Authors Note:
This is a sequel to a story I posted here a few months ago called Freedom. If you haven't read it, or can't remember what happened, here's a quick recap:
Kara slept with Lee on a visit to Pegasus and the following morning announced she was going back to New Caprica to marry Sam. Needless to say, Lee did not take this well and they had a bitter argument which ended with them both declaring they were done with the other for good.
This story opens several months later. Kara has married Sam and hasn't seen or spoken to Lee since their quarrel….
Chapter One
It was one thing, Kara discovered, to cut Lee out of her life, and quite another to live that life without him in it.
Not that she regretted cutting herself free of him. It had needed to be done. She and Lee were no good for each other, never had been. She'd had to get away from him before he tore her apart any more than he already had.
She didn't regret marrying Sam either. Sam was everything she needed; easy-going, reliable, fun. She was happy with him, and with their new life on the planet, running their mechanics business during the day, drinking and laughing and frakking their way through the evenings. Sure, the weather seemed set on wet and muddy, and the tent seemed to get damper and colder every night, but it didn't bother her. She had Sam beside her and her future wide open ahead of her.
No, she didn't regret her decision. It was just…little things. That was all.
----
She'd stopped playing triad much in the evenings. There were several makeshift bars in the settlement, and from the first she and Sam had spent most of their evenings there, him drinking at the bar and chatting, her cleaning everyone out at triad.
But after a while, things changed. The regular triad players got to know her, became too wary to go up against her, folded at her first bluff. The few times anyone did stay in the game, she knew they had a good hand, because none of them ever tried to out-bluff her. They thought they were beaten before they even started.
Well, they were, but she wished they would at least try. She wished someone would go up against her with a pathetically weak hand and try to bluff it out, knowing they wouldn't win but challenging her anyway, just for the fun of it, and because maybe, maybe, this time they might win…
But no-one did.
Of course she still won, but it wasn't the same. She'd always thought triad had been about the winning for her; now she realised it was about the challenge.
So she stopped playing. Joined Sam at the bar instead. He put his arm around her, and laughed at her jokes, and didn't comment on the amount she was drinking.
----
On her birthday Sam threw a surprise party for her at one of the bars.
Everyone she knew from the settlement was there, and as many from the fleet as could get leave – Helo, Racetrack…even Kat. There was ambrosia and presents, and even a cake from gods knew where.
She was touched and a little overwhelmed, even ridiculously on the verge of tears. No-one had ever gone to such trouble for her birthday before.
"I didn't even think you knew when my birthday was," she said awkwardly to Sam, trying to make light of it.
He kissed her cheek and grinned widely, pleased by his success. "Well, you were wrong."
She grinned back, pushing down the tears. "Everyone has a skill."
"What?" He looked puzzled.
"Nothing," she said quickly, "just an old joke." It had slipped out without thinking.
"How do you mean?"
Kara pulled him onto the dance floor. "Never mind. It wasn't very funny anyway."
----
In the mornings they went running.
Two circuits of the settlement, every morning, without fail.
They jogged comfortably along, side by side, Sam adjusting his longer stride to match hers. Every few minutes he'd look sideways at her and smile, his eyes sparkling, and she smiled back.
A couple of times she suggested a race. Sam went along with her, but she could tell his heart wasn't in it. He just let her surge ahead and arrived back at their tent a few steps behind her, smiling lazily.
"Looks like you beat me again."
"You didn't put up much of a fight, Sam." It irritated her, though she wasn't sure why.
"Why should I?" He looked genuinely puzzled. "It's only a bit of fun, Kara."
----
Helo visited them every few weeks. Planet leave was easy to get now there was so little for the fleet to do. Patrol duty wasn't exactly stretching them.
They went to one of the bars, and Helo joked and laughed just as he usually did, teasing her about being grounded, but she could see something else lurking behind his smile.
When Sam went to talk to a friend at the bar, she seized the opportunity to pick him up on it.
"Spit it out, Karl."
"What?"
"Whatever it is you came here to tell me."
He shifted uncomfortably, but didn't deny it. They knew each other too well for that. "It's nothing much. Just some news. I thought I should tell you before you hear it from anyone else."
She took a casual sip from her glass. "News? About what?"
She knew about what, though. Or rather about whom. It was the only subject that produced that particular wary look in Helo's eyes.
"Apollo's getting married."
Kara took a deep breath. "To Dee?"
Helo nodded.
Kara picked up the beer bottle and slowly refilled her glass.
She should be glad about this. She'd told Lee he should stick with Dee, after all. Told him she was good for him.
And she should be glad for another reason. Because it showed he'd healed, moved on. That she hadn't damaged him permanently when she pushed him away. It meant she could forget the broken look in his eyes when she told him she didn't love him, the one she still saw sometimes on the unguarded edge of sleep.
"Good for him," she said finally, meeting Helo's eyes squarely. "I hope they'll be happy."
Helo stared at her for a moment, and there was something about the look in his eyes that made her clench her free hand into a fist.
"Will you go to the wedding?" he said finally, and under the table, her fist tightened until her knuckles cracked.
"Doubt it," she said, casually enough. "After all, he didn't come to mine."
----
Tyrol was going to be a father, and he made a special batch of his home brew to celebrate. He gave Kara two bottles when she stopped by to congratulate him and Cally on her way home from fixing a generator that had broken down for the umpteenth time.
She lugged the bottles home, wiped the worst of the grease off her face, curled up in a nest of blankets on the bed, and cracked one open. Gods, she was tired.
She gulped the first mouthful eagerly.
The sharp, distinctive flavour filled her mouth, stung the back of her throat. And something slipped inside her.
Something slipped, and suddenly all she could think of was the last time she'd tasted that flavour, back on Pegasus, how it had lingered on his lips and in his mouth when she was kissing him, mingled with that other taste that was all his own, that was like nothing else in the universe…
She hurtled up from the bed and out of the tent. Stood outside the flap taking deep, harsh lungfuls of the cool night air.
Poured every drop of that home brew into the long grass and hid the empty bottles where Sam wouldn't see them.
----
It was the anniversary of Zak's death that broke her resolution.
It was always a difficult day for her; even now, when it was all years in time and space behind her. She had changed so much from who she had been then that sometimes she barely recognised herself, and yet some things hadn't changed at all. Some things never stopped hurting.
She was in a foul mood all day, scowling and snapping, every word and look razor sharp. Sam tried joking her out of it, then ignoring her out of it, then tried to get her to talk about it.
She choked him off, of course. She couldn't talk about it, because he didn't know about Zak. She'd never told him – had never told him much about her past, altogether. Well, there was no reason why she should. He was her present and her future, and her past had no place with him. He didn't need to know about it.
So she couldn't tell him what was wrong, not without getting out the whole stupid, horrible story, and she couldn't face that, not today of all days.
Instead she snarled at him until he went away, and had to be nastier than she had expected. He wasn't usually quite that persistent. But she got rid of him eventually, and she pushed down the sluggish flow of guilt and told herself she'd make it up to him later.
She went for a walk round the settlement to work off her mood, and somehow found herself in one of the grounded raptors. Found herself putting on the headset, starting up the communicator. Placing a call, her heartbeat thudding in her ears and her fingers slightly unsteady on the controls.
Her voice was level though, as she made her request, not giving a name. Just in case he refused to take her call.
There was a crackle of static and then-
"Pegasus Actual."
Just two words, but at the sound of them, at the familiar cadence of his voice, something that had been wound tightly within her all day suddenly relaxed. She took her first full breath for what seemed like hours.
"This is Pegasus Actual. Who's there?"
He repeated it a few more times, with increasing irritation. She could picture him at the other end of line, frowning impatiently, hand tapping the console, eyes darkening.
She stayed silent, listening to his voice, until he said, in a quite a different tone, so quietly she barely heard it: "Kara?" and she cut the connection.
----
After that she found herself hovering around the landing strip every time a raptor arrived from the fleet. Found herself searching the crowd of arrivals, looking for a familiar dark head, a stiff-backed stride, a flash of blue eyes.
Of course he wasn't there. Of course he wasn't going to come all the way down here just to see why she'd called. Not after the way they'd left things between them.
She was a pathetic fool to even think it.
What the hell would she do if he did come, anyway? There was nothing to say that hadn't already been said, nothing to do that hadn't already been done. She didn't even want to see him, not really.
It was just…
It was just that she hadn't expected everything to be so final between them.
Which was stupid, because she had meant things to be final. Had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure they were final.
But she realised now that part of her had never expected to succeed. Had irrationally believed that things between her and Lee would never be final, not really. Not until one of them was dead, anyway.
Looked like she had been wrong.
----
She didn't regret her choice, though, despite those few moments of weakness. Staying with Lee had been too dangerous, would only have ended in hurt.
Marrying Sam was the best thing she could have done. It was easy and comfortable and simple, and she was happy. Theywere happy.
She rested secure in that fact right up until the day Sam told her that he was leaving.
TBC