Title: Beyond Insane
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: This part of the fic is brought to you in its natural state, completely untouched by betas.
Spoilers: Up to the season three finale.
Beyond Insane 1/4
Three weeks after he sees her viper explode, Lee wakes up to the sound of Kara's voice, rich and amused and somewhat insulting as she tells him to get his lazy ass out of bed. For one fuzzy moment, he thinks that perhaps it's his conscience speaking, and the irony of that idea makes him huff in a weak attempt at laughter.
He ends up inhaling his bedclothes instead, which is not a pleasant experience, damn it, but at least it wakes him up enough so that he can will his tear-puffed eyes open. He blinks a few times and Kara comes into focus. She's tapping her foot impatiently, hands on her hips, about two feet away from his face. He stares at her, waging a serious internal debate for all of about two seconds before he decides that he doesn't care if she's a hallucination or not.
He tackles her to the bed and she grins up at him, hair fanned out across his pillow, and he wants to close his eyes in bliss, but he's desperately afraid that if he so much as blinks, he'll never see her again. He settles for curling up against her, holding her tight. She's warm and solid in his arms, and she makes a soft hum of pleasure as he nuzzles the back of her neck with his nose. Looks like Kara, feels like Kara, smells like Kara, sounds like Kara. He mouths her shoulder softly, and the tang of her skin is exactly as he remembers it. Tastes like Kara too. All five senses satisfied, he drifts off to sleep once again, and for the first time since she left, he doesn't have nightmares.
When he wakes up a few hours later, she's gone.
He almost hyperventilates when he realizes that she's not in his arms anymore, and a frantic run through his quarters reveals nothing. He dresses quickly and searches the ship as best he can, looking for any sign of her. Everyone eyes him strangely, and most look like they're busy wishing violence upon him, what with the Baltar trial and all, and all the pilots are still walking around in a haze, trying to absorb the double loss of their CAG and their top gun.
They haven't seen her. He doesn't even have to ask, which is good, because the last thing he wants is to be checked into sickbay. They'd ask all sorts of uncomfortable questions, not to mention that he hates the antiseptic smell of the place. He'd much rather go back to his quarters, bury under the covers, and never come out again.
He makes a valiant attempt at it, burrowing into his bedclothes and trying to think of nothing. He almost succeeds. The room is dark, bland now that Dee has taken all her personal effects away. It is the perfect place to forget.
He keeps waiting, though, for a knock on his door. A reprimand, or an ill-advised pep talk, or a sympathetic visitor, but no one comes for him.
He's not an officer any more, and he's broken the ties to most people who would care about him as just a man. It takes him two days to get hungry enough that he has to make an appearance in the mess hall. The food tastes like sawdust, even more so than usual, and no one sits next to him.
When he goes back to his room, Kara is waiting for him. "Lee," she says, "It's going to be okay." There's a calm and steady joy in her tone that he's never heard from her before. It makes him ache, both because he would have wanted that tone, that assurance, for Kara while she was alive, and because he now knows for certain that it can't really be her. She would never lie to him like that. Not if she were in her right mind.
That reminds him of her final flight, how he made her go up in the air, even though she'd said she wasn't ready, and he snaps. Shoves her against the wall, and his voice, when it finally comes to him, is hoarse from disuse, but has lost none of its volume. "Don't! Don't do this to me! I can't… gods, you're not even real!"
She ignores his angst, and the arm against her throat, instead peering around the room with a slight frown. "Where's Dee?"
He's so thrown by her lack of response to his yelling that he answers right away. "She left me." Just what he needs. Another reminder of exactly how screwed up he is.
"Why? I'm finally gone. She got exactly what she wanted."
Starbuck sounds more curious than concerned, and that grates on Lee's already raw nerves. "Not everything is about you, you know," he chokes out. She just stares at him with a level gaze, and he drops his eyes. She doesn't have to say anything. He understands her message well enough. When it comes to him, everything has always been about her. After all, if that weren't so, why would he be standing here, hung up on a dead woman?
"I defended Baltar, made them give him a trial. He's a bastard, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't give him the same rights we would give anyone else." He's heating up for a long debate… after all, it's no secret what Kara thought, or thinks, or whatever, about cylon collaborators, but she cuts him off mid-tirade.
"She left you for that?!?" She looks truly disturbed now; for the first time since she's been back, she seems less than calm. It passes quickly though. "Bitch," comes the verdict. "She's supposed to take care of you."
"You were supposed to take care of me!" As soon as he says the words, he flinches. There's something about Kara, even this version, that strips him of his defenses (and a few of his higher brain functions) and leaves him saying exactly what he feels, no matter how childish or how wrong.
"I never promised you that," comes the soft reply.
"I know," he says, looking down at his feet, "But you always did anyway."
It's true. Kara Thrace has always had his back, and they both know it.
She slides a finder under his chin and forces him to look at her, waits patiently until he can keep his gaze from skittering away. Her eyes hold real affection, and a softness he's only seen from her a few other times in his life. "I still have your back," she says. "You'll see."
He's going crazy, he thinks, as she kisses his forehead. Absolutely insane. Then she moves around behind him and starts massaging his shoulders, and he thinks that crazy might not be so bad.
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"I'll be back soon," she says, after his shoulders have loosened and he's resting against her, boneless. All the tension he's lost comes back, and he pleads with her not to go, even though he knows it's useless. She kisses the base of his neck softly, an apology of sorts, and he stutters into silence.
He wants to force her to stay, hold her here and not let her go. He fights down the urge though. After all, it's nothing new. She's always been uncageable, and although it's one of the things he admires most about her, it also drives him completely insane.
With that though, he snaps around and watches her leave, curious as to what he'll see. But she opens the hatch just like anyone else would. She winks at him before she goes, and leaves the hatch ajar.
He keeps it that way, hoping that maybe it will entice her to come back, but all he gets for his trouble is a dirty look from a deckhand that happens to be passing by a few hours later.
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When she doesn't show up the next morning, he starts to get restless, but he refuses to give in to despair. She said she'd be back, and Kara Thrace, figment or no, doesn't promise things she can't deliver. He believes that. He's got to. Otherwise, there's nothing left here for him.
He goes days without seeing her, and each day gets a little harder, so he decides that as long as he's waiting, he may as well wait in the gym. Working out makes the time go by faster, and besides, last time she left him, he ended up an oversized blob. Crazy or not, he's not about to let that happen again.
The next time she appears, he's in the shower, washing off the sweat of his latest run. He screams like a little girl and she gives him a wolfish grin. He scrambles for a towel, then realizes how silly he's being. They've been both lovers and pilots-- nudity is nothing new between them. And even if it were, what's the point in getting worked up about a figment of his imagination?
"Mmmmm…" she says, clearly enjoying the view, "Dee has no idea what she's missing."
He resists the urge to point out that Dee has every idea what she's missing. That is not a conversation he wants to have. Certainly not with Kara.
"It's Helo's birthday tonight," Kara says, and Lee is once again caught flat-footed by the abrupt change of topic. "You should go. He'd like to see you, and Dee will be there."
Lee doubts that anyone wants to see him, and he certainly doesn't want to see Dee. He tells her so in no uncertain terms.
Two hours later, he's clean-shaven, dressed and being dragged to the mess hall by a very insistent Kara. People look at him a bit strangely as he lurches down the corridor, and he hisses at her to slow down. She just grins at him and kisses his cheek before shoving him into the party.
Dee is indeed there. She looks lovely in a dress that he can't recall her ever having owned.
Kara catches him staring, and the urge to apologize is strong. Something about how he would be glad to stare at Kara instead if only she would wear dresses like that. Then he remembers that people are here, who already think he's unhinged, and besides, the idea of apologizing to a dead woman for looking at his wife is so twisted that it temporarily strikes him mute.
Kara doesn't seem angry though. She just smiles at him, mischievous, but a little wistful too. "That's my dress" she tells him, and he chokes, hard enough that she has to slam him on the back a few times.
"What?!?"
"Was my dress," she amends, a faraway look in her eye, "I won it in a triad game back when we were cadets. Liked the colors."
And that would be just like Kara, actually, though few people would know that. The woman has a finely attuned sense of artistry. Or, as she'd put it once, she cleaned up good sometimes. So that explained how she got the dress, but it didn't explain how Dee had come to wear it. Unless…
"Frak," he mutters, and has to sit down.
She sits by his side, and he leans into her a bit, thankful that she still feels just as warm and solid as she did in life.
"They auctioned off your stuff."
"Happens all the time. You know that. It's how you got half your gym gear, and most of your chocolate stash."
"They didn't tell me."
"Even viper jocks aren't that stupid Lee. It may have escaped your notice, but you haven't exactly been taking this whole thing well."
He's about to reply when he catches Racetrack looking at him strangely. No, he's not taking this whole thing well, gods damn it. He needs to leave now, before he does something stupid in front of all these people. He puts his head down and concentrates on breathing, and Kara rubs soothing circles on his back for a minute.
As soon as she's calmed him down though, Kara promptly undoes all her work by getting up and making a beeline for Dee. It's clear that Dee can't see Kara, but she certainly reacts when Kara tips the wiskey glass Dee's been holding, making it spill all down the front of her dress. And her eyes widen almost comically when Kara whispers something in her ear.
Kara saunters away quite satisfied, and Lee is about to follow and ask what the hell she said, and where the hell she thinks she's going, when Helo catches his arm and pulls him into a conversation.
At first he pays no attention, searching for a glimpse of Kara over Helo's shoulder, but Helo is patient, and insistent, and Kara had said to talk to him.
Turns out that having a cylon for a wife, not to mention having a woman that you would do anything for, leaves Helo a bit more understanding of his predicament than Lee would have anticipated. They've never been all that close; he knows Helo mostly as one of Kara's best friends, and as his father's XO, but Helo doesn't pry, and is easy to talk to, and seems to be looking for someone to mourn with him.
Every day that Kara doesn't come, Lee spends an hour or so just being with Helo, and eventually they get around to talking about her. It's obvious as they talk that her death has left a deep mark on the other man, and for the first time since she left Lee finds himself wanting to confide in someone.
"I'm going crazy without her," Lee tells Helo, but Helo just nods in sympathy and says nothing, and Lee isn't brave enough to press the point.
That night Kara comes to him again. "You're not insane, you know," she informs him. She's wearing standard-issue sleep attire. Tanks and shorts that he's seen on her thousands of times before. He can't stop staring.
He gives her a slow once-over, so it takes him awhile to make it up to her face and realize that she's giving him a look. "Well, not any more insane than usual," she amends.
"I missed you," he says, which is silly, and he thinks about taking it back and saying "I miss you" instead, but he knows that with Kara there are no takebacks, and besides, he has missed her, this her, with her calm, knowing eyes and her sense of tranquility and her easy smile.
He thinks that this is what she could have been if life had been kinder to her.
She's always been beautiful, but she's whole now in a way that she never was before. Staring at him as if she knows exactly what he's thinking, and he watches, rapt, as a small grin forms on her face. Insane or not, he needs this.
"I missed you too," she says. "That's why I'm here."
"Stay?" he asks, and his voice might break a little, but she nods.
"At least for a week. There should be time."
He doesn't ask what she means by that, because, in the face of her being here, it doesn't matter. He doesn't want to waste time with abstracts, not when she's right in front of him and his time could be better spent.
He kisses her, and that feels exactly the same as the old Kara. None of the fire has left her, and her hair still slides through his fingers exactly as he remembers it. She's perhaps not quite as desperate as she had been the other times they've kissed, but he doesn't miss it, not really. He is, for the first time in a long time, perfectly content.
When he wakes the next morning, she's still in his arms, and he thinks it might just be the best day ever.
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It takes her two whole days to persuade him to leave his quarters.
"You need to fly again," she says, after she has used all considerable persuasive talents (gods, he loves that mouth) to wear him down to the point where he'll agree to go down to the hangar bay.
"Oh, and we need to find a flight suit for me."
"Who needs to fly now?" he teases her, and she sticks her tongue out at him.
He gets rather caught up in the idea of her tongue, so it isn't until he gets down to the hangar bay that he realizes there may be a few technical difficulties involved in this flying endeavor. For one, he doesn't have his wings anymore. Also, Kara, figment though she may be, has proven remarkably solid, and somehow he doubts they're both going to fit in a viper.
"Raptor," she whispers in his ear. "You're going to take a vacation, see the Science Ship for a day or two."
He has a moment when he thinks that perhaps listening to voices, especially voices that tell him to get into tiny little spacecraft, is probably a bad idea.
But then he catches a glimpse of Dee, who looks to be flirting with a deckhand. She sees him looking, and averts her eyes, but keeps glancing up at him guiltily. Kara moves away from him, and tilts her head at the angle that means she's trying to solve a puzzle. He can see them both clearly, and he remembers the last time they where here together. The hanger had been converted into a bar, and he had been patching up his relationship with Dee, or at least trying to. He'd kept getting distracted by the way the low light glinted off Kara's hair.
He can't take his eyes of her now either, and this time, he doesn't even try. She's it for him. Always has been.
That decides it then. Crazy or not, he gets their raptor, and sets it on autopilot, plotting the shortest possible course to the science ship. She doesn't let him keep it that way for long, of course.
"Strap in," she instructs, and he grins. He's going to get the ride of his life, and he knows it. Even in a raptor, the girl can fly.
She settles down after a few barrel rolls, some flip stunts, and an ill-advised game of chicken with one of the agricultural ships. He's trying to keep his breakfast down, but other than that, life is pretty good.
Then she looks at him, almost shy, and he knows they're about to have an actual conversation. Of the type that they usually can't manage without being impelled by a major life crisis and a fair amount of liquid protection.
He supposes her being dead counts as a crisis. And, despite the lack of alcohol, his stomach feels like it usually does when they're about to have one of these kinds of talks, so really, she's done a pretty good job of simulating their usual heart-to-heart conditions.
He catches her looking out at the stars, and knows that she's trying to draw strength from them. Not so different from the old Kara then. Reminding herself that she's in control. That she's not caged.
It's probably easier to convince herself this time than ever before, because today, for the first time, it's true.
Finally, she turns away from the canopy, and faces him. Sits down on the floor of the raptor and pulls him down with her, tucks herself close.
"You kept me going, you know that?" She's looking directly at him while making a personal confession, and he's so damn proud of her that her words almost don't register.
"You never needed anyone to keep you going. If anything you needed someone to slow you down. I never should have…"
"Lee. It wasn't your fault. It was the best thing you ever could have done for me."
"I don't…"
"It's okay."
She's never said that to him before. He refuses to count her last moments.
"I love you," she says.
She's never said that to him before either, not really. Declarations shouted out to an empty world are not the same thing.
He's being given absolution, he realizes. He's not religious enough to have noticed what she was trying to do before, but it hits him now. He didn't even realize how much he needed it until his breathing is suddenly easier.
She's biting her lip though, clearly not finished, and it's not until she says, "I'm sorry" that he realizes he's not the only one who's been shouldering a private guilt.
Sorry for not being a better friend, for not being able to save him from everything she feels she should have saved him from, for his brother, for his relationship with Dee. She needs a clean slate. A final word from him to let her start everything over again. Will you leave, he wants to say, if I set you free, will you go away? Instead he swallows and says, "You have nothing to be sorry for."
Somehow the saying it makes it true. He watches relief wash over her face, and then, instead of leaving, she melts into him, and he holds her close. He barely even notices when the docking clamps engage.
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He definitely notices the ship docked next to them though.
"What is that?"
"That," Kara informs him with great satisfaction, "Is the reason why we're here. Experimental vessel. Civilian project a few of the brains on the Science Ship have been cooking up. They didn't want military intervention, because they have mixed views on the old man. But they do need a test pilot. And, you're not military anymore."
She's wearing her trademark Starbuck smirk. The one that says she's developed a plan, and lo, it is good… and likely to wreak quite a bit of havoc, just the way she likes it. Used to be that that look made him want to kiss her and slap her in equal measures. He's rather surprised to discover that it still has the same effect.
After she directs his conversation with the scientists, telling him what to do and say to wrangle a test flight, he spares some time to wonder how exactly it is that she knew to come here.
If she is a figment of his imagination, that would mean that his subconscious has a pretty amazing amount of clairvoyance. He supposes it's possible. Oracles and all that. He's never really believed in any of that stuff though. But there has to be some explanation for this ship, here and real and right where Kara said it would be.
He gets to the point where he's pinching himself, hard, trying to determine if everything since her appearance in his quarters has been a dream. She smiles and slaps him on the back of the head. It's Kara, so it's hard enough to hurt.
"Stop second-guessing yourself," she says. "That way madness lies."
He looks at her, intent on explaining just how twisted that statement is, but he gets caught up in her eyes instead. Perhaps, in the back of his head, he's always thought that she could do anything… she's flown a cylon raider, rescued inhabitants from a dying world, found a map to earth, turned a bunch of scared kids into an efficient fighting force, saved his life more times than he's ever been comfortable with. Why not believe that she can do this as well? Especially when the alternative will mean falling apart.
When he gets in the test plane, and she shimmies in behind him and wraps her hands around his on the controls, he knows he's made the right decision. He's always been the slightest bit afraid of flying. He used to think that was healthy… old pilots and bold pilots and all… but with her hands guiding his, he feels absolutely no apprehension at all. He feels safe and utterly secure.
And that's the only thing that keeps him from ejecting when the ship shoots out of the docking bay and immediately goes into an uncontrolled spin.
She gets it under control quickly enough, muttering something about the blackbird and the dubious wisdom of having non-pilots design ships.
They fly out beyond the fleet a short way, enough room to play around in and not fear collision. Then she takes her hands off the controls, and he feels like a little kid again, at that moment when his would father let go of his bike handles and tell him to try for himself.
His father had done that every day for two weeks, and at the end of that time, Lee still hadn't figured out how to ride on his own. His father had been called up after that, and Lee had practiced on his own every day for weeks, until, a few dozen scraped knees later, he had been able to bike.
When his dad came back six months later, Lee had not only mastered his bike completely, but had also taught Zack how to ride. Zack had gotten an approving glance and a slap on the back for his accomplishment. Lee had gotten a raised eyebrow. "See," his father had said, "he's two years younger than you, and already zipping around on his own. He's going to make a fine flyboy someday."
Lee had wanted to hit something, but Zach had looked so pleased, and so Lee'd gone into his room and proceeded to quietly vent his wrath on his favorite collection of model planes.
By the time Lee realizes where his head is at, the bird is out of control again. And Starbuck, for all that he loves her, has a lot in common with his father. Her teaching methods, for one. And her ability to hurt him, for two.
For no reason at all that he can think of, he is angry… really angry, at her for dying.
"You left me," he accuses. "I can't do this without you, and you ran away. Fracking selfish bitch. You knew I needed you, and you left anyway. Just like after Zack died. Just like on New Caprica. Damn it Kara!"
His hands are completely off the controls now, but she reaches out and brings the ship back under control. He watches her hands work, feels the ship gentle under her touch, then feels her rest her forehead against the back of his flight suit.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I really am. And I came back. I didn't leave you for good. Promise." She sounds weary, underneath that calm surface, and it's then that he realizes that they essentially had this conversation yesterday. He had told her that he had forgiven her, and she had believed him, and now he had put all that weight back on her again.
He wonders if they'll ever get over hurting each other. He doesn't think he's said it out loud, but she answers anyway, "I can change you know. Not often, and not without a bit of arse-kicking, but I can."
"I know. I… you have changed. Something's been different about you ever since you've come back. Besides the… uhhh… invisibility and the quasi-omniscience."
He's never been great with words. It's never seemed to bother her though. She's always been able to understand him. Sometimes too well.
"I'm not afraid anymore." It's a simple reply, and one he's heard before, but he hadn't absorbed it, because he had thought she was talking about flying, and that hadn't made sense. Kara Thrace had never feared flying. It was everything else that she had had trouble with. Being close, making mistakes, drawing people down with her.
If that had changed about Kara… well, that would explain a lot.