Polishing the Stars

Lee had wanted to be a historian since he was ten.

He'd been reading books on colonial heroes and the cylon war, and then acting out the plots with Zach after school each day. Zach always wanted to be the colonial soldier, a hero, just like his dad. And Lee had always had a soft spot for his baby brother, so he'd settled for playing the cylon.

Robotic movements, fiendish plans, and a jerky, violent death were interesting in their own right, he decided, and it was okay not to play the hero, because the grin on Zach's face after every game, the worshipful look in his eyes, was more than enough.

It wasn't the players that mattered so much, in Lee's opinion. The story was far more important.

And then his parents got divorced and Lee stopped believing in heroes.

While all the other boys were daydreaming of vipers, he was hitting the books. While they were playing in the arcade sims, he was hitting the gym. He got top marks, and an excellent physical evaluation, and two days after he send in the necessary materials, the Academy accepted his application to study colonial history.

All cadets were given one year of basic courses before they were separated into their areas of specialty. That meant that future academics trained and studied alongside future mechanics and marines. It also meant a lot of bluster and competition among the cadets, because only the very best were picked for the most popular specialty areas.

You could always tell which students were the aspiring doctors, which wanted diplomatic postings, which dreamed of being viper jocks. Lee watched them all, because people were what made up stories, and it was important for him to know how they worked.

Halfway through his first term he could guess who was going to be placed where. By the end of first term, he could anticipate what most of them would do and say in a given situation. There where a few that stood out, and he watched those carefully. Karl, the early riser, who could always be counted on to break up a fight or liven up a dead conversation. Sarah, who wanted to be a comm officer, and who had excellent marks, but had such a grating and nasal voice that Lee was pretty sure they were going to stick her in code breaking instead. David, who seemed to like parts more than people, and, instead of emotional intelligence had been gifted with an innate understanding of how engines worked. There were hundreds more, and even if he didn't know exactly what made them tick, he could give a rundown on most of them.

The only one he hadn't gotten a handle on yet was Kara Thrace, but it didn't matter, because she was clearly going to be kicked out before the end of the year anyway.

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At the beginning of the next semester, his history professor suggested that he tutor some of the students who had almost failed last term. It would be good practice, he'd said, for the type of teaching that often went with a historian's job. It seemed like the right thing to do, and so Lee agreed.

It turned out tutoring was rather harder than he'd anticipated. Nobody really cared about the course, they all wanted to be deckhands and viper jocks, but most of them were willing to try, at least. It wasn't their fault that they were a bit on the slow side, but knowing that didn't make it any less frustrating for Lee, who was beginning to despair of the fact that future members of the colonial army kept confusing the Sagittarian rebellion with the Sage Wars, and had an alarming tendency to spell 'cylon' with a 'k'.

The tutoring sessions were open to anyone who wanted to take them, and so most afternoons, Lee found himself with two or three confused cadets. He had almost settled into a routine—what don't you understand? How about we try it like this?—when Kara Thrace strode into the room and plopped herself in front of him.

He was intrigued,-- extra tutoring didn't seem to be Thrace's style--but he'd decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

"What don't you understand?" he asked her.

"I don't understand why this bloody awful course is required at all, or why someone who has the chops to do something else would choose to spend his days with his nose stuck in a history book." That little speech was delivered with a smirk, but Kara's eyes were sharp behind the smile. She was seizing him up, he realized, much like he'd done to her in the mess hall all those months ago. The only difference was, she didn't seem content to be a passive observer. She was more the type who poked people until they were riled enough to show their true colors.

She was going to have to poke harder than that if she wanted to rile Lee.

"There's something to be said for books," Lee informed her. "They never come barging in where they're not wanted, insulting people who are willing to help."

Her grin turned lecherous, "Bit lacking in… other areas though, books."

"Why are you here?" Lee asked her.

"I was told to get my grades in shape or get out. Besides, Karl bet me that I couldn't last ten tutoring sessions."

"What do you get if you win?"

"Wouldn't you like to know."

And, as he had rather feared it would, that exchange set the tone for the rest of their sessions together.

Kara wasn't like his other students, though. She was sharp, and capable of making connections just as quickly as he himself was. The problem was that she saw no use for history, and so she just didn't care. She'd be distracted by the smallest things, and glomp onto the most insignificant details. She was forever asking him inane questions, like what General Hickering's favorite food was, or whether he though President Wagner was a legs man or a breast man. Even worse, she had a tendency to make up false information about historical characters, have them play in their own little anachronistic soap operas, and invent back stories where none existed, until he had to stop himself in class from thinking of Vice Chairman Spar as the man who was involved in an unfortunate incident with a muffin tin and his neighbor's pet goat.

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At first, Lee found Kara exasperating, but refused to be annoyed, because that would mean that she would win. Then, when she decided he was too easy a target for her constant ribbing, he began to secretly enjoy their sessions. Maybe she'd been spot on when she'd said that he had been spending too much time with books, because he'd started looking forward to her insane historical fictions and her loud, simple laughter.

She must have enjoyed his company too though, at least a little, because the night after their ten session were over, she'd shown up with a bottle of incredibly expensive alcohol, and told him that she thought it was only right that she share her hard-won bet winnings.

He'd drank more than he meant to, and despite the fact that she seemed like the type who might, she didn't come on to him. Which was good, because Lee didn't like loose women.

He was drunk enough to say it too, and Kara had laughed so hard she'd fallen off his bunk.

He informed her that he didn't like women who laughed at him any more than those who tried to sleep with him, but for some reason, that didn't deter her. In fact, if he wasn't mistaken, she may have laughed harder.

He was beginning to figure out that it took a hell of a lot to deter Kara Thrace.

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A/N: The title is shamelessly stolen from Shel Silverstein, for no reason at all other than that I like the poem, and there's a vague connection between stars and pilots. Poem below:

Somebody has to go polish the stars
they're looking a little bit dull.
Somebody has to go polish the stars,
for the eagles and starlings and gulls academy
have all been complaining
they're tarnished and worn,
they say they want new ones
we cannot afford.
So please, get your rags
and your polishing jars.
Somebody has to go polish the stars.