Note: My first BSG fanfic. Be gentle!
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Battlestar Galactica.
Commander William Adama sat in the dark and wished that his son were still alive. He had been doing that a lot in the past few months, of course, but this was one of the more poignant instances in which he felt the pang of Zak's loss. Visiting Zak's flight school, sitting in a chair his son had probably sat in a hundred times, seemed to bring the grief closer, sharper than it could ever come when he was in the distant, vast emptiness of space.
Adama was taking an enforced leave of absence, insisted upon by his close friend and alcoholic second-in-command, Saul Tigh. Though the other man understood full well the pain that came from being off of his ship, the agony of feeling solid earth beneath his feet, he also knew the importance of retaining some ties to a planet, and had practically ordered his superior officer off the battlestar and on a vacation.
Adama could have gone anywhere for his leave. There was only one place he had considered. Here, the flight training school on Picon, here was where Zak had spent so many hours struggling to fill his old man's footsteps. Here, his youngest son had grown and learned and ultimately failed. Here, his son was told that his dream of being a pilot would never come true, and here was where the event had occurred which had ultimately led to his death.
It was late, very late, and he was alone in the rec room. Alone with his thoughts, with the television, and with a stack of forgotten papers. He smoked a cigar as he sat, the clean smoke purifying his lungs for several long seconds and then leaving them filled with an ache he couldn't describe when he breathed out again. He let his gaze drift from the blank television screen to the pile of papers, and then he froze.
"Zak Adama," the top sheet read. The name was written painstakingly by someone with terrible handwriting. It was a basic flight exam evaluation. With shaking hands Adama grasped the sheaf of papers and held them up to his face, wishing for the first time in several hours that there was more light in the room. The evaluation was carefully marked, indicating the places Zak had frakked up, the places he had done well. His written exam had been stellar; his flight had been wretched, especially for an Adama. He sighed heavily, barely noticing as a single tear tracked down his cheek, and let the paper slip from his hand. A word on the next page caught his half-lidded eyes, and he sat up straighter when he saw that the next page, too, was marked, "Zak Adama."
It was the same evaluation sheet, marked by the same hand, and the analysis was the same. But it wasn't a copy—someone had carefully written it out again. He flipped the page to look at the next. Zak Adama. Flip. Zak Adama. Flip.
Zakadamazakadamazakadamazakadamazakadama.
He tore his eyes from his son's name and instead sought the name of the instructor. Her name was scrawled almost illegibly at the bottom of the first sheet—not on any of the others—and he had to squint hard to make it out. Kara Thrace.
He had heard the name before. Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. Rumored to be one of the best pilots seen in the Twelve Colonies since before anyone could remember. Zak had glowed about her instruction in his few letters home, and even Lee had mentioned her as a friend in the one phone call they had had in the five years before Zak's death. The best pilots on his ship, the Battlestar Galactica, had all been trained by her, and the CAG had reported to him that many of the pilots liked to groan good-naturedly about the infamous Starbuck and her tyrannical ways.
The door opened softly behind him, and he swiveled in his chair to see who was interrupting his reminiscing. The first thing he saw was her back, and that the intruder was a woman was strange enough in and of itself in a military mostly comprised of men. She was facing the door, closing it quietly. She wore the usual downtime two tank top ensemble of military officers. It was too dark to tell the color of her hair, which was cut short. She turned around, saw him, and couldn't quite contain her gasp of surprise.
He was surprised as well. He had seen her once before, he remembered, although most of his memories of that day were so wrapped up in grief and helpless anger that it was agony to unpack them again. She had been in attendance at Zak's funeral, a mourner who stood near the back of the crowd and watched as his son's body was lowered into his grave, her face expressing the same emotions that he felt inside. She was not beautiful, not exactly, but her face was attractive and enticing. Then, she had looked upset, weak. Now, as he watched her in the dim light of the rec room, she looked tired but strong. She had lost weight since the funeral; so had he.
"Sir," she said, spine stiffening as she came to attention.
"At ease," he ordered softly. Her posture relaxed minutely.
"I'm sorry, sir," she said. "I didn't think anyone else would be here. I just came here to pick up some…work…I forgot earlier." Her eyes shifted to the sheaf of papers he had dropped onto the side table and then back to his face.
He smiled gently. "Lieutenant Kara Thrace, right?" he asked, feeling a sense of kinship with this tortured soul who had obviously spent hours reviewing the tapes of his son's exam, desperately seeking evidence that Zak should have passed, should have become a pilot instead of dying in a freak accident as a deck hand on a battlestar.
She nodded. "Yes, sir." He nodded in return, then picked up the papers and held them out to her. She strode toward him, hand outstretched, and took them from his grasp. "Thank you, sir," she said evenly, tucking the papers under her arm. She was going to pretend that he hadn't seen the papers, then, and to hope that he would do the same. She saluted him again, then spun on her heel and headed for the door.
"Lieutenant Thrace," he said, stopping her before she could quite finish making her escape.
Her spine stiffened and she turned slowly to face him again. "Sir?" He admired her poise.
"Will you be flying in the tournament tomorrow?" The tournament was held every three years, a competition in which viper pilots showed off their skills and fought to earn the title of top gun. He thought he remembered hearing that Starbuck had won three years ago, when she had just been starting out as a training instructor. He thought he remembered hearing that she had won three years before that, when she was still a nugget herself and crazy enough to enter herself into a competition meant for experienced pilots.
"No, sir," she said, looking anywhere but into his understanding eyes. A smile ghosted over her lips and disappeared again so quickly he might have just imagined it. "There's not enough competition, anyways."
He felt his own lips twitch in a smile. He had heard this about her, too, that she was as brash and arrogant as a young viper pilot ought to be, and maybe a little more. "Then why not show up just to beat everyone?" he suggested. He hadn't been planning to attend the tournament, but maybe that was just the change of pace he needed. Maybe it was just the change of pace she needed, too. She looked uncomfortable at the suggestion. "I know it isn't my place to say it, but I would very much like to see just what Zak's stellar instructor can do with a viper, Starbuck."
Her eyes lit at the sound of her call sign and he knew he had said the right thing. She bit her lip. "Since you asked, sir," she said reluctantly.
He smiled gently. "Then I'll see you tomorrow," he said. She bobbed her head again, and this time when she went to leave he didn't stop her.
His son, Lee "Apollo" Adama, made it to the fifth out of seven rounds before Starbuck blew him out of the sky in a fancy maneuver almost too quick for the eye to follow. The man in the sixth round barely gave her a challenge, and she demolished her opponent in the final round with a kind of ruthless efficiency that made the audience wince.
Adama Sr. made his way to her landing pad with a bounce to his step that had been missing since his son's funeral. He might not have been much of a father, might have only been commander of a junk of bolts just waiting to be decommissioned, but if he was good at one thing, it was flying, and he could recognize an amazing pilot when he saw one. Kara was everything Zak had boasted, and more, and he thanked the gods that he had gotten her to agree to fly today.
He had hoped to be one of the first there to congratulate her for her victory, and was a little disappointed to see a well-built young man talking to Kara. They were standing so that Adama could see her face and the man's back. The two were talking animatedly, and at one point she reached forward to push the man, a playful smile on her face. Adama could tell that the competition had been good for her, forcing her to loosen up. She glanced past the man and saw him and appeared suddenly shy, pushing a strand of her short hair behind her ear. She muttered something to the man, and he turned to face the newcomer as well.
Adama was struck, yet again, by a realization of just how poor a father he could be. "Lee?" he said tentatively, wanting nothing more than to take his son into his arms, knowing that his touch would be unwanted.
Lee's expression had been light, friendly when he turned around, but now it was shuttered. "Sir," he said coldly. He deliberately turned his back on his father. "Congratulations again, Kara," he said.
Her smiled was forced as she looked back at him. "Thanks, Lee. I guess I'll see you around."
"Yeah. I guess."
His only living son detoured around him in his haste to escape from the suddenly-cramped landing platform, leaving Adama and Kara there together. Adama stared after the young man, feeling a twisting in his chest as he thought of how terribly everything in their lives had gone wrong all at once.
"I'm sorry." Kara's voice drew him back to the present. A blush was working its way up her neck, and he could tell that she was uncomfortable about trying to make a connection, as bad at dealing with emotions as he was. "Lee doesn't really mean it—he just feels like he needs someone to blame."
"He's always been that way," Adama murmured. "But he does mean it. He thinks that it was my pressuring Zak to join the fleet that led to his death." He started when she laid her hand on his arm, staring at the offending appendage—so much smaller and more graceful than one would expect after meeting her—and then at her sympathetic face.
"It wasn't anybody's fault," she said firmly. Never mind that he had found good evidence yesterday that she blamed herself. "Zak did what he wanted to do. Joining the fleet was all he could think of. He died in a freak accident. It wasn't your fault."
Rather than respond to her words, Adama changed the subject. "I meant to congratulate you when I came here, but I haven't done so yet, have I? That was some impressive flying, lieutenant."
She shrugged. "It's what I do best."
They seemed to realize at the same time that her hand was still on his arm, and she pulled away at the same time to drop it when he grabbed it, holding it up so he could better see the ring on her thumb.
"You're engaged?" he asked, surprised. She was the kind of woman most men would be too intimidated to bind themselves to forever, and he found himself admiring the man who had had the balls to ask her to settle down.
"I was," she replied shortly, pulling her hand back with just enough force to be impatient rather than insubordinate. "It didn't work out."
"I'm sorry."
She shrugged. "That's life."
He would have said more, but then the crowd reached the landing platform and he yielded to their en masse congratulations.
Three hours later, two requests were submitted simultaneously from opposite sides of the planet. One, from the luxury hotel Athens, which was set aside for commanding officers of the fleet, was a request that one Lieutenant Thrace be transferred to the Battlestar Galactica, immediately to join the viper crew. The other, from a dingy flat on the flight school campus, requested permission for on Kara Thrace to transfer from flight school instructor to viper pilot on the Battlestar Galactica.
Three days later, Starbuck landed on the Galactica to be greeted personally by Commander Adama, and for the next two years things were almost good.