Blameless
Content Warning – This is a darker kind of fic.There will be implied violence in future chapters before it gets better.
Spoilers – Yep – I think through 2.13 based upon spoilers I've read.
Disclaimer - Not mine, never will be. Just borrowing as a distraction from real life. The characters are owned by Ron Moore, NBC Universal etc but this story is owned by me.
A/N - If you are reading this since you have me on your author alert due to my SG-1 fics PLEASE give it's Sci-fi Friday companion, Battlestar Galacticaa chance! It's just as shippy and just as angsty - just a different couple. (BTW - the next chapter of Instant Message is being typed now.)
Kara had never imagined she could hurt that badly.
After everything she had been through, her dysfunctional childhood and subsequent problems with authority which began in High School, that continued through her time in the academy. Which still plagued her to this day. Zak's death and the blame she placed upon herself for it. All of these experiences hadn't prepared her for that moment.
One would have imagined that it should have. That all of the anguish and disappointment would have served as least as a minor preparation, but in that moment of abject misery, no prior experiences were of any assistance to her.
She had seen the look herself, so it wasn't as if she could simply ignore it. Chalk it up to someone else's vivid imagination. Nope. She had been there working on the Blackbird when Lee had walked up to the aircraft. He had a slight smirk on his face which she knew signified his internal struggle to keep inside the mocking he was generating in his head. The usual banter began between them, the subject of the day being the design of the plane itself. She clearly remembered his words that ridiculed the positioning of the cockpit which she countered with ease.
The to and fro of their words were assuming their usual rhythm when suddenly it broke. She had looked up at that moment and couldn't miss the surprised look on Lee's face as Dee slid out from beneath the undercarriage. But there was something else in his face that she recognized clearly. A look that he usually reserved for her when she walked into a room. When he thought no-one else was watching. A unique look that rolled excitement and affection into one.
She watched as his eyes lit up and there it was. Acknowledgment that the nuggets weren't in fact out of their frakking minds. She was.
She had been in the head taking a shower when the nuggets had come in yakking and laughing about the hand to hand training which they'd just finished with Apollo. She had tried to drown them out in her mind until she heard their gossiping about how the CAG had found himself in a compromising position with Petty Officer Dualla. In front of her own boyfriend. Mocking catcalls bounced off the shower walls as the pilots went into sordid detail as to where they thought the pair would have ended their "hand to hand combat" if Billy hadn't walked in.
She laughed to herself thinking just how little these men and women truly knew about Lee's wants and desires. What idiot's they'd feel if they knew that just weeks before, Lee had told her, Kara Thrace, that he loved her. She was shocked herself at his admission and had fallen into one of her typical defense mechanisms to hide that shock. She had teased him mercilessly, so much so that he had tried to take it back attempting to make it sound like he loved her like a friend. Only as a friend.
But she knew otherwise and it was that knowledge that kept her warm at night. That gave her hope that the fight with the Cylons was still worth fighting. That after everything she had endured back on Caprica, her future held hope. That her life was worth living.
And she knew then with certainty that she loved him and that it was meant to be. As soon as the war was over, and protocol allowed, they would be together.
But as she sat on the stealth aircraft watching the amorous looks pass between Lee and the Petty Officer, a crack began to show in her well conceived fantasy.
And from that moment on, the doubt began to grow with each minute that passed. The more she thought about it, the clearer it became to her. He had told her the truth. He loved her as a friend and that was all. He loved her as the orphan of his brother's life. Someone who had no one else left in the world to love her and was, by default, adopted with pity by the Adama's.
Lee had told her before she went to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo exactly what he thought of her. To him she was simply a pilot who couldn't keep her pants on. Certainly not romance novel material. And he had hit her. A definite sign that he viewed her as a pilot and not a woman. Because even though she had struck out first, he was the son of the Commander and no son of William Adama would ever hit a woman. She was asexual to him. Someone who was there to hang out with on a lonely evening or cold morning. Someone with whom he could play in a plane.
And even if he had viewed her differently before, Kara knew that she had returned from Cylon captivity even less of a woman. She had never admitted her desire to be considered wife and mother material to anyone and now was glad she hadn't. It would never be and so with these thoughts in mind Kara continued living.
If you could call it that. She took more risks with her life than ever including taking the blackbird out on it's trial run. During the first few shaky moments of flight she truly wasn't sure if she wanted to live or if her untimely death in the black, thrown together aircraft, would be a fitting end to her miserable existence.
Having survived that experience, she drank more than ever before and it was in search of ambrosia and oblivion that led her to the bar on the Cloud Nine that night. A night which would live in infamy for Kara, Lee and a nobody marine.