Title: Soft Spot
Author: Em Meredith
Summary: "Now that you're going to have a kid, will you be...?" K/L.
Spoilers: Nothing specific. Probably you'll need to have seen the mini-series, though. Vague references to some exchanges in season 2.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine. Plus, I hear Ron Moore said I could.
Archive: Please ask first. I like to know where it's going.
Author's Notes: Fangirls, forgive me, but I have sinned. I committed babyfic. So if that's not your cup of tea, please scroll on by. :) Thanks to Carrie for beta help and to Macha (as always) for betaing, hand-holding, and listening to me yammer on about bulkheads. Also thanks to Cassie, Jesouhaite, and to Qill. This is my first attempt at BSGfic, so please be gentle.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Doc Cottle told his patients that they had doctor-patient confidentiality, but the close quarters of a Battlestar meant that crew members heard all manner of would-be confidential things all the time. There was the time that Hot Dog broke out in hives from the new military-issue soap, and spent an entire CAP shift trying to figure out how to scratch through his flightsuit. And Starbuck took great delight in sharing details of Colonel Tigh's hemorrhoids, snickering madly when the looks of disgust crossed their faces. Everyone had done their best to try and forget, but it wasn't easy.
But payback was a bitch. When Cottle broke the news to Starbuck that she was pregnant, it was all over the ship practically before she'd started stalking down the halls toward her quarters. And when the CAG came trailing behind her, a resolute expression on his face, pilots cleared out of the officers' quarters faster than nuggets fleeing a Cylon raiding party. They stayed far, far away until long after Starbuck showed up in the gym to beat the frak out of the punching bag. Then they kept their distance for a while longer, because a pissed off Starbuck was not even half as scary as a pissed off, hormonal Starbuck.
Illegal or not, nobody in the ship thought that she would stay pregnant for very long. Apparently Apollo was more persuasive than a presidential order, even if the next day he showed up at the briefing with a bruise on his jaw roughly the size of Starbuck's fist. Starbuck spent a couple weeks making herself scarce around the ship, and when she turned back up for the nightly triad game in the rec room a month later, she passed up the Chief's booze in favor of water. That's when everyone realized she might actually go through with it all.
Of course, it took them a week to work up the courage to actually ask her about it. Hot Dog did the honors--his latest attempt to prove that he wasn't afraid of her.
"So, Starbuck," Hot Dog asked, casually tossing a cubit into the pot. "Now that you're going to have a kid, will you be...?" He trailed off, like she should know what he meant.
As though she'd make it easy on him.
"Will I be what?"
Hot Dog looked uncomfortable, like he'd finally come to his senses and wished he hadn't brought it up. And everyone else at the table breathed a sigh of relief that they hadn't been stupid enough to ask her.
"Will you be--you know..." He gestured expansively, like that would somehow clear things up. "Knitting booties and singing lullabies and stuff?"
The silence in the rec room was deafening. Chopper folded immediately. Racetrack shifted her chair away from Hot Dog so she couldn't get caught in the crossfire. And at the table in the corner, where he'd been concentrating on paperwork, the CAG's head jerked up and he set down his pencil--obviously poised to pull Starbuck back when all hell broke loose.
She glared at Hot Dog for a full thirty seconds before she started snickering. That alone scared the frak out of all of them, but when her snickering turned into outright cackling, that set the rest of them off until they were all laughing so hard they were crying.
"Knitting booties." Starbuck wiped at her cheeks, still laughing weakly. Her grin turned devilish as she threw a razor into the pot. "Nah, I think Lee will be in charge of all the knitting crap." She glanced over at him, clearly amused at the thought.
"I think that in order for me to start knitting--Hot Dog?" Lee fixed him with a glare. "Shut it--you'd need to find some yarn in the fleet first."
"Aww, come on, Lee! If I found you yarn you wouldn't knit little booties? Maybe a tiny blanket?"
"If that's what you need, Kara, I'll do it," and for a second he looked so serious that the other pilots started shifting uncomfortably in their seats. Then he laughed, breaking the tension. "But I think you might have a better shot at getting me to change diapers."
Starbuck didn't look back at him, didn't acknowledge either comment as she told Tailgate it was his bet. But she bit her lip, trying to hide the grin that was tugging at the corners of her mouth.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Gods, Lee, what is that stench?"
The look he shot Kara as she came through the hatch to their bunkroom would have scared most anyone else. She just laughed at him, which Lee figured he should have expected. But he'd had a long day and he didn't even bother to hide his annoyance. "You know, Kara, any time you want to help change a diaper, you should feel free."
"Ha!" she laughed, toeing off her boots and kicking them into her locker. She stripped off her flight suit and pulled on her sweats just as Lee was efficiently snapping up the baby's clothes. Five months of changing diapers and he could do it in his sleep--and he probably had at some point, considering Kara wasn't any help in that department. Oblivious to his annoyance, Kara grinned at him and reached out for Penelope. And, as usual, Lee was stuck dealing with disposing of a dirty diaper while Kara had a nice, clean baby settled in her lap.
"You know," he pointed out. "I hear some mothers actually change their children's diapers sometimes." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he mentally kicked himself. Reminding Kara of her weaknesses as a mother was not going to get him very far.
But if she'd heard the criticism, she didn't react, staring thoughtfully at Penelope, tracing the curve of her cheek with one finger. Kara noticed Lee studying her and smirked. "Right. I'll get on that as soon as you can trade off on the whole feeding thing. Let me know when you've got the necessary equipment."
She had him there. "CAP go okay?"
"Fine," she shrugged. "Skeeter needs some more work on barrel rolls."
Lee went into the head to take care of the diaper and wash his hands. When he came out, he leaned against the doorway to watch Kara with their daughter. It wasn't often that they were both off-shift and awake at the same time. He didn't think he'd ever get tired of watching Kara and the baby together.
Kara had her feet up on another chair with the baby resting back against her bent knees. Penelope was staring intently at her mother as Kara used her hands to demonstrate Viper combat tactics.
"And then you want to yank the joystick all the way over or you're going to get a faceful of Raider," she said, twisting her hand in the air. Penelope reached out and tried to grab Kara's hand, but she wasn't fast enough. "Nice try, kiddo, but you're gonna have to be faster than that to catch me."
"She's five months old, Kara."
She turned her head, craning her neck so that she could see Lee. Penelope took this as an invitation to yank on her mother's hair. Kara rolled her eyes at this, extricated her hair from the baby's grabby hands, and turned them both around in the chair to face him.
"I thought I'd get started on explaining some basic maneuvers while we wait for her motor skills to catch up."
"I'm pretty sure you have plenty of time for that before she's old enough to fly." Trust Kara to start teaching her to fly before she could walk. At least she wasn't making Penelope call her "God." Yet.
Kara shrugged, turning them back around and resituating Penelope on her lap. "Yeah, but what else am I supposed to talk to her about, Lee? It's not like there are many kids' books floating around the Fleet, and I am not going to start talking to her like Cally does with her kids. Besides," Kara pitched her voice higher, cooing in an incredibly non-Kara-like way, "Penny has too much sense to want Mama to talk like a moron, don't you?"
Penelope stared gravely at her mother, clearly confused by Kara's behavior. Kara began to tickle her until they were both laughing.
"Anyway," she continued, once they'd settled down, "that book said it didn't matter if we talked to her like that. It doesn't make them learn to speak any faster, so I figured--"
"Wait. What book?" Lee crossed their quarters and flopped down on the bed.
"Oh," Kara shrugged. "That book your dad found for us when I found out I was pregnant. The one without the pictures. I didn't need to see pictures."
"You read that book?"
"Yeah. The Old Man went to a lot of trouble to track that stuff down. The least I could do was read them." She looked at Lee like he was crazy for suggesting that she wouldn't, even though he couldn't remember her even acknowledging the books' existence in the past ten months. He wondered what other kinds of research she'd been doing on parenting while he wasn't looking, but he decided that he valued his life too much to ask.
Kara stood and carried the baby over, lying down beside him and then settling Penelope in between them. She pulled her dogtags off and dangled them over the baby. Penelope managed to grab them in her pudgy hands, but Kara kept them just far enough away so that she couldn't get them in her mouth. Lee watched their little tug-of-war with amusement. The furrow of concentration on Penelope's little face was one he'd seen on Kara's a thousand times--usually when she was trying to take out a particularly aggravating sparring partner.
Kara's voice broke him out of his reverie. "Does it really bother you, Lee?"
"Hunh?"
She wasn't looking at him, focusing instead on Penelope's hands. "The diaper thing."
So Kara had noticed his irritation earlier. He'd have to choose his words carefully--it wasn't often she'd talk about this kind of thing willingly. And if there was one thing he knew about Kara, it was that for as confrontational as she was, pushing her when she was vulnerable was more than likely to spook her. He'd learned that the hard way.
"It would be nice, but it's not like you don't do your fair share. Although," he grinned mischievously, "you wouldn't think that a big, tough, Viper pilot would be afraid of a dirty diaper."
"Right," she snorted. "Like dealing with the spit-up isn't bad enough."
"Oh, so you are afraid?"
"Shut up."
"Do you hear that, Penelope? Your mother is afraid of--" he ducked away so Kara couldn't smack him on the head with her free hand.
"Take it back."
He laughed and pulled her in for a kiss, the baby squirming in between them. "There are no takebacks, Kara."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It was Recruit Branas' third week in the Galactica hangar bay. He'd come from the Galatea, where he'd been dying of boredom refining tyllium . Now he spent his days hauling Viper parts around, which wasn't really much more exciting, but it kept him busy and made the time pass faster.
Being in the military was an adjustment, alright, and there were plenty of things about the Galactica he just didn't get. For one thing, the whole military ranking system was just crazy, and for another there was some kid that everyone let run around the place. She had blonde pigtails and her elbows were always skinned, but the thing that annoyed him about her was that she was constantly underfoot. Branas didn't get why she was allowed to be there--it wasn't like there were any other rugrats hanging around. Just this one.
He asked Cally about the little girl, but she just shrugged and said, "Oh, that's Penny. She's Starbuck's," as if that explained everything. Branas hadn't been on the Galactica for more than a couple hours before he'd learned about Starbuck, but he couldn't reconcile the hot-headed pilot with the mischievous little girl. He stopped trying to figure it out and went back to unsnarling a tangle of hydraulic cables for the Chief.
A couple of weeks later he was carrying a crate full of cannibalized parts across the bay to Athena's Raptor when a blur of blonde bounced in front of him. Branas swore as he lost his balance, stumbling backwards to avoid the girl and dropping everything all over the deck, narrowly escaping crushing his feet with a hydraulics pipe.
He threw the rest of his parts down and reached out and grabbed the little girl by the arm. She just stared up at him without blinking, her little chin lifted defiantly. The brat didn't even look frightened, but he'd change that--put the fear of the gods into her.
He'd only just opened his mouth to start yelling when a furious, "HEY!" echoed across the hangar. He had just enough time to register that it was Starbuck stalking towards him, eyes blazing, before she pushed him up against the Viper and wrapped her hand around his throat. Branas had easily six inches on her, but as she leaned in, jaw set and nostrils flaring, he had no doubt that Starbuck would wipe the floor with him. And suddenly it made sense that the deck crew all said her name with that mix of awe, admiration, and fear.
When she spoke, her voice was low and dripping with venom. "Listen, pal, I'm only gonna say this once. If you ever--" and she punctuated this by squeezing a little harder on his windpipe, "--ever lay so much as a finger on my kid again, so help me gods I will toss you out the airlock myself." She paused, grinning ferally. "If you're lucky. Understand?"
He couldn't really nod understanding with her hand wrapped around his windpipe, but she must have seen enough comprehension--or fear--for her liking, since she let him go.
Branas sank slowly to the floor, taking deep breaths. He tried to make his heart rate go back to normal, but truth be told he didn't remember the last time someone had looked quite so intimidating without brandishing some sort of weapon. He watched Starbuck cross over to where her daughter stood. The kid looked pretty unimpressed by the whole situation, like watching her mother threaten people was something that happened every day. Starbuck crouched down and let her daughter climb on her back. She rose, bouncing the kid a little to get her balance just right, and she never took her eyes off of Branas for a second.
"C'mon," she said. "Let's go find your grandfather."
Less than 24 hours later, Branas received orders to report to a new duty station. It seemed they required him to serve out the remainder of his service in the ship's laundry.
Frakking military.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Kara was having a bad day.
The nuggets had been more dense than usual in class, the Cylons had decided to interrupt her CAP with a raiding party, and two of her pilots were in sickbay with injuries sustained in the dogfight. All Kara wanted was a shower, a stogie, and a glass of ambrosia, but instead she was stuck arguing with a stubborn six-year-old who wouldn't eat her vegetables.
"No," Penny insisted, arms crossed defiantly. "I won't do it. They're disgusting."
Kara blew out a frustrated breath and ran a hand through her dirty hair. "Yes, you will. Food's too valuable to waste and we don't have anything else, so you're going to sit there until you eat it all. And trust me--it's worse cold."
"I said no."
Sometimes having a kid was more infuriating than training nuggets.
"And I said yes, and since I'm your mother, that's what's important."
"No it's not. I don't care what you say," Penny's voice rose to a shriek, "I'm not eating them!"
Kara clenched her jaw. Lee kept telling her that yelling didn't help. "Yes, you are!" It sure felt good, though.
"Am not. And you can't make me."
Something in Kara snapped, and before she had time to think she had pushed out of her chair and was looming over her daughter. "Wanna bet?" She slammed her fist on the table. "Now eat the frakking vegetables before I shove them down your throat!"
The second the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to take them back. And she closed her eyes to shut it out, but she still saw Penny's eyes, wide with fear. Kara heard the sound of the chair scraping back and then little feet pounding across the floor as Penny ran into her room.
Kara hadn't hit her. Like that mattered--Kara knew that the words could hurt more than the broken bones.
She sank back down into her chair, leaning forward and resting her cheek on the smooth surface of the table. She heard the muffled sobs coming from the bedroom and felt tears prick her eyelids.
She hadn't been sitting there long when she heard the hatch open. Lee's hand was warm and comforting on her shoulder.
"Want me to talk to her?"
And Kara did. She wanted Lee to take charge and smooth everything over so she could pretend it hadn't happened. He'd do it, too, even though it was her screw-up to fix.
"No. I'll go." Being an adult was a frakking pain in the ass.
When she went into Penny's room, she had to step over all the blankets and sheets, which had apparently been tossed across the room in anger. "Oh, yeah," Kara muttered. "That'll show me, kid."
Penny was curled up on her bed, pillow over her head. She wasn't crying any more, but every few seconds she'd sniffle weakly. As soon as Kara sat down on the bed, Penny scooted as far away as possible, bringing the pillow with her. Kara took a deep breath. She'd sworn that her kid wouldn't grow up curled up in corners or hiding in closets.
"Go away. I don't like you."
"Yeah, I get that." Kara sighed. "Look, I'm sorry I yelled."
There was no answer from underneath the pillow. Maybe she should have let Lee handle this after all.
"You need to do what I tell you, but I don't need to yell, so we both screwed up."
Penny still didn't reply, but Kara could see her peeking out from the edge of the pillow.
"Okay?"
The pillow bounced up and down as Penny nodded in acknowledgment. She pushed it over to the side and crawled into Kara's lap. Kara wrapped her arms around her daughter, as much to comfort herself as Penny.
"You scared me, Mama."
"Yeah." Kara cleared her throat, willing her voice to stop being so damned shaky. "I scared me, too."
"Is that how you talk to the nuggets?"
Kara laughed at that. "Nah, I'm meaner to them."
"'Cause they don't listen?"
"Right," she agreed. "They're tough. They can take it."
At that Penny's little blonde head popped up. "I'm tough, too," she insisted.
"Never said you weren't." Kara bit her lip to keep from laughing. "But you know how the nuggets got so tough?"
"How?"
"They ate their vegetables."
"Did not. Other stuff makes you tough. Not vegetables." Penny said this as if her mother were the dumbest woman in the universe.
"It's true," came Lee's voice from the foot of the bed. "All the best Viper pilots eat their vegetables because they know they need their vitamins."
Penny looked back and forth between her parents, clearly skeptical. Kara felt Lee's eyes on her, but she focused on her daughter instead, not wanting to see the reproach in his expression. He was so much better at this parenting crap--and Kara was convinced she was still just a screwup.
"Okay," she relented. "I'll eat them. But only if Mama promises not to scare me anymore."
"I promise," Kara said, smoothing the hair back off Penny's forehead.
Penny clambered off her lap and trudged out of the room. Lee reached out a hand and pulled Kara to her feet, tugging her easily into his arms. "You okay?"
"Yeah." She steeled herself for his disappointment and forced herself to tilt her head so she could see him. But his eyes held none of the criticism she'd expected, just concern for her. She might be a screwup, but for some reason he still trusted her. "Yeah, I am."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The makeshift pyramid court took up most of the cafeteria, and since there were no bleachers, most of the adults who'd come to watch the semi-finals on the Fleet's school ship were forced to sit on the floor or stand by the bulkhead.
Laura Roslin had arrived just in time for the game, but far too late to find a choice seat. Her feet were sore enough that she considered playing the former-head-of-state card when a voice carried over the din. "Madame President! Saved you a seat!" And sure, enough, there was Kara over by the far bulkhead, perched atop a table and motioning her over.
Laura smiled and picked her way through the crowd, ignoring the murmurs around her. Over by the court she noticed Penelope sitting with the team, rolling her eyes at her mother's behavior and waving at Laura. She expected that one day Penelope would go through that typical teenage phase where she was ashamed of the adults in her family, but at 16 she still seemed pleased at having her own personal cheering section.
Kara moved her jacket onto her lap and motioned for Laura to sit, not taking her eyes off the cubit toss. Kara watched the school pyramid games with the same intensity that she did almost everything else, and Laura found that observing her during these events was almost as entertaining as the actual game.
"C'mon, Penny! Block him!"
Some of the other parents turned to see who was yelling so loudly, but most of them knew Kara by now and just ignored her. Barring an attack from the Cylons or some other fleet emergency, Kara came to all of the games -- sometimes with Lee, sometimes by herself. Laura figured that Starbuck saved up her emergencies for getting out of teacher conferences.
"So, Bill says that Penelope is starting to talk about what she'd like to do after she's done with school."
"Yeah. I'm trying not to push too hard." At Laura's skeptical look, Kara laughed. "I said 'trying.'"
"Has she narrowed down her options yet?" Laura winced as one of the kids blocked Penelope and knocked her over, but she scrambled to her feet and grabbed the ball, unhurt.
"Please. Like the Old Man didn't tell you she's been talking about working for the government. Sometimes it's the government, sometimes she says she wants to join the Fleet, and sometimes she says she wants to fly Raptors like Helo." She paused, thoughtful. "I'm almost positive that the last one is just her frakking with me."
"When I was her age I wanted to be a dancer."
Kara smiled. "I can see that--Oh, come on! Are you frakking blind?" The last part was directed toward the referee, who'd made a call against Penelope's team. "What did your parents think?"
"What did I care?" Laura laughed. "I was going to be famous throughout the Colonies and meet some dashing and handsome musician and we'd run away together and have babies and be disgustingly in love forever." She sighed softly, watching the teenagers scrabbling for the ball on the court. "I always wanted to be a mother, but things--" she broke off. Kara frowned, obviously concerned. Realizing how maudlin she was getting, Laura attempted to change the subject. "Well, things worked out differently. But it's all for the best, I suppose."
"Yeah," Kara laughed ruefully. "I never wanted to be a mother. Ever. I just wanted to play pyramid."
"Pyramid?" Laura tried to picture Kara without her Viper, but the mental image just wouldn't come. "You didn't want to fly?"
"I know. Crazy, hunh? I was going to play professionally and then I frakked up my knee. Next thing I knew, I was at the Academy, flying planes and shooting things out of the sky. Seems strange to remember that it wasn't something I always wanted." She watched Penelope shoot the ball into one of the baskets with a fond smile. Penelope's triumphant cheer carried over the crowd's roar. "Couldn't imagine life without it, though."
The referee blew the whistle, signaling half-time. Penelope and her teammates clustered around the coach for a strategy session and pep talk. Laura watched, amused, as Penelope began creeping toward the back of the group, waiting until everyone was preoccupied and then sneaking off to come around the court.
She rushed up to their table, grin impossibly wide. "Hey, Mom!" Her grin turned impish. "Madame President--thanks for coming!"
"Stop calling me that. Your mother is a bad influence." Laura glanced sternly at Kara, who was trying not to laugh.
"You looked good out there, kiddo."
"Thanks!" Penelope beamed at Kara's praise.
"But don't you think you should listen in on the coach's plan?"
"Nah," Penelope shrugged. "It's not very good. I'd just ignore it when I got back out there anyway."
Kara looked if she were torn between agreeing with Penelope and telling her to respect authority. If Lee'd been there, she'd certainly have done the latter. Of course, if Lee'd been there, Penelope never would have snuck away in the first place.
"Watch the Firelli boy. He keeps blocking you in so you can't get away. Keep an eye out for him."
Penelope was already pink with exertion, but Laura would swear she flushed darker. Kara didn't miss it either, if her smirk was anything to go by.
"Oh, it's like that, then?"
"Like what?"
Kara chuckled. "You know what I'm talking about. Your father and I used to just punch each other--but this works, too." Penelope looked a little bit alarmed at that, much to Laura's amusement.
Laura noticed Penelope's coach craning her neck, searching the crowd. "You had better head back, Penelope. Your coach is looking for you," Laura pointed out. "Good luck!"
Penelope quickly kissed them both on the cheek and started to rush away, but she hadn't gotten more than ten feet when Kara called after her.
"What, Mom?"
"Don't let him win."
Penelope looked at her mother like she'd just suggested joining the Cylon Revolutionary Army. "No way. Of course not."
"Good," Kara laughed.
They watched as Penelope sidled back over to her team, trying to look innocent and failing miserably.
The game started up again and the players were back on the court in a flurry of activity. True to her word, Penelope didn't let the Firelli boy's blocking get in the way of her game. Laura also noticed her passing the ball off to some of her less talented teammates, letting them score when Penelope could have easily made the shot herself.
Kara noticed, too. "That's Lee's influence," she pointed out, nodding towards the court. "I'd have taken the shot."
One of the members of the opposing team grabbed the ball and Laura couldn't help but cringe as Penelope elbowed him hard in the ribs and snatched it back. "It looks as though you had some influence on her pyramid playing, though."
"Maybe a little," Kara laughed.
The game was a close one and Laura gave up on conversation altogether so that Kara could concentrate on shouting at the players and the referees. Penelope's team won and Kara's shout at the final whistle was so triumphant one would have thought she'd been playing herself.
Kara hopped off the table and extended a hand to help Laura down. Laura took it, grateful for the assistance, and made a mental note to speak to the school supervisors about having some bleachers built before the start of the next season.
They waited off to the side while Penelope gathered her things and congratulated her teammates.
"She's turning out to be an amazing young woman," Laura commented.
Kara took the compliment about as well as Laura expected. "Yeah, well, she's always been a good kid and Lee's a great father."
"And, what?" Laura laughed. "You only taught her how to play pyramid? You didn't have any other influence on her?"
Penelope bounded up and threw her arms around Kara. "Did you see that, Mom? We kicked their asses!"
Kara met Laura's raised eyebrow with a smirk. "Okay," she relented. "Maybe a little."
- END -