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oooooooooooooooo
The sight of her hit him like a punch in the gut ... one of her punches.
She looked exactly the same climbing down the steps to the deck, helmet tucked under her arm. The damp, sweaty strands of blonde hair hanging over her face and the playful grin in her shining green eyes were identical as well. Her mouth curled up slightly in a small, inviting smile, as though she had an amusing secret she might be willing to share.
It reminded him forcibly of the first time he'd seen her on Galactica, the day of his father's retirement. Then too, he'd known she was there but had felt the wind knocked out of him at the sight of her. He'd played the proper gentleman then, keeping back and only teasing her with his words though he'd desperately wanted to pull her against the bars and tease her with hands and tongue as well.
That hadn't been appropriate so he'd restrained himself. Lee Adama - Captain (newly captained) Lee Adama always did what was proper. It was his trademark, and what had moved him so quickly through the ranks.
He wasn't that man anymore.
Too much had changed him in the three years since their reunion in Galactica's brig. Too much had forced him to fly by the seat of his pants instead of carefully thinking things through before acting. Too much had caused him to wear his heart on his sleeve instead of locked in his own private vault that no one was allowed a glimpse into.
He'd been teetering on the edge for months, knowing he needed to become a different person in order to deal with the new life he'd been dealt, but not wanting to let go of the familiar mantle of silence, strength and restraint he'd worn so long. Without it he was naked.
Her death had been the catalyst.
It had stripped him down to his core. Taken away that mantle, the uniform and even the wedding ring he'd worn to shadow himself from the world. He'd been naked, vulnerable, directionless till he'd faced himself and grabbed onto the one thing he still had ... Lee Adama. The Lee Adama only she'd known existed. The Lee Adama only she'd been able to bring out - nothing else had ever forced him to be vulnerable yet strong the way she had.
Frak appropriate.
He strode towards her purposefully, watching her grin widen in welcome as he approached. He grasped the sides of her head, burying his fingers in her hair as his lips met hers in a heavily demanding kiss.
She hesitated a second ... two seconds ... three seconds ...
A memory played through her head in those few seconds - another welcome-home kiss, one she'd pulled away from without responding, as kissing one's superior officer (even if he kissed first) was not appropriate.
She'd wanted to respond in kind that day, wanted to let him know that the few weeks she'd been on Caprica had been long enough for her to forgive him his stupid, possessive behaviour. She'd wanted to let him know that Anders had just been a passing fancy - a way to assuage the hurt Lee had inflicted on her that had driven her away. She'd wanted to throw him to the floor, frak him senseless and brand him 'property of Starbuck' for all to see, admitting publicly what everyone already knew anyway.
But she couldn't bring herself to do it. She, the master of ignoring rules and flaunting it, couldn't break the somewhat useless and defunct frat regs to show the world her innermost feelings.
Because those feelings were locked inside for a reason. Because her mother had taught her that admitting love was showing vulnerability and vulnerability was rewarded with pain. Formal math had never been Kara's strong suit (instinctive physics she blew the books away on) but the one thing she'd always remembered had been the commutative law - if A equals B and B equals C then A equals C. Love equaled vulnerability and vulnerability equaled pain so love ... love was equal to pain. And therefore something to be avoided or at least denied.
She'd nearly given in to the vulnerability that time but had barely restrained herself, instead channeling her feelings into the usual playful sarcasm.
But that was before. Before Anders. Before Scar. Before New Caprica and all the hell it had held for her. Before the Dance and before the affair. And before she'd died and miraculously come back to life.
Frak appropriate.
Before the three seconds were up her lips were just as feverishly devouring his and she'd even darted her tongue out playfully to tease his, like she'd always done when they kissed.
The touch of her lips sliding against his own sent warmth rushing through him. He could feel the ice in his heart literally melting away at her touch. He hadn't realized till that moment just how dead inside her loss had made him. Somewhere though the thick haze of emotions, he became vaguely aware of a voice.
"Lee! Step away from it!"
He pulled out of the kiss, body already groaning in protest at the loss of contact with hers.
Their eyes met. Hers were different. In the split second before he turned to see a dozen marines with rifles cocked surrounding them, he could tell she was different. Couldn't quite place his finger on whatever it was, but he was absolutely certain it was there.
He stepped backwards involuntarily as his father again barked out the order for him to step away from her ... it?
"Miss me Major?" Her voice was sultry, low-pitched. He doubted even the marines encircling them could hear her words. Flashbacks of their first kiss - back on the Astral Queen as she returned miraculously from Caprica flashed through his mind.
Before he could respond as he had the first time, he was hauled backwards bodily, landing heavily on the deck as several marines restrained Kara.
"I said step back, you idiot!"
His father's voice shook with rage, though whether it was at Lee for ignoring a direct order or for Kara for returning from the dead, he wasn't sure.
But why would his father be angry at having her back? He'd loved her, missed her terribly - his irrational behaviour had borne testimony to that. Unless ...
It. Not she. It.
He thought Kara was a Cylon.
ooooooooooooooooooo
"What the frak do you think you were doing out there?" Adama's voice was still full of rage, but after seeing his father's face he knew what the cause was - worry. The Old Man was terrified that Lee had placed himself in danger by getting too close to Kara.
Because he believed she was a Cylon.
Lee felt his hackles rise, as they so often did when confronting his father. "It's Kara dad. She's alive."
"That is not Kara Thrace. Don't let it's appearance fool you."
"It? It?" Lee's voice rose almost to a shriek. "She is not a Cylon! Trust me, I would know."
"Really." The word was dry, biting. "How? How would you know?"
Lee coloured. "I can't explain it. I just know."
"So we're supposed to trust your 'gut instinct' now?" His venomous look seared right through Lee's defenses. "I would expect something that lame from Kara but not from you. Not from you," he added, those three words cutting Lee down to absolutely nothing - just as he'd done less than a week earlier.
"I would know if she were a Cylon," Lee went on doggedly, stubbornly resisting the urge to lash out in return as he'd done at their last confrontation.
"Why? Because she doesn't kiss like a Cylon? For frak's sakes Lee, get real! The Chief carried on a relationship with a Cylon for months and had no idea. And from what Helo says, there's no difference between a Cylon woman and a human woman. How can a kiss tell you whether or not she's a Cylon?" Adama snorted. "And that's putting aside the question of why you were kissing her in the first place. You have a wife, she has a husband. What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Lee straightened an inch taller as pride took anger's place. "That's none of your concern," he answered stiffly. "What Kara and I are to each other isn't your business. Nor anyone else's either."
"Uh huh," Adama murmured, the expression on his face proof enough that he knew exactly what the relationship between them was.
Lee shifted uncomfortably. "You want to know if Kara's a Cylon." The very word sent a chill through his blood. Cylon. "Let me talk to her. Ask her something only she and I would know the answer to."
"Yeah, that'll work. They frakking resurrect Lee. Of course this Kara will know everything about your relationship. She resurrected when her ship exploded! She knows everything the other Kara knew."
"She isn't dead!" Lee shouted. "She's alive!"
"You saw her die! You were out there with her - you saw her ship explode! We all heard your pleas for her to turn around. You were screaming at her." His voice dropped low with emotion. "We heard your screams when she hit the atmospheric deck and exploded. It happened Lee. She died."
"She's not dead," he repeated sullenly. "I've seen her, talked to her, touched her for frak's sake. She's real!"
"The only way, the only possible way she could be alive is if she's a Cylon and has a new body. No one could have survived their Viper incinerating in the atmosphere. You know that as well as I do."
New body. Body.
That was it. Lee knew how to prove she wasn't a Cylon.
"I need to see her."
"I don't think that's wise."
"I need to see her," Lee repeated. "I can prove she's not a Cylon but I need to see her."
Adama considered his request. "She's in the brig under heavy guard."
"I understand," Lee said patiently. "But if I can prove she isn't a Cylon then you can let her go and the guards can be freed up to do their jobs elsewhere."
Adama headed towards the hatch. He looked back over his shoulder, waiting for Lee to follow. "You'd best hurry and show me you're right," he said, a note of hope creeping into his voice. "Because the President is on her way here as we speak and you know how fond she is of airlocking Cylons."
"She frakking well better not," Lee growled, almost under his breath. "I'll kill her with my bare hands if she does."
Adama's eyes widened at the menace in Lee's voice and wondered, not for the first time since Kara's apparent demise, how it was he barely recognized his son anymore.
They walked to the brig in silence.
oooooooooooooooooooooo
Her eyes lit up when she saw him.
I believe in you. He wasn't sure if she got it, though she'd never had a problem reading his eyes before, but it was the only way he could get the message across before the talking started. Things might get ugly after that.
She forestalled Adama's words.
"You think I'm a Cylon."
"Quite frankly, yes," he answered.
She nodded. "It's okay. That's what I would think if I were you."
"So are you?"
"Do you really think I'd say yes if I was?"
"You can be honest you know. Maybe you're a sleeper and had no idea you were a Cylon until now. You can be forgiven for pretending to be one of us if you didn't know better."
"Like Boomer?" She grimaced. "I know where that would land me - a one-way trip to an airlock. Our esteemed President is awfully fond of that particular privilege of office."
"I can promise you I will not allow her to do that without my approval. This is my ship, not hers."
"Somehow I'm not sure I can take that promise at face value."
Adama's eyes narrowed. "You don't trust me."
"Well that seems only fair, since you don't trust me. And really, why should I? I've been on your side of the bars. I know how tempting it is to ignore everything that's said and just push the button. The guilt doesn't last long - you're not really killing, it's just a machine after all."
The animosity between them grew by the second.
Lee stepped forward and grabbed the bars, knuckles turning white under the pressure of his grip. "Let's just end this now," he said angrily. "I can prove Kara is human. Let me in the cell."
The guard turned to Adama for approval.
Kara stood and walked to the bars, placing her hands just below Lee's. "You can prove I'm human?" she said softly, eyes locking with his. "I'm not even sure," she added in a whisper.
"I am" he mouthed back, no sound passing his lips. He turned to the guard. "Let me in," he repeated firmly.
Adama nodded curtly. There were five armed guards. If Kara was a Cylon she should be able to be neutralized before doing much damage to Lee, though a part of him still flinched inside at the thought of hurting his Kara
His head knew there was about a ninety-nine percent chance she was a Cylon.
His heart firmly clung to that other one percent however.
Kara backed off as Lee strode into the cell. He felt rather than saw a guard follow him in. His heart began to pound.
He knew she was real ... human ... not just a machine. In order for her to be a machine now she'd have had to be one before, and he flatly refused to believe the woman he'd fought, frakked and loved hadn't been human. Besides, how could a mere machine be as emotionally frakked up as she was? Machines didn't have emotions. For all that the quirk of her character had annoyed and hurt him in the past, he was grateful now. It meant she was flawed. And flawed was beautiful.
He approached her, not answering the question in her eyes. He slid his hands onto her hips and rested them there for a moment. The sudden glint in her eye belied the fear she'd obviously felt as she'd flinched at his touch. She leaned in, expecting another public demonstration of affection. Lee surprised her by yanking up her tanks, exposing her naked midriff.
One hand let go and pointed at the double scars on her abdomen. "There," he said triumphantly. "Those scars prove Kara's human. She's had them since her first visit back to Caprica. If she was a Cylon and had resurrected into a new body those scars wouldn't be there."
Her head tilted slightly to the side as she stared at him. She'd never told him where she'd gotten the scars or what they were. He knew she'd been shot from the report she'd given but she'd never spoken with him about ... the other. In fact she'd thought he hadn't even noticed it. Her body was riddled with scars anyway - a testament to the difficult life she'd led, but the few times they'd been close enough for him to see while undressed, their attention had been on matters more urgent than checking out each other's battle scars.
"Yes I noticed," he said quietly in answer to her unspoken question.
"Where did you get those scars?" Adama demanded.
"Caprica. Just like Lee said. One was a gunshot wound and the other ..." She trailed off. No one knew about that one except Cottle and Sam. Cottle was bound by doctor/patient confidentiality and Sam ... well, he'd been there when it had happened. She'd tried to blow off his questions but he'd persisted till she'd told him what they'd done to her.
"The other?" he prompted.
She drew in a deep breath. "They took one of my ovaries. So they could grow test-tube hybrid embryos."
Lee's face drained of all colour. "Oh my Gods."
The rest of the faces in the room didn't look much better.
"So if you ever have to fight an army of little Starbucks, you'll know why." She tried to smile at the joke but failed. It was still too painful.
"Oh Kara." The Admiral's voice brought tears to her eyes. She'd tried to be strong and pretend it didn't hurt that he thought she was the enemy but inside she was a wreck.
At least Lee had believed in her.
He pulled her tanks back down and slid his arms all the way around her, pulling her tightly against him in a bone-crushing hug.
"I missed you," he whispered in her ear, squeezing his eyes shut so as not to let the tears escape. It was the most perfect moment he could have imagined.
"I missed you too." She closed her eyes and smiled.
They were home.
fin