They are with other people, now. She is frakking someone who is not him, and he is frakking someone who is not her. Kara knows that putting it that way is crude, but that's what's true. She wonders if Lee has told his girlfriend (Kara has to forcibly freeze her face, stop it from frowning, at the term) that he loves her (and here again, she has to bite her lip to keep her mouth from turning downward). Kara has not told her man he loves him, but then, he might think, because of the way she makes his body sing in private, that she is telling him she loves him, just not in words.
Kara does not know anymore whether he would be wrong for thinking so.
It's been a while now, that Lee has been in his relationship and Kara has been in hers. Kara certainly feels something for the person she spends most of her off-duty time with, and she knows for certain that Lee must feel something for his woman, because Lee is not the kind of person to make a commitment without caring.
Kara wonders how much of a commitment Lee has made. She shudders at the thought of the words and promises he may have given to her, his lovely companion.
The time has come, Kara decides one day. The time has come to let each other go. It is a ridiculous thought. She and Apollo have never "had" each other to begin with, so there is nothing to let go. And Starbuck is unsure that, were she to bring up such intimate terms – the need for closure, the need for a decisive break between them – she is unsure that Apollo would have even the faintest idea of what she is talking about. He might very well brush off her attempts at a discussion of their "relationship" and laugh at her. "What the hell, Kara?" he might say. "We've always been friends, you know that."
But then, Lee would never use that tone of voice. That isn't in his character. Any more than it's in his character to be with someone he's not serious about.
No, Kara will bring it up and Lee will look at her solemnly and agree with her, and they will shake hands, maybe hug (though that would be bad, Kara thinks, bad for her resolve, anyway), and that will be that. They will acknowledge to each other that, whatever they might have come to feel for each other, whatever they might have become, they never will now.
That will be that.
Kara doesn't know why she feels the need for such a gesture. Haven't they gotten on well enough these past few months, having their two very separate love affairs? There was tension at the beginning, certainly. But then, Lee has always had bizarre reactions to her sex life. And gods know that Kara frakking hatedthe idea of Lee dating someone. Kara thinks she can safely say that she was jealous, and so was Lee, though why and to what extent, she does not know and would bet any amount that Lee had no idea either. In any case, the glares and semi-intentional jabs and the physical fights they got into (over stupid shit, like small changes to launch protocols and training procedures) those first few months, when both of their relationships were so new, receded and diminished and all the hard, angry energy smoothed out into something that was still strange but less awkward, less bothersome and incapacitating. Kara thinks of it as tolerance. They have both learned to tolerate the situation. They have all learned to tolerate the situation, Kara thinks, trying to remember to give credit to her partner and Lee's, since they must have been at least as mystified by the odd antagonism between Apollo and Starbuck as anyone.
So, maybe it's fitting, Kara tells herself, that she doesn't know why she feels compelled to put an end to this – whatever – between her and Lee, since she doesn't even know what the thing between them is. Someone once told her that relationships end as they begin: if you began as friends, you'll end as friends, they said. Since she and Lee began as a complete indefinable entity, she guesses they will end that way as well.
She picks a night to talk to him. She knows for a fact he will be alone; she checked and triple-checked all of the schedules to make sure. She spends too much time in the shower and in the ready room mentally gearing up for the confrontation, the talk, and she feels stupid. And scared. And incredibly, unfathomably sad. She can't do it. But Starbuck is one to always do what cannot be done, so she decides to do it. She walks to his office, where she knows he is, and knocks before she can talk herself out of it. By the time he calls out, "Enter," she is shivering like a child.
She opens the door. She doesn't know where she finds the courage to push the door open, but she has a body that often operates on its own instincts and acts in ways that are not good for her overall health. She stands in the doorway and knows she looks ill. She is shaking and pale.
"Gods, what's wrong?" Lee asks, his face full of concern. "Are you okay?" He was lying on his bunk when she came in, reading a report, but now the report has fallen to the floor and he has propped himself up on his elbows.
"I'm cold," she manages to say. Why is she on the verge of tears? This is absurd, and unnecessary, and she doesn't know why she continually makes such a fool of herself. "I'll go," she says, but Lee calls out.
"Don't go. What did you come to tell me?" His voice is curious, eager, but also patient and understanding. Kara has missed that way he has of being so solicitous with her when they are alone.
"I, um..." She feels like utter crap and can't get the words out. She's still shivering as if his office were thirty degrees colder than the rest of the ship. Lee does something she really could not have anticipated in a thousand years: he scoots over in the narrow bunk, draws up his feet and pulls the blanket over him, then holds up the outer edge of the blanket and gestures for her to come inside.
Kara almost sobs when she shuts the door, crosses the room and climbs into the bunk with him. "Let's get you warmed up," he says, tucking the blanket in around her shoulders, tucking her body into his. They are such a good fit that Kara feels suddenly heartsick, devastated. "What's the matter? Are you ill?" Lee checks her temperature by putting the back of his hand gently against her cheek. It's the worst way to gauge a fever, but Kara doesn't correct his technique. In the years that she has known Lee Adama, they have never once shared a bed, let alone a sliver of a rack. If Kara didn't feel so awful, she'd be amused that this, this night when she's going to put a stop to – whatever they are, is the first time they've lain together.
"I'm sorry," she says, and sort of smiles and cries at the same time when she looks into his worried blue eyes. She hates it when she does that, when her mouth goes wide and her eyes leak water. She reaches up and brushes her tears from her face and looks away. Lee says nothing, but she feels him staring at her. "I think I've decided something," she says finally. This is it, she thinks. The end of a hugely important part of my life. Even though she cannot begin to describe what Lee has been to her.
"What have you decided?" Lee asks. He is not touching her inappropriately at all. Except for the unusual fact of them being in the same bunk, he is behaving towards her like a good friend. They are touching all along the length of their bodies, but he is not holding her hand, or even resting his arm across her waist.
"I've decided," Kara says, and takes a deep breath and just says it, "that we've both been in our relationships long enough now to know that these aren't just flings, you know?" She risks a glance at Lee; he nods very slightly. Well then. He isn't just having a fling. Kara has to force the depths of her being to accept that he has just admitted he is serious with another woman. "And so," she continues, "I think the time has come for..."
Oh, but this is the stupid part, Kara thinks. This is the part that makes no sense. She should get up and go, but Lee's voice again stops her plans for immediate flight.
"The time has come for what?" Lee asks.
Kara begins crying openly now, though her voice doesn't break. She can manage to sound pretty together, but she can't control the fact that she looks like a disaster. "I think the time has come for us to let go of each other. Once and for all."
She waits for the inevitable questions that prove this entire enterprise is harebrained. She waits for him to ask, What do you mean, let go of each other? What is there to let go of? She waits for him to be confused, to balk, to move away from her, to patronize her by saying, Kara, will you please start making sense and tell me what's wrong with you tonight?
He says none of those things. He says, "Oh."
It turns out to be more painful to Kara to realize that Lee knows exactly what she is talking about, than it would have been if he'd had no idea.
Sometimes, Apollo and she can read each other's minds. Sometimes, though not often. It used to make her happy when it happened. But this moment, when she can see in his face that he knows what she is thinking, what she is saying, what she is doing, is one of the saddest of her life.
"Yeah," she says, and realizes the conversation is over. She said what she came to say. "So..." There is nothing more. She lifts the edge of the blanket and begins to swing her legs off the bunk, wondering if she can talk Helo into flying her to some ship with a bar tonight.
She finds her legs are trapped. Under Lee's. And his arm is around her waist. She searches out his eyes to find his intent. She sees earnestness, nothing else. He is stopping her from going. He has something to say. Kara relaxes (as much as she can relax when she is crying and her guts are knotting up wretchedly) back onto the bunk. Lee pulls her a little closer, and Kara has no safe place to put her arm so she puts it across him, just as his arm is across her. They are hugging each other, lying on their sides, facing one another in his bunk.
"Kara," he says, and he is frowning and looks a little sad and scared, too, but also intent. "I know this is not the right time to say this, and," he smiles that quirky small smile of his that somehow looks tremendously somber, though it is a smile, "in fact, this is probably precisely the wrong time to say this, but..."
Has his courage failed him? The least Kara can do is give him the push he needs, as he did for her earlier. "But what?" she asks softly and gently.
He looks as if he comes to some kind of decision within himself, and he stares at her, dead in the eye. He takes a breath and says very, very slowly: "Kara, I love you very much. Please, don't ever give up on us. Please don't let go."
Kara smiles, then frowns. "But..." she begins. But doesn't he know that by asking her to hang on, to hold on, it only makes it harder for her to deal with how things are? Doesn't he know how impossible it is for her to be with someone else, watch Lee be with someone else, and still hang on to the idea of him? To the hope of him?
She almost says some or all of these thoughts aloud but then she sees his face and knows that he knows them already. He is asking her to do the impossible. But the impossible is what Starbuck does, is it not?
Kara laughs, a full belly laugh. Lee laughs too, only a little, but in his eyes there is a smile alongside the sadness. Kara says, "We're pretty frakked up, you know that?"
Lee says, "Yeah, I know." They are still hugging each other.
Kara spends the night there, sleeping in his arms, both of them in their clothes. It is one of the best nights of her life. In the morning, she gets up, and knows she will see her man today and Lee will see his woman. And somehow, it's all right. Because between her and Lee, there is also something, something to hold on to.