By Crystal Wimmer
4,043 words / Rated PG
My thanks to Cori Lannam for her BSG Mini story, First Night Passing. It occurs to me that the first night is always the hardest, and that would be even worse if you weren't able to sleep…
Kara Thrace sat down on her bunk with a sigh and ran shaking fingers through dirty blond hair. Frankly, her hair was dirty both in color and in fact, and she just didn't have the energy for a shower. She had been awake for longer than she could remember, and she'd just finished a tedious patrol, which had been thankfully uneventful once they'd destroyed the ship which was apparently a Cylon plant. She wasn't sure what she would have done with one more emergency.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she knew that she should be trying to sleep. Her body felt like lead, and her vision was literally doubled. She honestly knew what it meant not to be able to see straight. The only thing that had her upright was a fist full of stimulants that had been necessary to keep her awake. Unfortunately, while the benefit of the medication had long since worn off, the side-effects were still present and accounted for. She was jittery, her head ached, and her hands still held the tremor she couldn't stand. Kara hated drugs; she always had.
Under any other circumstances, she wouldn't have taken the damned things, but it had literally been a matter of life and death. The fleet couldn't hope to survive without her fighters – her best fighters – in the cockpit. Still, all the justification in the world wasn't going to get her to sleep now that things had finally settled down.
Part of her problem was the stimulant, but the rest was pure habit. For days, every thirty-three minutes, they had been attacked. It had been long enough that her body had developed some kind of cycle, and every half-hour or so she found herself jerking around in expectation. She was rapidly becoming a nervous wreck, and no reasoning that this was simply exhaustion and sleep deprivation could convince her that it would go away. She would be waking up forever; at the very least it felt that way.
She was so disconnected as she stared at the metal bulkhead before her that she didn't hear the hatch opening to her side. The shadow of a body caught her off guard, and combined with the approaching deadline in her mental clock, she startled to a fully alert state. She jumped up, took in a quick breath, and was ready to stand and fight.
Gratefully she didn't have to. She released her breath and gave a weak smile to the man who had dared to interrupt her solitude. Indirectly, he was responsible for the way she was feeling, but she didn't have it in her to blame him. If it was possible, he looked worse than she did, and that was saying something.
She had never thought to live to see the day when Lee Adama looked any less than by-the-book perfect. He was one of the few men she knew who could complete a full PT session and never get a hair out of place. He actually looked better when he was at his worst, the emotions invariably giving personality to features that he normally schooled to absolute blankness. He was easier to read when he was upset, and at the moment he was far beyond upset. He was miserable.
His brown hair was more than mussed, coming closer to absolutely askew. His beard shadow had passed the stylish trend days ago, and now was simply a short beard, which looked untended and sloppy. He had black and gray shadows beneath tired blue eyes, and the usual smile he had for her was instead drained by the same fatigue that she was feeling. He was even standing with a slight slouch, a testament to just how tired he was. He was a long ways from the determined but resigned CAG who had dropped pills into her hand the day before.
Beyond the physical, there was also the state of his uniform. Like her, he had managed to pull off the top half of his flight suit to expose his undershirts, the arms to the flight suit flapping behind him like a tail. It wasn't regulation – and certainly wasn't Lee – but it showed that he was as fatigued as the rest of the squad. He was too tired to even shower and change, and knowing the man as well as she did, she knew that the world must be ending.
"You look like shit," she told him as she resumed her seat on the edge of her bunk.
"Thanks," he told her in a tired, wry tone. "Same thing back at you."
Unconsciously, she scooted to one side to allow him room to sit. He did so with a grateful sigh, resting elbows on his legs as he lowered his head and rubbed greasy hands over his tired face. "I figured you'd be asleep," he said after a long moment.
"Right," she snorted, trying to find the energy for her accustomed sarcasm. "I'll be awake for another week after that dose of stims. I'm too tired to think, but thinking too much to sleep."
"Yeah," he agreed.
"What about you?" she asked. "Not tired?"
He turned to give her a shadow of a smile, but it was something and it relieved her in an odd way. "Too tired," he told her.
Kara sighed, then ran her hands through dirty hair once more. "I should clean up, but I'm too tired to care."
"You and me both."
"I even thought of checking with Salik for something to bring me down, but with the medication situation the way it is…"
She didn't need to finish the sentence before Lee was nodding. Everything was going to be in short supply in their near future. No time in history had been more uncertain, and while no official command had been made – yet – it was common knowledge that everyone was going to have to cut back.
"So, we're too tired to move, and too tired to sleep," he decided. "Any clue where to go from there?"
"None at all," he admitted.
Kara sighed, and then turned herself sideways to sit on the bed, reclining herself back against the pillow. "Pull up a pillow," she suggested. "Talk to me. That should bore both of us right into oblivion."
He smacked her in the arm, but did as she said and lay himself along side her. She shifted just enough to share the single pillow with him, although later she wouldn't know why she bothered. The room was full empty beds and pillows with no owners.
"It's quiet in here," Lee said softly.
A chill traveled up her spine as she realized just how closely that thought mirrored her own. "My squad was the best," she said softly. "They were always the first ones out in a fight, or a drill, or a presentation. They made the Galactica look good."
"So they were first out in this mess?" he asked.
She nodded, unaware that he wasn't watching her. "The very first," she admitted softly. "Before we knew about the scale of the war, or the jamming, or anything else. They didn't have a chance."
"And you were…?"
"In the brig," she admitted. "Right where you'd left me. Every frakking one of my friends was blown to hell and back, and I was sitting on my butt in a cell because I couldn't keep my hands in my pockets."
His right hand slipped into her left, fingers threading with hers in a reassuring squeeze. Kara didn't withdraw her hand, but neither did she accept the comfort he was offering. She was a survivor, and always had been. She survived when those around her blew apart. She'd survived so well and so long that she had forgotten along the way that she wasn't immortal, wasn't untouchable. Now, feeling vulnerable for the first time in years, she was out of her depth.
"I didn't even get a chance to ask you how you were," he commented as he turned his head slightly to face her. "Things got a little… busy."
She gave a tired laugh. "You mean I kicked you out," she corrected. Then she sighed. "I knew you were wrong to blame him, but I didn't have the guts to tell you the truth. I guess I was trying to make it right without admitting any responsibility."
"Kara?"
"Hmm?" she asked, watching as his blue eyes met hers.
"I'm not… ready to talk about this, about Zak. I don't hold you responsible, but let's leave it at that. You're just about the only friend I have on this boat, and I'm not ready to have you kicking me out again."
She squeezed his hand. Lee Adama admitting he might need a friend? The world as they had known it was truly over. She grasped around in the dark – trying to think of another subject to change to that would be less volatile than the explanations for why she had murdered her fiancé – but very little came to mind beyond the fact that they should both be sleeping through the precious little time they'd been given off. "So," she hedged. "How's life as a Captain?"
"At the moment it's nerve wracking," he admitted. "I hadn't even pulled a stint as D-CAG yet, so this is a little… more than I expected."
"It's not so bad," she told him with another companionable hand-hug. "Ripper bitched about the endless reports, but most of the job he enjoyed. He knew when to be a hard-ass and when to listen, but then he'd been doing this for ten years or so."
"Sounds like a good CAG."
Kara smiled softly, refusing to give in to the sadness which constant activity had kept on the edges of her consciousness. "He was the best. I don't want you to let that get to you, though. You'll be just as good, but right now you're up against someone who can't make any more mistakes. Don't listen to the talk if they get to picking at you, just let me know and I'll take care of it."
He gave a wry laugh. "No thanks," he said with a bump at the arm nearest his body. "I'd rather keep my best pilot out of the brig."
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "He was a good man, Lee. We won't forget him. I don't want you to be… offended by that. It's not about whether or not they like you; it's about how much we'll miss him."
"Understood."
"And you told me how you are; you never did say how you were. How have things been going for you?"
Lee gave a shrug, which she felt more than saw. As he spoke, she closed her eyes and let his voice just wash over her in hopes that it might relax her. She was marginally successful. "Pretty much same old, same old," he told her. "Nothing too major going on. I was stationed on the Atlantia for a while, but when I made rank they started bouncing me around for this training or that. I was pretty much Solaria based when I got tasked for this." He gave a laugh. "You have no clue how much I tried to get out of it, but Admiral Negala himself had signed the order. At first I thought Dad was just trying to be – I don't know – sneaky, maybe. But I finally figured out that people just assume that families get along."
"They should," Kara told him. "You were pretty close once."
"Not close enough," he corrected.
"Lee…" Kara shook her head and tried to find words for what she had never in her life experienced first hand. "I don't think there was anything he wouldn't have done to get back on good terms with you. Anytime we got together – got to talking about things – it always came back to how much he missed you, and had I heard from you, and did you need anything. He never stopped being your father."
"I just stopped being a son."
"You did the best you could with what you knew," she told him. He took a breath, as though to speak, but she cut him off. "And this isn't going to be a discussion about Zak. I don't think either of us is ready for that, and I know I'm too tired to consider it, but your dad is a very forgiving man and I think you need to try it. I'm not going to preach, or argue, or fight you. I'm just going to say that you've both lost enough – hell, you're all you've got left – and turning your back on that is something that you'd eventually regret."
Lee was silent for a long while. Briefly, Kara wondered if she'd overstepped her bounds as friend of the family. She knew that it had been a long time since she'd gone on a rant of that length, but Lee's slowly released sigh let her know that she was okay. "We did talk a little," he admitted. "Mostly about work. We'll deal with the rest when there's time. I think we might have managed it, but with this damned attack cycle, no one has had time for anything not directly related to survival. After we both get some rest… Well, we'll look at it again, then."
Kara nodded, not caring if Lee saw it or not. It was the best she could hope for and far more than she had expected.
"He still calls me 'Son'," Lee said softly. "Even on the bridge and even in front of others."
"Old habits," she told him gently.
"We'll have to talk about that, too. Around you or Tigh it's one thing, but on the deck we need to keep it professional."
"Usually he does. You can't blame him for the occasional slip, though. You've never been under his command, so it hasn't been an issue in the past. Give him time to get used to it."
Lee thought about that for a bit, and Kara started to wonder if perhaps he'd drifted to sleep. She wished desperately that she could do the same. His voice told her otherwise. "So, you've heard about my life; what about yours?"
She gave a shrug. "Flying, fighting, and working out. That's about it, really."
"You seemed to get along with Boomer," he mentioned. "Sharon, was it?"
Kara nodded. "She's a good kid, but a little raw. A week ago she was pure rook, but now… She does pretty good, I think. Except at cards; she's pathetic at cards. Helo used to…" Her voice trailed off.
"Helo?"
"Her ECO," Kara added. "Karl. He was the one she had to leave behind on Caprica."
For a long time, Lee didn't say a word. She thought maybe her morbid words had finally discouraged his attempts at conversation, but once again he proved her wrong. He must be really wired if he was still trying after the conversation had dropped so low.
"So I can add gambling to your list of activities," he joked.
"Always," she said, giving him a true smile and a wink, grateful that she hadn't driven him off after all. Lee's odd sense of humor was still intact, and he knew when to ignore her words to find the intent beneath. She had expected to get a grin in return, but instead he looked positively somber. "What?"
"Just… I guess it's starting to sink in. This is the first time I've slowed down enough to think about it, but all the things we've taken for granted for so long…"
"I know," she agreed. "I'm still not letting it sink in. I don't want it to. When it does, I have to admit that no one's coming back to fill these racks, and that I can count my friends on one hand, and that there's nothing left."
"This is left," he reminded her. "The Galactica, and the fleet…"
"Such as it is," she scoffed.
"It's better than the alternative."
She turned to face him then, looking into eyes that seemed too tired to be seeing anything. Her moods were swinging from one end of the pendulum to the other in the blink of an eye, and while she was aware of it, she couldn't do a frakking thing to stop it.
"Maybe, but it's not easier. Do you even realize what kind of a battle we're looking at? Lee, the world is gone. I don't just mean that we can't go back; I mean that we can't even look back. We're headed for a mythical place, we don't have the supplies or ships or people to make it there, and we could be right back in the middle of a fight without even a moment's notice. Is this really better than just having it over and done?"
"I thought I was the pessimist," Lee said softly.
"You are. I'm the realist."
Silence reigned for a long stretch while Kara lay next to Lee and wondered if she'd said too much. She didn't regret her honesty, but neither did she want to kill any hope that he might have held. The past several days had been a reaction more than a decision; she had fought because it was what she was trained to do. She hadn't thought about anything past the next battle, and now that the immediate danger was over, she wasn't entirely sure she'd done the right thing. In retrospect, going out in a blast of fire might have been easier than struggling through whatever was left of the rest of her life.
"I'm glad you're here," Lee told her softly. "I mean, I'm glad you weren't with your squad when they got slammed, and I'm glad that I have at least one friend in this mess. And I guess it's selfish, but I'm glad that if I had to get stuck for the rest of my life on a battlestar, then it's my dad's battlestar."
"If it comes to that, I prefer you to anyone else as CAG. I just…"
"You never were one to embrace change."
"That's because it's rarely a good thing," she countered. And somehow, the entire conversation had gone from comfortable to miserable in a few words. She was miserable enough without contributing to the fact. "So, where did they put you? VIP quarters?"
"For the moment," he admitted. "Someone mentioned moving into CAG quarters, but there hasn't been time, and I don't have the heart. It's like a shrine in there. I guess your CAG was a pretty great guy."
"He took good care of us," Kara admitted. "You will too. You've already mastered the most difficult part of your job."
"And what's that?"
"Putting up with me," she told him with a smile.
After a moment, he smiled back and squeezed her hand again. "It's so damned quiet in the command block. I swear you can hear your own heartbeat."
"Kind of like here," Kara said softly. "Usually it's just this side of chaos. You can't sleep for the racket, and you don't dare let your pillow out of your sight." She glanced around the room, which contained eight bunk units.
"Plenty in here tonight," he replied. Kara closed her eyes against tears, knowing that she must be tired – too tired – if she was tearing up. She didn't cry easily or often, and under the circumstances she was afraid that if she started, then she'd never get herself stopped.
They lay in silence once more, Kara still as alert and fatigued as she had been when she'd arrived in her room, and Lee becoming steadily more restless. "What?" she finally asked, tired of his fidgeting.
"Trying to get enough energy to get up and go back to my room," he admitted.
"To stare at the ceiling?"
"Most likely," he admitted. "But the stims will wear off eventually, and I don't think you want to be found with the CAG in your bed."
"It wouldn't be the first time," she told him, deadpan. She maintained her straight face until she saw his eyes, and finally she burst out laughing. The problem though, was that once she started, her exhaustion caused the giggles to go on until her stomach hurt and her eyes were watering. Each time she tried to control herself to explain, she started laughing all over again.
The fit of laughter seemed to go on endlessly, and by the time she was too tired – and her stomach too sore – for more, Lee was looking more than a little put out. "Oh Lords," she said, almost going back into a peal of laughter. "Your face!"
The face in question was looking decidedly annoyed, so she managed to get herself under control, and with a final hiccuping cough she explained. "This is a long story," she began.
"Bore me," he requested, his voice droll.
"It started just after I got on board," she said. "I was my usual genial self, and made so many lovely friends. After about the third time that Ripper had to drag me out of the brig, he ordered me point blank to stop beating on his pilots. I went to beat on him, he clobbered me, and we both went down. By the time we got up, we took our bruises to the club and numbed them as best we could. I was so wobbly after that, he decided to walk me back here so I couldn't get into any more trouble. I came in and fell on the rack, and then he promptly passed out across me. He was heavy, I was tired, and the next thing I knew it was morning and half the squad was standing there trying to figure out what in hell had happened."
Lee shook his head. "Have you ever stayed out of trouble?" he asked.
"Not if I could help it. Anyway, we wound up in front of your father for that one, and both of us were polishing decks in the bays for a month for being drunk and disorderly. The saving grace was that we were both fully clothed and the room was full of other officers. But we still paid dearly. I didn't think I'd ever live that down. On the other hand, his wife thought it was hysterical, so I guess you can never tell how people will take that stuff."
Lee looked at her in absolute confusion for a long moment, and then finally started laughing. "You're one of a kind," he said simply.
"Is that an insult or a compliment?"
"Take your pick," he told her wryly. "I'm not telling."
Releasing his hand, she moved her arm around his and squeezed it between her own and her body. "You realize we're never going to get to sleep."
"Sure we will," he corrected. "This just calls for desperate measures."
"Such as?"
"The evidence of colonization to be shown through verbal history," he began.
"Oh Lords!"
He just grinned and held her arm tighter so that she couldn't get away. "Is an oral tradition which is to be passed from generation to generation. The founding of the original colony of Kobol was initiated by the Twelve Primary Lords."
"The first being Zeus, from the second planet of Orion, who believed that all human beings had a purpose, and that life required no more than knowledge and understanding to be preserved. He founded the planet of Caprica, creating a place for learning and beauty in a galaxy of confusion."
Lee continued the recitation that was mandatory for each child in the early grades of school. "The second being Aeres, who believed that humankind was destined to destroy itself, and who fought with Zeus. From the fourth ring of Saggisal, he was the first to colonize and create the settlements of Saggitaria."
Kara went on with the next Lord, and Lee the next, until neither was coherent enough to realize whose turn it was, which Lords they had covered, or which one should come next. Somewhere in the recitation – in the memory of a history that would no longer have any meaning in the world – the two warriors finally found the peace to sleep.