Julia wonders what she would have done if she'd never seen Kacey again.
Here, with Kacey clasped in her arms and against her chest, this is heaven. It's perfect. Her baby, her little baby girl, gone to who-knows-where, taken away by the Cylons – it had been a nightmare, with her crying herself to distraction every night, waking up shivering in spasms that wracked her whole body, even though it wasn't cold under the blankets.
She can't believe the good fortune; it must have been the Lords, watching out for her.
The odds against Kacey being rescued from inside the facility – well, she didn't know how astronomical they were, and she decided she never really wanted to find out. But then, after the rescue, the chances that Kacey would be on the Galactica with her, the chances that she would see her child just moments after the flight from New Caprica…
Julia hugs Kacey tighter against her.
"Mama," Kacey says, "when do we see Kara?"
Captain Kara Thrace, the woman who rescued Kacey. The woman Julia owed everything to.
Julia glances around, considering for a moment. There aren't any alerts on, and the daytime duty shift is over.
"Let's go now," she says, lowering Kacey to the floor. Kacey's face splits into an eager grin, and she holds her hand up.
Julia clasps the hand in her own, thinking that maybe she never wants to let go again.
----
It only takes a few questions to find out where the pilot's rack is, and Julia manages not to get lost on the way there. They're inside for a couple of minutes, waiting, when Kacey cries out. "Kara, Kara!"
Kacey runs up to Captain Thrace, arms outstretched. Julia follows, a little warily, until she recognizes the woman for sure.
"Kacey?" Thrace asks, disbelieving.
"Kara, Kara!" Kacey says again. She's expecting Thrace to pick her up, and Julia hesitates for a second.
"Um, Captain Thrace, don't you remember me?" Julia cuts in. "I'm Julia Prynne, I'm Kacey's mother."
Thrace makes a strange grimace. "Yeah, yeah, I remember."
"Give me a hug," Kacey says.
"We've been staying over in the," Julia starts, "well, everyone's been calling it Camp Oil Slick, part of the hanger deck. And they've put up cots for, you know, refugees." She's stammering a little, stumbling over her words.
It's a little bit awe – these are the pilots, around her, the ones who risked their lives every day for the fleet. The heroes. But it's not just that; there's something ridiculously attractive about Kara Thrace, even with the darkness that Julia can see in the lines of her face.
"Yeah, yeah, I heard." Thrace's tone is a little bit dismissive. Julia bristles, reflexively.
"Well," she says, "Kacey's been asking to see you for days, and." She stops. "I sent messages, and I thought maybe, you know, you'd come to visit."
Kara bites her lip, still trying to stay away from Kacey's embrace. "You seem like a really nice person," Kara says, "so I'm going to be honest with you. The last thing I need is a two-year-old friend." Julia's jaw sets. "And Kacey sure as hell does not need me in her life. So do us both a favor and do not bring her around here again, okay?" She turns down to Kacey. "Go to your mom, Kace."
"Sure," Julia snaps. "Don't let us keep you up." She picks up Kacey. "Sorry, honey, we've got to go."
----
Julia was very angry with Kara Thrace, but she's a good enough study of her own emotions to know that the anger isn't entirely at the Viper pilot.
In the evacuation from New Caprica, Julia had been separated from almost everyone she'd known since the Cylon invasion of the colonies. She was alone again, completely alone, with a two-year-old child to raise, and she had no idea what she was going to do.
Kacey's father was long gone, dead in the original attack, and good riddance to him. Down on New Caprica, Julia hadn't had any real friends, mostly just acquaintances and fellow workers. There was that nice woman in the hangar deck with the cot next to hers who would watch Kacey when Julia had something to go do, but that was rare, and she had the feeling that the woman did it more for Kacey than for Julia.
For a minute there, she'd allowed herself to believe that she might have an ally in Captain Thrace, someone who could be sympathetic to her and Kacey's plight. But it looked like even that small hope was gone, and the frustration and disappointment were just overwhelming.
She does the only thing she can do – she holds Kacey, ignoring or murmuring comforting answers to the child's questions about Kara, waiting until the lights flicker out and the hangar deck begins the collectively uneasy five or six hours of sleep.
----
Julia loses track of time easily, in this place where every day is the same, so she doesn't know how much later it is when Kara Thrace, with her newly cut hair and spotless uniform, squats down in front of them.
It's a tense moment, but very full somehow, and Kara pulls Kacey into her arms, hugging so tight.
Julia hesitates; she's not sure what's happening, but even an idiot could tell that something is different from the last time she saw Kara. Something inside her has changed, the darkness in her face has retreated, just a little – and Julia lets herself, hesitantly, hope that Kara could help them now.
Then she sees that Kara is crying.
It shocks her, to the core, because she'd assumed that Kara's hard attitude was from being a fighter jockey. She'd assumed it was something part and parcel of her, and the thought that anything could break through a hard veneer like hers was frightening. Julia, she's different, she holds her emotions on her sleeve, because she deals with the world through her feelings.
When Kara gets up to leave, on impulse Julia touches her arm. "It's okay to be, y'know," she starts, "hurt, over whatever it was that happened to you."
Kara's mouth twists, but Julia holds on, she doesn't let Kara leave.
"It's awful," Julia says, her voice choking a little, "but we're all in this together. The whole human race."
Kara stops then, and she turns back to Julia. There's a moment of hesitation, and Julia thinks Kara might be about to say something, the first thing she's said to Julia since her brush-off.
But, instead, Kara takes Julia's arm and pulls her to her feet, slides a hand onto Julia's neck and kisses her.
Julia's so surprised, it takes her a second to catch up, but then Kara's tongue is touching hers, and there's so much incredible intensity in the way Kara kisses that Julia thinks she's a little faint.
But Kara's hands, on her waist now, are holding her up, secure. Julia threads an arm around Kara's neck, and Kara tilts her head just a little, angling in deeper, and Julia makes a noise in the back of her throat.
Finally, Kara pulls away, and Julia thinks that she probably looks terribly flushed, definitely more so than Kara does.
"Do you mind," Kara asks lowly, "if I come back to visit, every once in a while?"
Julia shakes her head. "No," she manages, "of course not."
Julia watches Kara's retreating form until it's out of sight. She sits, numbly, on the bed. Kacey climbs up next to her, dragging her stuffed animal.
Something loosens inside Julia's chest, and she smiles.