, and life since the end of the world has been as amicable as one could expect. I guess that’s one reason I keep a safe distance from Lee. He’s way too much like Zak for me to entirely trust myself there. Oh, I don’t mean he’s like him – they didn’t look all that much alike, and their personalities were total opposites – but the caring is there. Sex with Lee would be more than an act, more than recreation, and that’s why it’s out of the question. I have few enough friends in the world; I won’t risk losing one over a couple of urges that are best ignored. Besides, I couldn’t bear seeing disappointment in the Old Man’s eyes that I had jumped from one of his sons to the other. Even to me it sounds beyond horrible. The Old Man is just too important to me for that; he’s important to all of us.

Which is one reason why I worry about him. He’s lost weight since this mess began, and he never smiles. He carries the responsibility of an entire civilization on his shoulders, and he doesn’t get a day off for anything. I’ve never seen him eat, rarely known him to sleep, and even Lee is worried about how he’s starting to look. It wasn’t the beginning of the war that destroyed him, but rather the day-to-day reality of keeping what’s left of the world on its axis. It’s too much for one man, even with the support of his son; even with the support of us all.

But he did crack a smile, and that was good to see. Then he told me that he’d just watched a miracle. I decided I’d bite, and asked him about it.

“A baby,” he told me, and his voice was almost reverent. “I was in Life Station when a baby was born. Why I wound up staying there isn’t really important, but to see this life come into the world where there wasn’t one before… a life that wouldn’t have existed without…”

“Without you,” I told him. He got busy shaking his head, but I wouldn’t let him deny it. “If you hadn’t gotten us to Ragnar, there wouldn’t have been a fleet, or the Galactica, or that baby. You did that.”

“Anyone would have…”

I had to laugh at that. “Right, and that’s why every other commander got blown out of the sky. At some point you’re going to have to admit that you did a damned good job, and maybe when you do you’ll start getting some rest. You can’t do it all. Hell, now you’re not only commanding the fleet but delivering the babies!”

His smile was worth just about anything. He didn’t look quite so old when he smiled, and there was this flash in his eyes that reminded me so much of Zak that it almost hurt. Almost.

“It reminded me of when the boys were born,” he told me. “Ugly little things, all bloody and screaming. Two of the most wonderful moments of my life.” He smiled again, and this time it looked more wistful. “It’s been a good day,” he said softly. “Babies and coffee. A man can’t ask for much more than that.”

“Coffee,” I said instantly. Of course; that was what I smelled on him. The man had found coffee, and it was totally unfair. “Where is it?” I asked.

He smiled at me. “Not telling.”

All I could do was roll my eyes. I guess he has a right to his secrets. In a way, it was bad enough that I’d cornered him in his office to give him my good news. It was better that he’d had some good news to give me as well. I think he’d had his worries when I cut my hand, but he’s so stoic at those times that you just can’t be sure. He ordered me to get well and get back to work, and frankly from him it didn’t seem sarcastic. He has nearly enough power to command illness and injury. Too bad it’s not enough to counter death.

“I need to prep,” I told him. He didn’t need to hear any more than that; he’d done it too many times on his own.

“Stay away from the seals,” he said as I moved towards the door from his office.

“No shit,” I told him with a grin. And I meant that, too.

This patrol was a short one, and I was opposite Lee rather than Docks. I know that was because he didn’t trust anyone else out with any injured pilot until he’d made sure they were flight worthy. Hell, nine times out of ten he sent me as the lead pilot. But this time I was the checkee instead of the checker; if that’s even a word. I knew he was watching.

Instead of letting it get to me, I took it as some time with a friend. We stayed formal until we had launched and cleared the fleet, but then we weren’t Starbuck and Apollo anymore. It was just Lee and Kara, and the wide-open sky around us.

Two hours. It’s good to know that you’ve got some time to just enjoy being with a friend. And if I have to prove my competence as a pilot, then that’s okay too. I’ve spent more hours in the sims this week than I can count, and I’m ready for whatever Lee throws. In his place I’d do the same thing. My hand will likely be sore when we get back, but it’ll be worth it.

“How’s the hand feel?” he asks. Do I know him or what?

“Just fine. What do you want me to do?”

“Just keep to course,” he said, and that did surprise me. “If you say it’s healed, then it’s healed. If it’s not, I need to know it, though.”

He was taking me at my word. I would have rather fought my way through a test. I flexed the hand, extended the thumb, and then squeezed once more. “I’m fine, Lee,” I told him, and I really was. He knew it, too.

“Good enough. We’re heading straight out, running a passive scan, and coming straight back in. Nothing fancy; no heroics.”

“Look, listen, and return,” I say, unconsciously echoing his words to me, spoken a year before.

“That’s it.”

We fly in silence for more than an hour, but it’s a comfortable one. My hand is actually feeling pretty good, if a little achy. I guess it’ll take a bit longer before I’m ready for long patrols. I can live with that.

I hear the grin in his voice though as he finally speaks. “So, you never did tell me… how was Scalding Winds of Unquenched Desire?”

It takes a moment for the words to register – have meaning. Damn. The book; that stupid romance novel that I borrowed from Doctor Salik. I had only managed a few pages of it on my two-day furlough, but the two weeks cast-time had given me ample opportunity to read it. Twice. It wasn’t something I was ready to discuss in mixed company. “It was… scalding,” I say evasively.

“Cute,” he fires back. “I’m serious, though. You said I could borrow it when you were done.”

“I forgot,” I lie. “I gave it back to the person I’d borrowed it from. Sorry.”

He’s laughing now, and I can feel a blush climbing from my chest to my face. Thank the Lords he’s doing this now and not on the deck. If he’d done it there, I’d have to kill him. “You’ve always had eclectic taste in books,” he tells me, still laughing.

And two can play at this game. “Yeah, well at least I haven’t memorized the Caprican Yoga Manual,” I say.

“You’re the one who told me I needed to relax,” he fires back. He’s not even ruffled. I need heavier guns.

“You say a word about my literature choices, and you’re going to be explaining why I find you standing on your head in your office,” I say, only half threatening. We all have our secrets.

“I wasn’t on my head,” he corrects, but the laughter is more subdued now. “I was on my back. Granted, my legs were in the air, but that’s not the same thing.”

“Your butt was eight inches off the ground!” I remind him.

“The desk is a little high for that exercise,” he tells me. “If I wanted to lock the position at my knees, I had to scoot up.” He’s not laughing now.

Lords, it had been a timeless moment, walking into his office to find his boots facing me, lower legs across the top of his desk, and the rest of him trailing down the side of that desk while he hummed with his hands beneath his head. I did what any red-blooded Caprican girl would do: I tickled him. After all, his sides were the perfect target. I couldn’t resist. He’d curled himself up, his legs had slid, and the two of us had wound up on the floor of his office laughing too hard to get back up. It had been in the first couple of weeks after the war started, and it had been the stress release that we’d both needed so desperately. When the laughter had finally eased, he hauled himself up by the desk and reached down to help me up. I took his hand – warm and solid – and let him tug me up. The thing was, he didn’t let go. He put both arms around me, rested his chin on my shoulder, and he held on so tight that for a minute I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t Lee… hadn’t been at all like him. But I held on too, because I’d needed the touch as much as he had.

I don’t know how long we stood there that way, just squeezing one another like crazy. I do know that I had bruises on my ribs the next day. I’d be willing to bet he had the same. It was worth it, though. Things had been better after that; more hopeful, more purposeful. I knew what I was fighting for, and I think Lee did, too.

In a way, it’s what we’re all fighting for – the commander, Lee, the doctors, and even the deck crews. I know it’s why I get up every morning, even on the days when I’m not going to fly. We just want to live, to be human. We deserve that right. As Lee and I enter back into the space surrounding the fleet, where even our private transmissions aren’t, we drop the discussions of dirty books and relaxation routines. We’re almost back to the Galactica, and my hand is hurting enough that the landing is going to be tricky. I don’t want to screw it up. Things are finally back on an upswing, and I don’t want to mess that up. I pray that Lee doesn’t either.

Chapter 4

Daughters and Sons

“Can we talk?”

If there are three words that should just be taken out of the language, those are them. “Can we talk?” Nothing good ever comes after that. When I heard them from Lee, and looked up to see his expression so serious that I could barely swallow, I knew I was in trouble.

“Sure,” I told him, when I was anything but. Oh Lords, I thought. This is it. Lee had been quiet lately, although no less sweet. He was either going to demand that our relationship move forward – whichever way that was – or tell me that he’d found someone else. I didn’t know which option bothered me more. I want Lee to be happy; don’t get me wrong. I want him to have what he needs. But it’s easy to get used to having his kind of quiet strength behind you, and if he finds someone else then that strength won’t be mine anymore. On the other hand, I’m just not ready for more. I want him near me, and I need him in ways that I really don’t understand, but… I don’t really know what to do about it. I do know that I won’t be pushed. If this talk goes in a direction I can’t deal with, I’m heading for the door. I’m not losing my best friend because he isn’t happy with a good thing.

I follow him into his office, doing my best to ignore the wolf whistles that accompany the action. It doesn’t matter if he has reports in his hand, I’m in full uniform, and the door is wide open; the gossip never ends. The only good thing about it is that it keeps everyone else off my case. You see, it isn’t just Lee that I don’t want to get physically involved with; it’s men in general. It’s not personal. In fact, in Lee’s case it’s in spite of who he is, not because of it. At the very least getting classified as the “CAG’s Girl” has kept the disgusting propositions down to a minimum. Why it is that men think women join the military only to attract a man is completely beyond me.

So I follow Lee into his office and take the chair opposite his desk. I don’t even realize that I’m keeping a physical barrier between us. It’s an unconscious action to keep myself safe, and one that really isn’t necessary with Lee. My head knows that. My body has been cornered too many times. And as I sit there, watching him take time to close the office door and dog the hatch, I realize that this talk is going to be more than I can handle. It just is. So, I do what I do best and go on the offensive.

“Lee, I know what this is about,” I begin. And when I look up I see that he hasn’t gone around the desk to his customary chair, but instead is sitting on the edge of his desk and looking down at me. He’s close; too close.

“You do?” he asks, and there’s a frown on his face, confusion as well.

“Yeah, I know, and this is a discussion I’m not ready to have.”

He sighs at that. “I’m not either,” he admits. “But it’s past time. I have to ask, Kara. This has been… eating at me.” He looks so lost for a moment that I just want to give him whatever it is that he thinks he needs. “You’re the only one who might know the answer.”

“The answer is no,” I say with my eyes squeezed shut. I can’t look at him while I hurt him.

“I understand.”

His answer is so quiet, and so… forlorn. “I’m sorry, Lee,” I tell him quickly. “But… there are things in my past…”

“I know I’ve been an idiot,” he says harshly. It takes me off guard, because Lee so rarely loses control, and I know that when he does it usually goes badly. “I wasted two years, Kara, but I’m really trying. I really am.”

I’m getting confused, and it must show. Two years? Hell, we haven’t been at war that long, much less more. It doesn’t make sense. “What?”

“I know I don’t have the right,” he says, and his voice is calmer, his eyes open. “But I’m his son, and I care about him. If you won’t help, I don’t know where to turn.”

And with those words, I’m floating clueless in an ocean of feeling. What in hell is he talking about? What does it have to do with me? What help does he need? There are so many questions in my mind that I don’t even know where to start. I finally go with the most obvious. “Okay, what the hell are you talking about?”

His head snaps up at that. “You said you knew,” he accuses.

Well, I did. “Humor me,” I suggest. “Because what you’re saying isn’t fitting in the blanks.”

“My dad,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m worried about him. He’s working too hard and sleeping too little. He’s… like a wire that’s stretched too tight, and it’s just a matter of time until he snaps.” Lee takes a deep breath before continuing; I can see how hard this is for him, both admitting he cares and asking me for help. His dad is a sore subject with the two of us, and one that he avoids; we both do, if it comes to that. “And now… there are rumors. He’s having dinner with a woman, and spending time with her. I don’t know her, and when I try to bring it up with him he just changes the subject. I don’t know what she wants, and as awful as it sounds I’m afraid she’s just using him. I mean, he’s the head of the fleet, and some women get off on that kind of power.”

“And it couldn’t be because he’s sweet, and thoughtful, and damned nice.”

“I didn’t say that,” Lee tells me on a sigh. “Kara, I’m not questioning him. I’m questioning her, but I am concerned that he’s so unwilling to talk about it. We’ve been talking lately. Okay, not a lot,” he admits, “but some. And when I bring her up he just… shuts down.”

“Gee, who does that sound like?” I ask, and get the pleasure of watching him blush. He’s the original clam, and he knows it. Getting anything out of him, from information to a hug, is like pulling teeth. But I’m smiling, because I’m so damned relieved that I’d read the situation wrong. Yes, his relationship with his father is a concern; it’s fragile and always in need of tending. But I’d sure as hell rather deal with their relationship than ours.

“Kara, I mean it,” he says softly, and he really is serious. “You know him better than I do. I’m not proud of that, but it’s the truth. He talks to you.”

I nod, because Lee is right. The Old Man and I get along pretty well. He once told me that we shared a soul, and while that sounds pretty stupid on the surface, it’s as close to the truth as I can explain. For us, flight is something more than what we do; it’s who we are, and why we are, and what we need. Because that’s pretty rare, it’s a bond between the two of us, and even though Lee is a pilot, he doesn’t live and breathe flight. He’s good at it, he enjoys it, but he doesn’t need it. The Old Man and I do.

Strangely enough, that’s what got us together in the first place. It was my interest in flight that attracted his attention, and my ability that caused him to act. Hell, that’s a long story, too. But it was the first time that anyone had believed in me for something, and for that I’ll always be grateful. More than grateful; I’m in his debt for life. What’s that old saying about when you save a life you’re responsible for it? Well, I guess that makes him responsible for me, and on a lot of levels.

I never had the “ideal childhood” that every kid is entitled to. I try not to feel sorry for myself, because in retrospect it wasn’t all that bad; it just wasn’t good. My mother died about two weeks after I was born from an infection that the pregnancy had caused. It was one of those things that just didn’t happen, not in a world of modern medicine and miracle cures. But it did, and it left my dad with a baby and more anger and self-pity than he knew what to do with. In his defense, he did his best. He never beat me, and he made sure I had a roof over my head and food to eat. I’ve come to realize that he gave me more than many children ever get, and I try not to resent what I didn’t have.

My dad worked with freighters, and most often military contracts. When I was of age, I joined him on the flight line with small repairs and menial jobs. It wasn’t much, but the income always helped and I swore I wanted to be out of that house as soon as I could. Somewhere along the way, we got moved to the docking facility on Sagitaria while the Penticle was in dock. Commander Adama was a Colonel back then, and he was impressed with a sixteen-year-old kid being able to piece together an assembly without having a manual in front of her. Nobody had ever been impressed with me before. Later I figured out that he was missing his own kids, but at the time I was somewhere between suspicious and flattered. The Penticle was an old ship, and in for long-term repairs. While in dock, the Old Man made it a point to come down to the deck and say hello, quiz me on stuff, and make sure that I knew what the hell I was doing. When we tested out the Penticle in her first space run, he asked if I wanted to come along. I’d never been in the air, so I took him up on the offer.

He must have seen something in my eyes then, or my actions, or something. Lords, I still remember that day, and watching the ground fall away and the stars come so close I could almost touch them. The flight went fairly well, but we didn’t have all the bugs out. So we all went back to work to get her ready for a year or so in space. Colonel Adama was always around, supervising everyone who worked on his ship. That’s how he thought of her – as his ship; not the Colonial Fleets, not the Military’s and not a piece of Service property. She was his. So he stuck close to be sure we didn’t do anything wrong, and one day he asked me if I’d ever thought about flying. I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt. Sure, I’d been impressed with my first taste of it, but that was a far cry from having the grades or the backing to get into flight school. I told him as much, and he suggested the military. Frankly, that was only slightly less likely. The Academy was selective; I wasn’t on their A-list. He badgered me into admitting that if I had the chance, sure I’d go. Who the hell wouldn’t?

Two weeks later, the letter came. I’d been offered a full scholarship to the Colonial Service Academy on Caprica. I couldn’t wait to tell my dad; finally, I’d done something right! He asked me if I had to sleep with Adama to get the sponsorship. That was the last time I saw my dad. I took the ticket that had come in the letter, boarded the next flight for Caprica with eight cubits in my pocket, and I didn’t look back. I suppose my dad’s dead now. I don’t think about it much. Hell, once I got to the Academy there wasn’t much time for thinking. I got slammed into so many basic courses that I couldn’t see straight; I had a lot of catching up to do, especially in math and science. That meant a double workload, weekend classes, and not having time to breathe. It was tough, but it kept me busy. The Old Man checked up on me once every couple of months, usually with a letter or call. He said he’d seen something in me that he’d been missing a long time in himself; I didn’t understand that, but I took what I could get. He was straight with me, and not only didn’t ask for anything but wouldn’t accept anything offered. I tried to pay him back for the books and supplies that the scholarship hadn’t covered and yet had miraculously appeared in my dorm room, but he wouldn’t accept anything. He didn’t deny that he’d sent them, but he wouldn’t take payment.

The brief contacts we had in that first year was how he found out about the roommates from hell. I was shocked as hell when he offered to stick his son in a room with me. Lee started at the Academy a year after I did, having gone to War College first as a prep. Lee still jokes me about that – his starting later, and my ranking below him. We joke about a lot. It always surprised me that Lee didn’t hold his dad’s support against me. I was afraid at first that Lee would resent his father taking time for a pathetic kid like me, but Lee shrugged it off. He said his mom would have done the same if she’d had the chance; that’s just how they were. I’d be willing to bet they took in stray animals as well, although I rarely saw more than a couple of cats around their house.

When I started dating Zak, I went from the category of apprentice – or something like that – to daughter. It was that easy. He never cared that I wasn’t from a great family or that I didn’t have a single thing of my own. I was family, and for some reason I have been ever since. After we lost Zak, he offered me a position on the Galactica, because he knew I had no heart for teaching any longer. I didn’t trust myself, or my judgment, and he just wanted me to be happy. I don’t think I’d understood before then that the sole purpose of families was to take care of one another, but I learned that lesson well. I won’t forget it.

So yeah, the Old Man and I are closer in a lot of ways than he is with Lee. But Lee has things I could never dream of; a stable family background is something you can’t overrate in this world, and a little brother would have been really, really cool. Lee doesn’t hassle me about the few advantages I got from his dad, and I don’t hassle him about the hard time he gave his father after Zak died. Well, I don’t anymore. For the longest time I did – mostly out of guilt – but once we all came clean we let it lie. It didn’t fix his relationship with his father, though. They’d destroyed a lot of bridges with harsh words and accusations that went both ways. Forgiveness came hard to both of them, but it did come. And gradually, over time, they started showing one another that they care for each other.

And that was what I was hearing. Lee cared about his dad – was worried about him – and being so out of touch, he had absolutely no clue how to tell him that. Lee’s never been big on articulating feelings. He has them, probably deeper and truer than anyone I’ve ever known, but they aren’t at the surface. His dad is the same way. Me, I have feelings too, but most of them are fairly guarded. People don’t need to know what I’m thinking unless it involves personal injury… most often theirs. Lee knows how I feel, or he should. Hell, who knows what a man knows? But he’d come to me, and he’d asked for help, and that meant something. I knew what a step it was for him. It wasn’t just jumping over a lake; it was swimming an ocean. Forget building bridges, the man was building ships!

“He would talk to you, too,” I say to Lee. His face falls, and I know he doesn’t believe me. “Lee, he loves you. He really does, although Lords know why.” That brings a small smile. “Talk to him.”

“I told you,” he reminds me. “I tried that.”

“So talk to the woman,” I say, and that is totally out of the blue. “If he won’t be straight with you, feel out the woman. See if she’s legit, or if she’s just after something. You’re a good judge of character; you’ll be able to tell.”

Lee’s laugh is sarcastic. “Right. ‘Excuse me, are you trying to seduce my father or are you in love with him?’ That would go over great.”

I laugh at his expression. “How about something more along the lines of, ‘Are you friends, or something more?’ It’s a legitimate question, and you have a vested interest.”

“And when she goes running back to Dad and tells him I’m meddling?”

I shake my head. Why the hell doesn’t he listen? “Your dad loves you,” I remind him. Again. “He’d probably be flattered that you cared enough to ask.”

“I don’t know,” he says on a sigh, and he looks so tired for a moment that I don’t know what to think. “If he was hassling me about my love life, I guess I’d be pretty pissed. Kara, I lost a lot of rights when I turned on him after Zak died. I don’t know if it’s my place to interfere. He’d probably be furious.”

“I don’t think so,” I say as I stand and take a step towards him. It doesn’t even occur to me that I’m doing just what I was afraid he would when that damned hatch closed. I put my hand on his cheek and look up into blue eyes that absolutely sparkle, even when he’s sad, or worried, or tired. “He knows you care, Lee. You try to hide it, and you think you manage it, but he knows. He’s your dad, and it is your place to care, regardless of what came before or what might come after. He won’t fault you for it. Lords know I don’t, and if you can get past me with those baby-blues, then blood relations don’t have a chance.”

His eyes close for a moment, and when they open back I see crinkling at the edges that prove the smile on his lips is from the heart. It makes me feel warm inside, just knowing that I caused it. Lee doesn’t smile nearly enough, and when he does it’s devastating. “How did we get along for so many years without you?” he asks. “You’re like… Adama family glue.”

I laugh at that, and plant a kiss on his mouth just because. He’s such a clown when he stops trying to be an ass. It doesn’t occur to me what I’m doing until it’s done, and when it does I’m not sure what to do about it. Lee takes it out of my hands when he leans forward and kisses me back. It’s not aggressive – Lee isn’t aggressive – but it scares the shit out of me anyway. I back up so fast that my shoulders slam the wall behind me and I lose my footing to land in the chair I’d been using. Lee looks stunned. I feel that way. Some situations just don’t have a graceful exit, and that’s how life is.

“Kara,” he begins.

“No!” I don’t realize how harsh it sounds until his face falls completely. “No,” I say again, more softly this time. “Lee, I don’t want anything to change,” I explain quickly. “You’re my best friend, and I won’t mess with that. Please don’t make me lose you.”

He watches me a moment, and I see the startled look fade into pure disappointment. “Fair enough,” he says softly, so gently that it’s almost like a touch. “But you can’t lose me, Kara. One way or another we’re always going to be stuck with each other.”

“How do you figure that?” I ask, and wonder why my throat hurts so damned much, and it’s hard to breathe.

“Because some things are just certain,” he tells me. “Some friendships are meant. This one is. There have been too many things to happen just the right way for me to belief it’s coincidence. We’re meant to be friends, at least, and maybe more. I don’t even know. But you won’t lose me.”

The pain in my throat isn’t going away. It hurts to swallow, and my eyes are burning, and I just want to get out of there. “Talk to your dad,” I tell him, and stand to get the hatch open.

The wheel is tight, and my graceful exit goes out the window. I’m still yanking on the frakking wheel when Lee steps up behind me, gives my shoulders a gentle squeeze, and reaches around to twist the wheel in the opposite direction to disengage the latch. “Inside the room it’s right to open,” he reminds me, one of those quirks of living on a Battlestar.

I nod quickly and push outward to get some air. I don’t even worry that someone might be watching me exit, or see that he’s so close behind me. All I know is that my throat is splitting apart and I have something in my eyes and if I don’t get out of there I’m going to lose it. Thankfully, I don’t see anyone in quarters, and I head straight for the door into the hallway. From there I walk quickly towards the flight deck, and nobody that I pass is brave enough, or stupid enough, to stop me for conversation or questions. By the time I make it to the deck and through the corridor leading to the launch bays, I’m feeling just a little calmer. This bay is deserted, so I lean against a wall and let myself slide down to the floor. With my forehead on my knees, I rest and try not to think. It takes me a while, but I’m finally successful. My throat stops hurting, my breathing is easier, and my heart slows from a gallop to a trot.

I’m not sure what kind of a mess I just got myself out of… or into… but I know that something’s changed. I also know that I can’t go back, and that scares me more than anything else.

Chapter 5

Parental Reality

Parents are not supposed to get sick, or hurt, or have real lives. It’s one of those incontrovertible facts that kids just believe. Parents are ageless, and immortal, and perfect. That’s how it’s supposed to be.

Hell, I’ve known since I was old enough to remember that parents weren’t perfect, or at least mine wasn’t. That was okay, though. For some reason I’ve always been able to manage on my own. I’m not sure if it’s luck, or skill, or even stupidity, but I’ve never had trouble separating parental expectation from reality. I didn’t understand where the blind spot could be until I saw what a real parent was.

I guess you could say that the Old Man is as close to a father as I’ve really had, even though I spent sixteen years with the man who contributed genetically to my existence and raised me. They say that having a kid doesn’t make you a parent, and the man was living proof of that. I don’t hold it against him – not really. He never asked to raise a kid on his own, and he sure never asked to raise a girl. Given the circumstances, I guess he did okay. I mean, I learned a lot hanging around where he worked because it was cheaper for him than getting a babysitter, and it was enough to get me started on the job. If I hadn’t been working in repairs, I wouldn’t have met the Old Man. If I hadn’t met the Old Man, I probably wouldn’t have survived at all. So, when it comes around to it, having a crappy father was a pretty good thing for me.

But when I think of parents, I think of William Adama. He’d find that funny, because he thinks he’s a failure as a dad. He doesn’t see things objectively; neither do I. But he’s the one I think of as immortal, as ageless and indestructible. Maybe that’s why it hurts so much when we find out that injuries happen, even to parents, even at work, and even where you think you’re the safest.

CIC is probably the safest place on the Galactica. As it’s where our officers conduct battles and our commands come from, it has to be. It has its own set of locking doors, its own guards, and its own filtration system. That was what went wrong. Somehow we had a seal bust – seals will be my undoing – and release a toxic gas into the CIC ventilation system. They found it pretty quick, and stopped it, but those few officers who refused to evacuate wound up getting a face full and lung full of the stuff. Needless to say, William Adama does not leave his command post.

But he’s not as indestructible as I believed. The gas did something to his eyes, and even though Cassie tells me that he’ll be fine, I don’t think I’ll believe it until he’s looking me in the eye again. One other thing I found out along the way was that the woman Lee has been so worried about – the woman who has been spending time with him and eating meals with him – is none other than our very own Chief Medical Officer. Who would have thought?

I wasn’t kidding when I told Lee that his dad was more than just a “good catch”. Still, I have my own suspicions about the woman who likes to push on bloody thumbs and never bothers to check up on patients after surgery. Well yeah, I hear she was busy, and she certainly sent Doctor Sands in enough times, but from what I hear it was her who did the surgery, so shouldn’t she be the one checking up on patients? Who knows how that medical stuff works? But she’s apparently set her sights for the Commander, and I’m not quite sure why.

On the other hand, I can’t think of anyone who would have less reason to use the Old Man. Kylen Salik has quite enough responsibility and pull on this ship; she doesn’t need the Commander’s approval for much. She also ranks nearly as high, commands quite a few people herself, and in general doesn’t have a lot to gain outside of what he has to offer as a man. That’s reassuring, but I still plan to check it out on my own. I’ve asked Lee more than once if he’s had a chance to talk to her, and he’s giving me vague answers at best. Hell, it was all I could do to get a name. I’ve made it quite a point to completely ignore scuttlebutt around here, and after a few convincing punches the majority of the pilots know not to gossip around me – especially about me, Lee, or the Commander. I still hear it, yes, but they’re a little less overt. I guess that’s something.

But regardless of whatever is happening between him and the CMO, the Old Man has a bandage over both eyes and looks absolutely miserable when I show up after shift. He’s been sitting here all day, although I know that Tigh and Lieutenant Gaeta have been in and out to let him know what’s going on and ask for advice; they can’t run this ship without him.

“Slacking again, I see.” I try to be casual after he calls out in response to my knock at the door. It’s just this side of a yell, and not a happy one. I haven’t seen him this pissed since the beginning of the war. He’s positively furious, and I think I know why.

“You could say that,” he mutters, and his voice is bitter. I can relate.

“No fun being stuck in a bed while this ship flies on without you, is it?” I can remember it myself; I still have the scar down my right hand to prove it.

His voice softens a little, but the bitterness remains. “How’s it going on the deck?” he asks. “Lee was in before his shift, but I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Same old, same old,” I tell him, taking a seat at the foot of the bed. Damn, he looks almost fragile there. A thought crosses my mind that the doctor may have been wrong, that this may be permanent, and it sickens me. The Old Man doesn’t belong in a bed, whatever I call him; he deserves to move faster than light. He always has. “Lee probably didn’t report because there’s nothing to say. Patrols are out, nothing’s reported, and maintenance is on schedule.”

“Great.” He doesn’t sound happy about it.

“So, are you glad that the world is moving on, or annoyed that we can manage a day without you?” I think this is why he’s so damned mad. It’s hard to realize that you might be expendable. He’s not, of course, but he’s probably feeling that way.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I’m reassured that Colonel Tigh is managing everything as well as I could.”

“Right,” I scoff. “That would last until the first time things got tough, then he’d be wasted in his room or worse yet, wasted and in CIC. You know he’s not cut out for this.”

“Drop it,” he says firmly, and I have to grit my teeth to do it. “I don’t let my friends chop away at one another. I won’t let him do it to you, and I won’t listen to it about him. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Sir,” I tell him automatically. I don’t have a choice. There’s as much command in his voice now as there was when he was dictating actions in CIC the last time we had a problem. You can’t say no to him; it isn’t possible. “But I…” I have to think a moment; there must be a way to phrase this without making him angry. “I don’t understand why you’re so… loyal to him. I mean, I know you’re old friends, but his record alone…”

“Is less colorful than yours,” he reminds me. Oh, yeah. But while I got put in the brig occasionally for drunk and disorderly conduct, it was all when I was pretty much a kid. A few good hangovers were enough to prove to me that it just wasn’t worth it. Well, that and more than one long lecture from Lee on short lives and long prison terms.

“I’ve been behaving myself,” I add quickly. After all, I deserve some credit for keeping my hands off Tigh and my opinions – mostly – to myself.

“So has he,” the Old Man tells me. “Kara, everyone deserves a chance to change. Give him that.”

I won’t argue with him; I respect him far too much. But I don’t agree with him either. Deciding this is one subject on which we will have to agree to disagree, I change the subject. “So, it seems quiet here. Any visitors today, besides half of CIC?”

He actually smiles. “Not many,” he admits. “I haven’t been in the… best of moods.”

I give a laugh, and he joins in. I wish I could see his eyes. He’s a lot like Lee that way; he can fool you about how he’s feeling, until you look him in the eye. Lee can’t keep a secret from me worth a damn, and it’s because his eyes give him away every time. It’s what has me so nervous around him lately. There’s something in his eyes that I can’t peg, don’t recognize. I think I know what it’s about, and I’m just not sure if I agree with it. Things are okay with us; why does he have to mess with that? I don’t realize that my laughter has stopped until I hear the Old Man’s voice.

“What’s bothering you?”

I shake my head, and then remember he can’t see me. “Just gnawing on stuff,” I admit. There’s purely no point in lying to him – he reads minds. “Things and people, and why things have to change. Everything would be so much better if we could reach some kind of equilibrium and just stay there. All the constant… adjusting… it wears me out.”

“Change can be for the better,” he suggests. I’m not sure I like where this is going, but at the very least he doesn’t seem so beaten now.

“It usually isn’t.”

“You would prefer to go back to the mess we were in just after the colonies were destroyed?” he asks. I know it’s rhetorical, but I answer anyway.

“That’s not equilibrium, it’s chaos. I just… Every time I think I’ve got a handle on things, someone changes the rules.”

“Like the old Cancerion proverb, when you learn all of life’s answers then life changes the questions.”

“Exactly,” I admit. “And I don’t like floundering around without the answers.”

“None of us do,” he says softly. His hand moves slightly, but aimlessly. I scoot a little closer and reach for his hand. I’m not usually a very tactile person, but I can imagine how isolating it is not to be able to see. Maybe he just needed to know someone was there. Or maybe I needed him to know. He’s done so much for me – more than he’ll ever realize – and it hurts to just sit there when he’s miserable and hope he’ll be okay. I know he will, because he has to be, but as much as I want to be certain there’s that kernel of reality that keeps trying to grow. Life is crappy sometimes; that’s just how it is.

He squeezes my hand tightly, almost painfully but not quite. “I’m glad you came by,” he says. “But there must be things you’d rather be doing than sitting here with an old man.”

“I can’t think of one,” I tell him. It’s not exactly true, but in a way it is. I don’t mind sitting with him, but I feel like it’s so worthless. I’m not even a relative, really.

“I can think of several,” he says, patting my hand and then releasing it. “Have you eaten? Did you take time to run, or work out, or even change out of your uniform?”

I shrug. I never realized just how much I normally rely on nonverbal communication – he can’t see a shrug, or a head shake, or a wink, or a smile. Lords, what must that be like?

“Kara, I really appreciate you coming. You know I do… but please go away.”

I’m stunned for a minute, and if I’m honest just a little bit hurt. “If that’s what you want,” I tell him. He’s already let my hand go, so I stand up and back away from the bed. Okay, it stung more than a little. Would he have kicked Lee out? Where in hell did that thought come from?

“It’s not that I don’t want you here,” he says. “But I need to take care of some things, and I don’t want you to watch me walking into walls.”

“If you need something,” I begin, but I don’t get any further.

“I have submitted to a day with my eyes covered,” he says firmly. “I have lain here and listened to the dullest music known to man because it’s supposed to relax me. I’ve eaten the food that was brought in even though it was the exact opposite of what I would have chosen myself, and I have tolerated having my ship run by other men. But damn it, I am not going to let you walk me to the bathroom! Leave a man some dignity.”

His voice was somewhere between frustrated and amused, and I wasn’t sure just how much of the tirade was real and how much was just to get me out of there. I managed not to laugh just in case he hadn’t meant it to be funny, but the image of him bopping into furniture like a ball on a pinball table was almost too much. I finally settle on something that is a compromise, at least to me. “Here,” I tell him as I press a small com unit into his hand. “I have one, and Lee has the other. Press the button and you’ll have both of us on the run. The next time someone brings you food you don’t like, we’ll beat him up.”

He’s still for a moment, and then laughing. It sounds pretty good. “Get out, Starbuck,” he says, but this time it’s pure amusement in his tone.

“Yes, Sir,” I reply, and wish he could see that I was smiling. He’ll be okay.

As I walk down the corridor, tucking the com unit into my pocket, I realize that it’s true. He will be okay, and it has nothing to do with his eyes. Even if they didn’t get better – which is unlikely – he’d still get through it. There are some people that life just can’t hold down, and he’s one of them. It’s nice to know that there are some constants in life, even if it is rather disconcerting to know that parents need to use the bathroom, too.

Chapter 6

Medical Opinions

I have to admit that some of my doubts about Doctor Salik were put to rest when the Old Man’s bandages came off and his vision was back to normal. I already knew she was pretty good with a needle and thread – aside from a thin red line, I have no scar on my hand, and as deep as the cut was that’s saying something – but a few stitches and restoring sight are two different things. Okay, so Cassie tells me that it was Mark who actually treated him; apparently the good Doctor didn’t get far away. She was also seen exiting his room very, very late so I have to wonder if she did check up on him even though she never checked up on me. Strictly a medical concern, after all. Or maybe hot. Hell, I know there are rumors about her staying in the Commander’s quarters overnight, but for once my reputation is preventing information instead of getting it for me. Everyone’s so damned afraid that I’ll smack them if I hear a word against the Old Man that they clam up whenever I’m close, and the one person who talks to me – Lee – sure isn’t talking!

Okay, so the doc and I don’t have the best of histories. Our last doc was content to leave me the hell alone, and that was great. He said Flight Physical, I said “no”, and that was that. He didn’t want to push it any more than I wanted to have it. So I kept clear of the needles and uncomfortable questions, as well as that damned annual female torture session. Leave it to a female doc to be sure I don’t get away with that anymore. But still, if she had wanted me to have the frakking physical, she could have just talked to me. Granted, she scheduled me a few times, but hell, so did the last doc. He didn’t have a problem with no-shows.

She did. She revoked my flight status, which in my opinion is akin to chopping off a limb. I truly wanted to kill her, and probably would have if Ripper hadn’t stopped me. Hell, I might have still done it, but the Old Man just stood there and watched, and I knew – just knew – that he would back her. Now I wonder if there was something between them even back then. So I consented to the damned physical, which proved what I’d said all along. I’m as healthy as they come. I don’t get sick; never have. I guess you can chalk it up to some serious gambler’s luck. Heaven knows I’ve got enough of that. She didn’t care; she wanted me examined anyway. She was just as firm after one of my more colorful landings a few weeks back. I knew I was fine, but when Mark said I needed an exam, she backed him. I swear they stick together like glue in that Life Station.

Still, I did find out something from that little run-in – a couple of things, really. First, crossing Salik isn’t an easy thing to manage. The woman has serious pull on this ship, and she’ll use it when she chooses. Second, I learned that some doctors can be really gentle. By that, I’m referring to Doctor Sands. He’s a nice guy, and I’ve since come to know him more as Cassie’s boyfriend than anything else – which is awkward in its own way – but at the time I just saw a man with huge hands, evil looking equipment, and I was wearing entirely too few clothes for comfort. Damned hospital gowns! But even though he’s probably the… well, the largest doctor to give me that particular examination, he was one of the few that didn’t hurt me in the process. He told dumb jokes, ran his hands under warm water before he started, and let me know what he was doing and when. I learned that there are good doctors out there; I didn’t learn whether or not Doctor Salik was one of them.

I say the situation has been a little awkward because a few times Lee and I have gotten together with Cassie and Mark for dinner or a game in the rec room. The first time, just about when I figured out who he was, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Cassie came after me, and I wound up explaining how he had given me that exam. It’s hard to look a guy in the eye after he’s looked at you… well, there. She actually laughed at me. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but it was to the effect of everything being old news after doing it long enough. I decided to do what he’d obviously done – and try to forget it – and we all wound up being pretty good friends. I never did tell Lee why I’d made my hasty exit, but I get the feeling he knows. He’s like his dad; he knows everything.

I did quiz Mark about the good doctor, although I tried to be casual. I don’t think I accomplished it, because he had this dumb grin on his face during most of our conversation. For someone who can win at Pyramid without a thought, I really can’t get much past the people I hang with. It’s frustrating as hell. Anyway, Mark informed me that Kylen Salik is a great surgeon, a wonderful boss, and a terrific person in general. He has her nominated for sainthood in at least three of the Colonies. No one is that good. But he does respect her, and I respect him. The same can be said for the Old Man. He respects her, so I’ll do my best. On the other hand, he also has respect for Paul Tigh, so his judgment isn’t foolproof. He has his blind spots; I’m glad that I’m one of them.

Finally, after a couple of months of sneaking around and trying to glean information from everyone except the source, I took the Commander’s advice and plopped myself down next to the doc and started talking. Truthfully, I cornered her in the mess hall. What I hadn’t expected was that outside the Life Station, when she isn’t screaming orders or causing pain, she’s a pretty nice person. Yes, there is something between her and William Adama, but even she doesn’t know what. More than friendship, and less than anything else. I know that feeling to a tee; it describes Lee and I perfectly. But where she might like more and the Old Man is holding back, with Lee and I it’s the opposite. I just… can’t feel comfortable with what he wants, or what I think he wants. I’m not even sure, because I’m too damned scared to ask. That’s a laugh; the Almighty Starbuck is afraid to talk to her best friend. But some things are too important to screw up.

But back to the doc. She really did seem nice. I don’t mean fake, plastic nice. I mean real, honest, watch-your-back kind of nice. She was straight with me, or she seemed it. And frankly, she looks as confused as I feel. I have no clue why it’s so much easier to tell her what to do in her place than it is to listen to her advice, which is nearly the same. Maybe it’s because the Old Man told me to talk with her, that she was a good person, and that I wasn’t giving her a chance. Maybe it was the way she opened up and shared that all of her relationships with men haven’t been stellar. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because it was frakking nice to have a woman to talk to. I have Cassie of course, and once in a while Sharon and I get together, but everything for them seems so simple. Not the relationships – they each have issues ranging from rank to position – but they know what they want and are basically in agreement with their partners. I wish I could say the same.

After my talk with Kylen – she actually asked me to call her Kylen, and it isn’t nearly as uncomfortable as I thought it would be – Lee and the Old Man showed up. That made for a fun end to the meal. Lee and his dad are damned good company, and we laughed a lot that night. There wasn’t any tension between Kylen and the Old Man as far as I could see, but I believe her when she says that she’s not sure where it’s going. I didn’t feel as much tension between Lee and I either, but then there usually isn’t any unless we’re alone, and even then I get the feeling that he isn’t noticing it. The only time I really noticed him looking… uncomfortable, was the one time that I kissed him, and instead of laughing and moving on he kissed me back. I still don’t know what possessed me to do that. Likely, I never will. But Lee doesn’t have a problem with things moving along; that’s just me.

And half the time I think it’s all in my imagination anyway, because he’s so damned casual around anyone else. Sharon says she doesn’t see anything out of line, and Cassie says the same, but he’s not the same with them as he is around me. When we’re alone together, he’ll talk my ear off about just about everything, and he seems so damned uncertain part of the time about everything from work, to his dad, to his skills as a pilot. In public he’s quiet to the point of being stoic, and he never shows any doubt about anything. I guess you could say that in public he’s just like his dad, and in private he’s a lot more like his mom. In private, he’s a lot more like Zak. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

He isn’t Zak, and frankly I wouldn’t want him to be. He doesn’t have that constant sense of humor that makes a joke out of things that really shouldn’t be, or that reckless sense of fun that always kept me on the edge. It wasn’t that I disliked those aspects of Zak – they’re part of what attracted me to him – but I’ve grown up a lot, and the world sure as hell has changed a lot since I needed those things in my life. Now Lee’s solid presence is a lot more reassuring. I’ll take my bad jokes from Mark any day; when I need support, I need Lee’s confidence. I think he needs me, too.

That was one of the things that Kylen said that struck me so hard. First she said that Lee has been an influence on me – which I already knew. But then she said that I had been an influence on him, that he was more comfortable around me, and that my support made the CAG position easier. I hadn’t really thought about it before. Lee was just born to lead; it’s always been that way. He’s too much like his dad to follow. It didn’t occur to me that he was young for it, or that he hadn’t been adequately prepared, or that he might be worried about it. Lee was just Lee, and he should be the leader. That was all; and that was wrong. I hadn’t seen it until it was pointed out, but I really hadn’t given him very much support at all. Sure, I was there to listen when he’d had a bad day, and I helped him with names and faces as he learned the squad, but that was about all. I could have done a lot more, and yet I hadn’t even thought I needed to.

Now that I think about it, Lee has been more than a little stressed lately. It’s been more than the difficulties with planes and pilots, or getting his relationship with his father back on line. He has been worried about work, and he’s said a hundred little things that I should have picked up on. I feel pretty stupid, actually. What is it they say about missing the shouting because you’re listening for a whisper? I guess that’s what I’ve been doing. I figured if he needed me, than he’d ask. Well, he’s been asking in about a hundred subtle ways, and none of them registered until Kylen made that remark.

About a week ago, I made the remark to Lee that the rotation seemed to be going well. He just shrugged it off, and I took it to mean that he knew what I was saying. Maybe he doesn’t agree? Maybe that was insecurity rather than a casual disregard. Again, the new perspective makes a difference. Lee’s never been casual about anything in his life, so he wouldn’t start now. I don’t know what I was thinking. Something similar happened just a couple nights ago. I stuck my head in his office – a little cubbyhole that he rarely comes out of when he’s not flying, eating, or reporting – to see if he needed anything. His quick reply was a smile and the statement, “Just another CAG.” I stuck my tongue out and walked off. Hell, he probably did need some help.

Ripper was forever bitching about the mountain of paperwork that his job entailed, and he was in a peacetime position. Lee’s not. I mean, just because the job is meant for him, that doesn’t mean it’ll come naturally or anything. It’s a big job for anyone. It’s way more than I wanted to deal with, and Lee knows it. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t asked for help. Scratch that. Lee doesn’t ask for help; he never has, and probably never will. His friends just have to know when he’s over his head. I guess right now that’s me.

With more than a little guilt nagging me, I change my current route from the gym to the main pilots’ quarters. Sure enough, when I get through quarters and back to his office, he’s perched at his little desk with a small stack of work neatly piled before him, a pen in one hand, and a look of disgust on his face. “That bad?” I ask.

“Pretty much,” he mutters, making a notation on the form and then staring at it again.

“Whatcha doin?”

He looked up in relative surprise, and I feel about an inch tall. I was right; I wasn’t doing much for him at all. “Next week’s roster,” he said, looking back at the paper with a frown. “I thought I had it, but Valerii is sick, and I don’t want her flying for at least a week. I was going to put in Hudgins, but he’s already on six shifts, and Billings is on seven. I guess I could move Carpings over…” He looked over the work, sighed, and shook his head. “Nope, he’s on six, too. Somehow I have to cover twenty-four shifts with three pilots, and not give anyone over six. You wanna tell me how to do that?” he asks in frustration.

“Last I checked, it’s not a mathematical possibility. Even at twenty-one, they’re going to have to pull seven, so it looks like this week they’ll have to pull eight.”

“Frak,” he mutters, closing tired eyes and rubbing them. “They hate me enough without having a good reason. No one can fly every day; they shouldn’t have to.”

I peek over his shoulder at the schedule. “How are we with Viper pilots?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Next week, thirty-eight scheduled patrols and nine pilots.”

I remember back to good old fifth grade math. “That’s five patrols, six tops.”

He nods absently.

“How many of those pilots are dual qualified for Raptors?”

He shuffles around on his desk, grabs a folder, and looks it over. “Only two,” he says. “And you’re one of them.”

“Okay, let’s rethink,” I say, my mind shuffling numbers. “If we move me over, that gives you four and eight. That’ll even out the Raptor roster with six flights each, and only increase the Viper patrols to…”

“Five max,” he says, catching on. “I’ll have to redistribute here…” His voice trails off and then he reaches down to grab the current Raptor roster and wad it into a ball. “Back to the drawing board,” he says with a half-hearted grin. “It’ll be easier to go from scratch than to try to cross stuff out.”

“Wait,” I recommend. “What if you move…” I peek over his shoulder to see the book he’d looked in. Anders, I see. Oh yeah, I’d forgotten Anders was qualified for Raptors. “Anders too,” I continue. “That’ll give you five and seven. It would bring the Raptor patrols down to four or five, and only increase Vipers to five, with three patrols left over. Put either me or Anders back for those…” I shift some numbers in my head again, “Exactly three shifts there, too. Everyone gets five, no exceptions. Can’t get more equitable than that.”

He shakes his head and then looks back around at me. “You’re forgetting something,” he says. “If I put Anders back in a Raptor, he’ll kill me. You know how pilots feel about Raptors; once they qualify for Vipers, going back is an insult.”

“We do what we have to for the fleet,” I tell him with a glare. He’s right, though. I’m not thrilled about flying a Raptor either. “Split it with three to me, and two to him. We play up how great it is that he qualifies on both and can do this for us, make a big deal of it to the squad how he’s really showing his loyalty and all that crap, and we should get by with it at least until Valerii is back. Hell, you may have a couple other pilots willing to go back and get current on Raptors. It wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway,” I say thoughtfully. “There’s so damned few of us, we have to be flexible. Besides, if I can give up a Viper, they have no place to complain.”

“Point taken,” he says, pulling out a couple of sheets of paper and setting them side-by-side. “Now I just have to get it in writing. Again.”

And that’ll take him half the night, I realize. “Here,” I say, grabbing one sheet and the book with pilots listed and pulling the only other chair in his office closer to the desk to sit in; even I can’t remember everyone at once. “I’ll do Raptors and you can do Vipers. That way if anyone has a problem with it, they can deal with me. Trust me, they won’t. I hit.”

He smiles, and the expression on his face is both grateful and… relieved. That doesn’t make sense to me. He’s a bright boy; he would have come to it on his own. “You would have thought of it,” I tell him softly.

He shook his head. “I’m too tired to think at all,” he admits. Then, rubbing his face again, he leaves his head resting in his hands for a minute. “Lords, I’m just tired of all of it,” he mutters. “I pray we never go back into actual engagements, because I’d never be able to keep that straight.”

And there it is, the self-doubt and the worry. It’s as bad now as it was when he was fighting with final exams and had no confidence in the fact that he’d studied more than any three people at the Academy put together. Anything less than perfect was always unacceptable to him, and that kind of self-imposed pressure is exhausting after a while. So I do now what I did then, although it doesn’t feel quite as natural. “Here,” I say, standing up and moving behind him. Instead of talking, or reasoning, I go straight for feeling. Putting my hands on his shoulders, I gently start a simple backrub. Nothing fancy, but just something that will feel good and maybe relax him. He leans back into me with a moan and I have to smile. The man’s back is one solid knot – always has been – and he’ll tighten back up the second I stop, but for the moment he’s enjoying.

And in all honesty, I am too. It isn’t so much how the backrub feels to me – my hands are cramping after only a couple of minutes – but when his head falls back and I see his eyes closed in relaxation instead of fatigue and pure frustration, it eases something inside of me. He shouldn’t have had to carry this alone. All that stuff I said about loyalty to the squad applies to me as well, and that’s outside the cockpit as well as in. A burden shared is a burden halved, or something like that. If we split this – if he’ll let me help – then the job will be far more manageable.

He’s almost asleep by the time my hands are too knotted to do more and still be able to hold a pen so that I can help with scheduling. “Okay, enough of that,” I tell him with a grin. “Now get to work.”

He gives me a smile that’s priceless. “Thanks, Kara,” he says softly.

“You could have done it on your own,” I tell him. “But you shouldn’t have to. You fly as much as the rest of us; you can use a break.”

Just the fact that he doesn’t argue tells me how tired he is. I sit down beside him and start dividing the sheet with lines, the way he does. Together we fill in times and names, the night passing quickly. From there we move on to fuel reports, juggling numbers there as well to be sure that flights are covered, and then pilot ratings and uniform management. It’s only a couple of hours until his shift when I finally get him to stop so that he can get some sleep, and even then it’s with the threat that I won’t leave the work until he does. I make him promise, knowing he won’t lie to me, and leave him to get some much-needed sleep.

As I settle into my own bunk, I’m tired, but my mind is racing. I have to wonder how long he’s been fighting with paperwork this way, and whether or not he would have ever asked for help or just silently suffered it out. Truthfully, I don’t have to wonder. He isn’t one to complain. For such a smart man, he can really be an idiot when he puts his mind to it. Most men can. I guess that’s why there are women around to keep them out of trouble.

Chapter 7

Conversation and Sacrifice

Sometimes, an easier life is as simple as listening to a friend. That’s what I did. I listened to Kylen, and life got a whole lot easier… or more complicated. I suppose it depends on how you look at things. I consider it simpler. Ground rules make everything simpler.

It started with Lee and I, and dinner, and one more subtle hint that he might want more than a friend. Given my usual resources, I would have ignored it, but Kylen’s advice was stuck in the back of my head. Talk to him. It sounded so simple, but it seemed impossible.

Dinner had been nice – really nice – and I’ll admit that I was more relaxed than usual. One thing I can say for Raptor flight is that it doesn’t sap you the way a Viper does. It isn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination, but neither does it leave you feeling like a limp noodle after eight hours in the pilot’s seat. So I was feeling better than normal, and Lee and I had the dining hall pretty much to ourselves, and we’d had the chance to just catch up and reminisce, and otherwise say a whole lot that meant very little. As a relatively undemanding pastime, it was really… nice.

I was just laughing at something he’d said, something silly and useless, when he tossed a napkin on his plate and smiled. “This place is going to be a mess in a few minutes,” he said with a glance at the clock. “If you want to continue this we can go back to my room.”

I just sit there, staring. It has to be one of the oldest, dumbest, lamest lines in the book. I can barely believe that Lee tossed it out, until I look at those blue eyes and realize that it wasn’t a line. Lee doesn’t dance around subjects, not usually. He means what he says, even though he doesn’t always say what he means. “If you want,” I finally answer, but the time-lag hasn’t gone unnoticed.

He sighs deeply and sits back in his chair to look at me. “You don’t have to,” he reminds me.

“I like talking to you,” I tell him honestly. “And it’s been a nice night.”

“It has.”

“So maybe it’s worth the extra ribbing to finish the conversation.”

He looks at me for a moment longer, then looks down. “They giving you a hard time?” he asks.

“They know better.” He’s asking about the squad. Hell, he doesn’t even have to tell me who he’s talking about. It’s the truth. When I say that I hit, I mean that I hit hard.

His head cocks sideways at that, just watching, and then he nods as though he’s decided something. Maybe he has. He stands up first, leading the way to the trash receptacles and recycling units. We dispose of our trays and leave the hall without a word. But it isn’t our usual companionable silence. It’s tense… nervous. I don’t like it, or trust it. The problem is, I can’t do anything about it. So I just follow like a daggit pup, and when we make it to quarters there’s thankfully no one around that’s awake to give me a hard time or encourage the physical outlet I’d just love to have as a tension breaker. I really, really want to hit something. Not Lee; that’s the odd part. Just… something.

Once we’re in his room he gestures to the chair before taking a seat on his cot. “What gives?”

Gee, that’s blunt. A guy could let me catch my breath. But Lee never has danced around anything, and that’s why I’m here. He’s just given me the perfect opening to tell him the truth and clear this whole limbo thing up. It’s a chance to get all the subtle hints and gentle ignorance out in the open and just deal with it. It should be so easy; this is Lee, after all. Only it’s not easy. I like him, and I care about him, and that makes it damned near impossible. “Why do I get the feeling that our discussion of Academy antics is over?” I ask to buy some time.

“Kara, I’m sick of this,” he says softly. “I don’t know what to say around you anymore. Part of the time things are like they always have been, and the rest of the time you’re backing away. What in hell am I doing wrong?”

Well, that puts it right out there now, doesn’t it. “I guess… I don’t know what you expect,” I finally tell him as the long silence following his words grows to deafening proportions. “Everything used to be so easy. We were friends, and that was all either of us wanted. Now… I don’t know what you want. Sometimes I think you want more than… well, more anyway. I don’t know what to do with that. What do you want?”

Blue eyes widen in surprise, and I realize that he hadn’t expected an answer. He probably thought I’d run again, or deny it. I wish I could, but Kylen was right. This isn’t going to go away by itself. I watch as he stands up, walks to the far wall of the office, turns to walk back, and then turns again to repeat the action. Pacing in a seven-foot room is amusing to watch, but not terribly practical. I sit there, tucking my hands under my legs to keep them from fidgeting. I hate being nervous, but I hate not knowing even more. He finally stops, sits back down, and faces me for a minute. At least he’s looking me in the eye now, and that helps. “That’s a loaded question, Kara,” he points out. “Are you sure you want the answer?”

Hell no. “I’m sure that I’m sick of not knowing, or being sure, or whatever. I’d rather know the truth.”

He watches me a moment, and this time I look away. “I wouldn’t mind being closer,” he finally says. “But you know I’d never do anything you weren’t ready for. I feel like you expect me to… rape you in a hallway or something.”

That brings my eyes back up to his. “I never said I didn’t trust you,” I tell him quickly.

“You didn’t have to.”

Shit, this really isn’t going well. “Lee… I guess I’m just afraid that you want things to change, and that if they don’t you won’t be there anymore. And no,” I tell him before he can cut in with a denial or explanation, “I don’t think you’d stop being my friend just because I won’t sleep with you. I know you better than that. I just don’t want things so… strained between us that we can’t talk, or be alone together, or ask for a hug when we need it. I don’t want to lose what we have just because I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

And that shuts him up. For the first time in more years than I can remember, I have no clue what he’s thinking as he looks at me. “I’ve told you that we’ll always be friends,” he says, but his voice is monotone. “Why can’t you trust that?”

This time it’s me who can’t stay still. “Because it isn’t true,” I tell him in frustration, up on my feet and looking down at him before I walk past and focus my attention on the wall. “Every guy I’ve ever known has had an ego, and when you live around guys you know a hell of a lot. Even the sweet ones don’t do well with rejection, and if that’s a stereotype than fine, because it’s true and I know it applies to you, too. And even if you get used to my saying ‘no’, you aren’t going to stop at that. You might not press me, but you’ll look for it… somewhere else. And if you find it, then…”

“Then things change,” he says softly.

I stare at the comfort of gray metal and do my best to get rid of the knot in my throat. Gray really is a sick color. “You deserve to be happy,” I tell him, “but that doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to you going to someone else first when you’ve had a shitty day, or that I’d like to see you dating someone instead of hanging with me in the gym. I’m sorry. I know it’s awful, and selfish. I know it, but…”

“But it’s how you feel,” he concludes.

I don’t turn around; I can’t. If I look at him now I’ll lose it, and as close as we are I don’t want him to see that. I guess I don’t want him to see just how much this hurts. No one ever said that honesty was easy. “I’m sorry,” I tell him again, and it sounds so pathetic.

Hands on my shoulders surprise me, because I’m so caught up in the intricacies of welded gray metal that I didn’t hear him stand. “I’m not going to go anywhere,” he tells me, his head resting on one of my shoulders and his cheek next to mine as he moves his hands down to my waist. “Kara, did it ever occur to you that this is why I keep… bringing it up? I don’t want to be with anyone else. I like being around someone who knows how screwed up I am and likes me anyway, and who can understand when I’m more worried about the balance of my Viper than what’s for dinner. I need to be around someone who knows how hard what I do is, and who helps rather than complaining about how much time it takes. And maybe I need someone… who reminds me that the world wasn’t always a mess, and that once upon a time everything was okay. Do you really think I’d give that up just to get another woman into bed?”

I shake my head, and I really wish he’d let go… and not. “It’s selfish,” I tell him again. “I don’t… but I’m not ready for you to…” Hell, I can’t even complete a coherent sentence.

“Maybe it would be selfish if I was interested in someone else,” he says thoughtfully. “But even so, you can’t change how you feel. Not too long ago the world flew apart, and I know that everyone doesn’t get over that at the same rate. We don’t really get over it at all, but eventually – if we’re lucky – we learn to move past it. I know for the first months I was… shut down. I didn’t think about anything but flying, reporting, and staying sane in the process. It’s just really been the last few months where I’ve felt… human. Maybe you’re just not there yet.”

“I may not get there,” I tell him. I don’t want to hurt him, but I need to be honest. “Lee, I haven’t felt anything like that since Zak. I haven’t wanted to.”

“That’s fair,” he says, and it really surprises me. I expected at least a flinch at his brother’s name, but it’s not there. I guess we all come to peace with things eventually. “But what we feel can change. If you change your mind, let me know. And if I change mine, then I’ll do the same. I’m not going to tell you that I’ll wait forever and die old and alone, but right now I don’t have any interest in anyone else. Believe me, I’ve looked around… and maybe I want to hold out for the best.”

I nod and attempt to smile at the joke, but I feel worse instead of better. It’s not fair to him; I know that, but I can’t change how I feel. It would be easier if he was angry. A good yelling at might help me get over the nagging feeling of dishonesty that lingers as he backs up slightly and moves his hands back up to my shoulders. The really screwed up part is that I miss having him close. What kind of confused is that? I take all this time and trouble to tell him to back off – risk a perfectly good friendship in the process – and I don’t even really know what I feel. Hell, the man is better off without me; I wish he’d see that.

“So,” he says with a gentle squeeze, “we were talking about Carson at the Academy. Do you really think that he and Beck were a couple?”

He’s backed away, moved to his bed, and is now sitting with his back against the wall and his legs crossed in front of him on the cot. “I know they were,” I tell him. “I caught Becky and him in the… um…” I trail off remembering that particular experience, and not entirely sure I want to go into it given the discussion we’ve just had. But he’s giving me an out – a return to our days of camaraderie and useless antics. I won’t throw that back in his face.

“What? Where?”

“The shower room,” I tell him with my cheeks heating at the memory. I don’t embarrass easily, and I didn’t even then, but walking in to find a friend and her boyfriend without a stitch of clothing and actively engaged in… procreation… had been more than I was prepared for. “The position they were in didn’t leave a lot of doubt as to what was happening. Or a lot of anatomy to the imagination, now that I remember it.”

Lee laughed at that, resting back against the wall. I was still standing there, although I was feeling dumber by the minute. Lee seemed to have already forgotten the serious discussion; I wished I could. “Who would have thought?” he said, and when I finally got the nerve to turn around he was smiling as though the discussion had never taken place. “You know, Beck swore up, down, and sideways that she’d never get within twenty yards of a pilot.”

“Well, life is short,” I joked as I took my seat.

“Hers was,” he said, and his smile was gone. Mine followed. Beck had been on the Atlantia during the initial attacks, and she hadn’t been among the few pilots who had survived.

“She went out doing what she loved,” I remind him. “Carson, too.” He had been on the Pegasus.

“There’s no one left,” he says, and gives me a half-hearted smile. “Sorry, this discussion started out fun and then it went morbid.”

“Life is like that,” I say with a wink, making a joke where there isn’t one because it’s true, but also because it nudges Lee’s smile towards something real. He’s got a nice smile – full of fun and mischief when he thinks no one is watching. He could sure get into a load of crap a while back when given the chance. I think most of his misadventures were spent trying to get Zak out of one situation or another, but he had an adventurous streak once upon a time. I haven’t seen it in a lot of years, though. Somewhere in all the classes and responsibilities, Lee got more serious and less fun. After I moved in with Zak, what little goofing off he had done seemed to grind to a halt in favor of studying. He was still there for us, and we would hang out a lot, but Lee just seemed to focus in on things more strongly once I was out of his hair. I really wish I could remember more of it, but I was young and in love and really not paying attention. I could have been a better friend then; I hope that I’m a better friend now.

*~*~*

Things seemed a little better after that. Well, on the surface they did anyway. I still felt more than a little guilty because Lee did want more, and that was made worse by his constantly accommodating attitude. There were times in that week when I just wanted him to get mad, to hall off and hit me, or to scream and yell and throw things. I wasn’t being fair to him, and I knew that. It seemed like a bad joke that he wasn’t willing to acknowledge it. Looking back, I’m not sure if I wanted him to be angry for his benefit or for mine. It’s a lot easier to forgive yourself when someone else hasn’t.

So life was still in an awkward limbo for about a week. The only thing I really was looking forward to was that Lee had scheduled the two of us on a patrol together. It was a rare treat, because he normally went out with rookies and had me do the same. It was the only way to keep a veteran pilot in the air at least most of the time. But we were passing by an area that was dense with asteroids, and Lee didn’t want to risk one of the kids going into a panic because they didn’t know how to dodge or negotiate two thrusters at once. So he scheduled his two best pilots – he and I – to the task of checking the quadrant. It was actually a relief to know there was something more exciting coming up than flying into the dark and then back again. It was also nice to know I was going to be flying with a pro, if for no other reason than it gave me someone to talk to. The rooks were too damned busy with the basics to say a word, even if they hadn’t been scared to death of me.

When the day of the flight arrived, I was psyched. It was exactly what I wanted to do, and truth be told it was with exactly the person I wanted to spend time with. Lee and I still had this tension between us, and a little old-fashioned work on familiar terms seemed like the easiest way to get past it and back on the track of being friends. For Lee to be late to a pre-flight was unheard of, but for him to be late for this one was unthinkable. So when he was fifteen minutes late, I headed to quarters to razz him about not being able to read a clock. What I found there surprised even me.

First I need to say this – Lee handles stress at least as well as anyone I’ve ever known. He’s strong, capable, and more than efficient. But the bottom line is that everyone has a limit, and apparently the late nights and early mornings full of work, more work, and yet more work had finally caught up with him. He was upright, but that was about all. I knew from the lights being out in his room that something was off, and when the light from quarters spilling through the doorway triggered a moan, I knew we were in trouble. Lee missed work only when he was physically too ill to drag himself there, and right now that’s exactly what he was.

I closed the door quickly, cutting out the light from quarters, and then went to his side. He was sitting on the floor with his back to the cot, as though he’d gotten up and couldn’t get back. I couldn’t see his face just then in the near absence of light, but I’d seen enough earlier when I’d opened the door. His skin was white, his expression pained, and it looked like he’d gotten sick more than once. “Let me call Life Station?” I asked softly. He jumped at even those quiet words; sound split his head as badly as light when he was like this.

“No,” he said simply. “It’ll pass. Take Higgens on the patrol.”

I wasn’t sure which worried me more; that he wasn’t willing to take care of himself, or that he felt crappy enough to miss a flight we’d both been looking forward to. I knew that what felt worse than anything to me was knowing that he thought I’d be willing to leave him there that way. I never had before; I didn’t intend to now.

Thankfully he was in no mood to argue. I reached up and grabbed the sheet from his bed, using it to clean up the worst of the mess he’d made. He jerked back when I wiped him off with it as well – at least as well as I could in the dark – but it had to be done. If he wouldn’t let me call the docs, he was going to be stuck with me. At least I knew what he was like during one of these spells.

The first time I’d seen him deal with one had been about three months after he’d moved in with me at the Academy. I woke up one morning, pulled the curtain back to check the weather for my morning run, and the groan behind me had been horrible. Lee had been almost gray, his skin glistening with sweat, and his body shaking as he had tried to squeeze his eyelids just a little tighter together. “Lee?” I asked him.

He had flinched at his name and his body had trembled visibly, almost as though he was freezing. The room was a little warm if anything, so I knew that wasn’t it. I had walked over to check for a temperature when he got sick that first time. It surprised the hell out of me, but I’ve always been quick on the uptake. He had his head hanging over the side of the bed, so I grabbed a towel that was thrown over the couch and managed to keep most of it in a contained location. Then I went to grab a bowl from our limited kitchen supplies so that I’d be ready if it happened again. Finally, I wet a washcloth to clean his face up. The cold water really set him off, and he acted like I’d taken a shovel to his head or something. I guess it was then that I recognized the headache. I’d heard about them – everyone had – but I hadn’t seen one before then. Frankly I’d thought it was a crock that weak women came up with to get out of doing something and that nothing could hurt that much. I learned differently that morning.

If there’s a good side to Lee’s headaches, it’s that they pass quickly. Unfortunately, what they lack in duration they make up for in intensity. That first morning, I had been afraid to leave him so I called the infirmary for help. At the time, all I could think of was that he was going to die and the Old Man wouldn’t want anything to do with me. Lee and I were still on shaky terms at that point, and were until a couple of months after that morning. The tech came from the infirmary and gave him a shot of something as though she did this every day. She may as well have. It knocked him out, but it didn’t keep him from getting sick. I wound up sitting there with him for all of that day and most of the night before his color returned to normal and he stopped guarding himself as though everything hurt. Later, I would realize that I’d done exactly the wrong thing several times over. Calling for help without asking, cold water, touching him at all… none of those things had endeared me to him. But I think the worst part was that I’d seen him at his lowest, and he couldn’t deal with that. As I’ve said before, guys have a lot of pride, and I’d stepped all over his.

We didn’t talk about that until about three months later, after his second one. That time I’d pretty much stayed close, but stayed out of it. It had been an evening rather than a morning, and while I cleaned up the mess I didn’t mess with him. I kept the lights off, didn’t make a sound, and as the morning sun came up I taped a blanket over our window to keep the light out. It passed just as quickly without the shot, and I realized then why he didn’t want it. He didn’t think it did enough for him to justify the embarrassment of having a tech in his room when he was so sick. But this time when he got better, I didn’t let him drop it. I cornered him point blank and asked him what I needed to know about the headaches, what I needed to do when he had one, and why in hell he was having them.

His answers were reluctant at best, but I got them. And even though it was over six months before he had the next one, I remembered what to do and what not to do. I helped as much as I could by keeping sensation to a minimum and cleaning up the inevitable mess. I also learned to keep a ginger-based tea on hand, which he could sometimes get down with a straw. It settled his stomach a little, and if I could get it into him between the time when the pain started and the vomiting started, then we didn’t have a mess to deal with afterwards. In time, he came to realize that I didn’t hold the headaches against him. They weren’t his fault, there was nothing he could do about them, and that was all there was to it. We were good enough friends by that point that he trusted me with it. For him, it was a big step.

So this morning, I knew what I was dealing with. He didn’t want a doc, and I could respect that for the moment. It was too late to stop him from getting sick, so this time we would just have to ride it out. It wouldn’t seem odd to me until later that I never considered leaving him. I’d been looking forward to that frakking patrol for a week, and without a thought I tucked a pillow under his head and slipped out to call CIC and asked them to task Higgens and Taylor with it so that I could stay with Lee. I went through the Old Man because I didn’t want it spread around that Lee was sick. He’d made it this far without anyone finding out about the headaches, and there didn’t seem to be a reason to spread it around. After the roster was settled, I slipped back into his room with clean sheets and clean clothes, and cleaned up before I settled in next to him to wait. I wasn’t sure when it had started, so I didn’t know how long it would be.

It turned out to be a long one, at least relatively speaking. It almost went on long enough that I called Life Station regardless, but just as I was making the decision to do it he relaxed a little and was able to get back up into bed and sleep the rest of it off. That was always my cue – the moment when he uncurled his body and let out the breath that he invariably held through the pain. I was finally able to check my watch for the time, and realized that we’d missed a full day, and then some. It was a little after noon. It explained why I was half-starved. When I got up and brought the light level up in the room, he didn’t even flinch. He was well and truly out, and probably would be for ten or twelve hours. The headaches were exhausting. I cleaned up the room a little better, took out the soiled sheets, and made sure the blanket over him was clean as I slipped out to get some food. There were a dozen messages on my bed from the Old Man, asking me to call when I could. I got on the comm, let him know Lee was okay, and drug myself down to the mess hall for lunch. A few people gave me curious looks, but no one was stupid enough to ask why I’d spent a day and a half in the CAG’s room.

Now I’ve eaten, showered, and changed clothes. I’ve been out of his room for almost an hour, and that’s about my limit when he’s been this sick. I grab a couple of blankets and slip back in, careful to keep the light to a minimum just in case. But he’s still out, in the same position he was in when I left him. I arrange my blankets on the floor and grab one of his pillows, and I settle in for some much needed rest. Not surprisingly, I’m down for the count, too. Much later, as I wake, I open my eyes and find myself looking into his from across the room. It doesn’t surprise me. “Hey,” I say quietly.

“Hey.” His voice is soft, and hoarse from both illness and disuse. “You got the fallout, huh?”

“How do you feel?” I ask, sidestepping the question as well as possible.

“How do you think?”

I smile at that. “Like crap?”

“Got it,” he mumbles. “How long this time?”

I give him a shrug. “I caught about eighteen hours of it, but you were quite a ways in when I showed up. I really wish you’d call when those damned things hit.”

“I don’t get time,” he mutters. “One minute I’m fine, the next I see stars, and then I’m on the floor. After that, doing anything isn’t an option.”

I’ve sat up now, brushing hair back from my face with my fingers and moving over closer to him. “Life really isn’t fair,” I tell him. We both already know that. “At least they only hit when you’re asleep, or close to it. Otherwise, they’d pull you out of the cockpit. Hell, as it is you’re going to be grounded for a week.” I reach forward and brush his hair back from his face. He’s still a little pale, but that’s probably lack of food more than anything. “You think you can eat?” I ask. Sometimes it takes him a while.

“I can try,” he admits, and gingerly attempts to sit up. I’m there, holding one arm and watching intently. I hate what these things do to him. Then he turns his head and faces me. “How was the patrol?” he asks. “Damn, I’m sorry I missed that.”

The moment of truth; he’s going to kill me. “You’ll have to ask Higgens,” I tell him. “I didn’t go.”

He watches me for a moment, a frown coming to his features. I realize that I’m holding my breath against the reaction, but I can’t help it. I defied an order and changed his roster, sending two pilots that may not have been qualified to do my job. I deserve a good yelling-at.

Surprisingly, he reaches over and places a hand on my neck, pulling me closer to kiss my cheek. “Thanks for staying,” he says simply.

I give him a shrug. “That’s what friends do.”

All he does is nod, but I know we’ve reached an agreement of sorts and things will be okay. “They do,” he finally says.

Then I smile, give a kiss on the cheek to match the one he’s given me, and leave him to get himself dressed. I’ve got at least a dozen things that I should have already done, and I need to get started if it’s going to happen. Lee understands, and he won’t hold it against me. Friends are like that.

And he’s my best friend.

Chapter 8

Strange Bedfellows

When I saw the stars around me, and could almost touch the silence, I knew that finally I was going to stay sane. Before then, I hadn’t really been sure. It wasn’t that I consider going crazy an option, but one too many things had happened in one too few days, and even the overwork of an extra patrol was a welcome diversion. Imagine that; Starbuck wanted to work.

Hey, that’s not to say I’m lazy. In fact, Lee has called me a classic type A all tied up in a type C façade. He’s not all that far off. Sure, I play it easy, but when things need to get done I just want them done. Lately, a hell of a lot needed to get done, and there weren’t many of us to do it. The only saving grace was that I was one of the few that was able to get anything done. The rest of the pilots… well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I guess the biggest mess started about a month ago. I still don’t understand what it was all about, but the bottom line is that everyone started getting sick. It didn’t seem like much – sniffles and vomiting and the usual crap – but when you’re crammed this close together and nobody is exactly in top form, something small can get to be a major deal. It turned out that we didn’t have any kind of immunity to this… whatever it was. So what started as a few pilots being a little sick turned into a lot of pilots being horribly sick. We lost more than a few along the way.

It’s weird, you know, the way that losing a few now hurts so much more than losing everyone did when the war started. I guess it all just blended into one solid pain, and was so wrapped up in shock that it didn’t register until we were too busy to deal with it. Lee says that it’s the little things that always dig deeper. Lee says a hell of a lot, lately. He and I, and about ten others, are all that remain of fleet defense.

Lee and I. Frak, now there’s a mess if ever there was one. I had determined very firmly that the two of us were friends, would always be friends, and that was how it was. Even when he started… I don’t know, sort of hinting that he might want more… even then, I knew that he would always be more brother than anything else. But seeing the world come apart this time has changed that as well. Well, that and a kiss that went in a direction I really wasn’t ready for. No, I’m not ready to hop into bed with Lee, but I’m not sure what I am ready for.

I’m not sure of much at all, except the stars around me and the power of the Viper as I make my one-eighty to head back to the fleet. This quadrant is clear, thank the Lords. I don’t think we could stand one more problem just now. I don’t think I could stand there and tell the Old Man that one more thing had gone wrong. Frankly, he looks bad enough without my making things worse. It’s sad.

I’m pretty sure that he and Doctor Salik had something going up until a while ago, and maybe even more than Kylen had let on. I haven’t gotten any information out of Lee, but then we’ve had other things on our minds. In any case, they seemed to care about one another. Hell, maybe they still do. I’ve been too busy to try to figure any of it out. The short little doctor isn’t all that bad, actually. Yeah, she’s a pain in the ass about flight physicals, and more than once I’ve wanted her disemboweled, but she makes the Old Man smile, and I can’t argue with that. I’m just grateful for it.

Lately both of them look too tired for much of anything. I was down in Life Station yesterday to see Davis. He was one of the first to go down, and he’s been one of the sickest. They’ve had him on life support for two weeks, and things aren’t looking all that good for him. I try to check in anyway, just on the off chance that he hears me or something. Yeah, it’s corny, but he’s been there for me since my first day on the Galactica. Granted he was more of a pain than a friend, but the war changed a lot of things. So I put up with the stupid procedures, including the gowns and gloves and masks. I stay behind that damned plexiglass wall, and my voice gets piped through to him. I tell him how things are going, and that I’m tired of his slacking. He just lies there and breathes. Maybe he hears me; maybe not. I just know that if it was me down there, I wouldn’t want to be forgotten. Maybe he can’t hear me; maybe he’ll wake up and tell us one way or the other.

I got a glimpse of the good doctor when I was changing, and she looks like death warmed over. Cassie doesn’t look much better, or the other doctor – the one she’s been dating – Mark Sands. Everyone’s so damned tired. Lee and I are pulling double shifts, and most of the other pilots are too, but it’s a fine line. We don’t want to get tired enough that we wind up sick. That wouldn’t do any of us any good. So we force ourselves to eat, sleep every chance we get, and take the vitamin and protein supplements that the doc has ordered. I don’t consider it even a bother anymore; it’s a duty. The fleet has to have someone in the cockpit.

Landing is automatic as I bring the Viper in. It isn’t like the old days, when a hands-on approach was a big deal. In fact, it’s as habitual as the auto-landings used to be. At this point, we don’t know anything else. So I land the Viper, go through the post-flight, and breathe a sigh of relief when Cally takes that damned helmet off. I’m covered in sweat, feeling generally miserable, and if I were a little less tired I might just feel like hitting someone just to break up the monotony.

And that’s when I see them. Blue eyes. Those frakking blue eyes that have followed me since the war began. It’s weird when I think of it. Lee’s eyes have always been the same color, but I never really noticed them at the academy. Maybe because I was too lost in brown ones to pay attention. I’ll never know. But now it’s blue, and they’re as tired as my own.

“Anything?” he asks.

I shake my head. Talking seems like too much of an effort. His nod tells me that he feels the same way.

“Get a shower,” he tells me. “Then you can crash in my room if you want. It might be quieter than general quarters.”

I nod again, and give a weak smile. It’s the most I can manage in grateful acceptance. There aren’t many of us left in quarters, but during the simulated daylight hours it’s damned noisy with folks traipsing in and out. Lee’s office is tucked back into a corner, and he had a cot put in there so that he could bail when he needed to. When we’re on opposite shifts, he usually shares. I consider it one of the perks of having the CAG as my best friend. The rest of the crew considers it something else, but that’s their problem. Usually. Thankfully I don’t have to deal with any of them on my way to his room.

The water feels good as I clean myself off. I’m even grateful for the astringent smell of chemically based soap, which keeps down bacteria and serves as both shampoo and body wash. It’s a far cry from the rose-scented bath oil that the Old Man gave me for my birthday, but that’s been gone for a long time. It went the way of real coffee and vegetables with crunch. Now we have coffee substitute, overcooked veggies, and all-purpose soap. Life goes on, and you have to stay clean.

I dry off my short hair, leaving it sticking up all over, and towel off so that my underwear won’t stick. That’s about the extent of my energy at the moment. Sure enough, quarters is loud and the lights are on, so I slip back to Lee’s office and punch in the code. I hear a couple of half-hearted wolf whistles, but I’ve learned to ignore it. Let the children think what they want; I need some sleep. Once in his room, I use his comb to get my hair into some kind of order, and tug at the tightly made covers of his bed. Damn, he’s the only man I know who can still bounce cubits on his bedspread. The rest of us stopped that nonsense when we left the academy. Most days, I don’t even bother to make my own; I’m just going to sleep in it again, so what’s the point?

I think I’m asleep before my head hits the pillow, and when I surface it’s to the odd feeling of warmth along my back and warm weight across my waist. Now, it’s been a long time, but I know the feel of having a man in bed with me, and this is it. Period. I know who I’m going to see before I roll over and lean up on one elbow. The clock says it’s morning, so I’ve been out for twelve hours. There’s no telling how long Lee has been here.

My first instinct, of course, is to kill him. He’s the one who said it was going to be my speed and he’s the one who said that was okay. Offering me his bed, and then joining me there, seems to violate everything I believe about him. Fortunately before I start punching, I do assess the situation and there are three things which save his sorry life. First, there are several layers of bedclothes between us. He isn’t beneath the covers, but on top of them. That leads me to the second factor, his state of dress, which is pretty substantial. He has his flight suit unzipped and the top half off, but that’s about it. One foot still has a boot as well; not his usual pajamas, I’m sure. Finally, there’s his face. What had been blue shadows were now black, bruised hollows. He’s way past tired, and frankly past exhaustion. He didn’t plan this. Hell, he probably never realized I was in the bed, even after sending me here.

He looks awful, and I wonder for a moment if he’s gotten sick with the rest of them. Lords, I hope not; this is one man I can’t manage without, and I don’t mean that emotionally – although that’s a factor as well. Without him, that would bring our number of operating pilots down to eight – this from the normal twenty-two it takes to fill the rotations and give us any time off at all. We can make it on sixteen with reduced quadrant coverage, and somehow Lee has wiggled it down to ten by assigning double-shifts and reducing everything to bare essentials. At nine, things have been insane, and that’s probably why he looks this way. With eight, we’re sitting ducks. There is no way in hell that eight birds can protect the Galactica, much less the civilian fleet.

I place a hand on his forehead, and am relieved when he is warm but by no means hot. He’s not sick; just tired. I wonder absently if he’s eaten anything at all, and decide that he likely hasn’t. I know I’ve missed more than one meal since the illness has crashed down on us. I’m cautious as I wiggle my way out of bed, trying not to wake him, but it’s not easy. Just as I think I’ve actually managed it, his arm tightens on my waist and he pulls me closer to him with an absent grunt. Great; Lee’s decided to pick now to become a cuddler. I decide to move down instead of across, hoping that I can get under his arm that way, but I run into blankets so tightly tucked that I literally can’t get my feet out, not with his weight and mine holding down the mattress. The problem is actually just as bad on the wall side of the bunk, but I hadn’t noticed it until now. I take a moment to think, looking at my options. The first is waking him up, but looking at his tired expression which is haggard even in sleep, and knowing that he’s pulled the last three shifts – two in the air and one in control – I just don’t have the heart for it. The second option is up and over, so to speak. If I can wiggle my way up and out of the covers, I should be able to get out at the head of the bed. That will mean a head-first drop, but I’ve fallen worse and survived it. Despite my usually creative mind, I simply can’t come up with a third. The fall has it.

So I shimmy my way up – or I try to. Frankly, it doesn’t go very well. I make it about six inches, and then the arm which had slightly released my waist catches my hips firmly and tugs me back towards him. Tight. If I weren’t so desperate – and if I’m honest, embarrassed – then this might be funny. As it is, I just want to get out of there. This whole mess goes on for another fifteen minutes. I wiggle, and he moves closer. I edge back, he moves forward. I tug away, and he pulls me back into his body. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was doing this on purpose, but I know how he sleeps. Once he’s out, he’s out. A bomb wouldn’t likely wake him, so even if I break down and start shaking shoulders and calling his name, chances are I’m not going to get anywhere.

I close my eyes and try to remember the schedule. Lee was on right after me – a six-hour patrol around the fleet. After that Bear was going to take a run, and then Ivings. Lee was next scheduled… in about eighteen hours. As I remember, I was scheduled the shift before his, which gives me about twelve. The bottom line is that I really don’t have anyplace that I have to be, and the warmth he’s generating combined with my own fruitless exertions have reminded me how tired I am. I’ve only been out about six hours myself, and I could use some more sleep. I would feel better with an alarm set, but if I’m late for pre-flight I know that Tyrol will call me. Or rather, he’ll call quarters. Truthfully, any pilot in there knows exactly where I am. Lee and I have been close by necessity since this damned epidemic started; any feelings we had for one another haven’t been hidden. There didn’t seem to be a point. They still razz me about it, but it’s a good-humored sort of kidding now.

Sad that it takes death and illness for people to accept someone, but that’s just what has happened. Crisis brings out the best and worst in others, and we’ve seen a little of both. Mostly, we’ve seen the best. The squad has been flying around the clock, doing all they can do. Lee’s been pulling far more than his share of shifts, and they respect that as they respect little else. Granted, he did the same thing at the beginning of the war, but everyone was too tied up in the tragedy to notice. Now they see how he’s working for them, and for this squad. He defends them to the point of exhausting himself, taking extra shifts so they can sleep. I worry about him, but it’s tough to change his mind once he’s made it up.

Warmth is surrounding and pervading me as I try to sort out what I have to get done in my mind. Everything gets muddled, and before I know it I’m drifting off. I surface a couple more times, each one surprised that I’m snuggled into Lee’s arms like I belong there, but I try not to read too much into it. I wish I could believe myself.

The last time I wake up it’s to blue eyes and an intent expression. I have to wonder how long he’s been awake and watching me, but I don’t have the courage to ask. Maybe I don’t want to know the answer. My first thought is to come up with a joke to ease this, or maybe a smart-ass remark that would get me a smile, but for some reason I can’t do it. Maybe it’s his expression, so serious. Maybe it’s the way he’s not moving, just holding me gently. In any case, I lose the opportunity to say something, do something to make light of it, and the moment becomes serious. Too serious. Friends don’t look at one another this way, and suddenly it occurs to me that Lee has seen it all along. Just because I don’t like change, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Just because I want to see him as a friend, it doesn’t mean that I don’t see him as more.

He has one palm cradling his head as he props there on an elbow, and the way he’s looking down at me makes me shiver. Lords, he’s so close. I want to tell him to back off, and I don’t. As much as this scares me, I can’t admit that it’s all his fault. I could have gotten out of the frakking bed if I’d really wanted to, but I’d found every excuse possible to stay in his arms. Why? That was the billion-cubit question.

Blue eyes were locked to mine and they came closer. I didn’t even think of moving as he gently kissed me, chastely, carefully. He made me feel almost fragile, like I might shatter if I moved too quickly. He made me want to be, just so he’d need to protect me. How stupid is that? I’ve always hated damsels in distress, and now I’m hoping for a shining knight. The funny thing is that Lee doesn’t disappoint. When I don’t move away from the kiss, it deepens. Before long I’m in over my head, and I know it, but like getting out of bed I can think of a thousand excuses to stay right here. None of them will wash, but maybe no one will notice. Maybe I can just feel, just for a while.

I let him kiss me, and somewhere along the way I start kissing him back. It isn’t hot and heavy; we keep the blankets between us, and his one roaming hand never leaves my face. My arms stay tucked beneath covers, carefully off of him. I feel him tracing my hairline, my cheek, around my ear, and then back again. He positions my chin slightly, deepens the kiss again, and then sighs as he backs off. He watches me for a moment, and my mind races for something to say that will be right – that will fix this – that will cement this. I don’t get anywhere before his head descends again, lips easing over mind, tongue playing around my lips. It surprises me a little, and I take in a quick breath. He doesn’t miss the opportunity to slip in, to show me things I haven’t thought of in longer than I can remember; things I’ve never thought of. Lords, he can kiss. It’s more than thorough, it’s more than meticulous. It’s… perfect. It’s like he knows what I’m feeling, and what I need, a long time before I do. Again, his hand doesn’t roam, but it doesn’t have to. I’m not going anywhere.

By the time he finishes, I’m out of breath and he’s the same. I can feel some distinct changes in his body, despite three blankets and our clothing, but that may be imagination – or wishful thinking. When I finally get my eyes back open to meet his, they’re closed. The disappointment surprises me. I guess I’ve gotten used to those blue eyes. I look forward to them. Still, he’s no less devastating without them. “What just happened?” I whisper softly. I’m not sure if I plan for him to hear it or not.

“Something… nice,” he answers.

“Unexpected,” I add.

“Not really,” he admits. Then, his eyes open and with a sigh, “Kara, I’m not sorry.”

Truthfully, neither am I. “And this puts us…?”

“No idea,” he admits as he rests his forehead on mine. “But I liked it.”

I smile at that. When he fires up the dimples, it’s easy to forget that the world is falling apart around us, that I never wanted this, and that change is almost always a bad thing. “What time is it?” I ask. I can’t see the clock for his chest in front of me.

He looks at his watch before answering. “You’ve got three hours until shift,” he tells me. It doesn’t surprise me that he knew my reason for asking beyond the obvious question. Lately time has been determined based on how long we’ve been off and how long until we’re on; there’s never more than eight hours between the two. The only reason the two of us got this extended rest time – eighteen hours straight for the both of us – was that we’d pulled triples and were barely conscious by the time it was over. Briefly, I consider blaming this on the shifts – on being too tired to think logically – but I’m too honest for that. Lee deserves more than that. I allowed this because I don’t know what I feel, and my heart can slide either direction. His is already fixed, so it makes sense that mine should be the one to change. I’m not sure yet how I like that, but it’s the truth. Some things change without us knowing, and it’s damned hard to go back. Sometimes things change for the better, and those times you just have to be grateful.

“I need to get up,” I say reluctantly. “I have to shower, eat, check the plane, and go over…”

“I know,” he cuts in. “You don’t need an excuse to leave.”

Had I been so obvious? I guess I was. Carefully I wiggle one arm up from between us and gently trace the line between smooth skin and razor stubble. It’s been more than a day since he’s taken time to shave; the feeling is intriguing. “I guess I need some time,” I admit. “I’m not… This isn’t what I’d planned. I’m not complaining, but it’s going to take some time for me to get it straight in my head.”

He covers my hand with his own, grasps it, and kisses it gently. Did I say something about knights? Okay, so every woman loves to be treasured, and I fall into that category as well. I don’t feel feminine very often, and that’s okay. It takes more than lace and bows to fly a Viper, and I would never trade that. It takes more than frill to survive a war, and that’s something I need to do. Most women can’t manage in a world of men the way that I have, and part of the reason is that in many ways I’ve become one of the guys. It’s important that the squad see me that way, but it’s just as important that not everyone does. I can trust Lee to see me as a woman. Hell, he started doing it before I did.

“So, can I get up?” I ask, and I try for a smile. It’s not a casual one, but I think I manage a decent facsimile. He must think so, too, because he rolls back off the covers to give me enough room to inch my way out. Unlike him, I made it to bed without the uniform, and that doesn’t occur to me until I’m up that I’m standing there in tanks and underwear with him watching. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen a thousand times, but it’s the first time I know he’s watching. There’s nothing I can say to change that either, so I choose to ignore it. I have a patrol in a couple of hours, and that’s where my mind has to be. I have a pre-flight check in less than that, and I can’t have my mind in the bedroom while I’m trying to get it done. If I want this – whatever it is – to be anything, I need to stay alive long enough for it to happen. That means screwing my head on straight and regaining my focus. I can do that. I’ve always been able to do that.

It isn’t until I’m in the shower that I realize my flight suit is still in Lee’s room, along with my boots. With a sigh, I wonder just how embarrassing it will be to hit up uniform issue for new ones rather than walking back into that room. I’m not sure, but with a look at the closed door I know that I’m going to find out.

Thankfully, the sergeant in charge of uniforms didn’t ask many questions and he didn’t laugh… much.

Chapter 9

Following by Example

There are times when a flight goes well, and you’re just damned glad it’s over. That was how I felt after six hours of circling the fleet at a thirty-mile radius. Rather than our usual quadrant based pattern, an out and in cycle that covers every direction around the fleet for several hundred miles, we’ve gone to a circular approach. Two Vipers at a time, one far and one near, opposite directions. It’s not as comprehensive, and it puts a lot of pressure on our long-range sensors to be sure that nothing’s out there that shouldn’t be, but it’s all we can manage. We have one Raptor and one Raptor pilot left healthy, so she sits in control and monitors tracks to be sure we stay our course and check in adequately. Hell, I don’t know how she’s managed to stay well, but Valerii has a constitution that’s a lot tougher than she looks. I think she gets it by osmosis from Tyrol; no illness would dare touch that man. Anyway, it’s not much of a system, but it’s all we can manage. The Galactica was designed to have one-hundred, twenty Vipers in her defense; normally we manage with one-fifth of that, and at the moment we’re managing with one-tenth. We can only do so much.

By the time I land, I’m coated in sweat, my hair is plastered down by my helmet, and I’m nauseous from lack of food. I know, it wasn’t bright to head out on an empty stomach, but at the time I knew it would just come up if I ate anyway, and I’d rather be queasy than vomiting in a Viper. So while Cally takes my helmet – I try not to be disappointed that it isn’t Lee – I rub hands over my face and try to get my mind to work. It isn’t easy.

Thinking that most of the problem is lack of food, I head for the dining hall. There’s no point in looking for Lee. His flight would have gone out ten minutes before I came in. That’s the rotation. I’m about half-way through a really disgusting meal when I see Doctor Salik – Kylen – coming in. She joins me, and the discussion goes off on a track I didn’t expect. Several days ago, Lee had brought up that his father was pretty miserable. Apparently the good doctor had been playing hard-to-get for the Commander, and it was wreaking havoc on already strained nerves. At the time I thought it was pretty trivial – after all, the world was ending around us. But as I looked at Kylen, I realized that if his dad had looked anything like this, then Lee had reason to worry.

Kylen and I talked for a while, and she told me what I’d already pretty much figured out – that she was in love with the Old Man. I can’t say it surprised me. He’s a pretty great guy, and she’s a decent woman. They should be happy together. Only the Old Man doesn’t open up very easily, and she was sick of guessing. I have to wonder if Lee sometimes felt the same way about me. After all, I’m good at screwing around and joking, but I avoid serious discussions like the plague. I’m sure that’s one reason Lee had to pin me down to deal with what was happening between us, and I know it was the reason I was feeling so off after waking up in his bed. But where I know Lee and how he can be, and he knows me, Kylen and the commander don’t have years of history to give them confidence in a relationship. They need to talk, and I tell her that. I’m not sure if she hears me or not. When she leaves the Dining Hall just this side of tears, I realize that I can’t just let this go. The Old Man has done far too much for me over the years; I can’t let him be miserable, and Lee says that’s just what he is. From what Kylen tells me, the situation isn’t likely to change without some help.

I really hate the CIC. There are several reasons, not the least of which is that nothing good has ever been said to me there. When I’m called up there for discipline, it’s because I’ve screwed up so badly that it can’t wait until the commander is off duty. Also, I guess I still hold the beginning of the war against the place as well, because that’s where I found out about it. Whatever the reasons, I tend to avoid the area like the plague. For me to go there, especially without being ordered to do so, should say a lot about my feelings for the Old Man. But after hearing Lee’s side of it in the days before, and then talking to Kylen myself, it was something I couldn’t just let slide.

Following standard procedure, I saluted the marines and requested to enter. It took a while for me to get clearance, even in the position of the deputy CAG, however circumstantial and unofficial. While I waited I paced, and for some reason the fatigue that had hit me before didn’t seem so bad. Amazing what a little food can do, even if it does taste like slop. When they finally let me in, I approached the commander, formally reported – including the salute – and requested to speak to him in private. If a shiny Cylon Raider had walked right into the CIC, I don’t think he could have looked more shocked.

I wanted to say more than that as he made quick arrangements to have his duties covered, because I knew his first worry would be for Lee. There was also the look on his face, which bordered on panic, and I hated to have put it there. But I didn’t want to go into it with everyone staring; at least everyone who was left. Until then, as I looked around to see more than half the stations empty, I hadn’t realized just how far-reaching the epidemic was. Sure, I’d seen it in the dining hall, but it was easy to ignore when I was covering such odd shifts. And yes, I knew how many were in the Life Station, but seeing the very heart of the Galactica hollowed out to only bare-essential personnel was a sobering thing. It was no wonder that he’d looked almost sick when I’d come in, and I’m not quite sure how much of that had to do with his missing Doctor Salik and how much was just plain overwork. I’m sure there was more than a little of both, along with worry for his crew – which may as well be his family.

The Old Man was quick in getting his duties relieved, and he led me into an isolated room that I’d never been in. Designed for the purpose of determining wartime actions without subordinates peeking over his shoulder, it was enclosed and soundproofed. “Is it Lee?” The question was quick and to the point; the commander wasn’t in any mood for beating around the bush.

“Lee’s fine, Sir,” I told him, surprised he was calling his son by his first name when everything else seemed so formal. “He’s on patrol; I just got off.”

I watched his body relax slightly as his worst fears were relieved. I was very grateful then that I hadn’t come in to tell him that Lee had fallen ill with the virus. I’m not sure he could have handled it. “Then what can I do for you, Starbuck?”

That was a tough one, and I wasn’t quite sure how to bring this up. “I know it’s none of my business, Sir, but I wanted you to know…” And where was I supposed to go from there?

“What is it?”

“Doctor Salik told me that she was writing a letter of resignation,” I finally tell him. The look on his face when I do proves that I was right; he does care. “She said that… well, that she loves you, and she can’t be around you when you don’t feel the same way.” Well, in for one cubit, and you’re in for a thousand. If I’m going to betray Kylen’s trust, I decide I may as well go all the way. “She told me that she can’t just be friends, and that’s all you want. She’s leaving the Galactica, Sir. She’s moving to the Dell.”

He looked like he’d been punched, and I guess in a way he had, but he didn’t say a word. I knew he could be a clam when things got personal – and I’d told Kylen as much – but most of the time he talked to me with little difficulty. I’m not sure if it’s the connection of being a pilot, or if it’s something more personal, but he doesn’t seem to hold back around me. When other people are tip-toeing, I tend to ask for a straight answer and get one. I hadn’t realized just how significant that was until now. If watching him shut down now was a taste of what the doc had been dealing with, then I couldn’t blame her for not being able to handle it on an indefinite basis. If Lee had ever been this closed to me…

"Excuse me for saying so, Sir.” I tell him, knowing it’s not my place and hoping I don’t get bucked back down to ensign. From the look on his face, it’s a distinct possibility. “But, make this right between you. She makes you happy."

He gave me a nod, and just that quickly I was dismissed. But oddly, I didn’t have anything I wanted to do, or anywhere besides the bed that I needed to be. I was back in the air in eight hours, so I should definitely be sleeping, but my mind was running on fast forward. So I hung out in the corridor for a while, leaning against the wall with one foot flat against it and the other holding my weight. Less than five minutes later, I saw the commander head out of CIC and walk a little more than briskly towards the section where medical quarters are. I didn’t have to wonder where he was going; I just hoped that they worked it out.

I’m too tired to run, and don’t want to work out, so I finally make it back to quarters for a shower. I almost prefer the days of waiting in line to walking into a nearly empty quarters and getting right down to business. Too many people are sick. I think the reason that it hit us so hard is that we tend to live tired. Being a pilot is high-stress to start with, and our schedules make it worse. Lee does the best he can, but there are only so many bodies to work with, and we all have to do our share. It keeps us weakened for illness, and it’s one of the reasons Doctor Salik is so damned persistent about her physicals and routine medical care. Hell, I’ve never had a fleet physician run blood tests to be sure I’m taking my vitamins, but she did it. And when I wasn’t, I got to report every morning for a month to the Life Station so they could watch me take it. Well, I take the stupid things now; they may be all that has kept me going.

The shower is over too quickly, and I’m left with a mind in overdrive and a body too tired to think. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but that’s how it feels. There’s something about tonight – about the Old Man and Kylen – that is eating at me. Both of them are reasonably intelligent people. In fact, I’d say that they’re smarter than average. Both are sweet, and considerate, and just plain good people. I’ve known a lot of jerks over the years – physicians who are only in it for the cubits, and commanders who get high on the power – and neither of them are like that. So they’re smart, they’re good… and they still screwed up. That scares the living hell out of me. I mean, if they can’t get it straight, with years of experience and high-powered degrees, then what chance do I have?

Lee and I are already making a mess of things, and mostly for the same reasons that they were. It isn’t lack of love on either side, because I’ve loved Lee for years. No, I haven’t always been in love with him – and I may not be now – but there was definitely love there even back before Zak and I were a couple. I mean, face it, you don’t sit up all day with someone and clean up puke unless you’re a little more than friends. Even then there was something special between us. And I’m pretty sure he feels the same way about me. Hell, why else would he put up with the crap I dish out. He’s bailed me out of the brig, nursed me through morning hangovers that I thought would kill me, and held my hand through physics finals when I was sure I was going to flunk out and lose any possibility of getting my wings. I wasn’t an easy friend to have, and I’m still not, and yet he’s willing to wait. I felt that kiss, it’s intensity and restraint both, and I know he doesn’t have all he needs from me, and yet he doesn’t push. That has to be love, doesn’t it?

But I’m just about ready to make the same mistake the commander has, which is to take someone who cares for granted. Lee may not always be there, and when he gets fed up with the waiting, he just may not bother to tell me. What would I do if I were to walk onto the flight deck one day and find that he’d transferred to another ship because I was dragging my feet? Yeah, he says he’s willing to give me time, but Kylen was giving the Old Man time too. She said that there comes a point when the relationship is just without hope and you have to cut your losses. When will Lee and I reach that point? Will I even know when we’re close?

And the bottom line… could I survive without him? Ironically, I know the answer to that one. Not a chance in hell. Not one frakking chance in hell. He’s kept me sane since the beginning of this war, and not just with his friendship either. He’s been a leader, and an example, and someone who I really wanted to impress with my talent as a pilot and my ability to do my job. I think he has been, but my personal conduct hasn’t been so exemplary. Still, it’s been better, and I know part of that is that I don’t want my behavior reflecting badly on him. How’s that for a change? I not only care what he thinks, but I care what others think about him. Wonders will never cease.

But still, as much as I care and admitting I love him, I’m still screwing this up. Why can’t I just tell him that I… well… I guess that’s the problem. I really don’t know how I feel. I’m not the “happily ever after” type, and I don’t really want marriage and kids. Oddly, it wasn’t until Zak and I were engaged and he started talking about family that I started getting nervous about the situation. It wasn’t that I was unprepared to be in his life; the whole life-partner thing has a certain appeal, and yeah the sex was great. But kids… I don’t even know how to keep myself out of trouble most days. I don’t want to be responsible for little Karas, I want to fly. And I’ve seen Lee with kids. He’s absolutely great, and I know family is important to him. He’ll want a family, just like Zak did. I’m just not ready for that, and I’m sensible enough to know it and realize that it’s a situation that won’t go away on its own.

On top of that, there’s the fact that he’s my CAG. I’ve spent a lot of years convincing folks that I don’t sleep around – whatever else I’ve been accused of – and if I start up with Lee and things don’t work out, then I’m back at square one only worse. I’d have set a president that I would sleep with other pilots, and that would make for a really uncomfortable living environment. All this assuming I don’t get pulled up on charges for fraternization. All this assuming that Lee doesn’t get in trouble for sexual harassment because I’m beneath him in the direct chain of command. And rolled up in all of that is the fear that the Old Man won’t approve of it, and yes that does matter to me. I respect him far too much for him to think that I’m only after his sons. And yes, I know that decision should be Lee’s and not his father’s, but it’s such a huge chance to take.

I look over at the clock and see that I’ve been running this nonsense though my mind for almost two hours. I’m on duty in less than four, and I haven’t slept at all. Not good. Finally, I do what I knew I was going to have to, and yet refused to allow myself. With a sigh, I grab my alarm and make the short walk to Lee’s office. I don’t have the excuse of quarters being crowded. In fact, only two people are there, and both are sound asleep. No, I’m not here for privacy or quiet, and there’s no use telling myself that I am. I’m here because I want to be, and the pillow smells like Lee, and in here I think I can finally relax enough to get some rest. I check my alarm, pry the blankets from beneath the mattress, and slide between his covers. Before I know what’s happening, I slide into a deep and dreamless sleep. Amazing what a little comfort can do.

Chapter 10

Unsatisfactory Resolutions

I was beyond grateful to see the end of sixteen hour days and shifts seven-days a week. As pilots returned from Life Station – rescued by Doctor Salik’s new wonder drug – things actually started to get back to normal. Kind of. She and the Commander are just about a set. If they’re off duty, then they’re together, and Lee thinks it’s fantastic. Me, I’m just glad they’re both happy. The Old Man walks around like he’s got this permanent smile plastered on, and Kylen’s almost as bad. I think she smiles all the time, too, but with the surgical mask no one can be sure. In any case, Lee and I have run into them for dinner more than once and they seem happy. No, they aren’t into public displays of affection, and normally they call one another by rank – except for the times Kylen calls him a devious bastard, but he seems to ignore that – but it’s pretty obvious that there’s something there. Lee made the horrible joke that someone must be getting “some” and I nearly hit him. It’s his father for Lord’s sake! Then came the “old but not dead” argument, and I found someplace else to be. Lee still laughs at me for that.

Oh, Lee. Lords, what am I going to do with that? I still don’t know what I want, but I need him on some level. I guess that’s what I need to tell him, whether there’s anything romantic about it or not. Lee hasn’t made a pass, and hasn’t even kissed me since the time he mistakenly woke up with me in his bed – can’t blame him much for that – but it’s in his eyes. He needs more than I’m offering, and it makes me feel like dirt. I took it to Kylen, and she threw my own advice back in my face. “Talk to him,” she said. “If he’s worth the time of day – and you already know that he is – then you also know he’ll listen.”

So that’s the plan tonight. It’s not a candlelight dinner, but it is sandwiches in his room with no interruptions and all shifts covered. I have begged, borrowed, and called in every favor owed to me in order to make this happen. It hasn’t been easy, because I don’t want to give anyone the impression that we’re together, whatever the rumors have always been. We’re used to ignoring those, but that doesn’t mean I want to set the rumor mill into deliberate motion. Let them speculate if they like, but I won’t give them ammunition.

The thing is, I don’t have the guts to just ask Lee to meet me in his room, so the plan is to camp out there until he’s off shift and in his office. I never thought I’d be afraid to ask Lee anything, but that’s just what this has done to me. I managed to get the sandwiches, and a couple of drinks, and I’m just sitting here waiting for him to show up. I know his routine pretty well. He gets off shift, grabs a shower in the ready room, and then comes in here for paperwork. He says it’s never done, and it helps him wind down from all the garbage that goes on during the patrol. It’s hard to stay that wound up for eight hours at a stretch, and I understand his need to fall back on something mundane. I usually head for the weight room myself, but everyone’s different.

A glance at my watch tells me that he’s already running late. His shift should have ended more than an hour ago, and yet he hasn’t come through that door. I’m sitting cross-legged on his bed - once more tightly made - and just staring at the damned door. Lords, when did it come to this? When did life with Lee become uncomfortable? He’s been the one constant I can remember since the beginning of the war and now I can’t even be sure that this one relationship will survive. It’s a hell of a feeling.

Half an hour later, I’m getting annoyed. Of course, Lee would pick today to break with routine. When I finally hear the hatch opening, I’m just this side of ticked. He was supposed to have been here on time.

“Hey,” he says as he steps through the door, his face showing clear confusion. I’m reminded then that he can’t read my mind - couldn’t have known I was planning this - but it doesn’t completely alleviate my annoyance.

“You’re late,” I tell him, and even I can hear the edge in my voice.

He shrugs a shoulder absently. “I grabbed dinner with Hennings,” he says. “We wanted to go over that new fuel regulator. I’m having some trouble with it, and I wanted to find out if he was seeing the same thing.”

Logical explanations do not help my mood. “And you couldn’t just ask me?” I say, and it’s beyond edgy and downright bitchy.

“You don’t have trouble with anything,” he says in a wry voice. “So you’re no judge. You compensate without even knowing you’re doing it. Some of us have to think about what we’re doing, and that makes it tougher.”

It’s tough to get mad at that much of a compliment. “So you’ve eaten?” I ask.

He nods, and I see his glance go to the desk where I have sandwiches set out. “You should have warned me,” he says softlly. “I would have rather eaten with you.”

Damn, I just can’t stay mad at him. Trust me, I’ve tried. “Yeah, well I wanted to talk and it seemed like a decent peace offering.”

Lee tosses his clipboard over onto the desk, neatly missing both the stack of paperwork he hasn’t done and the dinner I have set there. Then he walks over and takes a seat on the bed the same way I’m sitting, facing me with his legs crossed and his arms resting on his knees. “What do you want to talk about?” he asks.

And that draws a sigh from me because I’m no more sure now than I have been in the past. I don’t know what I want. I may never know what I want. But I know that I can’t lose Lee, and I’m tired of hurting him. “What do you want from me?” I finally ask. “I don’t have a clue what I want,” I explain, “but I should be able to figure out whether or not I can... I don’t know... do what you want. Maybe... be what you want.”

He just looks at me, and I’m not sure what that is on his face. For once I can’t read him as he sits silently on the bed, his eyes focused on mine but no discernable emotion in them. Lords, I wish I had his ability to read minds. But I don’t, so I sit there and wait, and hope like crazy that he’ll say something.

He doesn’t.

Finally, I lose patience. “Well, say something!” I snap. “I’m asking for some advice here, and you’re just sitting there like a rock.”

He still sits, still looks at me. I rub my hands over my face, trying to figure out what to do, or what to say. I don’t have a clue. I wait, and still he gives no response beyond the silent stare. He could be a statue for all the information he’s giving.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” I mutter in frustration. “Talk to him. What a crock. How in hell am I supposed to figure out what you want if you won’t tell me?”

He’s silent for a moment before answering that one. “Maybe I don’t want to have to tell you,” he says quietly. “Kara, it’s not something you can decide. You have to feel it. And if you don’t, I can’t make you. I wish I could,” he says with a slight grin and a shrug of one shoulder, “but it isn’t that easy.”

“But I don’t know what to feel,” I tell him in absolute exhaustion. “Lee, I just don’t have a clue. I want you to be my friend, yes, but you promised that if we were more the friendship wouldn’t be in jeopardy. And I like being close to you. You’re easy to touch, and I don’t mind it when you touch me. And when you kissed me... well, it was pretty great. But I don’t know how far you want this to go. I’m not asking you what I should feel; I’m asking you what you need. I don’t want you to feel... short changed. I don’t want you to settle, because you’re my best friend and you deserve better than that.”

And he’s back to staring silently. Frak, I wish he’d give me some clue what he wants, but he’s leaving this in my hands, and I don’t want it.

“Why is it when you want to talk, it’s okay, but when I want to talk you clam up?” I ask him bitterly.

Finally he moves, reaching towards me and taking my hands in his. He holds them, his gaze remaining on me until I look up and lock with those blue eyes. It’s almost as though he understands the confusion and irritation, but doesn’t. How could he have known that right then - at that moment - I had needed him to touch me? How does he do that? “I’m not trying to make this harder,” he explains. “But I don’t want to push you into something you’re not comfortable with. If I sit here and tell you that all I want is terrific sex, and you agree to that, then I’ll never know if you wanted it or if you just wanted me... somehow, and tolerated the request.”

“Is that what you want?” I ask, my throat dry. He’d made it sound so cold, and I couldn’t imagine him really thinking that.

“That’s my point, Kara. It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s about what we want. You’re a part of that. I’m not going to give you an instruction manual. Some things you have to fumble through on your own, and this is one of them.”

“But I screw it up,” I complain. “Lee, I always screw it up, and this is too important. If I lose you, then I lose me, and I’m just not ready for that. I don’t think I ever will be.”

“Okay, that’s progress,” he says as he squeezes my hands. “We can agree that we want to be together. Now let’s move forward from there. What do you like?”

“What?”

He shakes his head and the smile is accompanied by a roll of his eyes. “I’m holding your hands,” he says as though he’s speaking to a child. “Do you like that?”

I think I’m getting the jist of where he’s going with this, but I’m not sure. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Now that one I have to think about. “Because your hands are warm,” I say. He nods encouragingly.

“Any other reason?”

“Because you make me feel safe,” I admit, and that one is a little harder. Admitting that he makes me feel safe means that there are times when I don’t, and weakness isn’t something I want broadcast.

“Alright, let’s keep going,” he suggests, and the grin he’s giving me is just this side of wicked, complete with dimples. It’s reallly not fair. “What else do you like?”

“I like flying with you,” I say, trying to get back on some familiar footing. “You challenge me, and you keep me in line.” Squeezing his hands I tell him, “And I don’t have to hold your hand out there.”

“What else?” He asks.

Damn, he’s not making this easy. I’m getting sick of this being all on me, so I decide to go for shock value. “I like your pillow,” I tell him. “I sleep better on yours than on mine.”

His eyebrows go up at that. “Standard military issue,” he reminds me. “Just like yours.”

I give a shrug this time. “Yours smells better.” It may be my imagination, but his cheeks seem a little pink at that comment. “And that’s two for me. What do you like?”

This time his eyes lock solidly onto mine. “I like kissing you,” he tells me, and I can see the intensity with which he’s looking for a reaction.

I have to smile. We’ve kissed once, and it was fairly tame given what I’ve done - and what I’m pretty sure he’s done - in the past. I wouldn’t have thought it made much of an impact, but he’s right... it was nice. “Me too,” I tell him.

“Your turn,” he prompts.

This discussion is getting easier, but it’s moving out of safe ground. “I like having dinner with you,” I say. “You always find something to talk about that takes my mind off the slop they’re serving.”

He gives a laugh at that one, right up until his expression sobers. I don’t have to tell him it’s his turn. “I like watching you,” he tells me, and this time I know there’s a blush there. “The way you move - totally smooth - and the way you get things done. It doesn’t matter if you’re running the decks or fixing a Viper, you’re always in motion and always... gorgeous.”

My eyes widen. Me? Gorgeous? Lords, the man’s eyesight is worse than his father’s. “Yeah, right,” I tell him, and I’m not sure where the honesty slipped out of this conversation. “I thought we were being straight with each other.”

His hand leaves mine to reach for my chin. I’ve looked down, not sure whether to be embarrassed or hurt by what he’s said, but he makes me look back up. “I’m totally honest. You’re not tall and skinny, and you’re not a wimp. Every part of you is toned and healthy, and you’re one of the few women who can both out-run and out-fly me. You’ve got adorable hair, you have the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen, and when you smile it lights up the whole frakking room. How’s that for honest.”

I think if he didn’t have his finger on my chin it just might hit the ground. Zak had used to call me pretty, but he never justified that. I figured he was being polite. We got along, and we enjoyed one another, and there were just certain things that couples said to one another; that was one of them. But Lee made it sound like he believed it, and like he really did see something more than just a fit pilot with a penchant for throwing punches. “I never knew you saw that,” I tell him quietly.

“It’s not something you say to a girl who’s just a friend,” he explained. “It tells you I’ve been looking at you in ways that are... more than friendly.”

I have to smile at that as well. “Hell, I looked at you back when we were at the Acadamy,” I admit. “Half the women in flight school were hopelessly jealous of me just because we shared a room. I think it’s the killer eyes, really,” I thought aloud. “Either that or the dimples. Women have a thing for dimples.”

“Really?” he asks.

I give him a shrug, because it’s common knowledge so far as I’m concerned. “Coming or going you’re a nice package. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes, great butt... not much more any woman could look for.”

His hand leaves my chin then, reaching up to cup my face, his thumb stroking across my cheek and sending shivers down my spine. When his thumb moves down, making a single trek across my lower lip, I finally meet his eyes. They’re darker than I’ve ever seen them, clear and blue and intent.

“I like that,” I admit as his thumb moves down my chin, around my jaw, and back to my cheek. His fingers have slipped up into my hair, and Lords that feels good.

“I’m glad,” he murmurs. “Do you like kissing me?”

My throat is a little dry, but I croak out a muffled, “Umm, hmm.” It’s the best I can do; the man is damned distracting.

I see a brief smile before he moves closer, his weight balanced on his knees while his lips meet mine, and then I’m lost. I don’t know what it is about mouths moving together. It’s not physical, because I’ve kissed and been kissed before and it’s been little more than pleasant at best and disgusting at worst. But kissing Lee is... more.

And I do like it. It’s like there’s a direct line between where are lips meet and the electrical connections in my brain, and one turns off the other. I can’t think when he kisses me like that. I can’t breathe, and I can’t move, and for all intents and purposes I’m just his. That has never happened with anyone else, and it frankly scares the daylights out of me. I guess it’s just the intensity with which Lee does all things; where he’s involved, there isn’t room for anything else.

When he finally pulls back - his lips trailing down my jaw, back around my ear, across my forehead, and then leaving entirely so that he can look at me - I find that I’m flat on my back, stretched out on his bed, and he’s just about half on top of me. His hands aren’t anyplace they shouldn’t be, and he’s clearly just as shaken as I am, but I’m not entirely comfortable with the fact that he’s put me in a fairly vulnerable position and I’ve let him. He must realize that I’m nervous, because he quickly rolls to the side so that his weight is off me. And then he just watches. I guess the next move is on me.

“That was... nice,” I tell him, and damn but I think I must be beet read. I’m still breathing hard and I’m shaking a little. For frak’s sake, it was just a kiss!

“Better than nice?” he asks, and I see a hint of the same insecurity I’ve been feeling since things started changing between us. It occurs to me then that Lee has as much to lose as I do, and he’s taking just as big a risk. What’s more, his feelings are far more obvious than mine are, at least in their physical manifestation. I can feel him hard against my leg, although the way he’s inching back tells me that he’s not all that comfortable with how he’s feeling. Either that, or he’s afraid he’s going to scare me off. After that kiss, I think I’d be more nervous if he wasn’t showing some outward reaction, especially with my insides in an absolute knot.

Better than nice? Hell yes. But words aren’t going to do it, I decide. The uncertainty in his voice pulls at something in me, so I decide to take care of two things at once. Leaning forward, sliding a hand around his back, I kiss him again. This time is no less intense, and no less surprising. I may have started it, but there’s absolutely no control on my part. I hope that Lee is holding himself together better than I am.

Absently, I’m aware of his arm slipping beneath me and he rolls to his back, taking me with him. This puts me next to him, my chest on his, and gives me an odd sense of control over the kiss. I don’t mind. I let it go on, and I even let it deepen. When I get a taste of him, I go deeper, and he doesn’t seem to mind. His mouth tastes like his pillow smells - warm and comfortable and... right. So I settled in and kissed him - let him kiss me - and decided that the rest of the discussion could wait.

Lee didn’t argue.

Chapter 11

Aftermath

The problem with leaving things up in the air - with using actions instead of words - is that when it’s done no one has any more idea of what’s going on than they did before. Sure, the kisses were nice, and they felt good, and there was a definite reassurance in knowing that Lee and I were... compatible. But it didn’t tell me what he wanted, or needed, or expected. I mean, if all he wanted were really nice sessions of snuggling up together, then that was an easy one. It was the “happily ever after” concept that was frightening me.

But Lee didn’t ask for more than a few kisses that night. We kissed for a while, and then he inched back away and only keeping one arm around me he started talking about rosters and schedules, and who was going to be back on duty and when. I accepted the change of subject more because I was so confused than because I really wanted to help him out, or thought he needed the assistance. But gradually, as the evening wore into night, the discussion turned to friends and family, his father and a couple of the pilots, and more other things than I could have imagined. We lay there for hours, just talking, and it was... well, nice wasn’t the word. It was better than that. It was comfortable and easy, and when it came time for me to go get some sleep I was more than a little reluctant to leave. Lee actually offered to let me stay, or to take my bunk if I wanted to be alone, but I didn’t take him up on either offer. I kissed him on the forehead, went to my bunk, and to my surprise I slept fairly well. I never did bother eating dinner.

The next day I was expecting things to be uncomfortable with him, or at least a little strained. But they weren’t, and that was perhaps the biggest surprise of all. We worked just as well together, managed situations just as efficiently, and even managed to talk in public without anything appearing... amiss. In fact, it was as though nothing had happened, and that was what was bothering me. Hadn’t it been as important to him as it had been to me? Wouldn’t it... happen again?

And therein was my dilemma. I had been the one who wasn’t sure about the whole “relationship” thing, and here I was wondering why he was backing off to where I’d been the day before. I didn’t even make sense to myself, so I know I couldn’t make sense to him. But he didn’t complain or even say a word. He just went out on his scheduled patrol and I worked out until mine. Situation… normal.

Or I thought it was. I was on a short patrol, so I actually came within about half an hour after Lee’s long patrol. I knew from the tension on the deck that something hadn’t gone right, although I didn’t see any major cleanups in action or ships in pieces. Once I’d finished post-flight, I cornered Cally for the lowdown. She’s a good kid – Lords she’s young – and she’s pretty straight with me. She’d been one of the first to get sick, and I was glad that she’d also been one of the first to recover and make it back to the deck. This time though, Cally was a little bit evasive when I asked her what was up.

“Nothing, really,” she hedged. I knew better.

“So that’s why everyone is whispering in the corners and tiptoeing around like there’s going to be an explosion?” I asked. “Cally, I know this place, and something’s not square. Tell me what’s up.”

She gave a sigh, looked both ways to be sure nobody was listening, and then leaned closer. “There was a foul-up on Captain Adama’s patrol,” she said softly. “The rook he was with – Greenback – well, he didn’t finish his preflight and left off some checks so there were thrusters misaligned for landing. Apollo got him in, but it was a near thing. He didn’t even speak to him when he got out of his Viper; he just headed out. Greenback is in the ready room, but I think he’s considering a different career. Frankly, I don’t blame him.”

“So, Lee didn’t blow?” I ask, confused. No, Lee doesn’t go off very frequently, but when it comes to procedure he’s a hard ass. Skipping pre-flights – and not checking landing thrusters – was akin to killing someone in his book, because it very well could. I couldn’t believe that he’d just let it slide.

Cally was shaking her head, looking almost scared. “I think… he was too mad to blow,” she said.

“What?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never seen anyone so angry. It was like, he couldn’t talk or something. I’m sure glad I’m not a pilot right now.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, remembering one other time when Lee had been too furious for words. Granted, I didn’t think this would turn into two years of cold silence, but he was definitely going to need time to cool down. I also figured he might need a listening ear – someone to vent to whom he knew would hit back if it came to that. So I stowed my gear in the ready room, glancing only briefly at the morose rook sitting up against his locker, and headed where I knew that I would go if I’d been the one to talk in someone who frankly deserved to crash.

He was there, just like I would have been. Lee was in the gym, and there was no one else in the room. I actually considered leaving myself when I saw the expression on his face. While I’m sure the redness was due to the pull-ups, I’d very much doubt that the snarl was. Lee could do those in his sleep, so they weren’t enough to tick him off. “Hey, Boss,” I called out, giving him fair warning that I was in the room. I didn’t want him smacking me out of ignorance. I didn’t care if he vented a little, but he should at least know who he was doing it to.

He stopped in mid-pull and lowered himself to the floor. Then he stood, looking at me, and I swear I could see the rage coming off him in waves. I could understand it. Neither of us has any tolerance at all for stupidity when it comes to working with Vipers, and he had a right to his anger. Truthfully, I also admired the fact that he’d hit the gym before decking the rook rather than after. I probably would have beat the crap out of the kid and then gone for my run. Maybe that difference is why I’m so much better acquainted with the brig than he is.

When he just stood there, saying nothing, I started getting nervous. I know Lee tends to repress, but he’s always been able to talk to me. Usually, if a conversation gets tabled due to discomfort, it’s my doing and not his. He’s the talker, always wanting to fix stuff. I’m the one who usually puts my foot in it, so I tend to go with fists instead of words. Seeing him unable to even scream this out bothered me. It didn’t get any better when he finally spoke.

“Get out.”

The words were flat, almost expressionless. I hope I never hear that particular lack of emotion from him again. It wasn’t a dead sound, but rather so controlled that it held far too much feeling. It was like he didn’t know what to do with it. “That won’t make this go away,” I told him simply. “You’re going to be pissed until you deal with it, so you may as well start now.” The bottom line is that I’ve been dealing with Lee for years, and not much that he does really scares me. Yeah, we might knock the stuffing out of one another on occasion, but it’s a pretty fair match. What he may have over me in size and weight he loses to fairness, and what I lack in musculature and height I can compensate for with spite. We fit one another pretty well.

“Not now,” he tells me. “Get out, Kara.”

I sigh, realizing that this isn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. Momentarily I consider just punching him and going from there, but even I have more sense than that. “No can do,” I tell him as I walk a couple of steps closer. He surprises me then by actually backing away; definitely not in character. “I know what happened during the landing,” I tell him. “Or, at least enough to understand. You have a right to be ticked. If you need a punching bag, then go for it. But ignoring it will just give you an ulcer and end that kid’s military career. I don’t really think you want either of those things to happen.” Sweet logic. I wonder if he’ll go for it?

His eyes close, and I watch his body actually shake. Even when he was ready to take apart his father, I don’t think I saw him this obviously out of control. “Kara, this is your last warning,” he says, and his voice is absolutely deadly in its softness. “For Lord’s sake, go away!”

So I smile. I know it will set him off, and that’s fine. The energy has to go somewhere, and he’s absolutely vibrating with it. What I get surprises the hell out of me. I step towards him once more, and he backs off. I step again, and he backs away again. When he finally hits a wall, I’m able to advance a little, and I think I’m making progress right up until I’m within an arm’s length of him. Then everything shifts.

I expected him to hit me, but the quick lunge he makes catches me off guard and he takes me straight to the floor. I find myself pinned with his hands on my arms, one of his legs secured over mine, and his full weight knocking the wind out of me. Lee is a fair fighter; he never takes me by surprise because he couldn’t break a rule if his life depended on it. Now, he’s broken most all of them, and I think it’s the shock more than the hold that keeps me from moving. His eyes bore into mine for a long moment, clear and blue and absolutely furious. And then it occurs to me that he might not just be angry about the flight. Had I done something to piss him off? Was the thruster incident due to my maintenance shift? And if either is true, why hasn’t he just come out and told me?

“I told you to leave,” he says, his voice a growl that’s just over a whisper. If he weren’t so damned close, I probably wouldn’t hear him.

“Yeah, well maybe I should have listened,” I admit. Maybe he did need more time to deal with… whatever the hell has him tied in a knot.

“Tough shit,” he tells me. “It’s too late now.”

“I think you’ve already got the ten-count,” I say. “You win.”

He watches me a moment more, and then he moves closer. I figure out what’s going to happen just a split second before it does, but aside from doing permanent damage in the nature of removing a lip, there’s not much I can do but accept the kiss he gives. Trust me, I considered biting him. Seriously.

It wasn’t the gentle kiss I’d come to expect from him. Hell, it wasn’t even rightly a kiss, but nearly an attack. There was no emotion in it, but a pure outlet for anger and frustration and probably more other feelings than even he could sort out. But the bottom line was that the kiss was beyond aggressive and almost frightening. If it had been anyone but Lee, I might have really been afraid, and most definitely I would have drawn blood. Even with him, I fought for a minute and that just seemed to make him fight back. That was when it hit me that he didn’t want this any more than I did. He just had so much going on in him that it had to have an outlet, and I’d provided him one. I’d expected him to smack me; in a way, that was just what he was doing.

So I stopped fighting back, let my body relax, and let him do whatever he needed to. I know Lee, and however mad he is, he’s simply not the type of man to rape me on the floor. Yes, this was out of character, but I’d given him the opening. After offering, I couldn’t very well change my mind.

As soon as I stopped struggling, the kiss gentled. It wasn’t soft or sweet, and it kept an edge to it that was less predictable than I would have liked, but he let go of my arms to brace himself and took a lot of his weight from me. I took that opportunity to put my arms around his neck and hold on. It wasn’t groping, but mostly a hug. I just wanted him to know that I was there, and that I wasn’t holding this against him. It turns out that there are a lot of outlets for strong emotions, and this one was damned effective. A fight would have taken us a good half-hour to settle. In just a few moments, he knows he’s beaten me, and he pulls back.

And then I see the guilt. It’s that same expression he’s had when he’s hit back after I’ve punched him in the gut, or when he’s left a bruise on me while defending himself. The Adamas weren’t raised to abuse women, and while I’m not the traditional female they still hold to that standard. To make matters worse, I start most of it. I can’t really complain about how it ends up. And no, he doesn’t have a reason to feel guilty. Yes, he’s split my lip, but it wasn’t deliberate and I was warned going in and several more times along the way, which is more than anyone usually gets. This one is on me.

I reach up and wipe a smear of blood from his lower lip and leave my hand there cupping his cheek. He looks so upset. I hate that I’ve done this to him. Sometimes I should just listen and leave when I’m told. No, I don’t hold this against him, but there’s no way in the world will he ever believe that. “Feel better?” I ask, forcing a smile. I’m worried about him; I don’t want him to see that.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I lift up for a moment, kissing his cheek, and he flinches away as though I’ve punched him. I’ll admit that it hurts, but probably not nearly as much as he’s hurting. “I’m fine. Although, I think I’ll listen the next time you tell me to take a walk.”

His eyes close, and for a moment I know that he’s blocked me out. He’s trying to get himself together, and I need to give him that time. Who would have ever thought that I’d need to be the considerate one? When he finally opens his eyes there’s some perspective there, some clarity to go with the anger. And yes, there’s still anger.

“Are you ready to talk?” I ask.

He rolls to the side, winding up on his back and leaving me feeling cold and stupid lying on the floor next to him. After the workout he’s obviously done, the metal floors probably feel good to him. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s over,” I remind him, rolling to my side so I can watch him. “So talk to me.”

“You know it. Greenback nearly committed suicide, and I almost let him.” He lifts his head a few inches from the floor and slams it back down with a resounding thud. “Why in hell didn’t I check that preflight?” he grinds out. “I frakking knew he was a rook. I knew not to trust him to follow procedure. The brat is so frakking cocky that he wouldn’t follow a rule if it held his hand.”

“You did your job,” I remind him. “You checked your Viper, you covered your wingman, and you got him back to the deck. What in hell more do you want from yourself? You aren’t a holy lord, whatever you may think. You’re just a man, and you do the best you can at the time. It’s all any of us can do, Lee.”

“I wanted to kill him,” Lee says softly. “When he started screaming, and he was so low… Kara, I could barely think. I just kept wondering if Zak had sounded that scared…”

That catches me off guard, but not really. Every time anything goes wrong on the deck I see flashes of fire and what was left of the man I was supposed to marry. It’s not something you get over. Ever. But I can talk about it without coming apart now, and that’s progress. “I don’t think Zak ever knew he was in trouble,” I admit. “He wasn’t that low when he came in, and none of us realized that he’d caught a wing until he started to spin. Then he panicked, and before we could say a word… Lee, he never felt it. He never even screamed.”

“I froze,” he whispered. “For just a few seconds, when he started yelling, I just… froze. I didn’t get it together until the LSO said something.”

“You did what you had to when it mattered.”

“I didn’t want to,” he ground out. “And when we got down, and I realized that he hadn’t done preflight, I was almost sorry that I’d talked him in. How screwed up is that? Whatever he did, the kid didn’t deserve to die, but I wanted to…”

“Strangle him?”

“At least,” he said flatly. “And instead I attacked you.”

I had to smile. “Ah, we’ve done worse to each other after a bad card game,” I tell him with a slight shove. After all, whatever may have just happened, the gym isn’t the most appropriate place for PDA, and when Lee realizes the position he has put himself in he’s likely to be madder at himself then he ever was at Greenback. But for some dumb reason I need to touch him, so I take the friendly outlet that I’ve always used. I really don’t think anyone would dare come in here anyway, but just in case.

“You’ve always fought back,” Lee says carefully. Then he just looks at me, and I can see the question on his face. Why didn’t I fight him this time?

“Well, this wasn’t as bad as a left hook,” I tell him with a shrug.

He reaches forward to brush a thumb across my lips and it comes away red. Okay, maybe I hadn’t been ready for it, but he still doesn’t need to feel like an ax murderer. “I’m sorry,” he tells me again.

“It’s over,” I say again. “Forget it.”

He just shakes his head, then lifts it up and slams it back down. The guy is going to give himself a concussion if he’s not careful.

“And quit that,” I tell him with a snap. “At least until we get the rest of our pilots back. I am not taking your shifts.”

He’s staring at the ceiling now and something’s on his mind. I’m not sure if I should even ask. After all, he’s not doing what I expect at the moment. Neither the self-abuse nor the silence are typical Lee, so I know that something has to be eating at him. There’s something in me that says it’s more than Greenback’s most stupid move ever, and as self-centered as it is I have to wonder if it’s about me. After all, if his dad had followed him into the gym, I’d very much doubt he would be lying here next to Lee. This is about more than a careless rook, or his dead brother, or a rough kiss.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I ask. His face is pretty much blank, and his eyes aren’t giving anything away.

He sighs. “That I really wish you’d left,” he admits.

“I told you to forget it,” I remind him. “I knew you were ticked, and I fully expected you to try to deck me. Granted, I didn’t think you’d actually manage it, but there’s a first time for everything.” My attempt at humor falls pretty flat. “Lee, we both know that when you’re that wound up you won’t calm down until you blow, and I knew very well that I was coming in as a target. I walked through that hatch on my own, so what happened afterwards is my responsibility.”

He shook his head. “Yeah, I was mad at Greenback, but there was more to it,” he admits. “Kara, I didn’t hit you.”

“Yeah, you did,” I argue. “You just didn’t use fists. The outlet was pretty much the same.”

He turned his head to look at me, and he looked so sad for a moment that I just wanted to do something to make it better. Anything. “I was as mad at you as I was at him,” he says softly. “In a different way, sure, but…”

“But what?” I prompt.

“But that’s no excuse.”

I think about that and decide it makes absolutely no sense. “What were you mad about? Or, should I ask what are you mad about?”

“That you never listen,” he tells me on a sigh. “I told you to leave, and you walked right in. I tell you to do something, and you do the opposite. And even when I keep my damned mouth shut, I swear you read my mind and go the other direction just to make me nuts.”

And I find myself totally confused. When in hell did I not do what he asked? Granted, I usually do things my way, but lately it’s matched up pretty well with his. Hasn’t it? “I’ll give you today, and maybe I’ve been a little difficult on occasion, but you know very well that I listen to you more than I have any other CAG. Most of that is that you just make more sense, but part is just that it’s you.”

He shakes his head. “Forget it.”

“No,” I argue. “If this is about me, then I need to know what I’m doing wrong.” I also need to know why it’s so damned important, but that’s another issue entirely.

“That,” he says simply. “I say drop it, you don’t.” He looks back up at the ceiling, as though he can’t deal with looking at me. Okay, it hurts, and it hurts more that I’ve just proven him right. I can’t fix this if I don’t know what I’m dealing with, and it ticks me off that I care about fixing it either way.

“So that’s it? You’re upset because I don’t do what you want, and you won’t bother to tell me what that is? I’ve got this clear?”

His head lifts up and slams down, and I really want to smack him. On the other hand, my conversation is about as effective as beating my head against a wall – or in his case the floor – so I suppose it’s just as well either way.

“I’ll go,” I tell him quickly, pushing up to a sitting position. “Preferably before you crack your skull.”

“Damn it, you just don’t get it, do you?” he said with a growl. He was looking at me though now, up on an elbow and facing me.

“Get what?” I’m tired now, and getting sick of not knowing what in hell he wants from me. “Lee, I didn’t come in here for my health. I thought you might need an ear, or at least someone who understood. I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped somehow, but I thought that was how friends took care of one another. I don’t know what my crime is this time – as I remember, you’re the one who knocked me over – but whatever the hell I did, I’m sorry. No, I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it.”

“Friends,” he muttered. “I’ve had it! I’m frakking sick of being friends.” With that, he was up on his feet and out of the room before I could even stand. I just sat there for a minute, wondering if he’d finally gone nuts, or if I had, and realizing that things weren’t the same after all. Lee wasn’t willing to come to me anymore, and he didn’t want whatever it was that we had spent the last few years building. Rationally, I knew he was tired and that the adrenaline rush had to be wearing off enough to send him into a nosedive, but there had been truth in every word he’d spoken. I didn’t get it. He wasn’t acting like a friend. And what frightened me the most was that he had finally run out of patience and I still didn’t have any kind of answer for him.

Chapter 12

Decisions

I had to think about what Lee had said. Truthfully, I had a damned long time to think. It was more than coincidence that the next week had us on not only opposite shifts, but completely opposite schedules. The two of us were never in the same place at the same time, whether to eat or work or sleep. He was never in his room, no one could ever track him down when I had the time to talk to him, and with each passing day I got more and more angry. Yes, I knew that he was upset – more than upset – but avoiding one another wasn’t going to change anything. I was reminded of the dark time when Kylen was steering clear of the Old Man, and I had more sympathy for him than I ever had before. The only good thing was that I was reasonably sure the CAG couldn’t transfer off the only military ship in the fleet. If he could have, I do believe he would have done it.

I even cornered the Old Man about the situation, and for the first time in memory he just gave me a sad look and said that this was between Lee and I, and that he was very sorry. That was it; he was sorry. He didn’t offer to help, or mediate, or even explain. I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me that he was siding with his son, but it did. William Adama had always been in my corner, and seeing the quiet disappointment in his expression when he flatly refused to even try to get us in the same place at the same time was downright disheartening.

It took me over a week to finally get to frustration threshold. Then it took another few days before we had the manning to allow me any opportunity to switch shifts with anyone. I got it done – with a promise to protect the pilot from bodily injury at the cost of my own life if necessary – and finally, finally found myself off duty while Lee was supposed to be off as well. I say supposed to be because finding him wasn’t easy. In fact, it required calling in a couple of favors and making a few threats as well. But I managed it. Somehow, I managed it.

When I tracked him down – nearly two weeks after the big blow-up – he was on the flight deck beneath a Viper, checking on one system or another that he didn’t think Tyrol’s crew had right. Just the fact that the Chief was letting him said a lot about what type of mood Lee had been in; no one was crossing him, even the Lord of the Deck.

I watched him for a while, working on the ship and completely unaware that I was there. Lords, I’d missed him. I had known I missed him, but until then – until I was looking at him – I didn’t realize just how much. It’s weird the things you pick up when you’ve been away from someone for a while. He hadn’t shaved, and his hair needed a trim, and both of those things were very odd. He was intent on what he was doing, focused, and that was pure Lee. It took a lot to remind myself why I didn’t really believe in happily ever after. It took a lot to convince myself that it wasn’t worth just doing whatever the hell he wanted if it meant things could be right again. But having me give in to his terms was no better than him giving in to mine, so this was going to have to be sorted out. Some kind of decision had to be reached, and I just hoped it was one I could live with.

“We need to talk.” Lords, who would have ever thought I would use those four words?

His hands stilled, but they didn’t lower from the underbelly of the Viper. “No, we don’t,” he said simply.

Damn. He never lets anything be easy. “Lee, we can do it in private or right here, but we’re going to talk. If I have to fight you to earn the privilege of a few minutes, then I can do that too. And if you think I won’t follow you like a shadow until it happens, then think again. I’m tired of this; we need to settle it.”

“It’s settled,” he told me.

“This isn’t settled, it’s tabled,” I corrected. “Frak, Lee, you can’t tell me that you’re happy this way!”

His hands, which had gone back to their repairs, stilled once more. “It doesn’t matter. I’d rather be unhappy than totally miserable.”

“Why in hell do you have to be either?” I ask in frustration.

“Because I’m sick of doing things half-way. I thought I could, but I was wrong.”

At the moment, his feelings weren’t foremost in my mind. “So you get everything or I get nothing?” I ask in disgust. “How the frak is that fair?”

“Life isn’t fair,” Lee reminds me. “It never has been.”

And as much as I hate it, I know he’s right. “I won’t leave it this way,” I tell him. “It’ll be here or someplace private, and it’ll be now or later, but one way or another we have to sort this out to something we can both live with. I’ll tell you straight up that this won’t work for me, and you know damned well that I’m tenacious enough to make your life a living hell until you give in.”

Finally, he slid from beneath the Viper, put his tools back in the box next to him, and looked up to face me. And holy crap, he looked worse than awful. The shadows under his eyes were as bad as mine, and the expression there was beyond bleak and into dead. He meant it, I realized. He really and truly meant it. Suddenly, his way didn’t seem so bad after all. I knew for sure that this way wasn’t going to work. But if you’re in for one cubit, you’re in for a thousand, so I didn’t back down. “Your room, or do you have someplace else in mind?” I ask.

He looks at me for a long moment, and I can see that he really doesn’t want to be alone with me. It more than hurts; it puts a hole in me. But I can’t back down now. As he stands, looking very much like an older version of his father, I almost wish I hadn’t done this. Almost. But I was absolutely truthful when I told him that I can’t live this way. He’s been a part of my life for too long, and I’m not willing to give that up. Further, it’s destroying our working relationship, and that’s another thing we can’t afford. “My room,” he says softly.

“Let’s go.”

He takes a deep breath and lets it out as a sigh. “Kara I… let me get a shower first,” he requests. “I’ll be there in half an hour. I promise.” I must have looked doubtful – and with good reason given his avoidance and what I’d gone through to get around it – because he added, “My word is still good for something, isn’t it?”

It takes me a minute, but I give in. “Your room, half an hour,” I agree.

He doesn’t even nod, but turns to pick up his tools and walks off without even looking back. Lords, this is going to be a lot worse than I thought. I make the walk to his quarters in a daze. No matter what had happened between us, I never really thought that Lee and I couldn’t be friends. We were just a given, like peanut butter and jelly. We could manage independently, but we just worked so much better together. No, I don’t need Lee. I’ve spent years with no more than an occasional post-card and survived just fine… but that was before the war, and before we started working together under a single command that literally left us no place to escape to. We have to solve this, even if it’s only to make working together a possibility. Lords, I hope we have more than that, but I saw his face and I’m just not sure.

His room is… a revelation. If I thought his face looked bad, it’s nothing compared to his room. I’m used to Mr. Neat, with his quarter-bouncing bed and neat stacks of reports. What I find is a knot of tangled covers, a desk scattered with just about everything all mixed together – even I can’t make heads or tails out of it – and in the corner a couple of towels that…

Lee has either had another headache, or he’s been sick for another reason. I think that hurts the worst of all, that he would be sick and not even tell me. When had it all gotten so messed up? And in the back of my mind – always – is the curiosity as to whether things would be different if I had just listened and turned my back when he asked and left that frakking gym instead of thinking I knew what was best. At the moment, I don’t know a damned thing about him, and I realize that maybe I didn’t then either.

Nervous energy keeps me from sitting, so I busy myself with some much-needed housekeeping. First to go is the towels, which I put in a laundry bag and make sure is labeled before dropping them in the community hamper with the pieces of uniforms that had been scattered through the room. Each one had been sweat through at least once, telling me that he’d been working way too much and not bothering to clean up in the ready room. Probably, he was afraid that he’d run into me, heavens forbid.

On the way back to his room I grab some fresh towels, and set them on a chair as I tackle the bed. I wind up changing that too, and when I finish it isn’t as neat as he would do but it might pass. My watch says there’s another ten minutes, so I toss the towels to the foot of the bed and settle in at his desk to start trying to sort out this week’s reports from last, and next week’s requisitions from the week before. Lords, what a mess! Even I can keep paperwork better than this. I barely recognize the uneven scrawl which he’s used to put rosters together, and this from the guy with the neatest handwriting in the class. “If you can’t read it, what’s the point in doing it?” he had asked me at the Academy. My answers had been colorful and often profane, but they had come with the knowledge that Lee would always be Lee. Now, I didn’t know who he was.

“Make yourself at home,” he says as he walks into the room and closes the hatch behind him. The sarcasm is clear, but I’m still a little too shaken to counter it.

“Is this Cummings or Donnings?” I ask, pointing to a particularly scribbly name on the roster. He looks over my shoulder before answering.

“Doesn’t matter. Either one can do it.”

I want to roll my eyes. I can understand him being upset, but this is ridiculous. I neatly stack the reports I’ve sorted out as upcoming and stick them at the right corner of his desk, just as he would if he were still Lee. Then I start looking for this week’s paperwork. It’s a pick and piece procedure, and it occupies my mind. Yes, I’m avoiding him, but I just don’t know what to say. I feel like getting his desk in order will get him back for me, and it’s so much easier than facing him. And mixed up in all of it – the fear and the uncertainty – there’s an anger growing that he hadn’t just come to me, and that his father hadn’t said a word. Did the Old Man even know what a mess his oldest boy was in? And guilt… there’s a lot of that, too. Because – as self-centered as it is – I believe that I have caused at least part of this, and I hate it. I feel like I’ve killed my best friend.

“If you’re just going to wrestle with paperwork, I’ll get back down to the deck,” he says, and I could swear I hear relief in his voice.

“Not a chance,” I say as I finally set the papers down and turn on the chair to face him. He’s clean, and so is his uniform, but he hasn’t tackled shaving just yet. The dark shadow makes him look… different. Between that and the hair curling at his neck, he barely looks like the man I’ve come to know.

And suddenly it hits me: He isn’t the man I know. Not anymore. And with that acknowledgment comes the question of what the hell I’m doing in his office, cleaning his room, sorting through his work. This isn’t the friend I’ve had for years; he doesn’t want to be. And yet I’m here, and I have to try. I have to do something. “Please, sit,” I say, and my voice sounds unsteady. I’m scared, and just realizing it. I can’t lose him. I can’t, but I think I already have.

To my surprise, he does. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he faces me with his elbows on his knees and his expression haggard before turning his gaze to the floor. He just looks so frakking tired. I reach out before I realize I’m doing it, focused on the hair that’s almost in his eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so long. A long while before I touch him, he pulls back out of my reach. I don’t know why it startles me. “What do you want?” he asks, and his voice sounds as bad as mine.

“I want things right again,” I admit. “I want to fix whatever it is that I screwed up. Hell, I don’t even know what I screwed up, or how. Lee, I’m sorry I didn’t give you time after the mess with Greenback. I really am.”

He shakes his head. “Kara that… it didn’t have much to do with it,” he admits. “It was more like the final insult. I can’t make you do anything, or think anything, or even follow a basic command. We got so… comfortable with one another, that I couldn’t even be an effective CAG.” He lets out another sigh. “I screwed up as much as you did.”

“So let’s fix it!” I say, and my voice is more than shaking. It’s downright unsteady. I have no control over this conversation, and I hate it. Hell, even not knowing seems better than putting more nails in a coffin.

“We can’t,” he says. “Kara, we don’t want the same thing. I understand that – really – but when I’m around you I just…” He trails off, and his eyes finally come up to meet mine. “Have you ever wanted anything you couldn’t have?” he asked.

I had to think about that one. “Parents,” I admit. “What little I had of them was pretty lousy, and I can remember always wanting to have what the other kids did. And an end to this damned war.” I take a deep breath before continuing, “And right now I just want to be on speaking terms with my best friend.”

His eyes are down again, and his shoulders are slumped. I have to listen hard to pick up his words, and when I do I almost wish I’d missed them. “I can’t do things in halves, Kara. I never could, but I kept finding ways to keep it together. I’ve been half in love with you since Dad stuck me in your room at the Academy and I found out that the pilot prodigy he’d found had the greenest eyes and the brightest smile I’d ever seen. Friends seemed a good start then, and after you met Zak it was pretty much over. You can’t hope for what you can’t have, so I kept things in perspective. When we lost Zak… Kara, I didn’t stay clear of you because of my dad. I did it because I didn’t trust myself around you.”

“Trust yourself?”

He shrugs. “To keep my hands in my pockets,” he admits. “And to just be a friend. Without Zak, there were… possibilities. I didn’t want to impose that on you, especially when I knew you were hurting. And I never would have looked for an assignment with you. I knew that being that close all the time would wear me down.”

“I don’t understand this,” I tell him, trying to get a look at his eyes and not managing very well. “Lee, you never said a word at the Academy. If you felt this way then…”

“It was easier to hope,” he admitted. “I figured things would start up naturally, then progress slowly from there. I didn’t count on Zak showing up and throwing things out of kilter.”

“So, you wanted us together?” I ask, more confused than ever. “And you wanted things to progress?”

He nods, but still looks miserable.

“So what’s the problem?” I ask in exasperation. “Isn’t that what was happening?”

He shook his head this time. “What was happening was that I got my hopes up again. And all it did was mess me up, Kara. Why in hell do you think I forgot to double-check Greenback’s preflight? It was because my mind was on the night before, and how to convince you to go a step further. I was hoping, instead of doing my job. It nearly got a kid killed. I had just realized that it had to stop – things had to be one way or the other so that I can stay clear – and then you walked in and I literally jumped you. Does that show you how little control I have around you?”

“You were hyped on adrenaline,” I remind him. “We’ve all been there. I fight; you kissed. One emotional outlet is as good as another when your body’s in overdrive. And I didn’t mind, Lee.”

“You like being attacked?” he asked with clear doubt, but at least he looked up at me.

“I went in there planning to get decked,” I tell him with a smile. “Instead, I got a different kind of attack. Trust me, this was an improvement.”

“It isn’t a joke, Kara. I could have hurt you.”

I shrug. “Like I said, we’ve done more damage than that over smaller things. One of the things I’ve always liked best about you is that you treat me like an equal. I’m not fragile, Lee. I never have been.” He looked away again, and I frankly want to hit him. “Why is this bugging you so much? Lee, I’m not hurt, or mad, or anything else you seem to be so damned worried about. Did it ever occur to you that you’re worrying about nothing?”

“Tell that to Greenback,” he mutters.

“You did your job. After three months in Vipers, he should know how to do a preflight, and he should frakking well do it himself. You can only hold his hand so long.”

“But if my mind had been on my work…”

“So where was it?” I ask in frustration.

“On you!” he snaps back. I’m stunned speechless for a moment, and he continues. “On the night before, and being with you, and how to make sure it happened again. Like I told you, getting my hopes up.”

“Up for what?” I ask. “You keep saying that, and it doesn’t make any sense.”

“I guess it doesn’t.”

Rolling my eyes, I seriously contemplate hitting him. I’d do it, but I don’t think it would stop there, and a mutual beating won’t do anything for us besides put us in Life Station, or possibly the brig. “How in hell do you expect me to know what you want if you won’t tell me?” I ask reasonably.

“Why do I have to tell you?” he fires back. “If you couldn’t frakking figure it out after living with me for three years, how in hell do you expect to understand it now?”

“You never said anything then, either! You want me to read your mind, and I can’t do it. I’ve asked you a hundred times what you want, and you keep telling me I have to figure it out on my own. Well, I can’t! The only thing I’ve figured out is that when I try to keep from losing you, you’re even further away, and I’m sick of hurting.”

“That makes both of us,” he says miserably.

“So tell me what to do,” I ask. Beg, really, as much as I hate to admit it. “Put me in a Viper and I’m a genius, but when it comes to relationships I haven’t got a clue. I was afraid that if things changed – if we were more than friends – and something went wrong, then you wouldn’t want to be around me. So you promised we’d stay friends, but we’re not. You won’t talk to me, you won’t see me, and won’t even be caught in the frakking room with me! You lied, Lee. And if I can’t trust you to stay with me when we keep the rules the same, how do you expect me to trust you when all the rules start changing?”

“It wasn’t a lie, Kara,” he says, and it’s softer now. It probably has something to do with the tears that are on my face, but I’ll be damned if I’ll embarrass myself further by brushing them away. He’s seen me cry before and lived to tell about it. But, we had been friends then. “I just can’t do it anymore. I’m tired of waiting. I always told myself you were worth the wait, but nothing is worth people getting hurt. When my mind is on you – on us – instead of on my work, people get hurt.”

“Well when you don’t, I get hurt,” I mutter miserably. “And take a look in the mirror. You can’t tell me that this is pain-free from your side of it.”

“Maybe a lot of pain now is easier than dragging it out,” he says with a sigh. “Kara… I’m tired.”

When he looks up this time, I see the absolute defeat in his eyes. He’s given up, on everything. He’s given up on the friendship, on the partnership, and now on what might have someday been more. He’s done. It’s not just in my mind; Lee is shutting down as I watch, and it’s more than I can take. Lords, I just want it to stop hurting. I want to go to my best friend and have him hold me, and tell him about the jerk my boyfriend has become, but I was right. It doesn’t work both ways. Gaining one loses the other, and now I’ve lost both, and it just… hurts.

I guess he’s expecting some kind of an answer, because he watches me for a long time. I can’t say a thing. Hell, I don’t think I could if my life depended on it, and right now it does. What am I supposed to say, anyway? That I love him? Frak, he knows that. Doesn’t he?

“I’m sorry, Kara.”

I shake my head. It’s not ending this way; it can’t. I have to work with this man, and I think of his father like my own. He can’t do this. I won’t let him do this to me. I’ve had my world shattered twice already, once in losing Zak and then a second time when I lost the rest of the world. I won’t lose Lee. Whatever he says, part of this decision is mine, and it’s already been made.

But I’ve already given him all that I have. I’ve been his co-worker and his friend, he’s always had my love, and two weeks before I’d even offered more. Just about the only thing I haven’t offered him is my body, and the only reason I haven’t is the fear that I’d lose him if things weren’t to his satisfaction in that department. I mean, face it, I’m not a cover girl. Zak had often laughingly told me that I was built for distance and not show, and I always thought it was his way of being polite. But Lee had mentioned eyes and smile, and those weren’t part of my qualifications as a pilot. Maybe he did see more. Maybe he wanted to see more. Hell, at this point I was willing to try anything. How pathetic is that?

So I did the last thing I could. I unzipped my flight suit and started peeling off layers. The top went first and then the catch on the belt, which my hands fumbled with for a long time. I reached for the tails of the dark tank and tugged it quickly over my head, then reached to take hold of the lighter one. By the time those were gone and I was reaching for my bra, he’d moved enough to put his hands over mine.

“What are you doing?” he asked, and he actually sounded surprised. Well, at least it was some feeling. I considered that progress.

I sniffle once, hating the fact that I’m not one of those beautiful, tragic criers. When I cry it’s a mess, complete with runny nose and blotchy skin. It seems pretty trivial though at the moment. “Whatever you want,” I mutter, doing my best to keep my voice steady. I hate being out of control, whether of my emotions, my relationships, or my life in general. At the moment, I seem to have lost my grip on all three.

“Stop,” he tells me.

I shake my head, and take a good solid grip on my bra, hoping that he won’t run screaming when he sees how little I have. But it’s all that’s left, and if I don’t do this than I’ll never know what might have happened if I had.

His hands are over mine, preventing their upward motion. Hell, I can’t even strip for the man. He doesn’t want anything. Finally I realize the truth; I have nothing to offer him. He already has it all, and what he doesn’t have he doesn’t want. Frak, what he does have he doesn’t want. With a final, minute struggle, I give up. It’s over, and I can’t do a thing about it. I’ve lost everything here, up to and including my dignity. Why would I have thought he’d even want…?

His arms slipping around me are a surprise. They’re warm, and the squeeze is hard. It’s the hug I would have done anything for only moments before, and yet it confuses the hell out of me. I finally realize what Lee means about the half-way, the back and forth. The whiplash is enough to make me nauseous. One moment there’s no hope, and the next there is, and then there’s not, and now…

Now he’s holding me, and I wish to hell I could pull away and throw it in his face, but I need it too much. He’s my anchor, and I need someone to keep me steady when life starts tossing me around. Right now I’m tossed all over the place, and he’s just about all that’s holding me together. As much as I want to let go, it’s nowhere in the realm of possibility. I’m not quite sure how long he held me, but it was long enough that I started holding him back, and even over my own crying I could hear an occasional sniffle from him.

“I can’t get anything right,” I mutter. “I just wish I knew what you wanted.”

His arms tighten for a moment. “I thought I did,” he responds, and his voice is as wobbly as mine. “I had it all figured out, right up until you started tossing clothes and I had to decide what to do with you.”

“Thanks,” I tell him dryly.

“That isn’t what I meant,” he says as he loosens his grip and faces me. His blue eyes are red-rimmed, and between that and the black shadows he looks pretty bad – maybe as bad as I feel. “It’s just… the look on your face… Kara, I thought if I could just get you to see things my way then everything would fit together. I thought if we were closer – physically closer – then I’d be happy. Lords know I can barely look at you anymore without thinking about sex.”

“Not quite the package you expected?” I ask self-consciously.

That earns my arms a squeeze. “The package is perfect, right up to the look in your eyes. Kara, this isn’t what you want, and you can’t tell me that it is.”

It’s hard to lie to my best friend, even to keep him. “I don’t not want it,” I hedge. “I just… Lee I can’t lose you. If this is what you need, then I’ll manage. It’s not like you’re a hardship to touch, and I figure we would have got there eventually. So if you want it now, then what’s the difference?”

“The difference is that I want you to want it as much as I do,” he says, resting his forehead against mine and giving me a little shake. “I want all of you; body and heart.”

“Lee, you’ve always had my heart,” I tell him. “Hell, you have my soul, too. This is really the only thing you don’t have, and I don’t mind…”

“Call me selfish,” he says as he slips his arms beneath mind and tugs me close to his body. “But, I want enthusiasm, and excitement, and maybe even anticipation. What you’re giving me is desperation, and it’s not quite the same. I didn’t even realize…”

“What?”

“That I was pretty much blackmailing you,” he says softly. “You give me what I want, or I take away your best friend. I mean, from your perspective it’s pretty cold. I didn’t mean it that way, but…”

“Go on,” I encourage, as much to stay in his arms as to hear any explanation.

“But it does hurt,” he says softly. “When I want something so much, and you really don’t…”

“I never said I didn’t want it,” I correct. “I’m just… so afraid that I’ll lose you if this doesn’t work out. Sex screws up relationships, at least nine times out of ten. I didn’t want to take the chance. But if I don’t, then I screw it up anyway.”

“If you’re so afraid of it, then why did you…” He gestures to my bra, the only thing I’m still wearing above the waist.

“Because I thought I’d lost you. When you don’t have anything left to lose, then it’s a lot easier to gamble.” I feel his arms tighten again, and I hug him with all my strength. I really don’t want to let go.

When Lee finally pulls back, I’m way beyond shocked to see a faint smile on his face, and something there that looks a hell of a lot like relief. He holds my face in his hands, brushes the last of my tears away with his thumbs, and then gently lays his forehead against mine. “You were right,” he says softly. “You’re not ready. I’m not either; not yet.” I hiccup, and he backs up so that I can see the smile widen slightly. “All this, and neither of us are ready. I really thought I was, right up until you offered me what I thought I wanted.”

“We will be?” I said, and while I meant it as a statement, it comes out sounding like a question.

He nods. “Yeah, we will be,” he assures me. “And you know what? It’ll be worth the wait.”

I have to smile at the pure conceit in his voice. “For both of us,” I mumble, but somehow I’m smiling too. I think it has a lot to do with his arms back around me, holding tight and warm. I feel safe again, and that should scare me. But this is Lee, and in my heart I know I’m always safe with him.

After a long while of his reaching from the bed to the chair, he finally tugged me over onto his lap. Now that was a funny situation. I’m nearly as tall as he is, and it wasn’t anywhere near as romantic as anyone would think. I was half embarrassed, he was mostly knocked over, and both of us wound up in a laughing heap on his bed. When the laughter finally stopped, I was surprised to find my face wet again, this time most likely tears of relief. He must have known that, because he didn’t comment on them, but brushed his cheek against mine as he backed up against his pillow and pulled me up against him. His beard was rough and scratchy, but his arms were warm and hard, and I was so frakking tired that I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

It was hours later when I woke up, still laying on Lee’s bed – on Lee if it came to that – only now with a blanket around me as well as his arm. The slightly rough texture felt good on my back, between bra and flight suit. I really wished I’d taken time to get my boots off, though. Between the two of us, his clean bed was filthy. It’s the only evidence of what happened the night before, proving that it was real. Most of it felt like a really bad dream, and if it hadn’t been for the dull throb of a headache and Lee’s uncharacteristic lack of a shave, I might have thought I’d imagined it. Think of that; the worst experience in my life, the most fear I’ve ever known, and it didn’t even feel real once it was over.

I knew we still had some talking to do, but the most important thing was pretty clear. “I love you,” I whispered against his chest. It didn’t matter if he heard it, because I knew that he had to have known it to have put up with me. And I didn’t need to hear it back for the same reason. But I needed to say it – to make the words real – because this time I wasn’t going back. Neither was Lee… I wouldn’t let him.

Epilogue

In the real world, I’ve found that there aren’t very many certainties. One of the few things you can count on is that if things can go wrong, they will, and usually at the worst possible time. Another is that nothing worth having is easy to come by. Unfortunately, however many times I learn those lessons, I find that I have to relearn them over, and over, and over.

I can remember back to the first time I saw Kara Thrace. She was a live wire, even then. I went into that room doubly ticked off because not only had Dad picked out my roommate for me, and picked a woman at that, but that he had been a lot more impressed with the girl’s flight achievements than he was mine. I’d always worked for Dad’s approval, and I wouldn’t have told him no for anything, but I’d decided before I walked into that dorm that I didn’t like her. The feeling lasted right up until I found myself laying in the middle of the floor with a pert little green-eyed blond on top of me, an elbow in my ribs and a knee… well, some things a man doesn’t want to remember.

Once I’d answered her demand of “who the frakkin’ hell” I was, we both had a good laugh over the incident. She hadn’t had an easy time of it at the Academy, and once she’d explained her attack as the preemptive offensive it had been designed as, I could understand a lot more. Dad hadn’t told me anything about why I was to room with the girl he’d been bragging about for the last year; he had just told me that he had a room and roommate set up. Explanations weren’t his thing. That’s just how it is when your dad is a military leader. What he said was law, and that was the end of it. But Kara, now she was the beginning. I wouldn’t have admitted it to Dad, but I actually liked the kid.

Back then, she really seemed like a kid. She had tousled blond hair, eyes that were absolutely huge, and she was a full foot shorter than me. What she lacked in size she made up for in speed and intelligence, and in the ability to make a plane do things it was never designed for. She was easy to care about, and there was something about that tough and often foul-mouthed exterior that made me want to keep her safe just so that she wouldn’t have to. Looking back, I think she was the tougher of us even then. But we got along, and that was what was important. I helped her through physics and trig, and she helped me with offensive flight tactics and most of the required arts classes. Yeah, I know, no one would believe that Kara has a soft spot for great literature and traditional art, but it’s there. She not only likes the stuff, but she can interpret it the way the instructors wanted. I’d say we covered one another’s asses a lot over the next three years.

We got to be damned good friends, too. Maybe I wanted more – planned for more – once we were out of the Academy. My mom had never understood Dad’s need to fly, and the way he’d be gone for months at a time. I figured that if anyone could understand the hardships of a military wife and not resent them, it would be Kara. Meanwhile, she’d really grown up. She wasn’t the fresh-faced sixteen year old who I’d met that first day, but a very beautiful young woman. She had shot up in height, whereas I’d stayed about the same, and her time on the Academy track team had kept her in great shape. Hell, I even ran with her most days, and she almost had me enjoying it. Almost, because I’m a firm believer that no one should run unless they’re being chased. Once I told her that, and she did. Lords, she was fast!

When she met Zak, he fell head over heels for her. I couldn’t blame him, but what shocked me to the core was that she fell for him too. It hadn’t been in my game plan to lose her to my little brother, but I was naïve enough then to just want her to be happy so I backed out of the picture and was just a friend. She was a pretty great friend. She still is, truthfully. She’s also a lot more.

Which is why I’m laying here with her head on my chest, a blanket covering her bare arms and thinly clad back, and my arms around her. She’s like a little oven, generating heat all the time, but last night she’d tried to make a point. She accomplished her goal, and somewhere in the reunion afterwards she never did get her clothes back on. I really wish I could mind, but her skin is soft and this gives me an excuse to feel more of it than I usually get to. Last night, I could have felt all of it. It was very tempting, but the look on her face had told me that it had been desperation driving her rather than any desire to be closer. I couldn’t do that to her, and somewhere in the mess it occurred to me that there were more important things than sex. One of those was friendship. Another was trust. I’ve betrayed both of those in the last couple of weeks, but she’s still here. I was right about her, you know. She would make an incredible military wife.

Not that I’m planning marriage; not exactly. Truthfully, I haven’t thought that far ahead. I just know that when I’m around her, the world looks a little different – better – and I like that. And yes, she’s easy to look at too. More than once I’ve caught her without her noticing, and just watched. My favorite place to do that is the gym. There’s an intensity in her that is just amazing, and after a couple of years of celibacy a man has to wonder just what would happen if an intensity like that were focused on him. Maybe I couldn’t keep up, but I’d sure like to find out. And that seemed to be mutual at first. I mean, we were closer than friends, even back at the Academy. We’ve been closer than friends here, too. Closer than friends, but not as close as I wanted. She seemed to be with me just so far, and then she pulled back. Initially it didn’t bother me; eventually it made me crazy.

I always did well in tactics, so I didn’t panic too much when Kara kept her distance. I looked at the situation as objectively as possible, looked at what had gone wrong each time I’d been rebuffed, and planned away around what had happened. It was almost like a game at first. “Well, she doesn’t like this, I’ll try that.” But once you’ve run out of things to try, it’s not a challenge anymore but rather a nagging ache. You start wondering what the problem really is, and if the friendship is as solid as you’d hoped. In all honesty, I started to wonder if it came back to Zak and her feelings for him. I would have understood that, but even if it had been, I’d given her time to get through it. Zak’s been gone for more than three years, and the world has shifted considerably since that time. I decided it was time to get down to waging the campaign that I’d been putting off. If I’d known where it would go, I don’t think I would have done it.

On the other hand, if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here and this is something I wouldn’t trade. I don’t get to see her soft side very often, and I know it irritates the hell out of her when she starts to feel coddled. That same independence that I love has become a barrier more than once to our getting closer. But as her oldest living friend – well, not counting my Dad – I reserve the right to care about her, and yes, worry about her too. Let’s face it, she sometimes gives me reason.

As a CAG, I never like to get word that one of my troops is hurt. It’s not just a matter of preserving the few pilots that are left, but of believing every one of their lives is my responsibility. Is that a little lofty? Hell yes, but it goes with the job. And as much as I’d like to think I know all of the crew – and probably should given how few there are – the truth of the matter is that while I can put most names with a face, I’m not really very close to many of them. Nonetheless, when I got a call that one of the pilots had been hurt doing some repairs, and that it was possibly serious, I was worried. I was a lot more worried when I got down to the deck to find the now-deserted Viper left just as it had been immediately after the accident.

There was blood everywhere. It was on the plane, the floor, the small tool box… everywhere. Oh, not great pools of it, but as though it had sprayed or something. My first thought was that someone had hit an artery or something. I’d come in from the back of the bay, hoping to stay out of the way of any emergency personnel if they were on their way, so I wasn’t spotted immediately. I also didn’t call out to anyone, because I was frankly stunned. What in hell could have done this? And what pilot was careless enough to let it happen?

“Captain Apollo, Sir?” That voice I know, our very own little Specialist Cally. I say little because those first couple of weeks I was convinced that her presence was a joke. She didn’t look much more than twelve or thirteen, and she was so quiet and withdrawn that nothing she said changed that opinion. Then I saw her dive into a Viper which had taken a rough landing. The look on the Chief’s face was priceless; he had known, and I felt like a dunce.

“What happened?” I asked, partly in concern and the rest confusion.

“She’s already up in Life Station,” Cally said, carefully sidestepping the question.

“I gathered that. I’m asking what put her there.” Anyone else I would have screamed at for being so evasive when I was tired, busy, and otherwise put out by the whole issue of some pilot being careless.

“She and Lieutenant Bell were working on the preflight. He said there was a seal stuck, and she was trying to get it loose when her hand got cut on something.”

“Did you see how bad?” A trip to life station could mean anything from a bandage to death, and there was a lot of blood sprayed around.

“Pretty bad,” Cally admitted. “But she was still cussing when they rolled her out, so she’ll probably be okay.”

That brought me to a halt. I have four Viper pilots that are female and only one with the mouth of a sewer. “Who was it?” I asked.

Cally must have caught something in my voice – either that or she knows a lot more than she lets on, which is far more likely – because she backed up a couple of steps before answering. “Lieutenant Starbuck, Sir.”

Kara. Oh, shit! If it had been anyone else, I probably could have been objective. As it was, all I could do was keep myself together until I found out just how badly she was hurt. “I’d probably better go see how bad it is,” I muttered, just wanting to take off at a dead run. Sometimes being the CAG – setting the example – is a royal pain in the ass. “Why don’t you get this mess cleaned up before it dries.”

“Yes, Sir. Um, Sir?”

I really didn’t want to stand there and chat, but Cally’s one of our good ones and if she had something to say it was most likely important. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay, Sir?”

She couldn’t have surprised me more if she’d gone off on one of Kara’s profane rants. Well, it didn’t surprise me to know that the crew knew we were close; that’s a given on a ship of this size. What surprised me was that she’d say anything, especially then.

I gave her a nod, even though I knew better. The walk to Life Station may have slipped to a jog just a few times, and I hoped it was attributed to my concern for a pilot rather than my fear that Kara was really hurt. Then, when I finally reached my destination, I reached a brick wall. They weren’t letting me back there for anything, which didn’t do a thing towards my attitude. I made quite a few threats, and I have to say that the techs down there are pretty tough. I would have had half the flight crew cowering with half that display. But they weren’t letting me in. Period.

About twenty minutes later, Doctor Sands came out to tell me that she was doing well but was still in surgery.

“Surgery?”

“It was too big a job for a local, but every time we tried to knock her out she stopped breathing on us. It isn’t uncommon; a lot of people don’t respond well to that type of sedation. It was safer to put her under general and do this in the operating room.”

“Oh,” I say, feeling really stupid. I understood about half of what she’d said. “Um, when can I see her?”

She smiled. “She’s in recovery, so how about now?”

That was a relief. It wouldn’t have been out of line for them to refuse to let me in, CAG or not. I’m not a relative, nor even a boyfriend. I would have called my father if it had been necessary, but I didn’t want to worry him until I knew first-hand how she was.

And she was sick. Really sick. While I watched her retching into a basin from a fair distance away, I had to wonder how she could stand me when a headache hits. I mean, it’s bad enough on the puking side, but the receiving end is a mess. She’s never said a word, though. She just stays with me, cleans up the mess, and afterwards acts like it never happened.

I watch as Doctor Salik yells for something, and Cassie hustles away to get it. The “it” turns out to be a syringe of something which Kara gets quickly in the tush. She doesn’t even flinch, which tells me how involved she is with getting sick. I keep my distance as the Doctor walks off nearly screaming about the ancient medications they’re resorting to and the unnecessary side effects they cause.

But whatever they just stuck in her butt, Kara’s not retching any longer. The tech who had been there holding the basin waits just a moment more, then eases her onto her back, putting a pillow beneath her right arm. I approach slowly. “Why a cast?” I ask. “Is it broken?”

Cassie smiles at that. “No, but we don’t want her moving it until it’s partially healed; it would tear the stitches. I also have a feeling she’d be a scratcher, and a wrap she’d just take off. I’ve tried reasoning with her about her health before,” the tech told him with a wink. “No can do.”

And she was right.

The medication they gave Kara to keep her from being sick also put her out for the next several hours. I took that time to talk to Doctor Salik – who was optimistic, my dad – who was worried, and my Deputy CAG – who was surprisingly understanding. We did some shift shuffling to cover both my absence and Kara’s, and he gave me a report on the Viper that had caused the whole issue. Then, all there was to do was wait – and worry. There’s nothing fun about telling someone you care about that they may never be able to do what they love again. No, it’s not likely that she’ll lose that much mobility in her hand, but as the doctor had told me, infections and complications were always possibilities. Stupid me. I asked if I could be the one to tell her; I thought it might be easier coming from a friend.

She took it surprisingly well, as she did her convalescence. She spent the time doing everything but flying, and I don’t think she missed more than those first couple of days when the pain medication had her so woozy. It got to be a running joke that you didn’t dare upset Starbuck, because now that right hook would be concrete, but I was just glad to see her getting better. It had never occurred to me that she could get hurt; somehow it just never had. Even at the beginning of the war, when I thought her dead, I imagined a flash of light and then oblivion. Kara is not a woman to slow down. She’s just not. Seeing her taken down to a normal, human speed was frightening.

It was also frankly sobering, because I was forced to see just how much I actually depend on her. I knew that she was essential to my job, and that her friendship was valuable, and even that I wanted more than friendship with her. What I didn’t know was that my equilibrium was reliant on her presence. A day without her wry jokes or crass humor just isn’t any fun, and for all the hassle she causes, she’s far more help than hindrance. Life is dull without her, and I’ve had enough of dull lives. I want her in mine. Period.

Which is not to say that having her somewhat limited didn’t have its advantages. Someone had to scratch her back, after all. Getting into uniform herself was impossible, and a guy has to take his thrills where he can get them. She didn’t even seem to mind a little help here and there, which was unusual for her. But it was an excuse to be close, and I took it. I was careful – always careful – but I stayed close. And when she flew that first patrol, I was right there with her. If there’d been a problem, I would have helped her through it, but there wasn’t. It was like watching an injured bird, healed and set free. Lords, how she flew. It was just plain beautiful to watch, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

But for all her freedom in space, Kara can be an absolute brick when it comes to honesty. Finally, when she was back on her feet – or using her arm, as the case was – I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer to deal with the limbo we’d been in. I had dropped more than one hint over the past months, ranging from gentle kisses to not-so-subtle subjections that were as close to lines as I was willing to go. Kara didn’t seem to mind, but neither did she encourage me. She let me move forward, but she always pulled herself back. The dance was making me ill. I decided to corner her and just find out where we stood. It seemed like a sensible idea. We would both lay out our strategies, compare tactics, and the frakking war could be over. Instead, I ran into a pure roadblock.

It’s hard for me to believe that Kara is dense, but I honestly think I’d prefer that to thinking she doesn’t care. After going back and forth a dozen times or so, or what felt like it, we finally decided to pretty much leave things as they were. It wasn’t much of a solution, but I thought it would be better than taking the chance of chasing her off. I was wrong.

Oh, it started out well enough. At the very least she agreed to be alone with me long enough to discuss the matter, and she acted like it was important to her as well. Truthfully, she had some valid concerns. Changes in relationships are never easy, but things that are worthwhile rarely are. To me, it was worth the minute risk to be able look at her as more than a friend, but to her it wasn’t. That was the bottom line. It was good to know that it wasn’t me – that I wasn’t bungling in trying to let her know that I wanted more – but finding out that she was completely opposed to the idea was painful.

She was worried about losing a friendship; I understand that. And she’s had some pretty crappy experience with men as well. The jerks she roomed with at the Academy were prize losers, and I know she dated a few of the squad guys before she realized that if she put out everyone knew it, and if she didn’t they called her a tease. I guess that’s why she’s worked so hard at being one of the guys. So far as I know, she’s never dated anyone on the Galactica, but I didn’t think that would extend to me. She and Zak had something good; she had to know it was possible.

I tried to be honest with her. I let her know what I wanted, at least as much as I could without drawing diagrams. She plainly wasn’t interested. I don’t know if she expected me to be like the guys who turned on her in the past or what, but her lack of faith in me was hard to take. Gradually though, I came to realize that she wasn’t afraid of me specifically; she was afraid of change. It was flattering to know that she valued what we had so much that she didn’t want to risk losing it even if it meant things would be better when all was said and done. She didn’t want to lose her best friend. I told her she never would, but it turned out that she knew me better than I knew myself.

I let most of it go, though. I reassured her, I gave her time, and most of all I backed off for a while. Why? Because whether she knew it or not, I heard some things in her argument that just didn’t ring true. She didn’t want me to be with anyone else. She didn’t want to come in second to anyone. She didn’t want to be alone. Any or all of those things clued me in that she wasn’t really telling me no, but rather telling me to wait. I figured I could bide my time and at some point she’d come around. The thing was, I didn’t want to be with anyone else. I needed someone who understood me and loved me anyway. I needed someone with my same values and priorities. And okay, if that one woman is already a great friend and happens to be absolutely gorgeous, then that’s okay too.

And the other thing I heard in her was raw fear. She’d loved Zak completely, and I saw her after she lost him. There just wasn’t a hell of a lot left of her for a while. It took time for her to rebuild herself and get strong again, and that kind of personal reconstruction isn’t something a person wants to repeat. I do the same thing for a living that Zak was doing when he died. And bringing it around to my brother, I’m sure she had more than a little guilt in the mix. When I first started falling for her, I went through it as well. I felt like I was betraying Zak to feel that way about his girl. At some point though, I realized that she wasn’t his anymore. He was gone, and he couldn’t come back, and he wouldn’t ever want her to spend the rest of her life alone and pining for him. He’d loved her too much for that.

And I also knew that he’d want her to be with someone who really cared about her, and respected her, and needed her. He’d want her to be with someone who wasn’t intimidated by her skill, but challenged by it and impressed by it. He’d want someone who appreciated all she was, and didn’t hold what she wasn’t against her. I figure that if I don’t fit that bill, then it isn’t likely anyone else would. That wasn’t pride; it’s just how well I knew my brother. In fact, before he ever asked her out, he asked me if I minded. Even then he must have seen the way that I looked at her, but he accepted my word when I told him to do as he liked. I guess I didn’t consider that she might say yes. I know I never thought that it would work out. Maybe my judgment wasn’t as good as I thought it was.

But I let her go that night, because I believed that if I pushed her, it would be away from me. That wasn’t what I wanted at all. I wanted… her. I didn’t want to have to tell her how to feel, or what to do, or how to act. I wanted her to feel the same way for me that I did for her, and I suppose that wasn’t fair. I thought I was being so generous – giving her time and space – but I was just disguising my expectations and my own impatience.

I got the surprise of my life when I found her sitting on my bunk after duty. She seemed angry at first that I was late, but quickly she settled down and we started talking. She’d brought me dinner, and although I’d already eaten I thought it was pretty sweet. It also gave me a level of hope that I hadn’t had before. It was the first time she’d come to me – actively made an effort at what looked like more than friendship. Her words weren’t so reassuring.

She wanted to know what I wanted. It struck me as so… Kara. Give her a diagram and she’s set, but she can’t puzzle things out unless it’s under fire. She thinks fast when she has to, but when she tries it just seems to slow down the works. She over-thinks everything, which is what she always accuses me of. Maybe that’s why we usually get along. Anyway, she told me that she didn’t know what she wanted, so she wanted me to tell her what to do.

Gee, that was flattering. Right. I couldn’t make her love me, or see me as a man rather than a brother. I couldn’t make her feel the same excitement and anticipation when she sees me that I feel when I see her. I couldn’t make her do anything, and even if I could I wouldn’t want to. Who wants a woman who comes to him like a robot, asking for directions? I wanted her spirit and her life, not her obligation due to our friendship. But she was demanding an answer, and putting those thoughts into coherent words – especially under the influence of the disappointment I was feeling at that moment – was just more than I could do. I finally told her that. I couldn’t do it for her.

And then I watched her crumble.

Kara is one of the strongest people I know, and it takes a lot to bring her down. She’ll take on anything or anyone, but when it comes to her own feelings and emotions she’s always questioning. She’s so afraid to make a mistake that she doesn’t even try. I tried to explain it to her – that I couldn’t give her words for what she should feel – and wound up insulting her. Badly.

I used a bad analogy, and she got the idea that it was about sex. And it wasn’t; well, it wasn’t entirely. I’ll admit that more than a year of celibacy isn’t exactly comfortable, but neither is it terminal. If I wanted sex, that’s easy enough to come by on one of the luxury liners that are within the fleet. Hell, it doesn’t even take cubits anymore, just a few extra rations or a blanket or two. But sex isn’t what I wanted. I wasn’t opposed to it, but it certainly wasn’t my priority.

What I wanted was her – inside, outside, everything. I wanted to know what she was thinking, and feeling. I wanted her to want me, not just to sleep with me. She’d talked about male egos once, and I suppose she has a point. Everyone wants to be appreciated, though. It’s not just men. I wanted her to feel what I did. That’s just not something you can engineer; it’s either there or it’s not. But I figured that I could at least put her at ease, and put things back into perspective.

So I talked to her gently, like a frightened animal. I moved closer slowly, touched her carefully, and before I knew it my lips were on hers and the world just dropped away for a few moments. I hadn’t meant it to happen. I had only meant to get her attention, and maybe get her thinking in that general direction, but once I’d spoken of kissing her I just couldn’t resist doing it. Practically, it was damned awkward. I was kneeling on the bed, doing my best not to scare her by acting like a starving man staring at a banquet, but it may have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Even when I tried to pull away, I couldn’t help touching her. I felt like letting go of her would kill me.

She told me it was nice. Nice? I’m about to go off like a rocket, and she’s saying it’s nice? I called her on that one, as much for the sake of honesty as for ego. I’d felt her response. She’d been as involved in the kiss as I had been, and it had been a hell of a lot better than “nice”. I couldn’t get the words out of her, but at the very least she kissed me that next time, and then words weren’t really the point.

My arms were shaking, so I put one around her mostly for support. When she didn’t pull back, I pressed her down into my bed, doing everything I could to keep my hands out of any danger zones, and keep her from noticing what a state she had me in. I didn’t want to frighten her, and everything seemed so tenuous then, but I couldn’t let her go. Gradually, the kiss went from frantic to easy, and I think we were both able to enjoy it more. I know that she relaxed, and I didn’t feel like she was going to bolt at the first opportunity. At that point I felt confident enough to give her some space, so I tightened my hold on her and shifted to my back. With her laying on my chest, she was a lot less likely to feel how involved I was, and I knew that I was less likely to push her farther than she wanted to go.

I’m not sure how long we stayed that way; I really wasn’t watching the clock. I do know that when she finally pulled away it was to say something about the time, and needing some rest. I offered to let her stay before I even realized what I was saying, much less before considering how she might take it. When her eyes went wide, I amended the invitation by removing myself from it. I told her that I’d take her bunk. It’s something we’ve done in the past when she’s working the odd shifts and all the in and out traffic of quarters is keeping her awake. I can work just as easily out of CIC if it’s paperwork I’m juggling, and if I’m in the air then it’s all academic. She turned me down, but at the very least I saw her consider it for a moment. The refusal didn’t feel quite as bad when I knew that the choice hadn’t been easy for her. She was still so damned afraid; I wished I knew what would help, but I was completely clueless. I really don’t think she was any more certain than I was, but at least that night I had her fooled.

I even fooled myself at first, right up until my preoccupation with her nearly got a kid killed. I suppose that’s exaggerating, but not by much.

Iian Green was just that – green. He’s a fresh-faced kid of about twenty who had barely finished the academy and was in his first assignment on the Atlantia. The day the war began, the kid was playing courier when he was faced with a Cylon attack. The Lords’ honest truth is that he completely panicked and gave the shuttle far too much fuel, far too quickly. As a safety kicked in, all systems shut down. Ironically, that stupidity was what saved his life. We picked him up drifting just outside the orbit of Saggitaria, lost and scared and totally inept. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough military pilots to pick and choose, so when we started looking for replacement pilots for the Vipers we’d pieced together, he wound up on the list. We wound up naming him Greenback, because he always seemed so naïve about everything. He was also horribly nervous, and occasionally scatterbrained. I knew that; I really did.

But the morning we headed out on patrol, I was thinking over the night before and how good it had felt to have Kara in my arms. I’m not one to wander around in a daze, but that morning I was damned close. I had to work to keep my mind on the preflight check before taking my place in the Viper and preparing for launch. As patrols went, it was completely uneventful right up to the landing. We approached the Galactica and I kept pace to allow the kid to head in. It’s standard procedure that the wing leader remains to provide cover fire for less experienced pilots. Unless we’re under direct attack, it isn’t really an issue, but it is procedure and we’ve never gotten away from it.

I watched the kid head in with about half my attention. The rest was divided between maintaining my distance with the moving Galactica and how I was going to get Kara back into my bed that night. The schedule was set, and I’d seen to that a week before although I hadn’t realized why it would be such an important factor in my life until that moment. She had brought me dinner, so I was just planning to do the same for her when I heard the LFO’s voice change rhythm.

A quick glance and an experienced eye showed me the problem; the kid was way too low. For a moment I just sat there, waiting for him to self-correct. I hadn’t flown with him more than once or twice before, and there are pilots who come in from beneath to gauge their vertical thrust before landing. Greenback wasn’t that experienced but as I said, my mind wasn’t really on him. It should have been.

My second clue that there was a problem came from the kid himself. It was a panicked call for help. “I can’t get any higher,” he called out in a high-pitched voice.

“Abort landing, Viper B417. Repeat, abort landing. You are too low.” The LSO’s voice was clear, if urgent, but it was enough to get my ass back into gear.

“Drop down, Greenback,” I instructed. “Repeat, drop down and circle. We’ll try this again.”

“I can’t make it go up!” The call was frantic and childish. For just a moment, I caught sight of him flashing his glance around the cockpit before I settled in beside him.

“You don’t have to make it go up,” I told him in my calmest voice. “Drop down, circle, and we’ll go through a system check to find out what the problem is.”

“Yes, Sir,” he finally said, and perhaps three hundred yards before slamming into the lower section of the landing bay, he finally dropped down and followed me around a slow circle away from the Galactica.

While out, we went through systems one by one, and finally we located an absence of pressure to one of his engine’s fuel lines. I had him make a couple of minor adjustments, gave that thruster a little more juice, and we turned ourselves around to try again. This time when we approached the Galactica, I was intent. Ironically, everything went smoothly. The kid made his landing, I followed, and for the moment a crisis was averted.

The specialist who had come to grab my helmet and hand me the report board knew better than to argue when I handed it back and moved past him on the ladder. I was headed for the kid’s Viper, worried only about his post flight check so that we could find out what the hell had gone wrong. The first thing I needed though, was his preflight information. I needed to know his exact pressures when he’d gone out to calculate how significant a leak we would be looking for. I suppose I should have known by the look on the Chief’s face when he handed me the board that something was wrong. His presence didn’t clue me in, because anytime a bird has any level of malfunction, he’s the first on the scene. These Vipers are like his children, and he guards them with his life. But there was something on his face this time which should have let me know that something was wrong.

A glance at the board gave me my answer. The readout showed the pilot name, Viper identification code, and nothing else. Nothing. No preflight check had been accomplished. None. I looked up at the Chief for confirmation, and he didn’t meet my eyes. That gave me my answer. I didn’t hang around long enough to kill the kid. Hell, I didn’t even watch him get out of the Viper. I did however vow to myself that it would be a hell of a long time before he sat in one again. The kid had violated one of the most basic safety rules of flight. He might as well have gone out there without a flight suit, for the danger he had put not only himself in, but the entire landing crew as well. Our deck crews have lost quite enough, thank you very much. They don’t need a fresh-faced idiot to take out any of the survivors. Hell, if it hadn’t been for that I might have wished that the brat had crashed his bird. It would have served him right. Nobody likes to take the time for pre and post flight checks, but they are absolutely necessary to our safety. You just can’t go out there in a defective Viper. You can’t, but he had. And I had let him.

That was the part that drove me past the ready room and down the corridor to the gym. I had my flight suit half off before I got anywhere near the equipment, and miraculously the gym vacated in record time. When I looked up after my first set of reps, I was the only one in the room. We have a very smart crew. I don’t get angry often, but when I do it’s usually an epic event. I’ve come apart a few times since becoming CAG, and the squads have learned the signs. They stay clear, and everyone stays out of the brig.

There is – of course – one exception to that rule. Lieutenant Kara Thrace would take on the devil himself if given the opportunity, and she’d probably smile while she punched him. She’s never been afraid of my darker moods, no more than she’s been afraid of my headaches. She just accepts them as part of the package and barrels ahead. But that morning, I really wish she hadn’t.

I had far too much adrenaline left from the near accident to release it in a few minutes of exercise, and I’d only been there for half an hour when she came in. I told her to leave. Repeatedly. But Kara has never listened to anyone unless she wanted to hear what they had to say. She came in actually looking for a fight, knowing that I was going to have to blow before I could calm down. There are times she knows me better than I know myself, but I know her pretty well, too. At least, I thought I did. She expected me to come out swinging, and I decided not to give her the satisfaction. I wanted her out, and I figured the best way to do it was to scare her off. If she was out of the picture, my head would be out of the clouds and I could do my job again. If I could just frighten her away – get her out of my system – then I could quit walking on eggshells. And the best way to scare her was to push her.

When she cornered me against the back wall, I made my move. I snaked one leg around hers, pulled, and took her legs out from under her. I hit the ground with her beneath me, knocking the wind out of her, and then I attacked. And that’s what it was – an all out attack. I kissed her, but it didn’t have a damned thing to do with wanting her or loving her. It was pure anger and aggression, and a lot of resentment that she could keep me tied so tight in frakking knots. I didn’t care if I hurt her, didn’t care if I scared her away, and didn’t care if she was with me. I honestly think that if I’d hit her, I wouldn’t have felt nearly as bad when my head cleared.

And somewhere in her lack of resistance – in her failure to fight back – my head did clear. She didn’t fight me. If I’d punched her, she would have hit me back. As it was, she had accepted and let me do all the fighting. I might have been able to stand that, but then I saw her face. I didn’t know then if I’d split her lip or mine, but I knew that there was blood. Anything causing that much pressure had to have hurt. I still gave her the opportunity to fight back, but she didn’t want it. She just lay there, accepting whatever I gave her. And suddenly what I’d done and who I was absolutely sickened me.

I was so furious that I don’t remember half of what I said to her, but I remember her expression like it was this moment. I hurt her far more with my words than I could have with my body. I tore into her with everything I had, and still she accepted and offered comfort. It was a comfort I didn’t want, couldn’t deserve, and wouldn’t take. Every frustration I’d had in the last year seemed to boil up and spew out at her then, and the attack was completely irrelevant and unfair. I knew it even as I did it, but I couldn’t stop it. What I said really wasn’t important though, because I meant none of it. The words were simply weapons I resorted to after I had run out of other methods of attack. And when she finally left – when I had driven her away – it took everything I had not to go after her.

The next days were pure, undiluted hell. You never realize how much a part of your life someone is until they aren’t there. You never realize how close you are to someone until you’re trying to stay clear of them. I did everything in my power to avoid Kara in the vain hope that time and distance would keep me from wanting her. After nearly a week of working sixteen-hour days which accomplished very little and sleeping sitting-up in CIC, my father finally cornered me and hauled me off to his room. He asked what the hell was wrong, and I told him. I told him about Greenback, and about Kara, and about how hard it had become to keep work and friendship separate. I unloaded on him what I couldn’t tell her – at one point bawling like the child I felt like – as a week of fatigue and mental anguish caught up with me. It was pitiful, now that I think about it. But Dad didn’t criticize or laugh it off. He seemed to understand that I was coming apart. He told me that Kara wasn’t happy either, that she had asked about me and he’d avoided telling her anything because he purely didn’t know. I asked him to keep it that way, and he agreed. He didn’t look like he approved, but he agreed. Before he left the room, he told me to think about what I was doing, and what I was giving up. He told me that I wasn’t being fair to make the decision for Kara, and that she had some rights, too. I didn’t absorb much of it then, but I did finally get some sleep. There, in my father’s bed, I finally managed to let some of the anger go. The pain was still there, but the anger I had carried – both at her and myself – seemed to seep away as I slept.

The next week wasn’t any easier, and it had little to do with the headache that slammed me one morning. Stress is always a trigger, and this was as much stress as I’d known since the beginning of the war. It didn’t help that it was the first one I’d been through without her patient assistance in the past year. I cut back on work shifts, but remained as far from where I thought Kara would be as possible. I knew that if I saw her, I wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretense any longer. I knew that if I had to look at her, there was no way I could keep hurting her. I really thought that time would make it easier, and in a way it did make me numb. Granted, I wasn’t any more pleasant to be around, but neither was I quite as emotionally volatile. I knew that if I could just keep my distance, then it would get better. It had to.

I should have known that Kara wouldn’t leave it at that. Despite my scheduling and rescheduling, she managed to track me down while I was hiding out in the hangar doing some minor repairs. She gave me the option of either making a huge scene in front of my troops, or being alone with her in my room. I seriously considered the scene. But in the end I resorted to talking to her, using the excuse of needing a shower to get a few minutes alone so that I could try to build up some kind of resistance to her. But all it did was put off the inevitable. If what we had was going to end – whether friendship or more – it was going to have to be a conscious decision. Avoidance was slowly killing me, and she didn’t look a hell of a lot better.

She had cleaned up my room by the time I got there. Looking back, it tells me just how nervous she must have been because that woman hates to clean. She was perched at my desk, doing the paperwork I’d been ignoring, and I tried once more to avoid the situation. She didn’t let me do it that time either. I sat down, and we started to at least clear the air somewhat as to why I’d been so upset and even why she’d been so reluctant to get close. None of it was really new, but maybe we were both so tired that we had actually started listening to one another, because for the first time it started to make sense.

She really was afraid of losing me, and it suddenly hit me that I’d given her damned good reason to worry. I had done exactly what I’d promised I wouldn’t. I had turned my back on our friendship. I tried to explain that I hadn’t done it out of spite, but because it just hurt too much to see her and not have all I wanted with her. I understood that I couldn’t make her love me, and I wasn’t holding it against her, but the uncertainty was affecting my work and putting lives at risk. Somewhere in all the confession, I also admitted that I’d been in love with her practically from the beginning. I still don’t know how that happened, but she was too astute to miss it. I also let her know that I regretted what had happened in the gym, although regret is a mild word for what I’d felt. I had hated myself. When I really think about it, I still do.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of her voice when she asked me what to do. Kara is strong – very strong – and to hear her voice break because I’ve frustrated her to tears was almost as hard as knowing that she’d never want me the way I wanted her. I expected her anger, probably to get punched. I never expected tears, and I truly never expected her to start stripping before me. It was what I’d always dreamed of – Kara with me, beautiful and honest and warm – but this wasn’t my Kara. This was a woman who was terrified that she had lost her only friend, and I had done that to her. I had taken my best friend and dropped her into the vacuum of space, and I’d done it because I didn’t want to hurt anymore. I had her so tied up that she was even willing to give me what she thought I wanted: her body, something she guards very carefully. Turning her down was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and the look on her face after I’d done so was even worse. And when it was done, I did the only thing I could; I put my arms around her and held on.

She was blaming herself for my irrationality, so I said what I could to set that straight. I tried to explain myself, but it didn’t even make sense to me.

Yes, I wanted sex, but that was such a small part of it. I wanted all of her, not a grudging acquiescence to what she thinks I want. I want her to know that I see her as absolutely lovely, inside and out. I want her to want me – all of me – not just the part that’s been her friend for years because that was all she would allow. And finally, after all this, I realize that if her love isn’t freely given, then it isn’t worth a damned thing to me. And holding her best friend hostage is not the way to win her love.

I’ve been impatient, and I tell her as much. And then I realize that it’s worth the wait just to see the relief come into her eyes, the gentle smile I’ve missed so much. I find it impossible to let her go, but my back can only take so much. When I shift her from chair to bed, she actually tightens her grip on me, and that is a reassurance I desperately need, as is the brief laughter as we tumble over one another in the uncoordinated romantic effort. Another reassurance is the way she drifts to sleep in my arms, warm and heavy and trusting. I can’t believe that I almost betrayed that trust in the worst way possible.

I watch her sleep for the longest time, half-afraid that if I close my eyes she’ll be gone. I’ve missed her so much, and not just the compact body which is snuggled against me. I’ve missed her wit, and her energy, and the way she always keeps me guessing. I’m better when I’m with her, and I’m only just starting to realize how many levels that reaches to. I suppose I doze in and out a little, and at some point I realize she might be chilly so I grab a blanket and toss it over her nearly bare back, but I never really sleep. I’ve come too close to destroying everything I wanted, and I don’t want to risk it happening inadvertently. So when she finally starts shifting herself, I feel it instantly.

I didn’t know she was awake right away. In fact, I thought that I might be the one who was dreaming. But I feel her smile as she nuzzles her face into the space between my shoulder and chest, and I enjoy the way her hand drifts from my chest to my hip, then down my leg and back up. I’m still in uniform, but it still feels good. And more than good, it feels natural. She isn’t being forced into this, or coerced. Hell, she probably doesn’t even realize I’m awake. I debate telling her, and decide not to. I want to know more of what she likes, and wants, and sometimes it’s easier to feel than to talk.

She stays that way, gently petting me and cuddling, for a long time. Somewhere along the way I start rubbing her back, bare above and below the standard-issue running bra she’s wearing. She has the softest skin I’ve ever felt, and it’s at odds with the personality I’ve come to know and yes, love. And that’s when I hear it, quietly spoken but audible.

“I love you.”

I can’t speak. Hell, for a moment I can’t even breathe. I want to tell her the same, but I can’t say a word for the knot in my throat. I tighten my arms around her, listening to her soft and contented sigh, and that’s when I realize that she didn’t say it to hear it back. I don’t know why she did say it, but there’s no question in her voice, or expectant stillness from her body. And she already knows how I feel; I’ve been telling her for weeks, both with actions and words. More words now aren’t necessary.

So I don’t speak, but rather hold her, and enjoy her. She fades out again, her body relaxing completely, and this time I can’t help but follow. She’ll be here when I wake up, I realize. She’s not going anywhere. And neither am I.

The end J