DISCLAIMER: Not mine.
---
FIVE TIMES KARA THRACE KILLED L. by -yannik-
---
The first time was easy. He did not expect it. She had a knife in her boot, that he didn't know about. That was before he realized how dangerous she could be.
---
"Hey bro! You home?" Lee yelled coming into Zak's dorm room. The kid jumped out from the head, staring at Lee with his eyes wide open. The soft murmur of water running behind the closed door, told the older brother, that the younger was not alone.
"I'd come back later, kiddo, if I wasn't so damn tired" Lee said with a smile, throwing his aching bones on the rack. "But I'll close my eyes when she gets dressed."
"It's not that, Lee" Zak's terrified expression didn't change. He cast a sharp glance at the head door, and back at his big bro. "It's the . . . You can't tell anyone. You won't right? I can trust you?"
"Hey, I'm your brother, Lee" Lee was sure that was reassuring.
"That's why I'm afraid. She's . . . My flight instructor . . . "
That was like a blow. Lee knew who Zak's flight instructor was. She'd written him a dozen letters in which she'd elaborated on younger Adama's faults and feats. Faults more often. But not once she'd mentioned breaking the rules and regulations with him.
"Hi, Lee" she stood in the doorframe, clad only in a towel.
And Lee remembered how she'd refused to break the rules when it was him, who wanted to break them with her. Apparently his brother's charm was more appealing.
---
The second time was the only instance, that she was physically able to defy him. She didn't even plan it, didn't want it. But he made her angry with some misplaced accusations, and she found this inner strength, sudden surge of adrenaline, that made her jump at him, and strangle him with her bare hands.
---
"All I'm saying is that is was unnecessarily cruel" she said in a subdued tones, so unlike her.
But he refused to listen. To hear the message hidden in between those words.
"You're defending him? I can't believe that you're defending the man responsible for death of the man you supposedly loved!"
"I did love Zak!"
"Than how can you defend that . . . that . . ." he didn't even know how to call the man who used to be his father. He hated him so much right now!
"He offered me a position on the Galactica."
Lee fell silent. Her voice was silent when she said that, and his anger suddenly evaporated, replaced by dread. He wasn't sure he wanted her to continue, because right then he understood the hidden meaning.
"I'm going to accept."
---
The third time was probably the most sophisticated and effective. She double timed it, hitting once, then allowing him to think that it was all over and she did not succeed. As it happened many times before. But this time she had the follow-up strike ready and waiting, and he was helpless when she launched an attack.
---
The pain he felt when he realized she'd slept with Baltar was a surprise. She betrayed him in more than one way. But he told himself that this time he was going to survive it, he could yell at her, insult her, pay her for that suffering by making her suffer adequately. And so he did.
"You're a slut" he told her.
"I need ever pilot I've got" he replied when she asked if he'd miss her.
And he thought, this time he won.
But then she turned away and disappeared. Turned away and left, and he was sure she was never coming back.
And, of course, she took another piece of his heart with her.
---
The fourth time was the closest to the real thing. The resurrection facility had been down--as she learned later--due to the insurgency actions. They'd nearly lost all his data. He hadn't been back in days after days, and she'd been going insane, all alone in that sickly clean apartment, thinking, wondering if she'd finally succeeded or not. Had, or not.
She hadn't.
He came back.
---
The gun shot was real. The blood and pain were real, physical. It was odd to think, for those minutes when he lay on the floor of the bar on Cloud Nine, that he would die by Kara Thrace's hand. But it was also somehow very fitting.
He did not blame her, no. Friendly fire happened. Shit happened. That was the part of the job.
But he reveled in the thought that she would have such an impact on his life. The ultimate impact.
Of course there were others who did not allow this to happen--Dee kept him from bleeding out, the Admiral called him back from the brink of slipping away, and Cottle sew him up.
And Kara never came to see the effects of her deeds.
---
The fifth time she planned it more carefully. Of course he would know, he got familiar with her traits by the time. She had to take extra measures, use something he would not anticipate. She played a game, requested a knife to cut the steak, pretended to be vulnerable. She fooled him. And stabbed him when he least expected.
---
He would never have done it, hadn't he been drunk. Drunk with ambrosia, drunk with fresh air, and sunlight of New Caprica. The Day of Groundbreaking was so different from any other day of his routine life, that it seemed almost like cut out from the fabric of time and put in a different frame.
That was the first day in months that he felt alive.
So of course at the end of it, he had to come back to dead.
---
The sixth time she hoped would be indefinite . . .
---
.end