Disclaimer: BSG and its characters are not mine. Special thanks to word_vomity for prompting this story.
I have this to regret
He was writing her love letters for a long time before he noticed.
He left the first on the pillow of her empty rack five hours after the Olympic Carrier died.
You maniac. How are you not sleeping?
I'm in the ready room if you need.
She hadn't needed anything from him, quite the opposite. But she came anyway.
The second started in the late Major Spencer's filing cabinet. Lee'd been CAG for a week and a half and he was learning his pilots in the air: their styles, their strengths, their problems. He'd already clocked so many combat hours with each of them that he felt a bit stupid rooting around his predecessor's files for their formal flight evaluations. But Spencer had spent years watching them, and he'd done it with a clear head. So Lee dutifully sorted through his files on each flight group, setting the dead aside, making separate piles for Raptors and Vipers, and moving Kara's folder to the top.
He flipped past the disciplinary notices – that D&D from Zak's birthday was still on file? – and picked up her latest eval, dated two months back. He skimmed over the numbers, frowned, and went back to read more carefully. He sat for a few minutes.
That done, he ripped the report in half.
Memo: CAG to DCAG, re: admin
Need fresh flight evals for all pilots. Split roster with me; will send your portion of list w/in 2 hrs.
DCAG to CAG, re: admin
More paperwork? NO ONE CARES.
Worlds have ended. Cash in!
PS – if you need flight evals, check Ripper's old office, filing cabinet.
CAG to DCAG, re: re: admin
Checked already. He gave you 3 out of 10 in leadership potential. Judgment obviously impaired.
Redo evals ASAP. Yes, I'm serious.
DCAG to CAG, re: re: re: admin
Wilco, Cpt Adama, sir.
Am adding extra box on form so you can rate me at 11. Eagerly await promotion.
PS – Haven't seen you in mess lately. Are you dieting or lost?
That evening he showed up to eat for once and they sat at the same table. She stole the captain's insignia off his uniform and affixed it to her collar while he swiped half her bread roll and showered her with celebratory crumbs. It took her for-frakking-ever to get them out of her flight suit, and in the meantime the itch made her particularly twitchy. Lee found this hilarious, because he was a heartless bastard.
When Kara turned in her flight evaluations, each of them had one additional question at the very top, typed up in proper format:
On a scale of 1 to 10, how heartless a bastard is your CAG?
Every single pilot under her supervision had marked an unequivocal 10. It was kind of impressive.
After a while it just became routine to leave each other notes on bits of scratch paper. Their conversations scattered across pillows, under toothbrushes, inside shoes. Most messages were just business – Fuel consumption today: up or down? – but Kara liked hijacking Lee's brain – Chief with Sharon last night: up or down?– so he rarely got bored.
She kept harassing him about food, so he usually dragged himself to the mess for at least one meal. Some days that was the only time they had together.
She reached across him once, for salt or coffee or no reason, and he caught her arm, pulling it out until her elbow locked. "Hey," she protested, something very unlike protest in her voice. He leaned close over the letters inked into her forearm as if he were near-sighted.
"I've been meaning to ask you what this means," he said, nodding at her tattoo, bona fiscalia, watching the fine hairs on her arm rise.
She huffed a laugh. "Typical. I thought if anyone would get it, it'd be you. All those lectures on democracy and you never read the frakking constitution?"
Lee stared at her blankly. "Are you talking about the Articles? Or…you mean the planetary constitutions? Of course I've read them. Well, most of them. They get dull. What does that have to do with – "
"My tat means 'public property' in old Caprican. Remember this bit? Every soldier in our commonwealth is public property. The public is their master; the people are their trust."
Lee stared at her like he'd never seen her before. She shrugged. "My mom used to recite that like it was scripture. She made me say it back every time I left for school. It sunk in, I guess. I got it inked my graduation night."
Lee ran a thumb over the cool blue letters; Kara bit the inside of her cheek, holding still.
Her skin had always whispered to him, but this…this spoke louder.
The message had nothing to do with him, really, apart from being perfect; apart from edging him perilously close to realizing what he felt for the woman who chose it.
The tattoo took away the last of his comfortable breathing space, and a week later Kara wore a blue dress and a teasing smile.
There was nothing more to be done but to panic and ruin things.
He did, spectacularly.
Afterward, he spent plenty of time on his first real love letter – the conscious, deliberate, more-than-two-sentences kind. He was in the brig; he had enough empty hours to spare.
She was gone and might never come back. His Dad was going, and might never revive.
The last things he'd said to them could not become the last things he'd said to them. Please gods.
Kara, he wrote. But wait.
Dear Kara. No. He would need a fresh sheet.
Kara, he wrote again, uncomfortable.
I didn't mean a word of it had to be erased because lies were a bad way to start.
I'm so sorry for the terrible things I said. That could stay because it was true.
I love you and I want you and choose me never made it anywhere close to the page because too much truth would...
Better not to think about it.
Kara, he wrote,
I'm so sorry for the terrible things I said. I was completely out of line. I hope you hit me because you knew that already. But I doubt that's where your head was.
Please listen. You're my best pilot and my best friend. You wouldn't be either if you were actually a screw-up. If screwing-up were at the heart of you, I'd be long gone by now and so would half the fleet. So there's that.
It's not easy being the pilot or the friend that you are. But you're astonishing. Wherever you are now, the people are still your trust, and so am I. We need you more than you can see.
Come home.
Lee
He folded the letter and slipped it in his pocket, then lay back on his cot and turned his face toward the jail bars. The awkward words were more than he'd ever said or tried to say before, but they weren't enough. The barriers to risk and passion still stood inside him, barely shaken.
He lived in too many prisons. He really did.
It was time to turn his mind to getting out.