Lee hates the wonder of her.
He hated it from the start. He walked up and shook her hand and tried to look happy because Zak was so happy, but he was thinking She needs someone more like me than my brother. He hated the thought, and he hated himself, and the hate grew stronger when he realized what he was really thinking was I need someone like her more than my brother does. And that first night, and the many painful nights that followed, watching her and Zak revel in their sweet and splendid love, were full of hate.
Every moment he spent with her was a revelation. She knew as much about vipers and flying as he did, loved them as much as he did, but in a completely different way. He learned new things just by listening to her, about different maneuvers that were possible, ways to fix up the bird to get just a smidge more power from the left thrusters, why it was better to listen to your gut than your head in a combat situation. He also liked how she listened to him talk about hydraulics and energy efficiency and reflex times. She questioned him, challenged him, whenever he stressed the importance of discipline and awareness of duty and command chains. She challenged him, but listened attentively, like she was learning something from him, too.
It was exactly what Lee wanted in a woman, without ever knowing it. Someone as fierce and strong and brave as he was, but in different ways, so there would be give and take. So they could teach each other, complement one another's strengths. Well, he knew that's what he wanted in a woman after meeting her, and she belonged to his brother. Lee hated it.
He suspected even before they ever flew together that they would probably be perfectly in sync in the air and in space. They went up just for fun on a day they both happened to have off, and it was a trillion times worse than Lee had anticipated. They weren't just evenly matched. They weren't just exactly in tune. They were a frakking miracle of harmony in the skies together. She could read his mind and push him to his farthest edge and beyond and compete with him for dominance at every second. Every fraction of an instant flying with her that first time was a head rush, an enlightenment. A turn-on.
By the time Lee got out of the bird and walked toward her, and saw the huge grin on her shining face, he knew that the exhilaration would only get stronger every time they flew together. It would never wear off or lessen. And she still belonged to his brother.
Lee hated it.
He kept hoping that there wasn't any more to her. That she was a beautiful, headstrong, sexy, smart, outspoken woman, who just happened to be the most incredible pilot he'd ever flown with and an ace flight instructor besides, but that was it. That was all. Lee was wrong.
Over the five months he hung on as the third wheel to his brother's relationship, he had enough private, one-on-one moments with his brother's girl to learn that she had survived a childhood that would have killed most people or at least permanently broken their spirits, that she had a mean left hook and could drink any man under the table, that she was extraordinarily insecure and tender under her tough talk, that she had a love for music that she probably inherited from her genius composer father, that she was good enough at a variety of very difficult things – triad, pyramid, boxing – to have made a living at them, if she had loved any of them as much as she did flying.
If Lee had conjured up a woman out of his deepest dreams, if he had been able to summon the woman that he was destined to love, who was destined to love him, it would have been her. Except that he could never have imagined anyone as extraordinary, as compelling or layered or complicated or difficult or heartbreaking or courageous as her. She would have been impossible to imagine.
"You two are always fighting. Half the time you talk to each other, you're arguing," Zak told Lee one day, when they were alone. "Don't you like her?" Lee almost choked on his sudden, bitter laughter. He didn't tell Zak that the reason he fought with Zak's girlfriend (no, she's his fiancée now, moron, Lee reminded himself) was that Lee wasn't afraid of her dark side, wasn't shy of calling her on her shit, wasn't scared to push right back when she pushed, would never stop short of taking it to the absolute maximum with her. He didn't tell Zak that a woman like that needed to fight in order to be honest, in order to be totally alive. He didn't tell Zak that Zak would never be the kind of man a woman like that needed.
Lee can never have her and he knows it. He felt guilty about wanting her while Zak was alive, and he feels a thousand times more guilty for wanting her now that Zak is dead. He suspects she feels the same way, if she even wants Lee at all. They might find other people to love, one day, or at least other people to keep them company for the rest of their lives, if they live through this war and the journey to the new home. Lee might never get a chance to run his hands through her golden hair, to tell her that he understands things about her that no one else ever will, and the things he doesn't understand about her make him love her even more, far more than he thought it was possible for him to love anyone.
Lee doesn't even let himself think these things when he is awake, when he is control of himself.
The other day, in the ready room, he accused her of not knowing a damn thing about poetry, and she recited a verse to him in a sultry voice that made the words sound like a melody. He already knew she was a painter, and that her paintings ranged from disturbing and deep to heartwrenchingly gorgeous. Like her. And now he knows that she knows poetry, too, and could hypnotize him with magic words spinning off her moist tongue, her kissable lips.
She secretly is quite sensitive. She has the eyes and ears and hands and mouth of an artist. Lee in private is quiet and intellectual, and enjoys fine paintings, likes to listen to good poetry spoken well.
They are a perfect match in every way. She is what he needs as a CAG, as a pilot, as an officer, as a soldier, as a man, as a human, as a soul. He is what she needs as well. If they ever allowed themselves to be together, to go beyond their duty and their guilt, he knows that he would love her as much when they are a hundred years old as he does today. In fact, he would love her far more, because he would have had decades to know her better, and he loves her more the better he knows her. He would watch her wrinkled hands paint pictures in the garden, and he would put his head in her lap and nap under a tree, and read to her at night when they lay in bed. Their great-grandchildren would ask them questions about flying vipers, and Lee would proudly say, his eyes glowing, that their great-grandma was the best damn hotshot pilot the galaxy had ever seen. Lee won't let himself even speculate about how much damn sex he'd get to have with her, if they lived together until they were a hundred.
That future isn't even the remotest possibility, given his brother and the cylons and the general uncertainty that there is a future for any human being, period. But he cannot help but wonder at her. At how she can take bigger risks than anyone alive and win every time, at how she can have any man she chooses without so much as blinking, at how she can recite poetry and comfort her pilots and save their collective asses in a single day and then get three hours of sleep before another thirteen-hour rotation and not mind.
It is awful for Lee, how much of a wonder she is. He hates it, and wishes he could stop being awed.