Title: There is Quiet in Me
Rated: PG-13
Characters: Kara/Lee
Genre: Angst
Spoilers: None whatsoever
Summary: When Kara witnesses the death of a young boy at the hands of an easily curable illness, she finds herself disturbed by the silence of the voices in her head and the colour of his familiar eyes.
Word count: 3, 142
Notes: Okay, you're looking at my first BSG story and it acted as my introduction to the fandom (I wanted to do child!fic and Kara without crossing into baby!fic territory). It's not my favourite work by any means, but the gracious sbabe betaed it for me long ago and she encouraged me to post it again. Thank you, darling. You're a spectacular beta.
The child couldn't have been more than four years old, but that was no comfort. In his mother's arms, life departed the frail shell called flesh, faded as light was extinguished in pale blue eyes. Naturally, the mother cried. She held her child until the shaking of her arms overpowered her ability to grasp him to her chest. His body fell to the floor, albeit softly, his limbs coming to rest haphazardly and his eyes wide in a greeting of afterlife.
Across the room, Kara Thrace pinned herself to the wall, her hands clenched, white-knuckled, and her expression withdrawn. She watched as the mother's unsteady hand brushed wisps of messy brown hair off the child's face. A part of her mind – perhaps her largely forgotten voice of conscience – felt guilty for intruding on this moment, for daring to stare, but in spite of that she couldn't turn away or close her eyes.
Kara did not forget to breathe. She inhaled the moment, tasting metal on her tongue – so much that it burnt. Her face contorted in a measure of pain for the boy, for his mother, for the entire inevitability of death.
She had no love of death, having seen in every direction the fall of loved ones, comrades and even strangers whose faces shouldn't have appeared so familiar. Kara had no need to see every day marked by another loss, another tragedy that would diminish the precious numbers on President Roslin's whiteboard.
A member of the medical staff was the first to approach the woman, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. The mother's gaze did not leave her child, though she did allow herself to be pulled to her feet. She was unsteady and half-stumbled, half-fell into waiting arms. She was encouraged to sit on a bench closer to Kara and, reluctantly, she complied. But still, Kara could not see her face.
Outside the doorway, a commotion could be heard. Two men – one carrying a folded body bag, Kara noted – entered the room soon after. Their eyes assessed the traumatized mother, whom the attendant had finally managed to quieten somewhat through the onslaught of shock, and then fell on the boy's body.
As they prepared to take the boy to whatever makeshift morgue existed on this vessel, Kara felt compelled to look at him. She unclenched her hands and pushed herself away from the illusory safety of the wall and approached the boy. Kara looked upon him cautiously, inclining her head and allowing her jaw to relax.
Live brown eyes met lifeless blue in a vision of contrast. Kara stiffened and ignored the urge to sharply inhale.
She was again finding the familiar in a boy she hadn't known existed yesterday.
And in a way that seemed so normal and expertly practiced, she lost herself in that blue. The noise of others didn't jar her as she saw brown out of the corner of her eye. Her brain was seconds behind her body as she bent beside the boy and reached out to stroke that recognizable brown. Something inside Kara unexpectedly snapped and she stayed her hand, hovering millimetres above the boy's head. She felt inexplicably stupid for succumbing to the temptation.
Beside her, one of the attendants coughed. It was loud enough to rouse Kara from her daze. She scowled at the man, but he was just doing his job; everyone was just doing their damn jobs. Lords forbid that their routine should become nothing more than a useless concept.
"Sir?" He was insistent. "We need to take the boy now," he said softly, as though she were the one breaking.
Kara pivoted and glanced at the mother. She should be the one receiving the sympathy, not Kara. The deceased child lying on the cold, unsanitary floor was, after all, not hers - despite anything she saw in his eyes to the contrary.
"Give me a second," Kara replied tersely.
It was then that the mother lifted her head, as if she had sensed Kara's eyes seeing inside her.
Oh, but if it had been Kara's child –
She didn't want to experience that mental torture again.
She didn't know how she found it in herself to meet the mother's gaze, see her anguish for all that it was, and realise that it was more than a mere memory. It was solid – desperately nagging - and sat at the back of her throat, a torturous sensation atop a pile of feelings and emotions that had already dug too deep.
Another avalanche of tears slid down the mother's face, dripping onto her grimy clothes and the floor. Kara felt for the woman. She couldn't do much else but feel right now.
The mother's eyes shifted to her son. Kara's followed and the small, pale body prompted a feeling of loss within her. Kara felt a quiet emptiness, but no emotion screamed at her to mourn the boy's death. And yet she did, because it was the thing to do and because the voices inside her head were quiet and that disturbed her more than she would admit.
The boy's eyes remained open and she found it wrong that the blue shouldn't also find peace in death. With one last look, Kara closed his eyes gently, as maternally as a woman like her could manage.
Rising to her feet, she looked to the two attendants.
"Follow the mother's wishes. Treat him respectfully."
She knew it wasn't her order to give, but that didn't matter to her.
Kara left the room a minute later.
Orders had been posted late to the roster that morning. Instead of flying a CAP, she had been assigned to an inspection team as the military representative. Such inspection teams cycled through visits to each ship in the fleet, their task to access conditions aboard each vessel - in particular, issues of health and safety.
Kara had recognised the orders as the same posted in Lee's column last week. Whereas he had been assigned to an inspection team on the Rising Star, Kara would be visiting one of the oldest and most overpopulated vessels in the fleet.
That morning, Kara had never expected to witness the death of a young boy from the flu – an easily treatable illness, had he been on one of the Colonies. Kara didn't know where the blame rested – the Cylons for destroying everything, the mother for not realising the severity of her son's sickness, the medics on the ship for not seeing anything sooner.
All Kara knew was that a young child with blue eyes and brown hair had left this existence.
Kara arrived back on the Galactica thirty minutes later. Business in the hangar deck was normal. People appeared to be everywhere, all focused on their own duties. Perhaps it was simply Kara's perceptions that caused her to feel surrounded by too many people all at once, but all the same, she felt uncomfortable.
She needed the quiet in her head to match the quiet of her environment and here, on the hangar deck of the last battlestar, she knew she asked the impossible.
She passed a group of petty officers and purposely moved aside when their shoulders brushed her arms. Kara was thankful when she managed to retreat to the relative quiet of her rack. At this hour, many of the pilots – including the nuggets – were enjoying a game of triad in the rec room or out on patrol. Surprisingly, Kara encountered no one in the bunkroom. She took that as a good omen and stripped down to her tees and shorts.
She didn't realise she had company until the hatch slid shut.
"Kara."
"Lee," she acknowledged, slipping out of the last leg of her uniform.
She could hear him lean against one of the locker doors.
"How was inspection duty?" His tone was casual, smooth but decidedly relaxed.
Kara didn't turn to face him. She attempted to shrug indifferently, despite her feelings to the contrary.
"Inspection wasn't CAP," she excused. She bundled her uniform into a roll and shoved it inside her locker, promising to herself that she'd wash it tomorrow. As an afterthought, she straightened her tees and her dog tags.
"You didn't exactly get the pick of the bunch," Lee said, referring to the old transport.
His voice was closer and she could almost feel him at her side, their near contact electrifying.
"No," Kara replied simply.
His hand touched her arm and he lightly traced his way to her collarbone. Kara didn't shiver or react at all. She looked at Lee, feeling uncharacteristically irritated with his forthrightness.
She stepped back.
"Look, I've just been on a cramped transport for the past few hours and I don't feel like –"
He cut her off abruptly, "You don't feel like this?" His voice and facial expression screamed scepticism.
Kara frowned, but found she couldn't meet his eyes to show him how much he didn't want to mess with her today.
"You're not irresistibility on a stick, all right?" She knew she was being an ass, but like everything she'd said today, she let it slide.
"Lee, how can you be so absolutely confident and right one moment and then frak up so well the next?"
Kara turned to go, deciding she'd find a deserted room somewhere on the Galactica, but Lee's hand caught her arm. He pulled her around and this time, her eyes unwillingly met his and they were shining in intensity and… concern – was it concern?
"Enough of this frakkin' madness, Kara. Tell me why you don't want to do this now because I damn well feel like doing it to perfection."
And there was Lee, the passionate, thoughtful, perfectionist Lee, the one she could never ever forget.
Lee released her arm and instead slid his own arm around her waist, pulling her closer. He cupped her chin so damn tenderly and his gaze alternated between her lips and her eyes. She knew that if she didn't say anything in the next handful of seconds, she would feel the warmth of his mouth on hers and the feel of his hand underneath her tees on bare skin. And he would look at her as if she were someone else, someone better than everything she knew Kara Thrace to be, when she was holding him to her.
He was such an Adama. She didn't precisely know what that meant, but it made her stomach knot.
"Lee." His eyes skimmed from her lips and then she saw that attentive blue. Kara couldn't suppress the sigh – the relief – that ran through her.
"Lee," she repeated his name again. His name could have flowed from her mouth in a mantra and still, he wouldn't have noticed that she was speaking nonsensically.
He leaned over and she felt his warm breath brush against her cheek. "Kara," he whispered extremely, painfully slowly.
She metaphorically threw a bucket of ice-cold water over him with her next words. "I really can't do this right now, Lee."
He pulled back and the surprise on his face could have lasted him a year. Instead of saying anything, which probably would have encouraged her to step away, he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. While he was always gentle with her, Kara was bewildered at the unguarded feeling he allowed to linger in the sensitive touch.
"I'm here. I won't leave."
He had said that to her the night of the mission from hell when their feelings would not sit quietly in the dark. He repeated them whenever he felt she needed to hear them, and by the Lords of Kobol, she needed those cherished words now.
Lee embraced her, his hand shifting to the back of her head. He enfolded her in the safety of his arms and she positioned her cheek against his neck.
Kara swallowed awkwardly.
"Kara," Lee murmured, his tone deepened in reprimand.
She hesitated, part of her feeling it was a sign of weakness to confess the death on the transport to him. Kara Thrace wasn't a woman who relied on men for anything. She belonged to no one but herself and, as such, she could weather anything thrown at her. Damnit, she'd frakking proved that a hundred times over.
But now she had Lee Adama. And Lords, everything felt so frakked up when she thought of his inclusion in her life.
But her emptiness was filled and occasionally the silence of the voices inside her head didn't exist. They'd all talk at once and that type of complicatedness didn't frighten because it was something that she knew. She'd accomplished the hardest tasks with that.
She just didn't want the frakking voices in her head to be too quiet for too long.
And so she confessed.
"On the transport, there was a boy who had caught the flu." She gulped in air. "His mother didn't realise how bad it was. The medics didn't know a thing." Without her conscious consent, her voice became hushed, "Lee, I don't know how they didn't see it. The child… was dying."
Lee's arms tightened and his fingers threaded through her hair.
"He's dead, Lee. He's dead and I was there. And it was all frakking too late for anything."
Kara pushed herself away from him. She needed to do something, anything, just to feel alive. She settled for abusing her locker, banging her palms against the metal, hoping to dent the useless frakking thing, but it was all too futile.
After a round against the invincible locker, Kara turned to Lee and argued, "If he had been on one of the Colonies, he would have never died, Lee! It's the frakking flu! It's not the next plague!"
"Kara," he began.
But she wouldn't have it. She wouldn't have him say a damn thing. He'd wreck her precious momentum and that mattered.
"And who do we blame? The child for catching the frakking flu in the first place and acting his age in the middle of this extermination? The mother for obviously being so incompetent that it's amazing they survived the destruction of the Colonies? Or maybe the medics who barely have the skill to apply a bandage? Hey, how about the Cylons for frakking with our entire existence - in spite of the fact our ancestors set humanity on the path to ultimate frakking destruction before you and I were even born!"
Kara's voice rose and she felt such satisfaction. "Who do we frakking blame, Lee? Can we be their judge? Who do we frakking blame? Because, you tell me and I'll go and beat the frak out of them!"
Kara's voice unexpectedly cut out and she sank against her locker. Lee was still quiet, still looking at her so intensely and now, she really did feel herself break.
"Fate, Kara," he answered quietly. "Blame fate."
Kara countered with her typical sarcasm. "How convenient."
"All right, Kara," Lee encouraged, stepping closer to her as she felt herself slip down the locker, "you want someone's frakking head on a plate, do you? Take mine then because I'm sure we can share the frakking blame around!"
"Frak you," Kara spat and she challenged him again with her eyes. "Frak you for being you, Adama. And hey, while I'm on such a frakking good run, frak that kid for having your eyes and your hair!"
Lee stood agape. "What are you trying to say, Kara?"
"I'm saying that I frakking love you - and when I looked at that child, I saw the next Adama!"
Kara slammed her head back against the locker. "This day has been so frakked up, Lee. I've screwed myself over. I've screwed with every frakking quiet voice in my head that wants my blood scattered across my cockpit just for seeing what I saw in that boy's eyes!"
Lee was beside her in a second, their eyes inexplicably connected and their mouths centimetres apart.
"Frak, Kara," Lee said fiercely, "you think you could have told me that you love me an easier way?"
"So I've screwed with your head, have I?"
Lee smirked slightly. "You can screw with my head anytime, Kara." He sobered, though, as he studied her face and saw the anger and distress within her eyes.
"That child - that boy – isn't a combination of you and me. And you can't predict whether we'll ever mix, sink into each other and create life, because you shouldn't try. You'll create fears that aren't worth any thought. We've had enough terror to last a lifetime in these short months." Lee paused and his eyes narrowed. "And as for the quiet voices within you, if they become too much, I'll become a voice in your head. If you want, I'll talk all day and night and when you want quiet, I'll just be – and that's really all we can ever ask for, Kara."
"Lee."
He understood.
Lee eliminated the distance between them and his lips glided over hers, the heat of his mouth overwhelming her defence. Adrenaline still surged within her and she deepened the kiss, opening her mouth and inviting his tongue to glide against hers in a slippery, seamless and boiling rhythm. He acquiesced, of course, but not before rolling her bottom lip with his teeth, causing a shiver to run down her spine. She tried to smile against his mouth, but his need to taste her was more important. Instead, she pushed her body against his, held onto his waist and then slipped her arm around to cup a handful of firm buttocks.
The kiss changed as Kara carefully rubbed herself against the developing bulge pressing against her stomach, dangerously close. A low keening noise erupted from her throat when Lee's tongue lightly skimmed the tip of her tongue and then flicked across the roof of her mouth.
Lee broke the kiss, but was already pushing himself against her thigh.
Her breathing was uneven and her face flushed with heat, yet she refused to quieten. "The boy didn't deserve death."
"I doubt anyone ever does, Kara."
"He may have had your eyes and your hair, but I never got to see his spirit."
Lee rested his forehead against hers and their eyes locked. "Lords of Kobol, please guide his soul to the afterlife and let him rest."
Kara looked at him questioningly. She could count on one hand the times she'd seen Lee praying and yet, he did so now with a conviction that she could probably accredit to… her.
"So say I."
"So say we," Lee insisted.
"So say the voices in my head, too?" Kara quipped, almost smiling.
Lee tilted his head and his lips barely made any contact with hers. He exhaled through his mouth and in a whisper that she felt against her lips and ring in her ears, he admitted, "I love you."
The voices did not quieten.
FIN